Knock! Knock! Who's there?

I bought a DVD last week and as it turned out the DVD is only suitable for Region 1 DVD player. I didn’t know that! Do you? Don’t pretend; it’s okay to admit your ignorance too. Who knows these details! In fact, I was in a hurry so I just asked the shop assistant to help me look for the title of the movie that I wanted to buy. She picked up the DVD, I paid and left. In the evening, I put on the DVD in the player just to find out that my player did not support DVDs from Region 1. I searched for the contact number of the shop and I called.

The conversation went ugly when the person who took the call scoffed at me for not knowing the region type of my DVD player. His suggestion was to play the movie on the Region 1 player. Yeah! I have 5 types of DVD players in my house; the one in the kitchen is the Region 1 player. In my effort to appear civilized and cultured, I told him that it was their staff who gave the DVD to me and it was the responsibility of the employee to notify me that the DVD is not good for this region. “We have all kinds of DVD! You think we have one type only ah?,” he again blamed me for my ignorance. “Since you bought from the girl, you settle the matter with her lah!,” he added. “What time did you come? Morning? Afternoon? Night? Dawn?” he toyed with my feelings in a very irritating way. I was flabbergasted to learn that VideoEZY could employ someone who is not only unprofessional but also very hostile to the client. I lodged a complaint via email to the shop and VideoEzy but after one week, nobody replies. I guess one client is not important enough for them to care.

My husband and I have made our executive decision to not buy or enter any VideoEZY outlet til the day we leave this earth. Therefore, Speedy will get our money and we do spend a lot on DVDs and BluRays every month. The point is: it’s pretty easy to lose a customer.

Support is an important part of any business. Shall the person who picked up my call tell me that I could swap the DVD with the correct Region type within 2 days; it would make me a happy customer. Shall he apologize on the girl’s behalf and tell me to come to the shop and he’ll see what he could do, that would make my day. Apart from solving the problem, the way you attempt to solve it is equally important.

In these days and age, people are getting impatience than before. A delayed response to an enquiry or a support request could risk a business opportunity or could lose you an important client. And most important of all, customers must have channels to reach you and you must be able to feedback to them in a timely manner.
Strengthen your support system, tap on FingerTec’s support resources online, alert on all enquiries and support requests, I bet you will not only retain happy customers, orders will come in due to rave reviews from your current clients.

When your customers knock, make sure you answer. And for the uninitiated, Region 1 is for America.

Oh how you wish our technical team would look like this (and wishes could come true)

by Norana Johar, COO, FingerTec HQ

United We Stand, Divided We Fall

Last Saturday, on the 9^th of July 2011, the whole nation was anxious to see what’s going to happen in the so-called illegal rally of Bersih 2.0 in Kuala Lumpur. After weeks of demonizing the rally from all angles, and threats from the authorities to clamp down hard on the demonstrators, the whole nation waited at the edge of their seats. All major roads to the city were closed. People were diverted away from the city, and advised to stay at home. Announcements to not partake in the illegal rally flooded major newspapers and even electrical road signboards. Civil servants and scholarship students were warned not to join the rally, or they would have face the consequences. Roadblocks that were staged on Wednesday to check for imaginary weapons had caused massive jam in the already heavy office rush in Lembah Klang and anger throughout the KLites. And as the last resort, the authority announced 91 names of key people to be banned from entering Kuala Lumpur. Thousands of police officers and police reserves were planted on various sites in the city to keep the demonstrators away and to maintain the peace.

So when the day came, people waited to see whether the clamp down had deterred the spirits of the demonstrators. They waited to see how many would turn up and successfully slipped the fortress. By 10am, 1,000 were seen on the road and the numbers increased by the hour and despite the rain, tear gas and water cannons attacks fired by the police and FRU, more than twenty thousands turned up to flood the roads of Kuala Lumpur for a peaceful rally demanding Electoral Reform for clean elections. The demonstration went on regardless.

I’m not being political in this article but this event goes to show that united we stand, divided we fall. All these people stand united for a cause and they didn’t let any threat to discourage their fighting spirit. They may be small in comparison to the whole population but the impact they created were huge and they rocked the nation to its core. They didn’t let the big boy dictate how they should do things. They stuck to their promise to stage a peaceful rally, so peaceful they came, peaceful they walked and peaceful they left. Whether they achieved their objective or not had become secondary, the more important thing was, they tried.

It’s important to be seen, it’s important to be heard, it’s important to create an impact. It’s especially true in business as well. Why do we constantly insist on success stories, Facebook updates, Twitter updates, website links from all our esteemed partners around the world? The answer is simple; we want to create an impact. One party couldn’t do it as large as a large group could. Let’s stand together and unite to create an impactful marketing for the FingerTec brand. An update of Twitter about FingerTec in India could create an impact for FingerTec in South Africa. Let’s build a community of FingerTec Worldwide that’s available worldwide using the available technologies. Let the big boys do as they please – we will go our own way and if we are sustaining our way, we might just create an exceptional impact one day. Godspeed.

by Norana Johar, COO, FingerTec HQ

Once Upon A Time...

Children love to listen to stories. My daughter couldn’t wait to listen to my bedtime storytelling every night. Generally, we love to indulge ourselves into other people’s tales through stories and books. Stories ignite imagination, they create excitement, they build anticipation, they spark ideas, and with stories, a connection is forever established between the readers and the storytellers. The impact that stories have on people is strong as while images are built around those stories, values are created along the way and an identity is established.

I bought How Starbucks Saved My Life six month ago and it moved me. I felt like quitting my job and applying as a barrister at the nearest Starbucks in town. Well, that was absolutely only my imagination and entirely not true but the story made the Starbucks brand looks like such a good employer. A read on Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity also connects me to Virgin as a brand that is young, fun and adventurous, even though I’ve never experienced anything Virgin, pun unintended. There are tons of books written about successful brands like Google, Nike, Adidas, Apple, rock bands, fashion icons etc. The feud between the Dassler brothers, who founded Adidas, gave birth to the Puma brand; between their sneaker wars and world domination, they provided their brand enthusiasts connection and emotion to the brands that they are wearing. The fact is, every brand has its stories and customers subconsciously connect to these stories.

FingerTec has its own bittersweet story of how we built this business from ground up, stumbled upon a success that led to a failure and in the face of adversities, bold enough to make a drastic change to become one of the most successful, Internet-savvy and user-friendly biometrics brand in the world. While the FingerTec story is juicy, the more important stories for the business would be the success stories from around the world contributed by our esteemed partners. A story does make a whole lot of difference. The image of a company that purchased 1000 units but having no success stories would look smaller than a company that purchased 100 units but having stories about how and where they installed all the FingerTec units. Relationships between potential clients and your company would be instantly established once they read the story.

One or two stories a month should be sufficient to build your company’s library of success stories, a reference point for your potential clients to read and to get excited about owning FingerTec branded goods. If a successful bank is using FingerTec biometrics systems, what are the reasons for other banks to stick to the conventional one? A small office is having FingerTec as time attendance system and they are satisfied by its performance; that could create interest on other companies that have similar setup to explore further into FingerTec.


There are a lot of excuses not to do it but there are a lot more advantages of doing it. Don’t dwell on who’s gonna read it?.. because trust me, there are people who would read your stories. If you would like to send FingerTec installation success story to us, you are most welcome to do so here.

I would like to end my story today by asking you a question: where have you installed FingerTec terminals all these years? The answer to that question could sprout your very own success story.

Embrace the Change: Time to go with the flow

“Sometimes wishes do come true”. This line will forever be engraved on my iPad 2 and in my heart as a reminder of the day I got lucky at work. The day that every confirmed staff at FingerTec Worldwide was given an iPad 2 as a reward and motivation for the contribution they have done.

So, to avoid the havoc of iPad 2 frenzy at the shops, I placed my order online, where I could personalize it with my own little engraving. After two weeks of constantly and tirelessly checking the delivery status in the Apple store, my brand new angelic white iPad 2 arrived safely at my doorstep at work. It’s definitely worth the wait. I parted with my first iPad with a couple of tears down my cheeks and embraced the new, much slimmer one.

What I love about the iPad is its limitless possibilities. Anything can be anything. At this point in time, I think we haven’t really seen much yet but the things we’ve seen so far wow us. The apps I’m most in love with are the amazing magazine apps i.e. Oprah, TIME, Esquire, Vanity Fair, etc. Absolutely gorgeous e-magazines to keep me informed and entertained all night long. They offer me more than just text and stories. The pictures are breathtakingly HD, incredible videos are embedded in the stories, purchases can be placed instantly, personality quizzes can be completed with a few clicks, and the list goes on. Not only does it save a lot of trees, the price is even heaper than the ones on the mag stand. When we watched the Harry Potter movies a few years back which showed pictures in the newspaper talking and moving, we thought.. wow, that’s magic. Lo and behold, the magic is in our possession with this iPad mag apps now. And to me this is the real magic of technology.

And at FingerTec, we ride along with the technology be it social networking, team viewing, etc. The latest venture is the iphone/ipad application that we are building for FingerTec, which will be made available by next month. I have seen the app, and I’m loving it. I have no doubt at all that all partners and clients would gleefully welcome this new effort by the CEO. The image it adds to the brand would be tremendous but most of all, it makes things even easier to everybody. Many question our efforts in this area because FingerTec is not a consumer product but we refuse to be that mouse that asked “who moved my cheese?”

For the uninitiated, “Who Moved My Cheese” is one of the motivational book bestsellers, and the moral of the story is simple. If you can’t change, you will lose out on opportunities.

We applaud the effort by Technology Line of Egypt to set up their own FingerTec Facebook account, one small step could lead to one big impact. We appreciate the effort of our clients who sent in successful FingerTec implementation stories to show the world how FingerTec system could benefit them. We love the newly revamped website of FingerTec South Africa that features FingerTec so boldly. We are pleasantly surprised to see the number of followers in FingerTec USA twitter. We love the fact that promotions are carried out through social network. The efforts do not cost a lot but the impact would be tremendous if everybody plays their part in making FingerTec a popular brand.

Just like Newton who was inspired by a falling apple, iPad sparks ideas, and with those ideas consumers are presented with a huge range of possibilities. To say that I admire Apple for its technology is an understatement.

For those who are adamant to stay with the conventional way, are you not inspired by what’s going on around you? Change is definitely inevitable.

by Norana Johar, COO, FingerTec HQ