tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48288477616136083312024-02-08T14:12:53.742+00:00The Management of DisinformationIssues of information management, issues of poor practice and possible resolutions. HCI, Human factors, Design, computers.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4828847761613608331.post-38799767725379246132014-05-07T21:21:00.001+01:002014-05-08T09:15:34.930+01:00The Orange infinite loop of customer deathCustomer disservice has reached a new nadir.<br />
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d the circle of madness that can only be designed by computer programmers that have been very lazy. I call the number to top up the phone and proceed through the stages of having a automated service which is voice activated. I get through the service until the "lady" wants to know my surname. When I tell her, she does not recognise it. She asks me again to say my name, I comply. She fails to recognise it again. Now she is obviously losing her temper as she speaks patronisingly to me that she wants my last name. I tell her one last time my surname, which she mishears and says she cannot continue instead I need to talk with someone.<br />
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This is the first error as I can clearly spell my name but this is not requests or suggested. Instead I am transferred to the voice service.</div>
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After various multiple choices I am told that I do not have enough credit as the call costs 25p per minute. Why charge 25p for a call to a potential human. Surely it is in the interest of the company to maintain happy customers, so this should be free. This is business suicide.</div>
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Now this is the second and compounding error. If I had credit why would I need to speak to them to top my phone up?</div>
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So I go online an register... Or think I register... Only to be informed that the phone number is not recognised.</div>
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After various failed attempts I finally decide to seek help online.</div>
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I find the online help and eventually Poppy comes online. The lag between my writing and her replying imply she might also be an automated service.</div>
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Poopy basically tells me to go to an EE shop to sort this out. Well that is helpful I thought, apart from the fact I live kn ths countryside and I do not have an EE shop nearby. I pointed this out to her and was directed to a webpage, which it turns out was was one I had already visited.</div>
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I vet a brainwave and download the EE app and it tells me I have activated my SIM but the number is not recognised.</div>
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So after two hours of my life being wasted by stupidity I am left with a phone with the SIM in it that can receive calls but cannot make them. </div>
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Tomorrow I will go to Tesco or somewhere similar to purchase an unkocked phone so I can put in a GiffGaff SIM card. I have been with Giffgaff for a year now and had no such stupid issues that I have with EE/Orange. The GiffGaff PAYG service seems excellent and allows free calls to other GiffGaff phones so calls to my son would be free. Although GiffGaff uses the O2 network they seem to not suffer from Big Business syndrome which EE clearly do.</div>
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I am sad. My first mobile was Orange. They were a good provider untill fhey decided to stop some local ariels in the process of being amulgamated with EE. Since then service is patchy to say the least and poor at best.</div>
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So EE or Orange. Here is one customer you will have to work very hard on to get back again.</div>
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This is a classic case of when automation is taken to such an extent that the omission of real people is effecting their real potential customers.<br />
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In sum, EE/Orange:<br />
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1) Do not offer a SIM card if you will not allow someone to top it up simply via a card without requiring credit in the first place.<br />
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2) Do not provide software based systems that rely on audio recognition of names when they are clearly inappropriate for the job.<br />
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3) Do not provide Automated Voice recognition programmes which have a person apparently getting cross and patronising when the system is at fault for not recognising the name. In fact why get a person to apparently get laboured when speaking to your customers. <b>This is the customers first contact with your service</b> and the customer should be treated with respect and as correct at all times not made to feel stupid beacause your technology is rediculous.<br />
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4) Do not save money by removing real people from key jobs such as providing help. Also do not charge 25p per minute for the opportunity to speak to someone unless there is a guarantee of a fast fix otherwise you are no better than the UK Tax office and are using customers help as a income generation.<br />
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5) Do not have a system that relies on a new customer trying to give you money requiring to be connected to a paid service in order to top up their new SIM card. Anyone who wants to PAYG will not have money on the SIM so cannot use the paid service. Furthermore, no one will want to use their credit to purchase credit from you. This is rediculous.<br />
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6) If you are a phone and broadband provider it is sensible to have sufficient resources for someone who requires help to have the answers easily available to them.<br />
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7) When you design any system it is important in the usability testing that the customer is the focus of the design. Real cost savings are made by retaining customer satisfaction and providing good service.<br />
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EE/Orange - Fail</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4828847761613608331.post-80596527393674904232013-02-04T20:48:00.001+00:002013-02-04T20:52:56.689+00:00The noise suffered by the technology slave<p dir=ltr>Beep!</p>
<p dir=ltr>Our brand new technological world is exciting to be part of. Things we only dreamed about we can now do in a fraction of a second.  If we need information it is there in front of us. We can talk to our technology and It will provide sensible responses, some of the time. But are we masters of our technology or does technology rule us?</p>
<p dir=ltr>I think we are possibly the slaves.</p>
<p dir=ltr>To illustrate this think about the noise in your home that is technologically derived. Excluding the obvious TV, radio, mp3 player etc, we all live with a considerable level of technologically driven noise. It is almost impossible to buy a domestic appliance that does not omit some form of annoying noise designed to attract attention. The washing maching, the dishwasher, the clothes dryer all beep to say they are starting and beep to say they have finished. The domestic person is becoming trained like a lab rat to notice the different tones and action any offending beep, by taking out the washing, removing the clean cups etc.</p>
<p dir=ltr>Our cookers and microwaves beep, as do our mobile devices which make a range of noises depending on how they are set up. For many of us, the setting for silent is a blessing, or a simple vibrate makes the activity of monitoring your skcig media more pleasant. Yet, I note we are all monitoring our media continually, afraid in case me miss something "important" amongst the dross of emails, texts, blogs, tweets and other posts we help co-produce.</p>
<p dir=ltr>We are even unable to do what use to be considered something relaxing, by rich I refer to driving, without being beeped at. My car beeps if I am not wearing a seat belt,  as well as when it is below 3 degrees and when a service is required or a possble fault is discovered. When I crossthe road I await for the beep at the lights.</p>
<p dir=ltr>We are surrounded by noise pollution which is a result of our uptake of technology.</p>
<p dir=ltr>We decided to buy the computer, the phone,  the tablet computer, the mp3 player, the washing machine, the dryer, the dishwasher, the wii, the playstation, the DS; the list could fill this page. </p>
<p dir=ltr>We are also duped by technology that purports to do things but fails to live up to expectations. Two things spring to mind that I have purchased recently are a washing machine and a clothes dryer. The washing machine does clean the clothes but takes twice as long as my previous one, but this one is ecologically friendly but this means the amount of washing I can do in one day is half that achieved by my old unecological one. The dryer is another nuissance as apart from taking hours to dry things the clothes come out damp, somewhat defeating the single point of the thing and meaning I spend longer drying already supposedly dry clothing. Beep... its dry! Oh no it is not! Beep, its on again...</p>
<p dir=ltr>We are also slaves to the technology upgrade, but that is another blog entry all on its own.</p>
<p dir=ltr>What is evident, is that we are surrounded by noise that is computer generated and are trained to respond to this far faster and more literally than in any previous time in history.</p>
<p dir=ltr>Is this a good thing? Are we really slaves or willing participants to some S&M technological fantasy?</p>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4828847761613608331.post-32286608944128083022012-06-21T15:03:00.000+01:002012-06-21T15:06:58.905+01:00A taxing postWhen is security insecure?<br />
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Having contacted the tax office to enquire about something, I was greeted by the obligatory security questions. Now this is my first time at contacting the tax office for over three years, so I am somewhat shocked that they have developed security questions to keep me from my data.<br />
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As the security questions proceeded I was asked for an address I used to live at, now, I am not sure about you, but I tend to forget where I use to live, as I am now living somewhere different. So being asked to recall an address I lived at some years ago including postcode is not a security question it is a memory test.<br />
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I of course failed. <br />
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So the twenty minute wait, that I had to endure to get to speak to someone from the tax office is now compounded by the fact I cannot actually talk to anyone without knowing all my previous addresses off by heart.<br />
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I understand the need for security, but we are rapidly becoming a society in which we are locked out from our own data due to crass security measures that are imposed upon us in "our interest". Nobody consulted me on the questions they were going to store, so I do not know to this day whether the information they hold is correct, if it is not, then I might never be able to access my own data. <br />
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So this again begs the question, if someone steels your identity, and accesses your tax office office records, how does one stop them changing all your details so that you are locked out forever?<br />
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I now have to trawl through paperwork to find the address where I use to live, and then will be asked another asinine question to which I do not know the answer and have to make even more calls.<br />
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I note that each time I call I have to pay for the call, so I am paying for my failure, or is it there's?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4828847761613608331.post-4720797749045795932012-05-17T12:50:00.000+01:002012-06-21T15:06:26.873+01:00Depersonifying technologies – Healthcare ICT failures...<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
A call to a mobile phone was recently received from a north
London hospital. The call was an
automated call, stating that an appointment had been made for a person at a
time and location.</div>
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As this happened to someone I was with at the time of the
call, I think it is important that this is illustrative of many ICT failures
within the NHS and many other businesses.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Let’s look at some of the core problems of which I see three
main issues.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span> </div>
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<br /></div>
<ol>
<li>The call was automated and therefore the
receiver could easily assume it is a crank or spam call from some sales company
in a distant country. This means the receiver of the call is unlikely to listen beyond the five to ten second rule.</li>
<li> The call was from a hospital about a hospital
appointment. This, to me, and I am sure
to many others, would be considered personal information, yet no attempt was
made to ascertain that the caller (the automated caller) had actually got the
correct person. No attempt was made to
see if the person on the other end of the phone was capable of taking the call.
Were they hard of hearing? Were they driving in a car? Were they on a building site? The auto-calling system assumes too many
things about the receiver of the call. I
still think that the basic of getting the correct person is the most important though. To me not doing this breaches all areas of
confidentiality. What if the call had
been a private matter which they did not want their partner to know about? What if their child picked up the call? When you start thinking on this line the whole
system is too ridiculous for words.</li>
<li> The caller informs the receiver of an
appointment. This is fair enough, apart from the fact that the receiver no
longer lives in London and although on repeated occasions has informed the
hospital concerned, and the people at the hospital have noted that she moved
two years ago, she still gets appointments.</li>
</ol>
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This point is a really important one. It shows a wealth of failures in the NHS ICT
systems. </div>
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a)<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>The system does not allow the receiver of the
call to respond to the message. It
basically tells the receiver of the appointment.<br />
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b)<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>The computer systems at the hospital are such
that although the person’s has told the hospital on many occasions she has
moved the hospital system to not allow her records to be taken off their system
easily.<br />
<br />
c)<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>This calls into question whether the said
hospital has passed her records to her new hospital or if they are still
retaining them due to a computer error or human error.<br />
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d)<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>The time and money spent on getting an automated
system that does not work well is not saving the NHS money it is costing them money
by making the NHS look stupid to the general public.
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The most concerning thing is that the NHS is a health
organisation and one that should provide the potential patient with confidence
and a feeling that they are being cared for. But none of this comes through
using an automated electronic voice that provides no real connection of two way
communication with the patient. </div>
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It seems this one thing is illustrative of a greater decline
in the inappropriate use of technology to
be used where real people would do a better, more personal and efficient
job. I have little doubt that the response
to this is that a computer can dial thousands of numbers and book millions of
things in a fraction of a second. Perhaps...
So what?? </div>
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In business, you are only as good as your reputation. If a telephone system means your reputation
suffers this is more costly than the savings accrued through its use. If a system is so inflexible and cumbersome
that it cannot all for two-way interaction then the organisation needs to
consider if it is the correct system.</div>
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This harks back to an old argument of quality versus quantity.
I suspect that often computer systems are used for quantity and economy without
thought to the quality. The implications for EHRs and shared systems is worrying if this example is anything to go by. Certainly,
the message from this hospital seems to
fail on so many levels, the hospital and the NHS should rethink using systems
like this.</div>
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Addendum:<br />
Since posting this the hospital have contacted us over four times about different missed appointments and each time are told that we have moved some years before. The cost to the health authority must be ludicrously high and the health records that should have been transferred to the new health authority are clearly still at the original one. This is a simple thing that has cost the HA a lot of money and could be easy to solve. So why haven't they?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4828847761613608331.post-50572160187927531322012-02-28T17:03:00.000+00:002012-02-28T17:03:08.831+00:00the importance of survivability<br />
I was at the hospital the other day, as an outpatient. <br />
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The hospital was brand new with state of the art technology throughout. After following the obscure route to the department I required, I was greeted by a queue. Not a big queue, but a definite queue, all the same.<br />
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The person behind the reception desk, who was by herself, explained to me and the other people in the line that the computer systems were down, as they were constantly integrating the old and new systems, consequently unless we knew the consultant we were seeing it might be a wait.<br />
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The wait did in fact happen and the line started to move out of the department into the adjacent corridor.<br />
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It made me think that there are some serious implications of a hospital system going down. <br />
<ol>
<li>When the system went down, there was only one person left to do the job of three or four. Certainly with a computer system the job was a one person job, but without it more staff were required. This meant the computer was saving money for the NHS as long as it was working.</li>
<li>It is critical that a hospital computer work, in this instance, there were two other terminals with old databases which could be manually searched for the information but things such as the time of appointments and other key information was missing. This made me realise the importance of a survivable system for hospitals but also for all places of work where information time is money.</li>
<li>The third issue is that of redundancy, without the back up computer systems the wait would have been a lot longer. The fact that there was redundancy of information meant that the hospital did not grind to a halt but managed to limp along.</li>
</ol>
As we progress into the 21st Century, it is important to realise that if it is digital it is transitory in nature and can easily be destroyed, manipulated and lost. Without hard copy we are all at risk of losing important things as more critical information about our lives is put into digital format.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4828847761613608331.post-71268176726682112162012-02-12T12:35:00.000+00:002012-02-12T19:38:37.969+00:00the dependability issues of caller identification in the digital ageI recently did a Soapbox piece for Telecare Aware (<a href="http://www.telecareaware.com/index.php/telecare-soapbox-the-security-of-telecare-confidential-information.html">http://www.telecareaware.com/index.php/telecare-soapbox-the-security-of-telecare-confidential-information.html</a>) on security of information in relation to telecare operators and I think that this is something that needs to be addressed more widely.<br />
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Recently, I received a call from the bank about a matter that they wished to gauge my opinion on. Fair enough, you might think, but before they could do the questionnaire, they needed to go through the obligatory security protocols. The first of these, like the previous post was "are you Mr" "what is your date of birth"..... etc. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but there is a fundamental security issue with adopting this approach.<br />
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Firstly, there is no way for the caller to verify it is really me without me providing them with personal information which they must already be in possession of to verify this. (dependability problem number 1)<br />
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Secondly, I must provide my personal information prior to them being able to provide theirs. In fact, their ability to identify themselves effectively is dependent on me identifying myself to them satisfactorily. This is because they cannot provide any of the personal information about me to me without breaking their code. They could provide the odd number from my account, but so could anyone who has my bank account details, such as anyone I have given a cheque to or paid by card or any one who knows someone at a call centre that does the work for a bank or utility company / online shopping company etc. (dependability problem number 2)<br />
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In other words the details they are likely to provide are already, possibly, out in the public domain for those who want to get them.<br />
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This leads to the third issue. If the information they can provide is not unique to me, how can I guarantee their authenticity? The simple answer is that I can't, in fact no one can actually truly guarantee beyond doubt that they are talking to the person they think they are talking to without visual confirmation. dependability problem number 3)<br />
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Thus we arrive at stalemate. Clearly the caller from the bank knows I am who I am, as they have called me on my mobile phone. I do not sound like a child (hopefully) and I, in all probability am the person they are to contact. Clearly, exceptions could occur, but this is always the case, but these are cases of more serious fraud.<br />
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Thus, we need to design a system of authentication which allows the caller to identify themselves to the called, without the current security breaches that are enforced. One method would be a password system such as the one to log into the bank. Another is a an app that the caller could use on their phone to authenticate the call from a bank or some other body. The app would not be too difficult to do provided the companies are able to give up the numbers they use to call on, but most have a system where the caller number is withheld.<br />
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So, we have to go back to the drawing board. We need to rethink telephone communication and the security implications of caller identification. If we do not, then we put ourselves at risk, as the respondents, who are forced to provide personal data to a virtual voice who does not and cannot identify themselves to the same standard as online users experience. (dependability problem number 4)<br />
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We hear a lot about hackers and scamming but the security in place by major companies is neither usable or effective for the either party nor is it secure.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4828847761613608331.post-8787022565050107162012-01-05T13:22:00.000+00:002012-01-05T13:22:44.041+00:00Eons of experience but a major security data protection flaw – Time to put their energy into their debt recovery systems.Over the Christmas festivities, a bill arrived and due the impending celebrations, it was, like many other things at this time of year, overlooked. Finally, after the celebrations were complete my mind returned to things business and I, like many others, started to go through old post and outstanding issues. One of these was a bill from <a href="http://www.eon-uk.com">Eon </a>, which I paid on the last day to pay.<br />
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Next day, I receive an automated telephone message from a company apparently identifying itself as ‘<a href="http://www.bcwgroup.com">Buchanan Clark & Wells</a>’. I have never heard of this company, but the message was clear, it stated it was not selling and was from the aforementioned company. It provided me with a telephone number and a unique reference number and insisted I call this phone number and give the reference number.<br />
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Out of curiosity, I did this, and was greeted by a vaguely pleasant person who asked me for the reference number and my name.<br />
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Now this is where things became problematic.<br />
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I, of course, would not give my name, as I pointed out they had sent me a telephone message, provided me with the unique reference number and asked me to call, they should know who I am. It would have been unwise to provide my name or any other details because they could then potentially have my name, my telephone number and any other details I gave, which could be enough for some form of identity fraud. This is especially the case, as I still had no idea who I was calling or why I was suppose to call them. The voice message left gave none of this information. I also had no knowledge that this company was legitimate and that the telephone number was actually theirs!<br />
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Of course, this is where <a href="http://www.ico.gov.uk">personal data protection</a> comes back to haunt us. It is the law in the UK that no information can be discussed with a third party over the phone without the relevant parties identifying themselves. The woman on the phone identified herself as from ‘Buchanan Clark & Wells’, but as I have already stated this meant nothing to me and could have been a switchboard in India similar to the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/jun11/06-16MSPhoneScamPR.mspx">Microsoft scam</a> which is still doing the rounds in the UK. For all I knew, she could have been in a council flat in Glasgow raking the money in from innocent callers who returned the call. I had no way of checking the authenticity of the company or the call unless I put the phone down, Googled ‘Buchanan Clark & Wells’ or the telephone number they provided. Honestly, how many people are going to do this and why should we be expected to do this. Surely, the onus should be on them not us, the consumer!<br />
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Due to the lack of ID and I being unable to verify the authenticity of the call I had no choice but to finish the call as the woman could not provide any further clues apart from the word Eon and Buchanan Clark & Wells. This simply is not sufficient to instil trust from an automated telephone call.<br />
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Therefore, there are a number of issues that need to be addressed here:<br />
1) The telephone message could have been received by a child, surely this is against all protocols and should be illegal. Where does that leave the consumer? Is the consumer at the mercy of the energy provider or do they have rights to opt out of this abuse? Is the message logged down somewhere as having been received or will it be resent until the client contacts the agency?<br />
2) Why did they not rely on a human voice to do the work and cut out the middle machine? I would certainly feel better talking to a real human.<br />
3) How do we get through security issues to do with phones, if the third party cannot provide information to you to satisfy your own internal security concerns? If Eon had said to me that there was a security word they could use that would be unique to me then this might have helped.<br />
4) How can ‘Buchanan Clark & Wells’ be allowed to use such poor security as this is open to abuse and replication by unscrupulous people. The obvious scam is to just dial a number using an automatic dialling machine and provide the same unique number to all callers and the same false telephone number and identify yourself as Imagonna Scamunow and I am sure that many people, like myself would return the call out of curiosity. For the scam to succeed the person on the other end of the phone has to suggest that the caller owes a utility company £X,000 and that they are a debt recovery agency. This could be followed by an insistence that this bill is paid instantly or immediate legal action will follow. Most people, I am sure would, without thinking would provide their name, address and credit card details.<br />
5) How can the <a href="http://www.legalombudsman.org.uk">Legal Ombudsman </a> allow companies to use such poor practices and condone a potential obvious security flaw?<br />
6) How can we, as consumers, use the power of our money to show companies like Eon and ‘Buchanan Clark & Wells’ that their shoddy work practices are unacceptable?<br />
7) How can we get the law of third party caller identification and data protection reviewed to be in line with today’s needs for security and information, two concepts that might not go hand in hand.<br />
8) What new systems need to be developed to provide consumer safety against this sort of scam. Potentially this could have worse ramifications than the Microsoft Scam.<br />
9) Can we as consumers take action against the company, in this case Eon for endorsing such a blatant breach of all things credible to human rights and data protection?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4828847761613608331.post-40916083577188158822011-12-20T21:02:00.000+00:002011-12-20T21:02:34.449+00:00The Working FUNdamentalsThe Working FUNdamentals <br />
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The concept of fun is nothing new. The notion of fun has been discussed widely within computer gaming and HCI/CHI and is one of the key concerns of many designers and software engineers.<br />
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I consider things from a slightly different perspective. Work and fun should be compatible and encouraged. I would argue that the workplace has become sterile and a place devoid of emotion in which employees mimic computer programmes and success judged through spurious targets, processes and procedures not the effectiveness of a working team.<br />
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I have been fortunate to work in many places and found the workplaces very different. In some places, the building itself encourages work, through light and space and the ability for people to interact informally. Others discourage work, and creativity, through poor offices, cramped workspaces, poor lighting, little or no privacy and discouraging informal interactions. I recall one place I worked where they encouraged and were to make mandatory “hotdesking” which is where you come into the office and take the first available desk to sit and work at. This is, of course, very impersonal and very poor for staff morale amongst other things.<br />
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When all my places of work are broken down, the quality that distinguishes the good from the bad is the environment and whether I had fun. How much fun was it coming to work? Was the work actually fun? Was fun encouraged or discouraged? <br />
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Watching an obituary to Steve Jobs on the TV made me realise that for all the hype about how he changed computing, what he did do was add fun. He thought about ‘form over function’ and somehow fun was part of the design process.<br />
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In the design of new technology for people, is often easy to determine what a person needs on a higher rational level, but the hardest part is trying to add the buy-in component, which I would argue is fun. <br />
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By fun, I do not mean sitting at your desk collapsed in laughter. This is not necessarily intrinsically bad, but might be momentarily non-productive. I mean that working in a fun lighthearted environment allows people to personally achieve and grow as individuals whilst identifying with being part of a productive and fun team.<br />
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Prince II and Six Sigma are both similar management training tools/packages that teach people about targets, processes, procedures and documentation. What they fail to teach is fun and interaction. They teach black and white and avoid the grey. Therefore, the workplace is similar to many computer programmes, like the one I am using to write this - functional and sterile. Typing with one finger is not my idea of fun, but at least I have haptic feedback, which adds some elements of amusement to the otherwise mind-numbingly boring task. The fun is that someone might read this and think “he has a point there”.<br />
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To illustrate things let us compare two different jobs (in a very superficial way, as I am fully aware of some excellent SCWs), a hairdresser and a social care worker. The hairdresser has targets, standards, processes and procedures but due to every person’s head being slightly different and each customer requiring individual attention they make their name by the way they cut, their inventiveness and skill and attention to detail and these are all considerations for the customer. As a customer, the hairdresser will interact and actually listen to you, make sure you are comfortable and that what they are doing is to your satisfaction. <br />
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How is this different from a social care worker (SCW)? Well in almost every way. The SCW has very limited time per customer and has a list of targets within that allotted time following set down procedures and protocols. Whereas once there was time for discussions and time for the SCW to be concerned about the person, this has changed as targets, time and procedures are the main elements of the care. They can perform their tasks, tick/check the boxes and already running late leave, without due care for the customer or their feelings. The means that the function of someone whose primary role is to care actually in reality has less ability to care due to the target / procedural / process job functions they have to perform. Anyone reading this must agree that this rings true and also makes no sense. (I am fully aware that some SCW are people with a great sense of humour and really enjoy their work and their customers are more than satisfied with their job, but these are people who go above and beyond the tick boxes to actually ensure that the person they care for is actually cared for – in a normal workplace this would be frowned on as non conforming to the procedures and disciplinary action could ensue.)<br />
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It seems crazy that a hairdresser has freedom of expression and is allowed/encouraged to act on their own initiative and use their own skills and judgements where as the remainder of society is slowly following the target driven, procedural hegemony that stifles creativity, stops individualism and stamps out fun. Work and fun are not incompatible, in almost every job I have done, I have always strived to make the work, no matter how boring, fun. The difficulty with today’s tick/check box culture of work is that they are making humans into unemotional and unfeeling machines. We are not! We should address how we view our own work practices and not collude with this tyranny placed upon us by those with no imagination or who are too fearful for their own jobs to stand up.<br />
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Therefore, in conclusion, management of people need to look to computer system designers to relearn the process of making work fun again. FUNdamentally an enjoyable workplace out performs a stagnant humourless environment. In addition, as a side thought, the UK seems to be losing its embedded humour as the law outlaws the funny in order that we are encouraged to live sterile insular lives. I am reminded of Maya Angelou who stated the purpose of life is not to survive, but to thrive. Perhaps we should listen to her and add fun where it has been removed.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4828847761613608331.post-26253494377261981152010-10-04T17:56:00.001+01:002010-10-04T17:56:02.121+01:00The most expensive journeyWhen I run a program on my computer and the computer hangs I get a sign that the programme I have run is corrupt in some manner and can choose to not run it. I have proven the programme is unfit to be run. Why can’t life be like computers?<br />
In September I was returning from Newcastle on a train when the conductor, who is no longer called a conductor but a fair checker, checked my ticket and found that I had inadvertently boarded the train without a ticket using my seat reservation (which is the same colour and shape and size as a standard ticket). Floundering in my pockets and bags failed to produce the required ticket stub but did produce a wealth of tickets but none for the actual journey.<br />
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So I showed the person my email confirmation of the ticket sale and even showed it online, as I was online on the train. I produced proof of who I was and as the conductor/fair checker agreed there was no doubt I had paid for my ticket. So he gave me another ticket for an unpaid fair, as I did not have the physical ticket. He told me not to worry as long as I showed the people in the unpaid fair ticket that I had paid I would not need to pay anything else.<br />
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I did as he instructed and received a penalty notice for the journey of £87.50 through my door last week. On the phone the care line for the East Coast train company told me that I had to pay and he could not guarantee that I would get my money back. Flummoxed, I contacted the ombudsman about this and was instructed to pay and there would be no guarantee of me getting my money back as the law states that I was travelling without a ticket and therefore should be fined.<br />
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So innocence does not matter anymore. We have a program of management that means that as long as you do certain things you must pay whether or whether not you are guilty. I admit guilt for not having my ticket on me at the time, as it possibly failed to drop from the machine I retrieved it at. But I am not guilty of fair dodging as I did pay my fair and to this day can prove I paid for my seat on the train that I was sitting in.<br />
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To me this management style and policies are akin to a virus on a computer. No matter what you do the blue screen of death makes your life a misery. You cannot win.<br />
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I feel sad for my children entering into a world we have created in which all values seem to be lost. A world in which the bleeding obvious is not accepted as Mr Jobsworth has to fill out the form or he will get in to trouble.<br />
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The funny thing about this is that on the Underground a similar thing happened to me and nothing transpired apart from a short frank discussion with a person at the gate, who possibly will not be there is Boris Johnson et al get their way, but I was allowed through without a fine for £30000.<br />
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So what can be learned from this, apart from always ensure you have the physical ticket before travelling on the East Coast rail lines, I can see many parallels to the stupid and over blown managerial systems that larger companies are deploying. I can also see a link between Microsoft and Apple and viruses. Clearly if a system fails it should be rewritten and the coding modified. Why cannot business learn from the computer industry?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4828847761613608331.post-33509967704145900192010-09-27T15:56:00.000+01:002010-09-27T15:56:51.118+01:00Another example of the disenfranchisement of informationI recently changed ISP as I moved house from London up into the sticks. The ISP I wanted could not provide me with an internet connection from the moment I moved in as they were reliant on the major company to do work which they could not start until I was actually in the house. This would have meant two weeks with no internet. This would be unthinkable for me as I now work predominantly from home.<br />
So I was faced with a dilemma which was solved by the fact that the only people who could provide broadband to me in time for my move so it was up and running when I walked through the door was this major provider who now have my contract for the next few years it would seem. I will reframe from naming them but will refer to them from now on as CU as they have two letters in their name.<br />
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All went swimmingly, I have had internet for at least most of the time I have been here, with the router only needing to be restarted on a dozen or so occasions, which is a dozen or so more than with my previous provider. All was fine and dandy until this weekend when I came back from the shops on Saturday to find I had no internet.<br />
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So I phone up the help line and get a very helpful message saying there are reported problems that will cause outages at time in your area. I worry no further thinking this is a small blip and cannot be helped. Next day, still no internet and concern starts to creep in. I rephone the number and am told the same thing from the recorded message but this time I take advantage of the other free phone number to check on these problem areas and find from another recorded voice that my phone number is not included in the areas under investigation, so the first message was incorrect.<br />
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I phone the ISP and get through to a person from another continent, by which time I have already investigated things from the router perspective and ascertained that the router is failing with a couple of critical errors picked up in the logs. I attempt to explain to the woman on the other end of the phone that the router is dead or dying with read out the log entries from the router which I had on the computer in front of me. The woman failed to understand or even pay the slightest heed to this and started to go through a series of tests that they have to do such as, is your computer switched on etc. This took at least one hour throughout I persisted to tell the woman that the tests were useless as I have five separate devices trying to connect, none of which could make a successful connection to the broadband although all the lights we illuminated on the router. To the woman the fact all the lights were alight meant I had broadband. No matter how long I explained thing to the woman I still had to go through the ritual humiliation of doing silly things to my computer to make them happy and still have no internet. Finally she concluded that the router was broken. She suggested I change it.<br />
This I did and installed an old Netgear router I had from the previous ISP. After an hour I had it up and running apart from no internet. So I assumed I had possibly missed a critical configuration setting and thought I should double check with my ISP. So I phone CU again and this time speak to a very nice man from anther continent and explain the issue. He listens and is very apologetic, and starts by running the same tests that I have had to endure previously plus a couple of new ones. Each time, there is no broadband available on any device, be they Microsoft, Symbian or Apple based. After a further hour, and I have not mentioned the fact that it took over two hours to connect to this person as the line at CU had a redirection call on it that went to a number unrecognised for a few hours, the man said he had exhausted his tests and it must be a line problem so would put me through to them. The man from the line place was very nice and local and he tested the line and said it was fine but if I want a call out it was £125 so he advised against it.<br />
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So I went to bed trying to fathom things out, but first decided to reinstall the old router. When I did there was no connection but low and behold in the morning the thing it firing on all cylinders. So now I have broadband again from the malfunctioning router.<br />
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What this shows me is a number of important lessons:<br />
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1) As a consumer we need to prove a fault repeatedly even though the provider will not recognise your expertise in this area.<br />
2) As a consumer your time is not an issue and companies can feel that as long as they are pretending to help you then you will believe them.<br />
3) Companies that have fragmented services which rely on many different places to determine a correct fault are paying for poor service, and we as consumers are supporting this.<br />
4) I cannot fathom the logic of having a series of prescribed tests when they bear little or no relevance to the problem and further are infinitely repeatable every time you call.<br />
5) It cannot pay to have people who do not listen or cannot understand what a customer says. When a customer says that all his computers cannot connect, suggesting it is a settings issue with one counter makes no sense. Similarly a firewall would affect one computer not all unless the firewall was triggered in the router itself, which it was not as I had checked this, but no one ever asked.<br />
6) Train people on what they need to know not what you think they need to know. If I want configuration details on a router give them do not subject people to a battery of tests which waste time and money.<br />
7) Remember the adage that is long forgotten: the customer is always right.<br />
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<b>Conclusion</b><br />
Fragmenting services wastes money, provides poor service, annoys customers, wastes everybody's time.<br />
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The same ideas can be generalised to all help desks and customer services. <br />
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It is a false economy to assume that saving money is achieved through spreading services and employing cheaper labour.<br />
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Forgetting the customer will result in losses in the future.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4828847761613608331.post-79328051396408320042010-08-19T16:27:00.000+01:002010-08-19T18:36:05.891+01:00Computers, management and systems – rationalising the irrational</meta><meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 12" name="Generator"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 12" name="Originator"></meta><link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CGUYDEW%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link><link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CGUYDEW%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx" rel="themeData"></link><link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CGUYDEW%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml" rel="colorSchemeMapping"></link><style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">In the UK there is a new management system that is being deployed through call centres and I would envisage is also extending into traditional work environments. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>The Problem<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">Call centres are expensive and trained people more expensive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>New solution (1)<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">Split up the services and farm out to remote call centres where call centre staff do not need to trained in any more than one thing. This means if you have one query the call centre should be able to answer it based on the options the original called has taken in the call options (Press one for this two for that three for self destruction etc). </div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>New Problem which we are all faced with today<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">So by dividing the workload there is a successfully undertrained cheap labour force, what can be the problem? </div><div class="MsoNormal">What if you have more than one problem? This is where the whole system dissolves into absolute chaos. Because no one person can see or has control over the whole system it must implode and customer service must drop through the bottom of the call centre.</div><div class="MsoNormal">You must have experienced it yourself; I have been on the receiving end of it many times recently as I have had to move house on a number of occasions. So I will take this as an illustration:</div><div class="MsoNormal">Whereas once upon a time I could phone up a service provider and let them know I was moving and ensure all services were available when the move happened so there would be a seamless transition between services even when I had changed provider. So Let’s say I was using one internet provider and moved to another house and decided this would be a good time to change providers this would be no problem, I could phone them up cancel one and let the other know when I would be in the new house and sure enough on the day of the move the internet connection, router and accompanying services would be ready to go, all I would need to do is configure the router and plug it in to the computer and off I went.</div><div class="MsoNormal">How was this achieved? Simple I would speak to one operative over the phone and explain my own personal circumstances, explain the uniqueness of my situation and the telephone operative would ensure that all the things happened seamlessly in the background.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>So why can this not happen any more in the UK?<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">Answer:</div><div class="MsoNormal">Because we have fragmented the services and the customer support teams. Each team has knowledge of their own section (accounts, broadband, TV, whatever) but no one has the ability to access all these at any one time. The most constant thing I have been told recently is that we cannot do this because it they have no access to that database. So going back to the illustration previously outlined; instead of telling one call operative the situation and having it dealt with, I as a new caller must now seek to navigate the strange world of the disembodied call centre service where I speak to one person, whom I have to go through a number of security questions with and then proceed to explain the issues such as I am moving and need to get broadband so it is up and ready for when I move into my new house. This operative will undoubtedly explain that I need to speak to another department called new business, or something of that ilk. “fine” I am happy to talk to them, and when I get to new business I have to repeat the security stuff and re-explain my specific needs only to be told that this is not a problem as everything will be set up in time, as long as I am in the property now. </div><div class="MsoNormal">Now? “No sorry I am moving to the property, have a new number already installed and line up and running, I just want the broadband to be ready to go when I get in to the house”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Sorry we cannot do that; you need to be living in the house before we can complete your order”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“why is that?”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Because it will take ten days after that for us to send you the router and activate the line”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Well… send the router now and activate the line now please”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Sorry can’t do that, you will need to speak to new business for that”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Okay put me through…”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“New business… can I have your name…..”</div><div class="MsoNormal">And so it goes on in an never ending cycle of people who do not have the authority to do what you need them to do or do not know they do not have the authority as they have not been told that yet as they are too low in the hierarchy.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>So what?<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">Well this might seem a little strange but apart from the appalling customer service that everyone in the UK is now receiving as a result of this method of management It also has a number of implications for management in general and computing.</div><div class="MsoNormal">For management it is a false economy as I, like many others will not tolerate this incompetence and switch providers, I agree eventually they might all hit the nadir but I hope common sense prevails. There is also a false economy as I am not taking up the time of three or four people on, often successive, occasions with one simple issue which no one can resolve; this means that the call centres are spending 3-4 times the amount on not training their staff which is a clear false economy. It also deskills the experts, who have worked at the call centre for years and know all the tricks but can no longer use them as they have restricted access to the different databases.</div><div class="MsoNormal">For computer systems and engineers the problem is a human factors one. It is down to the Human factors people to ensure that this never happens, that we do not fragment services that should be connected. It also means that processes and procedures that are in the real world should not mirror a computer programme which seems to be what is happening.</div><div class="MsoNormal">I fully agree with systems thinking, by which I mean thinking about the interaction of the whole system as well as the independent parts. In computers there are few independent parts, perhaps software is relatively independent as long as the basic infrastructure such as Windows or IOS are in place you can run what you like on your own computer.</div><div class="MsoNormal">What is clear from the management school of customer care is that someone somewhere has separated out interdependent processes and labelled them independent. By doing this they have lessened the dependability of the whole dependability of the call centre structure and made the service to customers fail at the first hurdle.</div><div class="MsoNormal">The sad thing is this is relatively easy to remedy but the short term gain seems to outweigh the long term imminent implosion.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0