racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

During my brief stint in NEDA, one of the projects I handled (to some extent) was one for the modernization of the Philippine Postal Corporation. Among the goals of the project was to make the postal system more efficient, and to lessen corruption in the system.

I don’t know what has happened to that project. Chances are, it’s still going through the bureaucratic hurdles (it’s a joint venture with the private sector after all, and these things really take years to process).

Looks like we have a long way to go. I chanced upon this post by Greg Moreno of MicroISV Philippines (one of our .com.ph bloggers) detailing some corrupt practices at the Cainta post office.

For the past 3 weeks, I’ve been sending out snail mails to Deped officials, school associations, and schools for my SchoolPad website. My mail includes 8 pages of letter-size bond papers. The cost for each mail is 23 pesos (around $0.50).

The other day, one mail was returned because the addressee has resigned. OK, no problem. Except that the cost of the mail is only 14 pesos as stamped on the envelope. If not for this returned mail, I wouldn’t have known the true cost.

When you send a mail just like mine, the receiving staff would weigh your mail first before telling you the price. The price list is not posted anywhere and only the receiving staff can see the price list or maybe she acts as if there is a price list. You cannot even see the reading on the weighing scale. The 1st time, I asked for a receipt but the lady in charge politely said they don’t give receipts and that everything is OK. The reason I asked for the receipt is I want to be sure that they would actually send my mail. The 2nd time, my worry is that the price would change given that the weight and price list is virtually non-existent. The good thing is they price consistently. They also corrupt consistently.

Whenever I claim registered mail at the Quezon City post office, they always issue receipts (anyway, the PhP 35 for “customs inspection” is standard). I haven’t lost any mails yet (including ever-important AdSense and TLA checks), so the QC post office seems to be efficient and effective in doing their job.

The goings-in at the Cainta post office reeks of blatant corruption.

Can something be done about this?

I always thought you only had to stick a postage stamp onto your envelope and it will be sent to its destination. Maybe people can avoid paying over the counter and instead just buy stamps directly to avoid this kind of abuse.

A friend is doing research for his graduate degree in communications and has asked me to share this with fellow Filipino bloggers. If you have time, please answer this survey: PinoyBlogging: Goals, Trends& Baseline Survey (V 1.3).

Blogging is slowly emerging as an alternative communication medium worldwide. In the Philippines, blog sites like Friendster, Multiply, and i.ph have started becoming popular, first among the youth, and more recently among adults and professionals.

We wish to obtain a baseline reading of how Pinoys use, engage, participate, read, socialize, benefit from and communicate via blogs. This is a part of our requirements for UP College of Mass Communication Class on Communication Research Methods.

For questions and inquiries, please visit our blog at CommTheo3.multiply.com or text us at (0922) 8266353.

They need responses by this weekend, and they can share the results by end of this month. We would also appreciate it if you can spread the word by blogging about it.

One of my favorite writers and bloggers, Joel Spolsky writes an interesting piece on customer service. He says you won’t have to deal with irate customers, chargebacks, and bad reputations if you find solutions to problems early on, so you solve these at the root, and not when everyone and his uncle is already calling in to complain about lousy service. He also says that if you go to great lengths to please your customer, the return will be tenfold (or more).

We treat each tech support call like the NTSB treats airliner crashes. Every time a plane crashes, they send out investigators, figure out what happened, and then figure out a new policy to prevent that particular problem from ever happening again. It’s worked so well for aviation safety that the very, very rare airliner crashes we still get in the US are always very unusual, one-off situations.

One striking statement Joel makes is that in-house customer service is best, because outsourced customer relations management will not be able to adequately address issues at the source having no direct ties to whoever is developing the darn thing. Joel even specifically mentions the Philippines (along with Bangalore).

This perhaps will get negative feedback from those in the BPO industries, particularly those in my country. Believe me, I have several friends and relatives who work in call centers and other BPO firms, and I can say it’s been a boon, especially to people here looking for a decent living. They’re sort of the dream jobs of this generation.

However, I do agree with Joel that there’s something wrong with the concept of outsourcing customer relations. You’re basically letting someone else be the spokespeople of your company to the public. Never mind hiring PR firms for marketing. Never mind blogging about your stuff ‘til kingdom come. If you don’t handle customer concerns personally then you’re probably only able to address their concerns on a superficial level. Then the problem will keep on happening, again and again, like a weed that will keep on growing unless you grab it by the balls roots and burn it to ashes.

Take for instance this recent issue with HP support that Technosailor Aaron Brazell wrote about. What about the PLDT CSR swearing incident? These things give your company a bad rap. And even if it’s only one customer that you end up losing, it’s the loss of goodwill that will ultimately kill your business one way or another.

So what saves you more money? Being stingy with costs but losing a bit of customer trust? Or being all out with customer relations and gaining more clients because of goodwill? It depends, of course, but it matters when it comes to what image you want your company to project.

One good solution would be to offshore, but still keep development and customer relations teams within the same company. Or perhaps you can be selective with the concerns that can be handled by the offshore customer service centers (like billing or other minor, non-critical stuff).

I’m not against business process outsourcing. Believe me, I consider BPO as a Godsend, too. I’m in sort of an outsourced business myself, since I blog for foreign-own sites and blog networks (which is in a way different from outsourced customer relations). But it’s a reality that companies and BPO providers will have to contend with sometime.

There are more. Joel writes seven—no eight—steps to remarkably good customer service. Read on. I hope you enjoy.

Remember, greed will get you nowhere.

2007 is mid-term election season here in the Philippines. Every three years, we get to elect local officials from lowest (barangay, or town) level up to national Senate level (senators have alternating six-year terms). And this is one of those years.

I wasn’t able to register as a voter—I have never done so in my entire life. Those who know me would probably recall that I prefer to be apolitical. I prefer to effect change through other means, and this is mostly because I’ve lost hope in the local political system. I’ve been part of government before, and I can say I had grown further disillusioned and disappointed with how things are run here.

But then again somehow I feel it’s time to make a change, especially with regard to helping our country’s political system grow. I’ve been observing politics in other countries—particularly in the West—and one thing I notice is that their political systems are mostly platform-based. They have strong party systems. In contrast, here in the Philippines politics is mostly personality-based. And we have a weak party system.

If in the US, Democrats stand for one thing and Republicans for another, here in the Philippines, most parties seem to give empty promises of poverty alleviation, job security and economic improvement, but there really is no solid, observable and viable platform. Or at least once people get elected, no one is sure if they ever follow through on their promises/platforms.

Sometimes I’m not sure whom to blame: the politicians or the electorate ourselves. After all, it’s the citizenry that elects people into positions of power.

So here’s my crazy idea

Political blogging is very popular in the west. In fact, a lot of blogs and bloggeres have grown to A-list status in election seasons by outing irregularities or helping out candidates.

As a blogger, I would like to do the same. But given that I do not identify myself with any party or candidate, I would like to invite candidates for this year’s elections (local or national) to collaborate with me on this endeavor.

The concept is simple. I (probably along with a handful of other bloggers) will be writing about candidates, their lives, their political parties, and their platforms during this campaign season. I still have to decide whether it will be on my personal blogs (which have better coverage and readership), or a new site altogether. Now this wouldn’t be the standard press-release like postings. We’ll do it as bloggers do—with honesty, candidness and straightforwardness (with a dash of our own insights, of course). This makes for good new media coverage, no?

But it doesn’t end there. If and once that candidate wins the election, I will continue blogging about his/her activities as an incumbent, and through this we will see if that candidate has indeed followed through on election platforms/promises.

So for instance, he’s a Senatorial candidate who has campaigned on the platform of job creation, the people will know if the committees he’s become part of, the bills he’s authored, and other decisions and activities, are part of improving the employment situation in the country. Or if a candidate for City Mayor runs on the platform of cleaning up the city government of corruption, we will see if his activities once elected would, indeed, reflect that platform.

I’m aware that several local organizations are already focusing on blogging about politics, such as PCIJ, but they’re approaching it from journalists’ perspectives (particularly investigative journalism), and of course there is a difference. I would rather approach it as a citizen. Okay, let me be the devil’s advocate here. Let’s assume that all people are good and that political candidates have their prospective constituents’ best interests in mind.

I’m all ears!

If you’re running for office, let me blog about you, and with you. You can get in touch with me directly here. And I’m hoping communication lines keep open, so I can continue to help with the transparency. After all, elected officials should be accountable to their constituents.

Is anyone willing to be part of this?

Image source

At least that’s what the Blog Parteeh! 2007 tagline says. Sounds like a cool event anyone into blogging would be interested in going to. Time for a little get-together offline.

The details are here, the list of sponsors is here. I’m actually part of—or was once part of—some of the groups and companies sponsoring the event (namely the Blog Herald, Enthropia and the PinoyTechBlog team).

The parteeh (Why can’t we just spell it as “party”? SEO reasons? Or was the blogparty.com domain already taken? Heheh!) will be this coming Saturday, the 27th of January from 2:00 to 8:00 p.m. Venue is 6th Floor (Poolside Area), Classica Tower 2 Condominium, HV dela Costa St., Salcedo Village, Makati City. Why, oh why, can’t blogger meet-ups be organized in Quezon City or somewhere near my place?!?

See you there!

Update: Sponsor list is included below.

This event is sponsored by: Sheero Media Solutions, MyJournal Philippines, FeedText, Inc., Migs Paraz, A Bugged Life, The Blog Herald, b5media blog network, About My Recovery, Pinoy.Tech.Blog, Enthropia, Inc., Krispy Kreme Philippines, GMA New Media, Awesome Philippines, Codamon.com, Boracay.com.ph, Recipes.com.ph, WebMaster.com.ph, Bouncing Red Ball, Bo Sanchez, Microwarehouse Inc.

BlogParteeh07 Donors:



Marc Javellana, Bubba Gump, e-YellowPages, Adobe User Group – Philippines, Weddings @ Work, Google Philippines, Hinge Inquirer Publications

Oh, the instructions say I should include my email address. Well, it’s in th e sidebar, or I can be reached here.