grep -r ‘what is in Pin\’s mind’ /

Here is the result:

#1 This system helps me to understand how to run my business more effectively

#2 It save trees and is the ultimate solution to real paperless office

#3 I can travel for months now and have my office with me

#4 My operation cost is minimun now. To be precise, near Zero

#5 It is not CRM, helpdesk, accounting or intranet software… it is everything!

#6 It is a replacement of your office. Yes, you do not need an office!

#7 It opens up my business to other users who are using this system

#8 It is not a solution, it is an assets

#9 The killer of CRM

The smart engine behind the Google Adwords, marks it as one of the most targeted advertising channel out beat many other conventional medias. The revenue derived from this channel provides unlimited fund to continue improving Google products. The more people use their product, it provides even more eyeball for Adword.

“They are many newspaper publishers, but no one is controlling all”

Even one can make it, new media channels will be launched, such as Blogs.

Google creates content, but that can never cover all. Wikipedia, Facebook, WordPress – examples of other content providers who share the Internet eyeball with Adwords. Don’t forget, new media will be introduced too.

At one point, Google will find it hard to cover the ever rising cost of maintaining those free applications.

One day, Google search will be so accurate that it is no longer a search, but answers. Gmail is near to perfect after years of Beta too, who knows.

Remember the targeted ads appeared on the right column of search result? If Google aims to perfect the search, isn’t it is contradict to have sponsored listing which may or may not related to your search?

If Gmail is so-called the best email tools, isn’t that it should have no ads? Or, if YouTube is your personal video channel to show only video you want to watch, why bother to include the embossed ads?

Finally, Google will charge users to use their tools or services. Just like how Microsoft Words stayed in our PC for the past 10 years. From Paid to Free, and it would be one day going into Paid again.. and another player will emerge – with a new set of free services :)

What do you think?

This was the same question asked by my dad when I was back to my hometown. Good thing about my dad is, he is always very supportive in what we are doing. If you’ve read ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’, I can be very sure that he belongs to the Rich Dad type. He never too care about our result in schools those days, but encourage us to start our business than working for others.

He has got the impression that my company is not doing well especially when I have more time cycling now. It was never a bad ideas to work 4 days a week as we have been practicing now, but might sounds not too productive to him.

To be frank, I am not sure how long will we still keeping to having technical, marketing and operation in separate department? See, I can be a technical guy when I am setting up a Blog. The next minutes, I am doing marketing when I am posting an article on the Blog. When I am replying a comment posted by a visitor, I am into operation!

Less noise means we can plan our trip better!

(haha.. this post is not complete, my mind is wild and couldnt express correctly. Ideas was mixing up)

1. Dedicated support team sit 24×7 to answer phone call & replying email

2. Service Level Agreement to cover you and your customers when thing goes down, than preventing it to happen

3. Assume that customer will renew services subscribed with you next year

4. MYOB or UBS are the best accounting software, and is easy to use

5. Original invoice must with a company stamp, signed by a human being

6. Don’t work on Saturday, it is a trend. Keep it to 5 day work week.

7. Punch card & access card help you to monitor your staff movement

8. Fax, Email and Phone line (PBX.. hmm) are must have!

9. Chatting during work is monster, blocked & firewalled!

10. Boss usually has a private room :)

Collaboperation – Yupe, it’s not a typo although Google suggested so. It is a new word, at least Google does not find any website with content with the same word!

I am going to share with you why dedicated operation might not work, and how collaborative operation give more values to your company and customers.

Stay tuned for my next post!

I have recently attended their private launch of the new Maybank2U 2.0 website. If only Maybank2U knows not all users are techy, and their new website doesn’t seem to address to this problem at all!

A common problem for many System Interface Designers is, they believe everyone knows hitting Ctrl+V is Paste, and no one will choose the Paste function from File menu.

The old Maybank website

Look at the amount of information, links and pictures in this page. Yes, this is catchy in a bad way- distracting users’ attention on important notice and security alert. Choice is not good, in this case.

This might easily help everyone (Including Mr. Ctrl+V and Mr. File) to fight phishing. This cost less to develop, no consultancy fee to pay (I’m happy to share), and most importantly, to convince more people to use Maybank2U!

34 pages A4 size (Free)
60 pages, 4.25″ x 6.88″, perfect binding (USD8.23)

Post a Review if you like this guide

Just look at my earlier post on Jo-jo’s Challenge. We have collected about 33 feedbacks for just one form, extracted from an online hotel booking website.

This is the current website of Maybank2U. The Maybank2U team done a great work to build this from scracth. It is not easy, especially when you’re dealing with large number of users and important data. The decision to revamp come at the right time. If the old website was built to attract more visitors (during those days when it was new), the revamped version should have focused in the conversion rate or meeting goals. In short, to increase Maybank’s revenue and to decrease Maybank’s operating cost!

I managed to take this picture showing some important practices during the presentation. Too bad, the pages in the new website are still fighting for space :)

Allow me to quickly go through some of my humble and nothing-new feedbacks. I would love to jump to the end of the post which I am going to propose and touch the painful part of the change – The Fundamental!

Don’t be surprised, many visitors can not tell the difference between the two pictures in quick.

I couldn’t find the login box in the main page like what we have in Paypal? A touching personalization can be redundant. Quick math, if you will to login 100 times to Maybank2U in your lifetime, that means the New User link will appear 99 times to you unused. Not just that, you have just forced someone to make 99 decisions of not clicking on that particular link. Don’t make a choice.

Most often, user experience has a lot to do with the Contact us form. Imagine, it serves as the best time and place where you can turn someone’s experience of using your website better. They can be your best friend who promote the website for you, not of fancy technology but some little nice experience. A good form receives fewer support request, saving operational cost greatly. I have reviewed the Contact us form of Alliance Bank in the past, check it out. An example of Contact us form in good use.

Sign up form – one of the most important page where visitors are converted into Maybank2U users. Yet, too many options, and I wonder why the online method should not be given priority as like the big button in WordPress. Yet, this is not much different from the first version. This explains why 1,500 pages are way too difficult to focus your bullet (budget and time) on. Probably that answer to Yowchuan’s question on how much is the cost of revamp during the preview launch today.

I would love to have location map if this is not too much of work :)

The Fundamental Feedback?

My Maybank2Me directs me to a secure page with big login button. There is a clear instruction to tell people how to ensure they are landed in the non-phishing page. I don’t have to choose if I am a new user, the system will do this dirty job for me. My online system reminds me if there is a recurring payment to make such as rental and the list go on…

The rest of information such as banking, credit card, lifestyles updates, promotions, sign up instructions and contact us form are separated from the online banking system.

Who knows, I could have one version for people like my dad? Lite, easy to use, and probably they could belong to the last group of users who will continue ‘supporting’ the physical banks :)

Keep it up, Maybank2U Team!

I must be kidding. Yes, I don’t have a Maybank2U account.

Some related posts I have written in the past. They have a lot to do with UI.

- Truly first come first serve system must be discriminative!
- Acmamall.com, more stones needed
- What’s system design to do with marketing?
- I Hate Big Pencil

What’s next? I asked myself after we switch to 4 day work week last week.

My Glande Latte reminds me something. It’s possible to move an office to Starbucks? Occupying a corner with glass partition, from walk-in customer. This fixed and dedicated location with private LAN/WIFI – sounds like a reality show :)

“Starbucks in Malaysia is jointly owned by Starbucks Coffee International and Berjaya Group Berhad. The first Starbucks retail store in Malaysia was opened in KL Plaza since 1998. Today, we have 109 stores through out Malaysia.”

If this is possible, what would be the values of story to Starbucks and that company?

When asked why? This is definitely not another be-the-first kind of Malaysia Boleh campaign. It’s also not the Meatball Sundae like what Seth’s said in this book.

The change just happened. I can remember this suggestion was raised last year. We find no solid answers to how are we going to handle calls coming in on Friday, how our team members are able to check their email when they are not in the office, how to access the file servers without a VPN – We are not ready!

Again, change is pain but we are not afraid of it. Yet, to take every measure to make sure all our customers & team members will be benefited from this process.

It is important to understand what are the fixed cost associated with an online business. The following are an example of cost breakdown for an small-medium scale online business for your reference,

Setting up
Hardware, backup, setting up servers (RM20k)
Trademarks and copyright (RM10k)
System development (RM800k)

Monthly operation
Co-location, email hosting, domain name (RM2k)
Customer support, 24×7 (RM10k)
System maintenance (RM5k)
SSL certificate (RM50)

Monthly marketing budget
Online & offline campaigns (RM5k)

The hard work and effort put in by the team is clearly evident through the significant growth rate of our online business and also from the positive feedbacks of our customers. Other than the advancement of our skill set, we are also seeing ourselves improving in terms of our ability to deliver customer’s expectations.

The recent acquisition of Kumomo.com, with its donation to build two schools in Cambodia meant a lot to everyone.

2008 will see another action-packed year as we shall accelerate the pace of change, with even better focus and efficiency!

Over the counter, banks use queue ticket system to manage their crowd.

However, as with human nature, not all counters can solve each customer’s request in the same time duration.

Incorrect form entries, forgetting a company stamp, signature mismatch, and all other kinds of human-prone errors are bound to happen! This is where the queue system cannot easily filter out, making it half as efficient as it should have been.

To fix this little margin of “humanity-error”, we have implemented an “approval-based system”.

It’s quite simple really. The approval process kicks in the moment the first customer start queueing. The duty of the approval team will filter out the customers with problems and direct those who are error-free straight to the counter. Those with errors will be directed to the error-fixing team, where a dedicated trouble-shooting team will attend to them personally.

It’s not to be seen as a system to penalize customers with errors, but rather, it’s to reward well-prepared customers who gets their documents right and speed up the process for them.

In the end, both the erroneous customer and the error-free customer will be happy.

Email – Reliable, Manageable (forwarding, Spam Control), uptime. How marketing experience shares between your teams, solving customer support email while using it as an opportunity to train new support staff and at the same time to reduce operation issues…

Servers – Dedicated server, higher bandwidth, importance of understing every details of the platform including what is running in the Cron job, who is deleting the overflow log file, blocking the firewall, making sure the current datetime is correct and sync to the hardware clock, etc.

Domain name – Reminder to renew your domain name? Or, end up as the recent incident that caused the Advertlets.com domain to expire?

Various DNS Tools unveil the problem of their poorly setup email service, bit all it sounds too technical to them! Yet, it is obviously too attractive of the package they have signed up.

Here is how a simple math says all,

Said Company A with 50 staff, subscribe to email hosting service by paying RM1,000 yearly

Let’s drill down to a single month,

It would be RM83 a month for 50 staff, or RM1.67 for every staff in a month.

Hmm, am I hear it wrong? RM1.67?

My office cleaning service costs me RM120 a month!
My last McDonald’s meal cost me RM10…

Understand that the above email hosting company may be looking at volumes, but maintaining a reliable email hosting infrastructure can not be cheap too! I have yet to use the RM200/year email hostingpackage (Look at The Star In-Tech if you plan to subscribe one) in my sample…

Pay more today for your email :)

It is a balance between development cost and conversion rate. We can use an interactive map, than a drop down to solve this problem, eventually reduce our operation cost, or less one support email for today. But, before changes are made, we justify its cost to make this change to the values of conversion increasement we can get!

The answer, we maintain the dropdown – email to the customer to choose United Kingdom instead. Afterall, this is the one and only request we have received since day one.

The best localization is to listen to your customers and make changes!

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!