Tag Archives: Customer Care

January 5, 2026 · 16:25

The setting we hope for

That is a given, we all hope that certain settings come to play and I am no different. Part of it is banked on settings that are realistic and then there are those that are not that realistic. Before I start with this, one little update. I made mention of a new movie that would scare the nasty cloth out of the NSA (GCHQ too) and I just gotten the first few scenes out of the way. It makes me happy, but now I realise that it is not going to be a two hour event. At present I’m sitting on the first part, but the continuing story will not be a lot more than a short film some define this as under 40 minutes (including credits), That is what I am looking at. Perhaps a TV film? It wouldn’t be much longer and lets be clear. If you need two hours to scare the pants out of the NSA, your not doing a particular good job, but I might be wrong. So the script will be ready a lot sooner than I bargained for.

So back to the matter at hand. Realistically the employment game is definitely changing because (at https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/23/oracles_new_aienhanced_support_portal/) we get told that ‘Oracle’s new AI-enhanced support portal leaves users fuming’ which was released just before Christmas, so I missed out on this initially, but we are given “Oracle’s new AI-powered support portal is frustrating customers and support engineers who are struggling to find the basics, such as old tickets, links to database patch programs and release schedules for current databases.” It works for me as I have worked my whole life in customer service and technical support. As such it seems my streak of bad luck is ending and when a company like Oracle gets it wrong, there is not much hope that the others are fairing better, which would work out well for me.

I miss customer service and I remember when I was ‘made redundant’ all whilst others were saying that the new technologies were making my job obsolete. And I have reason to smile. When I am shown “Greg Parikh, Oracle veep for information development and operations, said in a blog post that the MOS portal offers new features, including AI-powered interactions, streamlined navigation, improved search capabilities, and enhanced knowledge access.” And as I see it, those who live according to the sweet spot of cheap revenue now see that others aren’t having much luck either and they need to consider their sales track and how they can salvage what can be salvaged and now it turns out that they will need manpower as the most defining resource and that is good news for me. And as I see it (in case of Oracle) that looking at “Users pointed out IDs had completely changed, such that searching for 888.1 — the Primary Note for Database Proactive Patch Program — or 555.1 — database 19c Recommended One-off patches returns error message KA912 as the top result. “Links to other documents, which still reference the old IDs, are currently failing for me,” one user said.” Gives the indication that their knowledge base isn’t doing any better and if the programmers cannot make it work, their manpower setting will drastically change and this is just Oracle. As I see it, there are hundreds more firms who have that very same escalating problem, as such I expect that places like ADNOC (Abu Dhabi) might soon require their own corporate service division and their own technical support making short work of the available resources. I reckon that this works out nicely for me.

So we have the realistic settings, and the dreamy station of a new movie, or at least whilst I am still applying for jobs, it will have to do and it keeps my but this creativity high, an undervalued ability in customer service. But this is merely one setting. Is it that bad? Well you judge, but a little over a year ago we were given ‘16 technical support tools to look out for in 2025’ (source:outsource accelerator) and some do work, but if didn’t grab the right one, the setting is a precautious one. Do you switch and take that chance or reinvest in your own knowledge base and that setting is dangerous, because you could lose a lot more than you bargained for. So whilst some went into combinations of SaaS, Paas or IaaS, your customers are in a tight setting where they demand service or they walk. Larger firms have even a more robust setting and in this age of fake AI, revenue lost is a large setting of shareholders giving up on you. That is the upside for me and as I see it, my time is not worth its weight in gold.

So whilst we are given ‘IBM Is Laying Off Thousands of Employees as Its AI Business Surges’ they are also cutting a single digit percentage which in case of their 270,000-person global workforce which implies that up to 25,000 people are being laid off. Now consider where they are and that is not a given, but technical support requires certain people to stay in place and when that is messed with nearly anything can go wrong. Now IBM and Oracle are two of the big boys and they wold have their ships in place. And in that setting we see the Register giving us the setting above.

So, who else and how much is being slid down the pipeline because some people think of their trolley and forget that other trolleys require assistance. It is in that setting that I think that the larger players need to hold one and rehire their old staff a lot faster before that knowledge goes somewhere else and in both these settings I get to win a better place in the work atmosphere.

Am I right? Am I wrong?

That is usually the question, but I personally believe that I am right because I never expected a player like Oracle getting that part wrong, as such things are looking up to the people who worked their lifetime in Technical Support and Customer Care. Even if it goes more towards a player like Zendesk. The knowledge that they have requires expansion because that knowledge is about to go the way of the Dodo. In other views, they are not the only one and the one who has the most diverse software takes over the others who are lacking. And as I see it, these systems are not enabling systems. They take it all and that is fine, but when we see the kind of failures that Oracle is showing the world, we see a growing set of barriers that could (merely a could here) define the needs for the next decade because all these cost crunchers require AI (which does not yet exist) and now that they are getting nervous, they need to concentrate on what works and what is merely bling for show. As such I feel vindicated is probably the best word. My knowledge is about to get a value upgrade, so I start 2026 feeling rather happy. And of course I could be wrong and I need to consider other venues. Time will tell.

How to measure success?

That is the question is was facing today. It wasn’t about my success (or lack thereof). It was about the olympics. One member (a fellow Australian) was happy because we had two additional gold members over the United Kingdom. But there was something wrong with that train of thought. It was too American. Don’t get me wrong, as I see it it is great to have more golden medals, but in my old fashioned way of life (and thinking) it is weird that the runners up get to live. I must be going soft in my old age.

You see with Australia grasping a 14-12-9 achievement and the United Kingdom holding onto 12-15-19 at present this list could go into any direction. However, this got me thinking. How do you measure success? Don’t get me wrong the gold number are nice, yet it is not a true list of achievement, is it? I have been pondering this and my mind took me to the old 1,2,3 squared allocation. So Bronze counts as 1, Silver as 4 and gold as 9. Now we get to 183 for Australia and 187 for the United Kingdom. UK won by a nose-hair as jockeys tend to say. So is this actually fair? How can medals be universally set? I don’t think that a boxer will accept equal points to an equestrian, in support, the horse will not go along with that either. Still there is a need to give some level of equality especially as the best of the best of the best in any of these disciplines are competing, yet the simple set to look at the golden medals seems wrong (possibly Canadian Summer McIntosh might agree but she just got 3 golden and one silver medal), at 17 she got (as far as I know) a tied second place with a few others all with three golden medals in the French Olympics.

However I still ponder, is my formula the right one? It seems to be, but it might be my own shortsightedness to think so.

Still, the question remains, how do you measure success, and not just in sports. In the 90’s I was subject KRA’s (Key Result Areas) and I accepted them as I had no knowledge on how to measure success. Even in customer care and Technical Support these numbers (when applied to the field I was in) made perfect sense. At some point you need to consider what to measure and how to measure it. Medals are a finite point of achievement, customer care is a little bit more fluidic. So how to go about it? The Olympic medallist might have kicked this off, but my brain takes into all directions. So with one movie script under my belt (for assessment with Dubai Media) am I more successful in scripting then all my friends (both of them)? They are not in that field, so how to generalise some metrics? You see we can grab Z-scores but as far as I can see that is a near obsolete approach to matters (perhaps what the people call AI use this) and now we get to the next bit and why I used Summer McIntosh as an example. These were her first Olympics, so how could there be a Z-score of her and how would it be reliable (or relatable)? Previous competitions? These were her first olympics and even in global events the pressures are different.

And the field becomes even more complex, you see whatever they call these systems based on LLM’s and Deeper Machine Learning, it is either set by a programmer, or set by data and there the problem becomes a lot larger as both are used. Without proper verification and a number of constraints the equation becomes a GIGO rule (Garbage In Garbage Out).

I wonder how much some players consider success. Most will measure success by their ability to bring home the bonus funds. To some extent I accept that, but when you consider how they went about getting that success becomes a larger issue. In this I take the conceptual setting of Awareness versus Engagement in market research. Awareness could be shown how many impressions (or clicks) something gets, whilst engagement requires interaction with the solution. As I have always stated Engagement wins every time, but the large companies often herald views per thousand (or clicks as a secondary). So who get the price turkey at the end? Large Language Models with (Deeper) Machine Learning what some call a version of AI has issues and the world is waking up to Nvidia (not meant in a bad way). You see there is currently no AI, not yet anyway. What there is (the LLM and DML reference) is awesome and it can do great stuff, but it has issues like the legal sector recently saw. There is a lack of verification and that will be an issue in plenty of fields.

Have a successful day.

Dominoes

That is the game, well it is not THAT game exactly, but the expression should be noted with you all. When things go wrong (and at times that will happen) the events fall like domino stones. One starts the next and so on.

It is here that I found myself after seeing ‘Saudi Arabia Pumps Another $100M Into Aviation As It Targets 250 Destinations By 2030’ (at https://simpleflying.com/saudi-arabia-aviation-investment-december-2023/). You see, this is all connected to a much bigger frame. Gaming, the Line, the Cube, the winter sports and so on. They have put up and they have put up the better part of well over a trillion. But the customer care person in me (did that for well over two decades) is looking beyond the frame.

If there is one software company well versed in support and customer care than it is NICE CX software solutions. It is the most complete solution I have EVER seen and there is one hitch. It is Israeli. Now, that doesn’t make it a deal breaker, but it might require Saudi Arabia to make adjustments (like with any other software solution). It needs to become Arabic (it might already be) and it needs to cover several areas and there is a bigger hitch. It needs to survive and offer multiple settings towards deployment and customer service.

So why now?
The simple setting is that something that big will need time and testing. Adherence to a larger station a well as a larger setting in more fields. Hotels, locations, trade shows, events, airports and so on, that list will not stop for some time and setting this up will take well over a year. Beyond that the creation of a book of ceremonies to capture even more, include even more will have certain settings. Settings for telephone, fax (some still rely on that), internet, CAPI, CATI, form scanning and collecting and verifying data is a much larger issue than most realise and now it is in one hand, in one organisation. I reckon before we get to that setting places like Aramco and SAMI will see additional benefits as well. And if goes well, a lot of it will be complete by 2028, with 2 years of testing before the larger corporations like Saudi Airlines and hotels are connected to that solution.

Time is an awesome partner when you have this. When this is started in 2029 it will be too late and Saudi Arabia will be cleaning house and answering complaints for well over a year AFTER the solutions are deployed and in that case I always go with, being early is essential, especially with customer care issues. You can only make a first impression once. The rest becomes repair and catering to a howling mess of complaints and that never has ever gone well.

I am curious what could be done and when we get to connect these systems and see how we can serve the customer consider that any international visitor to the The Mukaab, that person flew there, that person is in a hotel and that person could be visiting Trojena as well. Three options to possibly fix something, or to make the visit of that person even more amazing and now multiply that by 100,000,000,000 visitors. Also consider that Riyadh Expo 2030 will be then. When you consider all this, is there any doubt that such a system will be required to keep events in line? There is a second issue. I doubt if Saudi Arabia ever faced events to this amount and to that amount of visitors ever before, but that could merely be me.

Enjoy the day, for most it is about to become Monday, I have completed that day already.

Tag Archives: Customer Care

The setting we hope for

How to measure success?

Dominoes

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