IT down, customers frown

Over the past week I have experienced 3 separate incidents of an IT system failure causing major customer dissatisfaction.

The first one was last week at SPAR, Jayanagar. It was a Saturday afternoon and the mall was pretty crowded. Nothing unusual for a weekend.Trolley loads of stuff and slow processing meant that the queues started to build on all the counters. When I joined one of the queues, I realised that the slow processing was mainly due to bar code reader malfunction - the person at the counter had to type in the code for each and every item or search for them in the inventory. Some paid through SodexHo coupons which meant at at least two rounds of counting while doing mental arithmetic - only adding up to the overall processing time. Restless kids tugging their parents clothes and urging them to move created additional emotional strain. Strategically located candy and chocolate bars in the billing aisles came to the rescue of some.

10-15 minutes for every customer meant that people farther behind in the queue had a really long waiting time. Couple of them got really upset, lost their temper and started shouting at the young boys and girls at the counter. Not a very pretty scene. 

I wondered if the retail IT systems were designed with the "weekend" scenarios in mind. And this was not an isolated case; I had seen similar issues in other malls around the city as well.

The other two incidents happened today - first one at a local branch of Canara Bank. Apparently the "system" was done - none of the bank employees were able to login to the system. This meant that even relatively simple transactions like balance check/passbook updates could not take place. One customer got really upset - the gentleman had filled in a form for DD and was standing the queue for some time only to realise later that it was not possible to get a DD issued ! 

I myself had to deposit a DD and thankfully, it did not require the "system" to be up - it is a self-service operation (which is the case in most banks these days - you fill in the form, pin the DD to the form, apply the bank seal and drop the couple into a box).

 With a Landmark gift card to redeem, I made my way to the store located in Forum Mall. Spend some time browsing in the books section. Selected couple of items and went to the counter only to find that the card cannot be redeemed as the "network" was done. I returned as a dissatisfied customer without making the purchase.

As more and more of our lives get driven by "networks" and "systems", them being "down" severely impacts our day to day activities.

My toaster project - registering it

After several years of debates,shop visits and consuming tawa toasted bread (the double roti kind), we finally bought an electric toaster yesterday. The acquisition was not in any holy pursuit of better toast experience but to merely expend a soon expiring gift voucher.

The appliance in question was a Phillips Electronic Toaster - model coolwall,HD 4823/01. 

Hopefully HD, which is a popular buzzword these days,does not mean Hi-Def in this case

Now some may call the toaster as the best thing since sliced bread, rather the best thing for  sliced bread; I, for one, beg to differ.

Today the first trial of the toaster was conducted that resulted in 2 mostly charred pieces of "Daily Bread" bread. This brought back tawa toasted nostalgic memories - of mostly cooked and seldom burnt bread.

The flimsy user manual was of not much help. Hilarious as it may sound, it said that the bread may be 'charged' when removed from the toaster and recommended not being left unattended. Great ! yet another gadget that you have become a servant of thought the Luddite population of my little grey cells.

As my laptop was already powered on, I thought of searching the myriad shards of page ranked information to see if there was a 'best practice' in using this 19th century invention. Unsurprisingly, the top hit was the product page on the vendor's website which I had to visit. A blurry image of the product and sparsely populated links suggested that this was'nt the 'top of the heap' kind of device. 

What caught my attention on the page was the link titled 'Register your product'. 

Now I have registered Windows OS, phone but registering a toaster seemed interesting. 

One would argue that it is not as interesting as The Toaster Project; to each his own.

So the register link took to me to the page called - register. What I was being registered into was "Club Phillips" - sounded exotic for a toaster registry. The registration page asked for my name, email address and date of birth (as rules forbid < 14 year old humans to register). The site wanted to be sure that I did not want updates on Phillips products and congratulated me on successfully registering myself. The email confirmation took me to the actual product registration page. 

I was wishfully thinking that the product registration would ask for the serial number of the product and would decipher the location based on that (this is 2011, remember - not too unreasonable to expect your toaster to tweet, or post pictures of popped-up slices on your facebook wall is it ?). 

Turned out to be a damp squib - only date and country of purchase. 

Done ! Toaster registered !!

This height of ennui is not going help in anyway the future of my toast experiences but still, I, for some strange reason,went ahead and did it.

My humble word to Mr. Thwaites - building the toaster is the easier bit, try getting a decent pair of toast out of it.

आतंक

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