Greek Complexity

Er, what?

At first I thought this guy was joking but evidently he's not. His reasons for why Armstrong's failed comeback is a good thing include such gems as, "Armstrong has never failed a drug test", "Armstrong seems like a kind of a jerk" and "he inspired an entire generation of new cyclists".

Link: Why It's Good That Lance Armstrong's Career Is Over - Culture - The Atlantic

Maybe he is joking. In which case, he needs joke lessons.

Pleasantly surprising customer service

It may surprise readers of this blog to know that I'm not just a nit-picking armchair-theorising pain-in-the-unmentionables. Occasionally, I even Give Credit. Incredible but true.

There are two examples that I'd like to highlight today as examples of a superb attitude to customers:

Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA)

No matter what one says about bureaucracy and a rule-book mentality in Singapore's government, one also frequently experiences pleasantly surprising efficiency, customer orientation and even flexibility.

As a road cyclist, bumps on the road are something I'm always aware of. When riding in a group at speed a few inches behind someone else, one person swerving or braking to avoid an unexpected hole is enough for disaster to occur behind them. So when I do see a pothole in the road, I generally note down the number on the nearest lamppost and report it to the LTA.

Now, if one weren't familiar with the LTA, one might expect that the problem would be fixed "in due course". One pothole doesn't mean a road is falling apart and might be treated with relative nonchalance.

Not in Singapore.

Not only does the LTA alert their road contractor immediately, they even call back within 24 hours to confirm that the job is being processed or has been completed, and, get this, thank the person who reported the problem. On the occasions I haven't been able to take the call, they've tried a few more times to call back, simply to thank me for the report. I've reported potholes and other road hazards several times and am always tickled to see that they expect to thank me rather than my thanking them for doing a prompt job. I do thank them in any case, of course.

Why do they do this? Who are they accountable to? I don't know. But I'm not complaining!

The Economist

So I'm a subscriber to various free newsletters sent out by The Economist. I'm not, however, a paying subscriber to the website or the print issue.

One of the newsletters comes with the subject line, "From the desk of John Micklethwait, Editor". I've always thought that a pretty useless subject line. The From field of the email tells me already that the email is from The Economist so do I really need a reminder in the subject line too?

So I shot off an email to them. It came across as quite snarky in hindsight even though I didn't mean it that way. Witness:

Hello,

I have been an Economist reader for years now and read the paper version, the website and your email newsletters. However, I signed up for the email newsletter that comes "from the editor's desk", so to speak, only relatively recently.

Can I ask you: how useful do you think it is to send out a newsletter with the subject line, "From the desk of John Micklethwait". Why should any reader care whose desk a newsletter comes from? Wouldn't it be more useful to insert one or two major headlines in the subject line instead?

As masters of clear communication and to-the-point-ness, I'm sure you appreciate the point I'm making.

Murli Ravi

Really snarky, huh?

But guess what -- they responded within hours. Not the 48 hours they promised but just 4 hours later. And I know that the email wasn't written by a robot because, although its contents were pretty generic, it was addressed to me by name, even though I hadn't provided my name in a machine-readable format.

How many hundreds or thousands of emails they must receive every day! And I'm not even a subscriber. Wow.