Monthly Archives: March 2019

Alternatives, Analysis, Change, Decisions

Good, Fast, Cheap and the Future

I was casting around for a topic to write about. I had several candidates. Whenever I get an idea I write down the basics of it in my notebook. This happens to be a real notebook, with paper pages and a bound cover. Not a computer. I very rarely type at a moment’s notice, but I sure can pick up a pen and scribble with the best of them.

In any event what finally tipped the scales toward this topic was the NCAA selection committee’s decisions on who gets to play in March Madness (who gets to go dancing as they say) and who doesn’t. It wasn’t so much the actual selections that got my attention, as it was all the hype and fury that goes into the prognostications associated with filling out the tournament brackets and predicting the winners, losers and future match-ups.

It seems that what comes next is of more than passing interest to some people.

Being in a technology-based industry, in an increasingly technology-based world, I have been doing some reading as to what comes next in technology as well. It may seem like a stretch to compare filling out your NCAA March Madness bracket to predicting what comes next in technology industries and business sectors, but there you have it.

I have read and seen many methods used for predicting the next steps in our technological future. Some are internally focused (business focused). Some are externally focused (customer focused). I saw some that were citing universal constants and the laws of physics as the driving factors. Anything that equates physics to business always intrigues me.

But as I thought through all of the hype and hoopla surrounding predicting the future, as I stared somewhat forlornly at my unfilled NCAA bracket, I realized that while I had absolutely no idea beyond what I saw on ESPN regarding who’s who in college basketball, I had been in business and the technology industry for a while, so maybe if I relied on that instead of what others said I should rely on, I might be able to make some sense of what was coming.

Despite every pundit’s proclivity to try and make things seem complicated, I have found business to come down to, and be reasonably explained by the holy trinity, as it were, of business: Good, Fast, Cheap. I think these are the factors that affect and in effect, can be used to predict the future.

Simply put, they are: Good, or quality. Fast or speed of acquisition or delivery. And Cheap, how much you are willing to pay.

Now I agree that there are other influences, such as governmental regulation, and social and environmental consciousness, and even marketing and advertising, but I think Good, Fast, Cheap dominate the decision and prediction landscape. I’ll look at a couple of disparate industries to see if these ideas hold true.

The auto industry is always one of my favorite industries to look at. It has changed from a labor intensive “we’ll tell you what kind of car you’re going to buy”, to an automated, highly competitive customer driven, “We’ll tell you what kind of car you’re going to make if you want our business” industry. That’s what makes it fun to look at.

It is well known that there are market segments within both the automotive industry and its customer base. These tiers are based on car size and pricing levels. Smaller economy cars, all the way up to larger, more luxurious cars. This is because not everyone has the same level of “Cheap” or price. However, there are various sub-markets that do seem to behave similarly based on this factor.

Fast, for the most part, is going to be a given for cars. Dealerships abound, and interestingly enough seem to occur in close proximity to each other. This means that you can go in, compare products relatively easily, and select and drive home with your purchase. You can’t get much faster than immediate gratification.

That leaves Good, or quality as to what I would expect the primary differentiator to be, at least for now within the automotive industry. This is where things can get interesting. If you can’t spend any more money than you can afford for a car, and you can’t get it any faster than now, the perceived quality of the car will be one of the major, if not deciding factor on what you buy.

Yes, I know design and style, etc. are going to come into play. Have you noticed how similar in appearance cars within the same market segment look. If you don’t think so, look again.

It is interesting (at least to me) that the New York Times noted that General Motors first offered a Three-Year bumper to bumper warranty in 1989. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/17/style/consumer-s-world-for-1989-new-cars-and-warranties-come-in-all-lengths.html

Now such warranties can extend to six-years and in some instances 10-years, and I would suggest that they are viewed as a competitive advantage / disadvantage capability.

Now Elon Musk and Tesla have created a very high quality, electric car, and they are challenging some of the status quo in the industry. And the industry is reacting, as all competitors work to bring out competitive electric models as quickly as possible. But again, I would position that the economics of quality will be the driving factor of what the future holds for the automotive industry.

Now I’d like to look at the technology industries. I’ll focus somewhat on communications and networking, but I think much of the topic will be applicable across most technology industries.

Good, or Quality used to be the driving force in communications. Reliability, redundancy, etc. were the required thresholds to cross. But they cost money and they took time. People learned that they could get “Good Enough” for a whole lot less than what they paid for Good. I have referred to this as the race to the bottom. How low a quality for how low a price was acceptable. It turns out in retrospect, pretty low.

It seems now that there are generations of people who have never known high quality communications, or anything other than disposable platforms and devices, so they have no baseline to compare to. To them Good Enough is all they have ever had, so it is acceptable. So that leaves Fast and / or Cheap as the driving forces for the networking future. Maybe.

I also think that Cheap has also run its course in communications. Who here remembers when communications providers would “give” you a mobile phone as part of your service agreement? They don’t do that anymore. In fact, it seems that they have now established an upper boundary for what people will pay for a phone, in addition to their service contract. That limit seems to have been explored by Apple and its iPhone X at around One Thousand Dollars. https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/21/17763322/iphone-x-galaxy-note-9-smartphone-pricing-2018

That brings us to Fast, or speed of availability. It has been approximately Ten years since the last generation of wireless capability (4G) went into trial and delivery to the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G 5G is now just hitting the market as well, but probably won’t see ubiquitous coverage for another year or two. The speed we are talking about here is measured in years, if not decades.

The last major evolution / revolution in non-wireless communications, be it the analog to digital, digital to Internet Protocol, or the advent of cable providers entering the non-TV communications market, has also been years if not decades in the past.

So where does that leave us? The Good (quality) of communications has already been taken down. Can it go lower? Maybe, maybe not. The Cheap of communications has already been taken down, hit the floor, and started to bounce back up. This is obviously in response to the communications providers desire to continue to make money and stay in business. The Fast of communications has never been that fast to begin with.

I think it is going to be a combination of “Good” and “Cheap”. Quality is already low. However, if we are to believe the new applications and uses of communications, quality will probably have to come back up. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I want my self-driving car operating on the quality of networks that we have come to accept as “Good Enough”. Either that or the definition of Good Enough is going to have to be revised upwards, drastically.

Basically, this means that people will be expecting more, but probably will not be willing to pay more for it. The past technology iterations will have already taught them this behavior.

Cheap, as I said has already hit the bottom and seems to be coming back up. But not everyone will want or need the “luxury” service. Many will want, or only be able to afford the “Economy” service. I think you will see in far more granularity than is available now, a tiering, or set of communication strata put in place, very similar to what we see with the automotive industry: Luxury models to Economy models.

The issue will be that how do you create communications networks able to deliver Luxury to Economy levels, that are priced at levels that are already ingrained in the user’s market segment? That would mean that the capability to deliver Luxury would have to be built, but the ability to deliver Cheap, where desired or required would have to be available.

I think the technology to be able to deliver this type of capability is in development now. I don’t think the “Cheap” capability of the service providers being able to make money on that type of technology-based capability has quite been worked out yet. It will cost the providers a lot of money to build this capability. This will probably engender a price that their end user customers are probably not willing to spend. That and it will probably a fair amount of time before the technologies are truly available. I think we have an economically induced wait in order to see what’s next, at least in communications.

Uncategorized

A Great Service Story

I got a call from Travis the other day. I didn’t know him, but he works for Godaddy, the domain registrar and web hosting company that I use for this Blog. Up to now I don’t think I have had much call or reason to interact with them. I have my site on automatic renew and electronic pay from the bank. About the only thing I see from them is an email notification when then automatically renew my site and get paid for doing that. As long as the site has stayed up, which it has, I have been content.

I thought we would both happier with this kind of arm’s length, long distance relationship.

Still, Travis called me. The calling line ID didn’t say “Travis”. It just displayed a number that I recognized as an Arizona, USA area code. I have later found out that Godaddy is headquartered in Scottsdale (just outside of Phoenix, for those of you who may not be familiar). I didn’t know it was Godaddy headquarters calling when I answered the phone. If it had instead said something like “Travis”, I probably wouldn’t have answered it.

It seems I get so many spam phone calls these days that I always expect that long silence when I answer the phone from an unknown number, while the robo-caller detects my voice and switches me over to a real person. But not Travis. He was right there and immediately introduced himself and who he worked for right away.

I was pleasantly surprised.

He said he knew I was a busy man, so he would get right to the point. He said that Godaddy was seeing a significant amount of activity at my web site and wondered if there was anything going on that they should be aware of, or that they could help with.

Now normally I don’t do much more with the site other than type out one of these articles (using MS Word), edit it to my liking, copy it and paste it in as a new post and hit “Publish”. The web site is just a vehicle for getting it out to the world.

Travis seemed like a good guy, so I responded to his question regarding increased activity by wondering out loud if I had actually won the Nobel Prize for blogging, or potentially the Presidential Medal of freedom I heard rumors that I was up for. Travis didn’t hesitate.

He said that Godaddy normally associates the amount of activity that they were seeing with events of such or similar magnitude, but that he had already Googled me and saw that I was not nominated for either award. It had to be something else.

I thought to myself: Travis Game Level = Mage

After a little more discussion, it seemed to be determined that we could not determine what was causing the increase in activity to my web site. I guess people were just coming from all over to read the stuff I was writing. This is where the Travis upped his game level when it came to service. He started looking over my site.

The first thing he saw was that I was that I had a significant amount of content on my site. I mentally blew on my fingernails and polished them on my chest. I told him that I had been doing this blogging thing for over ten years. He noted the amount of content again and then asked me if I had ever backed up the site and the amount of data that I had on it. That way if there was a catastrophic failure I wouldn’t lose anything.

Uh, no. Can’t say that I have.

He then said the magic words: here let me do that for you. And in the background, I heard the quantity of tapping of keys that reminded me of the speed and quantity of gun shots expended in the latest John Wick movie, only faster. He then said that having finished that, he had now also programed the system to automatically back itself up once a month.

I thought to myself: I didn’t ask him to call me. I didn’t ask for his help, and he has solved a problem that I didn’t know I had before it became a problem. I very much appreciate fire prevention in lieu of future firefighting.

 Travis’ Game Level now = War Mage

But he wasn’t done. He then noted that I was on a pretty old release level as far as the web site itself went. In all the time I have had it, I don’t think I have ever upgraded it. It worked great as it was. It never broke. It was fine. He noted that he believed the only other Godaddy customer on this web site release level were a couple by the name of Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

Well played Travis. Well played.

I said fine. Go for it. Knock yourself out. Again, the veritable buzz saw of key strikes and I then found myself on the latest web site release. He said there should be no problems and that this was a much more robust release.

This was going much better than any of the other spam phone calls I usually got. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He then reviewed and saw that I was on a version of Word Press that was even older that the site release version. I said we’re in this deep. Let’s go big or go home. Update and upgrade that bugger too, if you don’t mind. He didn’t mind, so I them found myself on the latest release of Word Press as well.

I was now thinking Travis’ Game Level = Warlock

I did not know I was having excessive activity at my web site. I didn’t know that my content and web site were not backed up. I didn’t know that my web site and my publishing software releases were so far out of date before the call. Now I felt as if everything had been reviewed and updated. It sounded as though a very knowledgeable individual had gone through everything and reviewed for any potential issues.

I had not asked for all of this service. And, even better, I was not asked to pay for all of this service.

This is my idea of what great service is about. Reaching out proactively to a customer and going through their systems, programs and applications. Updating where necessary, and then thanking them for being a customer.

It is quite possible that Godaddy had put together a program where their service group would comb through their existing customer base looking for customers just like me who were so helplessly out of date that it was of benefit to both Godaddy and the customer to have Godaddy perform the requisite updates and upgrades. It would probably save them money, reduce customer issues and increase customer satisfaction. If I were them, I would probably do the same thing.

I didn’t care. They had reached out and performed a service for me without my asking. They had upgraded and updated my capability to continue to write and publish articles, such as this one.

They also increased my customer satisfaction and loyalty.

In the great scheme of things, I am just someone who has created a small, personal web site, and posts a blog using Godaddy. I am sure that they have many other, and many larger customers than me that they serve. The fact that I got individual attention. That I didn’t have to reach out and call them. That I didn’t have to fight my way through some sort of automated attendant answering system. That I talked to a knowledgeable individual who provided me with what I considered to be valuable service, was not lost on me.

I am not writing a homage to any specific company here. It may sound like it, but that was not the intent. I am merely using the company as an example and illustration.

What I am writing about here is how great service ultimately comes down to an individual, and a one to one interface. It is best done preemptively before there is an issue to resolve. How when each step in the service process is explained, customer buy in and satisfaction are gained. How attitude is important when dealing with customers. How being well trained and knowledgeable really counts.

Great service is doing a great job before you are even asked to do it.

Travis promised he would keep an eye on my blog, just in case the Nobel committee actually did start snooping around, because, you never know. Well done Travis.