Voice of the Customer : Love to engage 'Virtually'

Blame it on technology, consumers no longer prefer the 'personal touch'. Customer Satisfaction goes down every time they have to engage with the enterprise in person. Internet and lately applications on smart phones are enabling more ways for consumers to perform their business. Here are some examples -

• Internet and eBusiness enabled online shopping, online banking, bill pay etc.
• Lately, banking applications on smart phones allow consumers to deposit their checks without visiting a branch or ATM
• Streaming video has almost shutdown video stores
• Self serve kiosks, self checkout in grocery stores

This bodes well for business too, reduced labor overhead. The challenge for enterprises to find the right sweet-spot, so they won't delineate their customers. Every consumer facing vertical will have to deal with this challenge differently. While retail (esp. media), can completely go online (or require near zero direct physical interaction with the customer), it is different for hospitality or healthcare verticals (will have to check in into the hotel room, or use hospital services at some point). A challenge for enterprises is to make this physical and virtual interactions seamless. IMHO, this trend is an important input while formulating longer term IT strategies.