When used appropriately, technology is a wonderful thing.  When it's used to create efficiency or to help your clients deal with you more easily then it's great. When it's used to cut costs at the expense of your clients then it's a killer.

I'm on hold to BT at the moment so I thought I would have a rant.

A couple of weeks ago I parked at Chieveley Services on the M4 for a meeting with a potential client.  If you want to park for more than 2 hours you have to pay £10.  The only way you can pay this is using a mobile phone.  The system that they use is so unfriendly it's not true.  It took me about 10 minutes to pay but I figured it was worth the effort not to get a parking ticket.

Last week, guess what I received? Yep, a parking ticket.  I called to get it cancelled and it had, indeed, been issued in error.  It had already been done as I lease my car and they have to reassign the debt to me instead of the lease company.  I have to wait for a new ticket to arrive and then call in again.  That arrived this morning and after a long wait I managed to get it sorted.  I've now got to wait for notification so that I can send that to Lexus to get a refund on the charge that they make for having to administer an unpaid fine.

All is all, probably about £100 worth of lost production time because technology was used badly.

Then I have to get through to BT to reduce our DD as our account it always in credit.  The first time I called I tried to use their automated system.  I entered the phone number and then the account number but it complained that they didn't match.  I then called back to get to speak to a human.  I had to enter my phone number and account number again.  It didn't complain but I still had to wait over 10 minutes to speak to someone, all the time being reminded by a message that they were very busy and that I should try their automated system.  Guess what, BT, I'm very busy as well and your automated system sucks.

So, eventually I get through.  Of course, one of the first things she asks is what my account number is.  Didn't I just enter that?

The moral of this story is that we need to make it easy for our customers to do business with us.  With BT and the parking company, I don't suppose they care, but most of us don't have that luxury.