To examine a question like the above one has to distance oneself from the word “customer” and derive the real meaning behind the word. Customer in essence defines a person who needs to be convinced that you are the person he/she needs to trust, to get some service/product at the “right” price and quality. The word “right” may mean a variety of things in this context – but most often it means the “best possible” .

This definition was very true during the “good old days”. People first trusted a service/product provider and if their trust was justified they landed up trusting the person even more. Hence we had a “big family” scenario. In such scenarios the roles of the participants are not defined by “career choice” or “core competency” or “at the right place and time” phenomena. The different people in such a setup, do various things depending on necessity and proximity/familiarity with the person who requires the deliverable.

However today’s technology has made us able to abstract the service from the service providers. So now we have the service – provided by various people who come and go based on their free will. Now this is a wonderful change in the business concept. We have immense flexibility at the personal as well at the professional level – to choose
a) what we do for a living
b) where we take our “business”
c) friends – who may not necessarily be involved in our workspace

This concept is driving world economies now. The best example is the chinese economy where the “person” is a number in the “system”. A machine who has to put in X hours of work for the Y amount payed. This concept is the cornerstone of all aggressive economies !

However as almost everyone today realizes – this method is not the best when it comes to forming meaningful bonds with other people around us. This method is great for making the “numbers” and the “cash”, but when it comes to the question of sustaining the human psyche in a healthy manner – this method has failed most miserably. Part of this failure is due to one important deficiency in this system. This system is unable to record “traits” (or the “personal touch” ). The customer comes away from every deal none the wiser about the intentions of the service/product provider. This leads to a lot of people with “bad intentions” getting away with the “good business”. The honest person has no motivation to stay honest – since his honesty is most often neither seen or appreciated by the people he is dealing with. This leads to a society that is morally bankrupt at every level.

However there is a way out in all this mess. And that way would include helping this system record the “personal touches” in the business. We do not have to go back to those days of limited productivity just to “know” the people who are working with us. We can in fact leverage our current technologies to maintain distributed but interconnected databases which have “ratings” and feedback provided by people, about any person in the database. This database should be openly accessible and every person shall have freedom to provide his “opinion” about any other person and see all other opinions about other people. Also these databases should record the nature of the transaction/deal (but not the transaction itself ) in the context of which the opinion is provided. Recording the actual transaction with all details may not be in the interest of maintaining one’s privacy from prying eyes ! Thus to prevent the “user” from getting demotivated (to provide a “feedback”) – we will have to forgo recording the details of every transactions.

Feedback please !

I personally believe that this will anyway come to happen in the near future. Even in our present we have many such databases, but they lack the “freedom” in viewership and authorship. Wikipidea is open to all but alas it records only facts ! The key to improved efficiencies in the future lies in our acknowledgment that people are indeed the most important block of any business and need to be “heard”. Technology can support any system – and corrupt systems along with their technology can only bring the whole of our civilization down ! Lets make the right choice while the going is still good !

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