We really do get the service we deserve
Original article date: March 2002
We really do get the service we deserve. In the same way people used to always vote Conservative for tax reasons after telling the pollsters they would vote Labour, purchasers say that service and supply reliability is their primary criterion and then go out and buy the cheapest.
The problem is, people don’t vote with their feet. If your cellphone company doesn’t give you the service you need, then you should walk. Vote with your feet, but make very sure to tell them why, and make sure the people who matter hear it. It doesn’t matter that the other phone companies are no better. They are probably no worse. The key is that the first lot have lost a customer and you have told them why.
In many markets we are faced with oversupply coupled with a lack of time, and that can lead us to make purchase decisions on almost arbitrary criteria. Well, it may not seem arbitrary at the time, but it often can seem that way in retrospect, when you realise just what the differences between the suppliers really are. We might not like to admit it, but deep down we know that it’s often true.
If you’re going to make an arbitrary decision, make the most of it. Pick a criterion that you feel strongly about and use it to narrow the field.
Hate what’s happening in Tibet? Tell your distributors you won’t buy products that are made in China. Care about the planet? Tell them you only buy from companies with a published environmental quality plan, and watch them scrabble for the documents. Care about exploitation? Tell them you need to see documents showing the location of manufacturing sites and assurances that there is no child or slave labour. Care about reliability? Tell them you want to see independent trial data before you believe them.
Over time this will actually have just as much effect as anything else to create the suppliers you want. But it will take a little bit of effort from you up front.
On an entirely different tack, here’s an interesting product that I think deserves a mention. ‘GoToMyPC’ is a system that allows you to connect to a PC from another machine elsewhere on the internet. Okay, so connecting to your desktop from another location is no so new, but what’s really neat is that you don’t need to have any software installed on the PC you’re connecting from. You just need a java enabled web browser, meaning that you can ‘sit at your desk in work’ from a cyber café anywhere on the planet. It could be a Mac or Windows or Linux machine you are actually sitting at. The connection has the same 128-bit encryption security you associate with a professional Virtual Private Network. Because it is only the user interface that is being transmitted over the net, you don’t need huge bandwidth to get real work done, and because no actual data is transmitted, you have not created a security risk.
More details (including white papers explaining the technology in detail) are on the website (www.gotomypc.com). The catch (or the advantage, depending on whose side of the invoice you’re sitting), is that rather than buy a piece of software, you get the software that goes on your desktop machine for free, but the connection is initiated via the GoToMyPC website and you pay them a monthly fee per PC that can be accessed.
One day we’ll all be able to do our jobs from the beach…
March 2002