What customer service really means

Recently the Wall Street Journal published a review of Bill Price and David Jaffe's new book, "The Best Service is No Service." (Link here to book on Amazon.com.) In short, the book argues that most conventional thinking on how to run customer service departments falls short. It mentions some of the flawed metrics and incentives used by companies. (One of the best, and most commonly heard, example is the one about call center employees hurrying up calls or hanging up on customers because the customer service rep is about to run over the recommended time for an average call.)

I am no expert on customer service metrics and incentives but my sense has always been that the companies that truly excel are ones that really believe it's important. Weber Grills and JetBlue are two that come to mind. In both cases I've had extraordinary experiences that were based on several simple premises:

• The company representative cared or at least they seemed to care.



• They took the time needed to solve the problem.



• They followed up.

None of these are hard to do but if you've set up a system that measures you against the clock it's bound to fail. Of if you have a process in place that is merely that, a process, then the company is bound to fail in understanding the customer's needs. I've seen some of the work done behind call centers and it is incredibly fascinating and scary. There's a lot of smart minds involved in setting up call centers and decision trees and what not. But I contend that it's pointless until there's a desire to help the customer, not get rid of him. (I've always believed the main purpose of most call centers is to get rid of bothersome customers, not help them.)

In addition, I think in companies with bad customer service there's a huge disconnect between what the executives think and what the customers experience. Do all the focus groups and testing you want. Until the executives use the company's product or service, nothing will change.

When companies no longer control the story

An article in the Wall Street Journal today is a fascinating example of how companies have less and less control over how they are perceived. The front page article is about a blog that reveals developments at Anheuser-Busch before the company's PR machine can get its act together. (Article is online but behind a firewall.)

That's not that unusual in and of itself although it's surprising is how many companies seem incapable of dealing with this new world. The unusual part -- the blogger is an employee of Anheuser-Busch's main competitor, Miller Brewing.

So now we have a situation where companies need to monitor more than the media and their customers. They need to monitor their competitors. And a situation where one company is attacking another through its own media.

I am not sure how I would handle this if I were Anheuser-Busch but I would be thinking long and hard about the impact social media has on one's business and figuring out ways to make sure they can be involved in the conversation.

When machines take over

There's been a lot of discussion about the diminishing roles of newspapers and magazines. Let's not forget the journalist.

The latest is from Charles Cooper of CNet.

Charles points out how many PR people are bypassing news outlets to distribute news directly to the Web and news aggregators. Charles also noted that press releases sometimes rank higher on news aggregation pages (Techmeme, for example) than articles written by journalists. (Full post here.)

Here's an excerpt:

"The truth is that there are fewer and fewer of you guys," said a veteran PR-meister I know who works for one of the bigger technology companies. "You can't call the same reporter and expect him to do five stories on your company in the same month. So we have to have other ways to get out that information."

"Search engine optimization and other tools we have are better than they used to be and we're just taking advantage of the technology," this person continued. "We can go direct to audiences and bypass the filters--like the media--and have it picked up."

At some point journalists need to think hard about what their real role is. Companies bypassing journalists is not news. What's new is that users/readers seem to find value in the material. That's when you really need to rethink things.

When is it just too much?

Hutch Carpenter has a good overview of how to use social media so it doesn't overwhelm you. (Full post here.)

It was prompted by Erick Schonfeld who complained about information overload. (Full post here.)

There seems to be several stages of social media:

1. Lack of understanding. This is when you don't understand something and choose either to ignore it or criticize it.
2. Trial period. This is when you try it for a while either because you're genuinely curious or you don't want your teenage children to learn about this faster than you did. (Both reasons apply to me.)
3. Fascination. Those who find it useful then dive in and find out they've tapped into a new source of information and community.
4. Stop the fire hose. This is when it gets to be too much and you have feeds everywhere and information coming at you way too fast. This is what's happened to me at times. Each time I've sat back and carefully cut back various feeds to only the ones that truly provide me with new information or a perspective. I have found the most thoughtful people out there only post a few times a day. If you sub to a site run by an individual that is posting 30 times a day, unsubscribe. There is no way a single human can provide you with that many insights in a day. At least for free.
5. Recovery. This is when you've learned that social media is good. You just need to be selective.

And this final point is where Erick and Hutch seem to be today.

Magazines meet social media

Finally -- here's something that makes sense. Hearst Magazines will start distributing some of its content through several social media sites including Facebook.

It's about time. (Click here for full story in Folio.)

If you're going to blog, do it right

Good for American Airlines. They've created a blog. The only problem -- it says nothing. And Gawker has called them out on it. (Full post here.)

First, they only have three posts.

Second, they answer one of the questions without giving an answer.

Why would you even create something like a blog if you're not planning to communicate in an open and honest fashion? At the very least, communicate on a more regular basis.

The real measure of magazines

The online world has received a fair amount of grief lately for being hard to measure. (David Churbuck points out one such study that makes this point and he in turn makes an appropriate criticism of this attitude. Click here.) And some of the criticism is fair. (Here's an interesting criticism of how "views" are measure online from Silicon Valley Insider. Click here.)

However, none of what the online world is going through comes close to what magazines go through. (And I am not even going to touch newspapers and TV/radio.)

Today paidContent.org points out that magazine "rate card reported ad revenue" is down for Q1 by 1.2 percent from the same period last year. The fact that it's down is not a surprise. But I am certain this stat is way off. That's simply because no one pays rate card. And nobody's done that for 10 to 15 years. For the longest time the health of the magazine industry has been measured by ad pages. The New York Times measures (celebrates?) this every Monday morning in its business pages. While it's hard to measure true revenue the measurement of ad pages is absolutely meaningless since each publication charges different rates year to year (mostly less) and the rates vary from publication to publication.

I am not sure I know of a better way to measure this since no one is every going to fess up to what their real rates are but it does point out that using page count only masks an even bigger problem.

Use of SMS for local media

I stumbled across two stories this week that made me realize that newspapers, at least local ones, still have a great opportunity to utilize technology.

First, from Julie Starr in New Zealand, comes the observation that while larger papers have pretty much missed the boat on conversion to a strong online business plan, regionals and locals still have an opportunity. (Full post here.)

There's no question that ink on paper remains strong in rural and small-town New Zealand. But most of those newspaper readers either don't have internet connections or have dial-up or low-speed broadband. Eventually that will change, and people's reading habits will change along with it - with a clear impact on local papers. Unless, of course, those local papers start working towards developing useful websites. Not much sign of that yet.

So, they're behind the times but not by too much and still have a chance. Plus, I've always contended that local newspapers have the strongest chance of surviving simply because they cover something nobody else does -- local news.

After reading that piece I then stumbled across this piece from The New York Times about the recent protests of the Olympic flame in San Francisco and the rampant use of SMS (text messaging) to mobilize people. (Read full post here.)

The protesters had deployed people across San Francisco who were tracking the torch’s whereabouts — from the waterfront warehouse where it first appeared, to the diverted path it took away from the biggest protest gatherings. Every few minutes, the pro-Tibet sympathizers were sending updates on where they believed the torch and a busload of its bearers were being redirected. Most text-enabled demonstrators were apparently subscribed to a distribution list set up by Students for a Free Tibet, using the commercial service TextMarks.

After reading the two it struck me that local news organizations have a great opportunity to take the lead here. Granted, SMS is used primarily by younger people but isn't that the audience local newspapers desire to reach? In addition, nearly everyone now has a cellphone. Many older people don't have text plans but that will change over time.

What if local news organizations could broadcast events, alerts, traffice updates, weather alerts, scores, gas prices etc by SMS? Basically, anything local that the reader can't get anywhere else. (Hey -- go one step further and do it by Twitter too.)

I've written about this before. (See post here.) But that was basically about harnessing the power of users to share news regarding a train accident. Here the local media can finally take charge and be the reliable and up to date source of news it has wanted to be for so many years.

Explaining Twitter

Twitter, like Facebook before it, was something I had a hard time understanding. Until I started using it. That's fine. Until I try to explain to someone the value of Twitter. Telling them it's "IM on steroids" or "IM and a blog all rolled into one" doesn't seem to cut it. (My username is "cbarthold" by the way.)

Thus, I've tried to find people who are not only enthusiastic about Twitter but can also explain its usefulness.

Let's start with Robert Scoble, who recently caught the bug, explains one benefit. (Full post is here.)

But there "is" value in having a great group of people you’re following. Follow @craignewmark and you’ll see what Craig is seeing or thinking (he’s the founder of Craigs’ List). Follow @pierre and you’ll see what he’s thinking (he’s the founder of eBay). Follow HRBlock and you’ll see what the team at H&R Block is thinking about taxes and such. Follow @newmediajim and you’ll see what Jim Long, who is a camera guy in the press pool at the White House, is thinking about.

Now, do you start to get it? If you define yourself by who is following you you’ll always feel inadequate. After all, you can’t control your followers and any idiot can follow people. But, define yourself by who you are following and you can really build something of high value.

People still aren’t getting this. They didn’t get how I was using Twitter and still don’t. I follow the world’s best early adopters, business executives, and entrepreneurs. I really don’t care if I have a single follower. If I defined myself by my followers I’d always feel inadequate. If I define myself by the people who I follow, well, I follow the smartest, richest, coolest, funniest people in the world. That makes me smarter, richer, cooler, and funnier.

BL Ochman does a good job as well. (Full post is here.)

For me, and the extraordinary group of smart people with whom I interact daily, Twitter has become:

o a major source of business news
o a quicker way to find out what's important today than my feed reader
o a place to find out what the people I'm interested in are finding interesting
o a source of live blogging from conferences and other events
o an excellent source of experts on various technical topics
o a place to build relationships through common interests
o direct access to many of my business heroes
o a place to (selectively) pimp my blog posts
o an international IM platform
o a place to take a break around the virtual water cooler
o a lot of fun

I am still not sure this adequately explains its value and appeal so I will continue to scour for those who do a better job than I explaining such things.

Update (4/18): Here's a good overview from Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. (Click here.) Actually, the more interesting thing here is that Zappos is using Twitter to track customer comments.

How to really reach people

Seth Goldin has a great post that I'm sure will make the folks at Forbes.com squirm. (Read full post here.)

In short, he got a rather impersonal message to join a supposedly special group of people. He wrote back to Forbes.com and got what he believes to be, and I agree, was a rather snippy response to the effect -- are you in or not? Seth rightfully points out the absurdity of this all and this goes on to make this point:

You can contact just about anyone you want. The only rule is you need to contact them personally, with respect, and do it months before you need their help! Contact them about them, not about you. Engage. Contribute. Question. Pay attention. Read. Interact.

I seem to deal with issue every day. "How do we reach these people?" And it's normally about reaching a relatively small number, usually in the hundreds. What they're asking for is a magical formula. What I tell them is this -- call them and tell them. And give them information they will find useful. And if you don't have such information, ask. Most civil human beings don't mind being asked questions. Just don't ask too many times.

And don't do what Forbes.com did here.

Who owns the content and its comments?

There is something deliciously ironic about the current discussion over Shyftr, a new content aggregator.

The issue -- who owns the content on various blogs. The way Shyftr works is that the content on many blogs resides on Shyftr as do the comments about that blog. Other readers, instead, only publish a portion of a blog posting and refer to the entire post on its original platform.

At issue are two matters -- the original posting; the comments surrounding them.

Tony Hung goes on a bit of rant about how unfair this is:

Anyway, its not the conversations being hosted somewhere else that bothers me, its that there are a new crop of services which would not otherwise exist without republishing someone else’s content without the original author’s explicit permission. Well, lots of people’s content. And you can dress it up and all kinds of clothing and all kinds of nifty wrappers, but ultimately that’s what this is about. (Click here for full post.)

There must be a few folks in mainstream media chuckling at all this. After all, the knock on many blogs is that they don't spend any resources on original content instead feeding off of others. (Where would Drudge be without The New York Times, Wall Street Journal etc.?) Now some bloggers are upset their original content is being taken over by others.

I do understand the concern over the first issue. Taking over the content is wrong, even if it doesn't involve money. However, the issue over where the comments belong is, in my view, not worth fighting. As bloggers should know, it's really hard to control comments and where they live and in many cases the users of the content, not the content creators, determine its value.

Louis Gray points out:

As a blogger, I am a content creator. I don't want my content stolen, or reposted without attribution or under somebody else's name. But I am also a huge advocate of RSS and continuing to adapt where the conversation is being held. Just as my blog's RSS views have undoubtedly eclipsed my blog page views, I would not be surprised to see that more comments on my posts might eventually live outside of my blog. It would behoove me and other bloggers to be aware of the other places the conversation will be taking place, and to engage there, in my opinion, rather than railing against the continued evolution of how we're consuming content and engaging online. (Click here for full post.)

Update (4/14): Since I posted this, Shyftr has changed its position a bit. (Louis Gray talks about it here.)

"All of you are overhead"

The above quote from Sam Zell to a bunch of journalists is sure to prompt a lot of negative comments from journalists.

But the smart ones will realize that he's right.

Zell, owner of the Tribune Company, said this and a few other choice things at a meeting with the Tribune's Washington bureau in February. (Click here for a link to a write up of the meeting and audio.)

The full quote from Zell:

"This is the first unit of Tribune that I've talked to that doesn't generate any revenue. So all of you are overhead."

Another gem:

"Three guys in a garage create YouTube, and we've got 800 people in Chicago who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground!"

You can go on all day explaining how Sam Zell doesn't know what he's talking about. But at the heart of the matter is the simple fact that newspapers (and magazines) are businesses designed to generate revenue, part of which pays the salaries of reporters. And under the current business model advertising pays the bills. Yes, content attracts readers but journalists are overhead, just as are truck drivers, deliverymen, painters, etc.

And to Zell's credit, he understands that and he's challenged journalists to think about creating content that readers will want to read. Radical idea but spot on. Until now most newspaper executives were afraid to say this for fear of being seen as turncoats. Zell doesn't care. And Zell is right:

The recording of the Washington meeting gives fresh insight into Zell's annoyance at what he sees as the self-importance of conventional journalists. He says they're peddling goods the public just doesn't want to read: too much insider politics and Iraq, not enough local news.

It's about time.

Stick with spam

It's always hard to argue with research but this latest bit makes me scratch my head.

The research is regarding social networks and the belief that they have less impact on sales than, say, email campaigns.

Mylene Mangalindan of the Wall Street Journal posted on the Wall Street Journal's Business Technology blog results of a recent survey by the National Retail Federation's Shop.org. (Click here for the full post in the Wall Street Journal.)

According to the survey:

About 65% percent of retailers say that social-network advertisements would be an area of increased focus this year, while 55% of retailers say widgets, small, targeted software applications, will be a great focus, according to the study.

But Shop.org issues a warning:

Social Computing efforts continue to be largely experimental with little direct correlation to sales,” warns Shop.org. It says that ads on social networks have “notoriously low click-through rates, far below traditional banner ads and much lower than paid search ads.” It recommends more-proven marketing investments like email.

I shouldn't be one to argue with stats but I find it hard to believe that email campaigns can be any more effective than a campaign on a social network site. Furthermore, the problem here seems to be they're measuring impact by comparing email campaigns to banner ads (proven failures) and paid search ads which are declining in impact. The ad industry seems to want to measure everything the old way, through ways they've done with TV and print. Instead, they should recognize that users see social networks as a great gathering spot and figure out ways to provide compelling interesting messages. Advertising isn't about reaching people sitting on their couch too lazy to turn the channel. It's about engaging people and social networks do just that.

Why Facebook thinks I'm a spammer

So I send a Facebook message to another Facebook user. He's with MySpace. After I send it I get the ominous message you see here. I've never received this before and I send about three messages a week.

I can only conclude that whatever software they use, it's a bit too sensitive to MySpace. Or management is a bit too sensitive about MySpace. Either way, not a good thing.

How a newspaper works online

Nick Carr, best known for his IT Doesn't Matter Article in HBR five years ago, recently wrote about how newspapers should behave in the digital age. (Click here for his full post on Britannica.com.)

In short, Nick argues that users behave differently when reading a paper online.

In print, the appeal is the whole package, the journey from front to back (or the other way around) and the surprises one finds along the way. Online, the reader has a clear mission -- she knows what she wants to read and clicks on that link, ignoring much of the other material.

When a newspaper moves online, the bundle falls apart. Readers don’t flip through a mix of stories, advertisements, and other bits of content. They go directly to a particular story that interests them, often ignoring everything else. In many cases, they bypass the newspaper’s “front page” altogether, using search engines, feed readers, or headline aggregators like Google News, Digg, and Daylife to leap directly to an individual story. They may not even be aware of which newspaper’s site they’ve arrived at. For the publisher, the newspaper as a whole becomes far less important. What matters are the parts. Each story becomes a separate product standing naked in the maketplace. It lives or dies on its own economic merits.

And because of that changed behavior newspapers need to think about content differently. And they need to think about which stories will draw the most ads, and by implication that means the most traffic. In short, each story needs to stand on its own. Expensive, investigative pieces will suffer online simply because they cost much more to produce than service pieces and they will probably not draw many ads.

Each piece of content has to compete separately, consuming costs and generating revenues in isolation. So if you’re a beleaguered publisher, losing readers and money and facing Wall Street’s wrath, what are you going do as you shift your content online? Hire more investigative journalists? Or publish more articles about consumer electronics? It seems clear that as newspapers adapt to the economics of the Web, they are far more likely to continue to fire reporters than hire new ones.

As I've said before, it was inevitable newspapers (and magazines) would face this challenge. For too long they didn't consider what the reader wanted to read instead relying on they thought was best for the reader. The online world has only hastened this transformation.

Another one bites the dust

For the second time this week I learned of a former ink-stained wretch abandoning a print sub to read online only.

From Jimmy Guterman:

But, after years of wavering, I'm done. The environmental argument alone should have been enough for me, but the simple fact is that I do more and more of my reading on a screen (the only holdouts: fiction and poetry). And plenty of that reading has been from the Times. What finally made me give in to the inevitable was realizing, one barely-dawn morning last week when I was reading the paper at our kitchen table, that I had already read much (most?) of it online. For all the pleasure of holding and print, the Times on paper is just too late. In 2008, today's paper is yesterday's news.

Read full post here.

Impending doom

From today's NY Times: The Journal Register has hired Lazard as an adviser as it weighs a restructuring.

If the company were to seek bankruptcy protection, as analysts said was possible, it would be a first in recent memory for a publicly traded newspaper company, John Morton, a longtime newspaper analyst, said.

Two tidbits I find most interesting:

• The company, according to the Times, is carrying $625 million in debt. Not good when the economy is slipping and newspapers are no longer the medium of choice for advertisers.
• Four years ago the company spent $415 million on several Michigan dailies. And we all know how the car industry is doing these days.

Talk about the perfect storm: a recession, heavy debt load, a bad acquisition and, oh by the way, a sector that is fast in decline.

Update (4/12): I just came across this interesting perspective from Louis Hau at Forbes.com. He points out that newspapers, if run properly, can be quite profitable. The problem is when they're saddled with debt or a recession hits. (Click here for full article.)

Understanding Twitter

The hardest part of Twitter is explaining it to people. IM on steroids is the best I've heard to date. But it doesn't do Twitter justice.

Abbie Lundberg, editor of CIO magazine, does one of the better jobs describing her fascination with it and how it works with a demo of how she was able to reach out to a small community and gather info. (See her blog posting here.)

A few tidbits:

If you're into fully articulated thoughts, Twitter may not be for you. But if you're a CIO or any other busy professional, having a tool that quickly and simply aggregates immediate information is a wonderful thing.

Abbie also points to this post from Harry McCracken at PC World which describes Twitter's practicality pretty well. Harry points out some useful tips as well. (Click here for full article.)

Making Web sites easier to read

Jack Shafer goes on a rant against the Washington Post's Web site. He has several points, two of which stand out: (Here's the link to his full article.)

First -- Web sites that don't send links to their competitors. His specific beef with with the Washington Post not linking to the NY Times and vice versa. Jack's right. If your goal is to be the one place people come for news/opinion why wouldn't you point to your competition? Doing so only increases your credibility and makes readers realize that by going to your site they will get as complete a view of the world as possible. At a dot com I worked at I was pulled aside and told to view the Web site like a TV channel. "You don't want anyone changing the channel." How wrong that was and is.

Second -- Link infestation. Jack has beefs about all the links in so many of the articles. I am not sure it's the volume of links but instead the lack of description of where they are taking you. For example, "Google" with a hyperlink. Is that going to the Google home page, to latest stock prices, company profile, article about Google? I think much of the junk we see today would be solved if the author of a posting explained clearly and concisely where the link is going to take people.

Counting by hand

This just came across from AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) The Census Bureau is abandoning plans for the first high-tech census in 2010 and returning to using paper and pencil to count the nation's 300 million residents.

How is it that the United States, one of the technically advanced countries in the world, can't figure out a way to use technology to ensure our census is more accurate?

Update (4/4/08): From today's NY Times more details. It's worse than I thought. So now the federal government will hire 600,000 people to help with the count. The cost of conducting the census will now be $14 billion, $3 billion more than expected. Here's the money quotes with references to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez:

Mr. Gutierrez, whose department oversees the Census Bureau, said many of the problems were a result of “a lack of effective communication with one of our key contractors.”

Congressional testimony and government reports indicate that the agency was unprepared to manage the contract for the computers. Census officials have been faulted for poorly spelling out technical requirements to the contractor, the Harris Corporation, based in Florida.

John Murrell of All Things Digital agrees.

Opening Day -- Yankee Stadium

The weakest link in data security

There's lots of discussion these days on the security of data. And most people think that hackers, poking their way into corporate systems, are the primary culprits. I haven't seen any stats but my sense is that the weakest link are individuals who lose their laptops.

Here's the latest incident from FierceCIO: (Click here for full story.)

Another week, yet another data theft. This time a laptop PC was stolen containing unencrypted, confidential data on March 4 and the event was disclosed after the company began notifying employees that their data had been snatched. Agilent Technologies, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based maker of test and measurement equipment, sent letters to 51,000 current and former employees telling then that some of their personal and financial data had been stolen. The breach occurred when a laptop was stolen from the car of a Stock & Option Solutions employee, a stock-plan management services firm that works for Agilent as a third-party contractor.