Gyaan Sutra On entrepreneurship and technology

I read about the eight steps to remarkable customer satisfactions on Joel. The article was good, basically put everything that you have observed over the years, into bulleted points.

The aircraft industry example was excellent.

When Joel starts talking about outsourcing customer service to bangalore, I kind of remembered this old discussion I’ve had with a few of my friends who do the testing for this big company here in Pune on softwares that are created somewhere else in the world. Now the interesting bit is that these guys are almost always fuming about the fact that most of the testing that they get to do is black box, which means that more often than not, they never get to see the source code. Everything that needs to be checked up, has to be done by finding the developer and mailing them your issues. You are not allowed to directly find the developer and give them a call, but you need to inform your project manager about the issue who will find the guy for you. So after that the developer mails back his responses, and this whole process takes up atleast a couple of hours, if somehow your working hours are matching (US is half way across the globe).

Just imagine how long would it take, if you realize after half an hour that you need some more clarifications. Moreover, the project managers are pissed if you want to ask too many questions.

You would be surprised to know that just because of this problem, testing softwares sometimes takes them upto two months, while the testers are ready to put it down in writing that they didn’t work on it for more than four or five man days.

And mind you all of this is within the hood of the same company, which is located both here and abroad.

Sharing what is called the ‘intellectual property’ is so much of an issue these days that it has become the barrier to its own well being.

Anyways, coming back to the article, the best thing that I found out in the article was chargeback. Yes, I had never heard of it before, and I’m sure as hell going to ask for a refund the next time. Thanks a lot Joel, for the amazing article