Situation

It doesn’t have to be all too serious on social media, however there might be a thin line between added value and entertainment. The performers are on stage constantly or at least they perceive it this way. Even one on one interactions are carried out as a stage performance with a huge audience. It is fun, snarky or opportunistic. As long as there is a round of applause and attention they are completely OK with doing anything on social media.

O2 might be one of the best examples since they combine their opportunistic worldview (everybody can become a customer) with a highly personalised approach on answering some tweets

Another classic is of course this video by Bodyform as a response to one of their customers.

Analysis

Everybody wants to be a performer, however not everybody is a great performer so there might be a risk that you become the subject of your own joke. Also something to keep into account is that even though people most often like entertainers they do not always trust them with their business. Somebody who is joking all the time how will they handle the client business, will it be treated as just another joke? Therefore balance is important and in this case O2 has this balance between performing, being opportunistic and also doing some more serious service work.

There is always the question on why a performer performs, is it because he likes to entertain people and give them a good time, or is there a more selfish motive and is it the performing wanting your attention so he or she will feel good. If you are only using the questions and complaints of your customers as an excuse to get on stage and grab the attention it is just making fun on somebody else’s expense, which isn’t a very sustainable approach.

How to make it better

Compared to the other archetypes it is hard to define the performer as an archetype that is doing something really wrong. Of course some performers might have their flaws as described above: they might be having fun on their customer’s expense, they might be just focused on getting the spotlight on themselves no matter what and if that means that they also have to do a bit of service than it just has to be done.

Balance is the thing that is important while being a performer, the real performers perform when they have to or want to, not whenever they can. It is striking the ideal balance between business value and performance and the business value of a good performance could be lowered marketing and acquisition costs. Key is to measure the business value of your performance, unless you are selling tickets for your performance than the amount of tickets sold is your business value.