From check out lines to airlines, we live in a self-serve society. Getting accustomed to the automated world has taken some time. When they first came out, I couldn’t imagine that self check-out lines at grocery stores would actually work. And now when I stand several people deep in a check-out line, I wonder why we don’t have more self-serve registers.

Conferencing is another industry with a lot of self-serve tools that have been slow to adopt. When participants join an operator-assisted conference, they’re accustomed to giving a live operator their name, email, phone number, and whatever else the moderator is requesting. But what if they entered this information online prior to the conference beginning? It certainly would provide the moderator more accurate information and eliminate the John vs. Jon and Sara vs. Sarah mistakes.