Adapting to a changing market

Fixing this is almost always a losing battle. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean the market cares any longer.

The Marx Brothers were great at vaudeville. Live comedy in a theatre. And then the market for vaudeville was killed by the movies. Groucho didn’t complain about this or argue that people should respect the hard work he and his brothers had put in. No, they went into the movies.

Then the market for movies like the Marx Brothers were making dried up. Groucho didn’t start trying to fix the market. Instead, he saw a new medium and went there. His TV work was among his best (and certainly most lucrative).

It’s extremely difficult to repair the market.

It’s a lot easier to find a market that will respect and pay for the work you can do.

via Seth’s Blog: What every mass marketer needs to learn from Groucho Marx.

Seth makes a great point. One the IVR industry seems to ignore. The IVR industry is a corpse. You can make a living as a scavenger, picking chunks of dead meat from the bodies of the customer service department. But it’s not going to last.

People have changed. They’ve moved on. They no longer find acceptable to be treated by a drone. Maybe the IVR industry should re-invent itself as the customer community feedback industry. That would make a difference, for them and for the rest of us.