Thursday Feb 12, 2009
Yesterday my wife and I were watching Volt, a lifestyle/talkshow on Flemish national tv. One of the topics was about online dating, and the pros and cons behind finding a partner online. The setup of the discussion was fine: one person from a dating site, and 2 psychologists to talk about the phenomenon.
The introductory film talked about a 27-year old woman who had numerous bad experiences with online dating, and told the audience that she was fed up, and stopped using dating sites. Her testimony might have been valuable, but for the little fact at the end where she was actively promoting a series of after-work parties she was hosting, as an alternative to online dating. Mmm, quite an objective statement here, no?
The 2 psychologists then went on to warn about the dangers of online dating: people being rejected, too much focus on the exterior, too many people not having accurate profiles. One of them even raised his finger to warn about people using online dating to cheat! Oh no, the horror!
But hang on, wait a minute... Doesn't this happen in real life as well? Isn't this a fact of life in many bars, pubs, restaurants, clubs and in any place where people meet one another?
It frustrates me that some folks still are wanting to picture the online world as one bad place, where all these awful things can happen... Sure enough, there are dangers online, but that is not different from "real" life. In fact, to me, the online world and the real world are merging more and more, as I have many interactions online through Facebook and Twitter, amongst others.
To give credit to the producers, they also showed a couple that met online, moved in after a couple of months and is now married, and has 3 children. Just like my wife and me, except for the children.
Bottom line: stop portraying the online world as something alien, it is part of our lives and will be for the rest of them...
Thursday Dec 18, 2008
This morning I received a registered letter from a collection agent, urging me to pay a hospital bill dating back to June 2008. Even though I am the first to admit that some payments might slip my attention, a hospital bill is not one of them, so I was intrigued. My first reaction was to immediately pay to avoid further legal costs, but then I started thinking and I really could not recollect seeing this invoice.
So I called the hospital and asked them to confirm the amount and for what the invoice was. After some questions we found out that this invoice was sent to my previous address. As I did notify the hospital of my new address (my wife and I even were at the hospital registration before this invoice), the hospital agreed to waive all the extra costs such as interest and collection agent fees, providing I pay the invoice, which I did today.
Then I started thinking some more. So the hospital sent this invoice, with my previous address, to this collection agent. He obtains my current address from the official registry, and sends me the registered letter. Now shouldn't that already ring a bell at the collection agent? He sees an invoice from June 2008, sent to an address where I moved out of in February ... 2007, and he is now sending this to my new address.
Maybe the collection agent could see this and alert the hospital? So they can send the invoice for me to pay? Would that not be the most logical and customer service oriented thing to do?
I believe so, but given the fact that collection agents make a lot of money doing this, and given the fact that most people have that initial reaction to pay the bill, I fear that the system is set up to allow collection agents to make money off people's backs...
Does anybody have similar stories to share?
Saturday Dec 13, 2008
This past week I received a letter from my cable company, announcing that my download speed will increase from 20 Mbps to 25 Mbps, and this at no cost. I read the letter, and it went straight to the bin... Why? Don't announce something that will have no material improvement of my customer experience. Let's face it, I will not notice this difference. And this means that I don't want to know about this.
On the other hand, here are some examples of letters I want to receive from my cable company, which would have a very material impact, improvement duh, on my customer experience:
- Announce additional HD channels. I have a few at this point, and I enjoy them very much. Soccer games, movies, series. This will lead to additional customers, which in turn will lead to additional demand for HD channels.
- Announce the possibility to watch Belgian soccer games. Currently this contract is owned by the major competitor of my cable company, and I can not watch any games as I need to be a customer of this competitor. Both companies are missing out on revenue. They could be sharing the contract, allowing me to pay for specific games on PPV.
- Announce the fix in recording a full season of a series. Currently all re-runs are recorded as well, so I have to manually delete scheduled programming for re-runs of my favorite series.
These 3 announcements would be very welcomed, and would mean that my customer experience is greatly enhanced. If by chance someone from Telenet would be reading this: stop sending letters which have no meaning.
Tuesday Nov 25, 2008
How often do you hear this in a meeting whenever apologies before asking anything: "I may have a stupid question, but ..." And this is most of the time followed by: "There are no stupid questions..."
Well this happens to be true, and I firmly believe that there really are NO stupid questions. Well, very few anyway...
This was demonstrated to me again today. At Sun I run a number of reports for account teams that contain various data on their business. Last week one account manager asked to see a specific report, with more details, such as individual line items. Earlier today I sent in this report, and there was some back and forth emailing, each time going more into the specifics.
And this led to me also going into more details about the query I am using, and lo and behold, I found an error in the query which leads to the numbers being incorrect.
So a big thank you to the account manager who took the time to look at the numbers, ask questions, and push on until the answer was satisfactory for all. This will lead to more accurate reporting going forward!
Saturday Nov 22, 2008
This week my wife was described to me as a "sweetheart", by someone who has never met my wife. Just from me describing her, and most importantly, from describing what she has done yesterday, Friday November 21.
At this moment there is an action in Belgium from "The Association Against Cancer" in collaboration with Pantene:
Now you have to know that in Dutch, "hair" is the same word as "her". What this action does is ask women to cut their hair (minimum lenght 20 cm), to donate to a foundation that creates wigs for women who have lost their hair due to chemotherapy.
And my wife did that! She went to the hairdresser yesterday and had her long hair cut (it was more than 20 cm), and now she is sporting a new, and wonderful, short haircut.
Needless to say that I think this is a wonderful thing to do, and I am very proud of her. The thought that a woman will enjoy the hours of hair caressing on the exact same hairs is really nice.
If you are a women, live in Belgium, and have long hair, I would encourage you to think about this. Your hair will grow back, you have the opportunity to go for a new style, and most importantly, you can help out someone who is going through a terrible time.
Thursday Nov 13, 2008
As I have understood from the new direction the bailout is taking, Paulson wants to move some of the funds towards credit card companies, student loans and consumer lending in general. As much as I am pleased that not all of the money will be going to the financial institutions that got the world into this mess, it does make me wonder.
When is the US going to get the wake up call that is long overdue? Being a society focused on consumption is not bad per se, but living on credit to keep the consumption going is another thing. I am the first to admit that I also have a few credit cards, but zero debt. Each month I make sure that all that is owed is payed, as it should be IMHO.
Has the US reached the point of no return? Meaning that should the US adopt a different attitude, and stop spending on credit, the whole country would go bankrupt? And with it, dragging the whole world down with it?
What do you think? Should all hope be abandoned?
Wednesday Nov 12, 2008
If you don't know yet, I have recently moved into a new role as Sales Operations Manager for Sun's Global Communications and Media Industry, supporting a set of Network Equipment Provider and Telco accounts with revenue and management reporting. This new role allows me to expand my experience in the field of reporting and business analysis, and I am loving every minute, or more specifically, every row of spreadsheet of it.
A number of folks have give me feedback that they believe the reporting I am doing is very useful and helps them a lot. It increases their visibility and helps them to better understand the business they are responsible for. One person remarked that this helps him to prevent flying blind. To me the reporting I have been doing does not seem so special, but I guess that if you can bring additional data to folks it means a big difference.
In order for me to improve this reporting, and helping my customers even better, I want to reach out to you. If you are a user of data, and I'm guessing everyone is these days, what kind of data would you like to see? What would help you make better business decisions?
Thursday Nov 06, 2008
If there is one tweet out of all the thousands that were posted yesterday, I hope this one from nonstick reaches the McCain campaign team. This is the one tweet that will always stick in my mind when I think back at how the McCain campaign was run.
Why is it that only when a politician gives a concession speech, that the tone and how the person is behaving can change? We first saw this with Hillary Clinton, who received so many positive comments on her concession speech, and rightly so. And now McCain?
One can only hope that the GOP, and all other political parties across the globe, finally see and understand that an election can be won with a positive message of hope and change. You don't have to stick to a message of anger and fear in order to be the winner.
I share the great hope and enthusiasm that is now being generated by this election of change, and I sincerely hope that Barack Obama will lead the USA and the world into a new place, one where the glass is always half full...
And for those campaign managers that doubt whether it can be done?
YES IT CAN !!!
Tuesday Oct 28, 2008
Here are 2 examples:
- 2006: Banker A works for the investment unit of Bank XYZ. He has a tremendous year, making money for his bank, and ending up at 200% of his target.
- 2008: Banker A works for the investment unit of Bank XYZ. He has a
tremendous year, making money for his bank, and ending up at 200% of
his target.
Looks exactly the same, no? Well, there is a big difference, we now live in different times. There is a financial crisis going on. I'm not going into details about the how, why and anything else, that is being discussed at length on other blogs, newspapers and sites.
What I do want to point out is the ridiculous situation where a banker who has performed exactly the same might not be receiving the same compensation now than 2 years ago. And that is a stupid situation IMHO. There is no reason why someone who has done an excellent job now should be treated differently than 2 years ago.
Where I do have a problem, and I am glad this is getting the attention, are the severance bonuses some of these CEO's, CFO's and other top executives are receiving, even after they might have ruined the banks or companies they have directed. There are very good reasons to investigate these and hold them back, or reclaim them, after some of the excesses that these executives have caused.
But please, let's try not get hysterical and see the difference between the two situations. If we continue down this path, these bankers (who are top performers) might not be performing as well in the future, which is about the worst thing that can happen now.
After all, there is one incentive that has proven to work well when you want to motivate employees: money.
What are your thoughts on this? I would love to hear your opinion.
Sunday Oct 12, 2008
So there's a financial crisis it seems, and what has happened in Belgium is certainly not unique. The government has taken action to save 2 of the 3 big banks: Fortis and Dexia. As both stocks are very widely held by small individual investors, pension funds and social organisations, this has created quite a stir in Belgium. I'm no specialist, so it's difficult to judge whether the right actions were taken, I guess time will tell.
One thing that has really made me mad however is one event that happened this week. A division of Fortis, it's investment arm of the insurance part that is still part of the noted Fortis Holding, has organised an event for a select group of big investors. Apparently the event was hosted in an expensive hotel in Monaco, at a cost of 150K EUR.
As you can imagine the press are all over it, crying outrage over how top bankers are behaving inappropriately, and are wasting the taxpayer's money (the Belgian government partially nationalised Fortis).
Granted, the timing of this event is bad, but let's consider a few facts:
- Planning such an event takes months, and canceling at short notice probably will incur penalty charges
- Even in times like this, you can not stop your marketing and relationship building. Now more than ever business needs to be secured
I can only imagine the headlines should the following scenarios have taken place:
- The event was cancelled, and 150K EUR was spent without a return
- The investors that were not invited take their business elsewhere
So the situation is very difficult to say the least, and stories like this demonstrate how companies that are doing business these days (especially banks) are threading on very thin ice...
To me it's simple, let the banks go about their business, and leave it up to the official institutions both inside Fortis and the government to judge. Stories like this only make the distrust in the financial system worse, so do not help the situation at all.
What is your opinion about this story?
Wednesday Oct 01, 2008
At first I was planning to title this blog post "Campaign advice to Obama/Biden", but then I decided to put away some of those thoughts that anyone actually would read this blog post ;-)
What I do want to mention is that following some of the Palin interviews and videos that I have seen in the past few days, I have a feeling that Biden might be tempted to go for the all-out victory in the debate. Given Palin's track record in these interviews, I can assume that Biden will "win" the debate, even though Team McCain is probably brainwashing Palin right now.
But what would a "win" be worth if that means belittleing, humuliating or embarrasing Palin to the point where the sympathy vote might become an issue. If he goes for the kill, I think the actual "winner" of the debate might be a surprise come Nov 4.
My feeling is that Biden should not be trying to point out the fact that Palin might not be competent or intelligent enough to become the VP. Let's face it, 2000 and 2004 have shown that intelligence and competence are not really an important factor in electing a president...
Monday Sep 29, 2008
Last Saturday I was very pleased to see the headline in my newspaper that the grocery store my wife and I go to (Colruyt) is the cheapest in Belgium, even cheaper than some of the discounters such as Aldi or Lidl. That reinforces my point of view that we should continue shopping there, even though my wife does not really like it. Granted the shopping experience is not as nice as Carrefour or Delhaize, but price is king for me.
Now I don't know whether many people read that headline and decided to try Colruyt, but there were a lot more people in the store than usual on a Saturday morning, even taking into account it was the end of the month.
So far the good part...
Here is where my frustration kicks in. When we finished our shopping we arrived at the cash registers, and what we found there was quite a disappointment. Quite quickly I realised that the employees operating the registers were not really going at it at the usual speed. Upon closer inspection we realised that ALL of the employees were either new or job students, meaning that the speed of processing a customer went down dramatically. Whilst I understand that all employees need to be trained, I think it's a very bad idea to deploy all new employees around the busiest time of the week.
One can definitely argue that it's our spare time, and waiting an additional 10 or 15 minutes is not the end of the world. And it is not, I agree. But what annoys me the most, and this is the case in all similar situations, is where I see inefficiency such as this, thus having without a doubt an influence on the overall customer satisfaction.
What are your views on this?
Tuesday Sep 23, 2008
This blog posting is a direct result of Twitter. Many of the people I follow were commenting on the season premiere of Heroes season 3, which was on the US TVs yesterday. Already I have asked the people I am following to refrain from posting spoilers about the new season.
There is nothing worse than finding out what is going to happen next when you are watching TV. I am a big fan of NBA and the pay TV channel I subscribe to shows 2 games a week (would want more of course). As they are broadcasted live during my night time I tape the games and watch them the day after. Watching these during lunch used to be no problem, but these days there are so many channels where the result might be broadcasted that I usually have to refrain from going online (apart from work). But sometimes I do get the result from a source that I was not expecting, and of course this means deleting the game.
The same applies for TV shows. There used to be a time where I would download the latest episodes of all the great shows that I follow (Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes,...) in order to be up to date with US TV. This obviously is not completely legal, but that is what we Europeans have to do in order to be up to date. And as the majority of my friends do this, you had to follow in order to be able do discuss your favourite show. But in the last 2 years I have stopped doing that, now I follow the European schedule, which means being months late, and having to warn friends not to discuss what Jack, Kate and Sawyer are up to.
And this is why I am so happy that the BBC has decided to show the new Heroes season with only 1 week delay between the US release. For us this is quite a revolution, as we are used to waiting months (and sometimes even years) for our favourite shows to appear on European TV.
Here is to hoping that now the trend has been set and that other channels will follow, and start airing new material much sooner. I really think this will prevent a lot of illegal downloading, so in the benefit of the studios as well.
Feel free to leave a comment, unless it's a spoiler ;-)
Thursday Aug 28, 2008
Whilst my wife and I are counting down to our city trip to New York in 9 days time, we are starting to build our schedule of things to do and sites to see. So far we have already booked tickets to the following:
- Guggenheim museum
- Empire State Building
- 3 hour cruise around Manhattan
- Grease
Some of the other things we plan to do are:
- Ground Zero
- Flushing Meadows (we are around during the final weekend, but tickets are rather expensive)
- M&M's store (this one not my choice)
- Chinatown
- Little Italy
- Central Park
- Shopping (would have liked to see the US$ gain in value post New York)
A while ago I did post a message on Twitter to ask for feedback on what to see in New York, but no response so far. So I'm now trying again, this time via my blog.
So here goes: what is the 1 thing we absolutely have to see/do/experience whilst we are in New York? And please also let us know why this is a must do in your view!
Keep in mind that we are arriving on Saturday early afternoon at JFK, and leaving on Wednesday evening, if that can help you with your travel advice.
Tx in advance!
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Dear Sirs
May be you can help us to look for bus...