A conversation starter: Technology the enabler and disabler
- Graham Williams and Dorian Haarhoff
Innovative technology usually enables progress The September 2011 issue of Management
Today treated us to a wonderful array of articles and insights into innovation such as building an innovation culture and instilling good practices, managing creativity, improving market share, return on investment and business sustainability. Good stuff.
This current issue on technology in many ways complements the innovation theme.
There continues to be a flood of innovative technology. In the energy world, there are technologies to capture the wind, sun and wave power, and to reduce engine carbon emissions, make fuel from cellulose, biochar1
answered by the next (un)available agent, press 1 for this, 2 for that, 3 to hold, enter your ID, customer and other numbers, wait some more, and then you get through to someone who cannot help you. It is interesting that in the USA, leading contact centres employ higher level staff in order to answer queries and complaints more readily, and match and engage with their customer base. Some supermarkets that went the route of automated check-outs are reverting back to manned checkouts in order to re-establish face-to-face customer connections.
… In the medical
world, technology that improves prevention, diagnosis, treatment, (robotic) care, transmission of knowledge… In the business world we now have, through information and communications technology: distributed workforces, virtual teams, customers are able to communicate with us via multiple medias, the opportunity to enhance our brand reputations by means of trans-media story sharing. More good stuff.
We are hard-pressed to keep pace.
But can sometimes disable We can get caught up in the chase after technologies and vendor promises that entice, and we become seduced by Utopian offers and fall into the ‘new for the sake of new’ trap. And sometimes technology falls short, disables, or does the job more expensively. And we pay a price. Bad stuff. Consider just a few fairly recent examples to illustrate:
Less than adequate customer interactions. You phone a contact centre with all the latest technology. Experience a long wait while the phone rings… a recorded set of advertising messages, mindless music, and a recorded voice that tells you that you are a valued customer, number 3000 in the queue, please wait and your call will be
80 Management Today | December 2011
Demotivating employees. Under the banner of ‘improved efficiency’ recent workplace technology allows ‘big brother’ to analyse employees’ performance – for example the quantity of emails handled, time taken to respond and resolution rates. Customer relationship-building success is usually left out of the equation.
Taking the lead at high cost. The huge China Dragon Hotel Hangzhou has introduced IBM smart card based on radio frequency identification technology, for aspects such as convenient, automatic registration, directions to rooms, and at a sensory level, customized room temperature settings. At high cost, of course.2
While on business trips to Durban, long before the advent of Customer Relationship Management and Customer Experience Management, I was always delighted by being welcomed by the Edward Hotel by name, their recall of the type of pillow, tea, room that I preferred. They used a simple card index system.
Perhaps this no-cost solution was not in the same league as the China Dragon hotel technology, but the process worked, and the people-connection worked.
Shifting the locus of control. There will always be in the technology world, the best new thing ‘since sliced bread’. Now, for example we have Cloud-based computing. Your data, information
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