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Recently I went to the United Airlines web site to accept a special offer. It was
very smooth. A few clicks and I was finished. Then I got a message that said,
“You have selected 10,000 Mileage Plus bonus miles. Your miles will be credited
to your Mileage Plus® account in approximately 6 weeks. They are yours to use
as you please. Thank you again for this opportunity to reward you for your
exceptional loyalty. “ Six weeks? The web application that I interacted with
probably can’t talk to (is not integrated with) the application that updates the
mileage credit. Ever land at an airport and the gate was not available for the
plane to park? Happens to all of us. The Gate Scheduling System is not
integrated with the Flight Arrival System.
I had been thinking about getting a cappuccino maker and a friend had one not in
use that he offered to loan to me for a trial. The machine is called a Nespresso
and is made by Nestle. It uses pre-packaged “capsule” of coffee. I stopped in a
local gourmet cooking store that carries the Nespresso line and asked if I could
buy some of the capsules of coffee. “Oh no”, said the proprietor. “They can only
be bought directly from the company. Didn’t you fill out the form to register for the
buying service?” I explained my situation and said I had no form. I was told to call
the 800 number. I went home empty handed and rather than call, I decided to
visit the web site. I was in luck, or so I thought, because I quickly found a “click
here to buy” area of the site. Upon landing at the buying page I was asked to
enter my customer number. I have no customer number and could find no place
on the site to get one. I was really determined to get these “capsules” so I broke
down and called. The good news was that it was not 9-5 M-F and a real person
answered and I didn’t have to wade through a complex call center menu. The
person was very cordial and explained that the only way I could get a customer
number was to buy something from them by phone and then I would be sent a
customer number in the mail!
Attitude problem: These problems are viewed as very complex with fixes that
take a lot of time.
Net Attitude: The long-term fix will take time but in the meantime applications can
be enabled to send messages to each other behind the scenes and give the
customer the effect of a completely integrated solution. Some technology
investments will be involved but it is mostly an attitude of wanting to make
systems talk to each other. Chapter 12 will describe how this is done.
Click here to send us a fax, fill out a form or get our phone number and hours
I went to the web site of a California software company one Sunday afternoon
and I was ready to buy some software they had for sale. In fact I wanted it really
badly and was ready to pay nearly any price. I clicked to buy and up came a
form. No problem, Mr. Patrick. Step one; print this form. Step two; fill it out and
fax it to us! This doesn’t sound like e-business. Unfortunately there are a large
number of web sites that say click here to buy and then present us with a screen
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