Cost of Quality vs Low Customer Confidence

I believe in offering excellent service to my customes.

As an IT Professional, this means that I believe that the IT department has a responsibility to provide an excellent service to computer users. The trouble is, ‘excellent’ means that all the niggly little problems with applications need to resolved quickly, effectivey, and once-and-for all.

Unfortunately, this often appears to be an expensive proposition. It can be time-consuming to fix every little thing, and people’s time can be relatively expensive compared to the immediate benefits of fixing every silly little problem. It is, therefore, very tempting to provide good service – or even mediocre service – instead of excellent service.

I believe that this is wrong. All wrong.

The Red Rover, West Wellow

Yesterday evening, my wife and son and I were travelling with friends on the A36. We stopped at the Red Rover in West Wellow for our evening meal.

The establishment was child friendly with clean toilets and good baby change facilities. The food was nothing special, but was good value for money. The staff were helpful and the atmosphere convivial. Service was swift, and there was no problem with seating and serving a minibus of 11 people on a Saturday night. When everyone else’s food arrived, my own meal appeared to have been forgotten, but the problem was soon noticed and rectified quickly with appropriate apologies.

There was one other problem. As my wife was tucking into her ham and eggs, she was amazed to discover a piece of foiled paper in her meal. It turned out that two of those small packets of butter had found their way under the food! As you can imagine, the food was saturated in butter.

When the waitress came to ask us if everything was alright, my wife complained, politely but firmly. To her credit, the waitress offered to replace the food and to speak to the chef. My wife refused: she explained (with good reason) that we were in rather a hurry and that we could not wait for the problem to be dealt with in that way. My wife suggested that she eat what she could, but that we could be offered something off our bill instead. After consulting with the landlady, we were refunded the price of my wife’s meal.

We think that this is excellent customer service. We would recommend Red Rover, and would happily stop there again in the future.

How I See Myself Professionally

My present job title is Analyst Programmer.

Solving the Wrong Problems

It is often beneficial to go back to fundamentals.

Many years ago I passed an HND in Mathematics, Statistics and Computing. One of the few things that I remember from the Computing modules that is still directly relevant to my day-to-day work is the idea of the “Presenting Problem.”

Product Features and Marketing

A lot of products have ‘features’ that are there to sell them, not for people to use.

How many people buy a video recorder because of all the clever things they can do, then just use them to watch pre-recorded movies? 

How many people buy mobile phones with all the latest features, but only ever use them to make calls?

Marketing is often about the things that matter to people who buy products, not about the things that matter to people who use them. Even when these are untimately the same people.

Agree? Disagree? Do you have any other examples / counter examples? Your comments are welcome.

Programming Priorities

Over at Code Project, Colin Angus Mackay asked about priorities in programming. I am absolutely convinced that the only correct order is as follows:

1. Maintainability
2. Usability
3. Everything else (Security, reliability, scalability, performance etc.)

I put maintainability above all things. If the application is maintainable, the other attributes can be added. If not, then one day the user’s requirements will change and the application will become useless. 

Usability must come second. Software exists for users, it exists to enable users to achieve something. It is better to create software that users can actually use, even if it isn’t perfect, than to write an application that is functionally correct but unusable.

Losts of people seem to think that IT is primarily about technology. I profoundly disagree with this. In any endeavor, the human aspects are more important than anything else.I believe that IT is about humans first, and technology second. Software development is about two groups of people: the people who write the software and the people who use the software. ”People write software for people!” could easily become my slogan.

Interestingly, lots of developers don’t appear to think like this.

So, there it is. Maintainability is for the people doing the writing, usability for the people doing the using. Everything else is negotiable.

Disappointingly, I don’t always develop like this.

Penguin: Lost

Some while ago, we took my JB (my then 2-year-old son) to our local Vue cinema to see “Happy Feet“. It was his first trip to the movies. To remember the day, we bought him a promotional penguin soft toy from the kiosk.

The penguin quickly became JB’s favourite toys. He called it “Peng”, insisted it slept in his cot, fed it plastic food, made him dance, brushed its “teeth” and read it books.

A few weeks later, JB took the penguin out for a trip in the car. Sadly, Peng did not return. We guess the penguin was lost somewhere in our own street. I searched for the lost bird, but it could not be found.

JB kept asking for Peng. We said we would look for him.

I decided to try to obtain a replacement. After searching the web and ebay to no avail, I went back to the cinema where we obtained the original. Unfortunately, they had sold out long before. I wrote the the Vue head office.

After a few days, I received an email stating that they had just one penguin left. Then a package arrived containing the new Peng. Vue refused to let me pay for the new bird.

All credit to the Guest Services department at Vue Cinemas.

JB was very pleased to have Peng “back”.

Now, JB always insists that Peng is in his cot at night. He still feeds his penguin, makes him dance and makes me make him talk. JB makes me read them both stories, and I help them brush each other’s teeth.

For my part, I insist that Peng never leaves the house. This seems to keep us both happy.