The Brutal Truth About Second-Class Service: Customers Are Done Waiting in the ‘Right Now’ Economy. Consumers are accustomed to having virtually everything available at the touch of a button. If you’re not willing to meet their requirements, they’ll find someone else who will.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @TULLMAN
We’re nearing the end of the “hurry up and wait” era when customers politely settled for service and timeliness that suited the providers but sucked for the recipients. In many cases, there were few alternatives, and they were grateful to have access at all to certain of these providers. However, in today’s competitive environment, “right now” is barely enough to satisfy the demands of an educated, aggressive and increasingly connected public. No one wants to wait for anything, and if you’re not willing to meet their requirements, they’ll happily find someone else who will. The whole world is a few clicks away.
You can blame a small part of the overall “need for speed” on the impatience of young people—whose cultural impact and purchasing power across the board has never been greater—and on young techies and developers who are always seeking to accelerate whatever processes are central to their products and services. You can also point to the global nature of competition these days, as well as the ever-present availability of advice, instruction and alternatives that mobile devices make possible. Then there’s the fact that Amazon is constantly upping its delivery game and heightening the assumptions and expectations of buyers everywhere, both as to delivery times and the expansiveness of its inventory, wherein virtually everything you can imagine is online and available at the touch of a button.
The simple truth is that there’s no going back and, if your business or industry hasn’t been impacted and changed by these trends, it’s only a matter of time until the wave of change hits. The passage of time is not anyone’s friend except maybe for the Orange Monster who stalls everything and has escaped accountability for his misdeeds for decades. For us mere mortals, time has a nasty way of turning even the best assets into liabilities.
Speed, convenience and access win out over quality in far too many cases, but it’s really our own fault because we settle for “good enough” too often. We’ve also come to believe that almost everything is relatively disposable and quickly replaceable, so we think that we’re not really giving that much up when we accept second class service and mediocre performances and results.
Too many providers still take advantage of our indifference and grudging acceptance to continue to do a lousy job because they can get away with it and no one has yet offered a better alternative. But change is coming. One of the first groups to be targeted will be government office holders and political candidates. Anyone who’s wasted time trying to call or contact any of their city, state or federal representatives knows they’ll never reach anyone of consequence or secure any assistance or relief.
While our political and governmental officers and representatives have always lagged in terms of the demonstrable speed and service advances which we now see in virtually every business, the fact is, once a new technology emerges—and when that technology delivers better, faster results—the race will truly be on to see how quickly the laggards can catch up. Many of them won’t have the capacity to deliver comparable new features and services and will quickly fall by the wayside.
We’re only now starting to see the introduction–obviously aided in many respects by artificial intelligence–of intelligent automated response systems which will enable politicians, candidates, governmental authorities and other regulatory agencies to create authentic and interactive digital twins like Selfie which will enable them to deliver replies and responses in a timely (in fact instantly) and scalable fashion to a virtually unlimited number of callers, constituents, and voters.
These systems can be updated in real time 24 hours a day and provide the most accurate and comprehensive answers available to any inquiries. The time, cost and manpower savings which this kind of interactive and intelligent automation will offer to early adopters will be substantial. Competitors, candidates, and other offices or agencies which lack comparable tools and capabilities will rapidly discover that they are doing a comparatively poor job of providing the services to their constituents, prospective voters, funders, media and the public in general.
These are people who are looking forward to the past. The future doesn’t wait.
These are people who are looking forward to the past. The future doesn’t wait.
