Having decided to embark on a rather late journey into the world of tech, a significant part of my waking hours since the past many months have been a huge learning curve. One part of the learning curve is the actual stuff of building our virtual product in the form of an app. The other part of the learning curve is to deal with the vagaries of the service providers that are essential to give the app a life so that our potential users can enjoy our offerings.
My favorite experience is one of trying to close a bank account in India. I had the best customer service in the form of a truly caring bank employee willing to work with me face to face to try and resolve my challenges. She was stymied by the Byzantine processes put in place by the esteemed institution. As you rightly state in your opening “bars”, process is designed to be convoluted so that the actors can collect rent from the public for services rendered. And sadly, the private sector is not immune to this human tendency. The bots (which are designed by humans) are just another way to perpetuate the convoluted processes which basically distrust the customers they are trying to “serve”.
Yes, I remember you walking us through your account closure experience.
It’s amazing how humans who design the bots can’t do them keeping other humans in mind. But I have come to realise that human intuition and tech don’t go hand in hand.
Hello Shantanu , This painful experience of yours on dichotomy of the outcome of modern day technology based service , is very relatable . The analysis is very nice and believe me , even offline face to face service has deteriorated as they also keep depending on technology for their performance . This article is a wake up call .
Thanks much, Swapneel. I agree on the deterioration even in offline service. Only solace there is that one can vent out to some human that one can see, unlike in online where there are only bots nowadays.
My favorite experience is one of trying to close a bank account in India. I had the best customer service in the form of a truly caring bank employee willing to work with me face to face to try and resolve my challenges. She was stymied by the Byzantine processes put in place by the esteemed institution. As you rightly state in your opening “bars”, process is designed to be convoluted so that the actors can collect rent from the public for services rendered. And sadly, the private sector is not immune to this human tendency. The bots (which are designed by humans) are just another way to perpetuate the convoluted processes which basically distrust the customers they are trying to “serve”.
Yes, I remember you walking us through your account closure experience.
It’s amazing how humans who design the bots can’t do them keeping other humans in mind. But I have come to realise that human intuition and tech don’t go hand in hand.
Hello Shantanu , This painful experience of yours on dichotomy of the outcome of modern day technology based service , is very relatable . The analysis is very nice and believe me , even offline face to face service has deteriorated as they also keep depending on technology for their performance . This article is a wake up call .
Thanks much, Swapneel. I agree on the deterioration even in offline service. Only solace there is that one can vent out to some human that one can see, unlike in online where there are only bots nowadays.