I often correspond with my former IBM colleagues by email and instant messaging, but today I made a visit in person to the Somers, New York facility. It was a beautiful day with puffy white clouds and blue sky — I couldn’t ask for better motorcycling conditions. The subject of the two meetings was on demand. This is such an exciting concept, and I believe that it represents the beginning of the next major wave of opportunity in the networked world. I expressed my thoughts about this in a prior posting but will be writing much more about it over time. I took the long way home and passed through some New York communities I had not taken notice of before including Amawalk, Granite Springs, and Lincolnville (could not find a link). After I got home, I had an interaction with stamps.com which was anything but on demand.
The ride through Amawalk, Granite Springs, and Lincolnville was very nice. As I rode along Route 35, I passed by Lasdon Park, Arboretum, and Veteran’s Memorial — something else I had never noticed before. It is the site of the former residence of William and Mildred Lasdon who acquired this beautiful 234 acres in the 1940’s and built a green house, pool, and cabana, and a main house modeled after the Pennsylvania Governor’s mansion. It is worth visiting if you are ever in the area. While walking around the grouns there for a few minutes, I dictated most of this story using copytalk.com. When I got home the email was in my inbox.
One of the many things on my to-do list was to print out the postage and address labels for a package I am sending to a friend in California. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had some file folder labels in the Dymo Label Printer from another project last night and so the postage ended up printing on the wrong labels and in an unreadable way; i.e. the $5.75 of priority mail postage I printed was useless. The stamps.com website said that "Stamps.com recognizes that there are occasions in which your postage may not print as intended or you decide not to use postage that you printed. Stamps.com will assist you in obtaining a refund for misprinted or unused postage by submitting a request to the US Postal Service on your behalf if you complete the following steps: (I have abbreviated these)…
- Verify that your misprinted postage adheres to all US Postal Service requirements for refund credit, including…..:
- Complete the USPS Credit Request Form (a two pager)…
- Mail all misprinted postage (with the entire original mail pieces and/or label stock) and completed form to Stamps.com…..
Requests that do not adhere to ALL of the US Postal Service requirements will not receive credit! Stamps.com will review your refund request and issue postage credit to your Stamps.com account for all amounts in compliance. You will receive an email confirmation when your account is credited. Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for processing. Wow.
Is this e-business on demand? I don’t think so. I am sure stamps.com would say it is a U.S. Postal Service problem. Maybe it is but from a customer point of view it doesn’t matter. The point is that e-business on demand encompasses the "end to end" process. Pre-order, order, fulfillment, return, credit, support, etc. Cradle to grave. Expectations are rising rapidly and institutions of all kinds need to think through all aspects of their relationships with all constituencies.
