Future advances in electronic mail will streamline lots of activities we may not even realize are inefficient. For example, think about how you pay bills. More often than not, a company prints out a bill on a piece of paper and puts it in an envelope that is physically carried to your house. You open the bill, check your records to see if the amount and details seem appropriate, write a check, and then try to time when you mail it back so that it arrives shortly before the due date. We’re so used to this process we don’t even think about how wasteful it is. Let’s say you disagree with a bill. You call the company up, wait on hold, and try to get through to the right person—who may not really be the right person at all. In which case you have to wait for someone else to call you back.
Very soon you’ll check your PC, wallet, or television set the information appliance of your choice—for e-mail, including bills. When a bill comes in, the device will show your payment history. If you want to inquire about the bill, you’ll do it asynchronously—at your convenience—by sending e-maiclass="underline" “Hey how come this charge is so high?”
Tens of thousands of businesses in the United States already exchange information via an electronic system called Electronic Document Interchange, or EDI. It allows companies that have contractual relationships to execute specific kinds of transactions automatically. Dealings are highly structured—reordering products or checking the status of a shipment—which makes conventional EDI unsuitable for ad hoc communications, although many companies are working to combine the benefits of EDI and e-mail into a single system.
The asynchronicity of e-mail and EDI is one of their advantages, but there is still a place for synchronous communications. Sometimes you want to call someone up, talk directly, and get an immediate response rather than leaving a message.
Within a few years there will be hybrid communications systems that combine elements of synchronous and asynchronous communications. These systems will use DSVD (and later ISDN) telephone connections to permit the simultaneous transfer of voice and data, even before the full information highway is in place.
It will work this way: When companies post information about their products on the Internet, part of that information will include instructions for how a customer can connect synchronously with a sales representative who will be able to answer questions through a voice-data connection. For example, if you’re shopping for boots on Eddie Bauer’s home page (an electronic catalog) and you want to know if the boots you like are appropriate for use in Florida’s Everglades or on a glacier, you’ll be able to click a button to get a representative to come on the line and talk to you. The representative will see immediately that you are looking at the boots and will have whatever other information about yourself you have decided to make available, not just your clothing and shoe sizes, style and color preferences, but your athletic interests, your past purchases from other companies, and even your price range. Some people will choose not to make any information about themselves available. Eddie Bauer’s computer may route your inquiry to the same person you spoke to last time, or it may route you to someone who has expertise in the product displayed on your screen, in this case, boots. Without preamble, you will be able to ask, “Do these boots work well in swamps like the Everglades?” or whatever your question is. The representative doesn’t have to be in an office. He can be anywhere as long as he has access to a PC and has indicated he is available. If he speaks the right language and has the right expertise, he can help out.
Or if you decided to change your will, you’d phone your lawyer, and she might say, “Let’s take a quick look at that.” She would then call your will up on her PC, and it would appear on your screen as well as hers courtesy of DSVD, ISDN, or similar technology. As she scrolls through the document, the two of you would discuss your needs. Then, if she was particularly adept, you might even watch her do the editing. However, if you wanted a hand in editing the document instead of just watching it run on your lawyer’s computer, you could join in and work together. You would be able not only to talk to each other but also to see the same image on your computer screens.
You won’t need to have the same software. The application just has to run on one end of the connection, the lawyer’s end in this case. On your end, you would need only an appropriate modem and DSVD software.
Another important use of voice/data connections will be to improve product support. Microsoft has thousands of employees whose job is to answer product-support questions about Microsoft software. In fact, we have as many product-support people answering questions about our software as we have engineers building it. This is wonderful, because we log all that feedback and use it to improve our products. We get lots of these questions by e-mail, but most of our customers still telephone us. These phone conversations are inefficient. A customer calls in to say his particular computer is configured in a specific way and is giving a certain error message. The product-support specialist listens to this description, and then suggests something, which it takes the caller a few minutes to do. Then the conversation resumes. The average call takes fifteen minutes, and some take an hour. But once everyone is using DSVD, the product-support specialist will be able to see what’s on the caller’s computer screen (with the caller’s explicit permission, of course) and examine the caller’s computer directly rather than having to rely on the caller to explain what he is seeing. This will have to be done carefully, to ensure that no one’s privacy is invaded. The process will reduce the length of the average call by 30 or 40 percent, which will make customers a lot happier and will cut costs and product prices.
The picture transmitted during a DSVD (or ISDN) telephone connection won’t necessarily have to be of a document. One or both people participating will also be able to transmit still images of themselves. If you are calling in to buy a product, you might expect the company’s service representative to be there, smiling. But you, as the customer, might choose to transmit only your voice. You can select images of yourself dressed appropriately for the occasion, so it won’t matter what you are actually wearing. Or you might decide to have available several pictures of yourself, one smiling, one laughing, one contemplative, and maybe one that is angry. During the course of the conversation, you could change the image to suit your mood or the point you were making.
Electronic mail and shared screens will eliminate the need for many meetings. Presentation meetings, called primarily so participants can listen and learn, can be replaced with e-mail messages with spreadsheets and other exhibits enclosed as attachments. When face-to-face meetings do take place, they will be more efficient because participants will already have exchanged background information by e-mail.
It will also be easier to schedule meetings because software will handle it. For example, if you want to sit down face-to-face with your lawyer, your scheduling program and hers will be able to communicate across the network—even the phone network—and pick a date and time that you both have free. Then the appointment would just show up on your respective electronic calendars.