Community Guy – Jake McKee

Bad service kills amazing products

Have you ever offered cold drinks to people laying telecom lines outside your house? Have you ever pulled over to talk to telecom contractors to find out when their work in your neighborhood will be completed? Have you ever counted the days until you can have Verizon FiOS service activated?

I have.

I was literally cheering on the Verizon workers laying the fiber optic cable outside my house that would allow the FiOS service to be activated, giving me wonderful HD television, phone, and smokin’ fast, insanely reliable internet access. I convinced neighbors that they too should sign up. When I moved to Seattle, I chose a house to move to in some part based on the availability of FiOS. I check the Verizon site weekly to see if my place in Austin stands any chance of getting it any time soon. I’ve blogged, commented, and tweeted about how amazing the service is. I’ve literally convinced at least 10 people, probably more to sign up.

I’m what we in the business call a “Customer Evangelist”. I’ve been working my tail off for years to help Verizon expand their FiOS customer base because it’s an incredible product.

Despite my unwavering love for the product, I’m done.

You see, twice I’ve had to cancel their service as I moved cross-country. The first time I had to cancel my Verizon Texas account and open a Verizon Washington account. The second, I was moving to an area without Verizon FiOS service.

Twice, Verizon’s third party equipment return house lost my equipment. Twice they received the cable boxes fine, but not the modems. Twice I used the prescribed return method of self-addressed envelopes dropped off at the UPS store.

This time around, I continued to get healthy sized bills, despite having been told by Verizon agents that we wrapped up. I called in and was transferred seven times to four different departments (yes, some of them more than once) simply trying to figure out what the number was I actually owed. After two hours on the phone, they gave me a number, I paid it, then got another bill. During this time, I also received two call from the third-party return house asking if I’d sent my equipment back. Twice I gave them UPS tracking numbers. Twice they said they would clear it from their records and that I’d be done getting calls.

So you can imagine my surprise when I received another bill for $134.86 rather than the $0.00 I’d been promised by the last Verizon employee I’d talked to. After another hour phone call, it was discovered that only two of the three returned pieces of equipment had been logged into by the third party house. Which means Verizon thinks I need to buy my missing equipment.

Here’s the thing – I finally threw out my UPS tracking numbers, so I literally have no recourse here. Verizon is literally demanding I pay for equipment that I’ve returned, but was lost in a system that clearly sucks or I’ll end up in collections.

When I explained the situation to the agent who saw notes on my account that things had been insane after 3+ hours of phone calls, he had sympathy but told me my only option was to provide tracking numbers or pay my bill. He all but said that we were in a game of “he said, she said”, and they’d never believe me.

The lesson in this is really quite simple: If your service sucks, it doesn’t really matter how great your product is. In my case, there’s no chance I’ll continue to be a FiOS customer evangelist. I don’t want my friends to curse me for getting them into a situation like I’m caught in, no matter how cool the product is.

And the inverse is true as well: If your product sucks, it doesn’t matter how great your service is. This isn’t a new observation; it’s been made time and again. Marketing includes service. Your customer service is a marketing function, not a separate department. Marketers all too often steer clear of the call centers, and that’s unfortunate. Imagine if the FiOS brand manager had been on the phone with the agent and me throughout these 3 hours of madness. Do you think they’d be focused only on launching new features as a way to acquire and retain new customers?

The United Breaks Guitars Effect

Last week I wrote about the United Breaks Guitars story and the reaction that because it wasn’t directly responsible for a drop in United stock price, it was still significantly problematic.

So you can imagine my reaction when I saw the photo below last week while standing inline at the American Airlines check-in desk.

I asked the woman who owned this bag if the “I <3 baggage handlers” tag was about the United Breaks Guitars story, and she said that it was and that she is really scared now about traveling with United because of that video.

Like I said last week: literally everything helps and everything hurts a business. If this isn’t proof, I don’t know what is.

The United Breaks Guitars Affect on United Airlines

Did you hear about (or more importantly see the YouTube video) of the United Breaks Guitar song and story? Here’s how the Vanno blog sums it up:

Social media marketers (all 100 million of them, if my Twitter count is correct) are bending over backward to congratulate themselves on the effect the 4M YouTube views of a song about a broken guitar had on United Airlines.   Some social media PR types are touting the enormous brand damage done by the incident, and a journalist at the UK Times Online has even connected a 10% drop in United’s stock price with the spread of the YouTube video.

In the last few weeks, this question about the impact of this video on the United stock price has been quite a fun debate. Here’s how Vanno continues on the topic:

So let’s put the United 10% stock price claim to bed first. If you look at other airline stocks on July 10 (the low point immediately after the YouTube guitar video release) you’ll see price drops for Delta, American, Continental and even Southwest. All the drops occurred on small trading volumes, and were followed by a quick recovery. Moreover, United’s stock (UAUA) had fallen by over 100% in the previous month, and day-to-day variations of 25% or more were common. It is, after all, a very low-priced stock in a brutal industry during volatile financial times. In fact, the average day-to-day variance in UAUA price is more than 10% in the period shown in the graph above!

Let me first say that I’m not convinced that “social media” can take credit for anything in particular. But we know for a fact that any number of things can affect stock pricing. We’ve seen it happen numerous times and long before social media is a thing.

Having received phone calls from CEOs who have read a random blog post and been motivated to react or respond, you’d be surprised what makes it to the board room. Which is why I flat out disagree with this point from the Vanno blog:

United may have made a belated attempt to assuage the offended customer/musician, but I seriously doubt very many executive cycles or board moments were dedicated to the incident – despite all the social media navel-gazing.

Sorry, but wrong. When news cycles start picking up stories, execs spend cycles on them. Period. And with 4+ million views of this video, tell me how this issue didn’t come up in the United offices?

That said, I would have to wonder about this same point:

It’s not like the guitar story somehow broke a pattern of behavior on the part of United, or the 4M YouTube views changed the direction of customer perceptions.

Would this cause United to change the way they do business? Probably a yes and a no answer. Yes, everything adds up over time. Even companies like United have to reach the bottom at some point. These types of stories add up, although impact may not be seen or felt instantly.

And when sites like Orbitz and Travelocity make it just as fast to select American or Delta rather than United when booking your trips, 4 million people have another reason to skip United. In a business with tight margins and spiraling revenue, literally everything helps and everything hurts.

It’s not as simple as saying “social media dropped United’s stock price 10%”, but to blow off the impact of 4 million people seeing negative brand impressions is to blow of the overall concept of marketing generally. Any time you discount something as big as the concept of marketing, you’re probably not paying enough attention to the issue at hand.

The problem with the Kindle

I love Amazon. And I love my Kindle.

But I’ve been waiting for this particular shoe to drop:

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

It was bound to happen, and how appropriate that it was this particular author.

This is where you really see the value in the open source mindset, and privacy geeks who’ve been screaming about placing too much power in Amazon’s hands by not demanding their content be handled in a more buyer-centric way.

Personally, this really bothers me. When I purchase content legally through a valid channel, I find it inexcusable for a vendor to remotely pull that purchase out of my device. Restricting further purchases? Fine. No problem. But to take back the goods of a sale simply because a publisher changed their minds is flat out unacceptable. Imagine Nike sneaking in your closet at night and swiping those $150 shoes you bought because they decided the design wasn’t worthy the Nike brand name?

How is this any different?

UPDATE: In the comments, Patrick wants to clarify that this isn’t theft because Amazon grabbed their content back without permission, but also issued a refund. I suppose he’s right in a broad sense. After all, the terms we agree in purchasing both the Kindle and the Kindle books grants Amazon permission to conduct such Orwellian (ha ha ha) activities. But I would also say that just because a refund is given, doesn’t get Amazon off the hook from inappropriate action. If I broke into someone’s house and swiped some of their property but left enough money for them to replace it on the counter, it doesn’t mean that the theft is acceptable.

Perhaps the core issue here is the exception we have in this new digitally based world of what is “our property” and what usage of “our property” the providers grant us. In the long term, I can’t see consumers (or consumer protection mechanisms and groups) allowing this behavior to continue. So the real issue, perhaps, is how long we, as consumers, are willing to accept this type of ridiculous relationship between the content providers who sell us goods.

UPDATE 2: Patrick points out that Amazon is trying to recover from this story.

Amazon on Thursday began e-mailing a few hundred owners of its Kindle reading device to explain that it had deleted electronic copies of the George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984″ and had refunded the $0.99 purchase price.

[...]

The incident, he said, highlighted the gap in understanding about rights in the digital world and the real world. “There’s an enormous difference between buying a book and buying a tethered media device. And this incident really underscores that fact. Consumers carry with them analog expectations.”

Bingo.

UPDATE 3: Amazon issue a statement about this:

These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books…When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers….We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.

UPDATE 4: The Wall Street Journal has written an article on this too.

Why is a lack of knowledge cool?

Last week I was reading this article about Secretary of State Clinton talking about Twitter’s role in the Iranian elections. Overall, it’s an impressive statement of the role of social tools on the world stage.

But one part had me thinking all weekend:

“We promote the right of free expression,” the chief US diplomat added.

“And it is the case that one of the means of expression, the use of Twitter is a very important one, not only to the Iranian people but now increasingly to people around the world, and most particularly to young people,” she said.

“I wouldn’t know a twitter from a tweeter, but apparently it is very important,” she said, sparking laughter.

Will there be a time when older people don’t think it’s cool to joke about their tech cluelessness? I know it’s a brave new world and all, but seriously, when you’re the Secretary of State and Twitter is a major part of the revolution in Iran, joking that you don’t know anything about it is just stupid.

UPDATE: Des follows up on this topic. Good stuff, Des.

The Power of The One

TechCrunch covers a private viewing of the new FriendFeed. Notice anything funny in the first line of their article:

On Friday the FriendFeed founders Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit debuted a radical redesign of the product for about 15 journalists, technologists, and Robert Scoble.

Whether you love him or hate him, you can’t argue that people want him to talk about their stuff.

Success by 1000 Paper Cuts

As many of you know, I do quite a bit of public speaking. Most of my engagements focus on social engagement and customer experience, specifically helping business people figure out how to better connect with their customers, fans, and clients.

There are a few questions I can always count on getting during or after the session:

“But what if nobody in the organization is empowered to make the changes you mention? Who’s job is this change you refer to?”

Out of all the frequently asked questions in my sessions, this is that one that gets me the most amped up, ready to pounce. My reaction is normally summed up by a quote overheard in the hallways of SXSW 2009 a few weeks ago:

“If you know something’s wrong…fucking fix it!”

We’ve come to see that fear dictates many of our external facing business decisions, giving rise to massive Terms of Service agreements, NDAs, massive Legal team power, and other protectionist tactics. But it continues to surprise me how afraid we are of our bosses, colleagues, and management teams.

Whose job is it to fix things we recognize as problematic? Ours! It is every employee’s obligation to stand up for their customers, to be on the look out for ways to improve the company.

When I started at LEGO, I was a Senior Web Producer who saw instantly that the Adult Enthusiast community was being completely overlooked. I took on a few extra hours a week to help them. Those few hours turn into an official part of my job, and then my entire job. I didn’t ask for permission, I just started fixing it.

Surprisingly, especially for me, nobody told me to mind my own business or focus on my “real job”. They started seeing results I was producing and asked me to take on more and more and more of those duties.

The trick to making this process work is to use a tactic I call Success by 1000 Paper Cuts. The idea is simple: start with the biggest element of activity that you can do without having to get full blown approvals, budget sign offs, or legal approvals. A single paper cut barely gets notice, but enough of them and you can cut off a limb.

Start small, create success, share results.

The repeat over and over again until you have a collection of successes that represent a landmark. Bundle that landmark up and show it off. Use the landmark to get permission to bigger and radical and perhaps more expensive projects, but only by the new increment.

Start just a bit bigger, create success, share results.

So what are the small things you’re going to do today to impact change and improve your customer experience?

When will Facebook learn?

Sarah Lacy posted on TechCrunch about the Facebook Terms of Service debacle. You know, the one where Facebook (again) made major changes (again) without properly considering their users (again) or vetting the changes in front of the user base (again).

I asked Kelly—on this, the third major user uproar the company has faced on privacy that caught it completely by surprise—if the issue was a blind spot for the company or if Facebook was doing something so new in organizing the data of human relationships that it was bound to take all the arrows as these issues of privacy continually emerge. Kelly essentially said its the latter; I think it’s a mixture of both, although Facebook’s privacy sensitivities have clearly come a long way since the News Feed and Beacon debacle days. Give them credit: Each time they learn how to handle the crisis better, and this time they sprung into action quickly and decisively.

Setting aside the extreme slack that Lacy seems to give Facebook at every turn, my response is simple: no, I’m not going to “give them credit”. This is the third major breach. They’re clearly not maturing as an organization and they’ve not found a way to effectively communicate, or hell understand the sore spots their users have.

For an organization steeped in the Social Web, they apparently have very little understanding of it’s members.

25 Things that make me happy, despite TIME’s disdain…

TIME Magazine published an idiotic article that is yet another in an ongoing, ever present trend that drives me nuts. I call it Get Off My Lawn Syndrome.

Facebook’s “25 Things About Me” meme seems harmless enough; people write 25 facts about themselves and post them on their Facebook pages, just as they do with videos, status updates and photos of last weekend’s party. An estimated 5 million of these notes — that’s 125 million facts — have appeared on the website within the past week. Assuming it takes someone 10 minutes to come up with their list, this recent bout of viral narcissism has sent roughly 800,000 hours of worktime productivity down the drain.

You know, we could make a lot of equally pointless calculations.

• If 10 million people call their spouses just to say hi, with each call being 5 minutes, that’s also about 800,000 hours of “worktime productivity down the drain.”
• If 50 million people spend 1 minute walking to the mailbox everyday rather than checking only once a week, that’s also about 800,000 hours of “worktime productivity down the drain.”
• If 100 million people spend 30 seconds each day scratching their heads, that’s also about 800,000 hours of “worktime productivity down the drain.”

The Social Web gives all of us plenty of things to be annoyed by. So ignore them, don’t tell the rest of us that our enjoyment is stupid. Personally, I love seeing people’s 25 things, and I had a fantastic time writing my own.

Reason #23,4593 people don’t trust companies

Most people don’t trust most companies. Let’s be honest about that. We’ve been trained for decades to distrust companies because they fail to act like groups of humans rather than lawsuit fearing entities.

Case in point:

Ty, the toy company responsible for the popular Beanie Babies dolls, is now marketing “Sweet Sasha” and “Marvelous Malia” dolls.

The first lady’s office said Friday Ty was out of line. “We feel it is inappropriate to use young private citizens for marketing purposes,” said a spokeswoman for Michelle Obama in a statement.

And how does Ty respond?

A Ty representative told CNN the company generally avoids naming dolls for “any particular living individual,” because doing so might interfere with how kids use their imaginations to play with them. But they wouldn’t reveal the source of their inspiration for the new figures, telling CNN that information relating to the development of the company’s merchandise — including how it comes up with products, product names, and trademarks – is proprietary.

Are you kidding me? Either own it or don’t do it. Anyone with at least one eye and a marginally functional brain can see right through this silly protectionism language. Just take a look and the pictures and tell me these dolls don’t have anything to do with the Obama girls.

And now, as a parent of a two year old who would probably dig these dolls, not only am I not buying, I’m so insulted by their response I’m on the look out for Ty toys to avoid. Genius program there, Ty.