“The commercial world, then, treats us like celebrities - “Because you’re worth it,” it says. It flatters and kowtows to us and keeps on doing so right up until the moment when we hand over our credit-card details. Then we are cast aside and condemned to a purgatory of being held in queue on a customer service line for all eternity. What fools we are.” - How To Be Free, Tom Hodgkinson.
I was reading this and couldn’t help thinking how true it was when it comes to the vast majority of businesses today. Perhaps the most notorious device that exemplifies the implicit belief that the customer’s time is worth less than the company’s time are the automated answering systems. We all know them: “For Sales, press 1…for Billing press 2…” and so on ad nauseum. Now, whoever claims that this system is primarily for the customer’s benefit is a scoundrel - it is nothing but an infernal contraption by which your patience is tested by the narration of numbers in exchange for some benefit to the companies that institute it. Having a viewing of Network fresh in my mind, I believe it is time we shout with one voice: “I am mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
So, everyone who is SICK AND TIRED of automated call answering systems, leave a comment that says: “Press 1″ followed by the company that you’d like to REMOVE their automated call answering systems.
We’ll then send those comments to the companies listed and demand they remove that infernal contraption and give its job to a human instead. That way we’ll create jobs for people as well as give an end to our telephonic woes.
I also propose we make a badge for all companies that satisfy two criteria:
1. They have Humans answering the phone.
2. They do not put you on hold for *more than 30 seconds*.
So to all designers out there send me your proposed badge in a small jpg, and I will post a blog with all the proposed designs and have people vote on which one would best represent our mission.
And a small piece of advice to companies with a big volume of calls:
1. Find out what the majority of callers want. Let’s say most people call for billing questions.
2. Direct ALL calls to the billing department. This way most callers will automatically find themselves where they want to be with zero hassle.
3. The callers that did not call for billing questions can easily be re-directed to the relevant departments by the touch of a button.
4. Perform the statistics as to what most callers want every month so that you change the direction of all calls accordingly. If your company launches a campaign for a new product and everybody is calling to find out about it, it would be stupid to have them directed to the billing department just because the stats showed that 6 months ago the volume of calls went to billing questions. In short, adapt to caller demand regularly.
“One can resist the invasion of an army, but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas whose time has come.” - Victor Hugo, Histoire d’un Crime.
Knowledge about how to start, run and succeed in business has never been more plentiful. In other words, the basics are now available to everybody, with little or no cost. People in business are quickly realizing that what will soon be pivotal is not just doing the basics well. That will be the norm for any business that wants to merely survive. It is, and shall be necessary - but it is increasingly becoming apparent that it will not be sufficient for significant business success. The differences in the means and quality of production in top businesses are becoming indistinguishable, or at least, not significant enough to give any business a competitive advantage. An example is washing detergents that by now have become so similar in technological efficacy that the marketing people are obliged to present us advertisements with scientists that take us down to the atomic level of clothing so we can notice what their detergents do “different” because it is hardly distinguishable with the naked eye. With the aims of most products having been technologically accomplished (e.g. detergents clean very well) something more will be required to give companies their competitive edge. What will that be? I believe the answer has been staring us in the face for some time: a constant source of Creative Ideas.
One or two ideas from inspired employees might do the trick for a while, but in today’s rapidly changing business environment, modern businesses cannot afford to wait for sudden epiphanies from employees whose jobs mainly consisted in being able to produce consistently uniform results. Innovation requires change, and unchanging people cannot bring change. A new kind of employee is needed: a transformer, innovator, revolutionary. An employee who makes it his business to not just come up with single creative ideas. For creative ideas that are isolated resemble notes without a melody. In themselves, they don’t mean much. What is needed is someone who is able to put together creative ideas into a melody of creativity. I believe he would deserve to be called a creative thinker.
In the past a businessman had to do everything himself: finance, management, marketing, accounting etc. Modern businesses grew by dividing their labor and assigning specifically trained people to each post, thereby tremendously increasing the overall efficiency of the business. Perhaps it is time to create a new position for the people who make it their job to be creative - the creative thinkers. They might not know how to staff a business, do the marketing, or balance the books. But they would know how to think creatively, and just as a screenwriter does not know the science behind the cameras, does not know all the administrative skills that are required to produce a movie, nor does he have to be a great actor himself to produce a brilliant screenplay, so the creative thinker should not have to burden himself with skills and responsibilities other than the ones conducive to great creative thinking.
Nor should he limit his horizons and think of innovation only within a very narrow domain. He should let his mind think about diverse subjects, and engage in games that supply it flexibility. A stagnant lake has never been creative. A creative thinker should brainstorm in the sea of ideas. Challenge himself with difficult problems. If smooth seas never made skillful sailors, how could easy problems ever make creative thinkers?
With these thoughts in mind I created and organize Idea Contest 2.0. To encourage brainstorming about difficult problems and help people discover and improve their capacity for creative thinking. But also to have fun in playing with our intelligence and creativity which often results in surprisingly innovative ideas. Click on the link to be taken to the event’s site. I hope I’ll see some of you there brainstorming away in one of the teams.
Perhaps the majority of the generation that was born around 1945 have made it through half of their lives without intimate acquaintance of a major invention: the computer. And it is not just the computer, but all the peripherals and gadgets that have grown around the computer and of course the Internet which is not merely another gadget to master but a portal to a different mode of living which connects you to millions of people throughout the world in many diverse ways. From membership in social networking communities, to instant messengers to niche sites regarding some eccentric hobby or fetish, being part of the internet and the world wide web community alters the way you view the world.
But many of these persons can hardly operate the mouse, let alone join social networking communities. They are being left out. Some of them don’t care much, given that they’ve been around long enough to have managed pretty well without those things. However, computers, the internet and the world wide web has entered the mainstream so it has got the generation of the 50’s curious. Just what are those people doing in front of their laptops or punching away at their Blackberry’s all the time, they wonder.
The generation of the 50’s does not know – and wants to learn. Do not make the mistake of looking only in the capitals of the world and the top branches of business. Those people had to learn how to operate a computer and use the web. I am mostly referring to those who never learned because they didn’t have to. To them computers, PDA’s and other gadgets are devices that have become familiar yet no less inscrutable. Their interfaces require a prior acquaintance that younger generations take for granted and cannot understand why someone wouldn’t “get it”. Right there you have an emerging market that its satisfaction will actually achieve a worthy cause: making the generation of the 50’s part of the 21st century by helping them become proficient in the tools that allow for world wide communication, knowledge exchange and co-operation.
To make it easier for the generation of the 50’s to enter the computer age interfaces should become more intuitive. That doesn’t mean making them any less efficient or watering them down. It means making them better. Advances towards that direction are already on the way with pioneers like Jeff Han creating the novel hardware that will enable the interface of the future. Take a sneak peak here:
As Han says in his presentation in the past we had to adapt ourselves to technology now we can make technology adapt to us. By making things more intuitive to a wider margin of people we not only give those people the opportunity to participate in the developments of the 21st century but we also widen the online market by adding another demographic category.
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