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The global economic crisis is on everyone’s lips these days. Luckily, the US government is taking steps to address it and the new “Buy American” campaign is a big step in the right direction.

True, the crisis that has originated in the US drags the entire world down, but the essential part of the solution – a new wave of economic patriotism - makes perfect sense. Furthermore, the “Buy American” provision in the economic stimulus plans is the necessary guarantee of success.

Why is that, you may well ask? Because allowing people to choose means that they can, and often will, make the wrong choice. This is unfortunate at best of times, and certainly unacceptable in the time of crisis, when some dangerous freedoms need to be taken away so that the population may benefit from the strong leadership.

What about the rest of the world? We in Australia also enjoy the variants of the economic patriotism theme, so should we follow the lead and buy Australian only?

At first I thought that a resounding YES is the only answer…

…but then I started thinking. Do all of the Australian states have the interests of us South Australians at heart? I don’t think so. The eastern states in particular, with their booming economies in Sydney and Melbourne, are always looking down on us. “Buy Australian” can clearly be improved: “Buy South Australian” is the way to go, right?

Right! Except that South Australia includes a whole bunch of backwater communities, often with unfairly cheap labor, and investing any of our money on them simply makes no economic sense. We must end this constant drain on our resources, and focus on supporting OUR industry. This is the time when buying Adelaide-only seems like the only logical proposition.

Except for one thing: the snobbish southern and eastern suburbs of Adelaide do not care much for us living in Northern Adelaide. On the average they are better off than us, no doubt the result of exploiting our unwise, unrestricted spending. It is time to put a stop to that, and limit our purchases to the Salisbury Council area.

Yesterday we erected the stakes around our kraal and firmly shut the gates. True, things are a little dirty around here because we’re running low on soap, but it’s a small price to secure our economic recovery. Also, my kids worry me with their calls to make an exception and buy from the outside – they just do not see the big picture. They don’t know what’s good for them and how lucky they are that they do not get to decide. None of our money is to be wasted outside.

The buck stops here!

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Dr Alex Davidovic is the co-author (with Penelope Herbert) of the book Underdog Marketing: Enrich Your Reputation, Fashion Free Publicity and Wrestle Your Market Share from the Top Dogs

Controversy by Dr Alex buy American, buy Australian, global economic crisis, the buck stops here

Customer support is crucial for the company’s long-term success - are you making sure your business has a spotless customer support?

Let me tell you about my very personal experience. My Internet provider is Telstra Bigpond and over the weekend I’ve had all sorts of problems accessing sites in the US. Australian ones were loading fast, the ones in UK too, but going to a US site was taking forever.

My experience with Telstra is that they have no-one maintaining the service over the weekend, so if there is a problem you have to wait until Monday to have it fixed. Well, I waited - but mid-day Monday the problem was still there despite the fact that Bigpond was giving an all-green to the service status.

I did my homework by running a traceroute to see where the delay was and armed with this knowledge I contacted the Telstra customer support.

It is astounding to see how it is harder and harder these days to talk to an actual person. In the next 10 minutes I was held back by a Telstra robot, which kept asking me irrelevant questions, then repeating my answers back to me for double-insurance. The only thing I could do was to fantasize about various ways of smashing the damn thing, and waiting for the electronic nuisance to run out of questions…

… and when it finally did run out of questions it was like being born again - my hopes were up in anticipation of talking to an actual living person. Alas, that’s when you join the queue of other unfortunate souls waiting for some support from Telstra.

For the next 45 minutes I was on hold. That was the easy part, though. The hard part was being forced to listen to the most inane music you can imagine, if it qualifies as music at all - “noise” might be a better way to characterize it. You see, you cannot move away for the fear of missing on that magical moment when your call actually gets picked up.

I tried reading a book, running a video from YouTube and few other distractions, but there was no escaping the noise.

And then, after 45 minutes and when you’re ready to abandon all hope, your call gets answered by Gloria (name changed), a Telstra support person. God, that felt good - what a relief!

Unfortunately, from then on the conversation was rather unidirectional. Gloria persisted in trying to convince me that the fault was with my computer/firewall/security/what-not and not with the spotless Telstra service. It goes to show that the day when Telstra is going to employ a competent person to do customer support is still far away, but at least Gloria had a pleasant voice. She was very determined to get me through the list of remedies that had nothing to do with the problem.

Here is my 4-word sum up of the Telstra customer support: TOTAL WASTE OF TIME.
It is only marginally less painful than chopping off your left leg (not that I’ve tried it).

Here is how you can benefit from my experience: if YOU ever have a problem with Telstra - any problem at all - don’t waste your time in frustration, I can give you RIGHT NOW the same support you’d eventually receive:

1. Reboot your computer
2. Reset the modem
3. Switch off all of the security software in place, and
4. Delete the temporary files.

Will any of this help? Well, it might - if you are lucky enough to have a problem that matches one of these 4 solutions. It is similar to buying a lottery ticket: chances are small, but hey - anything’s possible.

But hang-on, that’s not all: now I am going to greatly improve on the Telstra customer support and add the solution number 5. Here it comes:

If everything else fails, do the Indian rain dance!

Will that fix the problem? Not likely, but unlike all other advice you receive, this will do you good. Exercise helps your health, and prevents the deep vein thrombosis you can otherwise earn from waiting on the Telstra customer support…

…and who knows, it might even bring rain, which is always welcome in this drought-stricken country.

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See you at the Lab!

Controversy by Dr Alex