Technology in Business

When it comes to the reality of business technology, you have to remember one thing: your customer does not live in Silicon Valley.

Despite new technologies, your customer probably doesn’t know their Klout score or the measure of their online influence. They probably haven’t answered ten questions on Quora in the past week. They probably don’t even know what Quora is. And they certainly don’t believe that the only group of people with an iPhone 3GS are the homeless. They use what they need to use, and that’s as far as some people go in terms of new technologies.

We live in a tech centric world full of high tech gadgets and new technologies, but our customers don’t necessarily live there. For example, most of the U.S. still uses a PC — not a Mac. Probably because PCs are cheaper than Macs and software was originally designed for PCs. Macs were also originally thought of as the computer primarily used by graphic designers. But when I speak with most of my friends, you would think that everyone owns a Mac. That just isn’t the case.

It’s true that most people I know interact with technology in some way — whether they use it to get news, to send and receive emails, to connect on Facebook, or to use Google to search the Internet. These are well-known technologies that have been around a long time and that people use everyday, but they don’t necessarily use newer technologies unless they have to or can afford it. In fact, there are so many new technologies being introduced every day, that your average customer probably can’t — and doesn’t — keep up with them.

As businesses, we’re always striving to use the newest business technologies so that we can compete with other tech savvy businesses. But we can’t forget that the new technologies that we use have to be compatible with the technologies that our customers use. Our customer base isn’t always ahead of the high tech curve. Heck, 15 percent of the population hasn’t even been on an airplane. So what does that say about our customers when it comes to online or business technology?

Eventually, the question becomes “How can you stay relevant to that group of people?” And by “that group of people,” I mean the average tech user: the user with limited funds who owns older applications or devices or the user who can’t navigate the high learning curve of some of the newer technologies. You simply have to remember that these people are likely to be a big segment of your customer base. And by being too forward thinking in your business technologies, you could be alienating potential customers.

Do you think you could gain more customers if you used less high tech technologies in your business?