The term has become iconic. For them it means the "new, shiny, internet" - whether the internet of the present or of the future, they seldom specify. But, to be fair, in the most general and shallow sense, their understanding is not entirely wrong.

It has also become a bit of a caricature, made fun of because of the earnestness of its early proponents, juxtaposed with the scale of their failures or successes. Indeed, there are many humour websites dedicated to poking fun at the caricature of Web 2.0 company names , their logos , their products and the language it has precipitated .

Tim O'Reilly and colleagues popularized the term (originally coined in 1999 by Darcy DiNucci) as a catchy phrase to help market a web-related conference they were promoting in 2004. His conceptualization is complex and abstract, while Paul Graham's is much more practical, and, true to character, my musings here on Web 2.0 and its impact on business are greatly informed by his.

Regardless, Web 2.0, as any Internet Project Manager, or anyone focused on Internet Marketing, will tell you, is about considerably more than an abstract, "next generation" internet, popularized by social networking sites, web apps that do things we never realized we needed done, and web sites of a certain style that have a bright, colorful and (mostly) uncluttered appearance that has itself become the metaphor for Web 2.0.

In fact, for business and the process of buying and selling, Web 2.0 is the single greatest agent of change in our time.

What the printing press did for the written word, Web 2.0 technologies and concepts are doing for the process of business. It's the paradigm shift that has enabled this process for the first time to favor the buyer, rather than the seller, and in doing so, it has changed forever what businesses must do to win and keep customers.

Web 2.0 de-mystified

But tyranny is the author of its own demise. It's excesses create a concerted resistance that eventually topples its corrupt and ailing hulk. And so it goes with our Canadian telecom monopolies - Bell Canada and Rogers Cable - who have lived off the fat of the land and prospered mightily, treating customers as mere supplicants, while at the same time bleating to government that their exclusivity in the marketplace serves the public good.

Well, where once that argument could be justified, those days have gone, and new technologies now by-pass their domains of exclusivity, providing consumers for the first time with choice in the marketplace, and thus an opportunity to exact revenge, further motivated by the fact that these new technologies are better and less costly than those of the telecom tyrants.

The case at hand

Oh, I understand that Bell's practices are a function of their historic monopoly and resulting lack of accountability, rather than a concerted effort by them to cause pain. I also understand that they suffer from the all-to common failure of many Canadian businesses to cater and quickly adjust to the needs and opportunities of the market, (when compared to U.S. businesses, for example).

But that doesn't change the fact that, because of Bell's practices, hours have been co-opted from the lives of customers pursuing service promised but denied. Or that customers have had their stress levels increased lavishly, and their net worth decreased with breathtaking audacity for services that, when provided by others, are far, far less costly.

At last, pay back!

But, wouldn't you know it, the curse of the monopoly came into play, and companies like Rogers Cable kept under-delivering, over-charging and, it seemed, generally treating customers as an inconvenience.

One tactic, for example, is to build system capacity only after its been sold, and is generating the revenue you need for financing. This is based, no doubt, on an algorithm that shows precisely how much abuse your customers will accept, without unduly effecting the bottom-line.

It's a pretty cynical way to do business, and, absent the scale, market dominance, lack of competition, or capitalization of these behemoths, any other business doing so would almost certainly fail.

We get anxious because we don't really have any confidence that merchants or suppliers will provide service once the sale is completed - that they will actually live up to the "Customer Service" promise they made to us as a condition of sale, or, that their "Customer Service" practices will not be so dehumanizing that we would actually prefer to avoid them, and just take the hit of the non-conforming product or service we purchased.

What's wrong?

These tensions are quite simple to describe. "Customer Service" costs money in the short term, and business, with their eye on the numbers for this financial quarter, don't want to spend that money. Oh, sure, they know anecdotally that great "Customer Service" may pay-off in the long term, through customer retention and brand loyalty and brand championing by customers, but that's too far down the road and the metrics are difficult to track in any case, so, as a consequence their "Customer Service" paradigm becomes corrupted by their need to generate short-term profit.

It's a slippery slope...

This chain of stores, Loblaws , owned by a Canadian conglomerate that goes back generations, has, like many others, been hard-hit by the Wal-Mart factor - a ubiquitous competitor that undercuts them in virtually every way, is better managed, has deeper pockets, and is apparently winning-over an increasing number of their customers.

Loblaws, like many others in their space, has responded by going head-to-head with Wal-Mart - trying to beat Wal-Mart at its own game. Seems like hubris to me. Did they really believe this to be a winning-strategy? A good subject to explore in another article, I think.

Formerly one of the country's most successful grocery chains, Loblaws has turned half their floor-space over to anything but groceries. Turns out though, that when folks are buying groceries, they aren't much interested in cheap-knock-off leather furniture, wiper blades for their car, or even bed linens or small appliances. This faux-pas is costing Loblaws a bundle, and they are trying madly to get back into the grocery business.

Which explains why I arrived at a grocery store with a broken small electrical appliance to return. Imagine my horror though, when faced with a long, long lineup in front of a single "Customer Service" rep.

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