The DOBlog

Category: Customer Service

  • Lego System and the Value Delivery System

    I love Lego. The fact that my Facebook avatar is a sinister looking “Liago” man from a Chinese clone of the famous Lego System is a little personal in-joke (and I’d love to see what their facial recognition makes of that). But I also love my daughter, who is bright, imaginative, and creative. And I hate to see anything that might curtail that and box her thinking into a gender-appropriate bucket that she might struggle to climb out of in years to come.

    That’s why I hate the fact that ‘girls’ toys are all pink. I’ve given up to an extent on the battle against all girls’ clothes being default pink. Everyone seems to think this is the way it has always been, but no it’s not. It’s new, and it has been the other way around as well. Here’s a quote from an article in the Smithsonian Institute’s magazine:

    For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti.

    In 1927, Time magazine printed a chart showing sex-appropriate colors for girls and boys according to leading U.S. stores. In Boston, Filene’s told parents to dress boys in pink. So did Best & Co. in New York City, Halle’s in Cleveland and Marshall Field in Chicago.

    But Lego is supposed to be different. It is supposed to allow children to think outside the box (literally as well as metaphorically). My fondest memories of childhood centre on a massive 30 litre white bucket that my grandmother bought at a time before my memory which was filled with every piece of Lego bought for my uncles, for me, my brothers and which did the rounds of ALL my cousins.35 year old Lego being played with without prefixed form or format, constrained only by our imaginations and the laws of physics, whether we were boys or girls (I’ll admit – mostly boys, but that just makes my next point more important as I do have some girls in my extended family).

    New Lego is shit. More precisely: New Lego for Girls is shit. Sexist, insulting, degrading shit. It is so shit that I will not let it in my house. Ever. Here’s why:

    Lego Friends–Silly imagination retarding lego playsets for girls.

    So.. gone are the fun Lego person minifigures, replaced with anatomically approximate figurines with long hair. Who go shopping. And hang out with their friends. And have handbags and Beauty parlours and cake shops.

    Jebus. There’s no need for any small girl to risk burning out a brain cell engaging in that ‘imagination’ thing. Keep your brain inside the small box that society is creating for you, accept the parameters and all will be well. Compare to the style of the ‘boys’ Lego (which is a slightly formulised version of the Lego I love)

    Lego that makes you think about what might be possible….

    Yes. I’m guessing the Astronaut is a boy. (I secretly suspect girl astronauts wouldn’t have sent a broken satellite into space or would have been more careful with the fragile bits when it got there).

    Lego say that their product design is based on market research and studying what girls play with. This is a mistake. This basically means that their research has essentially asked questions like:

    • “How have different genders reacted to mass market indoctrination by other toy manufacturers who are creating pre-assembled play sets? ”
    • “When faced with a choice of toys in pink, pink, or pink that establish certain female gender roles, do girls choose the astronaut (who is not an option they can chose)”

    Which, unsurprisingly has left them with the answer that girls like pink, want to have a beauty parlour, and the only space they are interested in is the one where they will be building their beauty parlour.

    This inevitably has lead Lego to creating a range of products that women find sexist and demeaning and men find to be a heretical travesty of the concept of Lego as we know it.

    What might they have done differently?

    A few years ago my friend and mentor Andrew Griffiths introduced me to the concepts and principles of the Value Delivery System, as developed by Michael Lanning at McKinsey and subsequently refined by Lanning in his own consulting work. Andrew helped knock some corners off the concepts when he was in McKinsey and gave me a first-hand insight into the power of the method.

    (Incidentally, the term “value proposition” in marketing comes from this Value Delivery System but is used today with a meaning that is less than that which Lanning first promoted it.)

    Key to the Value Delivery System method that Lanning developed is the idea of the Key Resulting Outcome that the customer wishes to have. Once that is identified, the organisation can determine how to deliver that Key Resulting outcome using their products and services. In his book, Lanning cites the development of the Polaroid Instamatic camera as a good example of a Key Resulting Outcome triggering innovation. The inventor, Mr Land, was taking photographs at his daughter’s birthday. She apparently had a tantrum when he told her she couldn’t “see the photographs now!!”, which sparked the development of a technology that shook up photography and related industries (like pharmacies and camera shops) for nearly five decades.

    I often work back from what a company is delivering through or with data to identify the Key Resulting Outcomes they are giving their customers – as a way of triggering debate about Information Strategy (a cheeky adaptation of Lanning’s method). Applying that approach to Lego’s #NewLegoforGirls I have determined that Lego believes that Parents and Children:

    1. Want imaginations constrained with pre-formed Anglo-European/Anglo-American gender roles and lifestyle expectations. Girls shouldn’t worry about being astronauts because they can own a cake shop instead.
    2. Want clear demarcation in play and interaction between children of different genders. After all, Astronauts don’t get their hair done at the salon and don’t go for cakes at the coffee shop. They’re too busy fighting aliens and fixing satellites.
    3. Want girls to identify from an early age with female body shape identity and “gender appropriate”clothing and colours (like pinks). So the “Lego Friends” figures have curves and bumps and boobs and long hair, while the traditional Lego MiniFigures have comical faces painted on, but remain blocky and androgynous apart from that (yes.. I know the minifigures have ‘wigs’ with long hair and can have bodies made with painted on dresses as much as painted on uniforms but…they’re not as ‘in your face’ about it).

    Frankly, the Key Resulting Outcomes I actually want from toys for my daughter are:

    1. Stimulate imagination and creativity
    2. Promote group play and interaction, so that skills of cooperation and planning can be developed
    3. Allow her freedom to imagine herself in any role/job/scenario she may want, whether that’s cake shop owner or astronaut
    4. Provide a format and system within which the gender biases and cultural short-hand of the marketing departments of other lazy toymakers can be set aside and open explorative play and imagination can be developed.

    Like in the old days. The way Lego used to be. Right now I fear Lego may be facing a “New Coke” moment. Parents (and dare I say it, grandparents who fought the feminist battles of the 1970s and 1980s) are sick of society and toy makers being lazy and putting the imaginations of children into boxes that are shaped by relatively recent colour charts (1940s) and ridiculously inane and sexist stereotypes of gender roles and possibilities.

    Lego should be about possibility, not pink. That is the Value that the Lego System should be delivering.

    When my daughter plays with Lego, I want her to feel free and encouraged to imagine the day she opens her Beauty Parlour/Cake Shop.

    On Mars.

    After she’s led the first successful manned mission there.

    As an Astronaut.

  • The missing link in Compliance and Governance

    Over the years I’ve done a lot of work in the area of Regulatory Compliance and Information Quality. Whether it is Data Protection, Information Quality, Governance or Compliance, it is important to bear in mind that what we are dealing with a Quality Management System:

    • Data Protection Compliance is the Quality System where by the obligations and expectations which arise under Data Protection/Privacy laws are met consistently
    • Information Quality programmes involve, by definition, the implementation of a Quality Management System
    • Information/Data Governance… well, that’s another form of Quality Management System
    • Complying with other forms of industry or Governmental regulation… well, the best way to achieve those objectives is through some form of systemic approach to meeting or exceeding expectations.

    In my experience Compliance and Governance initiatives and strategies tend to fall into three camps:

    1. Documentation Driven by “Rules Wizards”, with extensive policy and procedure documentation, usually from the comfort of an Ivory Tower in the Business that is comfortably removed from GEMBA
    2. Technology Triggered by “Techno-Lords”, usually from within the bowels of the organisation’s IT department, which is also often at a distance from the place where the work is actually getting done.
    3. Awareness and Attitude Oriented: Driven by a “Coalition of the Willing”, with a focus on policy that is actually executed through the appropriate use of supporting technologies and a strong focus on the “Human Factors” that lead to awareness and understanding of the required changes.

    Often it is difficult to see which kind of initiative you are dealing with. In organisations that have a “Document Driven” approach, management take comfort in the fact that they have documented procedures and policies for everything therefore everything is in control. In “Technology Triggered” initiatives, the management of the organisation places a blind faith in the power of technology to protect, prevent, detect, and mitigate issues.

    Both approaches are doomed to failure. Neither, no matter how sophisticated, can ever deliver anything other than “small ‘c’” compliance. Because Quality Systems are about more than just documentation or technology. Real quality requires a sustainable change in attitudes and awareness. After all, Deming’s 1st two points of Management Transformation are not “Write documents” or “Get good technology”: They is “Create a Constancy of Purpose” and “Adopt the New Philosophy”.

    Purpose and Philosophy require that the organisation look at the attitudes that are there. It is as important to understand and articulate a Vision for the Quality System… and to make sure that that Vision is embedded in the mind-sets and attitudes of the staff in the organisation.

    At a conference in London in 2005 Joyce Orsini of Fordham University shared a story with me of a trip W.Edwards Deming (she was working with Deming at the time) took to an automobile manufacturer in the US in the mid 1980s. On this trip the plant manager took great pride in showing off the robots (technology) that they were using to manufacture the cars. Deming noticed that every time the robot arm swung over the car it dented the boot (trunk) lid of the car. He asked if this was part of the Quality Standard (Policies). The Plant Manager said no, it wasn’t, but they had a man at the end of the production line with a hammer to knock the dent back out.

    A lack of awareness about the operation and objectives of the Quality System and what it meant as a value system meant that no-one in the plant seems to have questioned the operation of the Quality System.

    Without Awareness and Attitude the investment in Documentation and Technology that form part of the Quality System will ultimately have sub-optimal return.

  • Mobile phone hacking and the e-Privacy Regulations

    The recent furore about the News of the World and other tabloids engaging in unauthorised access voicemails I thought it might be worth pondering the potential Irish legal situation. Now, I’m not a lawyer. This post is intended to work through some of the relevant legislation and the potential issues that might arise in Irish law. It is not legal advice. I fully expect members of the Irish legal blogging community to leap in and make comments and corrections as needed.

    The law

    There are a few pieces of legislation in Ireland that would come into play here:

    1. The Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003
    2. The Criminal Damage Act 1991
    3. The Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001
    4. The Postal and Telecommunications Services Act 1983
    5. Interception of Postal Packets and Telecommunications Messages (Regulation) Act 1993
    6. The ePrivacy Regulations 2011 (http://www.dataprotection.ie/documents/legal/SI336of2011.pdf)

    The Data Protection Acts

    The Data Protection Acts require that personal data be obtained and processed fairly.

    Journalistic exemptions to this and other provisions of the Acts exist under s22A, but only insofar as there is an actual intent to publish a story or other work based on the information which has been obtained. So… if a journalist and/or a private eye in the pay of a newspaper were to obtain personal information about Celebrity A on foot of a fishing trip through the voicemails of celebrities A through F when there was no intent to publish a story about Celebrity A until such time as the information was obtained, then the journalist might not be able to rely on their exemptions under the Acts. The protection of the right to Freedom of Expression is only protected where there is an intent to actually express something, and if the publication of that story is in the Public Interest (which is a thorny topic I won’t delve into here).

    Criminal Damages Act 1991 and Criminal Justice (Theft & Fraud Offences) Act 2001

    Journalists who engage in unauthorised access to voicemails may also be committing an offence under the Criminal Damages Act 1991. This Act makes it an offence to access information without authorisation and to modify that information whether or not that modification has an adverse effect. Listening to a voicemail modifies the content and nature of the information (at the very minimum changing a flag from “new” to “listened to”. The Act does make use of the word “computer”, which would suggest to a lay person that it would only be an issue if a device meeting the traditional view of a computer was used. However the term is undefined and as such it is open-ended as to what type of device might meet the legal test of a “computer”. In that regard, the definition applied in the Data Protection Acts (“a device operating automatically in response to instructions”) might be relevant.

    So… accessing a voice mail box (which is itself stored on a device operating automatically in response to instructions computer of some sort) without permission and listening to the recording is likely to be a criminal offence in Ireland, given the breadth of the definitions in play.

    This is doubly so when the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act is taken into consideration. It provides for an offence of “dishonestly” using a computer or causing a computer to be used within the jurisdiction of the State. The big question to answer here is

    • What’s a computer?
    • What’s dishonest?

    It might be argued that going on a fishing trip for personal data without any prior formed intent to publish a specific story about a specific individual could constitute dishonesty.

    The 1983 and 1993 Acts

    Section 98 of the 1983 Act deals, in the first instance, with a general prohibition on the interception of “telecommunications messages”. In short… it’s illegal except in certain defined circumstances. Interception is defined as being

    “listening to, or recording by any means, or acquiring the substance or purport of, any telecommunications message without the agreement of the person on whose behalf that message is transmitted by the company and of the person intended by him to receive that message”

    The term “telecommunications message” is not actually defined in the legislation, which creates an interesting situation when you consider that this Act was drafted in the early 1980s when there was no digital voice mail, no email, limited use of fax services, and (importantly) when there was only one company laying cable and connecting people to a telecommunications network in Ireland. Significantly, the 1983 Act only applies to telecommunications services which require a license… which would exclude a lot of on-line communications tools such as VOIP, web-based email or IM chat.

    The 1993 Act deals essentially with phone tapping and interception of postal packets. The legislation is couched in terms suggesting that data at rest (e.g. a voice mail recording sitting on a server or an email sitting in in a mail host somewhere) may not be covered.

    Digital Rights Ireland argued in 2009 that the framework in place under the 1983 and 1993 legislation most likely did not cover most on-line activities and as such there was, strictly speaking, no clear legislative prohibition on the interception of SMS, email, VOIP etc., technologies which simply did not exist at the time the legislation was being drafted and as such probably left the State falling short of their obligations under the ePrivacy Directive.

    The European Commission rejected DRI’s submission at the time

    Electronic Privacy Regulations

    The new electronic Privacy Regulations place mobile phone operators in an interesting position with regards to phone hacking. The means by which voicemails were accessed, in the main, appears to have been default voicemail passwords being left unchanged. This is a security weakness in mobile phones and, for that matter, fixed line services which provide a voice mailbox service.

    For example, for most mobile phone operators, the default password for a voicemail account is 0000. In many fixed line systems, the password might be 1234. Failing to change this password leaves the data which is being recorded in the mailbox unsecure.

    The complication in Irish law for the telcos is that section 4 of the EPrivacy Regulations (SI 336 of 2011) requires providers of electronic communications services to

    1. Ensure appropriate security safeguards so that data is only accessed by authorised persons, with respect to the state of the art and cost of implementing (section 4(1))
    2. Ensure that the security measures can protect against accidental or unlawful destruction, accidental loss or alteration, and unauthorised or unlawful storage, processing, access or disclosure (section 4(2)(b))

    Section 4(4) is the doozy I feel.

    In the case of a particular risk of a breach of the security of the public communications network, the undertaking providing the publicly available electroniccommunications service shall inform its subscribers concerning such risk without delay and, where the risk lies outside the scope of the measures to betaken by the relevant service provider, any possible remedies including an indicationof the likely costs involved.

    My reading of that section is that mobile phone and landline operators who apply default passwords to voicemail accounts need to be more proactive about alerting customers to the risk and, ideally,  implement a process which mitigates or eliminates the risk (such as having a randomly assigned password associated to a voicemail that is SMS’d or posted to the customer – just like bank security codes for on-line banking). I’ve asked the Data Protection Commissioner about it and it appears that my reading is, by and large, correct.

    And as the SI implements an EU wide directive this could get interesting in light of the NoTW noises.

    Conclusion

    The world of telecommunications and person to person linking using tools like VOIP, SMS, Instant messaging, voice mail, email, and “Unified Communications” which we find ourselves in today was almost unimaginable even fifteen years ago. I can recall when I started working with a large telco in the summer of 1997 that digital voice mail was a massively new fangled thing, had you told me that I would be getting voicemails emailed to me from a virtual VOIP phone system which I could open and read or listen to on my mobile phone I’d probably have laughed.

    But that is what we do every day now.

    The legislation may not have kept pace. However, where the legislation has caught up, providers of telecommunications services need to do their bit to raise awareness and understanding of how the world may have outstripped the law (at least for now).

    I invite any comments or corrections from more learned colleagues.

     

  • Bank of Ireland Customers – check your balances

    As the May Bank Holiday draws to a close, I’d like to remind customers of Bank of Ireland that they should take a careful look at their account balances this week if they have been using laser (debit card) or ATM services over the weekend. If you do find you’ve been ‘double-dipped’, please let me know via this blog.

    Double Dip confectionery
    Double Dip – Nice Confectionery but leaves a bitter taste if it happens to your bank account

  • CRM Insanity (another update)

    So, I have the phone now. I’m still with Vodafone. I’m a no longer irately angry customer. I’m not a happy one. It will be sometime before I am that. I may still move my landline business just to make a point.

    But my experience in getting the phone sums up the difference between the CRM success of the Vodafone retail store and the CRM insanity of the Vodafone Retail policy.

    No Sims at the Inn

    It turned out that though they had a phone in stock they didn’t have microsims in stock in the shop. Not a show stopper. The manager went to Carphone Warehouse and got one from them for me while his team sorted the phone out and upsold me a case.

    What a clever win. Very little effort for him to do so. Kept me in store longer. I will buy from them again soon (I need a bluetooth kit for the baby-carrier car). I will tell the story of how they didn’t let a stock issue prevent them from satisfying a customer.

    A1 service. It counterbalances my experience on Friday when they told me they had no phones (now I know they were acting under orders).

    Tweet happens

    Having had no satisfaction over the last few weeks with Vodafone on the phone (or for that matter in store), it took posts on twitter to get the issue resolved. And it was resolved fast. Less than 3 hours later I have the phone that 4 hours ago I believed I was not going to be able to get.

    So, Tweet happens.

    But it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t take an angry customer writing an analytical breakdown of their customer value and posting it to twitter (and Facebook) to get action. That is just wrong as it requires the customer to push for what they are entitled to, and it means that the loudest shoutiest customer gets things done.

    A better way?

    As I stood in the Vodafone store today I noticed how they are doing lots of product pricing offers for customers of both mobile and fixed line business. They should perhaps consider using that as a criteria for rationing phones where supply issues exist. If you are a customer of both, you get preferential treatment for stock. Because you are WORTH more. A customer of the mid-tier Perfect Choice Access package for mobile and a moderate broadband package is worth the better part of €2000 a year to Vodafone just in line rental and connection. They should take preference over virtual customers with an unquantified value.

    That’s just a thought.

  • CRM Insanity (An Update)

    I’ve elected to switch to 3 and have shortlisted some options for the home phone. I made comments to that effect on Twitter this morning.

    At 12:32 today Vodafone Ireland contacted me on Twitter (after I’d posted a few tweets back to this post) and Daz on that team is looking into the situation. As of 13:09, apparently they have managed to secure stock in a local Vodafone store for me.  (Why they couldn’t do this on FRIDAY or any other time I’ve rung them over the past few weeks, or when I went into that shop on Friday, baffles me).

    I’ve indicated I’m holding off going switching until 13:30 today.

    But it appears that to get Vodafone to actually give a shit you have to be either a non-customer who they wish to woo or a high “cost-to-service” complainer who goes very public with problems. That too is just plain insane CRM, which results in people like Steven (who I spoke to on Friday) and Daz having to bear the brunt of customer issues that COULD BE AVOIDED with a bit of sanity.

    I fully accept that Vodafone have supply issues with the iPhone4 (which no other network seems to have BTW). It makes sense to ration the supply and impose some restrictions. But to completely block existing customers from the upgrade makes no strategic sense (unless Voda want to get rid of existing iphone customers to other networks). This is particularly the case for Voda who will soon have a lot of customers who took the 3Gs when it came out on Vodafone looking to upgrade after 12 months on an 18month contract (thereby locking them in to another contract).

    A better approach might be to:

    • Require new customers to enter into a longer contract (“Hey, you can have it. But it is in short supply so you’ll need to give us your soul for 6 months longer to get it”).
    • Allow customers who have been with you less than 24 months to get it but only if they go for certain tariffs.
    • Allow existing customers who are over 24 months on contract to upgrade as normal.

    Supply is rationed. Everyone can GET the phone, but existing customers in good standing have a reward for not churning out to competitor.

    Of course, Vodafone now have the issue that I’m pissed off. And publicly so.

    Just getting me the iphone isn’t going to be enough now (I know I can get it with 3). So there will now be an additional retention cost to be built into the deal (which would be on top of the 1 month credit I’d already been offered due to other screw ups on my account).

    THIS IS AN AVOIDABLE COST, or would have been if they hadn’t had such crappy customer service up to this point. Now it is pretty much required as I can get the same phone for cheaper cost and similar cost per month on the other network, with whom I have no current frustration (Vodafone on the other hand have

    • left me with the wrong SIM card type for the phone I have
    • failed to properly activate my mobile broadband dongle when I upgraded it late last year
    • failed to keep my personal data accurate and up to date as per the Data Protection Acts
    • failed the attitude test about the iphone upgrade)
    • send me direct marketing pieces addressed to “Ms Daragh O Brien”

    By having a screwed up CRM strategy for existing customers, Vodafone have put themselves in the position where they are now negotiating with me to stay, not simply handing me some forms and taking my money.

  • CRM insanity

    So, I have a few niggling problems with my iPhone, including dropped calls and poor call quality leading to lost business. I have been advised (by Vodafone tech support) that a new handset might be required.

    I have upgraded the SIM (which should have been done by Voda when I got the phone but wasn’t).

    Vodaphone have been telling me for the past few weeks that they have no stock. Carphone Warehouse today told me they have stock, just not for existing customers.

    This makes very little sense to me.

    In effect I’m walking up to Vodafone and saying “hey, I’d like to be handcuffed to you to the tune of at least €720 over the next 12 or 18 months.”

    Vodafone are saying “feck off, we are holding out for someone else who MIGHT come along at some point in the future, we don’t know when.”

    Of course, the policy doesn’t seem to take into account that I’m a home phone customer and a mobile broadband customer.

    That’s another €1000 approx per year just in rental. and I’m out of contract on those too… No barrier to migration.

    It doesn’t take into account that my wife is on Vodafone as well. Another €720 per year approx. She’s out of contract soon too.

    It doesn’t take into account that I’m an ‘influencer’ on the mobile provider purchasing for about 10 other people. All of whom are up for renewal soon. That’s around another €700 per person.

    Then let’s take into account that I’m a blogger and a tweeter with a large network. No direct bottom line impact but there is brand impact.

    So. I’m actually worth about a measurable €10000 to Vodafone.

    Versus the speculative €700 plus an unknown that the new connection (who incidentally isn’t actually buying iPhones at the moment) might be worth.

    Carphone Warehouse told me that in the past week they’ve had a number of customers who have cancelled Vodafone contracts for just this reason.

    So, does the revenue from one speculative customer outweigh the value of a half dozen existing customers?

    I would love to see the data that says it does.

    As markets mature the focus on new customer acquisition metrics becomes increasingly sociopathic and inappropriate. Managing churn is a big challenge in telco. Creating policies that effectively mandate churn is just insane CRM.

    As markets mature the focus needs to be on retaining where the cost of doing so is less than the revenue (and it usually is) or where the strategic value of locking the customer in is worth investing.

    As markets mature the focus has to shift to moving customers up the value chain and maximising share of wallet to underpin ARPU.

    Vodafone had me in lockin across 3 markets. I was happy enough with costs. I was probably going to purchase additional services for my business.

    Now they don’t. And my € 10000 per year customer value will be going to other operators over the coming weeks. Starting with the €1200 I personally spend on mobile and fixed line communications.

    Idiots.

  • Dell Build Quality

    So, I’ve recently invested in a new laptop for work. I got it on Tuesday. Today I noticed that the “J” key on the keyboard had come loose. That’s after less than a week of average use in my home office. The laptop hasn’t been out on the road (yet) and as it is performing well I haven’t had to bash the keyboard in frustration at a 20 minute hang for no reason (like on my old laptop).

    It is probably an easy fix, but it does raise a question about the build quality on Dell laptops when one of the “home” keys for touch typing can come loose so easily.

    But it is just one key. Surely not a big thing? I suppose that is a valid view. But often quality and perception of quality hangs on how the small stuff works.

    • The hotel might be great, but there’s no coffee with the in-room tea and coffee facilities (I like to make a cup of very strong coffee first thing in the morning when travelling for work)
    • The flight might be fine, but the hot sandwich you wanted to order from the attendants wasn’t in stock
    • A broken keyboard stops you typing “jumping jeosophat”

    A while ago I wrote an article for the IAIDQ about the “long tail of risk”, or the long tail of quality. My basic premise in the article was that as you tackle the big issues of quality and risk in Information, the smaller issues become increasingly important, so there is increasing value to be found in the “long tail” of issues.

    That’s why “Zero Defects”, while in part a wonderful slogan, is in fact a valuable goal to set for Quality Management. Setting your sights lower means you are accepting inevitable mediocrity. Why do I say this? Well, simply because the common argument against zero defects is that it is unattainable as a goal (it’s not) and compromises need to be made (they often do). However, if you set your target at 99.9% defect free, you’ll still find compromises being made (“we’ll aim for 60% this quarter and increase again next quarter”) and fudges being introduced.

    I saw a great presentation a few weeks ago from a Clinical Quality lead from the UK NHS. He gave some great statistics as to what 99.999% quality means:

    • 6200 ATM errors per week in the UK
    • 18 fatal airline crashes per year, in the UK
    • 2 children given to the wrong parents every day, in the UK

    So. My faulty key might be one component out of 108 on the keyboard and many thousands in the laptop. But it being broken has soured my experience and reduced my perception of quality of the laptop as a whole. While it isn’t up there with a fatal airline crash, it does bug me.

    (As an aside, it’s interesting to note that Qantas are considering suing Rolls Royce for a minor defect in the engines of the A380 Airbus which lead to oil leakage and an engine fire. It’s only a small thing, but…)

  • Who then is my customer?

    Two weeks ago I had the privilege of taking part in the IAIDQ’s Ask the Expert Webinar for World Quality Day (or as it will now be know, World Information Quality Day).

    The general format of the event was that a few of the IAIDQ Directors shared stories from their personal experiences or professional insights and extrapolated out what the landscape might be like in 2014 (the 10th anniversary of the IAIDQ).

    A key factor in all of the stories that were shared was the need to focus on the needs of your information customer, and the fact that the information customer may not be the person who you think they are. More often than not, failing to consider the needs of your information customers can result in outcomes that are significantly below expectations.

    One of my favourite legal maxims is Lord Atkin’s definition of who your ‘neighbour’ is who you owe legal duties of care to. He describes your ‘neighbour’ as being anyone who you should reasonably have in your mind when undertaking any action, or deciding not to take any action. While this defines a ‘neighbour’ from the point of view of litigation, I think it is also a very good definition of your “customer” in any process.

    Recently I had the misfortune to witness first hand what happens when one part of an organisation institutes a change in a process without ensuring that the people who they should have reasonably had in their mind when instituting the change were aware that the change was coming.

    My wife had a surgical procedure and a drain was inserted for a few days. After about 2 days, the drain was full and needed to be changed. The nurses on the ward couldn’t figure out how to change my wife’s drain because the drain that had been inserted was a new type which the surgical teams had elected to go with but which the ward nurses had never seen before.

    For a further full day my wife suffered the indignity of various medical staff attempting to figure out how to change the drain.

    1. There was no replacement drain of that type available on the ward. The connections were incompatible with the standard drain that was readily available to staff on the ward and which they were familiar with.
    2. When a replacement drain was sourced and fitted, no-one could figure out how to actually activate the magic vacuum function of it that made it work. The instructions on the device itself were incomplete.

    When the mystery of the drain fitting was eventually solved, the puzzle of how to actually read the amount of fluid being drained presented itself, which was only of importance as the surgeon had left instructions that the drain was to be removed once the output had dropped below a certain amount. The device itself presented misleading information, appearing to be filled to one level but when emptied out in fact containing a lesser amount (an information presentation quality problem one might say).

    The impacts of all this were:

    • A distressed and disturbed patient increasingly worried about the quality of care she was receiving.
    • Wasted time and resources pulling medical staff from other duties to try and solve the mystery of the drain
    • A very peeved and increasingly irate quality management blogger growing more annoyed at the whole situation.
    • Medical staff feeling and looking incompetent in front of a patient (and the patient’s family)

    Eventually the issues were sorted out and the drain was removed, but the outcome was a decidedly sub-optimal one for all involved. And it could have been easily avoided had there been proper communication about the change to the ward nurses and the doctors in the department from the surgical teams when they changed their standard. Had the surgical teams asked the question of who should they have in their minds to communicate with when taking an action, surely the post-op nurses should have featured in there somewhere?

    I would be tempted to say “silly Health Service” if I hadn’t seen exactly this type of scenario play out in day to day operations and flagship IT projects during the course of my career. Whether it is changing the format of a spreadsheet report so it can’t be loaded into a database or filtered, changing a reporting standard, changing meta-data or reference data, or changing process steps, each of these can result in poor quality information outcomes and irate information customers.

    So, while information quality is defined from the perspective of your information customers, you should take the time to step back and ask yourself who those information customers actually are before making changes that impact on the downstream ability of those customers to meet the needs of their customers.

  • Bank of Ireland Overcharging – another follow up

    Scanning the electronic pages of the Irish Independent this morning I read that

    1. They claim to have had the scoop on this story (no, it was Tuppenceworth.ie and IQTrainwrecks.com)
    2. They have “experts” (unnamed ones) who tell them that the actual number of impacted customers over the weekend could be up to 200,000.
    3. “Some other banks admitted there have been cases where Laser payments have mistakenly gone through on the double. But they said they have not had any serious problems.” (BOI had that angle on the issue back in June).
    4. The bank cannot guarantee that it won’t happen again.

    I’ll leave points one to three for another time and focus at this point (as my bus to Dublin leaves soon) on the matter of the Bank of Ireland not being able to guarantee that it won’t happen again.

    The Nature of Risk

    Fair play to BOI for admitting that they can’t guarantee that this problem won’t happen again. It has happened before (in May), it has happened now, it is only prudent to say that it may happen again.

    But are they not able to guarantee that it won’t happen again because they understand the causes of this problem, have properly mapped the process and information flows, understand the Happy Path and Crappy Path scenarios and the triggering factors for them  and have established robust detective and preventative controls on the information processes to prevent or flag errors to have a foolproof process but are hedging their bets against the occurence of idiots?  In that case, they have a managed process which will (hopefully) have effective governance structures around it to embed a quality culture that promotes early warning and prompt action to address the incidence of idiots which inevitably plagues fool proof processes.

    Or are they unable to guarantee it won’t happen again because they lack some or all of the above?

    Again I am forced to fall back on tortured analogies to explain this I fear.

    A few years ago I had an accident in my car. I am unable to guarantee that for the rest of my driving life I won’t have another accident. Hence I have taken out insurance. However, I have also taken a bit of time to understand how the first accident occured and modified my driving to improve my ability to control the risk of accident. Hence I am able to get insurance.

    Had I not modified my driving the probability of the same type of accident occuring would have been high, and as a result the cost of my insurance would be higher (no no-claims bonus for example).

    However, because I understand the “Happy Path” I want to travel on when driving and also understand the Crappy Path that I can wind up on if I don’t take the appropriate care and apply the appropriate controls (preventative and detective) on how I drive I haven’t had an accident since I reversed into the neighbour’s car many moons ago.

    I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again, but that is because I understand the nature of the risk and the extent to which I can control it, not because I am blissfully unaware of what is going on when I’m driving.

    Information Quality and Trust

    What does this idea of Information Quality and Trust mean? Well, the Indo put it very well this morning:

    Revelations about the Laser card glitch, disclosed in yesterday’s Irish Independent, have shaken confidence in banks’ payments systems at a time when people are nervous about all financial transactions.

    As I have said elsewhere, information is the key asset that fuels business and trade and is a key source of competitive advantage. In a cashless society it is not money that moves between bank accounts when you buy something, it is bits of information. Even when you take money from an ATM all you are really doing is turning the electronic fact into the physical thing it describes – €50 in your control to spend as you will.

    When the quality of information is called into question there is an understandable destruction of trust. “The facts don’t stack up”…. “the numbers don’t add up”… these are common exasperated comments one can often hear, usually accompanied by a reduction in trust in what you are being told or a reluctance to make a decision on that information.

    Somewhat ironically, it is the destruction of trust in the information around sub-prime mortgage lending and the bundled loan products that banks started trading to help spread their risk of in mortgage lending that has contributed to the current economic situation.

    In the specific case of Bank of Ireland and the Laser card problems, the trust vacuum is compounded by

    • The bank’s failure to acknowledge the extent or timescale of the issue
    • The bank’s apparent lack of understanding of how the process works or where it is broken. [Correction & Update: Yesterday’s Irish Daily Mail says that the Bank does know what caused the problem and is working on a solution. The apparent cause is very similar to the hypotheses I set out in the post  previous to this one.]

    This second one isn’t helped unfortunately by the fact that these issues can sometimes be complex and the word count available to a journalist is not often amenable to a detailed treatise on the finer points of batch processing transactions and error handling in complex financial services products.

    That’s why it is even more important for the bank to be communicating effectively here in a way that is customer focussed not directed towards protecting the bank.

    To restore trust, Bank of Ireland (and the other banks involved in Laser) needs to

    1. Demonstrate that they know how the process works… give a friendly graphic showing the high level process flow to the media (or your friendly neighbourhood voice of reason blogger). Heck, I’d even draw it for them if they would talk to me.
    2. From that simple diagram work out the Happy Path and Crappy Path scenarios. This may require a more detailed drill down than they might want to publish, but it is necessary. (they don’t need to publish the detail though).
    3. Once the Happy and Crappy paths are understood, identify what controls you currently have in place to keep things on the Happy Path. Test these controls. Where controls are lacking or absent, invest ASAP in robust controls.

    The key thing now is that the banking system needs to be able to demonstrate that it has a handle on this to restore Trust. The way to do this is to ensure that the information meets the expectations of the customer.

    I am a BOI customer. I expect to only pay for my lunch once. Make it so