Community Guy – Jake McKee

GasPedal Interviews Jake

In advance of my upcoming speaking gig at the Super Genius conference, GasPedal interviewed me about what I’m going to be talking about. The interview is embedded below!

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?

My Sincere Thanks

WARNING: What lies ahead is a sappy, lovefest of a blog post. While it might be all squishy, it’s entirely heartfelt. Consider yourself warned.

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2009 has been an interesting year. I’ve moved across the country twice, seen my (now) three year old daughter blossom into an even more amazing person than ever, began to get to know my little brother as an adult, and undergone some absolutely devastating personal relationship issues.

Through all this, the one constant of this year has been the amazing, and frankly, mostly unexpected rise of Ant’s Eye View. In just under a year, Sean O’Driscoll and I went from “hey I have an idea” to “well look at that, we have 10 employees!” Our business is extremely healthy, our clients are happy, our team is fantastic, and we’re having more fun than we ever have before.

This Thanksgiving, as I consider what I have to be thankful for I’d be absolutely remiss if I didn’t specifically call out four groups.

The Ant’s Eye View Team
When Sean and I first started sketching out the type of company we wanted to build, our primary goal was simple: to build the best team in the world, a team of practitioners who had real life, real world skills in helping companies become more social.

Not only did we build that team, we’ve built it faster and stronger than either of us dreamed possible. Literally every day, I am more impressed with the team than the day before. As each member of the team finds their footing, they’ve launched into true individual and industry powerhouses. In the management philosophy of surrounding yourself with people smarter than you and then helping them get smarter, Sean and I have nailed it. Seeing you all in action at WOMMA last week was truly amazing.

Ant’s Eye View Team: Thank you! From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Sean and I will be working even harder next year to provide you the room to run even further, to have more fun than ever, and to achieve results our team and our clients could previously only dream of.

The Ant’s Eye View Clients
No matter what how great the individuals on the AEV team looked on paper, we were (and are) still a brand new company. The list of clients who gave us a shot this year is truly astounding. The two best assets we have as a company are our people and our clients, and we’ve scored in a big way on both fronts. We wouldn’t have been able to fly like we have if not for our clients putting significant trust in our team.

AEV Clients: Thank you for your trust this year. We sincerely hope we’ve delivered on your expectations and promise you that every day we’ll be better than the day before. If you think we did great work this year (and we hope you do!), then just wait until you see what we have in store next year!

My friend, my partner, Sean O’Driscoll
Sean, this year we’ve smiled with glee, hugged, and shook hands in vigorous celebration many, many times. I will always remember our breakfast at the Marriott in Redmond as the first day of one of the most amazing adventures of my life.

I am counting the days until we raise our glasses at the company holiday parties (yeah,that’s right, we’ve opened not one office this year, but two!), and toast to this year and dream of next. Thank you, Sean not only for your friendship but for the volume of knowledge I’ve already gained by working with you.

Sean: We have much to be proud of, my friend.

CommunityGuy.com Readers
It’s been a tough year on my blogging. Travel, business, and personal life have conspired to make my blogging a bit thin this year, but you’ve stuck around. For that, I simply must thank you. (I should mention that our team is also blogging at the AEV Blog too, if you have a thirst for great content)

Here’s to a happy and safe holiday season, a successful year end, and all of us having an impressive 2010!

Social Media Revolution

The sheer volume of amazing stats in this video makes my head hurt. Seriously, seriously hurt. This is a must watch.

Ant’s Eye View acquires Wabash & Lake

It seems hard to remember, but it’s only been a year since I merged Ant’s Eye View 1.0 with Sean O’Driscoll’s CGT Consulting to create Ant’s Eye View 2.0. This time last year, Sean and I were just starting to talk through the details of our pending merger.

Flash forward to today: Sean and I have built an amazing time, truly world class people generating world class results. Our team is growing rapidly, and today I’m incredibly proud to announce yet another landmark in the short, but rich history of our organization.

We’ve acquired Wabash & Lake. That’s right, we’ve completed our first acquisition less than a year after our formation.

So, who is Wabash and Lake?

You may not know the company name, but I’m almost certain you know its principals, Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba. Ben and Jackie have been recognized as two of the web’s most influential marketers with over 120,000 daily readers of their Church of the Customer blog and best selling Word of Mouth Marketing books, “Citizen Marketers” and “Creating Customer Evangelists”. Forbes has described their work as “the word of mouth gospel.”

When Sean and I were still at Microsoft and LEGO, respectively, Ben and Jackie were an inspiration to both of us. We couldn’t be more proud to have them join us as we guide organizations through the process of transforming customer experience and brand engagement by activating and embedding customer voice in every aspect of the business.

Sean and I have always wanted to build the strongest, smartest, most experience team of social nerds on the planet, and today’s announcement (live from the WOMMA Summit in Vegas) is yet another way we’re making that vision a continued reality.

If you aren’t already, you can follow Ben and Jackie on twitter at @benmcconnell and @jackiehuba respectively.

And by the way – if you’re in Vegas for the WOMMA Summit, be sure to stop by the Risque Lounge in the Paris hotel after 7:30p tonight. We’re buying the drinks as a way to celebrate this great news. We’ve even created the world’s newest and most amazing drink: The Antini.

Ant’s Eye View is hiring!

Here we go again! One of my colleagues at Ant’s Eye View just posted a new job opening on the Community Guy Job Board. That’s right, we’re hiring a Senior Consultant. Interested? Check out the job post, or see the details below.

Ant’s Eye View continues to grow and we are looking for the next ant to join our colony. The open position is a Senior Consultant in the Seattle, Washington area to lead client engagements, build out project deliverables, and contribute to internal business operations/processes.

Successful candidates will meet the following criteria:

• 5-7 years experience in Product Management, Product Marketing, and/or Strategy Consulting.
• 1-3 years experience with online community management/strategy (specifically experience with applying social media and/or web 2.0 technologies to solve business problems)
• Experience project managing medium/large scale, multi-phased client engagements or product/service launches.
• A base level of knowledge in business strategy, marketing, finance, operations, and data analysis techniques Outstanding interpersonal and communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Need to be able to present comfortable to executive audience.
• A bachelor’s degree in Business Management, Marketing, or some related discipline is required. MBA is a plus.
• Ability to travel – TBD on exact frequency, but expect 1-2 trips per month, could be more or less.
• Approximately 50+% of work can be accomplished at AEV office and via conference calls with clients.

Benefits include:

• Healthcare plan
• 401K
• Fun and collaborative work environment
• Bragging rights to be part of the ant colony
• Chance to become an expert on Ant trivia

Visit us at the Social CRM Virtual Summit

Ant’s Eye View is sponsoring a pretty cool event next week. It’s all virtual and it should be all awesome. From the official AEV blog post, here’s the details:

This year there have been a lot of online discussions on Social CRM – what is it? can it work? who is doing it? Now is the time to hear from the informed and thoughtful on how Social + CRM enable new business opportunities.

The Ants are proud to be a sponsor at the Lithium Social CRM Virtual Summit on Tuesday, November 11 – the largest online conference for Social Media and CRM professionals. The Social CRM Virtual Summit is a five-hour online conference, which includes webcasts by industry leaders in an interactive exhibit hall, a resource center with extensive materials for download, and a virtual networking lounge to chat live with speakers and prospects.

The virtual event is featured in two time sessions on November 11th:

• 5am to 10am PT / 8am to 1pm ET / 1pm to 6pm GMT
• 10am to 3pm PT / 1pm to 6pm ET / 6pm to 11pm GMT

Check out the full post for more info on how to register and what the agenda looks like. Hopefully we’ll see you there!

Apparently I’m a Supergenius

If you’re a fan of awesome conferences and events, never pass up a chance to go to one put on by Andy Sernovitz. He’s a master of the fun time.

Andy invited me to speak about my LEGO experience at Word of Mouth Supergenius in December, and it’s sure to be one hell of a good time.

Here’s the official event description:

Word of Mouth Supergenius is where you’ll learn to be a fantastic word of mouth marketer with 12 how-to classes, 12 real-world case studies, and 6 brilliant authors. You’ll learn practical, hands-on techniques to get started, grow your program, and earn amazing word of mouth.

Taught by masters of word of mouth from Starbucks, Maker’s Mark, Domino’s, LEGO, Coca-Cola, and many more, you’ll gain the knowledge and skills you need to get people talking about your brand. Captivating speakers like Jason Falls, Mitch Joel, John Jantsch, Saul Colt, Spike Jones, John Moore, Rod Brooks, and our own Andy Sernovitz (to name a few) will take you through a day jam packed with innovation and intellect.

You’ll ask questions, discover new ideas, and get answers from people who have been there, done that — and learn it all in just one day.

If you’re interested in going (and really, why wouldn’t you be?), use this discount code to get $101 off your registration.

JAKEISMYHERO

The lineup of speakers is truly impressive, including Ant’s Eye View clients Rod Brooks (PEMCO) and Kira Wampler (Intuit). What are you waiting for?

The Amazon community team is hiring

Sometimes a job description comes across the Community Guy Jobs Board that I simply can’t help but share it’s so cool.

As a long time Amazon fan (I remember when the site was a solid tan background and only sold books), I’ve been so very impressed with the way their site and their community efforts have developed over the years. It’s disappointing that they don’t get more credit for the sheer volume of community/social features each and every page of their site has.

If you’re looking to be part of an impressive team and an impressive product, check out this job listing:

Amazon’s Community team is looking for a seasoned Community Moderation Manager to help shape our vibrant online community of reviews and discussions. As a key member of the Community team, you will have the unique opportunity to define the kind of community that Amazon creates on our websites around the globe. You will drive the definition and guidelines for all community based content, with a direct and visible impact on Amazon’s core customer experience.

The position will require working closely with the business managers and technical leaders on community direction and goals. You will also be responsible for managing moderation activity by our customer service teams. Above all, candidates must have excellent judgment and project management skills coupled with a passion for customers and community building. Ideal candidates will have five years equivalent demonstrated work experience, great analytical skills, strong customer experience judgment, superb communication skills, excellent interpersonal skills, the ability to resolve conflicts and set priorities, and outstanding customer insight.

Specific responsibilities include the following:

• Work with business and product teams to define the tenor and character of community activity that we would like to cultivate.
• Establish the policy and guidelines that will shape the large online community on Amazon’s global websites.
• Collaborate with our customer service groups around the world to ensure consistent and clear moderation.
• Acting as an advocate for all participants in the community from customers to authors to vendors.

For more open positions, or to post an open position, head over to the Community Guy Job Board!

Community Job Openings Update

Times are tough, no question about it. If you’re in need of a new gig and are interested in community development work (which I assume you are if you’re reading this blog), be sure to check out the Community Guy Jobs Board. It’s free to use both for employees and employers, and has quite a few tasty new openings. Here’s a quick run down of some of the latest jobs. Good luck!

Customer Service Manager
Hollywood, CA

Community Manager for a B2B IT Community
Austin, TX

Program Manager (Word-of-Mouth / Social Media Marketing)
New York, NY

Social Media Program Manager
Minneapolis, MN

Community Manager
Brisbane, CA

Director of Community (Managing 20+ Employees)
New York City, NY

Community Manager for Teen Social Networking Site
Los Angeles, CA

Wikia Community Manager
San Francisco, CA

Community Manager / Tech Evangelism & Support
Mountain View, CA

Community Manager
New York City, NY

Community Manager @ Communispace
Watertown, MA

H&R Block – VP Marketing – Digital
Kansas City, MO