The other evening I was meeting up with a mate for a business discussion at Chameleon bar across town. I set off from Area 47 at 6:25pm for the 6:30pm meeting. I expected to make it on time or at least a minute late. I ended up arriving 10 minutes late and all because I had underestimated the amount of traffic I would encounter on the way. The roads were clogged as if it were still 5pm rush hour.
Yesterday at lunch I found myself making a trip from City Centre to Old Town. By the time I reached my destination my feet were sore from the fifteen minutes of constant braking and accelerating.
We have too many cars on our roads and it’s affecting the environment and our health. I have the pleasure of working from home so don’t share the pain of those who have to make daily commutes to work. There is need for our city fathers to work on getting cars off the roads or making the road infrastructure better.
Provision of more dual lanes and increased parking lots is one way of dealing with it. Some of the illegal parking that takes place actually causes traffic jams. Property developers should also be forced into providing bigger parking areas than is currently the case. An example is the Blantyre City Assembly’s move to clamp cars that park ‘illegally’ but not providing enough public parking facilities. One tends to wonder where all the money from parking tickets and fines goes to.
Alternatively the newly introduced dual lanes should have a lane dedicated to high occupancy vehicles, buses and cyclists. The rest can use the other lane. This will encourage car pooling and also allow people to use buses other than their cars. It requires lots of civic education but it is very feasible. Cities like Johannesburg and Copenhagen have dedicated lanes for buses and cyclists and they work. It won’t happen overnight but it will work if everyone works together to make it happen.
If we don’t deal with this problem sooner rather than later it we will be heading for a gridlock!
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
When ‘Email marketing’ goes horribly wrong
It all started one quiet Friday morning when I received what was supposed to be a promotional email from a hotel in Chirimba. The sender, who never signed off, sent an email titled “Dorvic Hotel (Blantyre - Malawi)” and the body was simply written “PLEASE FIND THE ATTACHED DOCUMENTS. Regards”. Attached were three power point files and a word document. I found this approach rather amateurish but thought that someone somewhere will buy it. But what I saw next sent alarm bells ringing. The sender had sent this email to some 500 people or so and placed all the addresses in the TO: section for all to see. It was a recipe for disaster!
While I was still thinking why the sender had decided to send off an email in that way an email acknowledging receipt came in. Within a few minutes another acknowledgment came in. Then two other people responded at almost the same time asking people to send their acknowledgments to the sender and not to everybody. Then all hell broke loose. People started to second the idea that people should not respond to all. One of the first people to acknowledge receipt then sent out his ‘social message’ to the whole list. Then someone else sent out a party invitation. People shouted out loud to be removed from the list. Others continued to urge people not to respond to all. The emails went on and on and on and they came from far and wide. A gentleman south of the Limpopo wondered why he had to be abused for simply providing his email address when he patronized the hotel some time back.
Some semblance of normality seems to have set in but not without our hotel getting a bloody noise. An official apology from the hotel was sent out days later assuring email recipients that the whole episode was an error that had now been fixed and would never happen again. They then went on to extend a 10% discount to all email recipients for services at the hotel till 31st December 2009.
This apology no doubt was an attempt at crisis management but the damage had already been done and it was third parties that did the brand the most damage. The hotel provided the fuel for the flame that two people lit and burnt a pretty young and potential brand. The confidence that so many people had put in this institution by providing their email addresses on the assurance that their privacy would be guaranteed was lost at the press of the Send button.
This is one of many bitter lessons that organisations that choose cheap over professional, shortcut over doing it the right way have to deal with time and again. We can only hope that they will lead to better practices in the future!
While I was still thinking why the sender had decided to send off an email in that way an email acknowledging receipt came in. Within a few minutes another acknowledgment came in. Then two other people responded at almost the same time asking people to send their acknowledgments to the sender and not to everybody. Then all hell broke loose. People started to second the idea that people should not respond to all. One of the first people to acknowledge receipt then sent out his ‘social message’ to the whole list. Then someone else sent out a party invitation. People shouted out loud to be removed from the list. Others continued to urge people not to respond to all. The emails went on and on and on and they came from far and wide. A gentleman south of the Limpopo wondered why he had to be abused for simply providing his email address when he patronized the hotel some time back.
Some semblance of normality seems to have set in but not without our hotel getting a bloody noise. An official apology from the hotel was sent out days later assuring email recipients that the whole episode was an error that had now been fixed and would never happen again. They then went on to extend a 10% discount to all email recipients for services at the hotel till 31st December 2009.
This apology no doubt was an attempt at crisis management but the damage had already been done and it was third parties that did the brand the most damage. The hotel provided the fuel for the flame that two people lit and burnt a pretty young and potential brand. The confidence that so many people had put in this institution by providing their email addresses on the assurance that their privacy would be guaranteed was lost at the press of the Send button.
This is one of many bitter lessons that organisations that choose cheap over professional, shortcut over doing it the right way have to deal with time and again. We can only hope that they will lead to better practices in the future!
Thursday, August 13, 2009
My hour in one MTL shop
I told myself I would never go into that shop again. I swore that shop had a curse. But I did and boy oh boy did I regret it. MTL city centre shop is that kind of shop you almost always leave angry for one reason or another.
Well yesterday I happened to be in the area and thought I would buy a LibertyNet internet voucher from there. I noticed they had moved into another building so thought new premises should translate to a new customer experience. I was dead wrong!
I walked into the shop just after 3pm, found three people on the queue and the shop had five employees that I could see. A sixth one walked in about 15 minutes later.
Employee 1. She was handling customer service. She gave me a form you have to fill with your name and address to purchase a voucher (and to date I wonder why). The only other person she assisted was a mzungu gentleman who came in the inquire about broadband internet which she rightly said they don’t offer.
Employee 2. Also handling customer service. Assisted one mzungu lady who had come in to inquire why her application for a phone line in August 2008 had not been attended to. He quickly fished out her application from a folder, referred her to a back office and sat down to browse the net. At one point he sent a document to the printer and quickly dashed over to retrieve his documents. I noticed that the printout had pictures of plenty women. When he returned to his computer he maximized a screen and what did I see? A pink coloured screen with plenty pictures of ladies. Now am not jumping to any conclusions here but my creative mind tells me something not work related was going on. I don’t come across many business related websites with pink backgrounds and pictures of women! He obviously had no idea that I could see part of his screen.
Employee 3. Not sure what work he does, if any, because he was sitting slouched and motionless in his chair the whole time I was in the shop. The only thing I could see moving were his eye lids, consolation he had not died in his chair! He is obviously an extra piece of ‘furniture’ worth disposing of!
Employee 4. A cashier who only assisted one gentleman and referred us all to her colleague.
Employee 5. The cashier who eventually assisted us.
Employee 6. A gentleman who walked into the shop at around 3:15pm. He came in a jovial mood and immediately sat down to make a call. He then received a cheque from a customer so this customer could go off do other things. After that he made another phone call. I then asked him if he there is any other way we could be assisted being that I and a colleague had been on the shop for over 30 minutes and still had not been assisted. He said the ‘system takes a long time to print receipts hence the delay’. (Boy, some people just specialize in giving the most feeble excuses on earth!). Then after this he escorted a friend out of the shop and never came back.
I was finally assisted at 4:03pm!! I spent a whole hour in a shop where it seemed only one person was working a lot harder than the others. This shop and it's staff never cease to amaze me!
Well yesterday I happened to be in the area and thought I would buy a LibertyNet internet voucher from there. I noticed they had moved into another building so thought new premises should translate to a new customer experience. I was dead wrong!
I walked into the shop just after 3pm, found three people on the queue and the shop had five employees that I could see. A sixth one walked in about 15 minutes later.
Employee 1. She was handling customer service. She gave me a form you have to fill with your name and address to purchase a voucher (and to date I wonder why). The only other person she assisted was a mzungu gentleman who came in the inquire about broadband internet which she rightly said they don’t offer.
Employee 2. Also handling customer service. Assisted one mzungu lady who had come in to inquire why her application for a phone line in August 2008 had not been attended to. He quickly fished out her application from a folder, referred her to a back office and sat down to browse the net. At one point he sent a document to the printer and quickly dashed over to retrieve his documents. I noticed that the printout had pictures of plenty women. When he returned to his computer he maximized a screen and what did I see? A pink coloured screen with plenty pictures of ladies. Now am not jumping to any conclusions here but my creative mind tells me something not work related was going on. I don’t come across many business related websites with pink backgrounds and pictures of women! He obviously had no idea that I could see part of his screen.
Employee 3. Not sure what work he does, if any, because he was sitting slouched and motionless in his chair the whole time I was in the shop. The only thing I could see moving were his eye lids, consolation he had not died in his chair! He is obviously an extra piece of ‘furniture’ worth disposing of!
Employee 4. A cashier who only assisted one gentleman and referred us all to her colleague.
Employee 5. The cashier who eventually assisted us.
Employee 6. A gentleman who walked into the shop at around 3:15pm. He came in a jovial mood and immediately sat down to make a call. He then received a cheque from a customer so this customer could go off do other things. After that he made another phone call. I then asked him if he there is any other way we could be assisted being that I and a colleague had been on the shop for over 30 minutes and still had not been assisted. He said the ‘system takes a long time to print receipts hence the delay’. (Boy, some people just specialize in giving the most feeble excuses on earth!). Then after this he escorted a friend out of the shop and never came back.
I was finally assisted at 4:03pm!! I spent a whole hour in a shop where it seemed only one person was working a lot harder than the others. This shop and it's staff never cease to amaze me!
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