Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Alliant Energy recently sent their customers a letter inviting them to enroll in their new ePay, an electronic bill payment system. While that invitation is no big deal today, it also reveals the company's ignorance of customer value. Many Alliant customers who already had an on-line access to their bills were told that their on-line accounts are no longer valid and they too must re-enroll. Why? Because Alliant is moving to a new and improved system! System migration or system integration is an internal process. Customers, who are outside of the process should not have to change their tasks because the firm decided to make internal process changes! Alliant should transfer existing on line accounts to the new system and make the trransfer appear transparent to the customer. Any elementary process management class would teach that. Unfortunately, customers of Alliant are locked in. They can not go to a competitor. 10:06:33 AM

comment []

© Copyright 2004 Sree Nilakanta.