Burn The Evidence

I recently graffiti'd the Eclipse Planning Counncil Agenda with my $0.02 because I saw something I felt was incorrect. Not being one to posture and postulate wildly w/o facts to back myself up, I also created this supporting document: EMF 2.3 Plan History.

Why? Because on a recent blog entry, Bjorn brought up some excellent suggestions about having a good communication strategy so that your consuming teams (users, developers) can properly be made aware of lumps in the gravy.

At first I was annoyed, because I thought he was throwing rocks at EMF. But because I know we did damn near everything but sending up smoke signals to get the message out, I'd like to instead underscore all the places you can document and announce your plans to help grow your community:

• Architecture Council (meetings + minutes on website)
• Planning Council (meetings + minutes on website)
• Europa/Ganymede meetings (meetings + minutes on website)
• website (4 places: home, news, downloads, docs -- reuse information widgets or database content to be able to inform people in many ways)
• Eclipse wiki (project page, project category page)
• project newsgroups -- don't be afraid to cross-post to related newsgroups
• Cross Projects mailing list (cross-projects-issues-dev@)
• Planning Council mailing list (eclipse.org-planning-council@)

We have no favourite channel. We use them all. Sure, it's a lot of work and could be construed as overkill, but IMHO it's worth the cost because it shows project maturity and respect for the people who use your code. Need a more instant-gratification or cost-benefits-analysis rationalization than the warm-fuzzy-feelings one? How about free testing? Tell people about your planned changes and they can adapt faster -- and give you feedback sooner.

Oh, well, time to crank up some Billy Talent and let the weekend begin.

Customer Service Apathy, Part 3: Closure

(con't from Part 2)

That evening, I got a call from Rob, of Double G, who apologized profusely for the snafu, explained this sort of thing was rare, and told me a forensic investigation was in progress to figure out how it was possible that so many people had dropped the ball here.

He then assured me that a carpenter would be out next week to close the gaping hole in the side of my house where my old meter had been.

On Sunday, a full 12 days later, I began this email thread:

When we spoke on Tuesday, Sept 11, you assured me that someone from Double G would be out to my house to complete the construction of a box to weatherproof my new gas meter THIS WEEK (Sept 17-21). As this week has come and gone, I'm hoping you'll send someone out this coming week to finally build the box and complete the job that was started in July.

When might I expect a carpenter to arrive? And can you explain why one still hasn't been here? You assured me you'd make this right.

Thanks in advance,

I checked with the carpenter and he hasn’t had time yet to get to you. He assured me that he will get there this week. We only have one carpenter and depending on the work schedules there are some jobs where he has to work with the fitters at the same time in order to complete the work. Work like yours can be done at any time and therefore can get pushed to accommodate the work that must be scheduled. I will follow up with him later in the week to make sure it is done this week.

By way of explanation of the work, it is not a weatherproof box for the gas meter that is required. At your home, the gas meter was moved outside from the box that it was in, but since we did that work the box cover doesn’t necessarily fit since there is now piping in the way. The carpenter will come and put a proper cover over the box in your wall, but the meter will not be covered.

I will make sure it gets done this week.

As long as rain doesn't leak into my basement anymore, I'm fine with that solution.

Thanks for following up on this. Can you let me know what day your carpenter will come by (eg., the day before) ?

I’m not sure I follow….are you having a leak into the basement and are you sure it’s related to the meter box? Is it just since the box cover has been off? Oh wait…did Enbridge dig up around the meter set when they were there on the 10th? I know you weren’t there, but are there signs the ground was disturbed and is it since then that it has been leaking? If so then I’ll have to get them out to look at that part of it since we don’t do any of the underground work.

Let me know.

I never got the warning phone call / email, nor did I have a chance to email back an explanation about the water leakage. This morning I was rudely awakened to the sounds of power tools (and very loud barking as my dogs made sure I was awake for said power tools), but at least I finally have closure:

And to think it's only been 4-1/2 months since I received the initial letter from Enbridge. What a gas.

Customer Service Apathy, Part 2

(con't from Part 1)

Another example of how sometimes it pays to shame people into good customer service.

I sent a slightly less bitchy version of last night's post about Enbridge and Double G Gas Services to Enbridge's ombudsman emai address, and cc:'d the contact address on Double G's website.

This morning, I received this from Enbridge:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your e-mail.

You will be contacted regarding your concern within the next two business days.

Thank you.

The Office of the Ombudsman
Enbridge Gas Distribution Inc.

I also received this from Double G:

Mr Boldt,
As soon as you're up and checking your email give me a call at (416) ***-****

If you don't call me by about 9:00, I will try and call you.
Rob

I'm not sure if it was the same person, but around 8:15am I also received a call from Double G saying that they could come immediately to turn the gas back on. I was asleep; SWMNBN took the call. Apparently they had someone in the area who could come by "shortly," or in the next 90 mins, as it turned out.

The tech that arrived discovered that rather than just needing to turn on the gas, he had to connect the meter that Enbridge had played with yesterday. He was not amused, and rightly so -- I'm hoping he'll pass his annoyance with the workflow breakdown back to Double G and from there to Enbridge.

Anyway, by 10:45am, I was cooking with gas again.

Continued...

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Customer Service Apathy

Back in May, 2007, I received a note from Enbridge, my household gas distributor, telling me I'd been randomly selected for a new gas meter. The note then went on to say that if I didn't book an appointment,

we will go ahead and replace the meter sometime after May 25, 2007. If you are not home, we will leave the gas supply off and provide a number for your (sic) to call to have us come back to turn on your meter and relight your natural gas appliances. We will return as quickly as possible.

Now, as a skeptic and cynic, I new there was trouble brewin' here, but I called them and scheduled an appointment for June 1, between 1 and 5pm. A four hour window was the best they could do. So far, not great, but June 1 was a Friday and I work from home anyway, so this wasn't really a big deal. That is, until about 6pm when they still hadn't shown up.

I called to kvetch, but *surprise* they had no record of me, my address, or the appointment. So, I booked a new appointment, this time for June 22, between 1 and 3pm. Apparently when they screw you over they're willing do offer a shorter window.

Not that it mattered -- they didn't show up the second time either. So, that evening "between the hours of 4:00PM and 10:00PM", as directed, I called to book a third appointment. This time I got a three-hour window between 2 and 5pm on July 12 with the promise that they'd call 30 mins before to verify they were in fact coming. Whatever.

So Double G's technician finally arrived, did his thing, and was done in very little time, remarking that Enbridge would be back "soon" to complete the job.

Soon, apparently, was 2 months later -- this morning. No notice, no warning, no phone call or note dropped in my mailbox. Nada. Luckily, I work stupidly late hours so I was up to 3am last night and thus still home at 11am when two Enbridge techs stomped up my driveway to tell me my gas was turned off and that Double G would have to come out and turn it back on. (They're the gas company but they have to get some subcontractor to light a pilot? OK, whatever, I'm sure there's a union or some nepotism involved.)

The Enbridge guys were friendly enough and offered me a 6-9pm window for turning on my gas. Since today was Build Server Rebuild Day (another story for another time), I figured I'd be at the lab and in the server room pretty late, so I took that window, then later reconsidered and asked for something later. Believe it or not, they said I could have 8-11pm. I was once again skeptical that anyone would actually come out here that late, but since it was that or leave the server half-done to rush home or delay it another week, I accepted.

At 9:30pm tonight, I called Dougle G to verify that they had in fact gotten the booking and were on their way. They said yes, it's booked, between 8pm and midnight. So, great, not *quite* what I was told before, but at least I was in the system. Progress!

It's now 1:30am and there's been no sign of them, but frankly, I'm not surprised. They clearly have the same attitude that Rogers Email Support team does about fixing their website problems:

Because we're not satisfied until you're not satisfied.

Continued...

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