This article originally published in Self-Service World magazine, Dec. 2007.
One of my old bosses had a theory about the relativity of the passage of time. It's all based on how old you are and how that compares to the interval in question, he said.For instance, take a year, an ordinary year like the one we're about to close the book on. When you turn 2 years old, that year represents one-half of your life — it's a really, really long time, relative to what you have experienced. When you turn 20, that same period of time is only one-twentieth of your experience, and as a result seems much shorter. Turning 50? This past year was a mere 2 percent of your days on earth.
No wonder time seems to go by so much faster the older you get.
Time certainly has zipped past since we acquired the progenitor of this publication, Kiosk magazine, in 2004. After renaming it late last year, we moved to expand its coverage to include components of self-service that went beyond kiosks, as well as to report on the progress of digital signage as it grew up around self-service applications. Now, in time for a new year, we're changing again.
This is the last issue of Self-Service World magazine. In January, we're launching a completely new venture, Retail Customer Experience. The decision was at once difficult and obvious.
The obvious part came from our realization that by covering kiosks, other forms of self-service technology and digital signage, we already were covering a significant part of the customer experience. Why not use that background as a springboard to cover even more of it?
The difficulty came when it was time to zero in on the audience and their expectations. By embracing retail in the new magazine, do we leave anyone out in the cold? And what about the folks whose interest is very narrowly self-service and digital signage? Will they be underfed?
Devotees of self-service and digital signage will find things to like in Retail Customer Experience magazine and in its companion Web site, RetailCustomerExperience.com. And they can find dedicated coverage on our sister portals, SelfServiceWorld.com and DigitalSignageToday.com.
And while Retail Customer Experience indeed will look very specifically at retail, we realize two things: Retail embraces more of the world than meets the eye (such as the travel mugs for sale at Starbucks), and once we develop this effort, we can look forward to developing customer experience media for the financier, the restaurateur, the hotelier and others.
"Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Here's to another year of bold action and its wonderful rewards.
