Summary: [You might view the earlier post "Interactions: Medium of influence" before this.] Interactions improve business. But companies still tend to base interactions solely on costs. Systems need to change focus to realize interactions have their own economic power.
Interactions have to be handled right to be successful. This requires divergent thinking, ability to integrate diverse knowledge, and astute judgement.
Customer disconnects
Outsourcing hit mainstream mainly because labour is cheap on the other side of the world. ‘Training’ for call centre employees in third world countries means imbibing the accent – American, British and what-have-you - so the ‘contact’ makes customers feel at home.
But high-speed transmissions aren’t the automatic guarantee of effective interactive capability. What to say or how to say it remains the people’s issue – it doesn’t arrive with changing the accent!
When knowledge of the business, idiomatic expression and the culture is limited, these processes may simply be earning customer disconnects at high speed.
Basing solely on costs
Yet…Interactions have always spelt costs for management. The decision to outsource is based on costs. And the recruitment and retention of expertise is also based on costs.
In earlier times they worried about contracting specialists particularly if there were geographical distances between them - they still do.
Despite the changes in global scenario, managerial measures and mindset remain the same. Thinking centres on money, rather than the value of skills and thought development.
Cheap to interactive
The traditional focus on ‘threat’ generates fears - of losing margins. This ‘cost’ perspective guides decisional strategy. The ROIC companies tend to seek are not in long-term value but in profitability.
Manipulating data is preferred to learning to interact with other people. In cost cutting exercises, transnational expertise is usually undervalued even in firms that seek a global presence.
Corporate leaders put in time, energy and other resources to build the business, so focus rivets on internal processes rather than on the environmental reality. The unexpected generally isn’t anticipated, even with new challenges.
Thus the organization that opts for the stereotypical in a diverse world sets to also lose its competitive edge, as it fails to capitalize on the quality of insight and knowledge of its best resources.
Changing economic power
The ongoing action process may be building up to future failures. Computing technology can’t provide the thought development required in knowledge-based diversity.
Management needs to be prepared for 'when' not 'if' reality changes. Systems need to adopt new mindsets and new measurements, besides new vocabularies, to realize the economic power of interactions.
They need to evolve, so to speak. And, with time and technology, to change the operative focus from cheap to interactive value.
By increasing the quantity and quality of interactions in business, they could better manage their talent resources and their customer service. And ultimately, perhaps even hold the line on costs.
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