Hard-hitting IT commentator Dr Simon Moores gives his personal take
on the hot issue of the day."E-business is the game!" blares the
latest IBM advertisement on the television in front of me. My wife
wonders why I laugh bitterly.
We all know about customer relationship management. Many companies
spend a fortune on the software that goes with it but why, I ask,
do those who need it most, never seem to use it?
We all suspect, I'm sure, that a first-class letter is only
marginally quicker than a message in a bottle and that second-class
mail is sorted in Kabul before being lost in Reading, but you would
at least expect the Post Office or Consignia, as it's now called,
to recognise a valid London postcode.
And then there's Parcelforce - or should I call it Parcelfarce?.
Somewhere between California and Mitcham there is a £1,000 package
on its way to me. I know it's on its way, because the American
supplier, Cutting Edge Technology, has told me, and this is the
second attempt to send it to me.
Two weeks ago, the package reached Mitcham and, although it had my
name, address, postcode and telephone number on the package in
large letters, it was returned to California, much the worse for
wear, as an unknown London address.
Now my address is the only street of its name in London, which is
quite remarkable. In fact, if you type in my full postcode into
Streetmap.co.uk, you can even see an aerial picture of my patio
roof and whether my car is in its drive.
Parcelforce has an 0800 service number with a recorded message that
insists its agents are looking after other customers and that you
should please use the Web site or call later. It then disconnects
the call to reinforce the point.
The www.parcelforce.co.uk website offers a rudimentary tracking
agent, which yes, tells you that the package - if you happen to
have the consignment reference from the obligingly friendly
American side of the exercise - is on the UK system and en route.
But you knew that already and it's hardly up to Fedex global
positioning standards.
To be really awkward, what you might want to know as a customer is
whether it's en route to you or en route back to the States for a
second time because our sad excuse for a postal system is unable to
put in place anything that even remotely resembles an efficient
business process or useful CRM system.
I did manage to find out a week ago that the package was on a
guaranteed four-day delivery, so my best guess for its whereabouts
remains the black hole of Mitcham. But how, I wonder, do I find out
where it is and even why they chose to turn it right around to
California on the first attempt?
Isn't this what .net and the Internet revolution is all about? Are
so many of our older and larger companies and institutions are so
bogged down by bureaucracy and mediocrity that they are unable to
build useful customer interfaces and services from the vast sums
they spend on new technology?
The problem is that the bad old ways of doing business are still
alive and well and all the money in the world spent on customer
relationship training and software makes very little difference to
our lives when we have to deal with the likes of BT and Consignia.
It strikes me that companies of this size and reputation are likely
to take Microsoft's "One degree of separation" slogan literally
where their customers are concerned. Perhaps it should be "One more
excuse for separation" instead.
Is old-style bureaucracy clogging up new-business strategy?
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Zentelligence: Setting the world to rights with the collected
thoughts and ramblings of the futurist writer, broadcaster and
Computer Weekly columnist Simon Moores.