From Saving Water to Wasting Energy

Anybody service their car from Robert Lane? Robert Lane use to have a nice deal where they wash and polish your car and clean the interior out at "no extra cost". It's part of their service committment, but undoubtly you do pay for it. They still clean the interiors, but due to water restrictions, they give out free vouchers to use at those auto car washes at Shell. So they go from saving water, to wasting energy. If only companies could think more holistically...

Melbourne needs unique trams

Melbourne needs unique looking trams, yes, but the W class trams aren't the solution. As a world class city, trams are one of our cities unique selling points. However, with more and more cities world wide adopting them, can they continue to be a differentiator in the future? A unique design language for our trams need to be adopted.

I propose unique front and rear ends, specified specifically for our city. It has to be something designed by us, and not corporate. Sorry Yarra trams, screw you!! Let's get Melbourne's best industrial designers together and come up with something good. Could it be based on the much loved W-class? Maybe...

Myki - why it's needed

Forget the incompetence of Kosky, DOT and KAMCO. Myki when it's finally working as proposed should be a good system. Like every other Melburnian I have my 2 cents on this issue. I think the system is needed, the old metcard although functional, won't be able to deliver a system that's repsonsive to Melbourne's needs into the future.

The main thing going for myki, and the whole point of it is tracking. The reason why they want us to sign in and sign off, is so they can find out where we're going, how many of us are using it, and where to put resources.

The system also paves the way for new innovate fare structures and a possiblity of direct refunds if there is consistant underperformance on the network (no more filling out useless forms!).

So let's get on with it. Test it live, and fix the problems as we go. That's the only way.

Metro's first priority should be customer services

I would rate Metro's first month in Melbourne a fail. Sure they have a nice website, but it's what patrons see and hear everyday that counts. So far, it appears metro's priority is branding rather than customer service, and that's a huge blunder.

One wonders why they bother with brand promotion at such an early stage, when service levels are still poor. It just reinforces a negative brand perception. Do we really need to be reminded at each stop that "Metro" is arriving at? Who authorized such a stupid branding procedure, and why are our tax dollars being used to pay for it? Surely a common sense "Does this add value?" approach should be used. Does changing the arrival annoucement add any value? NO!

So what does add value? Thinking about how customers use trains. Can we add powerpoints for people to charge their mobiles and laptops? Can we offer a free wifi service at stations? Can we offer customers are chance to design their own timetables and vote for them?

There many, many more important things than branding at this moment. Hopefully metro gets a clue and starts thinking about them.

Should all Melbourne Premium Stations have ATMs?

A few years back, I remember reading an article in a Beijing newspaper at the outrage of the lack of ATM facilities in their new subway system, and can't help but find a similar problem here in Melbourne. Apart from Flinders St, which stupidly awarded ANZ sole rights, why aren't there more ATM's in conveninent locations for us to use them?

The lack of commercialization of our train stations is surprising given the massive foot traffic that passes through the system every day. Is this a department of transport issue, or is it an issue with the train operators? Or is it a security issue? Surely its not a commercial issue.

Either way a solution must be found. Is there any other things our train stations lack? What should the new operators MTM be looking at to improve our system?

Protecting the Australlian education industry

Once again I'm reading about a drop in international student enrolments and can't help but think this is linked to the rising Australian dollar. Unfortunately parents of foreign students and foreign students themselves may not have access to buy large amounts of Australian dollar to mitigate this rise.

Can a solution to this be found by pegging the price of education in Australia to a fixed amount of foreign currency? For instance can education authorities analyse the average cost of education in Australia over a 10 year period, and fix the price in the mid band? Say it costs between 30000 Chinese Yuan and 50000 Chinese Yuan over a 10 year period, can authorities fix the price at 40000 Yuan over the 3 year course? Obviously this is oversimplistic, but i'm sure their are several market mechanisms that can be used to mitigate risk for students. Insurance schemes could be one of them and large subscription based education fund could be another. There are many possibilities. Ensuring stability in this industry is important. Having students quit half way due to the rising dollar would be a disaster.

Please leave a comment to discuss.

Would you like a paper reciept?

That's going to be the catch cry for future supermarket checkout chicks, if indeed in the future there will be checkout chicks (self service machines are slowly taking over). Besides the obvious environmental (less trees chopped down) and economic benefits (reduced inventory costs), going electronic will actually improve the customer service experience. "Tracking" mark my words is the next big thing in the supermarket customer service experience. Customers googling their spending habits. Now it's going to be so much easier.

So how will it work? There are several possibilities.
1) Online. Once your transaction is finished, your scan your loyalty card and the reciept is automatically delivered in pdf/other format to your online supermarket account. Should you decide to print it out, you can also do that. In the future, if you lose your reciept it won't necessarily be gone forever. No more picking through dirty laundry to track down those buggers!

2) Via email. Don't have a loyalty card? Give them your email, and the cash register will send it directly to your email account.

3) Via Mobile phone. Don't trust the checkout chick to get it right? Send it to your mobile phone for instant review.

Two issues that will be the key to get this right is privacy and protecting the integrity of the data. Woolies, Coles, who'll take the lead?