Webster, Revamping FingerTec Support

The moment I thought about how to explain more on Webster in my next blog entry, a compliment letter landed on my desk. In this letter, a local client, Advance Lens Trading, appraised FingerTec technical support for the unexpected prompt replies that had solved his critical problem at a critical time, when our reseller, or his vendor, took a longer time to respond.

Yes, we receive compliment emails quite regularly on our swift and precise solutions in tackling technical issues. I particularly like the way my senior marketing manager, Norana Johar shared the pride with the sales and technical staff. She wrote in her email:

“Yesterday we received a compliment letter from our satisfied client on our prompt technical support service, the compliment is particularly directed to Hasrie for the job well done. The management would like to congratulate Hasrie and we hope that you keep it up. In the meantime, we also hope that our FingerTec teams would make prompt replies as our standard practice at all time. Please keep in mind that a delay from our side could cost clients a significant amount of lost and our concern on their issues could save them a lot of trouble and money. This letter is a confirmation that we are doing something right but it doesn't mean that we could take a breather and relax. There is still more room for improvement to keep our promise to make things easy for our clients.

But for now, please do enjoy the compliment, as we deserve it once in a while. :) Have a good weekend.”

I exchanged experiences with a good friend, whose company also implements Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System in their daily operations. The system is deployed merely in his sales department to improve their sales. But in FingerTec, even though our Salesforce CRM covers both sales and technical support, we prioritize technical support.

As our business grows rapidly in these past 5 years, technical support is always our major concern. While most suppliers channel technical inquiries of end-customers back to their dealers, we printed a noticeable line that says, “For enquiries on technical matters, please forward the email to support@fingertec.com", in our user manual. Besides solving technical problems received from our resellers at a regular basis, we are also willing to take direct technical inquiries from end-users. By doing this, we help our resellers to shoulder some of the their support burdens, and in return we get two happier customers.

And, I always want to go a step further in solving technical problems. One of the best solutions should be a direct login into the affected terminals to avoid inaccurate elaborations of problem by any non-technical end-users.

This time, with web technology, we develop Webster, with three clear objectives. First, it would be a fundamental tool for customers who opt to use our web application, TimeTec. Second, it is for big corporations to enable centralization of the terminal data management in many branches in remote locations. And third, it could be used as an effective technical support tool as mentioned earlier.

When a reader comes with Webster, authorized personnel can remotely talk to the machine. Therefore, authorized staff, resellers or suppliers can diagnose the machine from far away to correct some settings or to update a new firmware that is meant to fix the problems, without having to return the terminal back to us or to send any technicians to the site, if the errors are not caused by the hardware failure.

I really am excited for the development of Webster, and stay tuned for the official release date.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Social Media Tool – Like it?

I came across this full-page recruitment ad by CIMB Bank on a daily in Malaysia, hiring someone to fill up a new position, which did not exist in the past. The position is known as a social media executive or manager or director, for some big organizations, it might even evolve into a large department.

There is another interesting article, titled “Twitter, Twitter Little Stars” in Bloomberg Businessweek (July 19-July 25, 2010 issue); it is not a special report to cover Twitter, a mini blog engine, but it is intended to discuss the rising needs for corporate to include social media in their daily operation.

The article quoted Felix Gillette, a media reporter’s observation, “Layoffs? Not in the social media departments of corporate America. As customers make or break brands online, companies are rushing to hire social media directors … ” Quite a number of the big brands in the market have hired social media experts. And all of them tap on the online social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, and some even include RSS, YouTube, or Flickr to build a closer tie with their customers, and some may use the social media engine as a direct marketing tool to promote their products.

The change is fast happening. Today’s business has to build a better relationship and to have a more straightforward contact with the clients such as posting customers the latest news, or having their feedbacks read by the people at the top. Yes, it’s time for shopping malls to scrap the less efficient drop-off message boxes.

The outbound advertising media like newspapers, TV or billboards used to be popular for advertisers to broadcast their one-way message to customers, becoming old fashion nowadays in a more interactive-demanding Internet Era. In the past, not many big organizations would want to entertain customer that has zero complaint. Survey form is circulated whenever they need to gather customer’s opinions, and Customer Service Department is set up as a formality and normally only receiving and dealing with barking customers.

The arrival of Web 2.0 and Internet social media tools have changed the way we communicate. Businesses fast detected the opportunity to improve the conventional lopsided communication with customers by adopting the new wave of social media tools. Some activities (like FingerTec tagline contest) were organized within the social media sites to lure customers to “like” them in Facebook.

We are not selling consumer products, but as one of the world’s leading biometrics product suppliers, we do know the important of social media tool in helping us enhancing the way we communicate with customers.

It’s not hard to “like” us on Facebook, as we like to have many FingerTec customers riding the latest technology with us; “follow” us at Twitter as we also would like to follow you; and “subscribe” our video clips at YouTube, as we subscribe to improve ourselves for you.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Family Matters

Naturally, everybody would want to be with their family during any holiday and festive seasons. Be it Christmas, Eid, New Year, Diwali, Thanksgivings for example, they have never ceased to gather families near and far. Work becomes secondary in holiday seasons; family is always priority. We saw tens of millions of Chinese pack train stations in big cities of China to return home for Lunar New Year’s family reunion, and the same trend infected the world during these joyous occasions.

At the time I'm writing this entry, the country is celebrating Eid ul-Fitr, the biggest Muslim celebration in Malaysia and other Muslim countries, which creates a huge balik kampung (back to hometown) wave. The traffics on all highways are heavy and bumper to bumper from north to south, and most of our Muslim colleagues are taking extra leaves, and non-Muslim staff have to shoulder more responsibilities during this period.

In FingerTec “family”, the non-Malay staff would willingly help with the workload of the Malay colleagues that have to fulfill their family obligation during festive season; and likewise, in Lunar New Year celebration, Malay colleagues would do the same for the Chinese co-workers.

Over the years also, we have gradually developed FingerTec products into a kind of family concept. For example, card access control models, the Kadex series comprising of Kadex, m-Kadex and i-Kadex, is not only having similarities in function, but the outlook also make it easier for customers to identify them from the same family.

For our R2 and R2i models, not only that they resemble each other in appearance, the R2i also has to be paired with R2 to bring it to life. Now, we are ready to extend these two bestseller models with another two more family members named H2i and FaceID 3.

Same family?

The attempt to produce H2i was far than easy. We had scrapped the prototype a year ago because two must-have features were absent. A new mould was initiated to accommodate the crucial features, after relentless discussions and arguments with the R&D and marketing department. The only consensus we have is that the H2i should be in the R2 family because of the R2i design resemblance.

For FaceID 3, it will be grouped together with FaceID 2 under the same category in all-model brochure, but I purposely place it side-by-side here with R2 series because it inherits the same design concept to strengthen FingerTec image for access control industry. FaceID 3 is not having a fingerprint module; it focuses on face recognition and RFID card module, a decision confidently made after our market research.

We would still need a few more months to deliver these new products. I can imagine how our sales team hates the fact that I disclose this information early because they would have to answer incessant customer inquiries about the price and the actual release date, which currently they do not have. But as family members, they would understand my decision eventually. :-)

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

One Thing Leads To Another

One thing always leads to another. It started with Norana Johar, our FingerTec Senior Marketing Manager who wanted to conduct a simple Reseller Survey from what she had learned after attending a marketing seminar.

Anything good for FingerTec always gets a green light. Our findings were eventually published in our last month’s newsletter issue.

But the story did not end there.

There was one feedback from a reseller in Latin America that particularly bothered us. He said he was happy with our prompt reply within 24 hours, but sometimes realtime handholding supports through Skype or MSN is important to solve certain technical problems. With a different time zone of 11 hours, he has never had the chance to enjoy a virtual face-to-face support.

So, we retrieved all the necessary data from our CRM system, and analyzed the support pattern, and eventually found out that the inbound emails from 6pm-10pm are quite significant in quantity; and approximately 40% of inbound mails are received throughout the non-office hours and 17% throughout the entire day.

We concluded that by extending our support hours until 10 pm, we could provide longer and prompter support to customers in the Middle East and Europe during their office hours, and this could also cover at least a few valuable morning hours for North and South America customers after they step into their offices. With an increasing number of customers around the world, the decision is timely.

This is one of the good news’ published in our newsletter this month. And we have already put it into action since the 1^st of September 2010.

One thing leads to another, this time, I am glad that we have again improved our support system to better serve a vast growing customer base.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Comparing Apple to Apple

A lot of products claimed to have plenty of features to spoil your choice. One of the common strategies marketers often used is Features Comparison Table.

“With the impartiality by comparing apple to apple”, the salesman says, how their products are far more superior than the rival’s in terms of value for money.

And you fell for it. Happily you brought home the gadget. After two days of toiling with it, you noticed that the touch screen needed a bit more effort to make things move; you have to reboot your handset every couple of days to boot some functions; or you have to hold it in a special position to not lose your signal.

Comparing apple to apple, so they say.

Unless you are a diligent customer willing to do some extra research, similar sales strategies have been proven to work effectively in today’s marketing gimmick.

In delivering a feature in their iPhone, Apple says that they have to go through tens of thousands of discussions to achieve better user experience and greater user interface.

If a company can pick up the tiniest detail in delivering a product’s feature, of course it can produce greater products than the rivals.

And that’s why you hardly see Apple customers make features comparison with other brands and no brands dare to compare them to Apple. This is the only Apple; apple-to-apple’s comparison is invalid here! Irony.

“Delivering the tiniest detail” is what makes a product superb. And we at FingerTec always bear this in mind.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Unforgettable Moments

Among the many places that we went, my wife suddenly asked me last week: which was my most memorable moment? Without a second thought, the image of dusk at the River Nile during our stay at the Sofitel Resort Hotel, Luxor, Egypt, popped up. And my wife agreed that the same moment would last forever in her memory too.

What a scenery!

The setting sun slowly descending below the skyline. Clouds hanging low. Strings of smoke swaying upwards at the far opposite riverside of the Land of Death. A gust of wind wafts through the palm trees. Waves rising and subsiding. Chirping birds flapping home. Extraordinary serenity derived from the scene of two yachts moored side-by-side to quay. We strolled on the manicured lawn along the riverbank. That was the moment our minds easily dissolved into; an atmosphere that was shrouded by an ancient pharaoh history.

What an unforgettable moment!

The pharaoh history in Luxor, Egypt

And this year FingerTec celebrates its 10^th Anniversary. Overseeing the high and low moments for the last decade, what are my unforgettable moments for the history of FingerTec?

I had, in fact, more than one. So I listed it down as a remembrance of our journey toward glory.

Year 1999 – The trend showed high growth in the Biometric industry especially for the commercial sector. Excitedly we decided to move in to capitalize on the huge potentials. And that’s the one decision that later led us to suffer for a long five years.

Year 2000 – We received the approval letter from the government for an R&D Grant worth approximately RM1 million to develop the first ever fingerprint reader in Malaysia.

Year 2004 - After our first and second model the AC600 and the AC700 hit the road respectively, the response was unexpectedly lukewarm. The high return rate was another big blow. The staff spirited at an all-time low. When R&D staff started to resign one after another together with the executives in charge, I thought our days were numbered.

Year 2006 – When my accountant knocked on my door to announce the improvement of cash flow and that FingerTec sales increased by two folds, I nodded happily and knew the new products, new policy and new sales strategy we introduced in 2005 started to get a positive impact.

Year 2007 – Our marketing manager tabled a statistic to show that our export sales achieved 70% from our total revenue.

Year 2008 – We finally completed the 8 support microsites with a CRM system sitting at the back to ensure service quality. All I knew was that our operations could be kept very slim while the business continued to grow.

Year 2010 – Webster, an integrated product is scheduled to launch by the end of this year to work wonders for customer service; and we expect it to lift us to another level, and to distinguish us from our rivals. A highly hopeful moment started to form in my mind.

But why dwell on the unforgettable if you have a whole future awaiting you?

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Management by Objectives

There are still many old-fashioned bosses who cease to allow the staff from using Facebook or MSN during office hours. They are afraid that the staff would spend time not for the company but for their own leisure. But today, it’s really difficult to block these personal activities in the office because to be able to do that, not only computers should be refrained from being connected to the Internet, they also need to confiscate the smart phones whenever the staff stepped into the office too.

The “work is work, personal is personal” era has long gone. The once very clear line separating these two different activities for an individual has turned into a blur in the past ten years to a further dotted line in the future. Unless you are running a labor-oriented factory, the mix of office and personal lives are inseparable in today’s working environment.

When the bosses helplessly have to accept this fact, they start to worry that the “inseparable” would severely affect the company’s productivities. It’s no doubt that modern technology can be a safe hideout for employees to chat away with friends online without being caught.

Management by Objectives, popularized by Peter Drucker (1909-2005), a modern management guru, should be the answer to their worries. Because the essence of Management by Objectives, is basically participative of goal setting, choosing course of actions and decision-making. With the responsibility assigned to employees, you no longer need to aggregate the actual time they spent for company or for their personal leisure. The objectives should be achieved within a reasonable time for the assessment of an employee’s performance; the mandatory office hours become a sheer complimentary for disciplinary guideline.

The understandings of Management by Objectives, aided by modern technology, some companies even make the Work at Home model viable. Office hours become home hours, self-discipline and self-motivation become the driving forces that make things work.

Management by Objectives is essential to run a knowledge-based company; but to ensure a successful paradigm shift, to win the hearts and minds of employees, is the first and foremost after all.

FingerTec has long adopted the Management by Objectives as our practice of management. When FingerTec customers receive our replies within 24 hours all year long, our office still open 5-day a week, not 7 days. The rest, we work from home.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ