Customer Crossroads

Upcoming Webinar on Click-to-chat

Forrester and eStara are sponsoring a webinar on best practices using click-to-chat and click-to-call.
If you are interested, you can register here: https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/490210179. (March 7, 2007)

Since Marketing Communications Manager Dan Obregon at eStara was good enough to put a "click to call" link right in his e-mail to me about the event, I decided to call him and ask a bit more about this product, and why it's a good idea.

I was familiar with click-to-chat, but not click-to-call. When you click, a web page asks you to input YOUR phone number, and completes the call to your phone, either immediately, or later. Dan tells me that this approach means that the person you connect with on the phone (call centre agent, most likely) would then have access to your shopping cart, browsing history, or similar types of data. Hopefully meaning they can be more helpful to you.

I asked Dan to share some nuggets of Forrester's learning on the topic. And he had a couple of great ones:

"Customers overwhelmingly prefer speaking to someone on the phone, rather than being referred to an FAQ page...

"The customer doesn't really think about a particular channel -- they are not interacting with the company's web site or call centre, they are interacting with the brand."

Right on. I don't know if this technology is the answer to your prayers, but it sounds like these folks understand some fundamentals about customer experience.

[Please note this was not a paid announcement. No t-shirts or other booty were exchanged. I just thought you might be interested.]

Fast Company vs McKinsey Quarterly: renewal processes

To fill the ever-gaping maw of this blog -- and to stay informed -- I subscribe to a surprisingly hefty number of publications.

McKinsey Quarterly is not a fun read, but it's a quality read, and you get access to their whole archive library with a subscription. This archive has proved very useful over the years on client projects. I love their slogan -- "Required reading for the business elite."

Fast Company is a fun read, and probably the best source of innovation stories out there, with a lot of good stuff about customer experience, both topics near and dear to my heart.

I actually expect a lot out of both of these publications, but in different ways. Fast Company let me down today, however. Here's how.

I got a renewal notice by e-mail. I presume their database knows I live in Canada, since they manage to mail the magazine here every month. The renewal offered me a chance to give a free subscription to a friend.  Well, my young friend Matthew is in his teens, and I thought he might find the magazine inspirational. It might help him with career decisions. So I asked if he was interested. Yes indeed, he was.

Today I went to formalize the arrangement. Well into the process, I learned the following:
1) the great renewal price does not apply here.
2) the free subscribe-a-friend offer does not apply here either.  There is an offer, it is a savings, but it's less.

Of course I signed up my young buddy, and am happy to do it. [He's on his own with McKinsey, however, because it's about 10 times the price. Probably a bit dry for a teen, right?]

The real problem with FC's direct-marketing campaign is that they thoughtlessly and needlessly created an expectation for one group of their customers that they were not able to/planning to deliver on. And they did it rather mindlessly. I'm surprised, actually, that they don't have more nuanced direct marketing. But there you go. So I haven't yet renewed, and am now waiting to see their next offer.

I'd say there's a sales opportunity for somebody here who can help them do a better, more integrated, more nuanced job of connecting with their customers. Because really -- don't we expect a LOT more than this from FC?

[McKinsey's renewal logged me in to my account, presented the exact offers it had earlier, and was quite seamless -- just as expected.]

Environment Opportunities: help your customers go green

If they haven't started yet, soon -- very soon -- I think your customers will be looking to you to show some forward motion towards improving the environment. Or at least damaging it less.

For some companies, this means new product opportunities, perhaps along the lines of this solar battery charger (discovered via LifeHacker).

Others will need to radically redesign and reduce packaging.

Most will need to find better ways to do things (process innovation) that cause less damage to the environment. And then they'll need to tell customers what they are doing. This one is going to be hard work, but frankly essential to the future of your brand. [Assuming the larger issue doesn't warm your heart.]

To find resources to get started, it looks like the Pew Centre for Global Climate Change might have some useful resources. One item in particular was flagged in the March 2007 Harvard Business Review: Getting Ahead of the Curve: Corporate Strategies That Address Climate Change, by Andrew Hoffman. Download it free, here. Bronwyn Fryer, who reviewed the report for HBR, nails the challenge when she says,

"God help you if you're running a corporation. Faced with the inevitability of more and more climate-based regulatory constraints upon companies, business leaders need to do far more than propose a 'Ride Your Bike to Work' day."

Resources:

Harvard Business Review, March 2007, book review by Bronwyn Fryer

Pew Centre on Global Climate Change, Pew Research describes themselves as a "nonpartisan ''fact tank' that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It does not take positions on policy issues."

Museums and Podcasting

One of the first groups to take to podcasting were museums and art galleries. Several let you download guided tour information before you visit.

I recently read about how the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is using podcasts to let us all share their classical music concerts. The museum is tied down fairly tightly by their charter, and can't make a lot of changes to the building or displays. But they've clearly found other ways to innovate.

The really interesting part is that the podcasts are bringing them a whole new audience, with as many as 40,000 downloads a month.  Wow. Good for them.

References:
"An Unlikely Story: tech where you least expect it", by Kathryn Tuggle, FastCompany February 2007.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is here, and their podcasts can be found here.

Innovation and Customer Focus at Telus: no more porn

Telus recently started offering porn on their cell-phones. [I wrote about it in a post that went up only this morning. I confess, I did write the post a few days ago, knowing this was a busy week. Sigh... ]

Telus expected some push-back from customers about the announcement, but thought it would go away. They clearly intended to ride it out. It didn't go away.

After enduring a few weeks of customer complaints on the topic, as well as a church-led boycott threat, the company has now said that it will back away from this revenue stream.

"Faced with snowballing complaints from both consumers and corporate subscribers, along with a very public rebuke from the Roman Catholic archbishop of Vancouver, Telus chief executive officer Darren Entwistle bowed to the pressure on Monday. In an hour-long call, a handful of Telus executives, including Ms. Yale and Mr. Entwistle, discussed the logistics, including timing and a communications plan." (Globe & Mail, see references)

Not everyone thinks backing away was a good idea. Russell Smith, for example, a columnist for the Globe & Mail, said

"So Telus caved. It chickened out. It succumbed to the dumbest kind of knee-jerk provincial sanctimony about the transmission of sexual images on cellphones, a piety that was ill-informed at best. On Tuesday it announced that it was backing down from its plan to sell tame soft-core pictures and movies through its cellphones. I have no idea what the fuss was about to start with."

Smith makes the point that there is lots of porn on the web already (and already available by cellphone with a web browser), on TV, on satellite, and in hotels. In fact, it appears that Telus saw the opportunity to be a content provider because they could see the trend of their customers downloading porn to the cell-phones from other content providers. So why not Telus as well, right?

Nevertheless, the company backed off because of customer concerns.

My take:

Telus understood this a business decision that was not about brand. That was a mistake. They have a brand people care about and LIKE. People like the cuddly animals, they like the advertising, they like the slogan "The future is friendly".  [Note, they are not my client, this is my opinion only]

I believe people felt this action was inconsistent with the brand, as well as being less than what they expect from a major national corporation.  The porn thing also seems to be at odds with their corporate social responsibility vision statement, assuming that the difference they want to make is a positive one:

"We are committed to becoming Canada's premier corporate citizen by making a difference in the communities where we live, work and serve."

What IS really surprising is that they got caught by surprise. Janet Yale, EVP of Corporate Affairs was  quoted in the Globe saying the reaction was unexpected.

"It was a business decision that was taken in an informed and careful way," she said, conceding that it was "the nature of the reaction that we didn't anticipate." (Globe, see reference below)

This was an innovation that did not work. I'm impressed that they responded to the problem pretty quickly. I'm a bit surprised that they didn't conduct brand-impact research -- or if they did, surprised that it did not generate a response of concern among their customers.

Doing innovative things does mean taking risks. You can reduce these risks if you are careful. But you can't really eliminate the possibility that things may go wrong. They did well to recognize that they'd goofed, and to quickly respond.

References:

"Why Telus ditched its plans to profit from porn" by Catherine McLean, Globe & Mail, Feb 22, 2007 (free for 7 days only)

"No porn on cells? Talk about hypocrisy" by Russell Smith, Globe & Mail, Feb 22, 2007 (not accessible online without a subscription)

"Technology is the New Intimacy:" Blackberry matchmaking and porn-by-phone

Online dating goes mobile with Dateberry

Rasool Verjee is the founder of Dateberry.com, an online dating service for the Blackberry brigade.  The concept is intended to bring like-minded people together. You can join by being invited by others, who have to provide some information and a recommendation about you. Men can only invite women; women can invite men and women to join.

Since it's a new service -- official launch date is April 2007 -- it looks like you can probably wangle an invitation just by requesting one from the site.

I guess this was an inevitable evolution. And given the cost of maintaining Blackberry devices, perhaps this approach will limit the network to those with a certain level of economic means. I think Mr. Verjee is right when he says that "Technology is the new intimacy."

Or if you can't get intimacy... try cell-phone porn

Telus is loved for the warm and friendly advertising that makes use of crisp, intensely colorful images of flowers, insects and animals, often in a whimsical way. No doubt this corporate capability with graphics will stand them in good stead as they dish up web-based porn.

Apparently we've been lagging behind here in North America, and cell-phone porn is well established in Europe. Nevertheless, I wonder to what extent this will diminish their brand, since they have had fairly negative response.

References:

"But only the Berry crowd need apply: mini-keyboard Casanovas have a new dating service to find the perfect match" by Dierdre Kelly, Globe and Mail, Feb 10, 2007. [subscription required 7 days after publication]

"Telus defends cellphone porn offerings", CBC, Feb 2, 2007.

Creative Shopping Carts

Someone was paying attention to customers when they came up with these innovative grocery shopping carts, spotted at a Safeway on the West Coast.

The truck just looks like a lot of fun, doesn't it?

And I recently found these at a Home Depot... The gray-colored one is a bit utilitarian for my taste, but does let two little ones come and go, and sit down when they're tired.  The race car is definitely zoom-zoom, however.

Conversations with users: Design for everyday life

10TouchPoints is a project of the Design Singapore Council, that has enlisted people in identifying things in their everyday public space that are irritating because of poor design.

"10TouchPoints is the opportunity for us all to positively impact our surroundings and how we live. It is a voicebox for your opinions as users to be heard as you vote for what can be better designed. For designers, it is a challenge to produce the best redesign solutions for implementation, while getting the chance to win attractive prizes and bringing your share to better living. For service providers, it is a platform to tap into users' insights and using the best design solutions to remake and enhance existing items and services for the people!"

It's a three phase project that invites users to identify opportunities for improved design, vote on the top 20 ideas, and then participate in the re-design process.

"10TouchPoints seeks to demystify design.
Not just about relative coolness and high prices, or what you see on the glossy pages for the hip and rich. Design makes up what is around you. Design is about the relationships people forge with things. Design is thus something we value as it has an effect on how we get to work, better communicate and the energy we save."

The site seems to have collected many hundreds of ideas from people, often with an accompanying image. A huge number have to do with public transit irritants, like overhead handles and seating layouts on transit vehicles.

From my perspective here in Toronto, the Singapore transit system looks miraculous: modern, clean, fast, efficient, even attractive. But the locals can see lots of ways to improve the usability and intelligence of everything from seating to signage.

Great idea for collaborative co-creation, and people are clearly embracing it.

Lessons learned at Marriott: know thy customer segment

If you've been reading along the past few posts, you'll have seen several things that reflect weak experience design. This post is about one that's working.

You may have heard that Marriott hotels has been working very hard on customer experience. I'm here to
report that they are having some success, at least with my last visit. Here's a couple of the things that impressed me:

1. A desk designed for working -- right height, lots of room, and will let you have dinner there and watch TV at the same time.
2. Note the red cable. Instead of making guests go to the concierge to ask for a cable, this one is in the drawer. They probably do lose the odd cable to theft. But if you buy them in the thousands, how expensive can they be?

The coffee maker is now pretty standard, and always welcome. Having take-away cups with lids is a good idea. The condiments all come packaged in a nice triangular box. I used both of my creamers up on the first cup [we're a nation of double-double people here in the Great White North, you know, and there should be extra cream.]

I have never seen such simple controls on a thermostat. Temperature readings available in either Fahrenheit or Celsius is nice. And if you can't cope with that, just guess with the up and down arrows. Love it!  [Now if you could just do that to the clock radio...]

How about a shampoo bottle that stays where you put it. To see how they achieved this neat trick, check out the next photo.

All of these little things are evidence of starting with the customer. Learning everything you can about the customer segment you are trying to attract, and then systematically addressing that learning.

Forget this nonsense about "delighting the customer." Just systematically address customer needs, reduce irritants, and demonstrate that you are looking out for them. Delight will naturally follow.

Should you give stuff away or not? Lessons from luggage carts

My home town now has one of the most expensive airports in the world, judging by the landing fees charged to airlines. I guess that's why they want to charge a couple of extra dollars to get a luggage cart. [see pic below] 

In Calgary, which has a very nice airport, and approximately half the landing fees of Pearson, the carts are free. And present in abundance, both inside and outside the airport (see pic below).

In Toronto, you have to press down the handle all the time to keep the wheels from locking up. [This is deliberate ... some kind of runaway-cart-prevention-measure thing no doubt]. You can see people all over the airport having trouble keeping their carts moving. Calgary's carts roll when you push them, with no extra complications involved.

So what's the point here?

You can try to extract a few extra bucks from every little thing. Lots of businesses do it. And it can be a significant source of revenue.

It can also make people feel nickle-and-dimed. This practice can turn the rental of a cart into something done only grudgingly.  A grudge purchase is not a strong customer experience position to be in, is it?

So if you are doing this, you should start asking yourself what gains you might make in loyalty by taking another route.

What would Susan do?

Someone's got to pay for that giant airport, and I suspect there's enough revenue there that it would be tough to convince anyone to let people use the carts without a charge. 

An alternative would be to provide sponsorship opportunities for the carts. Hotels, local tour operators,  local tourist attractions might all be willing to sponsor the carts. Or brands that stand for comfort and convenience, like TD Canada Trust.   

I would ensure that the whole thing occurred within some design constraints so that it would feel clever, thoughtful and interesting for travellers, not noisy and commercial. Any good agency could handle that element with ease.

After all, an airport is the gateway to your city or your country. Do you really want people feeling irritated as soon as they get here?  Poor things -- they had no idea they would need Canadian COINAGE just to use a luggage cart.

How to Conduct a Panel Discussion: Not

I'm kind of down on attending panel discussions at conferences, because so often they are mini-presentations delivered in a linear fashion, that never actually obtain liftoff on anything that sounds like discussion. This is sad, really, because a good one can be trememdously stimulating.

Rick Wolfe sent me a video clip of one being conducted by Guy Kawasaki, who is clearly good at many things, but this isn't one of them.

Mr. Kawasaki is trying to liven up a conference presentation by bringing some of the target user group (young adults) into the room ⇒ a really good idea.

He puts the teens in a flat line at the front of the room  ⇒ not conducive to a discussion

He puts himself at a podium away from the rest of the group  ⇒ thereby setting up an unequal situation, also not good.

The first time he hears something funny he milks the entertainment value, not the learning value. [Start watching at 5:13] Everyone laughed at the girl whose parents cancelled her text messaging service when she sent 4,000 text messages in one month.  ⇒ The panelists are now either going to say something extreme, in order to get the desired laugh, or they are going to reveal as little as possible, in order to avoid saying the wrong thing and being laughed at.  And at 6:33, it's clear that this young man is nervously seeking the right answer to the question.

There are a lot of short, closed-ended questions. Each panelist is asked the same question.

Things start to get going for a minute at 8:37, as one panelist tries to explain text messaging to the audience. It's lovely and insightful. But not allowed to continue. Net result  ⇒ a serial interview and a lost opportunity.

Not long after that, the moderator starts polling people by getting them to raise their hands to questions like, "How many go to Blockbuster?" What a shame we couldn't just hear more talk from these very interesting panelists.

A better set-up might look like this:

• Put the moderator at the same table as the panelists
• Get rid of the "head table" feel, and seat the panelists so they can see each other
• Keep the mikes, get rid of the podium, and move the table into the room

If you're the one moderating the panel, try these tips:

• Get people comfortable talking by building an environment of trust. Gentle humour is good, laughing at panelists is not.
• Ask big, powerful questions to get things moving, then stop talking. Wrong way: "How many text messages do you send?" Right way: "What is text messaging all about?"
• Avoid setting up a norm of serial interviewing, by allowing a few awkward pauses, and forcing the panelists to take part of the responsibility for the conversation.
• Use a vote only to start a topic, or trigger discussion from different points of view, not as a poll. If you wanted statistics, you could have done a survey.

The whole idea is to get a conversation going that the rest of the audience can listen in on. Once it's going, you let it roll as long as it's on topic and productive, and no-one is taking over. 

Line up management: watch your layout

The airport provides some good examples of managing large numbers of people -- either well or badly, depending on where you are.

Check out the photo above. This guy's whole job is to make sure you don't get in the wrong line-up.

When the self-serve boarding pass machines were installed, the idea was that you would just walk right up to the counter, present your ID, and then give them your luggage. But massive staff reductions have made that design concept a distant dream. Now you need to schlep yourself and your bags back and forth through a giant line-up. The line-up is so long, that it is actually in two parts, not unlike at a movie theatre on the first day of a blockbuster release. [But without the anticipation and excitement of a movie, of course.]

Here's a closer look at this fun situation:

I'm sorry I don't have a picture of the luggage chute for you. Because after you do all this lining up, the agent doesn't take your bags. He or she puts a baggage tag on them and checks your ID. Then you have to hump your bags over to a SINGLE conveyor. A giant clump of people was pushing and shoving to get their skis, snowboards, etc. into this single conveyor window. A situation designed to accommodate one person at a time. 

By this point I was starting to laugh out loud. I told the agent I didn't think there was much benefit to the customer for taking the time to check in online. He told me pretty soon I would have to print and tag my own bags. 'Fine, no problem', I said. 'But will I have to line up for the priviledge????'

What useful things can we extract from this long story, hmmm?

Observation #1:  There is very little evidence that things stay the same for long. So why would you cement these machines into the floor so that you can't move them without a major renovation?  Good environments have a certain amount of flexibility built in.

Observation #2: This layout assumed there would not be line-ups ever. How dumb is that?

Observation #3: It should be obvious where you are supposed to be. If it isn't, either the process flow, the layout, or the signage are wrong. In this case, all three. So now you have a senior staff member spending his day directing traffic, and people are still confused. [And great for staff morale, I'll bet]

Here's a good example of a signage problem:

When you have to have a lot of signs telling people not to do something, you have a design issue. Wouldn't it make sense to do one of the following things:

1. design the carousel so you can't sit on it, or
2. design the carousel so you can sit on it safely, or
3. provide more seating
4. Or a combination of all of the above

When I came into the baggage hall, there were several empty carousels. But three large aircraft all had their luggage on this one. No doubt this makes some sense from the standpoint of the baggage handlers. But none from the standpoint of the customer. Not an impressive situation for an airport that only just opened.

When you travel with a researcher or experience consultant, you don't have a normal journey. We spend the whole time trying to figure out how to fix the process without spending a fortune. [My Mom, who was waiting in line with me, thought I was getting upset. I said, "No, I'm just trying to figure out how to fix it, should anyone ever offer me the opportunity".]

There must be airports that do these things well. If you have examples, please share!

Innovation Series Roundtable Reports

Schulich Executive Education has been sponsoring a series of executive roundtable discussions on innovation.   This concept was cooked up by Alan Middleton, Rick Wolfe and Alan Kay, who invited me to write up reports on the events.
The latest couple of reports are now available to download here or here:

• Commercializing Innovation -- how do you take an idea or a new technology, get it funded, and use it successfully in a business? This session included a number of entrepreneurs from Russia, who have barriers to success that we could hardly imagine. A lively session.
• Change and Sustainability -- if you are innovating outside the product domain, you are embarking on organizational change. Much of the discussion was about how to make innovations stick under these circumstances.
  

Participate in the Innovation Research Project 
I'm looking at doing an online roundtable discussion, so that we can get stories and participation from a wider group. If you would be interested in taking part in something like that, please e-mail me with your contact details and tell me a little about yourself. (Name, position/title, company, phone number, mailing address and e-mail address would be great). Just so no one is confused -- there's no $ for participating, just the glory.

The time commitment would be about 90 minutes over the course of a week.
You would have the opportunity to interact with others, share your own stories about leading or managing innovation in an organization, ask questions, and generally engage in a very interesting asynchronous conversation. And you will get a copy of the report. Most people find these events really worthwhile, and I expect the online discussion will prove just as worthwhile.

Travelling in Baggage Class: Service Recovery Observations

On a recent flight to Calgary, I experienced a little Canadian winter. Some freezing rain had the airport seriously backed up.  Here are a few of the highlights:

• Because the weather was getting yucky, my trip to the airport was slow. So I wolfed down my food at Casey's to be sure of being at the gate on time. Shouldn't have bothered, because the crew was 40 minutes late arriving.  [I think there is some rule that you can't make a "delay" announcement until there's no choice, even when you know there is a delay. Dumb rule.]

• Once we hit the tarmac, the airline recorded us as departed. We weren't going anywhere for another two hours, however, while we waited for a lost runway position, and then for de-icing.  The captain handled this BRILLIANTLY. He told us what was going on with down-to-earth language ('big problems, long wait') and said we could all use our phones until further notice. I called my beloved, who said, "The web site says you departed at 7:05 !?!".  Yeah, well, not quite...

• This captain had a lot on the ball. To keep the masses distracted, he explained the process of de-icing, and why there are two different colors of stuff being sprayed around. He also de-fused any anxiety about the First Officer's visual inspection of the wings by telling us it was all "just part of normal procedures, and doesn't mean anything is wrong". He said they would get the in-flight movie going as soon as possible, and try to dig up an extra video for us as well. WELL DONE, I say. He did a great job!!

• The captain also announced that there would be complimentary alcoholic beverages served to those of us mooing in the back. A nice gesture. Too bad it took the attendants more than an hour to get to my row, and I wasn't in the back row. Basically, as far as I could tell, they were already exhausted themselves, and chose not to modify their normal procedure one iota to accommodate the situation, because it would have made more work.

Here's the thing, though:  we had now been sitting in this tin can for 2.5 hours at this point. I think most of us would've killed for anything to take the edge off. Some of us had to wait another hour for that.  So the niceties may be missing when they toss you your heated beef brisket (see previous post), but heaven forfend they should rush the beverage service.

What's the Point?

Okay, here are the lessons we would like to draw from this.  You need to encourage your staff, (or yourself as the case may be) to abandon caution and put the customer first when things start to go wrong.

Give people license to start modifying procedures. When things go wrong -- and they will in every operation -- take the time to extract the learning and share it as widely as possible. What works. What we should try next time. How to cope with your own stress and still look after customers. That sort of thing.

Encourage your staff to act like the captain in this story: show some empathy, talk like a human being, do what you can to alleviate the irritation. Don't pretend it's business as usual.

Travelling in Baggage Class: modifying expectations

I've been tardy with my posts lately, dear reader, but I have a good excuse. I was out on the road documenting the joys of modern travel for your reading pleasure.

Before going any further, I'd like to say something about expectations and satisfaction.  If I ask you, "are you satisfied with the service", you actually conduct a process along these lines before answering the question:

• I didn't expect much, and they more or less delivered ... "satisfied"
• My expectations were low, and they actually did more than I expected ... "very satisfied"
• I didn't expect much, and they were actually worse ... "dissatisfied"
• I could keep going here, but you get the idea ....

The thing about airline travel right now is that our expectations have been lowered A LOT.  Between the airlines and the security services, it's a far cry from what it used to be, and even what it could be. [Unless you happen to be paying full fare for overseas first class.  I only wish ....]

Remember we used to complain about airline food? The little plastic trays it came in? The fact that the salads were always weird?  Strangely rubbery eggs?  Yeah, well ... here's what we've been reduced to:

I can actually recommend the beef brisket sandwich. But I'd really like some kind of service that doesn't involve tossing me a foil-wrapped thing without any ceremony at all. This isn't a meal in any sense I can identify -- it's refueling at best.

But the fact that it tasted good actually exceeded my expectations, which were exeptionally low. So I guess I'm satisfied with the food, right? Don't be fooled by customer satisfaction scores -- they're only half of the story.

Oh yeah ...  about the wine.  Stay tuned for the next post, where we discuss service recovery.

Intelligent agents are among us

A buddy just suggested I install the Firefox music player, FoxyTunes. It's a wee little control bar that allows me to adjust the music without switching over to the player window. Cool and kind of fun.

What's really interesting, however, is the sheer number of little add-ons now available for Firefox. Over 1000 according to their site.

I cruised around a bit to see what was there, and picked up a nice little information bar called Forecastfox that allows me to monitor the weather anywhere. So I picked Barcelona, a city I'm hoping to visit soon.

*** This feels like an intelligent agent to me. I can sit here doing other things, while the agent goes and gets information for me, in the case, the weather.

When I first heard about this idea years ago, it sounded like something very complicated that only a true geek could program. But in fact these things are now all around us in the web world.

It might be a stretch to call these intelligent agents.  A truly intelligent agent could monitor the web and let me know when it has found -- and booked -- flights to Barcelona. But this is a great start.

A few of us oldsters might remember "push" technology -- applications that would allow companies to push advertising to you. This stuff has had a relatively quick death, for the most part. [And thank goodness!]  Because we've got the power now, and we ain't playin' no push. We playin' pull.

So if you want to talk to me... or pretty much anyone else now... you had better have something interesting enough to tell me that I want to pull it in.   This will be like the difference between RSS and e-mail: I'm in control with RSS, so you can't spam me without my permission.

As we get more intelligent agents working for us, how will this all play out? Will advertisers buy the right to push things at us disguised as pull?

I went looking for an illustration for this article, and found Verbots. This thing does look a little too complex right now. But I bet it won't be too long before even us non-geeks will be able to get someone else to monitor things and get back to us.  [Now if I could just figure out how to virtually deal with expense receipts, we'd really have something....]

And oddly enough, as these things become more animated, they feel like company. Like my office cat, pictured above.  Sometimes I forget to turn it off when doing a presentation. But -- surprise -- people usually find it quite amusing and engaging.

Intelligent agents. Coming soon to a computer near you.