I’m not in the least bit happy that much of today’s business is run by the Finance people within an organisation with focus on bringing costs down at the expense of customer service. Since when has customer service meant being dealt with by any form of automated system? I was fascinated to listen to a BBC report that the London Underground is piloting an idea to give tube drivers a book of quotations such that when a delay occurs they can not only give you details of the delay but then they can add a pithy saying from the Dalai Lama or somesuch. The report concluded, after interviewing Joe & Josephine Public, that people liked the sense of being dealt with by a real person rather than an automated message. COME-ON! Who got paid lots of money to work that one out?
We all prefer that personal touch but the Spreadsheet Monkeys have stripped cost out of just about every part of business so that we all get to deal with “intelligent” machines and systems. Around the corner from where I live there is an old fashioned Do-it-yourself (DIY) shop where you go in and you can only buy goods from a salesperson behind the counter. A question such as “I’m trying to do xyz, have you got something I can use?” is usually met with “Of course, you need an abc”. You can’t get that from the national and international chain stores. No-one knows nowadays how to do it.
Anyway … why do we give these Spreadsheet Monkeys so much power. Look at the current economic crisis! Tell me, who engineered that? I bet it was someone trying to save a penny or two on some spreadsheet.
OK … I’m done. Had to get that out of my system.
