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IT Harming Customer Service?

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DQW Bureau
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I know such a statement

might make me sound anti-progressive; people might accuse me of being

against any development, but the fact of the matter remains and I

will stick to my guns that too much automated systems (at the expense

of losing the personal touch) is detrimental for the services sector.

This is true especially for the hospitality industry and I have three

incidents that took place in the last few months to embellish my view

point.

I write this piece

sitting

in my hotel room in downtown Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia; I am here as

DQ Channels, a sister publication of The DQ Week, is organizing a

residential convention for the country's top solution providers.

Yesterday, when me and a couple of colleagues from event management

team checked in to the hotel, we were told to wait for a few hours

for our rooms as the system would reflect the booking after some

time. Now, only after some cajoling did we manage to get the rooms,

but it was ridiculous a hotel reception compromising on customer

service at the expense of system conformance. Do we really want such

disruptive IT?

That's not all. While

placing order by room service, the attendant kept on insisting that

the system is right now not allowing her to add it to the room

charges and she insisted on cash payment. Only on threatening to

cancel the booking, did she relent-again over-dependence on IT led

to a serious compromise on customer service quality. Unfortunately,

hotels do not seem to be understanding this. A few months, as I had

narrated in this column, I had faced similar automation-related

challenges at one of the swankiest hotels in Washington DC.

My door had got stuck on

the sixteenth floor, and I had to go up and down several times as

despite activation the key was not working and the receptionist was

pleading helplessness as the system was showing key was alright.

Again that needed yelling followed by thee arrival of a hefty guy who

opened the door with a kick. Similarly, my senior colleague was not

allowed to check in for several hours in Las Vegas because of some

automation-related challenges.

This again brings up the

pertinent question that can a service sector compromise so heavily on

quality of customer service just by becoming so addicted to its IT. I

am not against IT automation, but becoming a slave to it and thereby

ditching all your customer services etiquettes just do not sound

right, it might also lead to problems or fearful scenarios of

Orwellian proportions. Channel partners and also smaller resellers

thrive on relationship; while I am all for them embracing IT to

improve business productivity, I hope it does not mean the demise of

their inherent customer service strength.

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