Cool “blox” for your blog

Cool “blox” for your blog. Laszlo is doing really interesting stuff for blogs. Instead of doing an entire system like Blogger or TypePad they are making little “blox” that you put on your blog's sidebar. They can be a photo block, a sound block, a link block, or a Weather block. Hey, where's the search… Continue reading Cool “blox” for your blog

U.K. government hit with another large computer failure

U.K. government hit with another large computer failure. As many as 80,000 civil servants at the U.K.'s Department of Work and Pensions had to deal with what is being described as the biggest computer crash in government history on Monday. [Computerworld News] [Privacy Digest: Privacy News (Civil Rights, Encryption, Free Speech, Cryptography)]

Mergers and customer dissatisfaction

In general, customers get a raw deal when companies merge. That's the conclusion of a Business Week article with the provocative title “Why Customers Hate Mergers” (12/6/2004). The article is based on a University of Michigan/Business Week study that tracked customer satisfaction (or rather dissatisfaction) in a number of major mergers over the past five or six years, including Bank One's purchase of First Chicago Bank, Unilever's acquisition of BestFoods, and BP's takeover of Amoco.. In the majority of cases surveyed, the customers were disgruntled, even years later.

As the article puts it:

The frustration is worse with mergers in industries whose services have the most direct influence on the quality of Americans' daily lives. Oil companies, cable-TV outfits, and retail stores saw their satisfaction ratings plunge between 5.3% and 7.4% on average…And the effects can prove to be long-lasting. Five years after SBC Communications Inc. bought Ameritech Corp. for $70 billion in 1999, its customers still say they were less satisfied than before the merger.

The reason is simple. Mergers tend to cost a lot of new debt, and cost-cutting measures are the order of the day. One of the first things that go out the window is customer service, rarely perceived as important as direct profit centers. When companies talk about reducing wateful overhead through a merger, customer service is a major part of that overhead.

And the confusion, complex integration of infrastructure including computer systems, and low morale that often follows inevitable layoffs, these make it all the harder to serve existing customers. In industries like banking, the expectation is that over 10% of customers will leave after a merger, based on their frustration. Even in industries like cable TV, unhappy customers look for alternatives like satellite TV. Victims of bad telephone service have fewer alternatives.

While companies always claim they are making the acquisition to benefit their clients, in most cases, the reality is quite otherwise.  [
Oligopoly Watch

Mergers and customer dissatisfaction In general, customers get a raw deal when companies merge. That's the conclusion of a Business Week article with the provocative title “Why Customers Hate Mergers” (12/6/2004). The article is based on a University of Michigan/Business Week study that tracked customer satisfaction (or rather dissatisfaction) in a number of major mergers… Continue reading

Mergers and customer dissatisfaction

In
general, customers get a raw deal when companies merge. That's the
conclusion of a Business Week article with the provocative title “Why
Customers Hate Mergers” (12/6/2004). The article is based on a
University of Michigan/Business Week study that tracked customer
satisfaction (or rather dissatisfaction) in a number of major mergers
over the past five or six years, including Bank One's purchase of First
Chicago Bank, Unilever's acquisition of BestFoods, and BP's takeover of
Amoco.. In the majority of cases surveyed, the customers were
disgruntled, even years later.

As the article puts it:

The frustration is worse with mergers in industries whose
services have the most direct influence on the quality of Americans'
daily lives. Oil companies, cable-TV outfits, and retail stores saw
their satisfaction ratings plunge between 5.3% and 7.4% on average…And
the effects can prove to be long-lasting. Five years after SBC
Communications Inc. bought Ameritech Corp. for $70 billion in 1999, its
customers still say they were less satisfied than before the merger.

The reason is simple. Mergers tend to cost a lot of new debt, and
cost-cutting measures are the order of the day. One of the first things
that go out the window is customer service, rarely perceived as
important as direct profit centers. When companies talk about reducing
wateful overhead through a merger, customer service is a major part of
that overhead.

And the confusion, complex integration of infrastructure including
computer systems, and low morale that often follows inevitable layoffs,
these make it all the harder to serve existing customers. In industries
like banking, the expectation is that over 10% of customers will leave
after a merger, based on their frustration. Even in industries like
cable TV, unhappy customers look for alternatives like satellite TV.
Victims of bad telephone service have fewer alternatives.

While
companies always claim they are making the acquisition to benefit their
clients, in most cases, the reality is quite otherwise.  [
Oligopoly Watch

Published
Categorized as News

Integrated Collaboration: what users really want

Integrated Collaboration: what users really want. My colleague, Michael Sampson, has just published the first part of his two-part white paper: Collaboration Software Clients: Email, IM, Presence, RSS & Collaborative Workspaces Should Be Integrated for Business Communication. In his paper, Michael returns to “first principles,” as he discusses the types of software-facilitated interactions the information… Continue reading Integrated Collaboration: what users really want

Social categorization

Social categorization. The ability to develop and share a common taxonomy / classification / ontology is a very fundamental knowledge practice that leverages knowledge creation, communication, promotes meaning and enables sense-making. Tools to do this are far and few right now but likely to be moving toward center stage in the near future as: Social… Continue reading Social categorization

Relationships, not Information

Relationships, not Information. Ever since reading his insightful weekly columns on Hotwired's too-good-for-its-own-good site Packet, I've been a fan of Michael Schrage, and the insight he brings to issues of business, economics, technology, information, and society. An old essay of his, “The Relationship Revolution,” has been recently reposted, and ought to be required reading for… Continue reading Relationships, not Information

My workstation OS: Debian

My workstation OS: Debian. “What do you want from a desktop operating system? The real criteria are stability, package management, hardware compatibility, and the people behind the software, the community. For its superiority in those areas, I made Debian my workstation OS.” Read the article at NewsForge. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 Released with KDE/GNOME Support

OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 Released with KDE/GNOME Support. Novell hacker Jan Holesovsky has announced a build of OpenOffice.org that has both KDE and GNOME support. When launched within KDE, KDE support is activated, similarly when launched within GNOME, GNOME support is activated. Jan's next project will be to plan for OOo 2.0. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]