Talking about our feelings

At a telecoms event that was probably more male-dominated than the industry average, and that's saying something, it was unusual to hear a speaker encourage his audience to talk about their feelings.

But that's exactly what Rob Keve, CEO of Fizzback, did at the FT World Telecoms Conference on Thursday.

In a presentation designed to introduce conference attendees to his company - and to be honest once he'd finished I was still a little unsure exactly how Fizzback works - Keve must have used the word "emotions" several dozen times.

Apparently, Fizzback is a way of capturing feedback from consumers "at the point of experience", which can then be packaged up for telecoms operators to use. But more than that, Fizzback "interprets the rich emotions they are expressing", Keve explained, sort of.

Frankly, whenever I've had a bad experience with a service provider - in the telecoms space or otherwise - it would not require a fancy service to interpret my emotions; a loud beep to protect the innocence of any children in the immediate vicinity would suffice.

Once consumer data is captured, via email, SMS, social networks and so on, Fizzback uses a black box, which "is neither black nor a box," Keve said, to interpret those emotions. Well, that clarifies things then.

I may still be somewhat in the dark about what Fizzback actually does, but the message was pretty clear: operators need to get touchy-feely and listen to their customers in order to prevent churn. Simples.