A mistake many organizations make is expecting people to use new technology and not accommodate for those resistant or incapable of new technology adoption. Bill Rogers, a fellow PLU alum (MBA class of 1982), recently told me a story concerning his communication with his Grandma during his service in Vietnam.
“I would send tapes home for her to listen to. She would respond by creating her own recordings by speaking into a tape recorder. The best response I could get was complete and utter “recording fright”. She would freeze up and become intimated by the technology. The solution was to have my parents call her and have her talk over the phone, recording it on my parents end, and let her talk away. This accommodated her technology preferences perfectly…they would have to interrupt her and let her know she had run out of tape.”
Key Takeaway: We do not live in a world where “build it and they will come” is necessarily true with technology. Thus, adapt technology to your market.
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Absolutely right, when clients come to us, the first thing that we talk about is how they can use technology to connect with their existing customer base. If the answer is, not at all, than it maybe be that a new website or social media strategy is going have a very low ROI without additional investment in advertising.
The problem though, is one of scale, for a small business, the percentage of a businesses customers that are technology resistant may be low. In that case you must weight the cost of getting in front of each segment. Depending on the quality requirements for your particular business, it may not be cost effective to continue to produce print materials. When you balance the cost of exposure on a venue like facebook, a blog, or company website, it may be that you are going to have to choose one or the other and that considering the technology resistant does nothing for the bottom line.
At a larger scale where their are hundreds or thousands of technology resistance customers that make up a significant portion of your client base, is where this holds true.
As we move forward this becomes less of an issue. I would recommend at the very least that every business have, and execute, a social media strategy. It is a very cost effective way to maintain relationships with clients that want to use those tools to manage their exposure to your brand.