It’s all about consistency.  Or is it? When it comes to communications, organisations are concerned about delivering a consistent branded experience.  However, sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the purpose of communication itself.

Here’s an example – yesterday I changed telephone accounts.  I must say it was a good experience on the phone.  Despite being on hold for 20 minutes, the person on the other end was friendly, chatty but also professional.  It was as pleasant as you could expect with such a mundane task – until she started reading from the company script.  All of a sudden it was as if somone had replaced the person talking to me with a corporate machine.  Admittedly, it was the part about the legal stuff where it is important to get it right.  It could be argued though that such obvious reading from a script on this topic only makes it worse.

Up until that point, I was having a conversation with a person, who I was aware represented a large company.  After that point, I was only aware of the large company.  A pity.