INTERNET SERVICES DESIGN STILL IN ITS INFANCY
29 November 2006 - Delft University of Technology

When the Internet hype took off in 1995, Bill Gates predicted the end of the middle-man. Electronic business would spell the downfall of traditional shops and stores. However, the reports of the demise of the middle-man appear to be much exaggerated. In many cases a strategy that combines electronic, physical and telephony components (‘click and mortar’) can be pretty successful.

Delft PhD student Luuk Simons gauged the quality of the combined strategy, simply formulated as ‘store plus Internet’, at Dutch companies. His conclusions are hard. Internet services which run parallel with traditional sales methods are usually a flop for the customer or the company. Or else, the new Internet business completely marginalises the old sales activities. For example, a company may offer its customers the chance to buy or shop for certain products via the Internet, only to find that it cannot handle the response because its processes are inefficient. Simons: "This is also illustrated by the fact that half the customer e-mails are either badly answered or not answered at all."

Design method for Internet services
Simons concedes that the quality of Internet activities has improved since the Internet bubble burst in 2001, but there is still room for improvement in at least half the Dutch companies: "In large companies the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. And many smaller companies haven’t given enough thought to what they want from Internet and why. Relatively speaking, medium-sized companies come off best."

The mediocre quality is partly attributable to the fact that Internet services are often designed by the ICT, marketing, corporate communication, or customer service department working in isolation, and seldom as a combined project. Simons has devised and tested a systematic method for designing Internet services, which involves all the main players in the company. The method, known as Multi-channel QFD, consists of an intake interview and four-hour sessions, where systematic decisions are reached on the nature and presentation of the Internet services on the basis of customer priorities and the services that run through other channels.

Simons has tested this method in a field experiment. The main conclusion is that Multi-channel QFD delivers a significantly better performance than other types of sessions. Simons wants to extend the method further. TNO, his other employer, is already offering Multi-channel QFD to the business community.

http://www.tudelft.nl

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