Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

Outsourcing Your Reputation

I just returned from circumnavigating the globe with stops in India, Singapore and Malaysia.  It was a fantastic trip as I got to see many interesting things and meet some great people.  Although the purpose of the trip was business I did have some spare time for sightseeing.  Most of my time was in Singapore which is an especially nice place to visit.  In addition to seeing some of the sights I made the de rigueur visit to the Long Bar at the historic Raffles Hotel for a Singapore Sling.  The recipe for this drink from this turn-of-the-century colonial Singapore drink is in the graphic for this post if you're interested.  Raffles and the Long Bar is great way to figuratively go back in time.  I just wish I could afford to stay there.

On my last night in Singapore before returning to Houston I returned from dinner around 10:00 PM and since my shuttle to the airport was to pick me up at 3:30 AM I thought I would stay up all night and sleep later on the plane to start my adjustment to a new time zone.   During this time I got on the Internet to catch up on emails and other work.  Unfortunately around 11:30 the Internet stopped working.  I waited about 15 minutes thinking it might be a temporary problem.  When it didn't come back I called the front desk.  They indicated that they would have the Internet company call back which they did a few minutes later.  The Internet company indicated he network was down for maintenance and that it would be available in about an hour.  The service came back as promised and worked fine although this unannounced outage was frustrating.

Obviously since providing Internet service is not a core competency of the hotel they logically outsourced it to another company.  This apparently planned but unannounced maintenance period provides two learning opportunities; one for the Internet provider and one for the hotel, i.e. the company doing the outsourcing.

Should We Make Customers Pay For The Convenience of Doing Business With Us Over The Internet?

Yesterday, I took the family down to Minute Maid park to watch the Houston Astros play the Milwaukee Brewers.  It was a  great day.  The weather was beautiful, I got to spend some quality time with my family and enjoyed a great ball game.  The Astros won!  My daughter's favorite player, #9 Hunter Spence, hit a 2-run walk-off homer in the 12th the win it 8 to 6.  Oh Baby!

Like a lot of other things I buy, I bought the tickets over the Internet.  Buying over the Internet is nice.  I could buy them when I wanted, not just when the box office was open.  It was easy and fast and I could print my own tickets.  Without question buying tickets over the Internet was very convenient.

At the same time it is a good thing for the Astros too.  Making it easer for customers to do business with you is always a good way to promote increased sales.  It also reduces costs.  When customers print their own own tickets the Astros' printing expense is reduced.  Likewise the staffing costs for the will call and tickets sales windows are reduced.  The more people that buy over the Internet the lower the Astros' costs.

So although this would seem like the classic win-win situation there is one little catch.

Keeping Data Accurate

This weekend I got a new windshield on my car.  A few weeks ago a rock chipped the windshield and propagated and 18 inch crack within a few minutes so I arranged for a windshield repair company to come to my house to replace it.  Things were going along pretty smoothly at first.  They removed the old windshield, took off the various registration and safety inspection stickers and prepped the car for the new windshield.  Everything was going well until it came time to put in the new windshield.  That's when they found out that the windshield they brought wasn't the right one for my car.

The repairmen called their office and verified that all of the ordering information was correct.  The problem turned out to be that the database of auto glass parts that they subscribed to had the wrong information.  They finally were able to figure out the right part number, brought it out to the house and installed it.  All turned out well except that it cost them an extra 2 hours of delay.  As they were about to leave one of them commented that they recalled that they ran into this same problem the last time they worked on my model of car.  It turns out they had to work with an inaccurate database that didn't have a good means for them to update or correct when errors were found.  In this case an inaccurate database became a customer service issue.

It's a fact of life that errors will find their way into our databases.  There are things we can do to minimize this but it difficult to entirely eliminate errors.  So this begs the question - "What do we do about the errors?"

Zappos: Integrating Systems and Business Processes

When you run across a company the truly integrates their systems with their business processes it can be an amazing experience.  Dealing with these companies borders on fun because they take the effort to make it easy and have anticipated your needs.  Zappos, an online retailer of shoes and other accessories, is one such company.  Or more appropriately as they describe themselves: "We are a service company that happens to sell ________.

• shoes
• and handbags
• and clothing
• and eyewear
• and watches
• and accessories
• (and eventually anything and everything)"

Since I'm a customer of Zappos I'm surprised that I hadn't written about this before.  Fortunately, Seth Godin's recent post, "Zappos wants you to return those shoes" reminded me so now is a good time to talk about them.

Zappos' service is all encompassing in how it is set up.  It includes: policy, processes, customer perspective, vision, attitude and systems.  Customer service for them isn't just putting a "Contact us" or "Customer Service" link on their web site.  Pete Blackshaw explain this in more detail in "Word-of-Mouth Marketing 101, à la Zappos.com"

Don't believe me?  Then check out these examples:

When Robots Attack

James Taylor over at the smart (enough) systems blog posted an interesting article last week.  It was one of those that if it wasn't so serious it would be funny.  His post iRobot - Elite CRM, stupid returns system details his experiences of buying 3 systems from iRobot and wanting to return 1 of them.   As crazy as it sounds the only way he could do this was to return all 3 and then re-purchase the 2 he wanted.  As Taylor points out this is a poor way of doing business in so many ways.

Taylor notes that iRobot received a 2008 destinationCRM award for their automated customer service system.  However after his experience with trying to return a product Taylor notes " am sure the automated system for which they received an award is wonderful - I have not had to use it yet - but clearly they could do with making their return system a little smarter."  It does make you question how much thought they really put into the design of their system or if they tried to get any customer input into the system.

This example points out the need for 2 essential elements in good application development - the end user perspective and adaptability.  End user perspective can be obtained in a number of ways.  It can be based on the developers knowledge of how the system is used, input from the sales team,or directly from the end-user themselves.  How you get this input all depends upon the particular situation.

So why is all this important?

Unintended Consequences of Overlooking the Obvious with Technology

A week ago Saturday (March 8) we moved our clocks one hour ahead for daylight savings time (DST)  to give us more daylight in the evening.  The next day I checked into a DoubleTree hotel to attend a conference.  Upon entering my room I noticed that the alarm clock was one hour behind.  My first reaction was that they missed a great customer service opportunity.  Since the housekeeping staff is in the room everyday why not simply have them adjust the alarm clocks for daylight savings?  That should be simple enough, shouldn't it?  Well maybe not.

Since I wanted to use the alarm clock I figured it would be easier to set the time correctly myself.  Upon looking at the clock I noticed 2 things.  First the clock was 53 minutes behind and not 60 as I assumed resulting from the DST change.  Second, and this is the most shocking, there is no way to adjust the time.  That's right you can not change the time.  Some of the features include:

• Four pre-set buttons for local radio stations designated by a graphic of the music type

• Connection cable for use with guest’s personal MP3 player, portable CD player, laptop and other entertainment devices

• Built-in stereo speakers for radio or connected devices

• Large LCD screen with dimmer that adjusts to high, medium or low

• Automatic daily alarm time reset, preventing an alarm set by a previous guest from repeating

I picked up the radio and looked on the top and looked on the bottom and looked all around but couldn't find anything that would let me change the time.  My curiosity got the best of me so I called the front desk and the conversation went something like this:

Me: I must be a complete idiot but the time on the clock is wrong and I cannot figure out how to set it, can you tell me how to set the time.

Front Desk: We'll have to send up someone from engineering to do that.  You have to have a screwdriver and open up the clock to adjust the time.

Me: Am I hearing you correctly?  It takes someone from engineering to set the time on a clock?

Front Desk:  I'm afraid so.  Would you like me to send someone up?

Me: No thanks.  I'll just use the alarm feature on my BlackBerry.

I wish I would have had more time.  It would have been interesting to see if the time setting really can be corrected.  While preparing this post I did a little research and things get even more interesting.

Let's Hang Up The Gloves

Marketing guru, Mary Schmidt, recently wrote a post, "Don't Get Defensive.  Just Fix It." in which she makes 2 excellent points that bear a lot on how we in IT deal with our customers.  As the HelpDesk often has to deal with "issues" this is especially important in that area.  Schmidt starts off the post by saying "I’m convinced that many of the world’s problems could be quickly fixed or even avoided if people didn’t automatically get defensive when faced with an issue or disagreement."

When our customers come to us with issues we need to resist taking it as a personal affront lest we become defensive.  Often we fall into the trap of using IT's weasel words such as "It works on my machine" or "No one else has had a problem with that."  The implicit message in this is that the problem is the customer's fault which makes them defensive and it just escalates from there.  As Schmidt suggests sometimes we need to just get beyond this and just fix the problem.  Hang up the boxing gloves and work on the solution.

Joel Spolsky has a fantastic post, "Seven steps to remarkable customer service".  Be sure to read all seven steps but pay particular attention to steps 4 and 5.  In these Spolsky gives some great examples of what not being (or being) defensive can do.  They illustrate the point very effectively.

Mind Your Posture or RTFM?

Marketing guru, Seth Godin recently had an extremely interesting blog post, "The posture of a communicator".  It's a short post but a powerful one.  I believe it gets to the heart of one of the biggest complaints people have with IT, namely, our poor communications.  IT is well known for its speaking in acronyms, writing cryptic error messages, writing incomprehensible (and not very useful) user guides, and using "code words" rather than plain language.  We often top it off with an arrogant attitude when people tell us they don't understand what we are saying.

Godin's first sentence gets right to the point.

"If you buy my product but don't read the instructions, that's not your fault, it's mine."

I'm sure there are a lot of people in IT that would disagree with that statement.  You know the ones.  They're the ones that complain about users not reading the manual and just wish they would "RTFM" (read the f*&%$#*$ manual). 

Should our users read the manual?  Do I wish the would read the manual?  Absolutely!  But the reality is they don't.  As Godin states:

"It's really easy to insist that people read the friggin manual. It's really easy to blame the user/student/prospect/customer for not trying hard, for being too stupid to get it or for not caring enough to pay attention. Sometimes (often) that might even be a valid complaint. But it's not helpful."

The key phrase there for me is "But it's not helpful."  That's correct, it's not helpful.  As a service provider our job isn't to be "right" but to make sure the customer can use our product.  So it doesn't matter if we are right about thinking they should read the manual since it doesn't help.

"No News is Good News" --- Wrong!

At the end of November we purchased some new furniture from Ethan Allen and also arranged for them to reupholster some chairs.  We naively asked if we might get them by Christmas and were told it might be possible but not likely that we would receive the new furniture but they would probably receive the fabric and pick up the chairs for reupholstering before Christmas.  We finally received the new furniture last weekend and they came to pick up the chairs for reupholstering this past Saturday.  Although this will eventually work out and we'll be happy with the furniture the whole process has been rather unsatisfactory.

The reason for the dissatisfaction?  Simply it was communication or more correctly the lack of communication.  A number of times we called to find the status of our order but were told the sales associate that sold us the furniture was on leave but someone would get back to us but no one ever did.  Finally in the last week of December I called and was told it was scheduled to be received by the store during the first week of January and that we would be contacted to arrange delivery of the new furniture.  I asked about the pickup of the chairs for reupholstering but was told that another department handled that and some one would contact us.  The delivery of the new furniture went as they described but we still couldn't get any information on the chair pickup.  Finally, at the beginning of the second week of January my wife called the store manager (and had to leave a voice mail) and indicated that if we didn't hear something by this week we would cancel the order for the reupholstering.  This apparently got their attention and the chairs are being upholstered now. They're due to be done in two weeks,  I'll let you know if they come through on this promise.

[Update January 27th - they missed their self-imposed 2-week delivery time with no communication that it would be late - looks like we will have to call yet again.]

[Update February 2nd - they called us early in the week (we didn't have to call them) and at our request delivered it this weekend.  Although we are satisfied with the furniture their customer service is so bad we would have to thing twice about going back there.]

It's rather disappointing that a store such as Ethan Allen with its reputation for a quality product (for which it receives a premium price) has such poor customer service and indifference to customer concerns.

Interesting you say, but this is a blog about IT.  So where's the connection?

The Importance of Integrating Acquisitions Quickly

A close friend from Chicago knowing my IT connection sent me the following story thinking I might find it interesting.  I certainly did!  Enough so that with the permission I am posting as something of a guest post (anonymously at their request).

My daughter and I had an interesting  experience yesterday, which you might find amusing in your IT world.  She had two checks that she wanted to deposit in her Bank of America account.  Since October 1, when BofA formally acquired LaSalle Bank, they have been advertising that they are one bank and retail customers (the reason BofA wanted to buy LaSalle) could do their business at either bank, regardless of where their accounts were.  The closest BofA facility is about 10 miles away which as you recall can be a long drive in Chicago traffic.  So my daughter goes into the local branch of the LaSalle (a stand-alone bank building, with a parking lot for at least 30 cars) with her BofA card and her checks....to be told that the 'infrastructure' is not set up for them to take any deposits for BofA accounts. (Mind you, she can, with her deposit slip from the checking account, deposit those checks in ANY ATM sponsored by any bank.)  The LaSalle people also mentioned in response to her surprise that the BofA/LaSalle 'infrastructure' was not working smoothly enough for the employees to get their checks in a timely manner, either. (I guess, treating employees badly is a good reason for customers to overlook bad customer service?)  And this is happening in Chicago, the home base of the LaSalle operations--I wonder what happens elsewhere?)

So we go off to Dominick's [a Chicago area supermarket chain] with the checks in her purse.  At Dominick's there is a Chase "office" of about 120 square feet--barely room for a desk, three chairs. the bank officer's computer,  and an ATM. I say to my daughter, "let's try something..."  We tell the bank officer that we have a Chase checking account, but we do not have any Chase cards with us, don't know any account numbers, don't have a deposit slip, but would like to deposit two checks...can she help?  No problem...my daughter entered her SS number into the hand-held device that brought up our accounts on the bank officer's screen, she asked for a photo id to verify that she was the same person as listed on her screen, took the checks, and two minutes after we walked in on the way to the produce counter, the checks were deposited.

I do realize that mergers are a lot more complicated than running off-site locations, but BofA won the LaSalle bank in early summer/late spring 2007 even if it did not get closed until 9/30/07.  That was enough time to get their ad campaign out about it being "one bank" but insufficient time to  merge the IT systems that are the lifeline of their business.

Oh well,..........

I find this interesting for a number of reasons:

Dumbest Internet Moment of 2007

Fortune Magazine recently announced their selection for the "101 Dumbest Moments in Business" for 2007.  Fortunately, for Macy's they've missed the cutoff for this year's competition.  Maybe they're counting on 101 dumber things to happen in the next year to keep them off that list too.  Nonetheless they've pulled what I think has to be one of the dumbest move in using the Internet as a sales tool.

A few days ago I went online to look for a particular Christmas gift.  I knew it was too late to buy it online and expect it to be delivered (at least without paying premium freight) in time for Christmas.  I simply wanted to see what various stores had and to check the availability.  One of those was Macy's and I was shocked to see this:

Even though it is politely worded and tries to make it sound like they are doing this to benefit the customer it is just dumb in so many ways:

Rocky Mountain High with Lost Luggage

Kevin Flynn, Transportation Writer for The Rocky Mountain News in Denver wrote a couple of articles yesterday that caught my interest.  The first one is "Airlines losing more bags" which talks about a 12.5% increase nationwide in mis-handled bags.  He reports that at some airlines the increase is in excess of 30%.  Now that's scary.

His second article, a sidebar article to the one above, "Late connection delayed bag, but airline was ready" discussed how some airlines are handling the situation.  I found two things especially interesting about this;

1. Kevin quoted my blog post of July 30th concerning my lost luggage experience in Denver where I suggested that they use the information they already have and proactively let people know their luggage didn't make the connection rather than make them wait in vain and then seek out the baggage claim people.  As I mentioned, "If you know a bag didn't make the connection, why do you insist on adding to my frustration by making me wait an extra 30 or 45 minutes, and then make me come ask you about it?"
2. The article relates another travelers experience with Delta.  Once they inquired about their missing luggage the Delta agent then consulted the computer printout and quickly handled things which was very similar to my experience with United when I got back to Houston.

What amazes me is that the airlines still seem to think that people really don't care if they get their luggage or not, its like they are saying "Maybe, we better wait and see if they will come ask us about it before we do anything".  As if I'd schlep 40 pounds of dead weight through an airport and then not want it!

I stand by my original suggestion:

Some More Thought Provoking Ideas from Matt Moran

Matt Moran consistently writes some pretty thought provoking posts about the world of IT.  I first ran across Matt's stuff at the ITToolbox where he has contributed over 700 posts.  I especially loved his "Policy Parrot" stories.  Matt brings a practical real-world approach to IT and is very customer focused which is why I like his stuff so much.

In addition to writing at ITToolBox Matt has his own blog, Matt Moran - Caffeine / Life / Technology / Music and runs Kreative Knowledge.  He has a couple of clips posted there from his speaking engagements.  These are very thought provoking in terms of how IT conducts its business and IT's approach to customer service.  Take a look.

• IT Blackened the Eye of Business
• Everything I know about IT I learned from Mr. Coffee

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• IT as Dentistry
• Some Technology Suggestions for Airline Customer Service
• Are You a Policy Parrot?
• Or the posts in the "Customer Service" category

Rebate Technology

As is often the case I bought a few things this past week.  And as is also often the case some of the purchase came with rebates.  I don't like rebates.  Don't get me wrong I like saving money which is part of rebates.  I just don't like the concept of rebates.  When you're shopping they quote the price as if you get the rebate which of course you don't cases unless you remember to cut out all the necessary tags, circle the price, mail it all in and wait a couple of months.  What a pain!  Somehow it seems a little be unethical to quote a price "after rebate" knowing full well many people won't get a rebate.

Rebate programs cost companies money to run.  Advertising are rebate processing and significant costs and you would think that companies would find it less expensive to just lower the price.  However, the dirty little secret of rebates is that people will buy based on the low "after rebate" quoted price but end up paying the full price in some cases.  Some people will lose the tags/receipts, some will fill out the paperwork incorrectly and some will simply forget.  And that is what the companies are counting on.

This week I experienced 3 forms of a rebate program, one of which was new to me:

Should We Stick To What We Know?

The Harris Country Toll Road Authority (HCTRA) operates the toll roads where I live (near Houston, TX) and they do a pretty good job of it.  They upgrade the roads quickly and construction is done relatively quickly.

Since I drive on the toll roads almost daily one of the great things that I like is the EZ Tag system.  This is a RFID tag that scans my account number automatically as I go through the toll booth and charges my account without having to stop at the mainline toll booths.  As a result I zip through at traffic speed (which in Houston varies from 2 mph to 70 mph).  There are a number of toll roads across the country that use this and if you drive with any frequency on them you know what a great advantage they are.

Recently HCTRA expanded the use of EZ Tags to allow me to pay for parking at IAH - Bush Intercontinental Airport.  There is no charge for this.  I just pull up to the entrance and instead of getting a ticket, a scanner reads my EZ Tag and opens the gate.  When I leave I go through another EZ Tag scanner and exit while the system automatically calculates the parking fee and adds it to my account.  At least that's the theory.  Unfortunately reality is much different.