Sitting in the cold and gray of January can put one in the mood to contemplate the really BIG issues of life. Such as how the cost of digital services has dropped to practically nothing, and how the cost of human services continues to rise. And what this means for customer experience.
While stepping back and pondering this weighty issue, I checked out another amazing free tool available to the digerati. This one is called Website Grader, and for no charge beyond signing up to their mailing list, you can get a pretty good report on your web site, delivered in a minute or so. [And there's a nifty badge too. I love badges, all bloggers do. It's down there on the bottom right, below the blogroll.]
All this as a marketing device to attract you to HubSpot's web services.
On the other hand, we have human services. There's a long standing tradition that people should get a little increase in wages every year. And occasional merit increases. So if the head count stays the same, more or less, the overall cost of the payroll rises.
This is leading to bizarre situations all over the place.
I can get webinars on many subjects for free, and can learn a great many things just by watching videos on YouTube, and reading free web content. It's even easier than going to the library. OR, I can take a class at a university or college, where costs continue to rise.
In my hometown here, the faculty of a major university have been on strike for two months because they don't like the latest offer: an increase of 9.25 % over a three year contract, with improvements in job security and benefits. [Are these people crazy, you may be asking yourself? Haven't they heard the news?]
With the cost of so much that is digital dropping, dropping, dropping, it gets harder and harder to find ways to support the perceived value of human-delivered experiences. Like, say, clerks in a clothing store, or tellers in a bank. No one wants to pay for these things directly. But the costs of human staff essentially rise every year, whether prices do or not.
Right you say, that's what has driven offshoring of call centres, among other things.
The challenge for us as experience marketing folk is this: how do you make the human experience valuable enough that people will pay the cost of delivering it? Especially when people are reassessing the value of pretty much everything?
No answers today, just raising the question.
