Wednesday, December 12, 2007

ATMs Rock!

The latest Bank of America ATMs are amazing. You feed in checks and
cash, and it does the OCR thing to process it all. No envelopes or
filling out forms. Just cram it in the slot (up to a stack of 40 bills,
if you've got that many) and you're good to go.

Between this and self service package machine at the Post Office, I'm in
heaven. Forget robot butlers or flying cars - what I really want is to
avoid lines, and having to fit my life into a 9 - 5 schedule.

Kind of interesting that the banking and postal industries have a
reputation for the slowest service, yet have leveraged technology to
turn that around. If they can take on their biggest complaints, surely
other business (airlines, cell phone carriers, etc.) can too.

--Ben

1 comment:

  1. Another business that has significantly improved, thanks to technology, is the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Over the past 8 years, I've only had to actually physically go to a DMV (for myself) maybe once or twice. The majority of my vehicle registration transfer/renewal, driver's license renewal/change-of-address, etc. have been done online, in a matter of minutes.

    DMV is another one of those places that has a well-deserved, long-standing reputation for having extremely long wait times, and being a big pain to deal with. I've been very impressed with their web-based services, though.

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