This story about insurance software brought something to mind - the loss of employee level flexibility due to the type of software being used:

As the recent father of twin babies, Philip B. was relieved to learn that his employer's benefit provider, Sun Life Canada, made the insurance process really simple. Adding the little ones on the plan required no more than a phone call to provide birth dates, names, and that sort of thing. All seemed so easy, until the customer service rep realized what Philip was trying to do: "I'm sorry sir, but we need a different birth date for each of your kids."

"Uhh, er," Philip stuttered, rather puzzled, "they're twins? They were both born on the seventh of May, so they actually do have the same birth date."

"Oh yes, I understand," she said, "but our system cannot handle two people with the same last name born in the same month of the same year on the same plan."

I've seen this kind of thing elsewhere. You walk into a store, and - need to do some kind of one-off thing with an employee - an exchange, perhaps, where you don't have exactly what the software expects. A few years ago, employees could bend the rules a little if things seemed to be otherwise ok. Now - they are ruled by the software. If the software doesn't handle the particular exception that came up, then you as the customer are in for a trip to never-never land. I understand the point of these new systems, but I wonder - has anyone sat down and asked the line employees about the impact on customer satisfaction?

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