Some would say the answer is obvious. But it’s always worth remembering that processes seemingly designed to frustrate the customer are not limited by sector or organisation. Here’s a tale of convoluted customer service with rather a surprising punchline. Though here is another, more seasonal, story which shows another approach altogether.
Good services depends on good systems. But good systems do not guarantee good services. The distinction is all too often overlooked, not least by designers of systems and services. The London congestion charge is a fascinating case study of a superbly engineered system supporting a service which has some important deficiencies. I was told a [...]
The links below have two things in common. They don’t work. And they should. http://hmrc.gov.uk http://met.police.uk http://parliament.uk http://civilservice.gov.uk http://hmg.gov.uk/ (though for so grand an address, the results to be found are sadly inconsequential) Distinguishing a web server from gopher, telnet and the host of other application protocols which jostled for supremacy as they emerged from [...]
To the post office this morning. Twice: once to queue up to post some parcels and once to queue up somewhere else to collect one. At the post office, the woman in front of me wanted a form to convert her Portuguese driving licence into a British one. Easily done. And she wanted some advice: [...]
I am sitting at home waiting for a parcel, the unloved and unglamorous side effect of internet living. I know it left Sheffield last night. I know it got sorted in Birmingham. I know it got to Croydon. I know it’s on a van on its way to me. The only thing I don’t know [...]
Try as we might, we just couldn’t make a mortgage application fun, so we made it simple instead. ING tube advert
The idea of service minimalism is a very attractive one. Perfection - in service design as in other things – is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. I have written before about government being most successful when it is least intrusive and also [...]
There are two things I understand about cloud computing. The first is that it works as an insurance policy. My house might burn down, my computers all get stolen, my hard disks fail simultaneously, and still I will not have lost any of the data I care most about because quietly every night Jungle Disk [...]
I walk in, slightly tentatively. It’s not altogether clear quite where I should be. I stand in what looks like the right area. Nobody takes any notice of me. There are one or two members of staff talking to other customers. There is a woman whose job seems to consist of walking around importantly with [...]
Things go wrong. Processes don’t quite work. The requirements change before the software is finished. The deadline is approaching so the scope is reduced. The system isn’t quite as scalable as the vendors claimed. The training was designed to support the original design, not what has actually been implemented. There are seventy six legacy systems [...]