My violin fingering: is it still right?
I gave up the violin almost 20 years ago. Or over half my life ago. Yet to this day, I often mime the fingering that my left hand would do were it playing the melody of a song I’m listening to, my fingers generally tapping on the pad beneath my thumb.
Or at least I think I am. I have no idea whether the notes that would ring out if a violin were in my hand would bear any resemblance to the song. Maybe so many years of dormancy render the mime talentless and the resulting music similarly tuneless. And doubtless the bow in my right hand would be playing the wrong string anyway.
One day soon, I’ll pick up a violin and see just how true my renditions are to their originals. Until then, you’re safe.
The power of a retweet
I wrote a blog post recently that I delighted in writing, and that people, it seems, delighted in reading. It drew from experiences from 15 years ago, and highlighted the need to treat deadlines with the respect they deserve.
The post drew no comments. But it drew a lot of hits. (The term a lot here is relative to the number of hits drawn by most of my posts.) The bit.ly link that drew people to the post itself via a Twitterfeed URL that adorned my Twitter feed drew 94 clicks. By way of comparison, most of my posts draw fewer than 20 hits via the same route.
The reason: the retweet.
Paul Clarke retweeted my original tweet within four minutes, together with a humbling pleasantry.
RT @danosirra: Blogged: knowing when to stop http://bit.ly/87wyGE < Dan. You are great. Please can we meet soon.
Now Paul is a well-respected figure, with 1,855 followers without, it seems, actively looking to build his following. He just writes interesting stuff and has wide respect and appeal.
Seven minutes later, the lovely Emma Mulqueeny (who I also only know electronically) acknowledged the post.
The snail like snakings of SWTrains means I can read all those blog postings @danosirra loved yrs, brilliant
And five minutes later, Chris Thorpe, who I don’t know, retweeted Paul’s retweet.
RT @paul_clarke: RT @danosirra: Blogged: knowing when to stop http://bit.ly/87wyGE < awesome. may have to frame this
The attention brought a smile to my face. But it also highlighted the power of the retweet. I’d noted that I should write a post about the subject two weeks earlier, but only noted its relevance midway through writing it. It was lovely to receive such compliments, and delightful to see so many clicks as a direct result of some lovely twitterers.
Colonel Mustard in the library with the lead piping: knowing when to stop
While doing my Masters, we were given a project that was to be done in pairs. The aim was to use artificial intelligence (of sorts) to code a computer to act as a player in the game of Cluedo. The language of choice: Prolog. (I say choice in the loosest sense. It was foisted upon us.)
Myself and my good friend Jorge paired up and took the task very seriously. I learnt a huge amount about the strategy of Cluedo—it turned out that as a youngster, I had not used a jot of inference in playing the game, merely capturing in isolation each piece of information that had been given to me. (As a youngster, I was shit at Cluedo.) But once unleashed with this new-found knowledge, we came up with some kick-ass rules, one of which I was particularly proud of but which I couldn’t for the life in me remember some 15 years later.
We coded rule after rule, with multiple layers of logic deciphering any information provided to enhance the knowledge that had been gleaned to date; and yet more intricate logic determining which questions to ask, and who to ask them of.
But our program was shit. We came last as far as I remember. And here’s why.
The information aggregator worked like a dream. But each time it was our turn to ask a fellow player (which was itself a competitor team’s computer) a question, we always selected the same player to ask, and we always asked the same questions.
The reason: it was my fault. I’d come up with the beautiful, competitor-killing logic a couple of hours before the hard deadline, as I remember. We had a brief discussion over whether we had time to code it up. And we decided we would. The discussion probably went something like this:
Jorge: shall we implement it?
Dan: hell, yeah!
So we coded like the wind. And we got the code unit tested. And it kicked proverbial ass. And then, with moments to spare, we did some integration testing. And it borked the whole “asking” logic.
Now if we had any sense at all, we would have grabbed the floppy disk (oh yeah, baby!) containing the version of the program that we’d saved immediately before the killer module had been incorporated, handed it to the professor, and done pretty well in the competition. But in our haste (or speed, as the proverb oddly goes), we didn’t keep any such version. Instead, we had no option but to submit our borked version of the program and watch the result.
It was like watching the words of a particularly annoying parrot flash up on the screen, a parrot that had just been briefed on the basics of Waddingtons’ flagship product. Hell it was funny. (Jorge always helped make light of moments like that.) But at the same time it was so annoying: being so close to wiping the floor with our classmates (for that is what we would have done, natch), yet at the same time, being so far from that goal.
The big lesson I learnt from that experience was that deadlines are there for the client’s purposes, not your own. Define an end time or date for development, either in your head or on a plan, and stick to it. (Development here might mean coding, document production, analytics, basically any client deliverable.) And make sure that this milestone is sufficiently ahead of the formal deadline to allow for all of the necessary post-development activities—be they testing, document review or simply document formatting.
Your boss will often try to push the milestone to the right. In that event, push back strongly. And if this is futile, warn them strongly of the potential ramifications. For in this event 15 years ago, our (my) willingness to take on new requirements at such a time that didn’t allow for them to be fully tested compromised the entire project deliverable. Don’t let that happen to you.
(Sorry, Jorge.)
If you like it and are able, pay for it
I wrote a post recently about the likely demise of certain media. It focused on the proposition that while much media has traditionally been cross-subsidised by other, more lucrative revenue streams, the increasing transparency of non-profitable lines of business means that some of these media will close down.
Media owners are struggling. Bobby Johnson has just announced that he has taken the Guardian up on its offer of voluntary redundancy, and will be leaving at the end of March. The New York Times announced Wednesday that from next year, it will start charging for full access to its website. And whenever I pop along to Wikipedia, I’m faced with a plea from Jimmy Wales for contributions towards the Wikipedia Foundation. (As an aside, that’s no name for an internet entrepreneur. David Filo, Jerry Yang, Sergey Brin: yes. Jimmy Wales: noooo.)
It’s time we started to show our appreciation for what we like about the internet, from apps to content (in its broadest sense), and pay for or make donations towards these things. I like Wikipedia, so I’ll contribute. I like Freshbooks, so I’ve upgraded to the first tier of paid service, partly out of necessity, partly out of respect. Flickr: ditto. (And I happily pay my “TV” licence every year which helps fuel my love of the BBC News website.)
The one I’m struggling with is Google. I pay for Google advertising through AdWords. But I don’t pay for its core apps. offering, which I use heavily. The issue lies in the fact that the charging model is per domain rather than per email account. So the three or four temporary, administrative or lesser-profile accounts that I’ve set up all attract a charge. I’d love to be able to upgrade my own account (and I’d happily pay for this privilege) without having to do so for the wider set of accounts.
So in summary. If you like it, pay for it. Otherwise, you may lose it.
How the BBC might personalise its content
I have a dream.
I’d like to be able to rate my interest in the categories in BBC News. On a scale of 1–10, say.
Upon being published, the BBC will score every single story on an importance/significance scale of 1–10. And articles will automatically be given a recency score, from 10 (breaking news) to 1, a couple of days old.
In putting together my personalised BBC News homepage, the BBC will multiply these three scores together for each article: my interest * importance * recency. So each article gets a score out of 1,000. And articles will be presented to me according to that score.
A similar methodology could be used for the BBC Sport site, with articles about sports I’m not overly interested in only coming to the fore when there’s little else going on, or if they’re sufficiently significant/recent to trump my content of interest.
Sound sensible?
iPhone star gazing
Alan wrote an interesting post about the Directgov Travel News app. for the iPhone, assessing its worth according to, among other things, the star ratings given by users.
The iPhone app. review system is somewhat flawed, in that you’re only prompted to review an app. if you delete it from your iPhone. So the scorings are artificially low as a result.
If I see an app. that has an average of 4 stars, I’ve historically equated this to 80%; 3 to 60%; 2 to 40% and 1 to 20%. But in fact, this is wrong.
When you rate an app., you’re invited to grade it from 1 to 5. So the inability to give an application zero stars suggests that 1 equates to 0%, and 5 equates to 100%. So 2 represents 25%, 3 is 50% and 4 is 75%.
Minor point, but worth documenting. Or not.
Haiti: the need for a trusted charity donations app.
I need not echo the words that so many have already voiced with regard to the sympathy and the need to help Haiti. Perhaps no one has voiced them more clearly than Jay Smooth here.
Soon after the devastating earthquake, there were requests for help, particularly for donations. 90999 was widely publicised on Twitter as a number to text, costing $10 plus the cost of the text. And more recently, 70077 has been publicised similarly, allegedly aligned to the Disasters Emergency Committee, texts costing £5. (I have not previously heard of this committee.)
I would like to donate. But I have no way of understanding the authenticity of the organisations behind these text numbers. And so I’m nervous about donating through them, both because they may screw me for way more money than I thought, and because I have no way of knowing whether the money will indeed go towards the disaster to which I think I’m donating.
Yet my phone is such a well-suited device from which to contribute. It is convenient and it already has a direct debit (to O2, or to Apple) to support any contributions made.
There is a desperate need for an iPhone application released by a trusted body (possibly a charity, possibly the government, possibly Apple, even) within which users can donate to charities that subscribe, charities that are vetted by the trusted body with an independently-written description.
The application would be simple. Click, choose or search for your charity of choice and enter a donation amount. When prompted, enter your iTunes password (if this is indeed the authentication method of choice) after which you’re presented with a confirmation screen. Close the application and then go about your business.
I would happily pay an extra £1 on top of every donation I make to fund the trusted body in its management of the charities on the application. And I’m sure charities would happily pay a subscription to feature in the app.
Does it have legs?
Wessex County Council
I was asked at workto put together a scenario recently of someone in government wanting to do something. (There were more details, but I won’t share them here.)
Within 24 hours, I put the scenario together. I tried to give it a bit of reality so dreamt up a fictional character (Dave Clarke) and gave him a job title, the CIO of Wessex County Council. (For those not in the know, Wessex was disbanded in 1066, its land divided among the followers of William the Conqueror.)
I sent the email to the two people who requested the scenario—from my own account, but all in Dave’s name. Five paragraphs with a moderate amount of flowery detail. I even added a wessex.gov.uk email address to his signature, along with a fictional phone number, using the 846 local code saved by BT for use in films and on TV, much like America’s 555 prefix.
Despite the email coming from my own account, both recipients thought the email was a genuine request for help. Both responded offering services to Dave. (Dave’s chuffed to bits.)
Given my success in duping two people—a 100% success rate thus far, albeit entirely unintended—the next phase of the plan will be to roll out Wessex County Council. Letterhead is currently being printed and we have put out fictional tenders for IT services and office space. I’m expecting healthy levels of response to both.
We will, obviously, need to begin a major recruitment drive as we’re setting up from scratch to provide a wide range of services to a large, if non-existent population.
To do all of this, there will, of course, need to be significant funding provided by HM Treasury. Again, I’m confident that this will be forthcoming. It’s a crazy world, after all.
Skype: a review
I took a while to adopt Skype. But now that I have the business need to use it, I love it, partly because of the business need, but mostly because the product has evolved.
I wasn’t happy when Skype tied me to my PC. That’s not how people make/take or want to make/take calls. They want to make calls with the freedom with which mobile technology has provided them. And even if I’m sitting on my sofa talking to someone, I don’t want the hassle of an accompanying laptop or the inability to move around if I so choose.
I dabbled with Skype when we lived in the US, but audio only, and the above constraints meant that it was a less-than-pleasing experience.
But now: I love Skype. I use it for both personal and work purposes, and I would be annoyed if it was taken from me. I started using it again when I downloaded the Skype iPhone app. It only works over wireless, and I started using it to call the US of an evening—during the US working day—while within the range of my home wireless network. It allows me to call people directly from my iPhone contact list, and although not integrated into the phone functionality of the iPhone, it works just as well from the app.
I was recently sent an email confirming my Skype to Go number. This is an outer-London number (based on the STD code) that I can dial from my mobile phone (now in my contacts), after which it invites me to enter the number I want to dial, complete with country code (“followed by the pound, or hash key”). This new-found freedom means I can dial whoever I want from wherever I want (normal mobile reception allowing) for Skype rates.
To use this carefree, I use their auto-top-up feature which, similar to Oyster, tops my account up with a fixed amount whenever it falls below £5 of credit, emailing me a receipt in the process. Beautiful. Earlier today, I called a hotel in Luxembourg without even thinking about how much the call was costing me. (I just looked it up: 1.2p per minute plus the cost of my London call (which was included in my “free” mobile minutes anyway.))
The only pain with the Skype to Go approach is that I have to write down or remember the number I want to call before calling Skype to Go. But even this obstacle can be overcome through the ability to add speed-dial numbers to my Skype to Go number.
And finally, here’s the icing on the cake. I tried calling my Skype to Go number from a landline today, to see whether it instead routed the call to my mobile. It doesn’t. But it did ask me to authenticate myself, after which I was able to make whatever calls I wanted. From the landline. Using my Skype credit.
All in all, I’m a convert. I love it.
I’d like it if their next step was to enable cheap calls from your mobile to international numbers when abroad. And there should be a way, in my opinion, of using my Wii’s internet connection to use Skype. Now that would be fun. Just sit on the sofa and you can talk to whomever you choose, and their voice comes out of the TV. FTW.
Sharing needs de-duplication and context
There are a number of media out there at the moment that invite you to give some form of acceptance of a piece of content. Google Reader allows you to star, like, share or email a post, or indeed send it to Facebook or Twitter. And Twitter allows you to retweet stuff. Add to this people’s ability to feed certain things (such as their Google Reader shared items) to other media (e.g. Twitter) and it adds up to quite a bit of confusion, and often lots of duplication.
I have a friend, for example, who is a “friend” on Google, who I follow on Twitter and who subscribes to some of the same websites as I do on Google Reader. In some instances, I’ll be directed to a single post three times: on his Twitter feed, in my “People you follow” area of Google Reader, and through my own subscription to that site on Google Reader. Other friends push their Twitter feed to Facebook and even have a weekly Twitter wrap-up, again resulting in the same content being “appreciated” three times. Not good.
It would be useful if there was some way of suppressing content that I’ve already seen through another medium, but I suspect given the tactical ways in which this functionality has evolved, and the competition between the various medium owners, this is unlikely.
Also, Google Reader kindly tells me how many other people like the post, almost trying to give it some level of acceptance with which to cloud my own judgment. I happen to like this, but the number in isolation is somewhat meaningless. Twenty people liking one of my posts would be an unequivocal success (hell, one would be nice!); while twenty people liking an xkcd post would indicate low levels of appeal. It would be much better to give this a more contextual score based on the number of subscribers. Or better still, based on the number of subscribers that have thus far accessed it. So if I have ten subscribers and get three “likes”, then this would be given the same score as 11,893 of xkcd’s 35,678 subscribers liking one of its posts. And the post’s popularity score might be further weighted by the pull of my various followers. So Seth Godin liking one of my posts would carry more weight than my liking one of his.
Just a thought.
Twitter: what to do with a follower
I’m after a piece of logic to work out what to do with “people” who follow me on Twitter. There are three possible actions (or inactions) I should take for a follower:
- Ignore
- Block
- Follow back
Ignore is the action associated with accounts that are harmless but whose content is unlikely to be sufficiently pertinent to inspire me. Block is for harmful accounts or those with few morals. And follow back is saved for those accounts whose contents is genuinely interesting to me.
Now there are three pieces of information pertaining to the follower that should be sufficient to determine an appropriate course of action:
- Number of followers
- Number of people they are following
- Number of tweets
Those three pieces of data should be sufficient to work out whether to ignore or block them. If the algorithm determines that neither action is appropriate, then I the decision whether to follow them back should be driven by me, as I’d be uncomfortable this being automated.
I’d be happy for Twitter to learn from my behaviour to figure out the most appropriate tuning of the algorithm for my tastes. In the meantime, any suggestions for formulae for ignoring and blocking?
Core blimey
Not much of note of late. But I did come second in the Defra apple-peeling competition recently, with a mighty 1m 54cm. Not quite FTW, but certainly noteworthy. I beat our Minister into fifth place.
And for the record, it was a Granny Smith. And I still had a third of the apple left when the peel tore. Argh.
Good and bad design: passports, cables and .dots
I’ve been thinking lately about the amount of effort that goes into product and service design, specifically when compared to the amount of usage that product or service is expected to attract.
I present four examples:
- CAT5 connectors: bad design, but forgiveable
- The UK Passport Service appointment system: great design
- Recruitment Agency CV templates: bad design, unforgiveable
- USB connectors: bad design, unforgiveable
The CAT5 Ethernet cable connector is rubbish. (Geeks can launch their tirade at this juncture if I’ve mis-used the term CAT5 (or indeed the words Ethernet and cable). In pristine condition, it snaps into place beautifully, but you’re equally likely to pick up a cable with that little plastic bit having come off as you are encountering one that’s still intact. (In fact, that little plastic thing deserves a name, such is the annoyance when it’s missing. Always better to be able to curse something by name.)
But as a colleague informed me, they were designed for servers and switches, devices that hardly ever move. So their ability to survive swathes of careless laptop users shoving the cable into their devices and yanking them out again without a care in the world was never designed into the product.
Now to the Passport Service. I recently bought my daughter her first passport, and the end-to-end experience was utter pleasure. I completed the form with the relevant countersignature, had my daughter pose for a photo and called the Passport Service one Thursday to book an appointment. They offered me Monday, which I couldn’t make, so I opted for Tuesday lunchtime.
I arrived ten minutes early for my 1.20pm appointment and was seen at 1.27pm. I was out of the building by 1.35pm having visited one counter to submit the appropriate documentation and another to pay. The passport arrived in the mail three days later. This is a service that was clearly designed in beautiful detail, every step designed to save hassle and maximise efficiency. The appointment system was a joy to behold, particularly for someone who had the misfortune of suffering its predecessor, Petty France.
The average recruitment agency CV template is shocking. It’s used and abused, fonts proliferating, styles leaking into one another and the general formatting leaving a lot to be desired. (The quality of the text therein is probably the subject of a tirade of its own.) On the rare occasion when formatting is consistent, its look and feel is usually so dreadfully bad as to put you off the content therein.
But when designed, the agency must have known that the CV would get some serious usage. They must have been aware that this was the shop front for the agency, the most important template they would ever create. So I’m afraid there are no excuses for this one.
And finally, the USB cable, like the Ethernet cable, is rubbish. Its fundamental flaw is that at a glance it looks to be 180° rotationally symmetrical. But it’s not. And so 50% of the time, you (or I, at least) fail miserably when trying to shove the cable into my laptop. But unlike the Ethernet cable before it, there are no excuses here. The inventors of this one knew that the cable would be used heavily, and that it would be in and out like a proverbial you-know-what.
So of the four examples that have presented themselves to me recently, the government wins hands down. Are there any other examples out there—good or bad—worthy of a mention?
Media: where’s it going?
I had a conversation with my brother last night about, among other things, the dynamics that are going on in the world of media. I found it quite interesting, sufficiently so to share. So here’s sharing.
Traditionally, the benefits of advertising have been relatively difficult to quantify. So people have done it on the off-chance that it works (i.e. its benefits outweigh its costs), and in the fear that if they pull it, things will turn to dust.
New media (or new meejah) has now come along and made advertising way more measurable. If things work (and are proven to work), then do more of the same. If they don’t, then pull them. Meanwhile, media owners in the less direct media (i.e. those that are generally about enhancing the brand than getting someone to click on the link or pick up the phone) are suffering. A good example here is TV. ITV is losing money hand over fist, partly because of the recession, but also in part because people are questioning the overall value of TV advertising. Further, with the likes of Sky+ and V+ becoming more commonplace, there is no longer a need to sit through adverts. (I generally watch Sunday night’s X Factor in about 16 minutes, avoiding the bulk of each performance and the adverts that litter the programme itself. A question for another time: does my active focus on the advertising as I try to perfectly-time hitting the play button make it more effective?)
Now the trouble is, traditionally the media owners have made a wedge of cash and used that very wedge to cross-subsidise the making of programming that, in isolation, isn’t worthwhile financially but which enhances the value and perception of their medium. Wildlife programmes may be a good example of this: they’re costly to make and don’t necessarily draw the same viewing figures as an X Factor, but they’re made to broaden the range of the channel and the overall appeal of the offering. And it goes even wider than this: for the big boys like News International, they can afford to keep the Sun website going because of the wedge of cash they make out of Sky. (Note here the difference between Sky the platform and Sky the media channel.)
Now with the media owners struggling, they will focus more and more on doing the profitable and avoiding the unprofitable, likely at the detriment of the overall quality of TV programming, perhaps even bringingabout the demise of TV as we know it.
The internet revolution means that people are less and less willing to pay for stuff (although the escalating costs of entertainment platforms into the home seem to buck this trend). And given that advertising is increasingly seen as an ineffective method of paying for good quality programming (TV advertising costs have reduced by 15% in the last twelve months), the only logical outcome is for TV to become unviable, just as newspapers seem to be going. (While the cost of content delivery is variable, the cost of producing good quality programming is somewhat fixed.)
But people generally miss things when they’re gone, as John Willshire pointed out with respect to Media Week and its recent move to an online-only medium. And rarely are those people given the choice (not that they’d necessarily take it) to pay to save what they unknowingly love. So unless there are some forces that come into play fundamentally change the dynamics of the media industry, we’ll lose some stuff that we love but aren’t prepared to pay for: newspapers and TV to name but a couple.
Thanks to Ben for the insight.
Ministers: stop tiffing about!
Once in a proverbial blue moon, I receive an email containing a communication from a government minister. They’re not sent to me directly. Instead they’re forwarded a number of times until eventually they end up in my inbox. Today’s example was from an MP to another MP.
The letter is always attached to the email as a tif file. And the tif is a multi-page file (scanned at a jaunty angle) containing a scanned letter. It’s often on letterhead with the MP’s details and is always typed with a hand-written signature and, depending on the MP, sometimes a handwritten salutation up top.
I’m always amused by the process that I assume must go on in advance of the file arriving in my inbox.
- Minister dictates letter into Dictaphone
- Secretary types up the letter
- Secretary prints the letter and gives to minister for amendments
- Minister makes handwritten amendments to letter and hands back to secretary
- Secretary makes amendments on the electronic copy
- Secretary prints the letter and gives to minister for amendments
- Repeat steps 4, 5 and 6 as necessary
- Minister tops and tails the letter and hands back to secretary
- Secretary scans letter at a jaunty angle and saves the file as a tif
- Secretary emails tif to the intended recipients.
Genius. Utter genius.
Don’t jump to the Cloud until you’re pushed
The Cloud is a wonderful concept. The marketing blurb will read something like this:
You can put whatever applications you want in the Cloud at the touch of a button. The underlying hardware will be invisible to you, and you can manage your applications at a virtual level, moving storage around as you see fit, moving your virtual machines around as you see fit.
If you predict a seasonal peak in activity, the Cloud can immediately divert CPU resource to your application to make sure that it can cope. And if you no longer have a need for your application, it can be turned off at the touch of a button.
The reality is somewhat different. Mainly because rarely do organisations use vanilla applications. And the vast majority of applications that the marketing spiel appeals for are already built, having built on a physical architecture upon which it is reliant.
A while ago, I project managed the migration of one such application from its old home to a new home. The data centre it was in was going to close come what may, and the legacy kit was near end of life. So the decision was made to re-build the hardware from the ground up, using some lovely blade technology. We upgraded the odd COTS application along the way to bring it up to speed. And there was a little virtualisation in there to boot, I believe. (I’m not a techie. But I had a good bunch of techies around me who knew the detail.)
The migration was painful. It was hard. It took longer than originally planned (although perhaps not longer than some people originally expected) and there were some bugs that were difficult to resolve, rooted deep in the modules within COTS applications—not necessarily bugs in the applications themselves, but issues in our own application that were symptomatic of the way in which the supporting COTS application had evolved.
If we had been going to a fully virtualised environment, I believe I’m right in thinking that things would have been no easier. Many of the same issues would have arisen, along with issues specific to moving to a fully virtualised set of environments.
Because of the headache and cost involved in re-platforming applications, there needs to be an impetus other than Cloud itself to move to a Cloud model. This external factor may be the forced closure of a data centre, the need to re-platform owing to operating systems or COTS lapsing out of support or the unacceptable aging of the supporting hardware. Or it may be the introduction of a brand new application—if a Cloud environment already exists, build it there.
Without the external impetus, the extraordinary cost and hassle that results from a migration cannot be justified. Yes, the ongoing hosting costs may be cheaper, as you pay for what you use and no more. And yes, your application may be more flexible in its new world. But in most instances these benefits would be outweighed many times over by the cost of migration. And don’t let people kid you otherwise.
We customers are not peas
Just when did companies become so big as to act as though they were several different companies?
For many companies, customer service has long been an afterthought. Yet the recent trend has been for companies to actively pursue customer disservice.
Aviva was one recent example. I was passed from pillar to post, all the while paying the extortionate rates O2 were no doubt chargine me to call an 0845 (”local rate”) number from my mobile. But instead of handing my call off, I was asked to call another number, because the operator I was speaking to couldn’t assist with my enquiry. When I did eventually get the £1,000+ owed to me, there was no sign of an apology.
Lloyds TSB is my most recent example. I’m still awaiting a call back from someone in business banking to confirm why a cheque from my business account to my personal account (both with Lloyds TSB) bounced, despite ridiculous headroom for the cheque to clear. Personal telephone banking couldn’t deal with the query, but asked me to call a different number (at a different time, as they work different hours) to chase the business side of the company.
And heaven forbid you ask someone to call you back. Many call centres don’t allow out-bound calls. Some time ago, I missed a call from British Gas. I called them back but the relevant department was closed. On asking them to call me back, I was told they don’t do outbound calling. Er, yes you do. Otherwise, how would I be able to respond to this voicemail?
Companies merge and companies diversify their offerings. And in doing so, they lose sight entirely of the customer. Making money and creating efficiency (for themselves) becomes more important than the experience of the customer. No beef that a customer has to call a few different numbers and spend money on the call (despite his mobile service provider giving him free minutes to cover bog-standard numbers), so long as the call centre staff can follow a script and can process the callers as if they were shelling peas.
Streetcar has got this model right. As well as their cheap rate number, they also publish their landline number. Where’s the hassle in that? And when I call, the person who answers my call is polite, knows what they’re talking about and always addresses the issue I called about, often throwing in an hour’s free driving to account for my inconvenience at having to call in the first place.
We customers are not peas. We come in all shapes and sizes, and our needs are often different from those of our fellow customers. Go ahead, streamline your processes and get efficient. But don’t do so at the detriment of providing a decent service.
Cabbies: think of the customer
I use about 1.2 taxis per week. The 1 is a given. I have a meeting that runs a little late on a day I pick up my daughter from nursery. The bus isn’t sufficiently reliable to get me there before closing, an option with which I fear that my daughter will be tied to the railing when I arrive to save her from walking away on her own, the nursery lights turned out and the place deserted. (I have no idea what actually happens if you rock up after closing time—nor do I want to find out.)
The additional 0.2 is to account for one taxi I might use about five weeks, one that I get either out of necessity or out of luxury. Rarely the latter.
Anyway, I was in a taxi recently, and was discussing with the very pleasant driver my ideas for how GPS could connect prospective passengers with taxis whose orange lights are burning bright. He talked of some old system that used to be in place to alert people of pick-ups in their area, but that it died a death (a) because the taxi driver had to pay for the privilege of the introduction, (b) because the cabbie suffered a reduced utilisation owing to the drive to their prospective passenger’s pick-up point, and (c) because the cabbie often had to ignore a bunch of hailers along the way.
(My idea, btw, is to develop a free iPhone app. for prospective passengers to allow them to say exactly where they are trying to hail a London cab; and a sister, paid-for app. for cabbies to be made aware of this information.)
Not once in the conversation did the cabbie reference the customer experience. It was all about what was good for the cabbie, or more to the point what wasn’t. I was suggesting pairing a cabbie trundling along a deserted Charlotte Street with a prospective passenger on Whitfield Street (the next street along), who otherwise wouldn’t have encountered one another. The cabbie might pick up a fare if they were quickest to the pick-up. While the passenger would get home a few minutes earlier than they otherwise might have, possibly a little drier too (on a night like tonight).
It’s not an app. that I’d have much use for. But I think there is some proverbial mileage in it, particularly if the cabbies start thinking about the customer experience, rather than solely the bottom line.
It’s a lottery
Let’s assume I bought a Euromillions lottery ticket in the UK on Friday. And I didn’t check the result that evening, but knew that 300 million likeminded people across Europe also bought a ticket for that draw.
I am then told that the £90m jackpot is to be split between the owners of two tickets, both of which were bought in the UK. On knowing that information, do the odds of me having the winning ticket increase?
I then find out that one of the winning tickets is owned by someone who lives on my street. (This piece is fiction, btw.) Do my chances of winning increase?
It’s like the Monty Hall problem. And no. They don’t.
Ça va? Ça va. The French are lazy
I work with a French lady. Out of respect for her language, and in an effort to introduce a little office-based banter, I make a rather trivial attempt to make her feel at home each morning with a standard greeting: ça va?
She always plays back to me my question, without the questioning intonation at the end: ça va.
If you think about it (and I never have before), it’s just plain lazy. And particularly non-committal.
Does it go?
It goes.
It goes is hardly an underlining of one’s joie de vivre, to coin another Frenchism. Yet I suppose we Brits are similarly ambivalent when it comes to stock responses.
How are you?
I’m fine.
But as I said to another colleague recently, rarely does the questioner care much as to the answer to the question. Certainly people are freaked out if you as an enquirer are particularly intent on the answer, and if you continue the conversation with follow-up questions to ascertain more detail.
Get away from me, you freak!
I’m tempted to start using the French approach in the future, informing colleagues on asking as to my general well-being that: it goes.