Posted by John Patrick on Dec 31, 2004 in On Demand
Not everyone agreed with my point about not really wanting to talk to someone. Dale said, "Even the best machine systems fail". He gave an example of how Amazon took his order for a Christmas gift, promised a delivery date, and the gift has still not arrived". His bottom line was, "no dates, no numbers, no satisfaction – and no way to talk to a human". "Even the best sometimes need to engage in human conversation to maintain satisfaction". Charley agrees. He said that my story had missed the point. "When the organization that you are trying to do business with makes a mistake, then you must talk to a human, and one with authority". He says it is an an iron rule in human affairs that organizations do not admit they made a mistake until they are subject to severe duress. "No voice response I have ever heard says ‘Press 1 if we made a mistake’ and very very few first level order takers or help desk personnel have in their scripts what to do in case of a mistake". Both Charley and Dale pointed out that problems are exacerbated when the organization you think you are dealing with has sub-contracted the actual work to another organization.
These are all good points but I am sticking to my thesis. Talking to a human is not what I want. I want systems and processes that work the way they are supposed to work. I believe that wanting to talk to someone is a response to the frustration that we feel when a system or a process has broken down. Another way to say it is that if I could wave a magic wand and have a company provide live telephone support with humans or make their systems and processes work properly (including integration with their sub-contractors), I would take the latter. I must admit I am quite surprised to learn of Amazon having a breakdown. This is the first I have heard of that happening. It sounds like a transportation snafu and I suspect that the recent airline difficulties are at the root of the problem. Not that this is an excuse. If Amazon guaranteed delivery they obviously relied on some discussions they had with their shipping provider, which I believe is more dependent on the USPS than in the past. One more time, if there was a choice of talking to someone or having Amazon provide a delivery tracking link with every shipment, I would take the latter.
Posted by John Patrick on Dec 30, 2004 in On Demand
Many people will undoubtedly be very sympathetic with today’s New York Times article, “Customer Service: The Hunt for a Human”. Some will conclude that the increasing difficulty (or impossibility) of talking to a human being, much less one with any authority, is one of the major downsides of the Internet. I don’t feel that way. Have you ever felt a need to talk to someone at eBay or Amazon? I haven’t. Why? Because they do such a great job in meeting your needs that you don’t need to talk to a person. A few mouse clicks and you have accomplished your mission. The places where people get frustrated and want to talk to someone are the ones not fully meeting people’s needs. If they met your needs, you wouldn’t feel the need to talk to someone. It isn’t really that you want to talk to someone. You want to get the job done, item purchased, item returned, user manual, setup instructions, new software update, or whatever, with intuitive procedures, responsive web site, using whatever kind of device you happen to be connected to the Internet with, any time of day or night. That is On Demand and that is what people really want. If all the transactions you engaged in were handled in an On Demand fashion, there would be more time to take a motorcycle ride, stop at a Harley dealer, and talk to people about important things — like planning the next motorcycle ride.
Posted by John Patrick on Dec 29, 2004 in On Demand
In the height of the "dot com" frenzy a class of companies emerged called Application Service Providers (ASP). The ASPs claimed to solve all known business problems by providing applications over the Internet. Solutions covered a wide range of activities from integration of the supply chain to a complete implementation of "office" functionality – spreadsheet, word processor, data base, presentation capability, etc. The value proposition was that you no longer had to buy Microsoft Office – you could just use that functionality via a server over the Internet. The problem with many of the ASP offerings was that they didn’t solve things that were perceived as problems.
Although I continue to be enthusiastic about the vast potential of the Internet, I felt at the time that the ASP model was premature — primarily because there were not enough people with always on, high quality, reliable, connections to the net. (network computers suffered from the same problem). On top of the network issue was the fact that the ASP solutions introduced were of questionable value and the result was that the ASP model essentially disappeared. What goes around, comes around – the ASP is back. The successful ones will be On Demand businesses. (read more)
Posted by John Patrick on Dec 23, 2004 in On Demand
Rob Norton asked me to write the essay below. Many thanks to Rob for his editing assistance. The essay was published by Booz Allen Hamilton in their magazine, Strategy+Business, Isssue 37, Winter 2004.
Best Business Books 2004
The Bubble – Reconsidering the Boom and the Bust
by John R. Patrick
As Internet companies began to implode in large numbers during the final months of 2000, an early warning sign of the extent of their difficulties was a Wall Street Journal story about the failure of a European e-tailer, headlined “Boo.com’s Collapse Further Darkens E-Tailing Picture.” The implication was gloom and doom, and it was prescient. Webmergers.com reported that at least 210 Internet companies folded in the year 2000. By December 27, 2001, the Journal reported that the “Dot-Com Death Toll” had more than doubled, to 537. The “bubble” had popped. (read full essay)
Posted by John Patrick on Dec 22, 2004 in On Demand
Yesterday I described my experience with the process of moving frequent flier miles from American Express to Continental Airlines. Paul Shanek, who is vp of sales & marketing at Leapstone Systems, Inc. in Somerset, New Jersey wrote to say he had seen the same message — saying it would take five days to transfer the points. "It actually took about 5 seconds to get the info into my OnePass account". "It was amazing". "I guess the marketing guys need to know what the techies are doing!". Good point. Another example is that when American Airlines reservation agents send you an email confirmation, they say it will take "up to twenty-four hours". And then there is the post card telling you that your rebate information has been received and will take "8-12 weeks to process" (there may be other reasons why this actually happens). In an On Demand world people are going to increasingly ask "Why?".
Posted by John Patrick on Dec 22, 2004 in Go Figure
I received a bright yellow letter in the mail today from Comcast. It was a "Pending Disconnect Notice". Comcast is my high-speed Internet provider and technically they have been quite good. The customer service is another story. After looking in Quicken, I found that I had somehow made the payment late. I assume the notice went out before they got the payment posted. I went to comcast.com to see if everything was ok. The homepage said "You are just a few clicks away
from managing your Comcast Cable and/or Comcast High-Speed Internet account online. Sign up now — it’s fast, easy and free"! I registered successfully and then clicked on "Simply add your account number to your profile and you’ll have online access to your account information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week" Great! I am on the way to confirming they received my payment.
One of the fields of information requested in the "Add Account" feature was the account number. "Enter the account number exactly as it appears on your bill including spaces and dashes". I did not have a bill handy but I had the yellow letter and it had my account number on it. It said Account Number: 0032762-01 so that is what I entered. An error message appeared saying "Please enter your account number exactly as it appears on your bill". After another couple of tries, I dug out an old bill and saw that the account number on it was 0327003276201. Obviously related but not exactly the same. Comcast wants me to be consistent, even though they aren’t. I entered the number yet again — exactly the way they wanted it. Then I got the following message. "We’re Sorry.
Although you are a current Comcast customer, online account management features are not available in your area. We are working hard to upgrade our systems to provide these features to all of our customers. Please check back again soon." On Demand. Not.
Sorry I am a bit late with the IBM Happenings posting for November. I would appreciate any feedback from readers as to whether these news postings are useful. It is not a huge effort to pull them together — but not trivial either. As usual, there was a lot going on at IBM during the past month (November). Here are the announcements made by the company. The complete index of prior IBM Happenings is here.
Posted by John Patrick on Dec 20, 2004 in On Demand
I have written a number of stories in patrickWeb about web services, a set of standards that allow for web sites to send messages to each other. If you have any doubts about whether this is needed, consider the following. I went to American Express’s MemberMiles site to move some miles to Continental Airlines. The site was very responsive and confirmed my transaction in less than two seconds. Then I got the following message on the Web page. "Membership Rewards points have been deducted from your account. Allow approximately 5 business days for these transferred Membership Rewards points to appear in your Continental OnePass® account". Five days? Surely they must have meant five seconds, or certainly no more than five minutes. This is why we need web services.
Posted by John Patrick on Dec 19, 2004 in On Demand
On Demand is a really important concept for institutions of all kinds — businesses, hospitals, universities, and governments. With more people connected more often in more places with more devices, their expectations are growing by the day. On Demand simply means to make the data and processes available to all constituencies (for which they are authorized) whenever they have need, wherever they are, and with whatever device they may be using to connect to the Internet. Simple to say, very complex to do. The information technology systems of many of the institutions are very complex and therefore their challenge in delivering On Demand is a big one. Many IT vendors are focused on delivering solutions. IBM, for example has been working on the concept of virtualization with the goal of dramatically reducing the complexity of managing vast computing and networking resources. A significant part of the challenge facing institutions, however, is not technical — it is "attitude".
One of the attitudes that has been around for decades is that there is something different about a weekend. It used to be true. When transactions were down via paper forms (unfortunately a lot still are) the forms would arrive at a company, for example, and people at computer "terminals" would enter the transactions into the central systems. In many cases the people doing this worked Monday to Friday from nine to five. During the "off" hours changes could be made to the systems because consumers were not directly depending on them. Of course this has changed, not just because of the Web, but because of the global availability of the Web. Two AM in New York is three PM in Tokyo. Nevertheless, we still occasionally see messages on a Web page saying "we are down for maintenance". It isn’t just maintenance of systems — it may also be updating of central databases with "batches" of transactions that were accumulated during the prior day(s).
On Saturday I was updating my own data with Quicken. With a couple of mouse clicks Quicken downloads data from American Express, Charles Schwab, CitiBank, etc. I noticed that something didn’t look right in a Schwab account so I called their outstanding technical support. They said the problem was that Intuit (producer of Quicken) updates certain securities information on the weekend and if you connect at that time you will get some erroneous transaction data. On Sunday I attempted to move some American Express Member Miles to Continental Airlines. the good news is that AMEX now has a Web transaction page where you can request the transfers. The bad news is that after entering my data I got a messages saying "Please click on the Submit button only once. Your request will take a few seconds to process. Thank you for your patience". I waited five minutes or so and then tried again. Same message. I then called and the always delightful AMEX customer service representative did the transaction for me. She said it would be completed in 24-48 hours (that is another issue and one I have written about before). She also said that the Web transaction frequently doesn’t work on weekends because that is when systems are being updated.
I don’t know if the reasons given by the support representatives about the source of the problems are correct. I have my doubts about that. All I know for sure is that in both cases I couldn’t’ do what I wanted to do and in both cases the result was that it took a lot of extra time on my part to fix things. I have no doubt that Intuit and American Express are on the path to becoming On Demand businesses. They are committed. The organizations that become truly On Demand will gain great loyalty from customers. For most of us, weekends are when we have a few minutes to catch up on various transactions. We expect Web sites to be available and reliable. This is not a technical issue, it is a societal issue — and an issue of expectations.
Not everyone agreed with my point about not really wanting to talk to someone. Dale said, "Even the best machine systems fail". He gave an example of how Amazon took his order for a Christmas gift, promised a delivery date, and the gift has still not arrived". His bottom line was, "no dates, no numbers, no satisfaction – and no way to talk to a human". "Even the best sometimes need to engage in human conversation to maintain satisfaction". Charley agrees. He said that my story had missed the point. "When the organization that you are trying to do business with makes a mistake, then you must talk to a human, and one with authority". He says it is an an iron rule in human affairs that organizations do not admit they made a mistake until they are subject to severe duress. "No voice response I have ever heard says ‘Press 1 if we made a mistake’ and very very few first level order takers or help desk personnel have in their scripts what to do in case of a mistake". Both Charley and Dale pointed out that problems are exacerbated when the organization you think you are dealing with has sub-contracted the actual work to another organization.
Other
Many people will undoubtedly be very sympathetic with today’s 
In the height of the "dot com" frenzy a class of companies emerged called Application Service Providers (ASP). The ASPs claimed to solve all known business problems by providing applications over the Internet. Solutions covered a wide range of activities from integration of the supply chain to a complete implementation of "office" functionality – spreadsheet, word processor, data base, presentation capability, etc. The value proposition was that you no longer had to buy Microsoft Office – you could just use that functionality via a server over the Internet. The problem with many of the ASP offerings was that they didn’t solve things that were perceived as problems. 
Yesterday I described my experience with the process of moving frequent flier miles from 
I received a bright yellow letter in the mail today from 
I have written a number of stories in 
