Okay, here's the amusing anecdote I promised you. Not sure it'll be
amusing to the businessfolk, but maybe you can rephrase it to
emphasize the more positive point:
Several years ago I was working on a website for a large bank; we were
setting up processes to allow people to apply for a credit card.
Part of this was meeting with the credit card division head and
explaining to him just what the heck this was, since the project was
being pushed from another department that was trying to get the other
divisions interested in using the web to reach customers.
As an interim solution, we ended up having to convert the applications
to faxes and send them to the existing department fax number. This
would be (and was) replaced with an electronic channel later on, when
the appropriate systems were in place.
We went over the process thoroughly, explaining how the applications
would get filled out and sent to a secure server, which would convert
the information into an intelligible report and then generate a fax to
the credit card division. When we got to the end, we asked if he had
any questions:
Him: "What happens if the fax gets dropped?"
Me: "If the fax call gets interrupted, the fax server won't lose the
fax, it'll try again. It'll keep trying for three days, and then
it'll save the fax and yell for help. We'll almost certainly detect
the problem before the three days and probably call you on a voice
line to see if there's something wrong with your fax machine."
Him: "No, I mean, what if it gets dropped after it gets to our fax machine?"
Me: "Uhm ...you mean what if, after it gets printed out and your employee
takes it off the fax machine, somebody drops it on the floor and
it gets lost?"
Him: "Yeah."
Me: "Well... what happens now??"
Him: "I guess it gets lost."
Me: "Then that's what'll happen. I mean, c'mon, what happens if World
War III happens and your office gets nuked?"
(Okay, I was bit more circumspect than that, but...)
At the time I was flabbergasted that he thought we could somehow reach
out and affect events at his site, but as I later got a chance to
think about it, I realized how much of an unknown the web represented
to this guy and most people like him. They don't think of it as a
technology or a channel form the customer to them. As a matter of
fact, they don't think of it at all. To reach them, you have to
bridge that gap.
Steven J. Owens
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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