Ever stood in a busy shopping mall in the UK (and by the way same question applies to Delhi airport and a million other locations) and watched how many people are on their cell phones? It’s frightening to those of us who remember old telecom technologies like switchboards, bakelite handsets and even acoustic couplers.
There are [...]

Any business using social media to engage with customers is stepping into an unforgiving world. Social media should be a way of supporting and interacting with customers. If companies try to use it as a sales tool it will back fire.
Also if mistakes are made a brand can be seriously damaged. This is why the technology [...]

At a recent round-table of mid-tier IT bosses (organised ostensibly to discuss customers’ IT infrastructure challenges), the issue that most animated delegates was not the nebulous nature of cloud computing or the virtues of virtualisation, but the tutting, sucking-teeth topic of supplier-customer relations. Blogging over at the 360 IT Blog, Computer Weekly editor-in-chief Bryan Glick, [...]

Back in the mid-90s, when the Net was just catching on in business, one of its biggest touted benefits was the ability for staff to work remotely. Pundits variously saw opportunities for companies to save money on fixed office costs, boost the morale of employees and foster the wider environmental benefit of reduced commuting.
To bring [...]

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. The first Ada Lovelace Day was held on 24th March 2009 and was a huge success. It attracted nearly 2000 signatories to the pledge and 2000 more people who signed up on Facebook. In case you are not aware of [...]

The first story that comes to mind when I think about an IT initiative that substantially enhanced customer engagement this year is the launch of Tesco’s T-Jam.
T-Jam is a research project that unites independent software developers and customers to bring in improvements to the web experience provided by the retailer, while providing an outlet where [...]

I am going to use this entry to have a customer service grip about banks (although the same is true for the Post Office these days). Yes, I know it’s an easy target but they set themselves up for it.
Now the bank branch I use is OK. It costs me money to park there, but [...]

Last month I launched a book of my Talking Outsourcing blog, which I write for Computing magazine.
Many readers showed up at London South Bank University to see me talk about the blog and what’s contained in the book – thanks to all of you who did come that evening and the evening was made all [...]

By the end of the 1980s, my teen programming proclivities had given way to more usual youthful pursuits like pubs, clubs, gigs and festivals. I’d decided to pursue a career in tech journalism and in 1991 started work at the IT trade weekly Computing.
Ironically, the magazine was still produced manually, with pages painstakingly laid out [...]

Thinking back to 40 years ago I remember 1969 as the year man first went to the moon, that Richard Nixon become President, and the Beatles played their famous last gig on top of the Apple building.
For me, 1969 was also a groundbreaking year for higher education in the UK with the establishment of The [...]