John Linton
It is interesting, for me at least, to observe the huge differences between the 'mind set' that we had five years ago when we started Exetel with the objective of building the 'perfect' ISP and sketched out a three year plan to accomplish that and the 'mind set' we now have (having failed to build the 'perfect' ISP even after a two year extension on the original time frame) to take Exetel from where it is today to the company we would like it to be in three years time.
We are still aiming at building the 'perfect' ISP but we now have five years of failure to do that to better advise us on how to go about it plus we have some of the worst economic times of the "industrial age" to take in to consideration. This crossed my mind early this morning when I was writing, for what must be the "thousandth" time, 'new' sales documentation for the sales force we have begun to recruit. I checked what I had written in terms of the advantages to the end user about a very simple Exetel product with what I could find on 7 other ISPs web sites. It's not for me to determine what is effective in 'selling' a product to a web browsing prospective user but what I saw surprised and, in a way, saddened me.
I was surprised by the sheer 'appallingness' (or should that be 'appallingivity'?) of the vocabulary/grammar used in each of the 'product descriptions' I managed to find which was only matched by the unbelievable lack of truth in the few 'factual' statements I read. However, I suppose what 'saddened me' was the triviality and nonsense that presumably successful commercial companies thought was appropriate to use to present the advantages of their products to a prospective buyer. The wording of the triviality and nonsense was so similar by seven different companies a casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that it was written by the same person. Perhaps they just all copy each other's ideas and wording? There is a startling lack of originality in their 'blurbs'.
I really have absolutely no interest in what or how other companies do but I was again reminded of how very difficult it must be for the management of these companies, much larger than Exetel, to control or even be aware of what their employees say to prospective buyers of their products if the written words on their web site are so very ill considered.....which lead me to the inevitable conclusion that growing Exetel beyond its current personnel levels would inevitably lead to a similar situation - if we are not extremely careful.
At our current very small size it is possible for me to still write every word that appears on our web site and every word that appears in our sales documentation (or do a final check of what someone else has written) but it is already past the time that I can, and have, done that for our technical and some of our operational documentation. By the way, I am by no means saying that only my writing style/grammar/syntax/legal knowledge/etc is "perfect". What I am trying to say is that currently Exetel is still able to exercise extremely tight control over what written words appear describing any aspect of our business and products and services and processes.
Very shortly that will be much more difficult than it is today.
When we set out five years ago to build Exetel one of our key objectives was to base as much of our 'value proposition' on web site selling and total automation of all ordering, procurement and support processes and we have largely succeeded in that objective which, apart from delivering the highest possible level of efficiencies, also provides total 'quality control' over all written communication with customers.
Now that we will switch a lot of our selling, and more of our support, to individual human beings that total control will continue to erode very swiftly and we will become subject to the whims and waves and frailties of human demands in what may be said and written to prospective and actual customers.
So automating highly complex operational processes (which has cost us well over $A2 million and has taken five years) appears to be a piece of cake compared to putting in place the systems and processes required to deliver the equivalent perfect sales and support customer interfaces - at an affordable cost. I'm quite unclear how to go about this, currently, seemingly impossible task in any real detail but I talked with Steve yesterday about how we might make a start to what looks like a dauntingly long and highly complex set of processes.
Perhaps it too will take another five years and more millions of dollars and I'm not sure that I will be able to play the same part in this process as I did in the last five years of driving the previous developments - the probable time frame is currently beyond my personal planning horizon. I very much doubt that any Australian communications company has got as 'pure' customer interfaces as we have developed (but of course I can't be sure of that) and I would be equally sure that no other Australian communications company has the same level of detailed plans to take wherever they have reached today to a level of excellence far beyond any designated 'perfection' that can be reached today.
However, everything needs to be started before any real estimates can be made on just how long completion will really take and we have made a start by moving all of our sales and support documentation to one place and introducing a multi-peer ongoing review of each piece of 'writing' via a 'wiki" process. It's only a start and we have yet to establish just how we will ensure 'perfection' is maintained but we will do that over time if it is at all possible.
Hopefully if we don't achieve perfection in this planning period we will at least go closer than any other ISP has been able to go to date.