Now it appears the client has signed off on the "final" project scope document and is ready to begin the project. So the project manager met with us on Friday to kick off the project and discuss the project plan.

A 105 step project plan!

For a software project that is estimated for 120 man hours.

To paraphrase Churchill, never in the face of human endeavor has so little been tracked by so many to so few.

At this point, the client has many pages of requirements documents and an exhaustive project plan, but not a single line of working software code. The management structure of the project has already consumed more time and effort than the actual development of the project’s ultimate deliverable — working software.

Somebody please explain to me how anyone can still place any value on this style of project management.

Again, I received a phone call from Todd, my local telco field service technician, asking me to check my DSL download speed. Again, it was less than 2 Mbps, far below the promised 6 Mbps download speed — and far below the current speeds I enjoy with my cable-based broadband connection.

This has been going on for 3 weeks now. And the saddest part is that the technical personnel for the company responsible for delivering the service, can’t figure out the problem. I suspect they’re trying to diagnose a kludgey system that was crufted together as a stop-gap, "me too", answer to the cable company’s broadband service.

My local telephone company field technician called today and left a message requesting that I check my DSL download speed again, saying that the problem should be fixed now. I did. It isn’t.

The saga continues.

BTW, the DSL modem does have a built-in, primitive firewall but it was not enabled. Todd was surprised at that and said they should always be enabled as no unprotected PC should be put on the Internet. Again, I am intoxicated with a surge of vindication.

Todd tries another DSL modem with the same results. He says there must be a problem up the line with "the programming" in the switch. He also tells me that I’m the first 6Mbps customer on this switch. He sends the problem back to the guys responsible for the programming and says he will give me a call later when they have resolved the problem. Todd then leaves about 10:45 AM.

About 4:00 PM, I receive a call from Todd. He reports that they have now set up my programming exactly like another customer that is using (and receiving) 6Mbsp download speed. He asks me to try another speed test and call him back. I do so with the same results.

So, here I am exactly 2 weeks into my attempted use of the telco’s high-speed DSL service and they still have not delivered their product. In fact, they can’t figure out why they can’t deliver their product. Even if they find and fix the problem, this fiasco does not bode well for when I experience service problems in the future.

Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality. –Peter F. Drucker

My local service technician, Jeff, just reported that he had reprogrammed my DSL modem and asked that I check my connection speed now. I did so and am getting a download speed of 1.8 Mbps, nowhere near the 6Mbps I’ve been promised. During our conversation, Jeff mentioned that the DSL modem actually has a firewall built into it; something none of the other "technicians" ever mentioned. Even so, he admitted that I would not need to hook up a computer directly to the modem.

After the test, he said he would refer the ticket to a "field service technician" who should pick up the ticket by tomorrow afternoon and begin work on it. Supposedly he will trace the connection from the telco’s central office to the connection box on my house. I asked if he would be informing me of what he found. Jeff said probably not, that if the field tech found a problem he would just fix it; and if he didn’t find a problem, he would refer the ticket back to Jeff who would then call me again.

Is anyone out there taking bets on the outcome?

The way to a customer’s heart and wallet lies in how well we initially serve our customers and recover from poor service. Unknown

As I’ve blogged before here, here, and here, I’ve been enjoying wonderful customer service from my local telephone company regarding my slow DSL speeds …………………….. (long Borat-esque wait here) ……………………………………….. NOT! In my last post on the subject, the service technician had left a voice mail saying that my download speed should now be 6Mbps. That was Monday, November 5. Of course, the speed was not 6Mbps, it was only about 1Mbps. The technician didn’t leave a callback number, nor did I have a trouble ticket number. I sure didn’t want to endure the telco’s outsourced technical support call center again. So I went online to the telco’s site and found a form to Submit a question or trouble ticket. At 9:39AM on Monday, November 5, I submitted a request for them to reopen my trouble ticket and send a service technician to my house to diagnose the problem. The telco’s site promises a response within 24 hours. I received a response at 11/08/2007 02:02 PM — 77 hours later. And what was their belated response?

Response (Avel P.) – 11/08/2007 02:02 PM   
Thank you for using Windstream’s Support E-mail System.  We would like to thank you for being an Windstream customer, your service is very valuable to us.  The problem you report is not easy to fix over email.  We suggest you contact our helpdesk at one of the numbers provided and we will be happy to troubleshoot with you.

Windstream strives to provide the highest level of service and answers to every question.  Please contact us at 1-800-990-4449 (dial-up) or 1-888-292-3827 (broadband) if you have any other questions or further assistance.

Sigh.

Resignedly, I call the broadband technical assistance number, a.k.a. the outsourcing of Hell. This time I talk to "Jim". Jim begins taking me through the exact same customer management and technical diagnosis scripts that I endured for hours last week. Damn, but these support people are trained to the point of becoming automatons. However, Jim surprisingly readily agrees to reopen my previous trouble ticket, but as he’s doing so, we are disconnected. Recall that I was disconnected last week when talking to this same support center — a support center for a telephone company.

Sigh.

I call back. This time I’m apparently connected to a different call center. "Andrea" answers the phone and she has an American accent. And, in sharp contrast to the over-the-top politeness of the other support personnel, Andrea has a very brusque attitude. She begins to insist that I disable all firewalls and plug my computer directly to the DSL modem. I still can’t believe that this is the technical support of an ISP suggesting I plug an unprotected Windows-based PC directly to the Internet. A quick Google search reveals all sorts of articles about the inadvisability of doing just what Andrea is advising me to do. When I refuse to do so and instead ask that she reopen my previous trouble ticket, she flatly states that she cannot help me unless I cooperate with her request. I ask to speak to her supervisor. Andrea says she doesn’t have a supervisor (how convenient) but that she’ll connect me with a "senior technician".

Now Vestil (sp?) gets on the line. Vestil is very polite but he also insists that I plug a computer directly to the DSL modem. Again, I refuse. Vestil then tries to tell me that he will not be able to help if I don’t comply with his request. I tell him I will not be able to continue as a customer with his company if he doesn’t comply with my request and send a service technician to my house! I told Vestil that his company is unable to deliver on the level of service they promised and now that I’m informing them of the problem and asking that they fulfill their obligation, I’m essentially being told "tough shit". I also asked him to provide a solid technical reason for why I should risk an unprotected computer on the Internet; of course, he could not provide a reason.

After much wrangling, I finally told Vestil to forget it; I wanted to cancel the service and receive a complete refund. Now he starts backpedaling, saying he really wanted to help me, they valued me as a customer, yadda yadda yadda. I told him it was too late that he had just lost my business. Finally, I’m connected to the billing department which, I’m told, will cancel my service and provide me with a refund.

Instead of billing, I’m connected to what I’m calling the "customer retention desperation department". Joyce comes on the line, and she’s good. Joyce is obviously well-trained and skilled in sales. She immediately tries to connect with me by telling me she lives in a nearby city and has visited my area many times. She asks why I wish to cancel my service and listens with an attentive and empathetic ear. And despite my knowledge that this is a technique for me to spend my frustration and make me more manageable, damned if it doesn’t work. Yes, Joyce weaves her magic and talks me into giving them another chance.

Even so, Joyce did provide a few concessions. First, my service will be free for two months while I try it out. Second, a technician will be here Tuesday morning (my first available time slot), between 9AM and noon, to fix whatever the problem may be at no charge. Finally, Joyce provides me with her direct telephone number as a point of contact for any problems; I guess my file has been marked as a customer in need of special handling — at least, I hope so.

So, in spite of myself, I’m giving the telco one last chance. At this point, I have spent 6 hours dealing with this stupid issue. At my billing rate of $150/hour, that equates to $900 or, as my business partner pointed out, 60 months of the $15 savings the telco is supposed to provide me over cable broadband service. And I swear, if they don’t fix it this time, I’m submitting a bill for my time. I know they won’t pay it, but it’s the money of the thing, not the principle.

If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends. JEFF BEZOS

As a self-employed programmer, I work from home a great deal and rely on a solid and fast Internet connection. For years, I’ve used Time-Warner’s RoadRunner service because it seemed to be the best value for speed and reliability. That’s not to say I haven’t had issues with them over the years. I recently decided to switch my broadband service from RR to DSL. RR costs $45/month and the local telco offered a deal of $29/month for a DSL connection with 6Mbps download speed. My cable connection is normally about 3.5Mbps but degrades severely in the afternoons and evenings when all of the neighborhood kids get out of school and online. DSL does not share bandwidth with the neighborhood, so I figured I would take advantage of a two-fold increase in speed with a savings of $16/month. So, I accept my telco’s offer and sign up for DSL. I give them a username and password for my account and am told I will receive a package with my modem and software within the next couple of days. Cool. They call back the next day with apologies and say they have "lost" my information. After having them verify they are indeed from the telco, I again provide them with a username and password. Again, I’m told the modem package is on the way. Today, I received my goodie package. I’m excited to try the new service. The first thing I notice is that the username/password combination is not what I provided and is instead a obviously system-generated username with a password of "changeme". Yes, that is the real password. It’s incredible that an ISP would not provide a strong, random password. Oh well. I hook everything up and am immediately online. I quickly change my password to something much more secure. The next thing I do is perform a quick broadband speed test. WTF?!? I only have 1.8 Mbps download speed — less than 1/3 the promised speed! I unplug my router from the DSL modem and plug it into the cable modem. Hmmmm…the cable connection is running at 3.5Mbps. So I call the telco’s technical support number at 4:00PM on Wednesday. Big mistake. The telco’s technical support call center has been outsourced to India, and while I’ve had excellent service from some call centers based in India, this support center was not one of them. First, I spoke with "Tom". Tom read directly from a script with phrases like:

May I call you by your first name? How may I assist you? I realize your time is valuable and understand your frustration. Mike, I will definitely assist you with this issue, please give me just a minute. May I put you on hold?

(on hold for a couple of minutes)

I really appreciate your patience.

Tom said he was creating a trouble ticket and as he was telling me this, we were disconnected. …..Sigh…… Dial again. Navigate through an unnecessarily long automated telephone menu….again. This time I am connected to "Eva". Eva also reads directly from the same script. Except this time, I’m on hold for 5 minutes. Exactly 5 minutes. To the second. When Eva comes back on the phone, she asks me if I am using a firewall. Of course, I respond affirmatively. At this point, she asks me to disable my firewall and be directly connected to the Internet! Remember, this request is coming from the technical support of an ISP. I told her that was not going to happen; the problem is not with my firewall or router as I was achieving at least 3.5 Mbps with cable so until my DSL connection showed that much throughput, I wasn’t going to consider the firewall/router as a possible bottleneck. I was immediately put back on hold. Again, I was on hold for exactly 5 minutes. "Everything is working fine, I’m sorry to say", I was told by Eva. Now she wants me to delete my cookies and browsing history from IE. I mostly use Firefox, but I went ahead and deleted the files from both IE’s and Firefox’s cache. The reason for deleting these files? Well, Eva says "The computer annoyingly keeps all these unnecessary files and it also hampers the speed of the connection." Yeah, right. Next we run the netstat command from a DOS prompt. I only have 3 connections; one to localhost from my testing of a local website, one to google for email, and one to GoDaddy for email. All the connections were in a TIME_WAIT state. I’m put on hold yet again while she "analyzes" our results. Unbelievably, I am on hold for exactly 5 minutes again! Eva wants me to disconnect my firewall and router again. I know she’s not only reading from a customer service phrase script, but also following a technical diagnosis script because she’s not logically analyzing the problem. I explained to her again that my equipment was achieving widely disparate speeds on two different ISP’s and until her service was providing at the least the equivalent of my cable speed, I was not going to entertain the possibility that my equipment was a bottleneck. I told Eva that I wanted her to open a ticket and send out a technician. She was at a loss and tried to insist that she could not do that unless we exhausted our options and insisted –politely, of course– that I disconnect my firewall. Wants me to disconnect the router again!!! Told her no and asked that she open a ticket to send out a technician. She was at a loss so I requested to speak to her supervisor. She agreed to connect me to her supervisor. Her parting words were, "Thank you for calling Windstream. We value the customer." It is now 5:10PM as "Danny" the supervisor gets on the phone. Danny is very well-trained in customer management, saying all the right phrases to appease me. He quickly opens a ticket and says a technician will test the line all the way from the central office to my "prim-EYE-sis". Great! I ask when I may expect the technician. The answer is anytime between now and Monday at 6:30PM! "What?!?" I exclaim. "Can’t you give me an appointment time?" Danny explains that the service technicians in my area are extremely busy and he assures me that they value my time as much as I do and they will service my call as quickly as possible. Nice. In addition, Danny tells me that if the problem ends up being inside my house, the telco will charge me $40 for the service call. I’ve never had the cable company charge me for doing any cabling in my house and they’ve done so on several occasions. At this point I just want to get off the phone, I ask Danny for the ticket number. I’m told he can’t give me the ticket number that the system doesn’t assign numbers. I ask how may I check the status of my trouble ticket without a ticket number? Danny instructs me to call the call center again to check for updates. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. So, here it is 5:30PM on Wednesday. I’ve been on the phone for 1.5 hours with my telco’s technical support call center in India and I am now more upset with the service than before I called. This episode is an extremely bad omen and doesn’t bode well for a continued use of DSL service. I’ll reserve final judgement until meeting with the local technician. In the meantime I’m thinking, if your company’s customer service makes customers yearn for the good old days of the cable company’s customer support, then you are absolutely doomed.

The customer’s perception is your reality. Kate Zabriskie

I have a vice of absolutely loving good coffee so I’m familar with Starbucks’ The Way I See It campaign, which is, in their words

a collection of thoughts, opinions and expressions provided by notable figures that now appear on our widely shared cups.

And I admit, I’ve seen more than my fair share of Starbucks’ cups. The cup I received yesterday had the following thought on it.

The Way I See It #252
Give me world politics, gender politics, party politics or small-town politics … I’ll take them all over the politics of youth sports.

Brenda Stonecipher
City council member and Starbucks customer in Everett, Washington.

This cup’s communiqué conveyed a colossal conjunction of coincidence (I couldn’t resist the alliteration). My son’s football team has been the stage for truly ugly politics this season.

Before I begin truly ranting, let me say that all of the coaches in his league are purely volunteers and –having been a youth sport coach myself– I applaud them for their huge commitments of time and energy to what is largely a thankless job.

OK, now let the rant begin.

My son plays football in a league for 11-13 year olds; his team is a brand new, expansion team in the league. Before the season, all new players participated in workouts so that the coaches could grade them. The coaches then held a draft, allotting new players to each team. Normally, this would be a fair system.

But it’s not.

First, unlike any of the other youth sports leagues, it turns out that most of the football coaches are also on the board of the football league; therefore, they make their own rules and guard their own henhouse. Second, the best kids are quickly earmarked by some of the coaches, pulled from the tryouts, and quickly assigned to the coach’s team — many times without the knowledge of the other coaches. Third, the expansion team had to fill their roster completely from the tryouts. The team is predominantly 11 year old boys; only 4 or 5 of the boys are older than 11. A better method would have been to randomly pull a few players from each existing team and put them back into the draft.

The result is that the competitive inequities in the league are staggering. My son’s team began their season by playing the three best teams in the league in their first 4 games. Despite good coaching, my son’s team suffered serious beatdowns in those games. And the natives parents were getting restless.

The kettle boiled over during the 4th game of the season when we played the team coached by the president of the league; he’s also apparently one of the worst offenders in regards to stacking his team. His boys were huge, fast, and mean; our boys were taking a beating. At the beginning of the second quarter, our running back was cleanly slobberknocked. He was knocked unconscious for a few moments and when he regained consciousness, he reported that his neck hurt and he was numb and couldn’t move! Emergency personnel were quickly on the scene and the boy was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Yes, he ended up being OK — turns out he received a stinger.

While the injured player was being tended by coaches and emergency personnel, some of the parents began loudly denouncing the inequities in the league. Without input from other parents, they swiftly decided and informed the coach that the team parents did not wish the game to continue. Their dissatisfaction quickly flamed into outrage and they took up torches and pitchforks to become a mini-mob. Now they spiraled out of control to the point that a policeman firmly commanded them to calm down. Their calm lasted only a few moments and only because the injured boy was taken off the field in an ambulance at that moment.

Then the opposing team’s coach, who is also the president of the league, ill-advisedly decided to confront the mob. And the keyword there is confront. He was already the focus of the mob’s anger and when he confronted everyone with a “write down your issues and we’ll address it at the board” attitude, tempers really flared. Some parents were screaming epithets at him. Meanwhile the teams had been dismissed and were wandering around with shocked and scared looks on their faces. The boys were already scared and upset because their teammate had just been carted off the field in an ambulance, and now they were witnessing their parents in a mob situation. It was a sickening disgrace; I quickly grabbed my son and left the field.

A parents’ meeting was convened the next night with all sorts of allegations made against the league board and the president in particular. The upshot of the whole meeting was that three representatives would take up the matter with the county commission, specifically to change the league structure so that coaches cannot serve on the board. We’ll see how that goes. I used the meeting to chastise the parents that lost control at the game and told them how shamefully I thought they acted in front of the boys; I actually got a few amens and some applause for those comments.

Despite the parents’ bad behavior, they do have a point; some of the coaches do stack their teams and it does create a safety issue for a team composed of young, inexperienced players. Competitive inequities exist at all levels of sport, but it’s disturbing to think that men who volunteer their time to coach football would essentially cheat to win. Does it stroke their egos? It smells like a person that sets a video game’s difficulty to novice level, and then puffs out their chest because they beat the game.

I know it’s not the type of person I want my son to learn from or emulate.