June 2007

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The Westpac Experience, Part 2

30 June 2007 in Business, Only One Name by Stilgherrian | No comments

Westpac logo

I can’t log into St George Bank’s Internet banking right now — presumably it’s overloaded with people like me doing their 30 June thing. So instead I’ll continue the story of moving to Westpac.

After that initial meeting, the cards and PINs and other stuff duly arrived — and as usual the cards didn’t record my name correctly. Now I’m OK with that, having only one name is more than a little unusual. And besides, I’ve never found it useful getting angry when something’s a simple mistake. After all, you want people to help you, and berating them won’t increase their chances of fixing your problem.

So I popped into the local branch to get it sorted.

The staff were friendly and helpful. And they were confident they’d made the right changes to get it fixed. But alas, yesterday one of the replacement cards arrived, and it still had me listed as “Stilgherrian Stilgherrian”. Back to the drawing board…

The test now will be to see how Westpac deal with this. Stay tuned…

It’s Friday afternoon, it’s the end of the financial year, so a little irreverence is acceptable — if not compulsory. So here’s a link to story about a ship with an unfortunate name.

29 June 2007 by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

MYOB, you’re dumped! Hello NetAccounts

29 June 2007 in Business, Internet, Marketing by Stilgherrian | No comments

Saasu logo

Marc Lehmann, you just scored your business Saasu a new customer because you commented on my gripes about MYOB. We’ve just made the decision to run my business with NetAccounts.

Marc, there was a steady flow of “Gee, wow!” moments as we looked at how NetAccounts might work for us — I’ll come back to that. But what really made the difference was how your company communicates. Especially when compared with MYOB…

MYOB only ever communicate with me to ask for money. Once, they were quite aggressive about it.
MYOB don’t reply to emails.
You have to wade through so much clutter to find what you want on their website.

Imagine MYOB were a person. You’d say something to them, but they’d never respond. Instead, they’d just be talking at you — either asking for money or telling you how good they were. Constantly.

You, on the other hand, joined a conversation about MYOB by talking about your product — but you added another insight and kept the conversation alive. “Well,” I thought, “if they’ve won an award and they’re clueful about blogs, maybe I should look at their product.” So I did.

And while NetAccounts certainly looked capable of doing what we needed — gawd, our accounting needs aren’t rocket science! — it was the quality and sincerity of your communication which persuaded me to take a proper look.

Your online demos are voiced by you, not some slick presenterdroid. This is reassuring.
Your website won’t win a design award, but there’s no clutter and so far I’ve quickly found everything I’ve looked for.
Saasu speaks in simple, direct language. You don’t shout about “Your business will be transformed”, you show me how I use your tool to do everyday things.

Imagine Saasu were a person. They’d be conversational, straightforward, to-the-point. All elements which build trust. All characteristics of someone you’d actually want to be involved with your business.

I’ll certainly have more to say about NetAccounts while I set it up over the weekend. But for now, my office manager Virginia Bridger had this to say after an hour or so poking around:

It’s a program that’s obviously been built knowing that human beings are going to be using it.

Oh, and Marc? I’ve just used your logo without asking first. I’m guessing that you won’t mind, given the context.

Explain the rules, plainly

27 June 2007 in Business, Language by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

It may seem obvious, but if you want your clients to behave in a certain way, why not just tell them? Open honest communication really is the way to go.

That’s why I was thrilled to see the following message in a newsletter from my chiropractor:

Missed appointments and late cancellations — our solution

Missed appointments and late cancellations are an inconvenience not only for us, but also for other clients who may have wanted your appointment time and miss out. So in future missed appointments and cancellations on the same day will be handled as follows:

1st missed appt: We understand, anyone can forget once.

2nd missed appt: We’re not very happy — a gift (wine or flowers etc) is required to appease us. Or we will donate your “Missed appointment fee” to charity.

3rd missed appt: Our regular fee will apply.

4th missed appt: Our regular fee will apply and we won’t make any more appointments for you.

What a superb piece of writing, too. It’s friendly and conversational, but it’s also laying down the law.

Crikey editorial slams Howard, Rudd over Aboriginal intervention

27 June 2007 in Politics by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

The best summary of the cynicism and nastiness of John Howard’s War on Indigenous Unpleasantness I’ve seen so far is the Crikey editorial today, written by Sydney journalist Alex Mitchell:

This is the last throw of the dice for John Howard. He is doing one big favour for the mining industry which he has faithfully served in public life for the past 30 years by rolling back Aboriginal ownership of their tribal lands. Cynically, cruelly but utterly predictably, he’s doing it under the hypocritical colours of humanitarianism. (Very similar to the invasion and occupation of Iraq sold as “spreading democracy”)… He is being aided and abetted by Kevin Rudd’s craven behaviour… Rudd has vacated leadership on the tragic issue of rescuing Aboriginal communities and given Howard the opportunity to play his sickening Father of the Nation role. Paul Keating, you were right about the Rudd team of fixers, hucksters, flyweights and spineless opportunists.

That’s just a taste. The full version is well worth it.

It’s nice to see gender roles reinforced, isn’t it? Even though Condoleezza Rice is arguably the most powerful woman in the world, she’s still picking fluff off George W’s jacket.

27 June 2007 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Human Rights: a reminder

26 June 2007 in Politics by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

It just occurred to me that people reading this website in a feed reader may be missing half the action: the rather excellent comments (and the dodgy ones too). So, a reminder. Apart from the RSS feed of the posts, there’s also a feed of the comments. And if you have no idea what that means, well… I was going to link to an explanation but all those I found were too geeky.

25 June 2007 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Yeah OK, it was mentioned in the comments, but the movie Thanksgiving With the Kranzes deserves its own post. It’s a superb satire on Ron Howard’s Apollo 13. 18 minutes well spent. And it ties in nicely with my posts about the oven crash and failure IS an option. Now back to work…

25 June 2007 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Releasing the Black Hawk crash video was A Good Thing

25 June 2007 in Defence, Media, Politics, Transparency by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

An open letter to family and friends of those who died in the crash of the Black Hawk helicopter on HMAS Kanimbla, and to those who survived.

I understand why you didn’t want the crash video made public. Every time you see it, you’ll re-live that crash. And every time, you’ll feel that black void of horror creeping back up into your mind. The horror may stay with you for years. It’s pretty fucked, I know.

But despite the on-going pain it inevitably causes, I think it’s not only reasonable that such videos be made public, I think it’s essential.

In 1992, there was another accident. During an army live-fire exercise, an assault rifle accidentally discharged and a soldier died. A very good friend of mine was holding that rifle. And while both a military inquiry and a civilian coronial inquest agreed it was an accident and found my friend blameless, the post-traumatic stress and guilt stayed with him for years — to the point where it became unbearable and he hanged himself at the end of 1996.

His parents were devastated. I wasn’t too thrilled either, having cut him down from the tree in my back yard and, later, helped carry him to his grave.

Some of us reckon the army hadn’t taken proper care of one of their own. The 2005 Senate inquiry into the The effectiveness of Australia’s military justice system agreed.

As a direct result of Senate recommendations, the inquiry into the Black Hawk crash was headed by a civilian judge — the first time that’d happened. And that judge declared the video should be released. It was right and proper that he do so.

Secrecy provides a breeding-ground for corruption.

Secrecy can be used to cover up incompetence.

Secrecy is, of course, essential in many military operations. But when it comes to finding out why a perfectly good helicopter slammed into the deck of a ship and then dragged two fine men to their deaths, secrecy has no place. Justice needs to be done — out of respect to those men, and out of respect to every man and woman who chooses to serve the Australian people in the armed forces.

Justice not only needs to be done, we need to see that it’s being done — and that means putting the evidence on the public record.

I’m sorry you’ve had to re-live the disaster. I know even reading this letter will hurt. I’ll have trouble sleeping tonight too, having re-lived my own story. That’s the price of Justice. It’s worth paying.

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