Random Synapses

Sunday. I decide to spend a part of my first salary on some things I wanted for months. So I order these products from a company that I know and whose professionalism I appreciate for a few years. Products are in stock and my items are reserved, pending confirmation from the sales people. On their site, my account has my legal residence address from my home town, printed on my photo ID.

Monday morning. Nearly half an hour after business hours start, my order is processed. I get a PDF invoice by e-mail. Both the company and I have accounts at ING Bank, and Internet Banking is convenient, safe and instantaneous. My billing address at the bank is where I’m currently staying in the capital, not the one from my home town. I make the payment directly from my account and send them the PDF confirmation of the payment by e-mail. The seller’s location is less than 10 minutes of walking away from my current residence, but I can’t get there during business hours. So I ask for the package to be delivered across the city to my work address, where a courier can reach me during their delivery hours.

Monday evening. I find out that the schedule for Tuesday has changed and I will be at a conference away from the office until mid afternoon. I e-mail the seller to ask them to tell the courier to deliver the package after 3pm.

Tuesday morning. Again, shortly after business hours start, I get the reply that the package has already been sent out and that I could contact the courier company directly. I leave my ID and money for delivery costs at the front desk at work, in case the courier shows up while I’m gone.

Tuesday afternoon. No package has arrived, the delivery company has no record of such a package, so I call the seller to ask for the tracking number. Something has happened and the package was not sent out on Monday, but I am assured that it will be picked up by the courier in the afternoon and delivered in 24 hours.

Wednesday afternoon (today). Mom calls from my home town that there’s a delivery for me at my legal residence. It’s the order I placed on Sunday. I ask mom to send it back with the same courier that delivered it there. She pays for the shipping to there and then back to me. It’s not expensive, just inconvenient and time consuming.

Conclusions so far?

E-commerce works, or at least it’s on its right track. Serious sellers are quick, payments can be made in time, communication can work properly. But, the difference is in details, and something apparently unimportant can ruin a larger process. In this case, the poor design of the order processing system interfering with timely and flawlessly delivering orders. Some system analyst who designed the information workflow disregarded the fact that, in every order, there can be up to 3 people and 5 addresses:

• the person who places the order, with a legal residence, a current residence and a mailing address;
• the person who pays the order, with a billing address registered at the bank;
• the person who receives the package, with a delivery address.

For instance, my sister could be placing an online order, have me pay for it with my credit card, and request the product to be sent to my dad as a gift. Sis has a legal address registered with the authorities, at our family’s place where we grew up. But she lives somewhere else now, so she has a different current residence; it’s not her legal residence, because she only rents the place, doesn’t own it. And she has a different mailing address too — a large, safe post office box which she checks regularily, because the mailbox in the building is really small and mail gets lost more frequently than she’d like, especially pretty magazines she’s subscribed to. My billing address and dad’s address are also different. Why would anyone expect that, in the complex modern world, everyone has a single address for everything, completely ruling out the increasing number of exceptions to this false assumption?

Wednesday evening (one hour ago). I e-mail the seller to explain the mix-up and suggest improving their system. I really like this company and its people, and I know they will listen to my comments.

Wednesday evening, really late (11:30pm, minutes ago). They’re still at work, apparently; just got a reply from them, apologizing for the mistake made by the department handling packaging, and promising free shipping for next order.

Lessons learned? You bet. I’m positive that the seller will make sure this glitch in the information systems will no longer affect their business. I know them long enough to be sure they’ll get it fixed. And, what do you know, my unfortunate case just became a small contribution to improving the e-commerce in my country. It probably makes an insignificant difference country-wide. But for the small company I’m dealing with, this is a great opportunity to get a competitive advantage by paying close attention to details and smoothing all those little causes that generate bigger problems.

How did you change the e-commerce world today?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 at 10:50 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.