We are not, as Darwin proffered, descended from the “lower mammals”. We are not the product of millions of years of evolution. We are, instead, the unrelenting descendant of telephone sanitizers. This was made ever more clear over the last few weeks as I struggled to explain to a client why charging their customers for the simple privilege of creating an account on their website was epically stupid.
You see, I currently do some work for a large organization that handles a lot of paperwork. Forests full of paperwork, quite honestly, and they are finally trying to step into the 20th century and automate things more. As part of that, they want to allow their customers to submit a lot of their requests electronically. This comes with innumerable difficulties, most especially around fixing processes that are paper-centric, or replacing them wholesale with new ideas. And yet, they continue to insist that their customers should pay for the privilege of having an online account whereby they can submit their requests electronically. It seems to escape their notice that this idea would doom the entire effort and ensure that they will continue to process only paper. To me, this is no different than Amazon asking for a fee to set up an account online so that you can later spend money with them. Or perhaps Safeway charging you to enter their store.
In what alternative universe is this a rational idea?
Tagged: business, government