c4-tech-issues

The assignment was to identify a problem facing the tech industry, explain why it is a problem and to hypothesize a possible solution. My first thoughts were that I was going to be looking into things like data management, network strains and capabilities, the loss of work force with the retirement of baby boomers, and the fact that technologies are changing so quickly that by the time you implement a new one on Monday it is obsolete before the weekend is upon you. What I did't think I was going to be reading about was customer service.

Maybe it's because I still barely have my feet in the pool of the tech world, but I never thought customer service played such a large role in the industry. Yet after reading about how poor customer service can have such a large effect upon the tech industry I am realizing the importantance of its role. The fact is that the technology world is implementing software and devices to a customer base that sees the advantages of certain products and services but doesn't exactly understand the how they are built or how they work. Sure once someone buys a device or installs some software they can go and read a user manual, but that only gets you so far. What happens when something breaks? What happens you just can't get it to work? What happens when you discover that the tech product or service you paid for is not functioning in the way you asked for it to be?

So here is where customer service comes in to play. Customer service can range from the service rep you call to figure out why your internet connection is not working to the web designers for the firm that has built your new website. The difficulty for the customer in the situation where they have to contact an IT professional, is the ability to express themselves, their needs and wants, using the vocabulary that the tech person needs to identify the problems. It goes both ways in the situation, where the IT professional is limited in their ability to tend to the needs of the customer because of that same difficulty in clearly expressing their ideas, needs and wants. Really it comes down to symantics. The customer and the tech industry need to be able to communicate with a singular language. Unless each side is using the same language to represent their ideas those ideas are not going to be translated from one side to the other and ultimately into the product that's being built.

A bigger problem arrises when the relstionship between the customer and the IT professional becomes strained because of this rift in communication. The customer can not express themselves in a way that the IT rep can easily understand, so the product that they design for the client is not what the customer thought they were going to get or the help that they receive doesn't solve their problem. Unless a suitable solution is found, this communication rift starts a back and forth between the customer and the tech, that more often than not creates frustration on both sides and ultimately ends in the customer walking away from that tech service or product with a bad taste in their mouth.

So the question becomes how to break this rift in communication so that the ideas of the customer can be clearly expressed and the tech products created can properly reflect what the cutomer wants to receive?

To me the answer to the above comes with improving communication by cultivating the relationship between the customer and the IT world. The wrinkle in the plan is that this answer is one that takes time. It has to start with the IT customer service actively listening to what the client has to say and finding a way to empathize with them. The tech has to be able to think from the perspecive of their client in order to see what it is that they want. Then the back and forth can become one of collaboration and education as opposed to one of frustration and misunderstanding. The more that the tech can go back to the customer and help them mold the working product within the capabilities of the technologies IT is using, the more cost effectively the product will be built and the happier the customer will be with that product. The more that the tech works with the customer the more educated the customer becomes and the easier it is to work together to build something that suits the customer as well as possible. This could be accomplished through bringing the customer into your pseudocoding process. The customer would then have the ability to be a part of the design in a non technical but specific way by identifying what they want and what they want to have happen. The customer doesn't need to know how a thing gets done within the code, but they need have a hand in directing what the end product is what it is going to look like. Including the customer in the design process in such an integral will not only teach them some of the language they need to express themselves more clearly to the tech, but also empower them to speak up about problems they see and changes that need to take place from their perspective. The comfort that comes from being a part of the process will ultimately give the customer more of an ability to step in and say, "No, that's now what I want, we need to change it in such and such a way". Along the line, the unseen by-product of this collaboration is customer loyalty. Once that relationship is built and the customer sees that a tech firm is actively working with them and willing to customize a product for them, that firm is the one they are going to go back to again and again.

No matter how fantasitic your product is, how small, how fast, how fashionable, how functional, if the support that comes behind it is less than the customer wants, that customer will seize to be a customer. In the restaurant industry there is an old saying that I learned very early on which I think can be related to any situation of customer service: a customer is more likely to come back to a restaurant with bad food and fantastic service than they are to a restaurant with fantastic food and shitty service. What it means is that the product is only a part of it, the experience is really what people walk away with. The better the experience, the more likely the customer is to return and tell people about your product.

In the end tech products and services are created and designed for people who have at best a limited tech background. The more that the tech industry can identify that fact and relate to their customer base in a way that makes the customer comfortable enough to talk about concepts they are not well schooled in, the better the product they are going to produce. The more that the tech industry is willing to mold their products to the responses of the customer base, the more the customer base is going to want to use those products.