Talking To Someone: Reader Feedback

Not everyone agreed with my point about not really wanting to talk to someone. Dale said, "Even the best machine systems fail". He gave an example of how Amazon took his order for a Christmas gift, promised a delivery date, and the gift has still not arrived". His bottom line was, "no dates, no numbers, no satisfaction – and no way to talk to a human". "Even the best sometimes need to engage in human conversation to maintain satisfaction". Charley agrees. He said that my story had missed the point. "When the organization that you are trying to do business with makes a mistake, then you must talk to a human, and one with authority". He says it is an an iron rule in human affairs that organizations do not admit they made a mistake until they are subject to severe duress.  "No voice response I have ever heard says 'Press 1 if we made a mistake' and very very few first level order takers or help desk personnel have in their scripts what to do in case of a mistake". Both Charley and Dale pointed out that problems are exacerbated when the organization you think you are dealing with has sub-contracted the actual work to another organization.

These are all good points but I am sticking to my thesis. Talking to a human is not what I want. I want systems and processes that work the way they are supposed to work. I believe that wanting to talk to someone is a response to the frustration that we feel when a system or a process has broken down. Another way to say it is that if I could wave a magic wand and have a company provide live telephone support with humans or make their systems and processes work properly (including integration with their sub-contractors), I would take the latter. I must admit I am quite surprised to learn of Amazon having a breakdown. This is the first I have heard of that happening. It sounds like a transportation snafu and I suspect that the recent airline difficulties are at the root of the problem. Not that this is an excuse. If Amazon guaranteed delivery they obviously relied on some discussions they had with their shipping provider, which I believe is more dependent on the USPS than in the past. One more time, if there was a choice of talking to someone or having Amazon provide a delivery tracking link with every shipment, I would take the latter.

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On Demand December 31, 2004 10:50 AM

I Want To Talk To A Human: Not Really

Many people will undoubtedly be very sympathetic with today's New York Times article, "Customer Service: The Hunt for a Human". Some will conclude that the increasing difficulty (or impossibility) of talking to a human being, much less one with any authority, is one of the major downsides of the Internet. I don't feel that way. Have you ever felt a need to talk to someone at eBay or Amazon? I haven't. Why? Because they do such a great job in meeting your needs that you don't need to talk to a person. A few mouse clicks and you have accomplished your mission. The places where people get frustrated and want to talk to someone are the ones not fully meeting people's needs. If they met your needs, you wouldn't feel the need to talk to someone. It isn't really that you want to talk to someone. You want to get the job done, item purchased, item returned, user manual, setup instructions, new software update, or whatever, with intuitive procedures, responsive web site, using whatever kind of device you happen to be connected to the Internet with, any time of day or night. That is On Demand and that is what people really want. If all the transactions you engaged in were handled in an On Demand fashion, there would be more time to take a motorcycle ride, stop at a Harley dealer, and talk to people about important things -- like planning the next motorcycle ride.

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On Demand December 30, 2004 10:19 AM

On Demand Update

Thanks to Wendy Warnecke at IBM for pointing out that my story about On Demand was getting old. I updated the story.

On Demand December 29, 2004 05:27 PM

On Demand Revisited

In the height of the "dot com" frenzy a class of companies emerged called Application Service Providers (ASP). The ASPs claimed to solve all known business problems by providing applications over the Internet. Solutions covered a wide range of activities from integration of the supply chain to a complete implementation of "office" functionality - spreadsheet, word processor, data base, presentation capability, etc. The value proposition was that you no longer had to buy Microsoft Office – you could just use that functionality via a server over the Internet. The problem with many of the ASP offerings was that they didn’t solve things that were perceived as problems.

Although I continue to be enthusiastic about the vast potential of the Internet, I felt at the time that the ASP model was premature -- primarily because there were not enough people with always on, high quality, reliable, connections to the net. (network computers suffered from the same problem). On top of the network issue was the fact that the ASP solutions introduced were of questionable value and the result was that the ASP model essentially disappeared. What goes around, comes around – the ASP is back. The successful ones will be On Demand businesses. (read more)

On Demand December 29, 2004 05:25 PM

The Bubble: Reconsidering the Boom and the Bust

Weekends On Demand -- Reader feedback

Yesterday I described my experience with the process of moving frequent flier miles from American Express to Continental Airlines. Paul Shanek, who is vp of sales & marketing at Leapstone Systems, Inc. in Somerset, New Jersey wrote to say he had seen the same message -- saying it would take five days to transfer the points. "It actually took about 5 seconds to get the info into my OnePass account". "It was amazing". "I guess the marketing guys need to know what the techies are doing!". Good point. Another example is that when American Airlines reservation agents send you an email confirmation, they say it will take "up to twenty-four hours". And then there is the post card telling you that your rebate information has been received and will take "8-12 weeks to process" (there may be other reasons why this actually happens). In an On Demand world people are going to increasingly ask "Why?".

On Demand December 22, 2004 09:24 PM

Please Check Back Again Soon

I received a bright yellow letter in the mail today from Comcast. It was a "Pending Disconnect Notice". Comcast is my high-speed Internet provider and technically they have been quite good. The customer service is another story. After looking in Quicken, I found that I had somehow made the payment late. I assume the notice went out before they got the payment posted. I went to comcast.com to see if everything was ok. The homepage said "You are just a few clicks away
from managing your Comcast Cable and/or Comcast High-Speed Internet account online. Sign up now -- it's fast, easy and free"! I registered successfully and then clicked on "Simply add your account number to your profile and you'll have online access to your account information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week" Great! I am on the way to confirming they received my payment.

One of the fields of information requested in the "Add Account" feature was the account number. "Enter the account number exactly as it appears on your bill including spaces and dashes". I did not have a bill handy but I had the yellow letter and it had my account number on it. It said Account Number: 0032762-01 so that is what I entered. An error message appeared saying "Please enter your account number exactly as it appears on your bill". After another couple of tries, I dug out an old bill and saw that the account number on it was 0327003276201. Obviously related but not exactly the same. Comcast wants me to be consistent, even though they aren't. I entered the number yet again -- exactly the way they wanted it. Then I got the following message. "We're Sorry. Although you are a current Comcast customer, online account management features are not available in your area. We are working hard to upgrade our systems to provide these features to all of our customers. Please check back again soon." On Demand. Not.

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Go Figure December 22, 2004 03:59 PM

IBM Happenings: Please give me your feedback...

Sorry I am a bit late with the IBM Happenings posting for November. I would appreciate any feedback from readers as to whether these news postings are useful. It is not a huge effort to pull them together -- but not trivial either. As usual, there was a lot going on at IBM during the past month (November). Here are the announcements made by the company. The complete index of prior IBM Happenings is here.

IBM December 21, 2004 02:43 PM

Five Days?

I have written a number of stories in patrickWeb about web services, a set of standards that allow for web sites to send messages to each other. If you have any doubts about whether this is needed, consider the following. I went to American Express's MemberMiles site to move some miles to Continental Airlines. The site was very responsive and confirmed my transaction in less than two seconds. Then I got the following message on the Web page. "Membership Rewards points have been deducted from your account. Allow approximately 5 business days for these transferred Membership Rewards points to appear in your Continental OnePass® account". Five days? Surely they must have meant five seconds, or certainly no more than five minutes. This is why we need web services.

On Demand December 20, 2004 10:23 PM

Weekends On Demand

On Demand is a really important concept for institutions of all kinds -- businesses, hospitals, universities, and governments. With more people connected more often in more places with more devices, their expectations are growing by the day. On Demand simply means to make the data and processes available to all constituencies (for which they are authorized) whenever they have need, wherever they are, and with whatever device they may be using to connect to the Internet. Simple to say, very complex to do. The information technology systems of many of the institutions are very complex and therefore their challenge in delivering On Demand is a big one. Many IT vendors are focused on delivering solutions. IBM, for example has been working on the concept of virtualization with the goal of dramatically reducing the complexity of managing vast computing and networking resources. A significant part of the challenge facing institutions, however, is not technical -- it is "attitude".

One of the attitudes that has been around for decades is that there is something different about a weekend. It used to be true. When transactions were down via paper forms (unfortunately a lot still are) the forms would arrive at a company, for example, and people at computer "terminals" would enter the transactions into the central systems. In many cases the people doing this worked Monday to Friday from nine to five. During the "off" hours changes could be made to the systems because consumers were not directly depending on them. Of course this has changed, not just because of the Web, but because of the global availability of the Web. Two AM in New York is three PM in Tokyo. Nevertheless, we still occasionally see messages on a Web page saying "we are down for maintenance". It isn't just maintenance of systems -- it may also be updating of central databases with "batches" of transactions that were accumulated during the prior day(s).

On Saturday I was updating my own data with Quicken. With a couple of mouse clicks Quicken downloads data from American Express, Charles Schwab, CitiBank, etc. I noticed that something didn't look right in a Schwab account so I called their outstanding technical support. They said the problem was that Intuit (producer of Quicken) updates certain securities information on the weekend and if you connect at that time you will get some erroneous transaction data. On Sunday I attempted to move some American Express Member Miles to Continental Airlines. the good news is that AMEX now has a Web transaction page where you can request the transfers. The bad news is that after entering my data I got a messages saying "Please click on the Submit button only once. Your request will take a few seconds to process. Thank you for your patience". I waited five minutes or so and then tried again. Same message. I then called and the always delightful AMEX customer service representative did the transaction for me. She said it would be completed in 24-48 hours (that is another issue and one I have written about before). She also said that the Web transaction frequently doesn't work on weekends because that is when systems are being updated.

I don't know if the reasons given by the support representatives about the source of the problems are correct. I have my doubts about that. All I know for sure is that in both cases I couldn't' do what I wanted to do and in both cases the result was that it took a lot of extra time on my part to fix things. I have no doubt that Intuit and American Express are on the path to becoming On Demand businesses. They are committed. The organizations that become truly On Demand will gain great loyalty from customers. For most of us, weekends are when we have a few minutes to catch up on various transactions. We expect Web sites to be available and reliable. This is not a technical issue, it is a societal issue -- and an issue of expectations.

On Demand December 19, 2004 10:19 PM

Lenovo - 2

From the feedback I have gotten to "ThinkPad Futures", it sounds like a lot of people are happy that the ThinkPad lives on after the Lenovo acquisition. While there is a large community of individual ThinkPad customers out there, most ThinkPad users are employees of the major enterprises of the world. That has been the primary target of IBM and will continue to be at Lenovo. Enterprise customers are much more demanding than the average consumer. They expect industrial strength, global service and support, bullet-proof security features (like the new ThinkPad built-in biometric fingerprint reader), and ease of integration with corporate networks. Enterprises buy ThinkPads because their employees like them but also because of the ThinkVantage technologies. I have to admit a partiality to IBM on this subject but I think there is good reason for that feeling. (read more)

IBM December 16, 2004 09:31 PM

iTrike Riding

It was not exactly a sunny and warm day but, as long as the roads are dry, I like to go out for a motorcycle ride on Sunday afternoons. Winter riding is actually very nice and refreshing -- as long as you have the electric vest and gloves plugged in. They really did the job today when the wind chill was in was single digit territory. Today's ride was on the trike through lower Westchester County, New York and was especially enjoyable because I listened to some great music from the Harley-Davidson MP3 player. The music came from iTunes, hence the term "iTrike Riding". First I will review the motorcycling and digital technology involved and then discuss some of the issues and implications. (read more)

Gadgets , Mobile , Motorcycles , Music , Personal Computing December 15, 2004 10:06 AM

IT Leadership Academy - 2004

An IBM colleague from years past, Craig Fellenstein, has been helping out with a significant initiative called the IT Leadership Academy. The program is sponsored by the Governor of Connecticut and is designed to bring 180 public High School students together to work on IT related projects during the school year. The participating high schools include both suburban and urban. The host for the sessions this year is IBM Corporation. I was fortunate to be guest speaker this morning.

Michael Mino is the director of the IT Leadership Academy and has organized the program. The students selected have been identified as leaders and I was very impressed with their knowledge and interest. The students asked poignant questions about WiFi, security, spam, and other pertinent topics. They are clearly on top of what the key issues are. After I described what is going on in Philadelphia with the lead telecommunications company pushing for restrictions on the city's ability to offer WiFi to the citizens at large, one student asked how this could be. He was dumbfounded. So am I.

P.S. Craig is quite an accomplished author. His grid computing book is the best on the sujbect.

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IBM December 10, 2004 09:51 PM

ThinkPad Futures

In 1992 I was fortunate to have an assignment in IBM's personal systems group. I had been CFO in the computer integrated manufacturing unit of IBM just prior to that and was quite happy with what I was doing. However, a friend of mine, who was #2 guy in the personal systems group at the time, knew of my passion for personal computing and he convinced me to take a marketing role in the group. I was a newcomer at marketing but I had a great appreciation for the importance of having good names for things. We were looking for an "independent" sounding name for a newly formed PC division that had aggressive plans to become a major player in the corporate market. We decided on the "IBM PC Company". The organization was fast on it's feet and quite successful. A few months later it was time to announce the company's first tablet computer. The product used a handwriting recognition program from a company called Go (later bought by AT&T and eventually folded). The "tablet" was two inches thick and weighed eight pounds or so. The worst part was the tentative name -- the "IBM 486SLC-2 Tablet Computer". A consultant came up with an alternative name -- the IBM ThinkPad. It was descriptive but seemed very strange at the time (more on that story in the future). With last night's announcement of the sale of IBM's PC business, what is the future of the ThinkPad? I would say very bright.

The deal that was announced sounds very good to me as a stockholder and as a former member of the PC team. The IBM PC and IBM ThinkPad are sentimental to millions of people but the deal was not about sentiment -- it was about strategy. The jewel in the transaction is not in the numbers -- it is in the people. I have known Steve Ward -- the new CEO -- and Fran O'Sullivan -- the new COO -- for a long time. They are top notch executives. Steve has been IBM's CIO, a former ThinkPad general manager, and head of IBM's global industrial sector. With a proven management team in place it shows the customers that both IBM and Lenovo Group are serious about keeping them as customers. It also shows the employees in the new venture a leadership that they already know and trust.

There are a number of more subtle benefits to the deal that go beyond the initial numbers. One is increased presence in the China market. IBM has been operating successfully in China for many years and has thousands of customers and employees there, but now, with a strong "local" partner, they will be able to expand the relationships beyond the current base. Lenovo has a lot of experience in dealing with high volumes of products and, combining that with the world class research and development of IBM, Lenovo will be able to expand their capabilities and continue the innovation that has been a hallmark of IBM. By "untethering" the PC business from IBM the new venture will have more flexibility to bob and weave around the competitive landscape. Meanwhile IBM can focus on high value businesses such as software, support, consulting, and other services. The bottom line with the deal is that there is synergy breaking out all over the place.

I have confidence they can make the combination successful. IBM has a good track record of both acquiring and spinning off businesses. A spin-off of a low-end printer division in 1991became Lexmark International, Inc., which is a $5 billion company with a market capitalization of more than $11 billion. The spin off of the low-end storage business to Hitachi Data Systems has gone very smoothly. Same thing on the acquisition side. In 1995 IBM acquired Lotus Development Corporation which is now at the forefront of redefining client software for the enterprise. The acquistion of Price Waterhouse Coopers Consulting is a text book case of leveraging two companies into one. In the past two years IBM has had more than two dozen acquisitions (mostly middleware companies), such as Rational, that have been seamlessly integrated. The IBM management team knows how to work with other companies. Although handheld devices are becoming the majority player in the connected world, the PC is not going to go away anytime soon. I expect to be using ThinkPads for a long time to come.

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IBM December 8, 2004 03:25 PM

WiFi Update No. 10 (The WanderPort)

WiFi is making the Internet “always on” and extending it to more people and more devices at more locations. But what about in the middle of the desert? Or in a disaster recovery situation, or large-scale events and on-location film productions where there may be no electrical and network infrastructure? Enter the WanderPod. From the Mojave Desert to downtown Manhattan, the WanderPod is literally a mobile communications machine that makes "always on" a reality. A fully-equipped trailer "Pod" contains a two-way satellite uplink, WiFi and VoIP telephony, and supports hundreds of concurrent users within a coverage area of 12.5 million square feet. The WanderPod is a self-contained and totally mobile "all-terrain warrior" that goes wherever the need is. Inside the Pod are VoIP phones, PDAs and laptops. During Burt Rutan's recent successful attempt at the X Prize for space travel, a WanderPod was set up in the southern California desert and provided WiFi access to the entire crew. At $80,000 each, I am not sure what the market potential is but it is nice to see the innovation at work to help people get connected no matter they may be.

Another interesting connectivity approach called IntelliEdge is being offered by DropZone Networks. What is unique about their approach is that they have created an outdoor-ready wireless platform that supports WiFi and several other protocols in one small system that is solar-powered. The system is aimed at service providers to enable them to deploy high profitability offerings such as multi-player mobile gaming, mobile music downloading, mobile video broadcasting social applications and VoIP.

So much for mere land-based connectivity. Vint Cerf has been talking about the InterPlanetary Net for years! Many of us would settle for just WiFi on an airline flight. It is finally beginning to happen thanks to Connexion by Boeing, the first high-speed Internet service available to commercial airline passengers. Lufthansa, SAS, JAL, ANA and others are in the process of equipping their long-haul aircraft with the new WiFi service.The best news is that the airlines plan to make it available throughout the planes, not just in premium classes. I think eventually it will become "jacks or better" -- the minimum needed to compete -- but at the outset it will not be cheap. It may be as much as $30 per flight. Cheap compared to what I paid in Scandinavia, but still expensive. On long inter-continental flights it will make sense though. I enthusiastically signed up for the service for a flight to Cairo a couple of months ago. Unfortunately, the flight crew had never heard of it. Seems like the training program is a bit behind the marketing program.

Finally, airports are getting on the WiFi bandwagon big time. Complete airport listings are available at JiWired's Hotspot Locator .

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WiFi December 6, 2004 08:56 PM