Using dialogues with customers as sources of knowledge

Every day organizations have numerous dialogues with (potential) customers. The representatives of the organization see themselves presented with the daunting task of how to identify and use the most relevant information that the customer communicated. Equally vexing for these dialogue participants is how to ensure that what is intended with a certain utterance in a dialogue is understood in the way the speaker intended. It is therefore not surprising that not all dialogues lead to satisfactory results for the participants. Customers tell organizations in dialogues (via media like e‐mail, telephone, letters or ‘physical’ visits) what they expect that the organization needs to know to be able to serve them in a satisfactory way. Equally, organizations would like to know whether the message they are communicating is understood in the way the organization intended and if the products or services they are providing matches any persistent (latent) need of a selected (group of) customer(s). This research is aimed at developing a computational instrument to come to terms with these issues. The seminal theory of Clark (1996) might assist us in this endeavour. In particular, the concepts of common ground and larger purpose present possibilities that could support us in our attempts to gain more knowledge from dialogues with customers. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.