After reading my CEO’s blog today – it made me think about my “call” with AT&T on Saturday.  I’ve recently signed up for an iPhone from AT&T.

Onto the story – I took a motorcycle ride on Saturday to meet a friend’s son for lunch.  When we arrived at the restaurant, I checked the and had two voice messages.  One was a friend and the other was AT&T.  I had not set-up my payments on my online billpay yet, so I had not made a payment.  I was basically behind.  Not intentionally – but I really just not gotten around to it.

So I called the 800 number and 2:31 (two minutes – thirty second later, I checked) I was done.  I had made a bank transfer of funds.  Now some will get a bit freaked out – but I’m saying thank you.

Firstly – you can take the iPhone when you pry it out of my cold dead hands.  The iPhone is awesome.  Seriously – 10x better than any other phone I’ve used.  Secondly – 2:31 seconds for me to pay my bill – COME ON!

Now – what does that have to do with newspapers and media?  Well – it goes back to what Chuck said in the blog post.

I do not believe that human nature is changing. However, we are learning new behaviors, using new tools.

Exactly.  I felt too busy to pay the phone bill.  I could have, but just chose not to.  But AT&T was cool with that and changed their behavior to adapt to my crappy ways.

So – what have we (as media companies) done to change what we do for people?  Do we even know who the people are?  What they do? What they want?  We have no clue what our people want or desire.

Just think what we could do if we knew the audience.  We have tens of sites, if we had all that data – plus the TV station, plus the newspaper and it was all available.  We could really know who they are and what they do and why they do what they do and that they may want you to let them pay the bill over a text message.

That would be good…but we don’t.  And we need to figure that out too.

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