Internet Transactions... Voidable?

I read today's newspaper. On page 41, there is a paid advertisement for new changes to the Consumer Protection Law (CPL). One of these changes addresses contracts that are established electronically: as long as the transaction occurs with both parts at a considerable distance from each other, a contract could be void within 8 days, at the consumer's will. These includes transactions made over the Internet!

So, how would this affect E-Commerce? Well, it could really boost trust in trade relationships over the Web. For most Web companies, such terms are well-known and accepted, but it's not always the case here. Asides from challenges such as Internet users representing less than 10% of the total population, lack of education in Web technologies, etc., one the current E-Commerce obstacles in the country is the distrust in electronic transactions. Users fear their credit cards will be charged, and no product/service will be delivered. They are also concerned about credit card fraud. Protection from banks and financial institutions could prove enough for most users... Although a first hand, Web company assurance is common for services such as Ebay, and really gives peace of mind to customers.

For companies, it could pose a chance to become more competitive locally, and prepare them for more outside competition. It is very uncommon to see Terms of Service, Service Level Agreements, sufficient and publicly-available policies (return, shipping, etc.) in local stores, and it's even more rare to see them in E-Commerce Web sites. Organizations will move from a product-centered perspective, to a more customer-centered philosophy. Besides, they wouldn't want people ending contracts in a disgusted manner, hurting their relationship with the company.

More to come on changes to the CPL, hopefully from the primary source: the CDC.

Service Level Agreements for the Final User

We recently hired a broadband Internet service from Turbonett. Like most companies here, they hand out a contract which is more liability-oriented, and they force its validity for a year or more, with excessive penalties for the customer if he/she should finish the contract before the specified period. There's a huge flaw in the whole business, nevertheless: there are no service level agreements (SLA).

SLAs for an ISP would include guaranteed uptime, penalties for downtimes that exceed such uptime, technical support levels like response and resolution times, information privacy, penalties for service misuse, etc. It is common sense to even include a contract invalidation statement in the aforementioned document. As with most companies here in El Salvador, this is not the case.

The Turbonett ADSL broadband Internet service contract, includes a statement that implies that the contract could be terminated if a "low quality" has been observed in service delivery. This would be fine if it wasn't so general. At the end (according to the sales representative that handed us the contract), the company would analyze any complaint the customer has regarding service, and, if such is desired, would terminate the contract. With such poor specification of "quality", it just doesn't make sense that liabilities of the service provider are at the sole discretion of it. Service could be poor, but the company wouldn't just want to lose to the customer and damage its position in the market.

We have been with one of the competitors for more than seven years. They didn't specified any SLAs, either, and I bet we could have forced a termination of one-year contracts by solely basing on the quality of the service delivered. In the first year, we experienced lots of downtimes and bandwidth problems.

Mobile and telecommunications companies alike don't usually have SLAs for the non-corporate customer, in any of their services (fixed phone lines, mobile phone lines, VoIP, hosting, etc.). We really need a change of such imposing, one-sided contracts, where the customer is hand-tied and with no options after signing. We are just tired of such bad treatment.

Pollo Campero Improves Customer Service with Wireless Devices

As customers, we always need a nice treatment. We want things fast and concise, because we need to do many things in the day. From fitness to religious activities, there's just not enough hours in the day for everything. So, if customers are in a hurry, and we couldn't hassle them with the ability of self-service (which is also one trend that retail customers are acquiring in some first world countries), why not use technology to help them get what they want as soon as possible?

About three years ago, I attended a Retail's Big Show for the first time. I saw Retelligence's S3 solutions, and what they could do to retail. One way or another, someone had to bring those ideas to El Salvador. I'm not exactly sure if they're the first company to do so, but Pollo Campero's execution of such infrastructure did impress me a few weeks back.

Waiters and waitresses at Pollo Campero restaurants are all equipped with a Symbol portable device. It has a magnetic stripe reader, and it's a fully graphical operative system. As I noticed, some authorization is needed at some point, so the waiter/waitress swipes a unique card. They quickly take the order through the device, which sends it via a wireless network to some terminal in the kitchen area. At the other "endpoint" (the aforementioned terminal), employees in other areas quickly begin preparing the customer's meal. Another waiter/waitress is ready to take products that are readily available, as quick as possible. I was really pleased to see my order of a peach mousse (yum!) and a medium-sized orange juice brought to my table in about 2 minutes…

This is the "front-end"… …and this is the device. No pictures could be taken of the "back-end", though.

Well, something went bad in the whole process: they got me a small-sized orange juice instead! As with all business processes, human interaction is always needed, so this type of small mistakes could be expected. I got another small-sized orange juice to compensate for the error, so I drank even more than I asked for! Service was so fast, I could get to do some other tasks in my laptop after eating… Well, I'll put it to real test, on a I-must-eat-as-fast-as-possible-and-get-out-of-here situation next time. I hear this system has been implemented for about six months now, so someone at the company might have already calculated costs savings, increase in customer satisfaction, and other metrics.

Kudos to the guys at Campero!

Transaction Brokerage and Security

Due to some work on E-Commerce for my master's degree, it has come to my attention that there's no such easy-to-use, architecturally complex and well-designed credit card transaction service in Central America as Google Checkout.

For those of you who don't know about the service and/or don't want to browse the technical pages and cookbook, Google Checkout allows for payment processing, and seamless shopping cart and fulfillment systems integration. This is done by implementing Web services to interact with Google's. There are great advantages to this, and one of them is that the merchant won't need to handle cardholder information; they wouldn't need to worry (too much) about security and compliance.

There's is one similar service being offered in the region: Ez Pagos Centro América (as in E-Z Payment Central America). Internally, they might be using Web services, but externally, they use a PHP interface to receive variables from customers (subscribed merchants), and they process credit card payments on their website. Considering the implemented technology, it should be tougher to integrate existing backoffice systems to their service.

On the security side, nonetheless, Ez Pagos doesn't really talk too much about it on their website. An online demo of an E-Commerce site using their system has been defaced for a little while.

There are still some challenges to overcome in the region, most importantly in the way business plans are developed. As in any planning process, if you overlook (or simply forget) little aspects, they could become big issues after deployment, not only in the IT area, but also in marketing, customer service, etc. Hopefully, we may see more offerings in transaction brokerage in the future.

As a region, we need to focus on obtaining the right technical personnel, whether it's outsourced or internal to the organization. Schools, colleges, and the private sector, should see the need for more specialized certification, as in information security, E-Commerce, and E-Business in general.

Welcome!

This is my first post. I will try to post at least one article weekly, so check back often. Don't forget to add the RSS feed to your favorites.