Jananas

I’m looking at adopting a doggo this winter. However once its winter the ground will be too cold/frozen to be able to put a fence in. So, if I want to adopt this winter I had to think far enough ahead to have a new fence put in this summer.  We’d taken down my back fence to get some deconstruction junk out of the backyard but this meant that the yard was no longer ‘secure’. The old fence was also 1.5 feet too far into the laneway (which is public) and I wanted to rectify that.

Gus Sinclair had done some work for my neighbours and at the recommendation, we contacted him. He was super quick to get back to me and come out for an initial consult. The estimate took about a week to get to me (by e-mail which was great). I okayed it and within two hours guys were at my house getting started. There was a bunch of rock/rubble that prevented the fence from being built right on the property line so the workmen removed that first. The next day the carpenter came out and got started building. Within a week everything was built and it looks awesome. The carpenter even spent the time to put in little wire loops on the gates so that we can open them from the other side!

First up is the new gate into the little alleyway between houses. The old one got caught and frozen shut in the winter. Sadly, I wasn’t able to replace the entire fence along this side as my neighbour is old (think 91!) and on a very limited budget. The dark brown fence is on the wobbly side, but the new gate will hold well enough to keep a dog secure in the backyard.

This is the new back fence. Its definitely improved as there’s now a gate so that we have access via the laneway out back! The lilac tree is now on the other side of the fence, which is a little strange. Sadly, the workmen trampled some of the plants out back (the big dirt stretch used to be plants). Thankfully my roommate transplanted the nicer ones so that we can easily replant. You can also see how well the thyme she planted this spring is doing – its on its way to becoming a dense groundcover.

The end result? I’m super happy with Gus’ communication and the quality of work! I’d definitely recommend him to other people and use him again myself next time I need work done at the house.

In terms of dogs, there is a bit of a gap under the lefthand side of the fence. I don’t see this being a problem as I’m a big fan of, well, big dogs. So well something small and toy could more than likely squeeze their way out, there’s no way my previous dog (an 80lb lab) would have been able to.

This is the sort of experience where I feel like I’m living an interview question. It shows forethought, an ability to plan, and responsible behaviour. And this is all so that I can adopt a dog in 5+ months…

Sometime earlier this year Rogers redid their on demand services. Its been bugging me ever since and this morning I was finally motivated to take a picture of the screen that drives me jananas.

When I want to watch on demand, I punch in the channel number (e.g. 308 or 309). The following screen comes up.

I’ve already selected the channel I want to watch, so why do I have to press another button in order to get there? My guess is that loading the on demand channels takes up relatively more bandwidth, so they don’t want people who are channel surfing to waste that bandwidth/slow the system down when they flip past it. Understanding that, why are you making the experience of people who want to watch this channel more difficult?

Instead, why not implement a time delay on the channel? Five seconds would be enough so that people who are flipping past wouldn’t ‘load’ the channel (and use up bandwidth) and it would also mean that the rest of us who want to watch the channel don’t have to press another button to get to it.

Underlying all of this is that you want to make it easier for people to use your product, not make it more difficult. All they’ve accomplish for me is that everytime I try to watch things on demand I get frustrated and annoyed. When customers are annoyed just by receiving their basic services (i.e. those that they pay for), they are going to be a lot less accomodating and understanding when a real service or quality issue comes up.

I’ve written about it before, but I enjoy doing puzzles. I’m currently working on my third of the summer. Post-MBA, I’ve had business (and good business practices) on my mind a lot. Somehow the two – puzzles and business – have become co-mingled in my brain.

What do puzzles have to do with business? Its all about pattern recognition. Its about the ability to sort through what at first seems like 1000 unconnected pieces, and slowly finding the patterns, tying them together, and building a cohesive image/model. Its about knowing when you need to take a break and step away from the detail. Its about knowing when to allow your brain the time it needs to process information. Its about not feeling pressured to get something done ‘right now’ when you’re taking that time to process.

To me, the puzzle is a good analogy for what so much of business is. And its a good reminder about how important is to take time to think (even unconsciously) things through.

I’ve watched a lot of outsourcing happen within businesses. As a customer I’ve had plenty of bad experiences (although to be fair, I probably couldn’t tell you how many good experiences I’ve had as those would have been too similar to a non-outsourced experience to identify). Overall, I’m not a huge fan of outsourcing. I have found that, more often than not, companies rush to outsource because they see the initial cost savings. The increased costs and time associated with management of the outsourced provider tend to downplayed. I believe that this is dangerous given how important things like quality assurance and customer experience are to a business’ long term survival.

Here’s an example from a previous life that illustrates what can happen when outsourcing doesn’t work out quite the way that you’ve planned…

Customer: I’d like to report a car accident.

Insurance CSR: What happened sir?

Customer: I hit black ice.

CSR: Sir, ice is white.

The problem in this particular case was that the CSR was in India and the customer was in Canada. The phenomenon of black ice occurring in the winter was something that an individual in a more tropical client would have never encountered. In this particular case, the CSR had no way or personal experience that would help them understand that this situation was indeed a valid reason for a car accident. And while we can rationally understand this, as a customer who has just been in a car accident the overall result is a company who isn’t able to help him.

With outsourcing, a lot of time and effort is put into training the CSRS. Training on accents so that they sound more like the country calls are originating from. Training to help the CSRS make sense of cultural differences. The problem here is that cultural training is only as good as the person defining the potential scenarios that could happen. This person also has to have an in depth understanding of both cultures, otherwise cultural differences can impact the quality of service (through no one’s fault other than the initial decision to move the service provider).

I know that I write a lot about customer experience. Its because I believe that it vital to long term success of your business. You may have to spend more money in the short term (i.e. more testing before you launch, a better designed product, etc.), but I believe that such investments pay off in the longer term. Better products today mean more satisfied customers (as an aside, they also mean easier product launches in the future and therefore save money on development down the line). Customers who are more satisfied and who have good interactions with the company (and these can still be good even when the situation that caused them isn’t) become loyal customers. And loyal customers don’t need to be bribed to stay or threatened with contracts. They will stick with you in rough patches and recommend you to friends.

And that’s why you need to be careful when you outsource. Because business isn’t just about tomorrow’s revenues, its about revenues 25 years down the line.

I wrote yesterday about Human Terrain Systems and how they can be used as a substitute for market research within companies, specifically for financial services in the example provided. Here’s another problem and application.

We’ve all experienced problems within corporations wherein information and history is lost. Many of us have worked on projects that have been cancelled and brought back to life multiple times over a number of years. What tends to happen is that much of the information is lost from one iteration to the next. Staff are reassigned and move departments. We rely on word of mouth and memory of our colleagues (who hopefully remember who worked on it previously) to help us get started again. In the meantime we waste time and energy recreating the wheel, instead of using the learnings from previous experiences to help us get to market faster.

I’ve had experiences where I was project manager on a small sized project to launch more targeted marketing materials, thus saving money and providing high returns on future programs. During the year I worked on it I had no less than four different product leads (from the same department) assigned to it. Not once did staff pass on knowledge when leaving the project, instead leaving me to bring each new staff member up to speed on a project initiated by their department.

Today, much of this sort of information is held informally within the organization. Each staff member has a network of people they know and projects that they’ve been involved in. When we are looking for a particular piece of information, we have to put feelers out and hope that someone can point us in the right direction (and that they bother to do so!). While this works to an extent, there are many potential points of failure – all of which are detrimental to the organization.

Without a formalized way to capture what projects staff have worked on during their careers (and what they specialized in), we are doomed to continue repeating these kinds of mistakes. In doing so, we continue to waste time recreating the wheel. The effect of this is to: waste staff’s time (they could be doing something else), delay launch, and create frustration which makes employees disengage from their work.

A potential solution is, again, to use HTS teams – only this time within the organization. Working with HR, an HTS team can collect data on when employees worked on projects, what areas those projects touched, what skill sets they require, etc. The end result would be a sort of system (think of a Facebook spin off to give you a visual) that would have an entry for each staff member. Down the road when you wanted to start up a project that was put on hold a few years ago, you can quickly look up who was involved and discuss the former project. This allows for quicker knowledge transfer and reduces the amount of time spent waiting or going down paths that have long ago been proven to be not useful.

Interestingly, such a system could also more easily identify staff with a unique set of experiences and skills. For example, lets say you are looking for a person with experience in operations and sound recording but have no one in your operations department that meets the criteria. You may have someone elsewhere in the company who does have the required skills. By searching, you could easily identify the person and ask them to lend a helping hand on your project (i.e. point you in the right direction, provide feedback, etc.). Such a system also requires a corporate culture that encourages helping others out, but I’m also a firm believer that such a corporate culture is a more fulfilling and productive environment in which to work.

Again, any thoughts?