Supporting our Customers

Last Sunday evening, after a busy weekend, we decided to get a 'quick' snack at out local pancake restaurant (de Panoramahoeve). The restaurant is in the middle of a forest  and has a nice outdoor terrace.  Because of the nice (warm) weather we decided to sit outside.   After a few minutes we heard the rumbling thunder of an approaching thunderstorm and decided to move inside (as many customers did).  5 minutes later all hell broke loose and rain came pouring down.

We ordered the menu and the drinks where served, no warm servings came from the kitchen for a considerable time and many clients started to call the waiters for an explanations why they have to wait so long.

The explanation was simple. The waiter told  "The policy from the restaurant is that the kitchen stops when weather conditions changes rapidly and customers have to move away from the terrace. When the situation stabilizes the kitchen reviews who moved inside and who left for home. Then the orders are adjusted based on these changes and the cooking process resumes".  After thinking this over, this seems logical from a business-perspective but not from a customer-focus perspective. We went to the restaurant to have a quick-snack and not for a long evening waiting because of internal policies.... (but the explanation helped a lot).

An eye opener ! in Oracle we sometimes forget that our policies are not always customer focused and to make it worse, we do not always explain the reasoning.  Sometimes, even I have to think hard why things happen the way they happen....  One of my mentors in my first Oracle years learned me 'when I cannot find an explanation for an error in 10 minutes  its an error, file a bug to get this resolved !'.  

In the era of change in Oracle Support, lets agree to focus on explaining our policies and improving our processes. In fiscal year 09 we have already started with explaining the processes on our Customer Services Days  (Oct6 for the Netherlands).  But lets also reduce the number of inconsistent policies and go back to the basics  "make our customer successful with  Oracle products".

Looking forward to your feedback an suggestions for explanation or improvements !

Hans Wiggerman

p.s. When the kitchen resumed service - we where served quickly by a smiling waitress that made us forget we had to wait bit longer then usual.
 
   


 

You might know that we ran a series of customer service days.   On the October 6 we will have the final session in Ede, The Netherlands.  I would like to invite you all to this event to learn, share and network with fellow Oracle users.

Details about this event in Ede are available through this page

Hope to see you there!
Hans

Some weeks ago we went to Austria for a ski-vacation. Because we can only plan a break during the school vacations there are some challenges to face.

One of the larger challenges is the journey to the resort an back. With 50% of the NL in vacation an many people traveling in the same week to Austria the roads are really crowded. This requires some careful planning and this where the problem starts.

The current practice is that drivers throw away their paper maps, take their navigator (Tom Tom / Navtec/ Garmin....) and let this device plan the trip. Most devices start with planning the shortest/fastest trip and use (dynamic) travel information to avoid traffic-jams as much as possible. The journey starts..... The effect, not only problems on the main roads but also on the secondary roads = chaos everywhere !

This year we tried a new approach. Yes we used the navigator + dynamic traffic planning but we also used a reliable advice from the ANWB (Royal Dutch Touring Club) who is very experienced in this field. They provided suggestions which road to take based on their experience, the planned work on the roads and weather conditions. During our journey we had a lot of 'arguments' with our navigator but at the end we saved 25% of the travel time compared with people who traveled using the guidance from their navigator.

Learning - there is an area for improvement in this field. Think ahead and keep thinking during the trip.... Ideally the traffic-info should be mixed with high-level advices from 'the field' people or organizations who have high-level knowledge about the topic.

This is exactly the point I would like to make in this blog.
More and more I see IT teams a consolidation phase where they let go(experience=expensive) people. The assumption is that this can be compensated by intelligent tools (the Navigators) provided by the Hardware and Software suppliers. True, this is an option for the short-term and not always targeted at your challenges, the golden 80% of the cases.
But do not forget that there is always a 20% of cases left that is responsible for 80% of the total costs. What is the plan to cover this ?

Here you could see if Support could provide help. Take a look at the next generation support Experience Did you explore the effectiveness of the Health Checks ? or what is your experience with the Communities in My Oracle Support. Consider to support your team by experienced people from Advanced Customer Services.
All valuable offerings provided by support to enable you to have a safe trip and save 25% of your costs.

Looking forward to your experiences!
Hans

Last week one of our customers faced a complex escalation where a large (2+ TB) database did not successfully completed the migration. I will not go into the details but the problem was that the data-header blocks where not consistent with the data in the blocks - in layman's terms "Houston we have a problem".
As a result - no access and.. the key business application down...   in Support terms a REAL SEVERITY 1...  in real life an emergency call Monday morning at 6.45 AM.

Our usual reflex is to assign a crisis manager who starts to engage with all parties involved (customer/partner-implementer/support/development). Starting point is to triage the situation, assign ownership and manage the process which in fact means communicate-communicate-communicate and let the techies do their work.

During the day we had a lot if discussions with the customer about all aspects of this project.   What is your plan?, how is the contingency  setup ?. Is there a fallback ? and did you see this problem during testing ?.   All interesting areas to discuss in this blog but lets focus on the testing

A review of the steps revealed that they spend a lot of time in this area. A team of specialists spend many hours in setting-up and preparing the test, covering all areas of the migration.  The team performed the planned data migration using an identical data set on an identical operating system using the cookbook designed for the migration weekend.

So... the 1M dollar question was - "Why did they not found out about the data-corruption in the test".  I can tell you there where a lot of speculations about going on during the day.

During the day we got the answer, simple and a great learning point; "We tested the migration but did not run the application accessing the data. This was considered as a separate project and was planned in a later stage....by a different team"

So, project leaders, please keep this learning in mind when planning migration.  Don't let a limited scope of the project limit your thinking about testing.
 

Hans


..and how about the problem...
-Repeating the migration would take 7 days
-Fallback would delay the project 3 months, resulting in huge costs and loss in confidence.
-Using DUL would be an option
-The Oracle team decided to manually detect the wrong blocks and patch the manually .. 12.00PM the same day the 2+ TB Database was up and running and the customer went into production as planned (after running the dataccess tests)

The last Month was not the best on in my life.  The 24th of February my mother in law died at the age of 73 caused by cancer.   Because we are a close family and the speed of this tragic incident (one week) it had a huge impact on my creativity, you start to focus on important things and you learn to relativize quickly.

One important thing I learned is that the service in the hospital is on very high level and a good place to learn where WE can improve.   I would like to share some observations, there is a learning in everything, even in the sad moments in life...

Communication is key.  Starting with the top. The specialists where very good in (frequently) explaining what happened, the approach they take and the showing options (will she survive?) of the treatment.   This approach gives a lot of 'piece of mind' to the relatives. Now, 3 weeks later we do not have the feeling 'if we would have done this then....' .
The medial people on the floor (nurses).  They where great in executing the approach suggested by the specialists and where key player in the process by regular checks, measurements (blood/heartbeat/temperature/... etc) and feedback to all parties.  They also took ownership and showed initiatives to proactively inform family and medical staff but they where also professional enough to keep distance and point to the specialists for more detailed information.
Finally the overall 'atmosphere' in the hospital.  Although you 'know' this is a routine, the staff was able to give the patient and their family the feeling that they really care about you. From the moment we entered the hospital till we left it for last time .

Oke, now the IT world.   We seem to promote as much self service as possible.  When you have a real problem that is not tackled in the online documentation, please log a service request and use the reference number in the rest of the conversation.  When you have a real problem, call use, and we might even decide to escalate. You might even get an actionplan (when you are lucky) .  However realize that we have more customers with even more severe problems so be patient.... 

I agree this is a bit exaggerated but it makes my point clear... WE can do much better when we are willing to raise the bar. IT community, lets take better care of our (critical) customers.  Make sure there are specialists who can provide and communicate a clear action plan. Ensure that the support organization follows the action plan with the customer. Perform regular checks and measurment to track progress. Stay in contact with the stakeholders, even in times when they are less responsive because they have other things on their minds. Last but not least, create the atmosphere that YOU CARE !! even if this is escalation #10 of the week.....

Hans

During the last weeks I get more and more inquiries from customers how we, Oracle Support, can help them to reduce costs.  Primarily these questions are aimed at lowering the renewal-fee and to be honest the answer on this specific question is that we are not open for this discussion.  

BUT we are open for reducing costs.. ;-)

Looking at the TCO of the complete IT stack it seems that we, Oracle Support, represent only a very small portion of the total costs. Lowering 10% here would not solve a lot of budgeting issues.  What we can do (Yes We Can..) is advise and inspire you how to look at your complete stack to see if there are possibilities for reduction.  

What would be the impact on your budget if you consolidate many to a few servers.  Ever thought of data compression ?  How about consolidating many OS'es to one e.g. Linux and use Virtualization.  Have you ever thought of using My Oracle Support to lower the risk and make the support process (security/patch management) more efficient?  Would you be open for Outsourcing parts of the service to an external party...? 

Many questions we CAN answer personally or though the Customer Services Days we are planning globally.


Keep an eye on this blog, I will post more concrete material when available...


and... sorry for doing marketing through this blog - This topic keeps me really busy, excited and turning a negative trend to a positive approach gives me a lot of energy!


Hans

In February I will enjoy a short break and we planned to go on a ski-trip.  Since the hotel is in Austria and we will go by car we will need to have snow-chains available in the car.  I do not expect to use them but you are expected to have them in your car 'just in case'.

I called a large retailer with a shop near by asking if they where on stock (it seems that my car has a 'difficult' tire-size).  The guy on the phone was enthusiast and told me that he would reserve a pair so I could come to get them during the weekend.  So far so good !

When I went to the shop on Saturday... guess you know what comes next ... the same guy could not remember the call, did not reserve them and so did not have the snow-chains available ...  But he promised to have them reserved in the store later the next week.

Yesterday I visited the store again and ... no reservation no chains .... but luckily (and after asking the ignorant servant) she had one on the shelve.. hooray.    When paying I discovered that the box was broken so I asked for a new box - if looks could kill....

It took me some time and lots of energy but in the end we found a solution by putting the chains in a new box (was that so difficult?) satisfied customer ....  

Driving home I realized that these kind of servants are killing for your image.  You can spend tons of Euro's in advertisement but if you carefully try to ignore service to your customer, its a waist of money..  

Lesson learned - "Servant, you can make or break the image of the company your work for. The least you can do is be polite an do what you promised to your customer. Give it a try - sure it works".  

To end with a quote "Customers come by Foot but leave by Car" in my case I left with my snow-chains

Hans








 

Nowadays there is a lot of discussion going on about Twitter, a 'new' micro blogging tool that keeps the web 2.0 community busy. As you are interested in the web and weblogs this might not surprise for you ;-)

Looking at it from some distance I can distinguish 3 groups of people using this Twitter.

First and largest group is 'the community', people twittering around, giving some insights in how they spend their day and sharing more or less interesting information like photo's or other content.

The next group is the content-providing companies like  BBC and  The New York Times.  More and more they find Twitter as additional stream to inform 'the world', replacing the email alerts they used to send to give a quick update to the community.

Group 3 are the service providers who use Twitter as service tool to their customers. For example Southwest Airlines is informing their customers on flight information.
I also see some companies starting to use twitter as a way of open-door for service related questions. 
In the past we used to call this the reception desk but in a globalizing world it has been replaced by web-based tools.   Starting with mail, followed by MSN/Chat and now we seem to have set the next step Twitter.  

There is a lot of movement in this area and because of this growing demand, large enterprises are starting to build Twitter-like features in their enterprise applications  (we are testing Ora*Tweet). Ideally you would like to connect your business applications to this communication instuments to automate sending info and capturing/routing incomming messages.

A lot of work ahead for the tech-guys and a lot of new ideas to be explored for the business innovators.....

In this post I was wondering if WE@Oracle Support can be of better service if we would open en service-twitter channel (in parallel with MetaLink and the phone) for catching user-questions... 
Looking forward to your suggestions.

Hans

http://twitter.com/hwiggerm

On a SIMI lecture from Gabriel R. Bitran I learned that there are 4 characteristics where service differ from normal 'goods'.   One of them is 'Simultaneity'. Services are simultaneously produced and consumed, you cannot put service 'on stock' to deploy when the market or conditions ask for it....

You might know that it's cold in the Netherlands.   We experience the first winter since 11 years and this means that the temperature ate night is -10 degrees C.  In these conditions many people suffer from problems with their car (e.g.  a frozen lock or doors or a dead and broken battery).   When this happens, the majority of these people call the ANWB/Wegenwacht to get help.  The process is that a mechanic 'on the route' is dispatched to the unfortunate car-owner to get him/her back on the road... (in 2009 till now, 6th of Jan they helped 20.000 car-drivers...).

And here I would like to come back to the characteristic from 'Simultaneity'. Because of this unexpected cold winter week, the demand on the service organisation is HUGE but.... it is very difficult to set mechanics 'on stock' to be deployed these 2 weeks.  You simply cannot clone mechanics to expand the team for these conditions.. 
As a result of this characteristic, there is a risk of a growing backlog (wait-time) and as a result less happy customers  (waiting in cold cars...).  The way the ANWB handles this situation is by making sure all resources are on the road early and making longer days. As a result, the number of people on the road and the number of cases per mechanic increase so the capacity is larger during this period.

In support we know similar situations.  When introducing a new product version (e.g. eBus V12/Db v11)  or on period- (year) end we see and increase of activity on the customer side. This often results in more calls to handle by support and development, with the same amount of engineers (no we do not keep the on stock ;-) ).   There are a few ways we anticipate on this...

• By preparing, build experience and share this with the Oracle community so you can also avoid problems to happen.
• By making sure we have the customers with 'pain' on our radar.  There is a team of people running a monitoring program where they, during the migration or go-live,  keep a close watch on the customer to make sure we understand what is expected and fix what has priority.
• By keeping a close watch to the process and KPI's and adjust the process or resources when needed (you might have to wait a bit longer on a solution for non-urgent issues)

One of my team members had an interesting discussion with one of his customers.  His customer-contact "I know someone who uses an Oracle product that can run checks on their environment, preventing serious issues.  What is it, what does it costs and how can I implement it ?"

These types of questions never fall from the sky.  Most of them are a result of a recent problems and activities to prevent these in the future.  This is what we call the 'compelling event' for change...

Software is getting more complex and keeping a good overview (not even focusing on improvements) is a difficult task these days with a decreasing IT budget.  
IT suppliers like Oracle try to keep up with this demand for help and for this reason we have released the Software Configuration Manager.  This program consist of 2 parts, one agent collecting data on your host and a monitor encapsulated in My Oracle Support or MetaLink. The best part ..... its for free ;-)

Getting back to our earlier discussion, it seems that my colleague already addressed this tool to this particular customer in the past. For some reason it was never implemented/used    (busy, no focus-priority, no... compelling event?). Guess they now have a good reason to reconsider this and take a few hours to download test and go into production with it.

it will save them a lot of time and prevent them for future damage .......


p.s. : Every blogger is providing you his or her 2009 prediction - I will not step into this trap but do want to wish you all a fantastic 2009!!