Digitizing the customer: the digital moat

Abstract

Argues that many organizations, particularly large ones, such as banks, insurance companies, telephone companies, and local utilities, are making a mistake in their application of digital technology, namely the electronic customer interface. Describes the trend toward using information technology to depopulate the customer interface and reduce the costs of managing customer relations, with many companies building a “digital moat” around their organizations. Warns of the psychological and cultural downside – the more “wired” human beings become, the more isolated they will feel. A severing of personal connections to real communities will cause psychological stress and a sense of “connected anonymity”. Argues that the “digital society” is a concept embraced and promoted mostly by people with a particular psychosocial orientation, i.e. the “loner” personality, and that to counter this the majority of people will very likely opt for “enclaves of humanity”, i.e. places and cirmcumstances to which they can turn for a genuine sense of contact and community.

Citation

Albrecht, K. (2003), "Digitizing the customer: the digital moat", Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, Vol. 13 No. 2, pp. 94-96. https://doi.org/10.1108/09604520310466770