Objection #9: They Aren’t Technical

Objection #9 I have heard too many times: “No one will use it.  They don’t know how.  This is totally foreign to them.  They aren’t techies.”

Answer: The great thing about Web 2.0 tools it that you don’t have to really ‘get it’ technically.  They are made to be SIMPLE.  That is a key.  It is not the technical piece that holds people back from using it.  It is the cultural.  That is the much more important piece.

I could spend hours talking about how the cultural aspect will get in the way and how to avoid it (in fact, I have as a presenter at a number of conferences and as I have consulted with other companies).  At our company I (we) am (are) creating a public facing Web 2.0 solution that triples as a  Social Learning environment, communication tool and a Customer Support tool.  Within our company the mantra is, “Our customers are not technical.  They don’t know computers.”

That never settled right with me.  Something was wrong every time I heard them say that.  So I decided to do a little digging.  I did some research by interviewing our customers – the ones that would call into our Support.  What I found is that they were correct, they didn’t know computers.  But they did know the internet – overwhelmingly.  They used it often at home and at work.  Most of them had high-speed access at home.  They all searched for information on Google.  Many knew of (and even used) Web 2.0 tools already.

So, objectors are correct.  They may not be technical, but they don’t need to be.  They need to know the internet, not their computer.  And besides that, the technical piece is easy to overcome.  The cultural is not quite the same……

Tagged as: culture, technical