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Systems that don’t talk to each other
There are several categories where web sites let people down. One of them has
to do with integration of systems. Some recent personal experiences may serve
to illustrate what this is about and why people are frustrated as a result. It was a
Friday night when my wife and I decided to go to New York the following
weekend for an impromptu opportunity that arose. I went to the web site of a
major hotel chain and checked my frequent guest points balance and looked for
an award for a one-night stay. I have plenty of points and, sure enough, I found
an award code for a one-night stay at a very nice property in New York City. I
could have made an online reservation but a prior experience convinced me that
they didn’t have the process streamlined yet so I called the 800 number and
asked the person if a room was available for that following Friday night. “Yes
sir”, she said, “I can confirm that for you”. “Great” I said. “Is there anything else I
can do for you, Mr. Patrick?” “Yes, I would like to pay for the room using Award
code XYZ”.
“Oh”, she said, “I can’t do that”. I asked if I was talking to an answering service
or the hotel chain itself. “This is the hotel chain”, she said, “but this is the
reservations department and I don’t have access to any frequent guest data”. I
explained that I was looking at the coupon in my browser and asked if there
wasn’t some way she could help me use it. “Oh, no problem, Mr. Patrick”, she
said. “Just call us back on Monday morning”. She went on to explain that I
would need to call them by long distance, no 800 number, and that I could call
anytime during their normal business hours of nine to five Monday through
Friday. She said that when I called I could just simply give them my credit card
number and for just $35 they would send me the coupon (which I was looking at
in the browser!) via overnight express mail. Now is that a “stick in the eye” or
what? The problem is lack of application integration. The frequent guest system
and the reservations system don’t talk to each other. They are applications that
were likely built in different decades and which operate on different and
incompatible computer systems. The examples abound.
I ordered three items from an on-line catalog at cdw.com. It was actually a good
shopping experience. The FedEx shipping was a relative bargain at $5.49. The
next day I received a phone message saying that one of the items I had ordered
had been discontinued but that the other two items were shipped. This was quite
disappointing since the discontinued item was the most important of the three
things I ordered. I called the customer service department and asked why the
web site was offering an item that had been discontinued. Lack of real time
inventory or out of stock conditions is one thing but offering discontinued items
for sale seemed like a real process problem. “Oh”, said the customer service
representative, “our web site is two to three months behind on updating for
discontinued items. We are working on that”. The result was I had to order a
substitute item and pay additional shipping. Problem: no integration between the
inventory system and the web e-commerce system.
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