New Tools Should Supplement—Not Replace—Traditional Communication Methods

The power of today's communication tools is indisputable, but it's important to remember that audio, visual, and text communication have been around for over a century and much of what is being done today—as exciting as it may be—is simply an advancement on what some smart people did a long time ago.

In the December issue of Tech Decisions, Michael Voelker writes an article on collaboration tools that insurers are developing and it is fascinating to read what carriers of all sizes and shapes are doing to work together—both inside an office building and remotely.

Tablets and smartphones are tearing down those office walls—even from the inside—and allowing business partners and customers to communicate face-to-face in an electronic fashion that brings at least some of the personal connection back tour increasingly impersonal world.

Still, Voelker's article points out something none of us should forget:

No matter what form online collaboration takes in the future, a segment of the user base will still want to "reach out and touch someone" during the process. According to the research and advisory firm Novarica, more than half of insurers report heavy usage of both the telephone and email channels during underwriting, and the telephone continues to be the most heavily used channel for policyholders to interact directly with their insurers.

"People have a job to do and they want to do it using whatever medium they have at hand," says research firm Celent's Craig Beattie. "Traditional methods are not going away."

There's no reason for those to go away, at least not for a good long while. It would be silly to walk away from something that remains a vital part of our office arsenal. But I find it interesting that when we talk about new tools we refer to them with the "technology" appendage, such as "mobile technology."

While attending the IASA conference last spring, someone brought up an excellent point: No one ever refers to the traditional methods—as Beattie and others calls them—as technology. No one ever refers to radio technology or television technology, so why is mobile communication made to seem more important just because it's usually referred to as "mobile technology?"

I confess that I'm part of the problem. Journalists are always looking for what's hot and land-line telephones stopped being hot once the bandwidth was large enough for Ma Bell—the Apple of an earlier generation—to do away with party lines. 

But all of the tools we are using today merely complement each other rather than replace anything. They all have value, even the poor old land line telephone system. It may be the COBOL of telephony, but it's still holding down the fort, or at least the home office.