Community Guy – Jake McKee

The Dealership Debacle: The follow-up

After a week in the shop, my car is back. Surprisingly (or perhaps not at all), the car is back to its normal peppy self. I hadn’t realized how sluggish the problem was.

Here’s the final outcome: The car was having major problems with the fuel system. Despite my bringing up the issue in multiple forms multiple times, nobody paid attention, and instead treated me like a I was trying to convince them my car was running on orange juice. It wasn’t until I got pissy and actually pointed out the issues for the mechanic that they bothered to look into it. After a conversation with my brother-in-law mechanic, I’m convinced that they didn’t even look at it. Apparently, warranty work pays poorly and they were just trying to get me out the door.

Post-repairs, the mechanic didn’t drive the car to verify his work. The advisor did, and replicated one of the several problems I was having… five feet from the dealership exit. He swore up and down that the mechanic was confident it was just a fluke. Considering their track record "trust me" and "fluke" don’t go far with me. When I asked if they’d replicated the conditions I had repeatedly reported, the answer was "no", of course. When I pushed back, the advisor claimed that there was no way to drain the tank and refill. (This was what caused the errors in the past. And for the record, they had drained the tank once before while doing the repairs) After I didn’t let the issue drop, he asked for if he could call back so he could look into it. Twenty minutes later, he called me back to report they after a "meeting of the minds", they’d found a solution. Do you believe they actually drained the tank? I don’t…

Oh, and despite my service advisor telling me that the car would be ready on Saturday when I came in, it took 20 minutes to track down and then complete the paperwork that he didn’t bother to do. One last jab in the ribs on the way out.

Funny thing is, they’ve lost all my business. No oil changes, no brake jobs, no tune-ups, nothing. Not at all. I also won’t be buying our new car from them (we’re upgrading before the baby comes). Courtesy Nissan, you’ve lost my business.

Book Review: Small is the New Big

Portfolio Publishing sent me a copy of Seth Godin’s new book, Small is the New Big for review. It’s an interesting read, and like Seth’s other books, they’re quick reads. This book recycles Seth’s blog posts from days gone by. Overall this plan works, and is much more "readable" than clicking through countless pages of his site. Some of the articles are a bit of date these days, and if you follow his site regularly, you might get a bit bored with the read.

But overall this is another fun, fast read from Seth.

Snakes on a Plane: The Community Ecosystem

With my brother in town for the weekend, Snakes on a Plane Day didn’t come until today. I have to admit, I was one of the many suckers that got pulled into the fan-created hype machine. The funny thing about hype machines is that they tend to be largely ineffective and at best short-lived when they’re run by the studio, yet can be incredibly effective when fans take over. I had no real interest in the movie when I first heard about it. Even when the blogs, Web sites, text messaging flash groups, and even fan created video, comics, and apparel started popping up, my enthusiasm rose only a minor amount.

But by  SoaP Day, I was completely excited to see the movie. What caused the bump in interest? Two things… the first was the SoaP voicemail. Being able to send hilarious voicemails to my friends was a ton of fun. The second was seeing Samuel L. Jackson on the Daily Show. It’s not often that you see actors having so much fun when doing the press tour. Fun seems to be the key to this entire adventure, and fun has moved SoaP into lead spot at the box office. My review of the movie? Fun, fun, fun. Even my wife had a good time.

You’ll notice that, despite the attention being heaped on the fan efforts, what really sparked my interest was a studio created Web design project, and an old school media spot. Does this mean that fan efforts are still largely irrelevant? Not at all.

If you look at how the process of this movie creation played out, you’ll see a big mix of fan and studio efforts. You had the lead actor posting messages on online forums about changing the title, which kicked off a flurry of fan discussion. Fans found fun in the concept and started to develop content…by the metric ton. The studio changed the marketing efforts for the movie in reaction to the new found fan enthusiasm. Fans were engaged and thus more willing to engage, to give feedback, to offer support in building buzz. The studio helped to encourage these efforts by running traditional marketing efforts.

Snakes on a Plane isn’t a story about the power of fan support. It’s not even a story about the pitfalls of movie making by committee. It’s a story about the ecosystem that can be created when an organization works with their end consumers to create something bigger than either group alone.

According to Wikipedia, “in general terms an ecological system can be thought of as an assemblage of organisms living together with their environment, functioning as a loose unit.”

When in balance, ecosystems are surprisingly robust, growth happens, species flourish, everyone grows. In terms of consumer interaction, this is what I talk about when my mantra “Everybody goes home happy”.

But when an ecosystem is thrown off balance, it can easily and quickly fall apart. This is what happens when marketers think of the fan community as nothing more than “free marketing”. This is what happens when fans forget that businesses need to make money in order to stay in business. In an “Community Ecosystem”, much of the burden for maintaining that balance falls to the marketer, whether than like it or not. Marketers have the budgets, they have the time, and they have the vested interest in ensuring that the ecosystem stays viable.
 
Will New Line continue to foster and support the ecosystem that has formed around SoaP? Will it help it flourish into something far more encompassing than one movie? We’ll see. But if they don’t, and if this ecosystem collapses, they’ll have only themselves and a lack of vision to blame.

Speaking of Podcast Interviews…

I had the pleasure of being invited by Eric over at MarketingMonger.com to talk about Social Media and Big in Japan and other assorted subjects. Eric is on a quest to interview 1000 marketing people, and I was number 79.

Check it out and if you’re interested in helping Eric drive to 1000, drop him an email and introduce yourself. He’s a great guy, and it’s a great project!

Matt’s Podcast Interview

My buddy Matt was interviewed regarding his cool software for pilots. He has several apps, but the key app helps pilots go digital rather than having to get big huge books that are updated every 28 days.

The interesting part of this story is that Matt build a company, Production Software, all by himself. His main method of advertising is the Web, second being the trade shows. With a few hours at home every night, and some Web and software development skills under his belt, he’s able to directly compete with the FAA, and giving them a solid run for their money.

The costs of entrepreneurship are lower than ever, and the barriers to be able to take idea from inception to completion are lower than ever. So what’s your idea?

Great job, Matt!

Success doesn’t equate to spending money

Nikon ran a terrific program to get their brand cemented to the multi-million strong Flickr community. Oh, and it couldn’t have cost that much to implement. Here’s how it shook out:

The program is called Nikon Stunning Gallery. Nikon encouraged Flickr users to tag their best images with "nikonstunninggallery". Then they give away Nikon cameras. Here’s their call to action:

Far too many brands try to roll their own functionality from the ground up, ignoring existing audiences and tools. Nikon has not just saved a bucket of money on both building a custom Web tool and marketing to drive to their site. They’ve also created an ongoing relationship with a few million photographers who now think they’re the coolest camera brand around.

Replicating the success is simple:

Participate before you build – Join the existing activity before you start brainstorming your custom version.

Spend money as a last resort - Spend your money figuring out the strategy for participation in existing communities. The size of your budget doesn’t need to show your placement in the food chain – success does that just fine.

Make meaning - Taken straight from the man, this is a huge part of the process. If your customers (and potential customers) can connect with you through a "higher cause", they want to support the same things you do.

Breaking the Web…?

Alex posted an interesting discussion thread on the Weblogs Work blog – Breaking the Web?

There’s a school of thought that once something goes up on the Web, it should never be taken down. The theory holds that once you put something online, it’s forever indexed, linked, and permanent. Removing content breaks those links, thus "breaking the web".

Alex asks (in reference to a blog project that has come to an end):

So what do you think? What’s the right thing to do here? We have our own opinions, but we’re not sure what the "right" answer is, so we’re open to opinion.

Fun Finds

I’ve been busy lately… I’ve been collecting a ton of links to blog about, but no time to add context!

• Play Battlefield 2? Here’s a Firefox toolbar to help you find which server  your friends are playing on.
• Battlefield 2142 site launches
• Remix of Ted Stevens’ "The Internet is a series of tubes" ramble
• Time’s latest 50 coolest sites
• Chris Anderson (Mr. Long Tail) speaks to eBay – transcript
• Farecast points out what blogging did to their traffic
• Multiple podcast types from the TED event
• BBS: The Documentary
• Boeing Connexion is eliminated

Live blogging the dealership

Just a quick rant while I hang out at Courtesy Nissan. Short version of the story is that 2 weeks ago I brought my car in because at low speed the car would die when I pushed the gas. Not break down, but not move forward either. Brought it into the dealership that morning and they couldn’t find anything. Yesterday I came out to the car to discover a sizable puddle of gas and a visible leak. And when I started up the car to drive back to the dealership this morning, the same lurching problem came back.

I come into the dealer when they open (7a) in order to get a prime spot in line, only to discover their mechanics don’t start until 8a.

Then at 8:15a, I’m told that they can’t find "any evidence" that the car was leaking gas or that there was a problem. Since the computer didn’t set an error, and they "couldn’t see any gas residue", they told me they’d be happy to hang onto the car overnight and see what happens after it sat for a while. Of course, I’d be paying for my rental since, again, the computer didn’t tell them anything.

Of course when I asked to see the underside myself, I immediately pointed out two, yes two area of gas leak "evidence". Only then did they decide to put their trust in themselves rather than in the computer.

Good customer service isn’t difficult. Trust from your customer is easy to build. You just have to want to create that kind of relationship. Here’s some tips fo rmaking that happen:

1. Run the numbers – Make sure to review your entire cost/benefit analysis before building a business that is developed are nothing more than cranking customers out as quickly as possible. Personally, I’d have a hard time recommending this dealership to anyone. When we turn in our lease in a month or two, I’ll have a hard time buying from this dealership. Is the hour of labor they give to researching my problem worth loosing a $25k-35k sale? Worth loosing the recommendation? Funny thing is, they probably spend a sizable amount on bad TV commercials that barely work.

2. Fight the stereotype - Here’s a tip: when people are pre-disposed by years of poor treatement to believe that your industry/business is out to screw them, don’t give into the stereotype. Make yourself stand apart. I’m not an ACE certified mechanic, yet I’m the one that had to point out the "evidence" of the problem I clearly witnessed?

3. Language is important – As you can tell from my repeated use of "evidence" (in quotes), I was irritated with the advisor despite his overall polite approach. Because he was clearly sending the "I don’t believe you" signals, I was immediately turned off and more willing to fight to prove I’m right. Maybe this advisor has become jaded at level or regular customer incompetence when it comes to cars. If that’s the case, he should be fired and a new, unjaded advisor hired in his place.

4. Rely on your customers, not computers – We hear stories all the time about computer mistakes. We know that computers are buggy, error filled, and often problematic. We know that a few misplaced keystrokes can turn a 20 year old man into a 60 year old woman. Yet, what the computer says is always correct. The service industry has become so dependent on the computer that human customer input has no effect on the conversation. Because the computer didn’t tell the dealership that I had a gas leak, I didn’t have a gas leak… despite my driveway still reeking of gas. If you want us to put our trust in your business, perhaps you should put a little trust in us, no?

UPDATE: Turns out, I was right. The car was, in fact, having problems. Big problems with the fuel delivery system. A valve was broken, causing a vapor-only filter to fill with liquid gas. After 45 minutes of removing the rear end (relatively short, really), the problem became obvious to the mechanic almost instantly from what I was told. Why this warranty work was being resisted so hard is beyond me. I’ve reported issues that were all inter-related going back four or five service visits now…

Here’s an extra rule to round out this discussion:

5. Apologizing doesn’t make you less of a man – After all this back and forth, a simple "Sorry about that, we should have just gone ahead and dug around a bit more before sending you on your way" would have made me love the dealership. As it was, you could tell the service advisor was doing everything he could to get me out so he could avoid the eye contact that would have given away his embarrasment.

Tons of interviews

I found some great resources this weekend and had to share.