The Service Pulpit

If only banks/airlines/telcos would ........

2011-10-07T23:11:00.001+11:00

You're impacting services to your customers - how would/should you communicate it?

This is a great example of proactive communication with customers about the impact of disruption to services and using social media to do it. http://t.co/TMbW34D

Honest and quite refreshing really.

If only our banks, airlines and telcos would follow this example instead of denying service disruption until the facts make it impossible to deny - and then it's glossed over as much as possible.

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

ITSMFA NSW Q2 2011 Seminar

2011-09-09T18:15:00.000+10:00

Check out the video of the ITSMF Australia NSW Q2 2011 seminar.

We had FUN!

The concierge who cares

2011-09-01T21:52:00.003+10:00

Today I was reminded by a smile and well-wishing for my evening, to document the "concierge who cares".

One of the concierge staff in my office building goes above and beyond the requirement of his job description.

Firstly, he's a lovely man who joyously greets the building workers at the beginning and end of every day. There was a gap of 6 months between my assignments in this building and he even remembered me as if I'd never left!

Apart from helping my vanity, how is he above and beyond?

The office building is directly next door to a major tourist attraction. There was, until recently, a considerable building construction zone. Identifying the tourist entry was difficult. I have observed him on several occasions directing tourists to the appropriate entry.

The other redirection he offers is more surprising. Prior the refurb of the building (2 years) a major public service department was housed here. Occasionally people wander in looking for the previous department. Our ever-friendly concierge has city maps, a highlighter pen, and redirects people to where they need to go to the relocated department.

The latter behaviour I've observed at least twice while waiting for a friend in the foyer.

I should also add, that this is in Australia - the concierge receives no tip for doing what he does.

An excellent display of great customer service!

How does BYOD aftect corporates?

2011-04-05T14:28:00.003+10:00

We've talked much of late about BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) but how is it actually affecting the workplace?

As a consultant on-site with a govt department very watchful of what sites and apps are accessed on their corporate machines, I've been using the BYOD philosophy for some time. On my corporate machine I am not able to access webmail plus most blog sites etc. are blocked. I therefore have my netbook by my side with wifi modem for everything else.

So what's the problem? Well I'm OK, but a little conflicted and have a little extra overhead of emailing docs back/forth with 2 machines/accounts. But simply, it's got too hard for corporate IT to keep up with securing while providing the flexibility needed in today's business world. Added to this, technology in the home, at a user level, is now superior to technology in the workplace. Gen X accept, but Y feel disenfranchised by being forced to use technology that they perceive to be antiquated. I wonder what the next upcoming generation is going to think.

IT no longer has any control - it has to settle for manage.

Some corporates are seizing the day by making it a condition of employment to provide your own device and support it yourself (Suncorp and Jetstar). Personally I'm of 2 minds with this - it's reasonable for a labourer to bring their own tools, but when it comes to technology, there's technology and then there's "technology"! You require a level of quality, but when you put this extra onus on employees, how do you manage the quality?

I live in a city and only see young people who have good technology in excess. I'm concerned about those without - how can they even get an entry level job these days?

Aust Post - again! and worse

2011-03-07T15:50:00.004+11:00

I've complained about Australia Post before about failing to deliver parcels to my apartment. They've just lowered the bar.

I've a typical apartment letterbox which is too small for the postie to insert any parcel. A fact of inner city living.

I'm often working at home and my previous annoyance has been that said postie never attempts to buzz the apartment. Usually, they put a notice in the letterbox and run away.

It's at this point I often recall as a preschooler bounding to the garden gate to welcome our twice daily visiting, friendly, bicycle riding postman for a chat. That was in the days when the delivering postman would accept any letters you needed to post also. He was a very nice man. A few years later when he passed my school he would always give me a wave. Is it only me that remembers those halcyon days when people took pride in their work?

My most recent australia post parcel experience was worse than the usual cut and run. No notice was left. I had no idea there was a parcel to be delivered until I was sent a final notice for collection. The rather gruff notice gave me 7 days to pick up the item from the post office or it would be returned to sender.

Luckily I could get to the post office within the time permitted to retrieve my parcel.

This is indeed very poor service and hard to imagine how much worse it can get. No wait, yes I can. The final notice card would be sent after they've returned the parcel to the sender!

There's no point in complaining to Australia Post. Once upon a time I did that - nothing changed - and my complaint wasn't even acknowledged. My former postie in his great heavenly GPO would be saddened.

So now I just tell friends and acquaintances about my poor service, and we console each other with similar tales.

Thanks for listening.

2 Ronnies - Ice Cream parlour

2011-03-07T15:29:00.002+11:00

The "Service Catalogue" has been around a long time. Which Ronnie is your organisation?

What geek thought that was a good idea?

2011-02-10T13:47:00.004+11:00

Most would probably agree that the new Westfield complex on Pitt St mall Sydney is bright, shiny, and very stylish. It's choc-a-block with designer label stores - small on stock and very large on price.

I'm not quite sure who's shopping there. Most of it would be a bit rich for your average Sydney office worker. Perhaps it's the tourists.

But regardless of whether you're actually buying, you probably want to navigate to stores of interest rather than aimlessly wandering and being blinded by the floor tiles.

So what do you do? You proceed to the nearest directory. Not wanting premature blindness, that's what I did.

I was expecting a large board with a colour-coded, numbered store list to be cross referenced on a map sporting a "You are here" sticker.

This traditional form of directory has been supplanted with a touch screen. You select your store or category after which a graphic figure shows the directions to walk through the virtual shopping centre.

It was all very swish but there is a definite downside. Only one person can use this electronic directory at any one time. The traditional directory can accommodate as many people as can stand in front of it simultaneously.

Do people really sit around thinking up new technology just to replace manual systems without identifying extra value or the benefit to be had? Do they say to themselves "that's nice but if I applied technology it would be cool". The sad thing is, apparently so.

Technology is supposed to be an enabler - making things more accessible, not less! If you want to be both cool and accessible, perhaps an iphone app to supplement a traditional directory would be a better idea.

Whoever that geek was - why did Westfield listen to them?

Fun at the ITSMF Leadit national conference

2010-11-22T13:22:00.003+11:00

I just got around to posting the youtube video of the itsmfa conference this year. It was informative and fun. Next year's is in Perth.

ITIL diagrams - shall we redraw them?

2010-11-10T21:03:00.003+11:00

I've decided to start a project to critique and potentially rework most of the ITIL diagrams.

Unfortunately many of them, although well meaning and necessary, tend to have been written by practitioners not schooled in graphicacy and break a lot of the gestalt laws - making them hard to interpret.

The purpose of diagrams is to aid human communication. Sometimes diagrams are just not necessary - text may be a perfectly appropriate medium to communicate the idea/s in question.

I've decided to work though the a lifecycle books beginning with the Service Strategy book. The target items will include "tables" because these are also graphical representations.

I will choose my first rework subject this weekend.

If anyone has a specifically hated ITIL diagram/table they wish to offer for review or has a revised version please respond to the blog and we can publish and discuss it.

I look forward to the challenge.

And the winner is.......Lord Howe Is.

2010-07-31T21:58:00.004+10:00

I regularly watch the ABC1 7pm news broadcast and usually pay attention to the weather bulletin to, either confirm my belief of today's weather, or to prepare for weather conditions of the morrow.

Much to my surprise last Sunday when I viewed the national weather chart of capital cities, Sydney was missing. However Lord Howe Is. was present to represent the state of NSW.

Did the majority of 4.5m of Sydney residencies suddenly get the idea to go native and relocate? The few hundred inhabitants of Lord Howe Is, whose size is 10 x 2 km, would be feeling rather overwhelmed I expect. Indeed the island would probably sink!

So let's assume Sydney is still the most populous city in NSW. It certainly looked that way to me on my journeys to work over the last week.

The obvious assumption is somone has missed with the mouse and "Auntie" has stuffed up in attention to detail yet again. The really poor thing however is that LH Is. first appeared last Sunday night and tonight, Saturday - 6 days later, LH Is. is still the capital of NSW!

I emailed "media watch" on Thursday because I thought this couldn't pass unnoticed.

I await the Sunday news bulletin - will they have picked up the gaff? Probably not. It's a weekend after all and I expect it will take an executive of the ABC to watch "media watch" to discover the error.

What has this to do with service management you ask. Everything. The service to be provided was an accurate weather report and it failed. The SLA with the public failed to be met because of poor attention to detail. Service management 101 tells us this.

The quality of production values for the ABC1 news bulletins is in decline. There are often issues with video or audio links, or the failure of cue cards, plus there's the corny scriptwriter that needs to be shot.

Let us see if Lord Howe Is. continues to the capital of NSW into it's 2nd week and how long this error will be perpetrated.

Vista - "Catastrophic Failure"

2010-06-20T16:23:00.005+10:00

From the misfortunes of a colleague, I was recently introduced to a new error that beats the good old PC "blue screen of death" hands down.

There has been much complaint about Microsoft's Vista - indeed ever since it appeared in beta. Mostly the arguments have been around lack of compatibility and drivers. I will now add stability/reliability to the list.

The trigger for a fatal crash displaying "catastrophic failure" was plugging in an external USB drive. Ironically this was for the purpose of backup.

There was no ability to restore service from this crash. The only options available were to run diagnostics and review the setup. It wouldn't even boot off a CD! After consulting with IT support it was also determined not to be hardware related.

How can a non-hardware related crash be so bad that the only recovery was to reformat?

I wouldn't have believed this except I saw it.

Information Technology has been around for several decades now, why is the quality of product so low? Why, in the race to market, are such high levels of bugginess acceptable.

Perhaps it's because the technology manufacturers can get away with it. Customers seem to accept it as the norm. But then maybe this is only because there's not really any choice - yes Mac's and Apple have their issues too.

Will there be a tipping point when the people revolt and throw their technology in the bin and revert to pen and paper?

As each year (no, each day) passes we become more tied to our technology in so many ways. So consensual rejection of technology is not likely to happen, but I do wonder that there is no end. Technology is organically evolving and continuing to look more and more like star trek - the ipad first appeared in Deep Space 9, didn't it.

The vision of a remote island (or even the garden shed) with no computer, phones and certainly no ipod, is a delight reserved only for the very few and then very briefly on a holiday - unless you plan of becoming a Tibetan monk.

So in the pursuit of survival and happiness we work with what we have.

Sensibly the said colleague reformatted and installed Windows 7 much to the relief of all those attempting to provide support. Not that windows 7 is by any means perfect, but it does have drivers for most mainstream devices and I'm hoping some of the bad lessons of vista have been learnt and applied to this OS.

What can I say, "change is inevitable - except from a vending machine" Robert C. Gallagher

Sticky Notes in Windows 7

2010-05-29T14:36:00.004+10:00

Are you constantly forgetting to buy that bottle of milk on the way home or make that birthday call to aunt Sarah? Or have you committed the unforgivable of missing an anniversary?

Postit notes have served us well for many years as that short-term memory jogger. Any office, home or corporate, is a silent testament to their use with most people's PC screens adorned with at least one sticky note.

The sticky notes applet appeared some years ago and I recall being not that much impressed by it and promptly forgot it. It's now part of windows 7 and "techrepublic" brought it back to my attention.

With the ever increasing busyness of our lives and the constant demands diverting our immediate attention, yellow stickies have become an institution and an important enabler to getting on with our lives. But they do have a risk factor: "write once, lose many times".

As I reflect on my engagement with the written word in the last 2 years I observe a major evolution in my practices. I read books, yes, but unless it's a major text, I do a lot of my reading on electronic devices. I have noted that my handwriting has gone to pot because I rarely write any more. I type into an electronic device - usually my laptop, which has become my most important business-critical possession. I don't even write a shopping list, I type it.

So it's time to embrace electronic "sticky notes". I know I've decided to.

Follow the link in the title to techrepublic's article in tips on how to use and customise it.

Qantas embraces service failure

2010-04-09T13:50:00.005+10:00

Considering all the international disruption with flights in/out of europe recently the couple of incidents involving qantas planes over the easter season has probably been forgotten.

But easter was significant for Qantas. They had 4 incidents in the space of one week featuring engine troubles, an exploding tyre and a cracked window. Their damage control processes all seemed to work affectively however and everyone was delivered safely back to earth.

As expected, the media jumped on Qantas' safety record and the organisation addressed the concerns accordingly. I expected that to be the end of it until another incident occured.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce seized the moment to engage his customers. He sent an email (click the title link to read) to all his customers explaining in good detail what occurred, how and what was being done to address the issues. He also took the opportunity to reinforce the core values and deliverables of the Qantas organisation.

Many CEO's would be inclined to run away from all but the necessary damage control activities but Qantas has embraced it's service failures and used customer engagement for a positive outcome.

More service providers should take a note from this. Customers don't really want to hear everything's going well. They want to hear about how you manage the things that don't go well and that you understand their needs.

DVD UI - isn't it about time

2010-04-09T12:37:00.005+10:00

My first DVD player was purchased back in 2000 when there was so much promise in what the new medium would provide. I managed to find one that I could crack the region settings of and it travelled in my carry on on a plane to Canada. I had one DVD - "Walking with Dinosaurs" - they were expensive.

Apart from the clarity of picture, there was much hype that new movies and TV series would be crafted towards the new medium. You would be able to do things like: zoom in/out on aspects of any scene, or watch the movie from different angles and from different characters' perspectives.

These features never materialised due to the costs to produce. Was it right to set expectations so high? Ah well, this is all past but a historical lesson should be learnt even so.

But what of today's offerings? The user interface of practically any DVD I encounter is so unintuitive. Silly gimmick icons and non logical directional movements and submenus make it very difficult to access the actual product. Just turning on/off subtitles can be a challenge.

It's been a medium crying out for some UI standards for 10 years now.

Technology is moving on, the faster/easier alternative these days is to download your video of choice. So I suppose DVD UI's will never evolve - just disappear.

Lifecycle is a journey

2010-04-09T12:14:00.003+10:00

4 ITIL lifecycle exams successfully completed and 1 to go.

Konfucius contemplates "Service Strategy"!

Compliance easier than initiative? Maybe

2010-03-09T15:35:00.006+11:00

I was reading Seth Godin's blog. He's often quite insightful and interesting.

He states "compliance is simple to measure, test and teach". Well, maybe given the right circumstances, but then why are so many organisations having such trouble with compliance and wasn't that a big part of the whole GFC debacle.

Consider, for arguments sake, that 20% or more of your people might be initiators (the highly creative ones) and only 80% compliant. In such a world, consider the state of your products' quality assurance, your change management program or even the bedrock principles of our society: the tax and legal systems.

I don't think managing anything would be easy at all - sounds more like a state of chaos where outcomes would become totally unpredictable. This in turn would lead to more creative attempts to circumvent compliance and achieve a more favourable personal outcome - e.g., bugger the community - what's in it for me.

Initiative is what drives us forward as a necessary part of human evolution but compliance is equally (some would argue more) important in order to maintain a working balance to our existence.

Reading Seth's blog however, at least now I understand perfectly why marketing is always at odds with any of the shared services functions in a corporation. Initiative should be encouraged along with a good dose of risk assessment and we can all have some harmony.

Thumbs up for VAustralia

2010-02-18T17:17:00.005+11:00

I took my first trip on V Australia this week. It's always a long flight from Australia to anywhere and as I'm getting older, economy class is just too hard these days.

So I went premium economy class - a thoroughly recommended option on this airline.

Seat pitch is good, the food was good and the staff were outstandingly helpful! I had chosen for the option for the seat pitch alone but the last item completely surprised me.

Service was better than most business class services I've used. Plus it was streets ahead of anything I've ever experienced in economy (some of those experiences have been down right rude). A typical economy experience is that once the lights go out, no attendant can be found plus there is a tendency to quite a delayed response to the attendant button (at any time) - you wouldn't want to be in urgent need of anything if relying on that.

V Australia were there through the night, hot towels and water at the ready. Added to this they were actually cheery and helpful with dinner and refreshment services plus the immigration forms.

In this age of such poor standards of service, I'm delighted to report evidence of good service.

Maybe someone else will get the hint that service (and I'm talking the genuine stuff) can be a differentiating factor. I'm not sure how V Australia is motivating this behaviour but there does appear to be genuine enjoyment of their work.

I'm feeling much better about my trip home.

Harvey Norman - j'accuse: poor execution

2010-01-04T00:12:00.005+11:00

I went to Harvey Norman today - not realising they were in sale but because I wanted a usb external drive.

Well, they were well in sale and the checkouts were 5 deep.

I had my item for purchase: a drive on sale (320Gb for $78 - can you believe it!). But the hassle was at the checkout. The device rang up as $129 and there was no staff available for a price-check. The purchase did finally proceed but there was unnecessary delay that appropriate preparations could have avoided.

Management please wake up. You have plunged your store into sale (almost everything was marked down), not enough staff were on duty, and the computer systems did not have the sales prices updated!

Added to that is the ridiculous receipt procedure - in many cases the receipt is larger than the purchase!

Guys, this isn't the way to keep either long-term customers or staff. Mr Harvey, should I be selling my shares?

MBNA - You can't outsource accountability

2009-12-26T20:52:00.006+11:00

Yet another story of customer data being stolen. Surely the risk should have been mitigated with some form of encryption.

The title link is to a news article from the UK in the closing days of 2009. In this case it's a major UK credit card provider (MBNA) having a laptop containing unprotected customer data stolen from one of it's 3rd party contractors (NCO).

MBNA state that the security of it's customers' information is one of it's top priorities and their privacy policy states, amongst other things "We also use vigilant protection measures in order to protect our customers' accounts from fraudulent use."

They also claim to comply with the UK data protection act which states "Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental lose or destruction of, or damage to, personal data".

I would argue that some level of encryption of personal data, particularly on laptops, was an "appropriate" technical measure and an "appropriate" organisational measure would be managing and monitoring a 3rd party SLA to ensure compliance.

It is unlikely that this was an isolated laptop lacking encryption and I have found no information to suggest the laptop was unique in this regard.

We therefore have 2 possible scenarios, either MBNA did not specify the need to comply with it's privacy policy in it's SLA with NCO, or the SLA was not monitored and managed.

In either scenario MBNA appears to have dropped the ball with regards accountability.

NCO has accountabilities of it's own, but MBNA retains accountability for the services it provides it's customers, even through outsourcers.

Governance and accountability are things you simply cannot outsource. We hope MBNA has learnt this rather expensive lesson and that other organisations learn from it too.

Apple service - a bit pearshaped perhaps

2009-11-26T15:41:00.008+11:00

I discovered this article courtesy of the ITSkeptic.

Owners of Apple equipment are finding their warranty is void if they are a smoker - at least in the US as any rate.

Nicotine residue is considered a biohazard and Apple repair centres have rejected at least 2 warranty claims due to "contaminated" Mac's.

Not that I think smoking is a good thing, but isn't that going a little to extremes? As far as I know you can't catch lung cancer from an object someone happened to smoke around. Plus it's not the nicotine that causes all the health problems anyway. And if they are worried about nicotine absorption through the skin, then surely gloves are the way to go.

I can see this leading to hairdressers and manicurists refusing to serve smokers. And what about money and credit cards having been used by smokers - are these deadly? My mind is running wild on this tangent - I have a vision of smokers being forced to wear a placard of "unclean" around their necks. I had better stop there as I'll give the yankees even more bizarre ideas.

Amadeus - and your expalation is?

2009-11-23T00:15:00.014+11:00

A week or so ago 485 airlines were brought to their knees when a check-in system provided by Amadeus failed. The outage was 3 1/2 hours. Qantas was probably the worst affected as the outage struck at 5pm Sydney/Melbourne time on a weekday.

The attached photo is the chaos in Melbourne airport. The resulting delays would have also caused cancellations to flights into Sydney as there is a curfew. Commuting business people throughout the eastern seaboard would not have been happy.

There's been multiple apologies in the press from various airlines to their customers that experienced major delays in check-in while manual processes were employed. But not a word from Amadeus that I can find, I was hanging back hoping there would be one - I'm perfectly happy for someone to correct me and I'll blog the Amadeus response.

The first thing to note is that most of these airlines had manual processes. A gold star to them for their risk mitigation efforts. The likes of Ryanair and Jetstar either have none or intend phasing them out as an acceptable business risk in the next 2 years. So when their 3rd party supplier of check-in software fails, you can expect not to be going anywhere, not even a delayed anywhere.

As we are are more and more encouraged (well, pushed really) to adopt technology to self-service we do increase these major risks to delivery.

Is the speed of transaction plus the ability to cut staffing levels so much cheaper when you factor in the losses of when things fail? I don't really mind when organisations such as Jestar do their sums and say 'yes' to this question. But I expect most organisations do not even consider to factor it in.

But there you go, expect to see more and more of this in every aspect of your daily life as self-service is only on the increase. Not that's necessarily a bad thing, in fact I often like to self-serve, I like the consistency of this kind of service. However, if the manual backup hasn't been factored in, the continuity of the service is compromised.

Oh, and before I close, Amadeus, we're all still waiting.

Did Y2K teach us nothing?

2009-11-11T19:02:00.007+11:00

I know it was a little while ago now but those who worked through the Y2K period would remember it well. It wasn't just all about testing of old software code which no one thought would still be in production 30 years on. Contrary to popular modern belief, Y2K wasn't an expensive storm in a teacup. There was a very real scare that everything might stop due to 2 digit date fields thinking it was 1900 - and finding them was difficult.

I know of a major financial institution's mortgage calculator that was found to be wrong and a manufacturer who accidentally destroyed a whole day's product due to an electronic system deeming the new produce to be past it's use-by date. There were several other glitches picked up before the fatal date also.

The major message of what we should remember from this period is the massive effort applied to defining and documenting manual workarounds for all major business processes. For the first time in their history some businesses were thinking about continuity plans.

So what should we have learnt? What happens when the technology fails? And it will fail. IT systems now have a complexity that no one person can understand end-to-end. We live in a world where businesses and people are atrophied by technology failure.

The photo I've attached is from the front door of my local Priceline store. Apologies for the quality of the photo - it was after dark and a cheap camera.

Priceline's computers were down and therefore "naturally" they closed the store until further notice!

I can understand not being willing to wear the risk of dispensing some medications without electronic verification but I don't understand why they couldn't trade other items. Can I not buy shampoo? Does their cash register not function at all? That would be extremely poor design.

And, I know it's painful, but those paperbased credit card swipe devices still work (taxi drivers still seem to love them). Obviously without the eft you wouldn't be able to provide a cashout facility but people would be ok with that if explained - plus there were 3 ATMs within half a block. The rewards scheme also wouldn't work - but who was the turkey who implemented that without some form of manual process as backup.

So, bottom line, priceline has no manual processes and appears willing to risk cessation of business when their technology fails.

I don't know how long this store was closed because of the cop out of "our computers are down" but I must say I find that pretty poor business practice.

Get real priceline - get some continuity processes. And I repeat, did we (priceline, because I know I did) learn nothing from Y2K?

Nice idea - poor execution

2009-11-10T15:29:00.004+11:00

I received a phone call from Australia Post this morning. My first thoughts ran to "I wonder why Australia Post is calling me". Initially I thought maybe it was a job prospect as I have been seeking out new clients of late. But no it wasn't that.

The caller had a heavy accent and very poor communication skills. It took 3 goes to communicate that an express post letter had been delivered to my post box. It then took a little longer to explain why I was being called with this fairly ordinary piece of information. Apparently it's a new service Aust Post is offering to box holders.

I would imagine that most people who have a post box would check it reasonably regularly or else they don't place a particularly high value on what gets delivered to it. Which leads me to question whether this new service is actually in response to a customer need or just something marketing dreamed up.

In the scheme of things it might be a nice little caring value-add but if you are going to execute it so badly surely all you will achieve is customer annoyance.

Personally I would prefer Australia Post concentrated on their existing services before poorly implementing new ones - like actually delivering my parcels rather than putting a card in my letterbox without attempting to find out if I'm at home.

Telstra - exceeded expectations of exceptionally poor service

2009-10-23T19:10:00.011+11:00

It was time to upgrade my phone - battery life was poor and it had begun spontaneously turning itself off. My old samsung owed me nothing, being about 3 1/2 years old.

It was time to go blackberry, as I'm more needing to access email while out and about plus the occasional need to access the web on the road.

So I summoned my strength and walked into a large telstra shop and made the request of the first sales assistant that approached me.

Over the years, australian telcos have conditioned me to understand that nothing is easy or straightforward when it comes to telephony. I find this a depressing state of affairs but was prepared for the worst and Telstra certainly didn't disappoint on this occasion.

I have never lost or damaged a mobile phone. A condition which has led me to be in possession of an 8 year old sim card. This is where the trouble started. Attempting to port my number to a new sim card generated an insurmountable error.

The shop assistant was trying hard to assist and I do not blame her for any shortcomings in service, the screens she had to deal with were poorly designed and technical support didn't seem to be particularly supportive at the other end of the line.

After much putting on hold and futile retrying of the same action, "technical support" communicated an SLA of 72 hours for resolution through the unfortunate assistant.

72 hours for fixing a glitch in porting a number from one sim to another is pathetic in anyone's measure of service, surely. There was no redress, there was no escalation possible - it was like "1984" where the faceless government set the expectations and there is no comeback. I imagined the poor girl I was sitting with would encounter a next customer with quite a different temperament to mine, and wondered what the turnover expectancy of her role was. I took the news the only way I could - with depressed acceptance of the inevitable.

I had been served promptly when I entered the shop, but it was over an hour later when I left with a non-functioning blackberry and the deep conviction I would be back 72 hours later.

The magical thing that was supposed to happen in the ensuing 72 hours was that my old sim in my old phone was to stop working and my new sim in my bright shiny blackberry was spontaneously to burst forth like a butterfly from a moth's cocoon.

Cut to 72 hours later.......

Needless to say my new phone still did not work. I returned to telstra. It was lunchtime, there was a queue (20 mins), which didn't help, but I stoically endured that. After all, I believe in service and understand demand management can be difficult. When I did get served and explanations were made of the pre-existing condition, we proceed down the exact same faultfinding path the previous assistant had tried which culminated in the obvious call to the tech non-support and a lot of on hold time for the customer-facing guy.

An hour and more passes...... we get to the exact same impasse - I didn't even get to sit down in this telstra shop (my feet hurt) - possibly intentional to frustrate and move people on quickly. Apart from causing my feet pain and delay my return to work, this was not sufficient torture for me to give up on my quest to resolve the issue. But as per the previous telstra shop experience, nothing was to be gained in store. This time an SLA of 24 hours is communicated to me - presumably I've now managed to pass some escalation threshold and am entitled to better than the "standard" 72 hrs.

I'm sure this is all going to end in tears, I have pity for the guy in front of me but am denied the satisfaction of ripping out the jugular of the 'tech support person' on the phone.

My customer response is one most certainly of anger that such pathetic service can pass for the norm, but am contained at not taking it out on the service guy in front of me because he has no ability to do anything at all - including escalation.

I ensure I am given my case number and a phone number that I may take it up with the invisible "tech support" myself when the next 24 hours expires. The shop assistant is just as relieved and happy to provide the info - I wonder where he is on the timeline to turning over in his thankless job.

Surprisingly a little less than 1 hour before the new SLA of 24 hours was up, the amazing transformation occurred! The cynic in me says the invisible tech non-support planned this timing but I don' think they could be that organised. The resolution was to my relief, however, because I really didn't want to have to do battle - I just want my phone to work and 4 days to get a sim card working is totally unacceptable.

I felt (in delusion) that my poor service experience should have been seriously unusual, and in an organisation that actually cared about their customers' experience I should have been furnished with some attempt at an apology - even if it was only lip service. No apology of any kind, or attempt to survey my experience, was forthcoming. If this is the service norm they are probably too terrified of the results of surveying the customer.

A week later, however, I did get a phone call from Telstra. Thankfully, for all concerned, it went to voicemail. Being human, the content of the call may have caused me to loose my composure. "As a premium telstra customer, you're entitled to a coaching package with your new service account to the value of $160"!

Being "premium" didn't help me when I waited 4 days to get my sim working but it does provide me some "value add" service that I don't need! Needless to say when I heard the message, I counted to 10, had a strong cup tea and ignored it.

So telstra did not disappoint my expectations of poor service - in this particular instance they exceeded them plenty. But rather than just telstra bashing, let's analyse what is awry in their service:

there is a total disconnect between the front-line customer staff and the back-office technical support staff resulting in the guys on the floor left to fend for themselves as best they can with angry, disillusioned and disempowered customers
Totally unacceptable SLA's, e.g., 72+ hours to fix a sim porting number problem!

Attempting to offer value add services when they can't even get the basics right

To be fair, Telstra isn't the only telco to blame for the extremely poor standard of service. I've had just as poor experiences in procuring Optus products over the years.

But Australia is in a telco duopoly who own 80% of the market between them. There are other telcos but the nearest only has 10% market share (no prizes for knowing who that is) and the rest vie for the remaining share. This bottom 20% have little or no infrastructure of their own and are forced to onsell Telstra and Optus products and services. Somewhere between a rock and a hard place you might say.

Boys and girls, we are prisoners of whatever the top 2 telco's deem to be service. All I can say is thank god I update my phone only every 3 years or so.

My broadband may need attention before then though - heavy sigh. Maybe I'll have some valium before I attempt that one.

Australia Post fails to deliver - again

2009-09-30T16:12:00.005+10:00

A lot of organisations are choosing to send their goods by australia post's parcel post service these days. I assume it's cheaper and easier than having to mess around with couriers as in days yesteryear.

But I'm getting a little tired of the outsourced contracted postie of today finding it all too hard to actually deliver parcels. I've posted about this before and it has happened again that the postie will not buzz my intercom.

According to AustPost's website they make every effort to deliver parcels safely but when you outsource the courier it's a bit difficult to ensure the quality of this statement.

I work from home often and as it is an apartment building, you can imagine the letter boxes will not accommodate a parcel. Where possible I have parcels directed to my city postbox but oftentimes the vendor will not accept a PO box leaving me no alternative but to use my home address.

I know I was present in my home office the entire day when the latest parcel failed to be delivered. The sound of my intercom would wake up an entire regiment, so there's no way I missed it. Finding the "sorry we missed you"-type note in my letterbox at the end of the day was not welcome. I now had to go out of my way to visit the local post office to collect my parcel which I should have already been in possession of! Adding to my aggravation was that it was large and heavy.

Alas for the days of my youth when the postie was friendly, chatted to small children, patted the cat and, oh what was that nice little value add......delivered parcels.

I figure Australia Post just doesn't care about the quality of this service. And the folks that use them should have some idea that sometimes cheap is just nasty.

Tim Tams: same packets - less biscuits

2009-09-26T17:22:00.007+10:00

Tim Tams now only have 9 biscuits in the packet!

I remember 12 from my early childhood. And a friend says they remember 13.

The packaging has remained the same size. The plastic spacers have obviously grown.

So when did this all happen? The 13 would have been early 1970's. Have they decreased 1 per decade then? Redesigning the plastic spacing as they went?

I don't eat a lot of biscuits and indeed had not had a tim tam in many years but was horrified at the deception of the same packaging with less biscuits.

The product still tastes good, but Arnotts: people don't like being hoodwinked. Less biscuits = less packaging in my book. Anything else is poor transparency of product delivery.

I expect no notice to be taken. Afterall it's been several years since I've actually had a tim tam, so Arnotts probably couldn't give a toss what I think.

Allied Graphics - Service excellent

2009-09-20T22:32:00.009+10:00

I'm always delighted when I can say I've had a good customer experience. Allied Graphics delivered that good customer experience this week.

I had an unusual requirement to laminate an extremely large wall chart (123 x 244 cm).

I had done one of these before but that was prior the en mass retreat of Kinko's from Australia. I called Snap - too big for them I'm afraid. I was then referred to Allied Graphics in the heart of town.

So a phoned, got a quote and proceeded to drop off my large poster. I was pleasantly surprised that the job was expected to be done by end of business the following day - I had expected a several day turn around as per my Kinko experience.

I was even more pleasantly surprised when I received a phone call later that day informing me it was ready to collect.

Their website and brochures say nice things about them; e.g. quality service, friendly team, etc. Indeed they were very friendly and regarding the task I put to them I can see no room for quality improvement.

Thank you Allied Graphics for a job well done, I'll certainly be using your various printing services into the future.

And my luggage came too!

2009-09-05T01:23:00.017+10:00

We are living in an era where the measure of success for air travel is "I arrived at my expected destination and my luggage came too".

No one mentions quality regarding air travel these days - they do mention safety standards which are held as extremely important, but it's now primarily all about how much does it cost - both from the customer and the provider perspective.

Airline bosses, are in a unique position. It is unacceptable for any airline to cut costs on safety measures, so everything else seems to be up for grabs regarding cost reduction and the no-frills airlines are now getting creative in surprising ways.

Whereas Ryan Air will nickle 'n dime you to death with charges for everything, including not taking luggage (unless you can find the elusive checkbox on the online booking system), Jetstar are looking to prune back IT infrastructure costs at the airport in a very aggressive and high risk fashion to the ability to provide service.

Jetstar CIO, Stephen Tame, has made some particularly controversial statements last week.

Mr. Tame claims it's a 2.5% business risk to use mum's 'n dad's broadband as opposed to more robust business-ready network links in airports. And when systems go down, going manual and using a pen is painful but perfectly acceptable. Does he really think he can continue to provide a flight service using hand written boarding passes and bag tags - in 2009! I'd like to see that little experiment, particularly on an A380. As airlines haven't been operating with manual systems since Pan Am in the 50's, the reality is that the business will stop until systems are up and available again. But that's a challenge for myth busters I think.

We've recently seen several highly publicised Jetstar service failures leaving passengers stranded at airports and left to fend for themselves when the airport closes for the night. Plus only last weekend Mark Dapin's column in the sydney morning herald complained that jetstar cancelled his flight from Sydney to Ballina, sent him to Brisbane instead, and provided a coach service which failed to meet capacity causing him to personally pay for a taxi to get to his destination. Added to this monumentally poor service, Jetstar's "Customer Relationships Officers" do not speak to anyone - they only accept correspondence and give no guarantee of a response.

I wonder what additional risk percent these service failures add up to. Perhaps the 2.5% Jetstar is happy to embrace is insignificant compared to the risks already assumed.

Probably the only thing I agree with Mr Tame on is the move towards the customer tagging their own bags. Having experienced loss of luggage due to failure of the service provider to tag it, I would welcome this move. I would then be able to take personal responsibility for the action - the north americas were doing this 10 years ago, what's the holdup in Oz?

Mr Tame also has a goal of within 2 years of all employees (as a precondition of employ) will own their own laptop on which to run a jetstar virtual image thereby eliminating all PC support requirements and deflecting any maintenance responsibility onto the employee. A positive spin is applied, suggesting it's a benefit that gen y's get to choose their own hardware - yeah right! I would call this an unacceptable transference of responsibility and labour.

I applaud Mr Tame's creativity, and his ability to redefine and deflect risk. He's steered away from cutting anything that would result in the unacceptable risk of not being able to keep planes in the air, and deflected everything towards any, and apparently all, "acceptable" risks of not being able to get them into the air in the first place. I would have thought the latter was a business critical requirement, 2nd only to the former of keeping the plane up once you got it there.

These proposed measures will certainly cut operational costs, but as the service is no longer robust it carries a large risk to execution. When poor services fail they do so in a spectacular fashion because there is no fallback position and certainly no mitigation plan - this is a known fact seen repeatedly time and time again across all industries.

Stephen Tame may be willing to wear these risks and, while systems are up, so will his customers, but what about his employees? Those who actually provide the end service are a key part of the process and have been forgotten in this race for the cost cut.

It is obvious Mr Tame puts little stock in Dr. William Edwards Demming's quality cycle but he is ignoring another Demming mandate at his peril.

Mr Demming was very vocal on management styles and how to promote a motivating environment for employees to ensure a consistently good quality service. Demming states the worker has the right to pride in their workmanship and that the best motivation for quality service delivery is to empower people by involvement in the improvement of services and their delivery.

Providing sub-standard systems and pushing responsibility for critical tool maintenance onto the individual can only demotivate and demoralise the worker. There is nothing worse than trying to provide service with substandard equipment or for a substandard product. Every customer engagement is likely to end in tears of pain and frustration from both parties and lead quite possibly to frantic but futile attempts to end it all with a plastic knife.

Mr. Tame's plans to cut costs to such an extent will take away a workers ability to take pride in their work and render them unable to care sufficiently to provide good service - even if the sub-standard systems permitted them to do so.

A little honesty on Jetstar's behalf would help a little. Enough with the commercials of everyone looking delighted to be flying Jetstar. Tell the truth - "we undertake to get you there safely and that's all".

When we get to a point where the sole measure of success is "and my luggage came too", that's not just cheap, that's downright nasty.

Let's "not" fly Jetstar.

Got Receipt? Service Complete

2009-08-22T17:01:00.015+10:00

I seem to be hearing lots of restaurant experience analogies referred back to IT service delivery/management lately. This put me in mind a restaurant I visited earlier in the year in the US - a restaurant with a very curious attitude to service quality. The restaurant was one of a chain of italian restaurants called Il Fornaio.

I've attached a photo of the sign that greets at the entrance to the restaurant stating their unusual service policy. For those unable to view the photo the transcript is:

At Il Fornaio, our goal is to provide the highest quality service with attention to every detail.
If we have neglected to provide you with a receipt for your purchase, please inform the manager on duty and enjoy one of our specialty cookies on us.
Thank you for dining at Il Fornaio.

I seem to recall the meal and service were perfectly fine, nothing exceptional, but perfectly ok. The link to their website states several awards and exceptional reviews but perhaps this is just indicative of the generally low quality of food in the US.

It must be difficult for a restaurant chain to maintain their branding and retain customers with a a consistent quality of product when the only evident measure of quality is whether the customer received a receipt.

I'm glad my experience adequately met my quality expectation. Had it not there would clearly have been no avenue of complaint for me, however, for you see, I did get that receipt. And Il Fornaio indicate that a receipt is their measure of "highest quality service with attention to every detail".

I was furnished with a receipt, therefore, had I been disappointed with either meal or service, I expect I would not even qualify for an offering of a cookie, speciality or otherwise.

I realise it can be difficult to define and measure quality but I found this one very curious indeed. But then I was a stranger in a strange land. Maybe it's a cultural thing.

Optus - substandard code

2009-08-11T18:05:00.008+10:00

Recharging one's prepaid mobile is expected to be straight forward.

That expectation springs from the understanding that it is in the best interest of a service provider to make it easy for customers to give them money.

This screenshot is the experience I had when I last attempted to recharge online with optus.

The first thing we notice is the extremely low quality of programming - this has to be one of the worst examples of error handling.

But let us do some analysis on the underlying cause.......there are only two potential options:

Optus' testing and change management processes are in an immature state and this code got through undetected, or
A conscious decision was made to release substandard code due to an unwillingness or inability to spend the money on fixing it

Either of these causes indicate an interesting corporate attitude to both servicing customers and the delivery of a key service that adds business value - but only when it's working!

"The Art of Service" - perhaps not

2009-08-04T21:25:00.008+10:00

I recently completed a service management online training course purchased from the Art of Service.

There were several quality assurance issues with the course:

One exercise and one module didn't load which had to be fixed before I could complete the training
I was never informed of the loading issues' being resolved - I found out by frequent rechecking the site
The orator occasionally stumbled and repeated bullet points
The zip file of the cumulative marking guides failed to load

An opportunity was afforded me to provide feedback via an evaluation form. I gave a factual evaluation of the shortcomings of the courseware and offered to assist if they wished to contact me regarding them.

The only response I received, it's been over a week so I don't think there's any more coming, was an email congratulating me on completing the training with an attached certificate documenting the fact.

There would appear to be a complete disinterest in improvement of service quality on behalf of this organisation.

This is exceedingly disappointing from a service management training provider who states "our exceptional service is what sets us apart from other training providers"

and.....

When you engage with The Art of Service you be assured of:

Highest levels of customer service at every level of interaction
Honesty, integrity and respect
World class IT Service Management Educational Programs
Us listening to you!

I think there's a bit of a way to go to live up to "The Art of Service".

Event Cinemas - George St Sydney

2009-08-01T23:06:00.008+10:00

This was going to be a negative blogpost but we seem to have a happy ending.

I visit the cinemas on George St Sydney every couple of months or so, mostly because of convenient location to me. But there has been a drawback that was causing me to think about travelling further afield for my cinema entertainment.

I have consistently found their restrooms to be a complete disgrace - totally contrary with all other areas of the cinema complex.

Perhaps not the most genteel thing to be blogging about, but it was usual to find the restrooms in an appalling state. Describing one such visit:

first two cubicles had no toilet paper
3rd cubicle's lock was broken
4th cubicle had no toilet seat
2 soap dispensers were broken

I find that extremely poor attention to maintenance and hygiene.

My recent experience was however much improved. I recognise in a busy cinema this is a high traffic area so perfection is impossible, but the lack of maintenance and frequency of servicing has obviously been addressed.

This was known as a Greater Union cinema complex but has recently rebranded as Event Cinemas.

I'm glad to see someone is addressing attention to standards that really do matter. I don't expect 5-star bathrooms in anything other than 5-star hotels/restaurants, but this is supposed to be a first world country after all - clean and maintained is a requirement.

Oh Aunty - surely technology needs support

2009-07-31T19:16:00.005+10:00

I'm disappointed in the deterioration of the technical delivery of ABC television. I don't watch much live TV today but I do watch the ABC as this is the only place you get real news and current affairs that isn't sensationalised with home invasions and hidden cameras concentrating on welfare fraud and paedophiles.

The journalism, apart from the scriptwriters' need to exploit every pun possible (which is getting a little tedious), is of a consistent high quality.

But the technical delivery - aunty, I'm not impressed! The video and sound dropouts are at least one per news bulletin. Wrong video or incorrectly cuing to the wrong camera happens at least once a week on the 7pm news and the teleprompter seems to go awol at least once a fortnight.

It's not the technology that is at fault. Back in the 1970's we were used to the occasional test pattern slide and a break in transmission apology. That was a long time ago, and technology isn't that flaky anymore. The reasons for such poor technical delivery is poor service management and delivery.

The ABC is suffering the results of one or all of three things:

inappropriate levels of support staff
lack of maintenance of equipment
ill attention to quality of deliverables

I lose track of whether the latest slogan is My, Your, or Our ABC, but whatever it's supposed to be it should be supported better. If it means I have to pay 10cents per day as opposed to the 8cents I'd consider this money well spent. We need a nation of well informed people - and the only mainstream place I see this coming from is the ABC.

On occasion the intro music or outplaying video on the news also gets lost - that's extremely poor!

Oh Aunty - please!

Excellent technical and friendly service!

2009-07-31T18:43:00.007+10:00

I thought I'd highlight some exceptional service I received recently at the York St Sydney store of Jaycar Electronics.

Over the years I have come to rely on this store to provide friendly and good technical advice on any electronic difficulty I have around the home.

My latest was a challenge.

I have a largish digital photo frame - 12 inches - and was faced with the conundrum of where to place it in my home. I wanted it removed from the AV entertainment unit as it would be very distracting whilst trying to watch the TV. The bookcase in the dining room was the perfect spot.

However, there is no electrical outlet in this space and the frame only runs on power. There is also no possibility of providing electricity to this space without major architectural overhaul.

I sought advice from Jaycar regarding my problem. I was seeking some battery solution.

I was aided by an exceedingly personable and technically helpful young man. We had a stumbling block in the amount of voltage the frame required. 15 volts is a little large for most simpler battery solutions available. So the solution is a trifle bulky but it's hidden on a bookcase so it works.

The solution is a rechargeable battery about the size and weight of 1/2 a house brick, connected to a car cigarette lighter adapter (because apparently that's the only thing designed to transfer this amount of mobile voltage), and then connected to the frame's power adapter. I also have a charger for the battery. The solution was tested and well demonstrated to me in the store.

So I charge battery by day and role photos by evening.

I'm a very happy customer. I'm not one for endowing service providers with the "excellent service" epitaph but I can't see how (barring better technology) this experience could have been improved upon.

Opening a can - how hard can it be?

2009-07-26T18:54:00.012+10:00

I recently threw out my can opener - because it was 20+ years old and rusting.

Can openers - a long serving kitchen gadget - something perfectly aligned to service delivery in the kitchen I think.

Every household needs a can opener, so I was out shopping for a new one. I bought one from Kmart, which was woefully inadequate - it couldn't open a can. The 2 times I and my husband tried to use it it was almost impossible to open the tin sufficiently enough to get the contents out.

So, I was then on a mission to find a quality can opener. What I didn't want was one of those openers that cuts the top straight off the can - exposing very sharp edges.

I went to Myers and I went to a couple of specialised kitchen shops. I discovered all the expensive openers, (non-electric - a: I don't have bench space and b: can't see the need) ranging from $25 - $40 removed the top exposing those sharp edges.

I also encountered a shop assistant from one of the specialised shops trying to tell me one of these was usable in both ways - a visual inspection of the device confirmed my kindest assumption - her stupidity.

Cans have been around since Napoleon marched on Moscow so there is no excuse for the poor quality or design. I simply wanted a quality version of the butterfly-style (pic above) manual can opener whose design was perfected in 1925 (when the wheel became serrated). I can appreciate the need in people who have difficulties with their hands progressing to an electric device however.

Sadly I walked homeward bound empty handed. Then, as I did need an opener, of any kind, for the immediate need - I popped into Woolworths.

I found a chrome plated device for $3.25. This marvelous invention is doing the trick in my kitchen now! Thank you Woollies.

But I ask again "how hard can it be?".

And I do not look forward to 20 years hence when I will be faced with the same situation because.......

"A nice dilemma we have here, that calls for all our wit, and at this stage, it don't appear, that we can settle it" W.S.Gilbert

Dept Stores - high touch customer relationships!

2009-07-18T19:39:00.022+10:00

This is a bit of a rant from an introvert about the high touch and upselling emphasis in marketing.

I might be a little bit touchy about modern marketing and selling techniques but if more people get vocal about it ticking them off maybe things will change.

So, what's been going wrong with my shopping encounters?

I was in need of a new bottle of perfume. I usually purchase a large bottle for the economy of cost plus it's longevity.

I was in town and dropped into Myers to pick one up. To my dismay, I discovered they'd rearranged the department and put practically everything under lock and key (not that you would have any chance to steal and escape in this highly cluttered store). Customers are forced to approach a shop assistant to view or procure anything. Being an introvert, I have to gear up for engagement with people. I retreated - being not ready to deal.

I concluded my business in town and turned homeward. David Jones was on the way. I dropped in and subsequently breathed a heavy sigh when I noted their perfume dept had received a similar lock-down treatment.

I did need the perfume, however, so I mustered my forces and braced for the customer/shop assistant engagement.

Before I could solicit an encounter, however, a shop assistant was at my elbow asking "can I help you?".

As I mentioned I'm an introvert (as is 50% of the population) so I'm going to take a little detour and tell you about my 3-strikes policy.

When I shop, I like to look at things for myself and prefer calling a shop assistant when I need to make an enquiry and/or am on the point of purchase commitment. When approached 3 times in a store and have not achieved this purchase or engagement point, I immediately leave the store.
The unsolicited hovering and pouncing activities of shop assistants leave me too distracted to make any sensible product assessment or decision. Rather than being railroaded into making an ill-assessed purchase, regardless of the pressing need, I always choose to leave the scene.

OK where was I - yes - in David Jones, having been accosted by a shop assistant, I asked for a large bottle of my perfume. Said shop assistant began to fetch the required item, he then commenced the upsell - "do you need any moisturiser to go with that?" Equally hating being upsold to, I firmly replied "no thank you - just the perfume" with emphasis on the "just".

He began ringing up the sale and, obviously undeterred, he tried it again "will you be needing any gift vouchers today?" I again declined with a decided frown. When the transaction was finally and exhaustingly concluded I was dismissed with a decidedly unheartfelt "have a nice day".

There's also the modern development of the 'greeter' situated at the entrance of every KMart and Target charged with the activity of making eye-contact and enquiring after your health with a smile (surely no one over the age of 5 thinks they mean it and actually want an answer). I know they've been doing this in fashion shops for several decades but it hasn't become any less annoying in the passage of time.

There seems to be some strange idea that the customer wants a relationship with their shop assistant. If this was the case I'd post a request on RSVP - "middle-aged woman seeks shop assistant for relationship" - that could work.

Isn't it obvious that these techniques just annoy people?

The americans are usually the one's who lead the way with these marketing and upselling techniques and I must share that I did see one ray of hope for the future earlier this year in a Macy's in California. I was not greeted on entry to the store entry or harassed while selecting goods - gold star to Macy's for that. When I made my purchase it was done with courtesy and a "My name is Barbara, thanks for your custom and is there anything else I can do for you today?"

This is more like it. I thought that was a perfectly fine low touch encounter that allows the customer to drive the engagement or relationship (presuming they want one).

Macy's have hit a good balance in customer engagement - is it just possible for others to take a lesson from this and follow suit. We live in hope.

In the meantime I'll just continue to frown when the upselling begins and leave stores when I'm on the receiving end of the 3rd strike harassment.

Thanks for listening.

One Small Step for Man - a "quality" project

2009-07-18T19:39:00.010+10:00

This week being the 40th anniversary, means there's been a lot said about the historic moon landing. Much has been made of meeting Kennedy's "landing a man on the moon" challenge and the extraordinary technological development....which was considerable.

But few recall or pay much attention to the other major piece of Kennedy's challenge..... "and returning him safely to earth".

I can't imagine the anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission would be quite so celebrated if Neil, Buzz and Michael were subsequently unable to lift off the moon or re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. Imagine the heroic crew doomed to drift in space forever.

Delivery of the moon landing is the high point that everyone focuses on - the sexy bit of the project. But the project closure of 'returning him safely to earth' is just as important. The moon landing is is ultimately a 'quality' project with much needed attention to detail of all milestones.

Could the lack of a quality closure be a major reason for the failure of so many business projects today? The closure of a project rarely gets the focus if deserves. But it is crucially important to realise that a poor project closure is detrimental to the perception and performance of some, or all, of the key project deliverables. What would history would have said about Apollo 11 if it had failed in the ultimate milestone of "returning him safely to earth"?

Particularly in this dreaded GFC, it is certainly a challenge for project managers to keep on track and deliver quality in a project. At every turn there's someone stealing your resources or cutting your budget.

Next time you name your milestones, try using familiar Kennedy quotes to keep the momentum and focus going.

Just remember "one small step for man - one giant leap for mankind" is a lovely inspirational mission statement but "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth" is your actual objective.

It's a standard

2009-07-05T16:14:00.003+10:00

The brutality of either australia post or the US postal system caused this very sadly battered and bruised parcel to arrive this week.

The contents were however not fragile so it did arrive safely. It was decidedly over packaged which makes one wonder though. It was a printed document (indeed a data modelling standard) that would have easily fitted into an A4 envelope. Perhaps the packer was going for a creative award.

I also have issue with Australia Post's failure to buzz the intercom when attempting to deliver this item. I was at home when the post office pick up card was placed in my letterbox. A journey to the post office was subsequently needed to retrieve the item.

Come on guys how hard is it to press a button? Are we really in a world where carefactor is zero?

Yet more certifications!

2009-06-20T15:34:00.005+10:00

Just when you all thought there were more than enough standards and frameworks certifications out there to set anyone's head spinning, APMG has endorsed a new one surrounding expertise in IT Service Catalogues.

Pink Elephant and Newscale appear to be in partnership to provide training and product in this area. This is Newscale's press release http://newscale.com/j8/servlet/NewsItem?newsItemID=93

I have no issue with people gaining specialist training and education in any field of their choice, but I do think the IT sector is overwhelmed with the plethora of certifications you can attain. And the recruiters are even more confused, I have to repeatedly explain what mine are - and I really don't have that many.

Where is it all going - I have no idea - but the generalist definitely seems to be a thing of the past.

So when you embark on your next specialist accreditation, consider wisely - it's all about what's in fashion. And to quote Mr Oscar Wilde "Fashion is so awful we have to keep changing it".

Incident fixed - no problem

2009-06-15T14:34:00.006+10:00

I recently had occasion to stay a few days at the Novotel in Brisbane, Australia. All over the experience was fine and value for money.

Most hotel chains are currently doing it tough and are offering cut-rate deals (which I took advantage of) and introducing a % surcharge for use of credit cards.

But on my stay I certainly spotted an obvious process improvement that would help reduce their operational expenses.

I had a car and therefore used the parking onsite. My room key (a mag-stripe card) was supposed to raise the boomgate on the carpark. It didn't work. I therefore pressed the intercom button for attention. The responder was a real person who requested my room number and name. The boom was then raised with great speed. Great service in response to an incident - I was impressed.

My next entry to the carpark encountered the same ritual. At this point I formed the opinion that my card had not been encoded correctly. I did spot others using their cards successfully, so it seemed the obvious root-cause assumption.

Novotel get top marks for incident management. By the 3rd time I approached the boomgate, I had been trained to push the intercom button. From my perspective there was no difference in effort between finding and swiping my mag-card compared with pushing a button and stating my room number and name. The customer was not inconvenienced and expected service was delivered immediately.

However, with the speed with which the boom had been released, no validation of information was made and there was no assessment as to the cause of the incident. There are no measures of this reoccurring incident and no referral to more indepth analysis that would lead to cost savings.

Current US statistics claim resolution of an incident at first point of contact costs $25. So if my
card had been encoded correctly in the first place, or if the cause was spotted and escalated as a problem to be addressed, Novotel would not be spending this excess operational support money.

So my parking incident (or anyone else's) is fixed, proving "incident management" to be good, but there is absolutely no "problem management" happening at Novotel.

Open your eyes guys - just being responsive is not enough.

Upselling - please stop!

2009-06-10T14:00:00.006+10:00

I don't know about you guys but I'm really over the "will there be fries with that?"

This modern marketing technique does not go down well with Australians. If I wanted fries I would have asked for them. Besides it's not like you are offering something for free.

I recall some years ago working for a bank during the financial deregulation. After having promised it's customers for many years that there would be no fees on its flagship banking product, this organisation found the new monetary climate made the no-fees offering impossible to continue to support.

Unfortunately, the organisation ignored local culture and opted for foreign marketing advice on how to implement the new fees.

Branch staff were forbidden to tell the customer how much until they had gone through the long list of value-add nonsense (card registrations, hotel/restaurant coupons, etc.)

Australians put great store in people being straight with them, and their first question was naturally "how much?" This stalling (but you've got fries!) marketing methodology led to a hemorrhage in customers.

Many customers went to other banks who charged exactly the same fees. These customers felt that this bank had broken faith with them with no explanation and could no longer be trusted. It was probably a good lesson these customers learnt that week, as this was a more simple time.

These days, the trusting of most corporations, especially banks, is something you do only after reading all of the fine print.

The fact remains that a simple, truthful campaign would have retained more customers for this bank.

So corporations please, stop this upselling model. It just irritates the aussies.

Pizza Hut - doesn't deliver

2009-06-04T18:56:00.005+10:00

Although I know they aren't good for my waistline, there are times when I like to take the easy way out and veg-out in front of the TV and order a pizza. Of the chain pizza stores I do like pizza hut best. But I can't say I'm going to be ordering them again anytime soon unless they change their attitude to doing business.

The convenience of having pizza delivered to your home is excellent and has been around for a long time now. Even better is the ability to order online. Why is this good - because you don't have to talk to anyone. Sadly I find in the lower end of the service community, where transient and cheap labour is used, the communication skills are usually poor.

So I really enjoy using online purchasing of all kinds of services including pizza.

If you dial pizza hut you get a friendly message encouraging you to order online next time. After all it makes sense for all concerned - it's cheaper and easier to manage.

I live in a inner city suburb of Australia's largest city - Sydney. I can walk to the Pitt St mall in 20 minutes. Pizza Hut's online ordering website therefore determines my store to be the one on Martin Place in the CBD. The website refused to accept my online order.

I gave feedback on the pizza hut website stating I was extremely disappointed at not being able to order online and that I received poor service from the real person I had to speak to due to their communication inadequacies.

I received an email apologising for my disappointment, however stating that pizza hut stores were franchised and they were unable to insist on this store accepting online orders, but that they would pass on my comments regarding the poor service.

I consider this response pathetic and shows the contempt with which they hold their customers.

So a message to Pizza Hut, don't advertise a service you don't provide! And for god's sake if you are going to have people answer a phone, ensure they can actually speak. Oh and look to your branding - if your franchised stores can't live up to the bandname you will have a problem pretty soon.

Free Bus - it's green

2009-05-28T23:47:00.004+10:00

The CBD shuttle in Sydney is a great idea and a 'yay' for service from the council. It does a loop around the city from circular quay to central station.

It's great for tourists and weary shoppers running 7 days. I have ridden it at lunchtime and it was packed. The amusing thing was the driver, who was obviously not used to providing a free service, insisted on people boarding through the front door - surely only a requirement if you needed to pay or show a ticket. He was obviously someone very familiar with a process but with no understanding of the requirement behind it.

However, I wonder what the future intent of this service is as it currently only runs between 9:30am and 3.30pm (excepting late night shopping and weekends). I'm hoping once they iron out the process, this will be available during peak commuter hours. It would be a fabulous method of transporting ferry commuters uptown towards central, or visa versa.

It's been running around 6 months now so here's hoping.

I love my library

2009-05-15T23:26:00.004+10:00

I thought it was about time I endorsed my local library in print. The Sydney council do a wonderful job of providing such a full community service.

It's a nice quiet place to study and work plus it has an enormous amount of free facilities, not the least of which is free internet access and the ability to borrow 20 items at a time.

Their collections are expansive, they host literary events, provide community services such as computer straining and legal advice plus they even lend toys.

There is a host of additional facilities I'm sure I'm not even aware of.

Go check them out both on the web and in person and share the love with your library today.

Red Cross doesn't take blood

2009-05-15T23:25:00.005+10:00

I was recently diagnosed with a genetic disorder for which the treatment is giving blood regularly. This genetic disorder has no effect on the quality of the blood BTW it just means the person who has it needs to regenerate blood more frequently.

My Dr. filled in the forms, as I need to give monthly (rather than quarterly per a normal donor), I then called the Red Cross to make an appointment.

They wanted me to fax in the forms (perfectly understandable) and then proceeded to tell me someone would contact me within 3 weeks. I was surprised at the need for delay.

Additionally I had been surprised when my Dr. anecdotally told me of another patient he had with the same disorder who is now past 70 years. The Red Cross refused to take blood from him due to age! A private clinic had to be found - the condition untreated will kill you.

I thought the Red Cross wanted blood!

Sommelier Lite

2009-05-09T21:36:00.008+10:00

The increasing variable quality of waiting staff at restaurants amazes me.

Rarely is there a fine dining experience these days, most fine dining establishments I've been in over the last 18 months, are overpriced with odd and funky menu items that look nothing like the description. They also have waiters with not enough english to accurately take an order.

And I had to shake my head when visiting an asian restaurant very popular for business lunches, when the waiter failed to comprehend a request for a glass of the house white wine - he had to phone a friend.

In more budget friendly establishments such as burger joints or cafes who hold a liquor license, my expectations of waiting expertise is not unduly high. I expect these establishments to offer clean, friendly and helpful service. Oftentimes I get it.

But I feel the need to remark on the recent wine serving of a waitress that I found a bit odd. She was holding the bottle correctly, in one hand and her thumb in the punt. However the label was not directed to the customer who chose the wine. She gave no offer to taste the wine before pouring and the neck of the bottle was also sadly resting on the wineglass.

Did she do half a sommeliers course or something? It was just a little mum's n dad's cafe, so deary, just pour the wine and get over it.

Where do they get these waiters?

2009-04-26T12:48:00.000+10:00

City Extra may not be renowned for fine dining, but it has established an expectation of affordable family food in the heart of Sydney's tourist area with close proximity to the opera house with an ability to deliver reasonable middle class service.

I go there probably once a quarter, for that affordable family meal, prior a performance at the opera house. The food never changes and consistently meets expectations of being acceptable but I usually find the abilities of the waitstaff to be highly variable.

A bottle of wine was ordered. Not too expensive but not too cheap either. Two glasses and the bottle in an icebucket arrived fairly promptly - that was all good. But that was the end of the interaction with that waiter. No attempt to pour or even open the wine was made. Admittedly it was a screwtop so it wasn't difficult to help ourselves. But it does make my eyebrows rise when I observe better service from grungy little cafes in Newtown.

Subsequently an alternate waitperson, who took the food order and request for water, brought a fresh chilled water bottle, 2 glasses and proceeded to fill them. Which was kind of the behaviour I was expecting surrounding the bottle of wine. The 2nd waiter delivered the meal with no fuss, enquired regarding quality, and closed the deal by processing the bill in a timely and efficient manner. I remark uppon her because she discharged her duties in a perfectly efficient and dilligent manner. I'd be happy to have her serve me at any restaurant I entered.

This particular venue has a constant stream of new faces on their waiting staff, the majority sporting wildly diverse accents and a variable acquaintance with the english language. My 2nd waiter is remarkable being the exception to the rule at this establishment. The first waiter was just one such of these 'new faces' described.

I'll make the assumption that he didn't know how to wait and his employ was his method of earning money to make his next backpacking destination. Paying for your holiday is a perfectly fine motivation for working, to be honest whatever his motivation, providing it's not supporting illegal activities, is fine by me.

But whatever your labour and setting aside how much/little you may enjoy it, surely it's essential to take personal pride and do it properly.

A world where labour is just a means to an end is surely putting us back into unenlightened times.

Align with the customer maybe?

2009-04-24T16:38:00.000+10:00

Most entertaining things in life; movies, theatre, theme parks, etc. carry an entry fee. Alternately most things you'd rather not be doing but are obliged in some way; medical checkups, car service, traffic fines, are paid post the event.

So why does New Zealand, which relies heavily on tourism (an entertainment I would have thought), carry an exit fee? An exit fee can't help but mentally relate your holiday experience with something you are paying to escape. I find this all a bit topsy turvy. There's also the risk that an impoverished backpacker spent all their money and can't afford to leave until ejected at the pleasure and expense of the government. That can't be good for the taxpayers.

I can understand the NZ government wanting to collect revenue from tourism, but why not an arrival tax instead?

Another example of a misaligned tourism service is the customs at Christchurch airport. It closed for lunch! I respect customs officials' right to a lunch break but couldn't they stagger the shift? There were several international flights scheduled on the particular afternoon I was there, the result was a bottleneck when they reopened.

Perhaps some process assessment needed on that side of the Tasman.

Hospitality industry actually hospitable!

2009-04-21T18:39:00.001+10:00

I had occasion to visit Christchurch, New Zealand.

I have been much despairing of receiving even passable service from the hospitality industry in recent years but I was pleasantly surprised by two incidents on my leaving NZ.

The first was checking out of my hotel. I was staying at the IBIS in the centre of Christchurch. While checking out I asked the service operator where was the best place to find a taxi. She asked if I was going to the airport and if I wanted to leave now. She them proceeded to phone a cab for me! I should note she was alone on the counter, this was busy checkout time and there was a small queue behind me. The whole encounter was remarkably friendly and I received a warm wish for a good trip home. It has been at least 10 years since I've received such good cheery service from a hotel and that would have certainly been more than a 3 star. If I had of been sitting on a chair I would have fallen off it.

The taxi arrived promptly and turned out to be a 'green' chain that only drive hybrids which I commend as doing a good thing. The driver was courteous and when arriving at the airport actually offered to get a trolley for my bags - another amazing throwback to past times of good courteous service. In the US this would simply be the driver angling for a bigger than the already compulsory tip, but this is New Zealand where the smiles and service are for free - there was no ulterior motive.

I put the two experiences down to two factors, pride in their work and mutual respect. Increasingly there doesn't seem to be a lot of these factors prevalent in society.

I enjoy trips to New Zealand but do we all really have to come to one of the smallest 1st world countries on the planet to witness the last of the dying art of service delivery?

Silver Cabs are confusing me

2009-04-19T20:42:00.001+10:00

I had previously posted regarding the missing SMS option from ordering Silver Cabs online.

The option isn't back but out of the blue my last cab booking, 3 days ago, gave me an SMS on approach.

I'm puzzled but pleased. Maybe they have decided to reinstate the service and that it's easier to assume everyone wants an SMS so there's no point in asking.

Whatever the reason, a gold star to Silver Cabs for this one. Just keep the service consistently good - that's all I ask.

SMS notification feature gone

2009-04-16T19:37:00.000+10:00

I tend to do a bit of air travel and as a result often book a taxi to take me to the airport.

I have always received a consistently good service from Silver Service taxis. I should point out that a consistently good service, in my view, equates to service excellence.

So well done Silver Service cabbies.

I was disappointed to note however, that in the last couple of months the online booking service no longer has the option to SMS on approach.

I'm presuming it's a result of 'times are tough' and a desire to cut cost. I do hope that they did do their homework before making this decision. I'm not edified in silver cabs' statistics and costs but I would have thought that an approach SMS would save waiting time by cabbies attending calls to businesses and blocks of flats.

Maseur Sandals' quality decline

2009-04-13T19:37:00.000+10:00

I have been wearing Maseur Sandals for the last 25 years. My first pair lasted around 10 years. The bumps had worn smooth at the heel plus the ball of the foot and they finally fell apart due to the rubber perishing. They did cost around $30AU in the day (which was a little expensive) but considering their staying power, were excellent value.

I have continued to purchase maseur sandals over the years. The price has remained the same however the quality has dramatically declined.

The last 15 years has seen several pairs of maseur sandals on my feet with a decreasing lifespan. I currently have 2 pairs - I've found the need, due to their frequent turnover, to have one pair I am wearing-in while I am wearing out another.

The pair I retired in October last year only lasted 18 months. Bits of rubber were shedding around the house and testing the patience of my nearest and dearest. I purchased a new pair and needed to have the sole reglued by christmas. I thought maybe I had defect pair.

I received another pair as a christmas present. 3 months later I need to have their soles reglued. I should note that there is a 12 month warranty carried with these sandals, but the effort of returning to the seller (particularly in the case of the christmas present) and the probable need to reglue another 3 months later, far outweighed the effort of getting the local shoe repair man to fix it properly.

I am sympathetic to the issue that if the original quality was sustianed there is potential they would go out of business waiting for return sales. However, keeping the price down by degrading the quality so much has not served this product well.

I'll be looking around for alternatives in about 12 months when my current 2 pairs need to be binned.

Hertz again - process failure

2009-04-12T22:05:00.000+10:00

It's Easter. I've booked a hirecar from the airport as a gold club member. It's late Holy Thursday night and it's raining.

Backstory
I reserved the car for 10pm because the carpark goldbooth closes at 9:30pm. I hate having to wait for my baggage inside the terminal and then wait to collect my keys at the goldbooth. When the gold concept was originally installed - many years ago - I could collect my keys inside at the Hertz counter while waiting for my luggage. So, booking my flight/car for arrival past the goldbooth curfew meant I could have it the way I like it - pick up my keys inside. There is no other way to achieve the same result if you are a gold customer - I have asked.

What happened on Holy Thursday
It's 9:45pm. The gold booth is still open - presumably because of the heavy business they are doing due to the holiday (plus beginning of school hols). I issue a heavy sigh reading the electronic sign on the inside hertz booth directing gold customers to proceed to the gold booth in the carpark.

I wait and collect my luggage from the carousel. I then proceed to the gold booth. They can't find my booking. I present my booking confirmation (I'm usually always organised with such paperwork) - I think this saved many minutes of stuffing around (I reconfirmed with my inner id that to have booking references for everything is a must).

It transpired that the inside counter had my carkeys! The hertz worker stated it was due to the booking being for 10pm and the gold booth closing at 9:30. I did point out that it was 9:55pm, they were still open and that signage inside the terminal directed me to their booth. In his favour, he did not suggest I return to the inside counter to retrive my keys but went to collect them for me. We then had to play spot the car with the remote control, as he didn't know what bay it was parked in.

To add to all this, I was upgraded. This isn't a good thing. I book the size of the car suited to my needs. I received a 'living room' to drive around instead of a modest compact.

Message
So what broke down here - there is evidently no communication between the inner and outer booths as to who holds which keys in which circumstances. Surely the gold booth should hold all gold keys until they close at which time they transfer remaining keys inside. And on a minor note do not presume "upgrades" are a favourable thing.

It should also be noted on a previous occasion at the same airport, the inside counter directed me to the gold booth in the carpark which was subsequently closed. Needless to say I was not a happy camper when I returned to the inside counter.

A far simpler solution to my needs would be - allow a gold customer to choose where they pick up their keys.

Hertz Australia - degrading their service

2009-04-12T21:40:00.000+10:00

Lets talk about the recent dilution of service from Hertz Australia.

Until recently they were offering a free service who's objective was to provide hirer's of their vehicles the ability to locate their destination. This service was provided via a free street directory available with all hires (a deposit required from non-gold members).

This free service is being discontinued. You can now purchase the same service via hiring a GPS device for your hirecar.

I have nothing against GPS devices, in fact I do believe they are a superior method of achieving the objective, however the street directory fulfilled the need and was free.

I am severely disappointed that Hertz has gone down this road.

Effectively we now have 2 options: pay for a service which used to be free or invest in maps/street directory for the locations where we will be hiring cars.

One day in the future I may own my own GPS device - when the cost becomes irrelevant or it is a free inclusion with something. It is completely superfluous to my current at-home needs - I know where I am.

I consider this an example of degraded service. It's obviously a decision already done and dusted so there is no hope of changing anyone's mind by complaining. We just have to emit a heavy high and wear it as a sign of the times of declining standards.

Coat check positive

2009-04-11T23:08:00.000+10:00

I'd like to thank Qantas for good service this evening.

My travelling partner was carrying a suitcoat. On boarding (we were in cheap ticket economy) he was offered to have his coat hung up. We were rather surprised as it's been a long time since any hostie has offered such a thing in economy class.

I think this above average service was really only due to a long-term individual employee doing something a little old-school and truly wanting to provide a good service.

So I'm not hopeful of receiving the same surprising service soon, but this surprising event was a lift to my day.

Please make up my room?

2009-04-11T21:55:00.000+10:00

I had a bit of a deja vu experience today. I'm staying in a 4 1/2 star hotel in Brisbane. I put out the customary "make up my room" sign when leaving my room at 10am this morning and on returning at 5pm discovered it had not been done.

The first thing to be noted is that there was an excellent abundance of time for the business to be completed and it was a reasonable expectation that it would be done. Plus that the activity was unlikely to be undertaken after 5pm.

On contacting housekeeping, the reactive service response was appropriate in offering to rectify the situation and have the task undertaken immediately. However, all I really wanted at this stage was not to be bothered but I did need fresh bathroom linen. This was done. The establishment then 'got away' with not cleaning my room and only delivering fresh linen.

I won't name the particular establishment because it 'may' just have been an aberration.

However, I have had the same experience at another establishment of 4 stars within the last 12 months plus a colleague has had a similar experience also.

It appears evident we have a trend of a depreciation of hotel service with a couple of possible causes:

It could be a calculated cost reduction technique designed to service rooms only on demand with the presumption that the few-night stayers won't bother complaining.

Alternately it could be an unconscious result of cost cutting of service staff - there are fewer staff to undertake the work, therefore, a reduced carefactor and a loss of rigour around the checks and balances.

I don't think it is a calculated conspiracy - we would be endowing the perpetrators with too many planning and organisational skills I feel. I think the latter is the most probable cause.

Personally I don't care the reason because the result is the same - a degradation in service.

The result for me is that now I know the "please make up my room sign" is most probably ignored, I call housekeeping when leaving the room asking for the room to be cleaned while I am away.

Human beings are very adaptable, once they realise this is the new state of play this will be the adopted behaviour.

It's a shame the perpetrators of the poor service don't realise that in the long run this just causes them more effort in answering and responding to random requests - when previously they had a methodical predictable and manageable process for cleaning rooms.

In time, this degradation in service will morph into a service you either, do not get, or will need to pay extra for.

A sad day for service I would say.

Web Access = Lost productivity (not that old chesnut)!

2009-04-08T13:01:00.000+10:00

I subscribe to a site called http://www.activetechpros.com/ who send me the occasional whitepaper on various things touching on IT. They recently sent me a link to a whitepaper titled "Web Use and Misuse". Click on the title to download it.

I can't believe there are still people out there generating fear surrounding access to technology.

Let's have a critical look at this whitepaper. Effectively it sets out to blame the web for organisations' lack of discipline and governance by highlighting 6 "world-wide worries" for employers.

"Reduced Productivity" - that old chestnut. Fear that employees will spend all their worktime on facebook! I seem to recall the early 90's when the PC first emerged as the indispensable corporate tool, middle managers were insisting removal of solitaire because people would be playing games when they should be working. What did these non-productive employee's do before the PC came along, I wonder. Perhaps they read the newspaper or spent a lot of the time socially on the phone. If you can't manage your staff to attend to their work appropriately, don't blame the technology - it's a discipline issue.

"Security Problems" - risk of malware and access to infected webpages. Seems to me no difference in risk between legitimate work-related websites and non work-related.

"Legal Risk" - risk of illegal or offensive material being accessed and downloaded. This can quite easily be covered off with a corporate acceptable use policy backed up with appropriate technologies to block things like porn, etc. This is simply a lack of governance.

"Wasted Bandwidth" - caused by those addicted to downloading porn or gambling sites and streaming radio. In the case of the latter, buy a $20 radio for the office - or perhaps a TV. As to the porn and gambling, most astute network managers noticed their telco costs spiraling out of control in about 1995 when the internet took off. We did the sensible thing and implemented web filtering technology.

"Unlicensed Software" - hey isn't that a legal risk? See above for a corporate policy. Then depending on how great you view the risk, lock down your IT environment to prevent non-sanctioned software.

"Reputation Risk" - from people defaming the company or leaking confidential information, etc. Seems to me these people can just as easily do this from outside the workplace.....and even over a beer at a BBQ without the aid of technology.

The paper does a lot of beating up on social network sites, which is just pandering to the fear factor of older non-techsavy managers. There are many businesses and professional groups turning to the social networking sites to carry out their business these days. Block access in the workplace and you are in danger of your business lacking innovation and falling behind the competition.

The paper isn't really a whitepaper at all. It is a blatant ad for a product which is but one of many in the marketplace. It's purpose was to get stupid managers in a state of frenzy so great that they have to run out and buy MessageLabs' services today!

What the hell, perhaps we should all take the advise of the last pope and give up the internet for lent - then we wouldn't have a need for webfilters.

Clear Messages - Change Management Diagram!?

2009-04-05T18:45:00.000+10:00

Unfortunately ITIL has become such an overused term that people concoct all sorts of knowledge artifacts (in this case a diagram), point to them with pride and label them ITIL. Thanks “clear messages” for finding this sad example.

Click on the Title to check it out.

ITIL Software Endorsement Scheme!

2009-04-05T14:57:00.000+10:00

If you're not into ITIL and IT Service Management, I recommend you skip this post.

I spotted something quite disturbing on the IT Skeptic's blog during the week.

Apparently the OGC are developing an ITIL Software Endorsement Scheme whereby vendors toolsets will be assessed and accredited.

Although I appreciate the OGC are probably frustrated by the plethora of toolsets that claim "ITIL compliance", I can't help but agree with several comments about this move giving rise to some disturbing possibilities.

The major concern is that this surely can't help but divert the emphasis away from process and onto tools. Just when we've started getting the message across that service management is a continual journey, management will revert to the thinking that once they've implemented a tool they've done ITIL.

Then there's the tools themselves. It will become all that much more expensive to implement ITIL if you have to go with the rolls royce service management suites. SME's can't afford them.

The teckies without tools will go back to the bad old cowboy days of doing inconsistent break/fix service delivery and the teckies with the tools will simply follow the toolset without a thought to service management and value. Continual service improvement will go out the window. (How do you assess a toolset for compliance with that process anyway?) And remember the old adage "a fool with a tool is still a fool".

And the big question, why isn't the ITSMF involved in this. ITIL has grown way beyond it's humble beginnings at the OGC - wasn't that clearly evident with the worldwide collaborative effort of the ITSM community to develop and publish version 3.

There's quite a bit of discussion surrounding this on the web and most of it is negative. We watch the debate with interest.

Declining Standards of Service

2009-03-27T00:17:00.000+11:00

I have been a 'valued' customer of Hertz for some time now. How do I know that? Appart from them telling me at regular opportunities, I do get some gold discounts and the occassional upgrade (not always welcome).

I keep going back to Hertz for two things only - it has been reliable and it gives double qantas points if I use my visa card.

Their gold booth is reasonably free of paperwork - although not if you turn up at a non-airport Hertz who don't seem to have heard of the concept of flashing your license and walking out with a car. You wait your turn with everyone else at these places.

Recent cost savings at Hertz have left me rather unhappy though. Witin the last 2 months street directories are no longer avaiable with your hire. The apparent reasoning was that everyone has a GPS. Why would I have a GPS if I don't have a car? I see no move on Hertz's part to make GPS inclusion in the car a free service either.

I see no point in lodging a formal complaint. The business will do what it wants and while it can get away with a declining service standard it will do so. I will put up with the declining standard as long as there are no better options and sadly will have to travel with a street directory to my desired destination.

Why do I see no point complaining? I have previously attempted to make very rational suggestions against the move of the gold booth into the airport carpark (many many years ago now) was ill-use of customer's time - you might be productively picking up your car keys while waiting for your luggage inside the terminal. This fell on deaf ears. Then there was the experiment of no receipts when dropping off a car (the attendant behaved as if such a thing had never been a provided service). Somehow that one seems to be a reinstated service - maybe enough people complained.

Whenever I have complained of service to any corporation, if I receive a response at all it is invariably a platitudinal one.

We live in a world of declining standards and unfortunately we have to live with it.

TAT at the Westin San Francisco

2009-03-06T18:04:00.001+11:00

The experience at the Westin in San Francisco was very comfortable but it appears times are obviously tough these days. Please note this is a great picture of San Francisco but certainly not the view from our room.

The usual bathroom convenience products are almost a thing of the past. There was only one cake of soap (presumably to be used at both sink and shower), and a showercap, cotton buds or sewing kit were not to be seen.

As is becoming the norm in the big chain hotels now, you can't use the fridge for any personal items. You receive a caution that your "personal items may spoil"! The reality is that there isn't any room left as each barfridge item is electronically encoded and if you remove one it automatically gets charged to your room. So sadly we can't use the fridge and revert to the age-old american custom of multiple trips down the hall to the ice machine in order to fill the bathroom sink. I always thought the american 'ice machine' practice odd.

Sadly there is also no free wireless anywhere in the hotel. Only a year or two ago the Westin was proudly advertising free wirelesss internet in the lobby of every one of their hotels worldwide. Most other hotels in the US offer it for free with your room now - even the little 3-star places alongside the highways.

Another negative is that the AV on the TV was nobbled so I could not plug my Ipod in!

The stay did have it's colour though. We coincided with a 'Twilight' convention. The weekend was overrun with young people wearing Twilight T-shirts and carrying logo'ed handbags. They were extremely well behaved however. Just very excited as they were set to meet several stars from the latest movie.

Airport Angst

2009-02-24T17:13:00.001+11:00

All-in-all my flight to the USA was fairly uneventful, but the hassle of the process is starting to get very very silly.

I have not flown international in around 12 months and was a little surprised at the additional precautions to the usual metal detector screening point as seen in the domestic airport. In addition, I was one of the victims selected for a random screening trifector at the gate. This was a piece of "security theatre" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater which could easily be undertaken by Curly, Larry and Moe.

Fristly my carry-on was physically inspected by an individual who exhibited the urgency and enthusiasm of Lurch from the Adams family.

Secondly I was wanded for metal objects with arms outstretched front and back.

Thirdly, just when you are wondering what else they can possibly screen, I was asked to sit in a chair and remove one shoe at a time and present for physical inspection.

The stooges showed perfect understanding of their roles, the process, and how to follow a procedure - so ISO9000 would be proud. However the value of the activities appeared to be nil.

Such 'security theatre' seems to be activities whose prime outcome is to torture the unassuming participatory audience. Another example would be the pizza Glen and I shared whilst awaiting our flight - it had a thick crust and we only had a poor plastic knife and fork with which to dissect it.

We meekly complied with all requirements and were suitably agreeable to the staff, so we passed all hurdles and safely arrived without undue harrasement.

Plus we had a spare seat between us!