When plain old whacking works!!!

I am a firm believer that machines are becoming more like people because of the amount of interactions that take place between Humans and machines has become multi-fold. OK, I accept I sound like a nut. But check this out.

MY four month old DSC-T70 Sony Digital Camera, started giving me some problems. Whenever I switched on the camera, I got the error E:61:00 and I couldn’t take pictures at all. There was no mention of that in the Manual other than the fact that it was an “out of focus” error and has to be given for servicing. I decided to see what others though about this problem and I reached this site.

The fix for this problem was a simple giving a whack to the camera. I honestly thought this was a prank being played but their seemed to alteast 50-60 people who seemed to have done it. I decided to try it out ( since it was anyway under warranty) and couple of smacks later (whacked it on the back of a book), the error went away and it as good as new!! In fact it could be my imagination. I think the clarity is better as well!!

Now you tell me, aren’t machines becoming more like humans?

You pay peanuts, you get monkeys!!

Here is a company ( we shall call “X”) that is an outbound call center mostly for Indian companies. They were on a certain outbound solution and decided that though it was a very good solution, it was not cost effective when they wanted to grow into a 3000-5000 seater. For every seat, they had to pay for a license which increased their TCO. So they decided to go with the Outbound Solution of another (2nd ) vendor. This was last November time frame.

The second vendor’s outbound solution would take sometime to be ordered,shipped and installed. So this “X” decided to go with a third vendor, who had a very cheap solution, quick to install and go live on production. This was a stop gap arrangement till the second vendor’s solution could be fully installed. Now the third vendor had given some hardware specifications for the expected load and the hardware was slightly expensive. “X” rationalized that since they were going the second vendor way in the near future, and the current solution was only a stop-gap arrangement, decided to use some cheap servers instead of the suggested servers.

Needless to say, the six months ‘X” ran with the third solution was a miserable experience for both “X” as well as the third vendor. There were performance issues, late night crashes, lack of stability. “X” finally went to the second solution early June and were relieved that they didn’t have to go through the mess. They bad mouthed the third solution and the damage was done.

Now, who is to blame. The third solution would have been perfect had it been run on the hardware that had been suggested. Was company “X” to be blamed for going cheap? Was it the mistake of the third vendor not to have put his foot down and say that “X” had to run in that specific hardware. To be honest “X” got what it wanted and wouldn’t care about what happened to third vendor. The third vendor would have to build its reputation all over again.

There is a popular saying “Whether you put cloth to a knife or knife to a cloth, it is always the cloth that gets torn”. It was the vendor’s mistake and it was its responsibility to have set the expectations right with “X” that they are paying peanuts and they will get only monkeys!!!

Who is going to buyout Avaya?

By now, the storm of Lou stepping down as CEO has passed over. Yet the question still remains. What is going to happen to Avaya that was bought over by SilverLake partners just over a year ago.

I have been hearing from different sources that top guys ( one was even close to Lou) are being let go and this would only mean that Avaya is going to be sold to the topmost bidder. Either as a whole entity or after splitting them into different entities.

Interestingly though, there are two names that are being floated as possible buyers. One is Cisco ( is there any deal in the world, where their name is not flouted?) and the other is very surprisingly Nuance. I can understand why Cisco’s name is prominent. The interim CEO who is taking over from Lou is none other than Charles Giancarlo, a prominent ex-Ciscoian. 

Nuance is trying to enter the PBX/ACD world to further stabilize their speech market and this would be a logical step. Microsoft and upto some extent IBM are developing Speech engines and the only way for Nuance to continue their stranglehold would be to enter the PBX sector as well.Nortel seemed a little interested a year ago, but with their current state of affairs would not be brave enough to venture in this.

One thing is sure. The face of Avaya would change in the next couple of months.

Am Back

Am back after a tiring yet very productive two week visit. I did not get a chance to go anywhere and was in Princeton for most parts of the two weeks. I had a chance to visit Londin during Transit and though the transportation ( Tube, Trains, Buses) looks overwhelming at the beginning, it actual is a very simple system and easy to understand.

Needless to say, I still prefer US over Europe and the casual attitude of the Americans never cease to amaze me. Krisy Creme and Dunkin Donuts still rock and Best Buy/Staples are as cool as ever ( wow, does that make me nerdy?) and Telecom Service providers are as closed as ever

I did not buy anything fancy other than a Sony Headset and am pretty impressed with it already. I was itching to buy an iPhone but considering it is still not supported officially in India, I had to let it pass. I am hearing that Sep 1st, Airtel is going to support it, but then haven’t they been saying this for like a gazillion years already.

Oh,oh, before I forget, I learnt poker and am already hooked. Lost some money, but hey who cares. It is all part of getting the “007″ Persona

Now back to serious work.

Travelling to the US

I am on official travel to US starting next Thursday and I will be there for couple of weeks ( from Apr 28th to May 9th). I will be in the New Jersey/New York region. Drop me a note if you want to meet.

It has been nearly five years since I left the shores of US to come back to india for good and can’t believe it has been that long. It just feels like yesterday. Was never a fan of New York and liked the calm of Florida more, but I hope to re-discover the “Yorker” spirit and hey I might even like it this time around

VoIP termination may just about become legal in India

There was a very important announcement from TRAI where they are abolishing ADC ( Access Deficit charge) from April 1st. This was one of the main reasons why the existing Telecom providers were saying that Enterprises/Users should not terminate VoIP calls on PSTN ( because they were loosing out on this revenue).

Now with this being abolished, it could pave way for VoIP termination to become legal. There was a unique problem where we were architecting an Outbound call center over IP for a BPO in India and we had to architect it such a way that termination of each of the outbound calls had to happen in the same STD region ( i.e have a Media/Voice Gateway) in each of the locations. We could not have agents sitting in Chennai making calls out of Mumbai VG to customers in Chennai. The law as of today states that the Chennai agents HAVE to call the Chennai customers through the local gateways.

This news might be a blessing since cost of having Media Gateways in each location is phenomenol and rules out a centralized architecture. Maybe this abolition of ADC might help us architect solutions better. Most of the times, things are possible using Technology but it is the process/business needs that are the impediments

Oracle Entering Contact Center space?

I saw an article in Economic Times which talked about Oracle having come up with a product for the contact center. Their premise is that the contact center suite of products is complicated ( Tell me about it!!) and they are out to simplify that ( Where have I heard that before?)

They are going after Telcos/Big Enterprises/BPOs ( Surprise, surprise)

Before I pass judgements, let me see whether I can get more dope on this and evaluate whether they even make sense.

What is Gokul doing in a SOA meet?

Some of you might know that I am not exactly a fan of web services companies and also that terms like SOA/SAAS are all just new terminologies to dupe the innocent public.

So trust me, when I was nominated to go to a SOA seminar for two days (today and tomorrow), there was a lot skepticism from my side. But though I am not convinced enough to be forced into the dark side, I am convinced enough about SOA to atleast spare a second thought to it.

My initial thoughts of this being old wine in a new bottle is still valid, but I appreciate the effort to package it in a bottle that would be accepted by the Business guys as well and not restricted to the techies. I am a huge fans of APIs and SOA fits right into that.

Btw couple of my colleagues have patented the right to the new expansion of the SOAP protocol. According to them it is SOA Protocol So if you are using that, you can be sued by Gopinath Bailur and Kamesh ( Guys, I gave you the credit. So quit complaining now )

Contact Center gone wrong?

I had a broadband outage this weekend and I called up Bharti Airtel’s customer service. I was met with an IVR which calmly collected all my information. ( Account Number/Problem Description etc). I was pleasantly surprised that I was going to have my problem recorded by the IVR itself and I did not have to go to an agent.

My assumption was that the case would be recorded by the IVR and a complaint would be raised and an complaint id would be smsed to my mobile phone. I couldn’t be happier. That would save me time to talk to an agent. But then the worst happened. After the IVR collected all the details, I was asked to wait in queue to be transferred to an agent. I still thought it was fair enough; maybe the telcos need me to talk to the agent for auditing purposes.

So I wait and I am put on to an agent. The agent asks me the SAME questions the IVR asked. So I ask the agent, I just entered these details in the IVR, don’t you have a screen pop of these. And he says ‘No’. So what is the point of me spending my time on the IVR? So I register my complaint with the Agent on my broadband outage and also registered another complaint that their IVR/ACD integration sucked.

The good guys from Airtel called me the next day and wanted to know what the problem was. I started of asking whether they were employees from Airtel or just some bozo from an outsourced call center. I don’t want to be talking to another agent who has no clue what an IVR/ACD is. So he assures me that he is proficient on these and asked me again what the problem was.

I told how skewed his IVR application was ( Btw, my call was also dropped on the IVR 2-3 times when I was in the queue) and this is not the way an IVR needs to be written and surely not the way an ACD integrates with the IVR. I asked him what was the ACD/IVR they were using and he said Nortel. I asked him to inform his higher ups to move to better platforms Maybe Cisco

If you are an Airtel executive reading this post, make sure that the IVR applications are written well. If you want call completion on IVR to be maximised, atleast give us consumers a chance to complete it. I am never going to access your IVR for bill information. I will do it online. The only reason I will call into your IVR is for complaints, and since you already have menus for that, why can’t you integrate it properly?

I would be more than willing to help you if you get in touch with me.

It is about the Consumers, Stupid!!!

I was watching the India-Srilanka cricket match when there was an ad break. I normally would have switched channels, but the remote was not there with me and so had to watch the ads.

For the first time in my life, I actually saw an ad by Cisco touting its “Human Networks”. This got me thinking. Why in the world would a Networking company want to announce itself to the general consumers? Why would Cisco want to be consumer facing? Let’s say Cisco’s next big bet is on Unified Communication. Still, they would need to target the enterprises and not the end consumer.

They are not going IPO. So it cannot be a marketing ploy. Why would Cisco want to get into the public eye? I have some views. But I would like to hear yours , please.