Miles’ Blog » Offline

A couple of weeks ago, whilst in Albany WA, we visited one of the local museums and my 6 year old son, Davis, pointed to a laundry washboard, and asked me what it was. After my explanation of scrubbing clothes against it to get them clean, with a serious look on his face, he asked me ‘Yeah… but they had Dryers, right Dad?’.

I remembered this, earlier tonight when turning on our new fangled washing machine, and amusing myself with the 18+ wash programs, LCD screen and animated tips and trouble shooting screens.

Image: LCD screen for Fisher & Paykel Washing Machine.

So, I got a new toy on Friday, a long awaited Canon EOS 400D. A serious digital SLR, instead of the compact Sony DSC-V1 that has been my trusty friend for the last three years.

A crazy increase from 5.0 megapixels to 10.1 megapixels goes to show where technology has headed over the last three years. Now I just hope that my storage keeps up with my requirements. At 3mb per image in JPG format, the EOS400D can certainly chew up hard drive space, especially when I shoot 509 pictures in the first three days.

It’s about time I stepped out of my comfort zone with my photography, and started learning more about exposure, speeds, ISO, etc.

The pic above shows you what I was shooting on Sunday - the Red Bull Air Race came to Perth, Western Australia for the final stage of the 2006 World Series. An estimated 300,000 turned up on the banks of the Swan River to watch it, and a further 11 million watched it around the globe. An amazing new sport, completely created by a company looking for a sport to sponsor and promote - those marketing propeller heads at Red Bull are onto a winner.

Image: Michael Goulian in 2006 Red Bull Air Race, Perth WA.

In Australia, we’re a gourmet and competitive people. So when we see a new food product hit the market, we’re all scrambling to be the first to get our greedy hands on to it.

In this case, our friendly local multinational takeaway food company (you know, the one with it’s own blog) have come out with an invention called toast - basically heated bread, available in three styles, all ‘thick cut’, no less.

I was amused enough when I saw the television advertising campaign start a week or two ago, but now my local newspaper has joined in, by running a competition (also promoted on their front cover) to go in the draw to win yourself a voucher for a twin slice serving (valued at a whopping $1.50!).

All you need to do is call a premium 1900 number, at a call cost of $0.55, including GST, and wait by your phone for the draw. You too could be a BIG winner! They’ll even post the voucher out to you, saving you the $1.00 for an envelope and stamp.

Does anyone else think this is just a little odd..?

Image: Newspaper advertisement for McDonalds toast competition.

Dear offshore call centre client,

I don’t mean to sound gruff, but outsourcing your important client and prospect contact work to a company who is based overseas, uses staff who don’t have a good understanding of the target market (and its language) and uses very laggy VOIP or dodgy international calls is just plain rude.

To me, you’re saying you don’t mind my inconvenience of having to pronounce myself three times, nor do you mind my waiting for long 4-6 second pauses between sentences. In fact, the argumentative tone taken by a few recent callers to my home, makes me think you want me to actively boycott your products and/or services.

Companies like yours (read: Optus, National Australia Bank, ANZ and Coles Myer, amongst others*) are showing us Australians how much you respect trying to provide jobs and local economy considerations when you are happy to oursource it to countries paying their staff a pittance compared to ours.

* List of companies found here.

I’m all for a global economy, and as a business owner, I appreciate the idea of profits, but there’s profit and then there’s profit at other peoples expense. To me, offshore call centres fit the latter and you are profiting at Australia’s expense.

Photo: Davis running through bubbles in our backyard.

You should start taking the ‘usability rules’ that we set ourselves when building websites, and apply them in an offline setting. I do, and I love it.

For example, a ‘hybrid online/offline’ challenge is our state gas supplier, Alinta Gas, who have this nifty contact page, which quickly guides you to the correct number for residential customers (13 13 58), business customers (13 13 58) and privacy department (13 13 58). Are you getting the theme here yet?

Anyway, the funniest part is when you call 13 13 58, and you get an IVR system which asks “Press 1 if you are a residential customer, press 2 if you are a business customer…”.

I’m thinking they either need separate numbers to distinguish business units, or have a big bold statement throughout their site saying “Call us on 13 13 58″.

Is it just me that thinks it’s strange?

Oh, and another quick offline usability issue is ordering the vegetarian burger on the menu at Fast Eddys, aptly called a ‘No Meat Burger’. Every time I order one I get asked ‘Would you like Bacon with that?’.

Go on, tell me your offline usability funnies…

Photo: Late afternoon verandah, Bassendean.