Category: Service

When is a service not a service?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Health & Social Care, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Processes and Practices, Public Institutions, Service, Transformation

As companies grow, they reorganise and establish different business units to serve their needs. Often, a number of units must cooperate to deliver contracted services to clients. This cooperation can sometimes prove difficult causing disjoint service delivery and strained relationships with the client. The Badger took many calls during his IT career from frustrated clients who experienced, and were frustrated by, poor cooperation between different units within his company. One call from a client he knew well, however, has long stuck in his memory.

Their call was to complain about constant bickering at service review meetings between two units, one delivering helpdesk, hosting, and support services and the other developing a new business application. They demanded that cooperation between the units improved to provide ‘joined-up’ service coherency, as required by the contract. Action was taken, but what became cemented in the Badger’s memory were the client’s general words about service, namely ‘Service is not a service when it fails to fulfil its intended purpose or meet the needs of users. A service should provide value, convenience, and satisfaction, but if a service provider’s internal problems become visible and are a hinderance then the service has turned into a disservice. The essence of service is not its existence, but its ability to deliver coherently.’

These words, and the context that triggered this client’s call, came to mind when two friends described their recent experiences with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). One received an outpatient appointment letter from Audiology when they were expecting one from Cardiology! Enquiring revealed that the appointment was indeed with a cardiologist, but the wrong letter template had somehow been used to notify the appointment! The other attended a CT scan appointment arranged months ago only to be told when on the scanner with a canular in their arm that the scan could not proceed because they hadn’t had a prior blood test! The radiologist apologised but said it was common for scans to be aborted for this reason, because departments rarely tell each other – or the patient – that a prior blood test is needed! Having travelled some distance for the scan, the patient was understandably livid at having their time wasted and at having to await notification of a new appointment.

Irrespective of strikes, waiting lists, money, and political posturing, all of which are the mainstay of media reporting about the NHS, it’s no wonder that public satisfaction is at a record low (see here and here) when patients routinely experience interactions similar to these! The words of the Badger’s client resonate. The essence of service is not its existence, but it’s ability to deliver. It’s thus frankly shameful that ‘when it’s the NHS’ has become a valid answer to the question ‘when is a service not a service?’  Without redressing this, oblivion beckons for the NHS and its end-users…

Systems failure? keep calm and carry on…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business Continuity, Information Technology, Life, Online Services, Risk, Service

Fred (not his real name), an 80-year-old retired civil servant, walks past every morning on his way to the local supermarket for a newspaper. He does this regardless of the weather. Fred walks slower on his way back because the round trip to the supermarket is the limit of what he can manage in one go. On his return leg, therefore, Fred and the Badger often chat if the opportunity arises. Fred has a passion for modern history, current affairs, financial markets, and public service, and while he may be slowing up physically, his mind remains sharp, informed, and impressively analytical. Our conversations are always enjoyable and enlightening.

On Sunday, we had one such chat. Fred knows the Badger’s background is in IT and so he asked about the previous day’s delivery order and contactless payment problems at a well-known UK supermarket chain. ‘In IT there’s always going to be unexpected failures due to software defects, hardware and system problems, human error,  or any combination of the three’, the Badger answered benignly. ‘Didn’t affect me; a good old-fashioned visit to the supermarket and cash will always be my preference’, Fred responded, adding that it didn’t reflect well on the state of society when shrill hysteria and blame floods social media and the news whenever there’s an outage of online services. Fred thinks people take online services for granted and have lost the ‘keep calm and carry on’ spirit that’s normally a strength of the British character! Whether you agree or not, it’s an understandable point of view.

The conversation moved on when Fred mentioned that he’d been reading books about Mr Putin, cyber security, and artificial intelligence. He reckons humanity’s future is bleak, not because of technology, AI, or cyber warfare, but because younger digital-native generations are already slaves to algorithms, aren’t interested in facts and share comments before thinking, have a first response to everything which is a search for blame, and are too willingly ‘followers of the herd’! Again, it’s an understandable point of view. Fred added that Mr Putin doesn’t really need sophisticated cyber tools or AI. He just needs his supporters in key IT roles in some supermarkets, banks, fulfilment and distribution companies, energy suppliers, and network providers to coordinate a simultaneous ‘human error’ moment when making changes to systems! Fred thinks this would cause national mayhem.

Fred’s an interesting guy whose views are shaped by his eight decades of life and what he sees, hears, and reads on a daily basis. Our conversation reminded the Badger that he learned early in his IT career that systems will fail, often in unexpected ways, at an inconvenient time, and disruptively. When they do, it’s important for everyone to ‘keep calm and carry on’. Sadly, calm, patience, and individual resilience seems to be in increasingly short supply in our digital-dominated world…

When your home broadband goes wrong…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Broadband, Online Services, Service, Technology

What conclusions would you draw from the following interaction with a home broadband provider:   

  • Your broadband degrades over 48 hours and becomes unusable. Your checks don’t find any fault and so you call your provider suspecting a fault on the physical line.
  • After 30 mins on the phone waiting, you speak to a person who says their systems show no fault on the line. They suggest waiting 24 hours to see if the situation improves.
  • It doesn’t, and after another 30 minutes on the phone, you speak to a person who says that there is, after all, a fault on the physical line. They arrange a time 3 days hence, the soonest slot available, for an engineer to visit. Progress, but it means being without home broadband for a week before it’s fixed.
  • With no advanced warning of any kind, the engineer simply doesn’t show up. After spending another 30 mins on the phone to the provider, you speak to a person who offers no explanation. They simply rebook the engineer for the earliest available slot a few days later.
  • Again, the engineer fails to show up. You spend another 30 minutes calling the provider, but when you speak to a person, they are sympathetic, arrange another date and time for the engineer’s visit, and insist that it will happen.
  • With no advance warning again, the engineer fails to show up. It’s now 3 weeks since first contacting the provider. You spend more time on the phone before getting to speak to a person who says the engineer couldn’t visit because ‘they only had a partial address for you’. You point out that the provider routinely uses your full address on their bills, and that the engineer could have called the  mobile phone number registered with them to check.
  • The person ignores the point and goes on to say that the fault is not with the physical line, but with the provider’s hub in the home. They say a new hub will be dispatched within 48 hours and that the fault will be resolved by simply unplugging the old one and connecting the new one.
  • You control your annoyance and calmly make a formal complaint.

The Badger concludes that the provider’s customer service is 20th century, their IT support systems are likely woeful and not joined up, that resourcing must be a problem, and that against such a backdrop the introduction of more AI-centred technology is unlikely to improve matters for customers. OFCOM’s recent report on complaints about providers  probably paints a rosier picture than reality when it comes to typical customer experiences. It’s thus perhaps hardly surprising that many, like the Badger, are making the jump to smaller, modern, local fibre broadband providers where both service and value for money is substantially better.