I witnessed a conversation on my Facebook wall today that obviously caught my attention, as I am working in the customer service technology industry. I want to share it here:

It is obvious how the recent advances in communication technology simply overwhelm some bigger organizations. While in the past they could compensate lack of speed of adoption as technological progress was slower, it is nowadays pretty much impossible to keep up with the Whatsapps, Snapchats and Secrets of this world. But looking at what my friends here discuss – they really don’t demand much. SMS and email are technologies from the stone-age! SMS celebrated its 20-year anniversary in December 2012! And still today, so many years later, businesses are not using the power of this channel for the most basic B2C customer communication.

And phone calls that ask you to call back on a number that isn’t even the one the call is coming from? Or a text that asks you to call back? Why the forced switch of channel, if obviously I chose to have you reach me via SMS?

It quite frankly blows my mind, knowing what is possible if only modern software and cloud solutions were embraced. How much longer will consumers tolerate companies with customer service technology from the 90ies? Well, research shows that they are increasingly taking their business elsewhere already, so hopefully the dinosaurs of the service industry will either go extinct soon, or adapt. Remember, it’s not the strongest that survive, but the “fittest”, meaning those that can adapt…