Third Idea Consulting

I ran across an amusing little incident (via MetaFilter) that happened recently in San Francisco, and I felt I needed to share. Members of the Fred Phelps-led Westboro Baptist Church gathered recently for a protest outside the offices of Twitter. I’m going to be smart and stay well clear of discussing the ministry, its protest signs, or the counter-protest to their small rally—you can read and see more of that at either of these not-safe-for-work links—but I have to address what one of the protesters was reported to have said. To quote the Asylum article by Harmon Leon:

As the verbal assault continued, I raised my hand and asked the obvious: “Why Twitter? Does God hate Twitter?”

“We have not quarrels with Twitter. Twitter is a great platform,” stated a gray-haired WBC woman juggling several signs that could be interpreted as funny and ironic if they were actually funny and ironic. Gesturing to one of the younger WBC women, she added, “Meagan, she’s Twittering right now.”

But she explained the reason behind the protest: “Twitter should be used to tell the punks of doomed America that God hates you!”

As a staunch advocate of the use of social media, I have to say this shows a complete misunderstanding of how Twitter works, and reveals the difference between the old and new schools of mass communication. Protesting at the Twitter offices to get the platform to be used in one way or another presupposes that Twitter is a one-way channel that controls all the messages sent through it. It’s like seeing a soda can on the ground next to a recycling bin and complaining that the bin doesn’t reach out and pick up the can.

The new model of social engagement starts with interested parties reaching out to other interested parties. The correct action to take if you want Twitter to “tell the punks of doomed America that God hates you” is to start telling them yourself via Twitter.

Of course, that’s going to be somewhat problematic, since Twitter doesn’t work by telepathy. You can spout all the hate you want (subject to Twitter’s terms of service) but if nobody’s following you, you won’t be heard. The punks of doomed America aren’t going to follow these people to receive daily reminders of how a fringe group thinks they’re damned—well, the masochistic ones might—so the message dies. That’s how it is with social: If you want to reach people, you must have something worthwhile to say.

Here in the Northeast (New York to be precise) we’ve just had our first big winter storm. It wasn’t as bad as predictions threatened, but it’s still made a mess of things. Ice and snow are now part of our daily lives, along with puddles of slush and people who seem to forget (or to never have learned) how to drive, walk, or operate a thermostat when the weather turns ugly.

As with most big cities, we rely heavily on public services, and even more so when it’s time to dig out from under a snow storm. Unfortunately, those services are among the last strongholds of people who don’t know how to listen to or care about customers. Make no mistake: Citizens are customers of their municipalities, and we’re not always served appropriately.

To be fair, bad weather makes life harder for everybody, including plow drivers and the transit workers who keep the subway stations free of ice. We’re also short on funds to pay for emergency crews. Still, I’ve been noticing an attitude of “I don’t care” this year, and because of the situation it’s hard to provide feedback in a timely and effective manner.

Some of our subways stops are above ground (crazy, isn’t it?) so they receive a heavier load of snow and ice. The steps leading up to the platforms are metal clad, which makes them incredibly slippery when wet. In my travels these past few days I’ve seen a number of stairwells at busy and not-so-busy stops that haven’t been shoveled, swept, salted, or even sanded. Slippery stairs plus impatient people plus city property equals hundreds of potential personal injury claims against a town that can’t really afford to pay. But nobody’s saying a thing, because if we’re using those stairs then we’re on the way to or from someplace, and it’s too cold and miserable to stop.

Yesterday afternoon I watched a snow plow try to make a right turn while a woman pushing a stroller was trying to cross the street. The plow (which had to start from a dead stop) essentially chased the woman out into the middle of the intersection in order to make the turn. But nobody said anything, because it’s cold, and everybody’s on the way to someplace else, and there isn’t a good way to chase down a snow plow on foot.

In both cases, and many more, the incidents get pushed to the back of one’s mind after a while because there’s something else to think about, and no lasting proof, and ultimately nothing gets done. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

If you’ve been keeping up on this whole social CRM thing, you’ll have seen the powerful effect that a photo or a short video can have in motivating corrective behavior when a company screws up. We need to remember that city services are a business, and we’re its customers, and we should hold the city to the same standards of responsibility with the same threat of ridicule. We’ve all got cameras on our mobile phones nowadays (at least many of us do, and the rest are expecting one this Hanukkah-Christmas-Kwanzaa-Solstice-Festivus). So just do what you’d do if your local big box merchant drops the ball on safety and service: Take picture, shoot a video, get it online ASAP. Tweet the incident to your friends and family. Blog about it. Be responsible customers, so that the city can be a responsible entity—or be held responsible.

I’m not advocating playing gotcha with city governments. We’re already far too prone to try and squeeze money out of government in this overly litigious society of ours. This is not about blackmail. This is about making those who watch out for us do what’s right.

Other than that, things are pretty good, and I hope all of you can say the same. Have a happy, healthy, safe holiday (whichever one it is for you), and try not to get too stressed out.

It’s time for me to take out some of my rage and indignation on a retailer. It’s one of my favorite pastimes. To be fair, I must say that the company in question—Best Buy, in case you couldn’t figure it out from the title of this post—provided the product as requested, at the expected price, with a minimum of delay once the problems I’m about to describe were cleared. The problems encountered will probably not prevent me from buying from Best Buy again. That said, the customer experience left a lot to be desired, and here’s why.

I found myself in the market for a new notebook PC—the first one I’ve personally owned, as I’m a desktop aficionado and always received laptops from employers. My ability to travel to industry events and client sites (and do anything useful once there) would be seriously curtailed by not having portable computing power. Not wanting to spend a fortune, but neither wanting an incomplete machine (netbooks aren’t my thing), I researched the best balance of power and price. I found this, the Asus K50IJ-RX05. The only place to acquire one at the $499 price point was Best Buy.

Problem 1: finding the product. I consulted Bestbuy.com to see if either of the two “local” stores (local meaning 20-30 minutes on a bus) had my machine in stock. Neither one did, of course, so I called the first and asked whether it would be restocked soon or if I could order one. Five minutes later (after being placed on hold twice) I was told that I couldn’t, with no explanation why. A call to the second had the same result, but with some added info: The one I wanted had been discontinued—or so they said; it’s still listed on the Asus site—and the service person didn’t know what model had replaced it. She suggested I try asking around at the stores in the Bronx because they might have one or two in stock. No offer to check for me; no offer to ship the unit to her store.

Of the two Bronx locations, one was nearly twice the travel time, so I naturally chose the nearer one. I called the store. No answer. I’m not talking about no answer after pressing 3 to speak to a sales rep; no pick up at all, like they didn’t have an IVR installed. That’s inexcusable. In a moment of desperation, I tried to contact the horribly-named Twelpforce, Best Buy’s assistance line on Twitter. By the time I heard back from a twelper, or whatever they call themselves, I’d already figured out how to order online for in-store pickup—significant because the first few attempts failed, since the function doesn’t work properly unless you start from the right place on the site—and decided to bite the bullet and go to the Bronx store.

Problem 2: verifying quality. Jump forward to my arrival at the in-store pickup counter, skipping over the time spent waiting for not one but two confirmation emails (both of which I was told were necessary), the 45 minutes or so on the subway, and the difficulty navigating a horribly designed suburban mall. The store was not busy, probably the emptiest I’ve ever seen a Best Buy, but there was still a waiting line at the service desk. Fair enough, just bad luck on my part.

The difficulty came in trying to figure out whether the computer—with Windows Vista installed—was qualified for the free upgrade to the new Windows 7 operating system when it becomes available in October. I wanted to be absolutely sure what I was getting myself into, because while I have learned from long experience to never use the first release of a new OS if I can avoid it, I have no desire to use Vista; dealing with it for a few weeks or a month is acceptable if I get the free upgrade, otherwise I’d dump the whole thing in favor of a Linux distro. The in-store display said yes, the salesperson said no. It took a further 10 minutes of delay before a Geek Squad guy walked over and opened the box, revealing the upgrade offer within like Charlie’s golden ticket.

Problem 3: taking the survey. So in the end, I got home with the computer, a carrying case, and a mouse. All over, right? Wrong. This morning I got the follow-up email asking me to take a brief online survey about my in-store pickup experience. Fine by me; I don’t mind answering surveys about products or services I’ve used, at least within reason.

The brief survey turned out to be 32 questions long, actually longer because a yes or no in the right place would insert one or more conditional questions to clarify the answer. The survey tech was provided by ForeSee Results, but I’m willing to bet they had nothing to do with designing the survey itself. First of all, I’ve spoken with ForeSee people before, and they’re the first to tell you that the value of a customer experience survey decreases with length.

They’ll also tell you that, to assess customer satisfaction, you should ask relevant questions. There were some, but plenty that weren’t. If the survey is specifically for in-store pickups, why bother rating my opinion of the shipping costs? How is “Please rate the degree to which the order received matched the order placed” a different question from “Please rate the accuracy of your order”? If you’ve already had me rate the degree to which the experience matched my expectation on a scale of 1 to 1o, is there a point in asking the same question in yes/no format later? By the time I reached the bottom of the survey page, I was starting to regret taking it. None of the questions addressed how I felt about the experience, or asked what I’d change. In short, there was nothing that captured the voice of the customer in a way that will affect anybody’s shopping experience.

Was I satisfied with my overall Best Buy experience? Well, I got the item I wanted at the price I expected, and found some accessories to go along with it, so in that sense I was satisfied. But it was clear that I was nothing but a source of revenue for the company; I was not treated like I mattered for anything but the numbers on my credit card. Poor-to-nonexistent integration between store locations, marginally helpful staff, and a useless survey left me flat. I’ll use Best Buy again, but mainly because it is the only real choice nearby for consumer electronics. I wasn’t a lover of Circuit City, but at least when it was still operating there was a choice, and the hint of competition made both stores try harder.

Thanks to Metafilter (by way of my girlfriend), I found out about a case involving the apparent power of social media. I would have missed it entirely because of the other recent social media event surrounding Michael Jackson’s death. It involves another celebrity, Adam Savage of MythBusters.

Briefly, the situation as reported in the Vancouver Sun is this: Savage got hit with $11,000 in connectivity charges from AT&T for what amounted to a few hours of use over a period of five days. The company shut off his phone as a result. Savage turned an assistant loose on the provider to try and straighten out the charges, but it appears that the real work was accomplished with a few tweets. (No disrespect intended to the assistant, of course.)

Your first reaction to this story might be, “Aha, the power of social media in action!” (It was my second, right after, “Those guys have the best job ever, and I love that show.”) But if you look deeper—not just in the MeFi comments but read Adam’s own words—you’ll see another thing at work: the power of celebrity.

“A lot of people on Twitter are saying, ‘Well it’s great that it worked for you, because you’ve got 50,000 followers, but what about the rest of us?’ ” Savage said. “And I totally agree with them.”

The fact is that the power of massed customer voices is mostly a sea-change thing for the moment. One tweet, one blog, or one Facebook group typically has little power of its own; as they accumulate, they exert pressure on businesses that want to maintain good public opinion. It’s like emailing your senator or congressperson to ask them to put their weight behind a certain bill—no matter how awesome and right I think I am, my note is almost useless by itself. It’s going to take a lot of constituents to shift a legislator’s opinion, or get one to make it a pet project instead of just something to vote on.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and Adam Savage is capable of a much louder squeak than most of us. Kudos to him for acknowledging this.  The typical customer would have spent days or weeks sorting this mess out, or might just eat the charge if it was small enough. You’d better believe that if AT&T hit me with $11-grand in charges I’d become an instant sensation on Cursebird (NSFW).

The change we’re all hoping for is that businesses don’t just use social media as an alarm system directing them to fires which must be put out. If somebody goes to the trouble of starting a social networking group founded on the premise that your company is run by thieves and/or morons, or makes a public-message complaint that is echoed by others, it doesn’t just mean some customers are unhappy—it means you’re doing something wrong. Fix the damage first, put out the fire, but if your next step isn’t taking a hard look at the policies that caused the fire, you’re missing the point of listening and are a fire hazard.

Also, congratulations to MythBusters cohost Kari Byron (no, she doesn’t know me) on successfully completing her pregnancy internship. Good luck in your new role as Doctor of Momology.