theIdeaStudio (Customer Crossroads)

Gone skiing

Wishing you the best of the holiday season (whichever holidays you celebrate!)

I'll be off trying to stay warm and ski off the extra calories, but keeping a close eye out, as always, for interesting things to write about soon.

Thanks for reading, for commenting, and generally keeping the alternative media world rolling along!

- Susan

Do companies actually like their customers? David Lazarus suspects not...

A columnist for the LA Times, David Lazarus, has a video about product non-support and asks why we continue to shop at places that don't give us any support.

I loved these holy-state-the-obvious quotes.

"Automated switchboards -- a whole technology designed to keep you from actually talking to anybody who can help you resolve a problem."

"A lot of companies, it seems they don't even like their customers, they hold them in contempt. What's the deal with that?"

The thing is, even though Lazarus is right from the customer point of view, the challenge in service businesses is that human services get more expensive every year, while manufactured goods and technology gets cheaper every year. Outsourcing has only shifted the challenge, and not always solved it.

We don't seem to be willing, as customers, to pay for much in the way of product support, either directly or indirectly. But it's done to keep purchase prices low.

What the heck is the answer to this conflict?

I can tell you one thing that can help. Insist that your executives use the same support services the customers get, instead of the gold-plate support they are probably getting now. It'll be an eye opener.

Resources:

Mercury News story about Dell Customer Support

Idea Marketplace wins awards for Lloyd's TSB

A fascinating story is told on the Bankervision site by Lloyd's TSB head of Innovation, James Gardner, pictured above. The firm just won an innovation award for the work on an ideas marketplace. I've heard of these before, but not in financial services. Very leading edge.

In particular, I was interested in Gardner's comments about the emergence of marketplace behaviors like inflation and insider trading.

He's coming out with a book in the new year from Wiley, FutureProofing, which sounds quite promising.

In another post, Gardner reports on his experiment in social networking, whereby he tries to make his status updates as banal as possible:

"Over the past few days, I've been conducting an experiment: using my Facebook status, I've been trying to see just how ridiculously uninteresting I can get before people dump me. "

Instead of dumping him, he is getting more response than ever. From this he draws some interesting conclusions about the role of social networking, and why banks aren't flocking to it in droves.

Customer managed experience: Facebook lets you vote on ads

The great promise of the web to let customers manage their own experience has only started to happen. But I saw a bright light emerge on Facebook. There are little "thumbs up", "thumbs down" symbols, as well as a "next ad" symbol under each right column advertisement. So you can start to influence what kind of advertising messages you see.

I love it. What a great idea!

I've written about customer managed relationships before. We are still a very long way from this ideal. But this is the kind of direction we need to see, and will see eventually.

Throw out your well-worn assumptions - study customer adaptations

"We're throwing out the well-worn assumptions about how applications are
supposed to work, and are instead paying attention to the clever ways in
which people have adapted software to fit their needs. These workarounds
usually contain the seeds of a better solution."

- Rael Dornfest, Valuesofn.com and I Want Sandy

This is great advice for anyone designing a customer experience -- forget your assumptions and find out what people are up to.

I Want Sandy was suggested by reader James Shewmaker in a comment. Unfortunately, this charming little service is packing it up. But Twitter has purchased their IP. So I'm guessing Twitter is planning on being much more than they are today. 

My year of gadgeting: Bamboo, Livescribe, and now BlackBerry

This has been my year of gadgets.

First it was the Wacom Bamboo tablet, which I use to customize graphics for presentations, and occasionally for this blog. It made the great arrows above. And Leonard Cohen uses one of these to make his drawings. I recently met an editorial cartoonist, and I think he's using a Wacom product to make his drawings as well. It's a beautiful device, and I love it. I haven't really shifted from my mouse for basic navigation, however, as you can see on my messy desktop above.

Then the Livescribe SmartPen, which I wrote about not long ago here. Also a terrific thing, and has been a great tool for research work. It records what you write, and can match digital audio to it too.

The latest addition to the family is the Blackberry Bold, which took this picture. I want to tell you more about this purchase, but that's for another day.

While each of these purchases seemed completely justified -- in fact, I've been something of an outlier, and not in a good way, to resist the always-on-always-accessible lifestyle accorded by the BlackBerry for so long -- I still now feel overwhelmed by this orgy of gadget consumption. Has it really improved my life, or just given me a bunch of new stuff to learn and process? [To say nothing of the dusting.]

Oddly enough, one of the favorite things on my desktop is one of my set of mugs from Lucky Rabbit. Old technology, to be sure. The mug is one of a set we commissioned -- each mug is different, each having a whimsical animal: a cat with a squirrel on its back, a fox, a fish, a wild boar, etc. Wonderful stuff, and individual in a way that a BlackBerry can't easily achieve.

How to say you're sorry and look like you mean it

Mountain Equipment Co-op is this very cool outdoor gear store. Our household have been members for years. In fact, their logo is so well known in Europe that this is one way they can spot Canadians. [I'm not kidding!]

They oopsed on an e-mail recently. And sent this very nice apology.

Why this works:
[1] uses a human voice
[2] admits to human error
[3] reaffirms that having your e-mail address is a privilege
[4] tells you how to get in touch

This is near perfect execution.