Virtual Services

As a beauty consultant for Giorgio Armani at David Jones, I have been lucky enough to pilot a new way of doing consultations through our new program called ‘virtual services’. When talking about the future narrative of work, I thought this would be the perfect example of how the workplace is changing and I am extremely blessed to be a part of this new innovation that is just being piloted in Bondi Junction, Elizabeth street, Queens plaza and Chadstone mall. 

Being a part of  piloting a new program within a workplace can mean you hold immense responsibility. Not only because your performance determines how well the new program will run, but also because you’re making history. Virtual services is where the future is going. 

Being a part of something that is making history (especially in such a big company like David Jones), means that I have a certain narrative to tell. My narrative will contribute in determining what changes are made to the program and what are the benefits and similarly what are the downfalls. 

Post structuralism describes the notion that knowledge is crafted in dialogue and is relational, it depends on language which is conditional and it is constructed, not revealed or acquired (bowles, 2020). 

How this connects to my narrative is that my experience in piloting this is going to be different to my coworker, Laura who is also trialling this with me. My experience is also going to be different to the customers who are also trialling this with me and my experience is going to be different to my bosses who designed this and are ALSO trialling it with me. 

How is it different?

Post structuralism mimics the notion of postmodernism, in that there is no such thing as the truth. Post structuralism believes that our narratives are just interpretations of what we believe to have happened. That means that every person who experiences the same event is going to have a different interpretation of what happened in their eyes. 

Using David Jones’s virtual services as an example; one of the virtual services tests was with the head buyer of beauty, Kate. Kate is a lovely American woman who was scouted by Target Australia after previously working for Target in America to fix Target in Australia. She however could not fix Target in Australia and eventually moved to David Jones to become the head buyer for beauty. Kate also lives in an apartment in Melbourne city with her husband and two dogs who she calls her children.  

My point is that this is the background of Kate’s life as a buyer for David Jones with an extremely high risk and integral role. A role that makes Kate see the world out of a very different set of eyes to me. Therefore, when I sit with Kate to have a virtual consultation, Kate is going to have a different recount of our consultation to me. 

Kate’s feedback was positive and she relayed to me that my screen was crystal clear and I really maintained the conversation so it wasn’t awkward.   

However, on my side Kate’s wifi was quite bad and I found I couldn’t see her very clearly nor could I hear her very well. Kate’s account of the event was very different to mine, which could ultimately lead to a different result in the future of work. My main feedback was that we are not able to ensure a stable wifi connection from the customers end which will inevitably end up in poor service. 

Laura also had a different perspective when we ran the trials for the virtual consultations. Laura said that she felt quite awkward talking to the people from head office whilst role playing how she would conduct a virtual consultation. Laura is also a 50 year old mother of three who struggles to understand technology and in particular facetime. Laura’s feedback on the virtual consultation would also be a different narrative to that of me or the ‘customer’. Laura’s main concern was wrapping her head around the technology of the whole project. 

The way in which this affects the future narrative of virtual services, is that we are launching a program that has many different perspectives to it. We have the customer, the consultant and people in head office designing the app. All different perspectives share a different story and accounts of how we’re going to go about virtual services. I have a narrative, the customer has a narrative and the people in head office have a different narrative. Although post structuralism (and post modernism) suggests that there is no ABSOLUTE truth, the differences in perspectives if well communicated can be used to an advantage to further improve projects. The diversity of human beings and the collaboration of diverse idea’s is what has aided us to come as far as we have in society. 

The future of work 

We came to know through a conference call that the way virtual consultations were introduced into David Jones was that our project manager, through corona virus has travelled the world to meet with big department stores to see what solutions they have had in response to coronavirus. Through the information he gathered virtual consultations (or similar concepts) was one of the main responses many department stores had. This illustrates that the whole world is moving towards being online. The coronavirus has only sped up the process of what was going to happen inevitably.

To make this pilot successful it is important to remain empathetic and aware that everyone is going to have a different narrative and most importantly, a different future narrative. Everyone involved in the process of moving online throughout the world is going to address similar issues with different mindsets. Post structuralism outlines that our knowledge is only a product of our language. To me, this is why I think empathetic people create success. Through this new project by being empathetic and really listening about the real issues and downfalls is what is going to make this successful.

I am honoured to have been offered such an integral role in the piloting of this new way of consulting. Being one of the very few people to be a part of launching ‘virtual consultations’ and being a part of the pilot has been a very good experience for me as a communications and media student. Coincidentally at the same time of piloting virtual consultations I’m in this subject that is called ‘the future of work’. My narrative of the future of virtual consultations is that we have a long way to go before we can successfully give the best service online.