Yes that was Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi using SightSpeed
More and more government officials are realizing the value of video conferencing as it earns its place in reducing carbon emissions and enables more face to face interaction both near and far.
Client Vringo had a pretty good week with two very nicely written stories.
Business Week and Download Squad.
The Business Week story has a very homeland feel, written by their correspondent in Israel tells how the company was started and what the future looks like. This is great for potential partners and for carriers to read as it tells how Vringo can fit into their plans.
Download Squad's piece, written by Ted Wallingford, gives a very easy to grasp consumer's understanding of what Vringo is about.
Both are great reads and very timely.
Part of the fun of being a quotable blogger is seeing yourself in print. Today Paige Wiser of the Chicago Sun Times has a story that really helps people figure out how to be working anywhere, and guess what? I'm quoted.
The Purple Wonder himself, Mr. VON, has a very good post about innovation. But Jeff, please don't think you are alone in this battle. Others of us like David Beckemeyer (PhoneGnome), Alec Saunders (iotum), Jeff Bonforte (Yahoo), Craig Walker (GrandCentral), Luca (Abbeynet), Michael Robertson (SIPPhone), Jim Tobin (Comcast), Jeff Black and John Todd (TalkPlus), Surj Patel (eTel's conference chair), AOL's Sr. VP of Voice Services Ragui Kamel and even I have been on this same kick for about as long (even if some of us weren't blogging back in 2002.)
But rather than take a purple sky view through mauve colored glasses, something we all have been guilty of more than once, let's start with where the problems actually lays. A fundamental lack of knowing how to market to consumers that exists in so many companies that are trying to bring consumer products and services to market today.
Here are some thoughts on this which may likely cause discussion, some discomfort, some angst and even some indigestion…but better over a blog post than over one’s career or investment dollars I figure.
1. To sell new and innovative products and services requires marketing, not just selling. And marketing requires real dollars. Demand either exists and that need can be satisfied, or demand has to be created. Marketing finds the need, and satisfies the want, by knowing how to tell the market why it needs it.
2. Most venture backed voice related companies are led by people who don't have a clue what it really costs to market a product or service to consumers. They have great ideas, but no experience.
3. The reason the cable MSO's are winning in VoIP over the upstarts is simple. They have all kinds of marketing and promotional inventory to use to get the attention of the customers. Backing a play without the right marketing dollars in the funding round is a recipe for disaster, unless owning the Intellectual Property is the play from the start.
4. It's not about selling in. It's about selling through. Too much time and energy is spent getting the deal, and not enough time is spent on what to do once the customer signs on. I call this the B2B2C paradox. You have the deal, but have no way to fufill it.
5. Most companies in the start up phase hire an experienced B2B marketer to get deals done. This is the same person, because of their success at getting the deals done, who ends up running the B2C business into the ground. Why? Because a real consumer marketer doesn't speak the right "tech speak" or VC speak language. There's a reason for that. The consumers don't either.
6. To continue the sell in vs. sell through point, to sell through means you need to know thy customer. To know thy customer means to conduct two types of research.
A. Primary, meaning you do it for your company directly with the customer segments and
B. Secondary, meaning you review what is publicly available from sources that matter and apply it.
I don’t know how many startups I have suggested hire a real consumer marketing company to help with market segmentation, usage and attitude studies and more. Few take us up on that offer. Why? Because their investors don’t take the time to understand how to take a new product to market, have never spent a day in consumer marketing at the face to face level or have almost no consumer marketing agency experience to know what is needed. The most successful companies we all know of all research how they research, constantly improving their processes. Who does this best? TV Networks. Packaged Goods companies and yes, even the established telcos. Funny, aren’t those the companies that online companies are trying to better..hmmm..
7. Not enough customer centricity...The products that get launched today are so non-customer centric it's scary. It’s not that consumers wouldn’t want to buy and use them, it’s just that they have too many challenges learning how and just give up.
How do you take a new product to market? By putting it in the hands of thousands of people in one-on-one and focus groups to find out what they think and then boil it down to where it is plain dumb simple to use. I don't know how many of the executives in the emerging VoIP plays have ever done a real focus group in their lives, or spent time selling to the public, but I do know that Level3 has done just that to enable their clients, mostly the Cable MSOs, to know more about what their customers want and it shows. Cable VoIP sales are up vs. the other guys, and Level3's stock is up. Someone at Level3 should give Cynthia Carpenter a huge raise for that study alone as she quarterbacked the project under the now departed to Verisign, Charlie (Two Buck Chuck) Meyers.
8. Distribution---the web is a lousy distribution outlet. I repeat. The web is a lousy distribution outlet.
The web is a great marketing channel for awareness and serves as a wonderful delivery vehicle via download or for order entries and sign up. So you ask, why isn’t it a great distribution outlet for everything? Well for starters it’s a lousy way to interact with consumers who have questions. FAQ files only frustrate the masses and you have to know exactly the right words to use the search tools.
Now compare this to going into a specialty retailer.
For starters when I'm in a specialty store I can get questions answered in real time from people who should have some product knowledge (okay CompUSA is the exception but they are a big box store without any specialty vs. Frys or Best Buy which actually trains people as product specialists.)
Most online services want the customer to email and then WAIT for a reply. Or worse, you call up, and experience what we all now accept as normal. A call to some outsourced service provider in some foreign land who doesn't even know what day it is, let alone have the basic level of product knowledge of a web page that does.
Compare this to QVC, HSN or even going to a Costco. There you get answers and you get service and it happens more often than not, almost right away.
9. Retail is still important.
Building retail distribution takes money. But having retail distribution will make you money. I'm continually amazed how clients and companies we interact with won't spend one day looking at how to get their products to retail, and yet will spend months trying to figure out how to optimize their web sites for higher Google rankings. Believe me. Selling services in 10,000 convenience stores sure made a lot of money for the calling card folks, so one has to wonder why no one is really pushing VoIP in Radio Shack or at the independent cellular stores let alone selling new services at 7-11.
10. Sample This--nothing works better than sampling. I'm continually amazed that services that offer trials don't do more sampling. Not on the web. Offline.
At start-ups the pressure to start showing uptake is enormous. But you can’t have uptake if you don’t reach you’re the potential customers. If they would sample more, in more places the awareness and uptake would be far greater
Heck anyone with an email account can keep sampling or keep trying free services online. What amazes me is the lack of sampling of a service where people are. People are not just at home on their PC's they are at events, in malls and on the street.
Apple gets this idea better than anyone with their Apple stores. Consumers come in and try out an iPod, a MacBook and then order from somewhere. For Apple the sales at Apple stores are a bonus. Secretly Apple doesn't care where you buy Apple products just as long as you buy Apple. The whole facade of exclusivity is just that. It's a cachet and Apple does it as well as a Ferrari or Porsche dealership can. Cisco practices a similar marketing approach. Buy from them. Buy Cisco from someone else, but at the end of the day, they are happy if you just bought Cisco (or Linksys.)
Nokia understand this too and with their Nokia World locations is taking the same approach. Show people what they didn’t know about. Let they try the product and then let them buy it there, on the web or anywhere, but just buy Nokia.
But the path to success has its failures. Gateway failed at this with Gateway Country stores, but it wasn't for lack of trying. It was because Gateway didn't have the rest of the retail market channels in place the right way. Before Apple launched Apple Stores they already had stores within other computer stores staffed by Apple people. Gateway didn’t. Oh.there’s that research thing coming up again. And oh, there’s that lack of sampling and trial. And oh, there’s that selling in, not selling through mentality at work.
Innovation isn’t dead. It’s being killed. And the killers are the people who give birth to the ideas by practicing the worst form of euthanasia. They kill off their young not because their idea isn’t right. Because they’re not the right people to innovatively market the idea.
In this changing game from where technology has gone from geeks to the general market, the time for innovation in marketing is here. To market innovatively takes money, or at least some clue.
Many a writer, analyst and blogger have put the label of “disruptive” on Skype.
I think NOT.
The proper term, as I have said before is “subversive” and what the following will prove and point to that exact claim. Now for those who don’t see the fine points of differentiation, disruptors upset the status quo. Michael Robertson at SipPhone, best known for MP3.com is an example of a premiere disruptor. Subversive types do an Al- Quada type 9-11 unexpected attack and profit from it.
That’s exactly the category that Skype has to be taken in and always should be.
Not only did Skype set out to disrupt the market, something they have done, but with three independent moves, or what only on the surface would appear to be independent, Skype has subverted their own promotional partner, T-Mobile in a masterful way that I applaud.
Let me first give you the ingredients to this explosive recipe that is clearly inspired by one part “Alchemist’s Cookbook” and another part “Mini Manual For The Urban Guerilla” . The execution is pure asymmetrical marketing, a concept I not only subscribe to but applaud when I see it as it not only on the surface appears to be disruptive, but in the end subverts the very nature of the T-Mobile relationship.
It is pure genius and what’s more unless you looked at the sum of the parts, on the surface everything seems to be just what it is.
But it’s not.
Here are the ingredients
1) Skype on Sony Mylo available for $349.00 at Best Buy
2) Skype/T-Mobile Hotspot Free Access For a Year Promotion With The Mylo Upgrade NO CHARGE
3) Skype Unlimited Calling for $14.95 for one year
So what does this mean?
Well for starters for the crowd that goes to Starbucks with a cell phone, for what amounts to $365.00 you can make unlimited calls to your friends now who aren’t on Skype with a the Mylo which is also a very useful PDA, music player and lightweight web browse. You add in the free calling and all of a sudden for the hotspot connected, no-need for a mobile phone crowd, the same crowd that Earthlink covets and wants to attract, and you have the very first real salvo at the mobile phone industry, and in true subversive fashion, Skype used the industry’s own infrastructure, or at least T-Mobile’s for their very mission delivery vehicle. If you already have a Mylo this means it stops being a paper weight.
I’m not sure if Sony was a party to the Skype “Pearl Harbor” move on T-Mobile, but as someone who appreciates great execution in marketing, this is one for the books in how to take independent pieces of non-volatile elements and make something up that pure incendiary.
Ka-Boom!
If this is an accurate account of how T-Mobile is operating in the USA, it has to go down as one of the all time DUMB moves.
Imagine telling a cell phone customer that they can't buy a new phone because they don't have a land line.
Suggestion: Buy a Skype In or Gizmo In number and don't admit it's not a real land line.
Years ago Microsoft and Qualcomm created a venture called Wireless Knowledge, sometime within the first year the venture sort of went sideways and the two slowly separated a lot quieter than they announced the marriage.
Now I see some of what the claims from back then of what the venture was to do making the light of day, only this time Microsoft is at it with a Qualcomm partner in Sprint, but without the kings of CDMA.
Stuart's Skype Journal has good news for Pocket PC users. An upgraded release from Skype which fixes many bugs and adds more of the PC client features.
Way to go Skype. Now since Skype Journal didn't have the link to the download, I'm adding it here.
Jon Arnold's Blog means Mark Evans now has some real competition in the Toronto area for blogging on VoIP.
If you don't know Jon, you should. He's freshly thawed from the team at Frost and Sullivan.
iNeen is a new service from XTEN. Using the Eyebeam technology and SIP you can make free calls to other ineen users. In a way this is a lot like GloPhone without the hype and with Video. With this out there for free the pressure is now on Packet8 and Sightspeed to say why they are needed...
Aswath does a parody of the famous "I have a dream" speech by Dr. Martin Luther King. It is brilliant, witty and well done, in a tasteful manner.
While not VoIP related, Today's New York Times has a story on how blogging is impacting the world of gossip in the media. In the past, when sources mattered, scoops were the key and reporters valued relationships and sought to build new ones, as one never knew where that would lead.
Today, reporters and editors seem to have lost the art of personal relationships for the most part, or are a lot more standoff like than in the days gone bye. Part of that falls on those in the PR trade as we've all relied too much on technology the last ten years or so and forgotten the art of the story, the relationship and the scoop. News also has become more instantaneous, making gossip seem more real, and the need for spin control more necessary.
As someone on all sides of the news, and who loves the right use of a rumor, this story is one more nail in the coffin of traditional media.
A lot of media coverage has fallen on Vonage's complaints about Port Blocking by a couple of companies. The real credit goes to Paul Kapustka, who has been like a proverbial bloodhound on breaking and covering the story from its very start.
Kapustka, editor of Advanced IP Pipeline for CMP. He's been on the story ever since the first issue and always maintained a steady watch.
While Paul is not a Blogger, the line between journalism and blogging is very thin, and Kapustka always links to the blogosphere when stories there help with his writings.
AT&T is keeping its game going on a global level with VoIP as they have announced a customer win in Japan. As I keep saying, AT&T's CallVantage is NOT simply a consumer customer play and their goal is farther reaching than Vonage or Packet8 which clearly are both starting in the home market and will be trying to get into the enterprise market.
AT&T is already there.
EuroTelcoblog's James Enck discovers a flaw in the Skype multi user chat system and waxes on about it.
One of the aspects of Skype I see is some type of social networking feature being overlayed with it. The Pulver Communicator already has this type of feature built in but until the type of trust system that is available with LinkedIn or ZeroDegrees type of operations, I don't think Skype should let this type of technology be authorized.
Why? Skype's firewall penetration technology is very good at poking the hole through the firewall and even though you trust your friend, I don't think third party trust is really there just yet.
"Om, it's not dot-VOIP yet"....so says Canadian Mark Evans in his blog today. Om thinks the dot.com/dot.bomb era is hitting VoIP, and while some startups may become casualties, there are also more established companies in the space from top to bottom who are shifting to VoIP for telephony and the related business. While there is merit in some of what Om feels, there also is lot more savvy in the business world about technology.
In ninth grade World History, our teacher, Royal Black, yup, that was his name, no jive, was the first person I recall ever using the phrase "history always repeats," so I'm not surprised at Om's post today about the growing pains effecting VoIP.
When I got into the dot.com world outages were nothing uncommon. Heck, @Home had at least one a month in their early days, causing me all kinds of frustration, especially the ones caused by their stupidity.
Now VoIP companies are starting to have issues. These same issues effected the streaming media industry and the WiFi industry. Om draws a comparison to the RBOCs but he should read some of the complaints against them for service outages. He may find that they too have issues and the outages are not reserved for IP only carriers.
BlogShares - VoIP Blog - VoIP News, Opinions
If you scroll down you will see what Blogshares values blogs at in the future. I'm humbled to have the second ranked VoIP blog. Honestly, I'm laughing...hopefully all the way to the bank..... :-)
For SBC Chief, AT&T Deal Is Essential in New Telecom Era is a Q&A in today's Los Angeles Times.
I think the swipe at Vonage and other so called instant phone companies who can buy network access below cost and then resell and the comment about customers in Hong Kong really points to how important AT&T's CallVantage and VoIP overall was to this deal.
Clearly SBC is also gearing up for a name change. AT&T is clearly the logical choice because it has to have the higher recall in brand identity vs. SBC. I say it's time to invest in automobile and truck paint. Here's why.
My guess is the senior marketing folks (remember, Dorman is a marketer first) will evaluate at shareholder expense the options:
1. Stay SBC--this would be the second weakest way to go as the cost to build brand nationwide, but more importantly on a global basis (and we are in the era of the global telco brand) would be even more expensive. Don't forget AT&T just did a deal to sponsor some aspects of Formula One Grand Prix racing while they could easily transfer it to SBC, the ability to tell the story gets harder and more expensive.
2. Come up with a totally new name...NOT. This would be even more expensive and erode the equity in both brands. I mean, if they did come up with a new name, I think it would be ABC for American Bell Corporation, (oh, yes, some mouse house has that name in their portfolio--and I don't think they would be very sporting about giving it up) but while that makes some things cute, I don't think the expense of rebranding is worth the years it will take to build market acceptance.
3. Go with AT&T. It will cost less. It will score higher on the recall tests and it is at the front of all directory listings. What's more globally it still is the most known USA phone company. The one thing I know is all the truck painting companies must be salivating right now. It's only been a few years here in California when the trucks went from Pacific Bell to SBC in look.
Bottom line. I just saved shareholder millions of dollars, as that's what would be spent on studies, research, analysis, focus groups and more, all before the first dime is dropped on new advertising and promotion.
Fractals of Change: Freedom to Communicate Conference
So, where is Jeff Pulver? If anyone has been pushing the rights of the user and the industry it's Pulver. He should be on this distinguished list of experts.
Kudos for Time Warner and Business 2.0 for allowing Om Malik to participate. Normally magazine publishers hold tight reins on their writers, but this shows a lot of forward thinking policy.
Sadly I will be on out of the country when the fireworks happen in D.C.
From Netimperative - Google prepares Skype-killer phone service and this makes total sense. Read what they have to say and think why? Yahoo is heading in the same direction, but while Yahoo has Messenger, Google doesn't have an IM client yet. Maybe they will work with someone like Pulver or Popular Telephony. Heck, maybe they will work with XTEN. But you know one thing, Google going into the phone biz could mean an end to having to have your fingers do the walking through the yellow pages.
Don't also forget they own Blogger and have Picasa...a phone service with those apps are also very interesting.
I'm always flattered when the press turns to me for a viewpoint, but I'm honored to be included in a story with Om.
While Level3 has customers, the big question is how will they handle their enormous debt load. Even if VoIP revenues start to fly from the cable companies, which is now in question, one has to wonder if they are shedding their legacy business (like AOL dial up) how are they going to make up the revenue.
SAM - Skype® Answering Machine --Insecure ?
I called a colleague using skype, not knowing he was in another skype session. His Skype Answering Machine picked up and I left a message.
First the parties on the call with him heard me. Secondly, I heard them. Both calls were clear as a bell to the others.
Many months back Om Malik wrote about the security holes in Skype. This just validated what I already knew.
The bottom line is while this piece of software is not Skype's own, how the program was able to clearly hear an and ease-drop on "encrypted" transmission is beyond my technical abilities, but it happened and the person on the other end told me too. But this begs the question of should you be using Skype for sensitive calls.
WSJ.com - Write to The Wall Street Journal has a letter from the guru of VoIP, Jeff Pulver. It's a great read and makes many salient points.
Give it a read.
Roughly two years ago or so I spoke with Starbucks VP, Anne Saunders, their Biz Dev wonderkind who put the hotspot deal together with T-Mobile after Mobilestar went under. During the interview I asked her about power outlets, saying "as you know WiFi draws down a battery faster than a normal PC."
Saunders replied saying in so many words that Starbucks would be adding extra power outlets in stores that became hotspots. Liar !
Over the past two years I've held many a conversation with Starbucks store employees and not one has said that any extra outlets were ever added when the hotspots went in, and what's worse some upgraded locations are so laptop unfriendly, meaning there aren't enough power outlets to start with that going to one is almost a guarantee of a battery rundown.
Take the location at 19th and J in Sacramento, CA. There is one outlet in a location that is not really a seating location, which according to one employee, really makes it hard for the students who like to meet and hang out after classes.
Starbucks may have the best hotspot operation going of any USA retail chain, but that consistency comes from T-Mobile. Sadly, when it comes to being honest with the press, they're rather cold. So, while I know they will try and spin this with excuses, the bottom line is that all locations are not created equal.
The State of Customer Service In America
Let me first start out by saying that I really didn’t want to write this, but do to a series of matters that have affected me and two of my closest and dearest friends I found myself honor bound to do so.
As a member of the press, yes, the media, I know that I have to be sensitive in overplaying that hand, and while both the KenRadio World Technology Roundup and this blog go out uncensored, I have to keep in check when I’m a consumer, and when I’m press. And that’s what forms the crux of this posting.
A few months back one of my closest friends, a retired former very senior executive from Wall Street said to me over coffee that he was having problems with his new H-P Windows Media Center Laptop. The issue was his inability to access a certain financial web site using Internet Explorer. He lamented to me that he had spent four hours on the phone with someone from H-P support and got nowhere. As a matter of fact he was farther behind than he was when he first called them. I told him I could fix the problem and went to his house and in five minutes, he was looking at the site he wanted and logged in. I downloaded Firefox. You see, at no point did the H-P tech seek to solve the problem. They just read their support screens because they are not taught how to be logical, only to be helpful in the way someone has programmed a decision support system to work in a customer service environment.
Anyway, being they had him make all kinds of changes to his PC, he needed to get it back to normal. He spent 8 hours on the phone with them and at the end, the computer was less functional than when he started the process. I had him call an inside support person I know in what is called the “Executive Support Team” or something like it inside the President’s office of HP. Their solution. They are buying the PC back from my friend. It just isn’t worth it to either of them, and my friend is buying a laptop from PortableOne, the guys who support and know and relate and fix the first time out of box. They get it.
Another dear friend signed her company up with T-Mobile at my suggestion. I love T-Mobile, and though I’ve had my share of difficulties around the XDA PDA phones in the past, I’ve gotten past that. Maybe it’s because when the crap hits, I go to the PR person and get results fast. That doesn’t mean T-Mobile is always perfect. They’re not. The problem lies with the fact that their voice, data and high speed service teams are in three different groups and you have to go from one rung to another rung, and in some cases one person speaks out of turn. In my friend's case, she bought five phones, five numbers and things were all screwed up. It took her five days, five different phone calls to five different people to fix it.
And there in lies the problem with customer service today. Lack of account ownership. The people dealing with the customer figure, this is the one time I deal with them. They don’t know my name, where I am, what town I live in or any of that. Just try and get those details. Ask for their last name…see/hear what happens.
Let me digress…I remember a great real estate sales guy in Denver. His name was Steve. He sold my boss a great house back when I worked with the Nuggets. He was all about customer service. He even would ask me if I wanted to buy, or what I though one day I would want to buy even before I was in the market for a house back in 1988. You know what, for a few years I still got Christmas cards from him, even though I didn’t live in Denver
This past week I had two issues that required my going the “press card” route to fix problems. First was with Vonage. Before leaving for Europe in September I had purchased a new Linksys ATA which meant establishing a new Vonage number.
I didn’t want to, but to test the device it meant I had to. At least back then it did.
There have been reports on some bullentin boards of Vonage customers having difficulties switching devices and number, as well as being charged cancellation fees.
All I wanted to do was dump my old Cisco ATA and use the newer, smaller and better Linksys device.
During a conversation two weeks back with a support person at Vonage related to a call forwarding issue I asked that it be done. He never followed up. So rather than wasting time, I asked their ace PR guy Mitch “Mad Dog” Slepian—he’s aggressive, but in a nice way, to fix it. He escalated it to Warren in their Executive Support Team and with 24 hours the old line had the new Linksys box, and the new number was history, and all unnecessary charges waived or reversed.
Warren even took the care to migrate my number in the UK over to the old line and then followed up with a call and email to make sure everything was done correctly. His email, documented everything that he did, or what he was going to do. It was perfect.
Let me compare this to my still ongoing Gateway monitor fiasco. Over two weeks ago I went to my Gateway Windows Media Center that is all of five months old or so. The monitor was blank. It would blink, then die out. I called Gateway that night, got a nice chap in their Canada call center and he had me run some tests. One test would take an hour so and he assigned me a case number and told me to call back in the morning. I did. On that call I gave the new tech the results that with my back up monitor from another PC, that all was fine with the video card. Tech number two then processed a replacement order and said that within five days I would have a new monitor. On day six, I called Gateway and asked, “Where is it?”
The person I spoke to was clueless. First she said my case number belonged to someone else. Then she said they had no record of my call. I asked what the case number referred to and she described back to me the exact problem I was having, but it had someone elses name and address on it. I said, no big deal, being that I live just forty five minutes or so from Gateway’s headquarters I ‘d be willing to drive up to get the replacement. She said that was impossible and that I’d have to start the process over again with support . I asked for her manager and she said that would be a 27 minute wait.
I called P.R. at Gateway. Rather emotionally, I explained to the PR contact what had transpired, and that all I wanted was a working monitor, not to have to spend another few hours dealing with this. He agreed, and escalated this to their Executive Support Team. That was on Thursday November 4.
On Monday I received a call from Ashley at Gateway. She reviewed all my information and had asked that I call her. We ended up speaking but being I was at a wine trade tasting I just said, let’s talk on Tuesday. Which we did.
All went well, and she said the monitor would be shipped out. On Wednesday she called to confirm my address and again told me the monitor was going out, and that I should see it by Friday.
Then the crap hit the fan.
On Thursday Ashley called and said that someone in corporate office in Irvine was holding up the shipment because they didn’t have proof of purchase, something up until that day no one had asked for. What’s even more bizarre is Costco transfers that data to them, but somehow on my particular bundle they lacked the right level of detail. What does that have to do with my broken monitor that I registered with Gateway when I first bought the combo back in June?
Then to add insult to injury, this person in corporate could not be spoken to, was not reachable other than by email by Ashley and even after I found the sales receipt and read Ashley all the details she requested, she still could not get permission to ship unless I faxed in the receipt, something that is difficult as I don’t have a fax machine and I really didn’t want to go to the UPS store again, that I had just returned from only an hour earlier. As much as I’ve been on the move, I really need to spend time working on the computer, not working to get the computers working.
I called the PR guy and he was not happy. Not with me, but with the situation.
The next morning, Friday, I got an email from the VP of Client Services, Bob Cote, inside Gateway. He asked that I explain the problem from my perspective. By noon he and I were talking. By the end of the conversation, I was assured I would have my monitor, and that he was going to look into why the problem even happened. By two PM I had a tracking number. I should have my monitor on Monday. Bob even offered to have it delivered on Saturday, but being I was traveling, I said to have it arrive on Monday, as there was no sense in wasting his money. If I wanted to be a jerk I would have said yes, but let's face it, do I need something that I've waited this long for and can't wait until 1030 AM on Monday? I didn't think it would be the right thing to do.
Oh yes, I also had an issue with CallVantage, but it got resolved, with professional follow up by someone in Kansas City. I didn't have to call their ace PR guy Gary Morgenstern to get it fixed. I didn't have to play the media card. They just fixed it.
Yesterday, Saturday, I spent the morning updating content on a client's web site. It could have been done by their staff on Monday. But, the client, who is also a friend, needed it done and was busy with other matters. I took an hour and did it. Why? I value my clients and treat their needs as my own. The day before my client asked that the programmer do something that was not part of the bid. I paid for it and will not bill my client. Why? It’s about getting the job done right.
A few weeks ago I missed a typo on a printing job for another client. I paid to have the job rerun. Now I have put in systems to prevent this from happening. I hired a copy editor and a proofreader. Will those steps completely stop things like that from ever happening again? No. But as I was taught, “we eat our mistakes” and “the client comes first.” Sadly that’s not the way things are these days in the tech customer support area until you get high enough. That's sad.
If companies will empower their employees to solve the problem the customer has and then find out what happened, we’d all save time, and be happier. More importantly if they would just replace what's broken at retail when possible, none of this would happen. It just would be like the old days when the "customer was always right."
What this all means is that customer service in America is really screwed up. Sure, some get it right, but more don't, and that's a real reason for concern.
Thanks for reading.
Andy
AOL looks like they are getting ready to go up on the auction block to me.
They are cutting out broadband, eliminating divisions (Shoutcast/WinAmp), and more. They are doing this while they are working on rolling out a VoIP product.
Me thinks two things. First AOL wants to be the dominant dial up player in the market and is working to gear everything in that direction. Second they are looking like a company that is about to be sold. By trimming staff, high cost centers and not pursuing a grow to where the market is going strategy, they are making it easier for a suitor to figure out where the core value of the company rests.
In my view the glory days of AOL are long over. They have become what they fought so hard not to be, another Compuserve.
A few hours since I posted, AOL issued this statement.
I'm glad they bit. If you look at how AOL has operated in their relationships with the RBOC's they have struck one deal in once market, and then over a series of months made similar announcements. While AOL can spin this anyway they want to, the facts are that in BellSouth's backyard AOL is getting out of the business of selling broadband.
Is this the abortion or the harbinger of things to come? Time will tell.
PaidContent.org has a story item about New York's YES Network creating a broadband delivery model. I have for many years been saying that the telcos are the next cable tv network and if they want to deliver true content over DSL, that sports and movies will lead the way.
Imagine VoIP and Sports, plus Sports Talk Radio, all over the same connected pipe. My late father, who used to read the paper, have a radio on with sports talk, the TV on watching a game all at the same time, and only didn't call the talk show hosts, but wanted to, because I was in the sports team PR world, would be in well, heaven if this came to be. He used to ask me when I was online back in the 80s, if I ever saw that day coming. I did then, and continue to this day.
In his own way, my dad was a multitasker before the word was in vogue. I too did that. Newspapers, magazines, CB radio, phone, tv, pc, stereo, all in my home office, heck we called it a den. Today we have Skype and other softphones and similar ways of connecting by voice. I receive my music using Winamp's Shoutcast, Musicmatch, Rhapsody, Windows Media, Real Player. I read on the screen of laptops and desktops. And now, my TV comes via the Windows Media Center where I watch and record programs. Soon sports will be there, but not as cable, as IPTV, that comes wirelessly, via DSL or cable modem.
I can't wait.
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