The Occasional Masthead

Bah. Humbug. Back on the exercise bike for the first time in way too long, for half an hour. Bear in mind this is not in an airconditioned gym, this is in hot and humid subtropical Queensland. The only problem I found, apart from my immense dislike of this sort of exercise, was that the seat was not uncomfortable. Last time I went through this, the bicyle seat was excruciatingly uncomfortable, which means this time around my butt is too-well padded.

Were it not that I am much taller, with shorter hair, and a different gender, my enormous butt might lead to my being mistaken for Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Not so much websites, as it is reasonably pretty, and doesn’t break too many formation rules. No, what broke is the entire chain of communications.

Some days before Christmas I received a package of materials from one of the companies with whom I have superannuation. It was the usual sort of package: a cover sheet, a couple of glossy brochures, a self-congratulatory and entirely opaque annual report. There was also a sheet inviting me to go to a page on their website and make sure my contact details were correct, and be put in the draw to win an iPod.

Yesterday, I thought I may as well sit down and do it. After all, they have my address and email wrong, so we’ll sort it out. Ok, go to the URI they show on the printed sheet. It has instructions to go to another page to login, or create a login account. That other page, and the link to it, was just the top page of the site, and the instructions were a description of whereabouts on the destination page to find the next link.

So I go to the new user page, and see that it’s standard sort of stuff. Some stylish grey text describing the page, and mentioning that it will make my hair shiny and glossy, and some stylish grey form fields to fill in. I fill in the fields, then pause, wondering what my customer number is. I go to the package they’d sent, and see that there is a Reference number on the cover sheet. Ok, lets try that. Hmm. Nope, an alert pops up to tell me it’s an invalid number. I go to the filing cabinet, dig about, and find an older document that has an Account number on it. Hmm. Same number - logical deduction is that this is the Customer number. Re-enter in case I made a typographical error, same rejection.

By now I was getting both intrigued and irritated. I tried a different browser… same result. I sat back and stared at the screen, then realised that there was a notice on the page: “The Automatic Password service is not yet fully available for Organisations, Companies, MLC SuperEzy customers or customers who only hold a Business Super account.” Oh, surely not. I looked at the package of materials they’d sent out, and there was no mention of the kind of account I had. I had to dig back through my documents to find that I did indeed have a “Business Super” account.

Straight up, there’s some significant problems that have shown up just in the set of pages that I travelled, either in the pages, or in the entire process flow:

1. Why did the initial url not link to the new user and/or login page directly?
2. Given i’m identified by a customer number, why insist that i have yet another login name and password distinct from that unique identifier?
3. Their should be consistent naming of the unique customer number on all materials.
4. The rejection notice should have specified the reason for rejection.
5. The materials they sent out did not specify the kind of account i had.
6. Why have a page that was not fully functional at all?

Overnight, I mulled on this some more, and realised that the entire process was a wonderful example of how not to do customer relations. I can see the chain of thinking that would have occurred: we need to make sure we have correct addresses for customers, we can get the customers to do it for us, hey we could lure the customers to the site by having a contest, we’ll send something out in the next mail out.

Did the people who had this series of brainwaves remember that the bulk of their customers would not have login accounts on their website, and would need to go through the login process? Not likely. Did they realise, or even know, that some of their customers would not be allowed to go through the process? Not likely.

The process went horribly wrong in so many ways that indicates, to me, that the people running the company just don’t understand their customers. Most customers they have will have superannuation products through the compulsory arrangments their employers make, and hence are ineligble to enter the contest based on the way they have constructed the entry requirements. It would have been possible (I do this for a living) to ensure the competition insert was only sent to eligible clients, but they couldn’t be bothered. And finally, most people don’t retain the various pieces of paperwork, and would not go through the process that I did.

The main outcome of this customer relations process? I now feel that the company has different classes of client who have different rights and levels of customer service. I now feel that the company tends to be sloppy, and not think through issues. And I now feel that the money the company makes of this compulsory virtual tax is being wasted.

Congratulations MLC.

I really, really like the Dictionary tool built into the latest Mac OS X, in part because it has such lovely typography. Hence, the annual Xmas picture, or rather the first of:

I was tickled to see the “exclamation of surprise”

The latest King Kong film is good, very, very good. It’s also very long. All the technical aspects of the film are outstanding, and the whole thing is a very carefully constructed tribute to pre-War Hollywood, and to a dream time that never was.

The acting from most of the characters is reasonable — I would not expect to see vast ranges of emotion from most of them, as they are explicitly and deliberately stereotypes, in the true Junigan sense — but the Giant Ape rocks, and Naomi Watts is luminescent and outstanding. I’m talking Kate Hepburn style of good, and the camera loves her.

Go see it, at least once. (oh, and a bit of a spoiler: the monkey gets it in the end)

Some boxes I’ve recently made, for this christmas. The whitish wood was silver maple, the reddish wood is new guinea rosewood (and the mdf base for the drawer will remainly discreetly un-described).

I learnt a lot making these:

1. miter joints on boxes are really fiddly, and lead to Bad Language;
2. Vigorous application of carnuba wax makes my elbow ache;
3. An aching elbow is worth the result;
4. Silver maple burns from the saw and router really easily, and the grain tears if you look at it wrong when cutting across the grain;
5. Oops. Cut that groove on the bottom too far;
6. I love my cabinet scraper, now that I can sharpen it;
7. It’s amazing how well hand tools work when they’re sharp.

I am completely, utterly and entirely sick of working. I have been working effectively nonstop for close on two decades, with a change of career, six changes of employer, a stint as both a contractor, a full time employee in the private sector, and a full time employee in the public sector. And I’m sick of it. The only reason I work is so that I can eat and do the things I want to do when I’m not working, except I’m so tired (physically, mentally and frequently emotionally) that I can’t do anything when I’m not working.

Most people, a decade or more ago, if they had worked as long as I have would get a year or so’s long service leave. A sabbatical. All I can see stretching in front of me is another two or three decades of working, then the grave. I’m sick of it.