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!