Just got back from two weeks in China. Saw Beijing (Climbed the Great Wall (Badaling section), Forbidden City, Tianamen Square and more), Xi’an (Terracotta statues and more), Yangtze River (Three Gorges dam) and Shanghai (Bund, Pudong and more).

Lots of amazing things to see. China has raised more people from grinding poverty to ‘middle class’ faster than anyone else has ever , but still has a way to go. India has a lot to learn from China’s investment in infrastructure, though China started its economic reforms about 20 years ahead of India.

A few pictures:

Wall outside the Heavenly Center Stone in Beijing
Terracotta statues, Xi’an
Mag-lev train from Shanghai to airport
Top speed - 431 mph

Well I’m off to India via the UK for a mixture of work and vacation. For the travel buffs among you, I’ll get to see the new terminal 5 at Heathrow as well as Bangalore’s brand new airport and also the brand new airport at the up and coming tech hub of Hyderabad.

I’ll let you know how this goes.

Before I travel abroad, I call my credit card companies to let them know where I’ll be no matter how many countries I stop in. I started doing this after I was left scrambling to find an alternate method of payment when a credit card company thought the card was stolen and denied payment.

One of the companies is a pleasure to deal with - AMEX - one call takes care of it all. In and out in about 30 seconds. My other credit card company has me answer multiple questions, one of which invariably involves having my payment history in front of me. Not very user friendly particularly when I’m calling from an airport on my way out.

Needless to say, I tend to use my AMEX more than any other card particularly while traveling abroad.

This tension is typical between customer support/service folks in a company and security folks.  So, in your organization, do you strike a balance that puts the customer’s needs first or do you make 99.9% of the people jump through hoops to catch the 0.1% of potential crooks?

During my recent trip to Berlin, I was given a personal tour of Deutsche Bank’s ‘Branch of the Future’. This innovative and stylish branch encompasses the latest technologies with novel concepts drawn from upmarket retail stores and cafes.

As you walk in, there are pictures of staff working that day with their names and areas of specialization.  You can ask to speak with specific people instead of having to queue up to conduct transations with the ‘next available teller’. On the left, there are ATMs with new technologies - one where you can drop in coins without pre-counting them, and it is automatically counted and deposited into your account; another with fingerprint recognition etc. On the right, there are a rotating set of high end merchants - on my trip, it was a travel related theme with Thomas Cook (the travel agency) who had enticing brochures on exotic locales and a representative on hand, along with a high end Italian designer company selling bags, briefcases and assorted travel goodies.

Just beyond this area, you have services (like loans, mortgages etc.) that are bundled into tangible products - something you can touch and feel, and have to buy for a modest price. (You get back more than what you pay for in savings inside the box.)

At the back of the branch is a stylish upmarket cafe, with big screen flat panel TVs and free internet connectivity (there is even a flat screen tv built into the bar surface complete with embedded keyboard). There is a free (staffed) daycare and customizable meeting rooms all with the latest technology. It is even pet friendly.

This ‘branch of the future’ caters well for both the self service crowd as well as the ‘high touch’ crowd, making it a far more personalized and pleasurable experience - indeed a destination if the number of people who walked in were any indication.

If you are in Berlin, you should go see it!

Interesting factoids from some of the talks - from Sean O’Driscoll, former GM of Community Support at Microsoft, now on his own. One observation was that the search tool (e.g. Google) gets most of the credit for the content that you (or your customers) have created.

Another presentation was from the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormon Church). Interesting factoid - the average age of their online knowledge base volunteers is 70!

The Euro Cup is going on, and it is wonderful to watch different communities celebrate as they win.

I’m heading off in a few hours to Berlin via Zurich, for the first ever Consortium for Service Innovation/TAUS joint conference. I’ll be doing the keynote at the event, which will be held very close to Checkpoint Charlie. For those of you read spy novels (or history), you can see why this is going to be an interesting trip on a personal level as well.

Flew on Kingfisher Airlines in India recently, and enjoyed their service. During the one hour flight in economy, we were:

1. Greeted warmly
2. Given a drink and welcome kit (containing a pen, menu for breakfast and other small goodies) before takeoff
3. Shown a welcome video from the flamboyant chairman, Vijay Mallaya (often called India’s version of Virgin’s Richard Branson) that welcomed us, told us that he had personally selected every member of the crew (yes, they were all very good looking) and gave us his email address if we had suggestions or issues
4. Greeted by name (in economy!) as we were asked what we wanted to eat

A wonderful experience, and makes US domestic business and first class pale in comparison. Kingfisher is considered a classy discount airline.