How Much Do We Really Work Online and What Effect Does It Have On You?

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You go online to e-mail your friends, pay your bills, play games and if your single you go online to find dates. For many of us, a good part of our day is spent working online. We do almost everything. For many families the appliance that causes the most stress when it is down is the family computer. When our online world first started to get popular in the 90’s, most people used a dial-up modem and the AOL desktop software.

Those numbers have dramatically changed today although about 2% of all folks still use a dial-up modem with AOL. In many cases, this is the only option that they have because they live in a remote location where broadband is just not available. Regardless, many of these folks still use their computers for many of the daily tasks that used to be done either in person or by snail mail.

So where does the Post Office stand today? Well it is obvious that they are suffering from a huge reduction in first class mail that consists of things like letters, bills, bank statements etc. More and more folks are using the Internet to receive many of these things that they used to receive by snail mail. Personally, I have switched only a handful of things to electronic simply because I prefer to receive an actual envelope in the mail with my information or bill statement.

I still find it very reliable and a good way to communicate. Even though I do require the Internet for my profession, I do not want to rely on it for everything. I have missed more statements via e-mail then I have through snail mail. In short, the Post Office still plays a strong part in our society. We still need packages delivered along with other commodities and that is the direction they are pointing in.

In a recent survey, about 35% of organizations still use snail mail as the main means of communication to their customers. About 50% of all companies offer Facebook as a medium for support and this number is growing by the day. I expect that over the next year almost every company will offer a Facebook page. All the surveyed organizations offer a conventional landline for customer related issues.

The problem with this is that many companies “hide” this option or bury it deep in the menu in hopes you will give up or hang up. If you dig deep enough and do some research, you can always find a way to contact a company a phone. It may take extreme patience, however.

Looking forward, I think most consumers are going to demand that companies start to offer customer service like they did in the past. It might be you will get a see a real person via a video chat while online or it might be the return of the customer service representative on the physical landline. If companies are going to survive, customer service is going to have to improve and talking to real people is going to have to become a reality. In order to improve, we are going to have to take a couple steps backwards.

Article by, Ross Deprey
Owner of Computer Geeks Online