Technology and Knowledge Management July 19, 2010
Posted by afoote in : Knowledge Management , add a commentThe technology in cell phone is amazing. On my recent trip to Europe the technology in the cell phone was fine, but the information systems that were connected to the amazing technology that left a lot to be desired. Going to Europe with your cell phone is not easy. It basically involves two different standards. In the US the technology standard for cell phones is CDMA and in Europe it is GSM. It would be so much easier if there was one standard, but where is the creativity in that? There are a variety of good techniques on how to have a cell phone use the two different standards and those techniques usually are effective.
On my recent trip we contacted the cell phone provider and they told us our cell phone would work in Europe. We had the right setup and everything would be fine. The problem is that you cannot test the cell phone for use in Europe until you get to Europe. As you can guess when we got to Europe, the cell phone did not work. What we discovered after taking a day out of our trip was that the phone had to be activated by the cell phone provider for use in Europe before the phone would work. I have no idea why they could not tell us that before we got to Europe, but that detail was overlooked. Activating the phone for Europe was a very short procedure and with the phone activated, the cell phone started working. Everything was fine, but after about an hour we got a text message from the cell phone provider telling us that we had used 100 hours in roaming charges on the phone. The phone had only been activated an hour ago. How can there be all these roaming charges? After another phone call to the cell phone provider, it was determined the text message was wrong and there were no roaming charges on the phone. Of course as soon as we got off the phone with customer service, there was another text message indicating we now had close to 200 hours of roaming charges.
The point of this is that the advances in technology are amazing, but without the proper information systems to manage the knowledge the new and amazing technology can be a big problem. The customer service area must be aware of what is needed to have the technology work and erroneous text messages do not help the user. The technology makes great marketing, but the technology does not work by itself. The entire system needs to work. The system involves not only the computer network, but also the people involved in the system.