The latest weapon in BT's quest to deliver better customer service is nothing more than the humble widget, a simple technology that is enabling significant change across the internet as part of the move to a web 2.0 world.
Ensuring BT customers have access to useful data is clearly a laudable objective, particularly if it means further reducing paper communications or incoming calls. However, the challenge has been to ensure that people can get and manipulate the information they want in as convenient a way as possible.
BT.com has been a staggering success in terms of offering customers a single point of access to information such as billing data and service options, replacing millions of paper bills in the process. The question is how to improve on this portal model? The answer: widgets.
The word 'widget' is a frequently used catch-all term for any kind of gadget or gizmo that serves a specific function. Often it has no other purpose but is incredibly useful when you do need it.
In internet technology terms widgets are interface elements, usually on a web page, that enable the user to view information, either raw, or possibly the outcome of a software application processing specific data.
So, type your postcode in a 'weather widget' and you get a forecast.
Collect a number of widgets together and you have a personal home page, as seen on iGoogle.
Given the growing interest inside BT on how widgets could be used productively, the BT Beta team held a 'hothouse' late last year to develop a 'widget strategy', focusing on how widgets could be beneficial and which technologies could be utilised.
The team also spent one session at the hothouse on a 'widget challenge', an intensive development session to prove how quickly functional applications could be put together.
Tom D'Roza, beta team developer, says: "One of the main areas we have been looking at is which of the different widget frameworks and software technologies is the best to use. We want any widget that we write to be used in the maximum number of environments, rather than have to rewrite it for every other framework."
The potential benefits are significant. D'Roza says: "We want people to use the online channels rather than calling in. They are more likely to do that if we make data accessible in a way that is friendlier. With BT.com you have to know where to navigate and log in. If you had a personal and secure home page that always displayed the information you want, it would hopefully increase customer satisfaction."
Longer term BT would have the option of allowing customers to approve selected third parties having access to relevant data via widgets. For example, a company might offer a phone call analysis widget or a widget to incorporate bills into accounting applications.
For now, the Beta team's goal is simply to make sure that widgets are up to the job of helping customers get what they need quickly, securely and easily.