Bob Williams

Attacking process waste

February 22nd, 2012 | Leave a comment | Tags: , , , , ,

I don’t like process waste.

Who does? But how many of us really try to change processes to eliminate or reduce waste? In my experience this is a tough topic, and I dare say an unwelcome one, most of the time. The problem is that in an organization processes are tied to job existence and security. So the people in charge of setting the processes and administering them really don’t see the incentive to make adjustments.

I’m nearing my 20th year of software development experience, so I’ve observed and talked to many practitioners about software development process philosophies and techniques. Process waste starts to build when the people within the …Continue reading >>

Bob Williams

Practical advice for educating employees about your eCommerce platform

February 3rd, 2012 | Leave a comment | Tags: , , , , ,

There are two groups of people in your eCommerce organization that are on the front-line of dealing directly with customers each day: the help desk and the call center.  Yet when we think about the software development release cycle, it’s easy to focus all of our attention on the planning, development, and testing cycles for release management  and forget about the people who provide operational support.

The work to keep the help desk and call center in the know is not difficult, but it does require periodic and intentionally focused effort. There are a few things I’ve learned over the years to help keep the front line up-to-date.

1. Make …Continue reading >>

Bob Williams

Communicating go-live deployments

July 30th, 2011 | Leave a comment | Tags: , , ,

The work of eCommerce deployments doesn’t end with go-live sign-off. If you work with eCommerce platforms then you know the happiness of after go-live deployments. The actual events of go-live deployments can be an adventure when unplanned events ‘happen’. But the work doesn’t end with the final sign-off and completion of the deployment plan.

There are a series of tasks after deployment. One important step is to gather information from listening posts such as voice of customer collection areas. The success of the deployment is really based on how the customers use the system. Unwritten and unspoken voice of customer responses are visible by monitoring the key metrics of the …Continue reading >>

Bob Williams

Customer focused eCommerce: Return Policy

December 5th, 2008 | One comment | Tags: , , ,

I recently made a return to Costco for a misbehaving GPS unit.  My experience was made easy in large part because of Costco’s friendly return policy.  The store clerk didn’t give me a hard time or ask me any detailed questions.  I didn’t even need to fill out a form.

But the real find in the transaction was a feature of the Costco web site.  It was worthy of putting into the Customer focused eCommerce best practices archive on the Merchant Stand blog.

Provide return/warranty information on the customer receipt and status lookup pages

I had purchased the GPS three months ago on the Costco web site.  I knew I …Continue reading >>

Bob Williams

Customer focused eCommerce: Find and Flow

November 28th, 2008 | Leave a comment | Tags: ,

Much of my working life has revolved around eCommerce sites.  I’m both a practitioner and a customer and I look for patterns and features of a site that add value and utility to the customer experience.  I was thinking about a few of my “lessons learned” over the past several years after I went through a search-and-find exercise with my daughter for something she’s been saving to buy.

Here are two rules of customer focused eCommerce that site owners should follow:

1. Make sure site search works well (Find)

Don’t make the customer look for the product by clicking through multiple layers of categories and then searching for the product …Continue reading >>