The premise behind technology used to be that it serves human needs. But these days humans serve technology. Weird times call for weird words, so, as some long-forgotten genius once observed: \u201cWhen the spider eats the fly, the spider becomes the fly.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, now what?<\/p>\n
To the extent that the CNMI is serious about making any progress in tourism, the world\u2019s snowballing trend of dehumanization might hold a warm spot here. After all, though technology is a force on the islands, it\u2019s not yet the dominant force. There are still people who can get along with other people. That\u2019s a good thing when it comes to serving tourists. <\/p>\n
Like many things in life, or in business, you don\u2019t notice something when it\u2019s working but you do notice it when it\u2019s not. <\/p>\n
On the \u201cnot\u201d side of the ledger, I\u2019ve seen a growing number of examples where technology is deliberately used to put a firewall between staff and customers. Some formerly-mighty retail chains in the U.S. are making international business news as they fail. Regarding customers as merely human data mines, their stores made things as unpleasant as possible for these walking meat bags known as \u201cshoppers,\u201d and, guess what, the customers went away. <\/p>\n
I suspect we\u2019ve all got stories about this phenomenon in our own lives as customers, be it in retail, travel, financial services, or whatever. <\/p>\n
For a small, mom-\u2019n\u2019-pop shop, few of us expect fancy, Ritz-level customer service. There\u2019s nothing wrong with genuinely-rooted simplicity. Heck, given the alternatives these days, I think I prefer it. <\/p>\n
But large and sophisticated companies seem to prefer technology to people. It\u2019s getting to be a pretty twisted situation. I\u2019ve resigned myself to migrating my accounts to businesses that are, for now, at least, less hostile to actual people. I\u2019m lazy by nature and I try to avoid these kinds of chores, but I\u2019m sick of waiting on hold while listening to a snide recording about how important my call is. This is the opposite of the \u201ckindly hold, sir,\u201d you get from a real, live person in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
Of course, it being Friday and all, a visit to my beach chair should be rewarded with a little bit of thinking, or at least as much as I can muster, which usually ain\u2019t much. <\/p>\n
So here it is: Part of the situation we\u2019re contemplating is rooted in the \u201cagency problem.\u201d This basically means that a corporate manager who hides behind a computer all day, and thus avoids dirtying the hands with the unglamorous world of customer service matters, isn\u2019t the one who is going to suffer for the eventual loss of revenue. The shareholders are the ones who take that hit. Of course, shareholders themselves are likely to be large institutions. <\/p>\n
Furthermore, it\u2019s impossible to really determine cause-and-effect here; how many of your customers left because of bad service, and how many left because of other factors, is an issue that can be argued but never really proved.<\/p>\n
When it comes to agency, the most incompetent bunglers often have a slick genius for sitting on the corporate payroll for a long, long time. It\u2019s the executive version of low cunning. The resulting absurdities are a common theme in the famous \u201cDilbert\u201d cartoon strip. If you\u2019re looking for some text on the agency problem it gets insightful treatment by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book Antifragile. <\/p>\n
Anyway, having looked at all these gray clouds, if you\u2019re looking for a silver lining then here we go. Saipan\u2019s tropical charm, friendly ways, and laidback demeanor are attributes that will command a premium in the coming years. Globally, the cold glint of technology is getting colder. Saipan can offer a place to thaw. <\/p>\n
So the good news is that Saipan doesn\u2019t have to be fancy, it just has to be friendly. <\/p>\n
The, uh, other news is that the good news is null and void if a reasonably competent level of public administration isn\u2019t maintained. That\u2019s an agency problem writ large. But that\u2019s not my department, so we\u2019ll just keep on rolling. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ll mention this: I\u2019ve seen 10-person companies on Saipan that could, and did, outrun their 30-person counterparts elsewhere. That\u2019s because the Saipan workers were getting the job done (and serving customers) instead of stabbing each other in the back in office politics or hiding behind a computer in the air conditioning. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s what I think. What do you think? <\/p>\n
Hey, let me know. After all, your call is important. <\/p>\n
Visit Ed Stephens Jr. at EdStephensJr.com. His column runs every Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The premise behind technology used to be that it serves human needs. But these days…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}