Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

Writing policies with an attitude Wed 27 May 09

I received an email the other day that was offering to sell me pre-written IT policies to use rather than writing them from scratch.  Using a template may be a good way to develop policies as long you review them carefully and adjust them for your particular situation.

But I'm not writing about policies.   Although I think we in IT sometimes have too many policies for the wrong reasons I'm really all in favor of them and I also support the idea of enforcing them.  With that behind us I wanted to point out what really got me about the way this particular company decided to market their product to IT people.

Technology in the Airline Industry Fri 06 Feb 09

Changes In The Airline Industry Making New Demands on IT

Kim Nash has an interesting article on CIO.com, What the Airlines Can Teach You About IT and Business Strategy.  The article discusses how the events of the past few years have created new demands on the airline's IT groups.  Dealing with legacy system while trying to provide new services and features is a challenge.

Just in case anyone from the airline industry is reading, I thought I'd remind you of some suggestions to put on your to-do list.

• Surfing the Internet At 30,000 Feet - Airlines Providing Wireless Access
• Rocky Mountain High with Lost Luggage
• Some Technology Suggestions for Airline Customer Service

"At the airport" photo by Giacomo P.

IT Doesn't Have To Be Annoying Wed 04 Feb 09

How to improve the perception of IT departments.

Brighton, Michigan made the headlines not too long ago when the city council passed an ordinance that you could be ticketed and fined for annoying someone.  I don't intend to get into specifics of what's going on in Brighton, but I couldn't help but think any information technology folks passing through Brighton might want to be very careful, given our reputation. This reputation of annoying people with our indifference, poor customer service and overbearing policies and standards may not be accurate or deserved, but it persists.

Because it persists perhaps we should do something to counteract it. Why is this so important? Think back to your childhood. You're in the back seat of the family car on the way home from an outing with your parents and your brother or sister. It's been a great day of fun, laughter and fellowship. And then your brother pokes you in the arm. No big deal. He does it again and you give him a dirty look. He pokes you a third time and you yell, "Quit it!" He doesn't and mayhem breaks out until dad bellows, "Don't you make me stop this car!" That's what set the tone for the day--not all the good things but being annoyed with your brother.

Trying Harder In Hard Times Wed 24 Dec 08

IT departments with poor customer service might not survive the recession.

Perhaps the most common topic at holiday parties in Houston this year was the ramifications of Hurricane Ike, which hit us pretty hard in early September. The conversation typically started on what I call Phase 1 of the hurricane--the damage it caused and the resulting cleanup and reconstruction.

Since many have successfully completed Phase 1, or are well on their way, the conversation would typically quickly move on to Phase 2--dealing with the insurance companies. I think it's fair to say the frustration and exasperation levels of dealing with insurance companies easily go beyond those of dealing with the hurricane itself.

Typically the conversation would go something like this:

"The insurance company is dragging its feet. I'm on the third (or fourth or fifth) adjuster. They keep asking for the same information, even though I've already given it to them. They don't return my calls and want to give me a lot less than they should. I don't understand why it has to be such a hassle."

A sharp IT guy would look at this and see a number of ways that process and system improvements could greatly improve the situation. Unfortunately, these suggestions wouldn't be welcomed by the insurance companies--it's to their competitive advantage to be inefficient and provide poor customer service.

The aim is for the claim filer to become so frustrated that he is willing to settle for less, just to complete the process and get some reimbursement--thus saving the insurance company money. And since all insurance companies have the same incentive and operate the same way, no one has to worry about their poor customer service driving their customers to the competition. It's just normal industry-accepted practice.

So how is this relevant to IT? Let's just change a few words to the story above:

Installing Outbrain "Star" Rating on TypePad Blogs using Advanced Templates Tue 26 Aug 08

Last Saturday I mentioned that I had added a way for you, the reader, to rate my articles and give me some feedback.  There are a number of these services available but I chose to use Outbrain as I liked their features.  I did mention that although they made it easy to install if you used basic templates in TypePad it was not quite so easy if you are using advanced templates.  I also promised, time permitting, to explain how I did this since some of you may find yourself in the same situation.  Here it is.

Fair warning - this won't be my typical conversation or whatever you care to call it.  Rather it is a more instructional article on how to add code to your TypePad blog to include the Outbrain rating system.  If this is of interest, read on. 

Surfing the Internet At 30,000 Feet - Airlines Providing Wireless Access Mon 25 Aug 08

Last week American Airlines (AA) launched mobile broadband service, Gogo™ provided by Aircell  on certain select flights - " . . . customers traveling on American’s Boeing 767-200 aircraft can access complete coast-to-coast coverage on nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami."  Delta and Virgin Atlantic have also signed with Aircell and will be offering service soon.

AA announced "Aircell will charge $12.95 on flights more than three hours, which include American’s Boeing 767-200 flights. Each paid Gogo session includes full Internet access. Cell phone and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services are not available. "

As an IT guy I guess I should be happy about this but the truth is that while I accept this as an inevitable event I actually have mixed feelings about this.  I fully admit there have been times in the past when I really would have liked to have had access especially on long overseas flights.  However, since Aircell use ground towers to transmit their signal we still won't have it on overseas flights.

The reason for my mixed feelings?  Over the past few years air travel has become much less pleasant.  It's more like flying the "unfriendly skies" to paraphrase and mix airline metaphors.  I'm sure we've all seen the stories chronicling assaults on the cabin crew and assaults by the cabin crew.  Recently the hot news in Houston was the trial of a co-pastor of a local mega-church being sued by a flight attendant for allegedly assaulting her over a spilled drink in her first-class seat (the jury found no assault took place).

Outsourcing Your Reputation Mon 09 Jun 08

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? Mon 05 May 08

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 Mon 28 Apr 08

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 Mon 14 Apr 08

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: