There Are Not Apps for Everything – Friday Distraction

Remember the old iPhone commercial, “There’s an app for that.”?

There are a lot of apps available to us. Apps for banking, well-being, photography, and of course, games. It could be said that we’ve become an app driven society. And that might not be a bad thing. Apps can really help us in our personal and professional lives.

But today’s Time Well Spent cartoon from our friends at Kronos reminded me that apps can’t do everything.

While an app can provide us with certain amount of information and enjoyment, people are still a key differentiator in business. I don’t ever recall a time when I decided to do business with an organization solely because they have an app. Sure, an app might be nice but the people I interact with create the memory and the credibility of the company.

Businesses need to keep this in mind when it’s budget season. Sure, allocating some dollars to create or update an app is a good thing. If your competitive set has an app and you don’t, it’s something to seriously consider. If you haven’t updated your app is years, it’s time to figure out what’s in the next version.

But, organizations cannot develop apps to the exclusion of customer service. I don’t hear anyone saying, “I’d buy from XYZ Company in a heartbeat. Their customer service sucks but their app is a winner!”

Same goes for management and leadership development. Not sure I can hear employees saying, “I love working here. My manager is a jerk, but the app the company developed for employee learning is the best.”

You get my point. Apps are great. This really isn’t an anti-app post. Apps don’t replace people. And all the artificial intelligence talk in the world isn’t going to change that. At least for now.

The post There Are Not Apps for Everything – Friday Distraction appeared first on hr bartender.