Advancing Technology and Consumers Relation Problems

We live in a digital age, were things are being digitised. But sometimes there are some consumers who feel so uncomfortable with it. I interacted with some individuals living across Africa, and one in Asia. Their opinions will also be expressed in this article. More than half of the persons I interviewed said they have lost their money to several ponzi websites before. Till date they said they still felt the effects of the ponzis on them, one lost his job because of the borrowed money he lost to a ponzi. I tried inviting these investors to Steemit, majority of them felt it was like putting their money into the unknown. They haven't done any crypto related investments before, aside crypto ponzis. This created a bad image of the crypto world to them. In this article some of the challenges they encountered in the digital world will be explained in details.

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Trusting a website they cannot easily visit it's physical office looks like previous ponzis they did. Trust has become a big problem to them. This is not only limited to investments, even when they want to buy something online they try to see if the e-commerce store has a physical office. This way they feel that they could easily visit the office and ask more questions on the services they offered. And also when things go wrong they want someone that can be easily arrested and charged to court. They got no chill no more.

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Internet banking is still looks strange to many living in the areas mentioned earlier. Fear of financial insecurity has been a major problem in this industry. Only the young adults (between 23 to 30) agreed to using such digital services that are being offered. The old ones (above 35 years of age) were not interested in their services. The only old person that said he used such services said he was persuaded his child. So persuasion is really needed for some of these elderly ones to harness what technology has to offer. Another problem that is there is fear of complications, many fear that such online activities will be very much complicated. So they tend to always need a helper around in order to carry out transactions online.

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Customer care challenge. Some customer care agents tend to know a little of the companies they are working for. This is a problem that is really common over here in West Africa, I have experienced this several times. I had a problem with a token not being synchronised with my bank account, the customer care said I should get a new one or do transactions without token. The response was really surprising, telling me to replace a product that wasn't faulty. I had to speak to someone else in charge. This problem is not only a bank-related one, it applies to several other technology driven establishments. Either the company's will have to organise regular seminars for their workers or something, because it gets really discouraging. Because the more technology advances, the more questions people have these companies. Adequate facilities need to be put in place.

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Who does not want something easy? I'm certain everyone reading this definitely wants something easy and smooth. The young and the old are all benefactors from advancing technology. But if these challenges should continue, it will pose a problem for further development. 75% of the challenges mentioned can be solved by companies. If companies should do their part in providing easily accessible solutions to problems, growth will be encouraged. With the right words and good marketing skills, someone can be turned from a disgruntled consumer to a happy one.

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