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An Amusing Anecdote about the Web and Points of View

Several years ago I was working on a website for a large bank; we were
setting up processes to allow people to apply for a credit card.  

Part of this was meeting with the credit card division head and
explaining to him just what the heck this was, since the project was
being pushed from another department that was trying to get the other
divisions interested in using the web to reach customers.

As an interim solution, we ended up having to convert the applications
to faxes and send them to the existing department fax number.  This
would be (and was) replaced with an electronic channel later on, when
the appropriate systems were in place.

We went over the process thoroughly, explaining how the applications
would get filled out and sent to a secure server, which would convert
the information into an intelligible report and then generate a fax to
the credit card division.  When we got to the end, we asked if he had
any questions:

Him: "What happens if the fax gets dropped?"

Me:  "If the fax call gets interrupted, the fax server won't lose the
      fax, it'll try again.  It'll keep trying for three days, and then
      it'll save the fax and yell for help.  We'll almost certainly detect
      the problem before the three days and probably call you on a voice
      line to see if there's something wrong with your fax machine."

Him: "No, I mean, what if it gets dropped after it gets to our fax machine?"

Me:  "Uhm ...you mean what if, after it gets printed out and your employee
      takes it off the fax machine, somebody drops it on the floor and
      it gets lost?"

Him: "Yeah."

Me:  "Well... what happens now??"

Him: "I guess it gets lost."

Me: "Then that's what'll happen.  What happens if somebody drops a bomb on
     your processing center?"

At the time I was flabbergasted that he thought we could somehow reach
out and affect events at his site, but as I later got a chance to
think about it, I realized how much of an unknown the web represented
to this guy and most people like him.  They don't think of it as a
technology or a channel from the customer to them.  As a matter of
fact, they don't think of it at all.  To reach them, you have to
bridge that gap.

Postscript:

On reflection afterward, I realized that in fact I screwed up.  I
missed an opportunity.  I went in with, somewhere in the back of my
head, an adversarial attitude.  I went in thinking, "I'm here to
explain what we built to them" instead of "I'm here to take the next
step in solving their problems".  Instead of reacting to division
head's request by stopping to think about how I could help him with
his problem - clerks dropping faxes - I thought about it my frame of
reference, not his.  I thought about it in terms of how it related to
explaining our system.  In fact, I could have done something to help
him.  Several things, for example:

     Dating and numbering each fax so the clerks could spot
     out-of-sequence faxes,

     Keeping temporary copies of the applications after faxing
     available for resending,

     Faxing a log of the applications for that day, once or twice a 
     day.

Live and learn.