Guard Checks at MMU: Efficiency or Deficiency?
November 29th, 2007
All cars going out from Multimedia University are checked (you will be asked to open your car’s boot). This is not something new, it can be traced all the way back to the year 1999. If this is a good policy, I would say it will be good for just one day! Why you ask me? Here’s why:
1. You have 100 more ways to hide it somewhere, not just in the boot.
2. Size of PCs and other lab equipments get smaller every year.
3. Guards are bored from doing repeating & meaningless processes. It is a conversion zero job. It’s quite certain that you will never find anything in the boot!
4. Even if there is anything you want to smuggle, I bet you can still put it in your boot without any problem. The moment your car boot was opened, guards closed it almost instantly. Yes, it a process of open-close, not open-check-close.
5. Do it during rainy days or school opening days.
Why do they continue to allow this process? MMU is just setting a best example of how most instruction is taken blindly. Guards are ‘designed’ to carry instructions. Top management are ‘designed’ to give instruction. I will not tell you how this can be solved because it is the simplest to answer if:
a. Ask top management to work as guard and open & close the boot under the hot sun for one day.
b. Listen to the guards. Let them be the one who decide what is the best way to prevent this.
Either way will do it, and it is just a matter of change!
How many times have you been asked to write your information on a book by a guard when entering a private property/premise? This is just another step to have more work for guards (top management believed that guards’ time are less important than them)
You may want to take a look at our related postsWhy Facebook do not need to advertise on billboard???
November 22nd, 2007
Have you ever come across any billboard advertisements by Gmail on their Free Webmail service? Online business runs very differently from conventional business!
You may want to take a look at our related postsRunning e-Government the way online store runs!
November 22nd, 2007
Recently, e-Visa changes how one views Government activities on the internet and that for quite some time now, it can not only be fast but even fun. When done and executed correctly, e-Gov need not be a chore but can be like any online store that offers the same convenience and same speed.
You may want to take a look at our related posts“Getting an e-Visa was surprisingly fast and easy, a very pleasant experience. Thank you. All other countries should follow your footstep.” Said Kikko
Think the online way - even the smallest things matters
November 22nd, 2007
Yes, you may have the best system, software, idea, proposal for your online business, but without changing your mind to work like an online business… What would you do? Take this test now!
1. You have just received an email from your customers to thank you for your good service rendered.
2. You have just taken a picture of your company dinner.
3. Someone wrote in a very negative comment/feedback about your product.
4. You found an interesting link.
What will you do next (Remember, from a point of online business owner).
Post it with the Leave a Reply form below.
You may want to take a look at our related postsEmail is monotonous
November 22nd, 2007
“Email is monotonous,” said my friend during our discussion today. Email delivers a message in a single tone unlike a conversation. My business nature requires me to answer many emails a day.
My email reflects me, it is just another form of conversation, in text. We love our work - so I have to think of some ways to reflect this well in my email:
1. Thanks means Thanks, but Thanks :) means Thanks and I’m smiling happily. Will you love someone when she is hiding all her feelings from you?
2. You have more than one hundred ways to tell your sender that you are a human. This is me!.
3. Make your email short. Long email is just like your mom nagging on you! Do you ask your lecturer 10 questions at a time and expecting 10 answers together?
4. Skip this if you are that kind of person who will never stop and offer help to someone with a broken car beside the road. Don’t just reply for the sake of replying. Offer your help, feedback or any suggestion in your email!
5. Though this has something to do with the default setting of Outlook Express to mark message read automatically after 5 seconds - Never ignore an email. Give a precise answer. It is just a Yes or No. Not hearing from you is either not a Yes or No, but being impolite. Imagine you are talking to someone face to face but he ignores you and walk away, this is exactly the same feeling.
You may want to take a look at our related postsIt’s not about delivering
November 21st, 2007
Over the years, we have been working on projects after projects. So, what is the change?
In those days, we strike to deliver. We aim to complete project in time, good project management, quality control, customer satisfaction, etc. We have changed. The first question we are asking is the result.
Yes, to build system with results (can a poorly designed system gets you the result, I highly doubt it will).
You may want to take a look at our related postsWebsite completion
November 20th, 2007
We use the term ‘Website completion date…’ in our quote. I was kinda reluctant to apply this. Websites are never really ‘complete’ as new contents and changes will always be needed as long as you are still in the business.
Thus, when it is complete, you are at the end of your business!
You may want to take a look at our related postsHow much can you cover?
November 20th, 2007
Recently, I was involved with a charitable event by leading the web team to drive the website of the organizer. Eventually, we have created the new website with a Blog. We received more than 500 feedbacks in less than two months. It provides a platform for everyone to share pictures, experience, providing feedback, asking questions… Eventually, all these make the content of the website. I doubt how much we can cover if all the contents are from us!
Sadly, I have just received a painful instruction to merge this website with the single, centralized controlled website. Though the intention is good, but would it be something that your visitors really want?
I have heard from the Foundation and in view of all of the infractions to regulations world-wide, the foundation is establishing a single, foundation controlled web-site. They will post a variety of information covering all sanctioned runs and events and put up details to support each run. With this in mind, we need to take down the web-site as is being requested for all countries / cities having events.
It is easier to follow than to change :)
P/s. Apparently, this painful decision was a result of some variety of countries and cities choosing not to follow the guidelines and do not respond to the change requests from the organization.
You may want to take a look at our related postsWhat’s system design to do with marketing?
November 20th, 2007
Behind an online business, backend system works silently, handle operation issues, customer support, making your online experience a most wonderful one. They are a part of the business!
Spending more time in your operation means you have less time for your marketing.
It is one of the reason why we are never happy about our supporting system. Apparently, we revamp our system very often (Yes, complete revamp). New interface are tested before actual coding. Our programmers are tested in every revamp to make the interface even better.
Instead of presenting few dropdowns for different search options, we have included arrow button to click for various search options. Don’t ask me why the arrow is before the text field, why not after? Funny enough, such important details is never being discussed in the Request for Proposal documents or quotations. Clients tend to just want a system done, rather than getting it done the right way!
Thanks to Weikiat, our best reduce-operation-increase-marketing engineer!
You may want to take a look at our related postsWhy you work so late?
November 16th, 2007
We were having a drink last night, one of my friend seemed to be interested to find out why we are working late most of the time. It is pretty hard for us to answer until we have realized it is something to do with the word ‘work’…
We don’t feel that we are working because we are having fun and enjoying what we are doing.
You may want to take a look at our related postsHandle the truth
November 16th, 2007
‘Bad’ feedback can actually be good for blogs. It gives you clues as to where you went wrong and from there, how to improve.
“Focus on bad feedback, rectify and improve!”
Perhaps you could also add that people can give suggestions as to how to rectify the problem. Not all bad feedback is actually ‘bad’ as some are actually good feedback in disguise!
So when there is a negative feedback in your Blog next time, face it and solve it! Moderation is not only about removing negative feedback :)
You may want to take a look at our related postsConversion you don’t want
November 15th, 2007
In all online businesses, we have two important measurements - Visitors and Conversion Rate. If you have 100 visitors daily and 20 out of the 100 make a purchase online, that means you have 20% conversion rate.
Good customer support, happy returning customers, excellent services and buying experiences are factors that you can improve on. It is always good to listen to your customers, review the ordering process, collecting their feedback with a Blog and rewarding your customers rather than throwing your marketing budget to advertisements you can’t measure.
What happens to those conversion which you might not want it to happen - even once!
What is the goal of installing an alarm system? To prevent theft. Unauthorized access triggers siren. The whole process of conversion is unwanted by everyone who ironically decides to install an alarm system. Probably this explains why the interface and the keypad command are not really designed to improve the conversion, making it so much difficult to setup and I doubt it will be improved in the future :)
I was setting up my new home alarm system today.
You may want to take a look at our related postsDon’t leave people hanging
November 15th, 2007
It is not impolite to say no, but it is when you leave people hanging. When the subject of an email is in favor to someone, you tend to get the reply earlier. When the answer is no, some people choose to ignore and don’t reply to your email - sometimes we just need an answer to move on.
It is fine to say ‘no’ in your reply and your sender will be happier than receiving nothing at all!
You may want to take a look at our related postsI’m calling from Google?
November 14th, 2007
Received a call just now. A girl with a nice name Yu Sien, called me and greeted me with ‘Hi, I’m calling from Google’. The first thing that came to my mind was whether Larry was calling to make an offer on the Kumomo.com site, just kidding. Apparently, she is calling from Google Singapore, checking on the recent bugs that were discovered in Google Optimizers. Well, since we are only doing some testing with the code, and it was removed after then, basically we are not affected.
Who says being big doesn’t mean that you can’t do extra for your customers? Though I am probably just one of the millions of Google’s users, but I felt that I am their only one now :)
You may want to take a look at our related postsSave our Rhinos the better way
November 14th, 2007
Though we are very impressed with what has been done by Honda on their continuous campaign to raise the awareness of saving the Sumatran Rhinos, something needs to be done on the website - As we are running out of time and are at risk of losing our Rhinos [the news of the last few Rhino kept in the conservation park near Kuala Selangor shocked us few days after our visit there few years back].
Today, we are losing not just the Rhino, but visitors to the website as well!
We are greeted with the full flash introduction which hangs on the first visit. Determined not to give up, I visited the website after a few minutes, and was able to enter the website but it wasn’t giving any hint as to why there was no content displaying in all of the pages. It is simply empty with just the beautiful photos. Suspecting the flash file never completed downloading… [remember, the website conversion rate is closing to zero now].. I tried again, and this time was able to look at the content - expecting a poorly updated one with regards to the flash design and the difficulty in recompiling the flash file.
Again, no email addresses were found [maybe it is hidden somewhere, or I just couldn’t even spot a ‘contact us’ page. Well, the ‘latest news’ does not attract me to click and explore further, why not does it like a Blog to collect more feedback [through comments and track backs]?
This is a sample of website with capabilities and potential to drive in visitors [their major visitors source could be from Direct traffics, followed by Referrals or through Search Engines), but the website simply failed to convert - less conversion. In short, it is not hitting the goal of setting up the website.
Beautiful website without conversion
How about online donation? How about leaving a reply or feedback to at least communicate with your visitors? Feedbacks give you the permission to contact your visitors, to update them about news and interesting activities going on.
The website of Terry Fox Run KL [http://www.terryfoxrunkl.org], without a fancy look but collecting 590 comments over the period of two months since we launched the website, more than 10,000 unique visitors…
You may want to take a look at our related postsDo they really like to hear from us?
November 14th, 2007
We’re more than happy to hear from you - Share your thoughts, comments, feedback and queries with us and we’ll be more than happy to help you out in any way.
I came across the Contact Us page in the website of Honda Malaysia [www.honda.com.my] and I am going to tell you the reason why I am here in my next post. I was wondering how serious are they in listening from us when I couldn’t even find the email address or an enquiry form in their Contact Us page.
People are afraid of making changes and marked as ‘troublemakers’. We used to think that it is a norm to receive a reply from big corporates or government agencies with much delay when comparing to smaller institutions. Yes, big corporates do have ‘more’ things to handle and more emails to receive everyday but do not forget, they have bigger crowd of customers to win their hearts and ample resources to improve their process flow just like the simple act of replying an email in a fast manner!
You may want to take a look at our related posts
