Continued….

However now that the promise of getting rich quickly is no longer there, most companies are taking time in developing their use of the Internet and being cautious. The statistics still indicate that e-retail is growing at above 60 percent per year and that the population of Internet users is still rising at over 100 million people a year.

For most companies an Internet presence is absolutely necessary, but many companies have slowed their efforts in the light of the dotcom collapse. At the moment there is no strong driving force to lend urgency to their efforts and we do not believe that one will arise until wireless Internet access develops.

The problem here is that the 3G auctions have made access very expensive and at the same time, most of the wireless operators are performing poorly (in financial terms). The use of mobile technology has not gone much beyond phone calls and text messages, but when it does a whole series of business developments will occur that will drive many companies forward. The most important of these will be the use of mobile technology as a mechanism for payment.

Q: You advocate the use of the Internet as a means to capture new customers and keep them loyal and also to differentiate from your competitors. But in large firms is it not the case that customers feel distanced from their suppliers when the relationship is managed through the Internet. Is it not a fact that communication through a computer is colder and more distant?

This is a correct observation. Computer communication is cold and distant compared to what it could be. There is a strong technology factor involved in this. Quite simply voice technology and video technology have yet to become a direct part of the Internet interface.

The point here is that currently there is little that a company can do to improve the coldness of the Interface because both voice technology and video technology demand high bandwidth – which most customers do not have – and the integration of these technologies also needs to go through a period of development before it becomes clear what is possible.

In reality, the coldness of the Interface has more to do with the lack of direct visual interaction and sound interaction with the computer than with the lack of human-to-human contact. In time people will become used to a richer interface and it will become clearer which types of interaction can become automatic human-to-software interactions and which need to be human-to-human.
Inciedntally, it is not easy to predict this ahead of time. It has already been discovered for example that if people are receiving phone-calls in respect of debt chasing, they prefer to talk to an automated voice system than a real human being. Naturally there is also a cost factor involved in this. Human beings cost more than software.

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