A quick note of thanks to all the companies who've figured out that there's a world of folks who use the web browsers on their handhelds. When I'm using my phone, I always try company.mobi before trying company.com. The dot mobi extension was specifically created to signify that the webpages would fit on tiny screens. The first really helpful one I discovered was Amtrak back in April; it's great for checking schedules or making reservations on the way to the station. Since then, I've seen the numbers grow and now include airlines, stores, and some movies. Can't wait for restaurants and local stores to join in. After all, what is it I usually want to know so much that I'm checking from my phone? Hours and address!
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The custom-built power bar has arrived. "You Bar" offers a website where you can choose the ingredients for a power bar that suits your particular needs and tastes. You can have nuts, fruits, grains, protein, and extra flavors like cocoa, cinnamon, or mint. You can choose only the ingredients you want and you can change the amount of each ingredient to alter the flavor and nutritional balance. Sure, it's a bit more expensive than buying a power bar at your local market, but seems worth the expense for folks ranging from diabetics to athletes to folks with food allergies.
I travel frequently and often am challenged to choose "lunch" from a newsstand or dinner from a one-step-above-drive-thru chosen by business colleagues. Occasionally, I travel to very exotic places and always want to carry something I'm confident I can eat without risking a reaction. So, when a nutritionist told me about "You Bar", it seemed like a promising option.
I give "You Bar" high marks for customer service. The website is pretty simple and the user interface for ordering is self explanatory. You click on the items you want and the amounts you want. If you have questions or comments, you can put them in boxes right alongside the item(s) in question. And, there's a nutrition calculator button on the ordering page, so you can see exactly what the bar's nutritional content will be as you add or change each ingredient. You can name your personal product, making it easier to order again or differentiate among them if you're ordering multiples.
I thought all that was enough to constitute good customer service and I placed an order. As it turns out, that was only a hint of customer service to come. I don't know if this young company can keep it up as they grow, but they were amazing about sending emails to respond to my questions (I challenged them to stick to my ingredients but change the nutritional ratios) and trying to help. Even with sticky questions, the bars arrived much sooner than promised. Although I loved the long-lasting energy produced by my non-traditional no-sugars bar, it turned out I reacted to the particular protein I'd chosen. I sent You Bar an email and got back a fast response offering to replace them under their satisfaction guarantee. A couple of clarifying emails later, a new batch was promised and is on its way. And, they're expediting at no charge just to make sure I can take them on my trip to the Artic next week! That's great customer service.
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It's a topsy-turvy world when it comes to customer service. I've written before about the subversive shifts in business/customer relationships. For example, I wrote about what it implies when a business stops calling a customer a customer and instead calls him a "guest." Social norms say customers are always right, but guests should be acommodating and grateful. I'd rather be a customer.
Today, I'm offering another report from upside-down world. This is the Alice in Wonderland world in which landlords agree to rent their property through a third party (broker) who holds auctions for the lease but won't tell the landlord what the winning rent bid is or what percentage of the rent the broker is charging as a fee. In addition, the landlords must agree that they won't share the statistical information they get from the broker that might provide insight into how their cut of the rent is being determined. They let the broker unilaterally determine how much money has to accrue in the landlord's account before the broker has to release the money to the landlord. And, last but not least, the broker doesn't have to retain that money in an interest bearing account for the landlord's benefit; the broker can invest the money and reap the benefit.
Perhaps it's just because I've been exposed to the laws that regulate real estate brokers for physical property that I find all this quite odd. These sorts of practices are generally not permitted in the United States if the real estate in question is physical real estate (real land, real buildings). But, it appears to be the norm in the Wild West of the internet. Owners of websites are owners of virtual real estate. Allowing other people to place ads on their website's pages is essentially granting an incredibly short-term lease (a fraction of a second to a few seconds). Why, then, are those landlords agreeing to rent through a broker who won't tell them what rent tenants will pay, are paying, or the size of the broker's cut? As I understand it, that's what Google Ad Sense does. Here's what they tell a landlord (a website owner considering renting out space through Ad Sense):
"How much do I get paid?
How much you earn depends on a number of factors including how much an advertiser bids on your site -- you'll receive a portion of what the advertiser pays. The best way to find out how much you'll earn is to sign up and start showing ads on your web pages."
(https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/)
Google says nothing in particular about what they're earning or what the landlord will earn despite Google's significant influence over how many potential "tenants" bid on the lease and some of the best analytics around. Interestingly, Google goes even farther than not telling the landlord what they know; they prohibit others from providing some of the most telling information (see the confidentialy section of the terms & conditions).
Don't get me wrong. There are a lot of things I love about Google. I regularly use all their basic services - search, maps, map search, news, images - and some of their mobile services - .mobi, 411, my location, etc. Against my own best judgment, I even let them data mine my gmail account. I admire much about their technical prowess and even their hiring decisions -- they've hired two of my favorite people.
All the happy stuff said, I understand that Google makes the vast majority of its revenue from advertising. And, I understand why they'd want to use their dominant market position to take the highest advantage of both buyers and sellers. What I don't understand is why people let them.
[P.S. I've gone ahead to try out AdSense and I'll give Google credit... signing up and setting up is very easy. Curious to see what happens.]
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Sometimes, something works so well we don't even see it. I'm a regular traveler on Amtrak and it works pretty seamlessly.
I make reservations on the web. The reservations page is intuitive and easy to use. If you buy your tickets online, you get an email with a link that makes it just as easy to cancel them if your plans change.
Amtrak is an early adopter of .mobi. This means if you're in the taxi on the way to the station, you can get access to the Amtrak website (make reservations, check train status) specially built to fit in the tiny window of your phone. Just type in www.Amtrak.mobi instead of www.Amtrak.com.
Amtrak was also an early adopter of the automated ticket kiosk in the station. Unlike airports, you can arrive about 15 minutes before your train, pick up the ticket you bought in that taxi, and make your train. Except for major holidays, there are enough kiosks around that there's never more than three people in line for one. You can count on getting ticketed quickly.
Also unlike air travel, at least in the northeast corridor, the trains are almost always on time. And, so far, they haven't had big increases in their fares. There are power outlets, so you can plug in your laptop. There aren't transmission restrictions, so you can use your phone or laptop air card. And, of course, the stations are in the center of major cities, rather than 30 minutes or an hour's drive away. When traveling between Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, I've given up flying altogether.
Many thanks, Amtrak.
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This is another story about pointless circular conversations with a vendor that doesn't listen to the customer. If Verizon Wireless didn't have such great connectivity in the places I spend my time, I would never have stuck with them so long. I've learned to live with the fact that that the best phones don't come out in Verizon models for a year after release (I'm waiting for a Blackberry Curve now). But, Verizon's customer handling has finally reached the proportions of the Abbot & Costello "Who's on First?" routine.
The Problem:
My husband and I live in a community property state. That means the law says that whatever we own, we both own (unless we do something specific otherwise). The law also says that anyone who wants to collect debts from us must collect from us jointly; lawsuits must be filed against us as a couple for someone to collect. Verizon, however, isn't interested in that law.
At some point, we discovered that Verizon insists that only one person owns and is responsible for our phones and phone bills. For a while, they thought this was my husband. Since I handle our bills and services, that got pretty frustrating. Every time I would call to follow up on an error in a bill, change in service, whatever, they would tell me they needed my husband's permission. Treating me like chattel will always get my dander up, so those conversations (while I waited for them to get my husband on the phone, to ask him for a password he didn't know, and for him to plead with them to stop this crazy system and agree yet again that I could handle a phone bill) tended to escalate in negative ways.
So, we decided, in what seemed like logical fashion, to instruct Verizon to make me the authorized customer. (Still didn't seem right if my husband ever wanted to call, but the odds were low, so we went with this.) Within a few months of the change, I received a text message, phone call, and bills indicating that the account was past due. I pay every bill on time or early so I kept explaining that I'd paid the bill.
Last week, when I sat down to reconcile my checkbook, I confirmed that the bank statement showed Verizon had been paid. In an exercise of over-caution, I called Verizon to confirm this. They told me they hadn't been paid. After much conversation, we were able to determine that they had closed the account with my husband's name, opened a new account with my name that showed no connection to the old account with the same phones, phone numbers, and registered users, and not told me there was a new number. I had sent an automated payment through a system that still had the old account number as the reference; Verizon accepted the payment from me with the old account number on it but not credited it to anything. That occurred on March 21.
I called Verizon on April 16. The operator promised to call me the next day. Instead, two days later, I got a notice from my bank that Verizon was returning the money to them. So, having been notified of the problem, Verizon wasn't applying the payment to the account with the same people and phone numbers. Instead, they declared my account (for which they had received and returned the payment) was still past due!
The Solution:
I say it every time. Start by being nice to your customer. From the first contact, the Verizon folks were pretty aggressive, taking a "you're a deadbeat and we're going to cut off your service" sort of tone. If you're the vendor, always consider that you might be making a mistake and make sure you won't be embarrassed by your actions if you are.
This is probably another lesson in the importance of thoughtful system design. The inability to change the name on an account from one person to another probably reflects a system that was built completely by automating standard procedure. A good system designer asks the ultimate users to explain problems and exceptions to standard procedure and builds a system that can handle them.
Make sure your system lets you know your customer. Proper record keeping would have made clear that my husband and I had been excellent customers (high bills, expensive phones, and on-time payments) for many years.
Last, excellent record-keeping is usually worth the hassle. Had Verizon accurately reflected that all we wanted was to change the name of who would talk to them about finances, none of this would have happened. Had Verizon insisted on its policy but properly shown the link between the two accounts, they would have known that they had been paid and not have alienated a good customer.
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You'd think that the meaning of "hotel" is pretty clear, but I had a customer experience this week that might raise some doubt.
I was in Washington, DC this week during the Cherry Blossom Festival, the week that tourists descend to see the beautiful flowering trees that were gifted to the city by the Mayor of Tokyo nearly 100 years ago. That meant hotel rooms were scarce and prices were high. I checked into the well-known L'Enfant Plaza hotel.
PROBLEM:
In the morning, I got up, did a little work, and then hopped in the shower with 15 minutes to go. Except...I couldn't turn the shower on. I work out and am fairly strong, but no matter how hard I tugged -- even with both hands and putting my back and core into it -- I couldn't get the handle to budge. Since I was speaking at an event that morning, I couldn't wait for engineering to come and fix the problem. My only option with 10 minutes left was a fast, unsatisfactory wash from the sink. Before I left the room, I called the hotel operator explained the problem and suggested that an engineer come to the room and the manager be apprised of the problem.
When I returned eleven hours later, the on duty manager knew nothing about the problem and kept trying to explain to me how to turn on a shower. He checked the engineer's log and informed me that the shower had been fixed. But, when I went to the room, nothing was changed. The manager then came to the room, leaned over the tub and... was unable to turn on the shower with a flick of his hand. It required this much taller and larger person to put his two hands and full weight into the effort and multiple tugs until he was ultimately able to turn on the water. He then showed me how not to turn the handle to a position that was not quite "off" so that it wouldn't freeze in place again.
The next morning, I found the hotel bill slipped under the door showing a full charge for both nights. That struck me as unreasonable.
SOLUTION:
A large part of my frustration was created by the hotel staff's apparent lack of empathy for my situation. No one apologized for the problem and, in fact, their comments implied that I lacked basic intelligence or skills. As I've often said, the first thing a seller should do is apologize. This doesn't necessarily mean admitting liability but does mean acknowledging the customer's problem. "I'm sorry you're having a problem with the shower" can really diffuse anger.
The second thing a seller should do is stand in the customer's shoes. Is it reasonable to have a basic in-room service that can only be used if you're six feet tall and two hundred pounds? Of course not. You wouldn't put the thermostat seven feet from the floor.
Most importantly, understand what the customer values about your product. The management considered the problem a minor inconvenience and initially made no offer to discount the cost of the room. When I asked for a discount, I was offered a reduction of about 12%. I explained that a hotel room provided two things, a bed and a bathroom, and asked the manager to imagine what it would be like to find an equivalent problem with the bed (not there, broken, etc.). This resulted in a much larger discount, but had turned the experience into a contract negotiation.
Again, it's the affirmative reconciliatory act that wins over the customer. Cruise lines, for example, give customers discounts for future trips inn apology for things that have gone wrong on the current trip. I'm sure that, like most gift certificates, it costs them far less than face value because many people never use them. Remember, offering to help is always more highly valued than agreeing to help when asked.
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I'm the first to admit I'm not a fan of USAir. Even though I fly cross-country on the airline as often as twice a week because their routes/schedules work for me, they're pushing me to the brink of finding a new carrier.
I'm thoroughly frustrated with the post-merger routine. I log on the USAir website, using a USAir frequent flyer number, and print out a USAir ticket. Whenever there's a problem or a question, though, a USAir employee says s/he can't help because I'm an America West customer! What they actually mean is that, 15 months after the merger, they still haven't merged their computer systems effectively. Take note USAir, when your Albany USAir ticket agent couldn't check me in all the way through the trip I booked as a single trip on your website, I could walk into the Business Center, hop on the internet, and check myself in! Doesn't that sound like something's wrong to you?
Speaking of things that are wrong: USAir lost my suitcase on Labor Day (see, "Abbott & Costello below) and had a draconian claims policy that only a compulsive record-keeper like me could successfully complete. I don't think they should be allowed to sell a window seat on the exit rows that would only comfortably fit a one-legged flyer. I've been on an increasing number of planes with broken seats, headseat jacks, and videotape players, making me wonder what else is broken? And, considering the literature about the spread of disease on airplanes, I was particularly disgusted by the discovery of an improperly installed soap dispenser that meant that for nearly four hours no one using the restroom had washed their hands (I fixed it. You're welcome.) With so many things going wrong, I just couldn't figure out what the airline was thinking.
I get it now, though. Late last year, CEO Doug Parker was on my flight from DCA to PHX. Several hours in, I realized that I hadn't seen a flight attendant in quite some time. In the galley, I discovered Mr. Parker holding court with the staff admidst much laughter. While that may have been a good opportunity for him or them to get face time, the customers were underserved and by the time we got off it was the messiest garbage-strewn plane I'd ever seen. Apparently, Mr. Parker isn't one of those roll-up-your-sleeves, help the crew, and meet the customer kind of guys. He seems to be one of those guys who thinks customers are just another point on the supply chain, instead of the sole reason for a company's existence and profits.
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Just a short while ago, I wrote about the great job DreamHost had done in quickly self-identifying and correcting it's own billing error. This week, I've got to take back a few of their gold stars.
PROBLEM #1:
DreamHost is in the business of providing web hosting services, but last week it had delays and outages that make clear it shouldn't host stream-of-commerce businesses. On the same day that I sent out announcements that I was making my new business site available for testing, it was essentially impossible to get to it. It took more than five minutes for the homepage to load.
The DreamHost team tried to help, but needed to have done a lot more. Apparently, they knew that they had reached some scaling limits and had planned to spread the load in a new facility. They ultimately sent a note to users that they were planning to have a twelve hour outage to address the problem.
SOLUTIONS:
First and foremost, you can't be a webhost if you need to have twelve hour outages; they needed to have a backup or fail-over facility.
Second, if you are having an emergency (both your operating and fail-over facility are hit by simultaneous tornados), you need to know exactly what the damage is. DreamHost has a status page that was supposed to report system problems. Prior to the scheduled expansion, it was reporting occasional serious system delays and outages. However, more often than not, they were listed as resolved while a string of user-submitted comments indicated they were not or had been supplanted by new problems. If you're posting notices to your customers and allowing them to write back, you need to read what they write, and hold a responsive dialogue. Things would have gone more smoothly if DreamHost had replied to all the posted comments and explained why they weren't part of the same problem, how they were being addressed, etc.
PROBLEM #2:
While all of this mini-mayhem was going on, I discovered a problem unique to my site and went to pull the back-up copies of files. They didn't seem to be there, so I sent a note to customer support and signed up for the enhanced call-back-by-phone support. The new phone support required me to provide a number and a multi-hour preferred calling window. Later in the day, I discovered that they had called while I was handling some other business responsibility. The support person left a message that he had made the attempt to call and would now be sending me an email (with no opportunity for interaction). No return number was offered nor any explanation for why not. Needless to say, I don't consider that phone support and canceled the service.
SOLUTION:
If DreamHost wants to offer fee paid phone support it's got to have a method that takes into account that the customer may not be free at the moment DreamHost decides to call.
ONE THING DONE RIGHT:
I'll give them credit for one thing. When I canceled the phone support, they didn't whine, wheedle, or attempt to cajole. They just politely informed me that they'd credit my charge card.
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This weekend, I was in a Circuit City store because I needed to buy an inexpensive mp3 player. Similar to their competitors, the players were locked in a glass case. The items neatly displayed with prices did not match the boxes I could see in the case and I wanted to find out the prices of what I suspected were the less expensive items.
While I was looking for help, a salesman came along with another customer. He unlocked the case and pulled out a box for the customer. I told him that I, too, wanted help in the case. He asked me to wait a minute, locked the case, and walked away with the customer. As he was returning to me, someone asked him for his set of keys and he gave them away. He then turned to me, heard my question, and told me he had to get keys. He again walked away. When he returned with the keys and took out the boxes in question, they were not marked with a price. He again walked away, ultimately returning to tell me the price of a Sansa 1MB player....$10 more than I had recently paid elsewhere.
On reflection, I realized that several things have changed. My local Circuit City used to be big, but not big box size. I used to shop in the old store frequently and almost always found the staff to be attentive and have strong technical knowledge about the products. It's just reached my consciousness that since they've moved to the big box store, the model has changed. Now, I'm often talking to sales persons who don't seem to be assigned to any particular part of the store and don't seem to know the products.
And, the salesmen, like the one I encountered Saturday, don't appear to have much customer service training. With the smallest amount of thought, the salesman would not have given up his keys while returning to meet me at a locked case. In a perfect world, he would have let me state my question before walking away the first time...I might have had a simple yes/no question for which I wasn't willing to wait five minutes. And, he would have had at least a rough idea of the cost of the items.
I see that Circuit City's sales are down and that this has been attributed to the downturn in the housing market, reduced consumer spending, and competition from Best Buy. But, in my experience, Best Buy isn't consistently cheaper. Could it be that the stiff competition arises from better trained customer service?
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It's a busy day, but this fabulous email was too good not to post right away. FYI, their email was perfect. I redacted the personal information.
"Hi K Krasnow!
Ack. Through a COMPLETE bumbling on our part, we've accidentally attempted to charge you for the ENTIRE year of 2008 (and probably 2009!) ALREADY (it was all due to a fat finger)!
We're really really realllly embarassed about this, but you have nothing to worry about. Please ignore any confusing billing messages you may have received recently; we've already removed all those bum future charges on your account (#...) and already refunded the $... charge on your credit card.
You should get the money back on almost immediately, within a day or two max, and there's no need to contact your credit card company or bank for the refund.
Thank you very very much for your patience with this.. we PROMISE this won't happen again. There's no need to reply to this message unless of course you have any other questions at all!
Sincerely,
The Foolish DreamHost Billing Team!"
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