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Yet ANOTHER Excerpt from CRM at the Speed of Light, Chapter 4

By the way I've done this so far (chapters 1,2,3,4) you'd think I was pretty organized, wouldn't you. HA! Fooled you. I'm jumping all over the place doing chapters and if they fall in order of completion - a SHEER coincidence. This is the chapter on Customer Experience (not the chapter on mapping the customer experience - which is Chapter 21. I TOLD you I wasn't organized!). I've given you a case study excerpt that I think you'll find interesting - though the company, American Girl, has been discussed before.

As always, the Wordle of the entire chapter- not just the excerpt - and then the excerpt - not the chapter. At least this one looks like I wrote the chapter correctly.....

(1)The Transition from Management to Engagement through Experience

"Companies used to focus on making new, better or cheaper products and services...Now the game is to create wonderful and emotional experiences for consumers around whatever is being sold. Its the experience that counts, not the product…People…want capabilities and options, not uniform products…business is there to provide the tools." (Source - Business Week 12/19/2005)

"We have to create a great experience every time you touch the brand, and the design is a really big part of creating the experience and the emotion. We try to make a customer's experience better, but better in her terms." - (Source - A.G. Lafley, CEO Proctor & Gamble)

Why should customer experience supersede customer management as the operating paradigm for a successful CRM strategy?

Simply, customers are demanding it and customers are human beings like you, who I presume, remembers that you are a customer too.

This is more than just a nice homily to the personal side of human beings. This is a foundation for CRM if it's to be done successfully.

The premises are not too complex:

1. If a customer likes you, he will stay with you.
2. If a customer doesn't like you, in time, he will leave you.
3. People are looking to control their own lives.
4. People are looking to fulfill their own agendas. They are self-interested.
5. If you help them control their lives and fulfill their agendas in valuable and unobtrusive but memorable ways, they will like you.
6. If you fail to help them, they won't like you and won't continue with you because someone else will help them.

Those premises are the entire practical foundation for CRM 2.0. Simple, but the rest can be complex. I'll simplify the complex for you this entire book. I promise.

(2)The Experience Economy Realized

In 1998, Joe Pine 2 (who you met in Chapter 2) and James Gilmore wrote what has since become a classic, "The Experience Economy: Work is Theater and Every Business a Stage." Their central premise was that customers were looking to businesses to provide them with not products and services, but experiences. Products and services, the backbone of the old business model, were created to be in service of the experience. They also made the point that customers would pay premiums for those experiences.

What Pine & Gilmore make clear is that these experiences are the foundation for how the company constructs its business model (see Chapter 6). Products become the props and services the stage for the experience. The enterprise is able to charge for the experience which is both personal and memorable. I would add also sharable to their equation.

This is perhaps the most important aspect of CRM 2.0. A personalized experience that is shared - at least can be shared - is what differentiates one company from another - and engages the customer in ways that are unique and immersing.

The way that Pine and Gilmore put it was that this could be a commoditized experience. I would simplify it and say, if the customers find it valuable, they'll pay for it.

HORRORS!! How do you pay for an experience? Easy. With money.

I need to assert reality for a second. No one is talking about those who are having difficulties meeting bills or who have to scrape by each paycheck or who have no way of earning a living. These are for those people who can afford it. This is a business strategy, not a social strategy. Many businesses, like salesforce.com, have strong philanthropic programs that aren't just for PR purposes. But what we are talking about is something that people pay for - like any other commodity. This is not to be confused with their deeply personal and organic experiences that happen spontaneously. These are created experiences designed to delight and be memorable. They are authentic only in the regard they are what they are openly intended to be. Please don't confuse authenticity with spontaneity or natural growth.

Pine and Gilmore knocked it out of the park with their notion of how business experiences worked. As the millennial divide was crossed, customers' demanded personalized experiences as part of the way they were engaged and treated by the companies they were choosing to deal with.

While, of course, Starbucks, now in trouble, is the classic experience that since Pine & Gilmore has been used by the rest of the known universe, the Experience Economy is best reflected by one even more calculatedly encompassing experience - Mattel's American Girl dolls and the world that has been built around them.

(3)American Girl - A Cup of Tea and $200.00

The average cost of a pair of Fisher Price dolls is $38.00. The average cost of a Mattel American Girl doll duo is $205.00. Gaack.

Why is that?

Because American Girl has been intelligent enough to understand that their market is the mothers and grandmothers of the little girls whose imaginations they intended to capture. Rather than just sell a product, they are selling a story. This is an experience not just a plastic object. Here's how it works.

(4)American Girl - The Company

Where Fashionology LA is new, less than a year old, American Girl is an iconic company to both young girls and businesses looking for a model of success. It was founded in 1986 and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Mattel, Inc. in 1998. The numbers of staff are between 1800 and 4700 during the holiday rush. They have their HQ in Middleton Wisconsin with 560,000 square feet of doll brainpower. Over a million people a year visit their American Girl Place stores and 650,000 subscribe to the American Girl Magazine, making it among the top 10 children magazines in the United States. All in all, the numbers are big, but as you'll see, the customer experience is even bigger, which makes for an even bigger return on investment (ROI).

(4)American Girl - The Movie

In July 2008, to primarily positive (81%) reviews, a movie, starring new wildly in demand kid actress Abigal Breslin, Chris O'Donnell, and Julia Ormand, called "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl," hit the theaters. Note the title. Yes, this was based on the American Girl doll character Kit Kittredge, a doll with a life history in the 1930's U.S. Depression era.

The plot in a nutshell - Kit Kittredge, daughter of a dad with a failed car dealership, and a mom taking in boarders to make ends meet, writes articles on a typewriter in a tree house. She writes an article on a hobo camp that she tries to get the newspaper editor - who is mean - to publish. He refuses. In the meantime, her mom buys chickens and Kit goes around selling the eggs. Her mom's locked treasures are stolen and all signs (a footprint) point to a hobo boy named Will who is innocent. Kit and her friends Zach, and Ruthie (another actual doll) investigate to prove Will innocent.

What makes this truly amazing that this is the 4^th film production for American Girl - the first three were made for TV movies.

Even more amazing is the following illustration (Figure 1):

Figure 2: The Experience Counts: American Girl & the Movies

Look at the prices for the various products. Kit and Ruthie are $205.00 for the pair plus a few accessories, though you can buy them separately. Then there are coordinating items like Kit's Dog Grace, adopted in the movie for $18.00 or her tree house for $250.00. Plus there are the "you might also like" items like Kit's bedroom collection - $135.00 or Kits Bed and Quilt set $80.00. This might seem insane to you because you're a guy without a daughter for whatever reason, but there are parents and grandparents paying for this without reservation - even if a large gulp precedes the unreserved payment.

But the experience doesn't stop with American Girl movies. That's just a small part of this.

(4)American Girl - The Store Experience

Four hundred dollars for a visit to an American Girl store is de rigueur. When you go to the store, you can get your doll's hair done (and yours), have lunch with your doll in the café - which is amazing, since to my knowledge, dolls don't have digestive systems. Even though, mom and youngster can eat hot dogs, lemonade, and dessert while their dolls are sitting next to them in special doll chairs attached to the table. Of course, in keeping with what you will see is their model, the chairs are also for sale. Now look at what varying permutations of the hot dogs and lemonade will cost you in the American Girl Place (one of two types of experience) store at Chicago's high end Water Tower Place.

• Brunch is $18 per person, plus tax.
• Lunch is $20 per person, plus tax.
• Afternoon Tea is $17 per person, plus tax.
• Dinner is $22 per person, plus tax.

It doesn't stop with just food. There is a theater where you, your child and her doll can watch " The American Girls Revue^® for $28.00 per person. In case you were wondering, the doll is not a "person" as far as the price goes. There is also always Bitty Bear's Matinee: The Family Tree™, for a mere $15.00 per person.

In preparation for that big matinee, you can get your dolls hair styled for between $10 and $20. For a further price, you can get a photo of you and your doll taken that is then placed on the cover of a souvenir issue of American Girl Magazine (only $22.95 for six issues of the real deal).

But it doesn't stop there either. Needless to say, each store has dolls, books with the stories of the dolls, and clothing and accessories for the dolls to buy.

In addition there are special services like birthday parties, personalized tours and activities and…

Then there's the dolls themselves.

(4)American Girl -The Dolls

The American Girl experience is of course organized around the dolls themselves. There is a certain almost scary brilliance about how the dolls are used. They are not just products, but, as we will see in Chapter 6, the dolls are the centerpiece of the new business model that drives CRM 2.0 - which is, as we will see in detail in Chapter 6, an aggregation of products, services, tools and crafted experiences that are made available to customers to fulfill their own agendas and personalize their own experiences.

There are multiple lines of American Girl dolls but two are significant for us - and for space considerations.

The most famous line is the American Girl Collection line. The dolls each represent a period in history that has a story around it for the doll themselves. For some reason, the years that they represent all end in "4." I have no idea why. In any case, each of them has a book that tells their story and a line of accessories and clothing that reflect both their heritage and history. For example, here is the Kit Kittredge story according to Wikipedia "Kit Kittredge is growing up in the early years of the Great Depression in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her family struggles to adjust to the realities of the economy after Kit's father loses his job. Although referred to as 'Kit' in almost all books and promotional material, Kit's full name is Margaret Mildred Kittredge. She got this name when her father kept singing her the song, "Put All Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag", after he learned it when fighting in World War One. It should be noted that although the year 1934 appears on the cover of the book, 'Meet Kit' is actually set in 1932. The Kit books were illustrated by Walter Rane."

There is also a line of contemporary dolls that becomes significant (more or less) if you remember the Edelman Trust Barometer back in Chapter 1. They were called "American Girl Today" but in December 2005, the name changed to "Just Like You" dolls. 2005 was the year that "someone like me" became the most trusted source. I'm not sure that they are directly related but this reinforces the trend that occurred that time - a nodal shift toward a customer ecosystem dominated by peer trust - and moving away corporate trust.

The way the doll works is that you get 28 options each with a unique combination of face mold, skin, hair and eye color that your little girl can customize to be whatever she wants. This is directly in line with Pine & Gilmore's concept of the commoditization of experiences. You provide the customer with choices that are substantial and flexible and they pick and choose according to their personal desire. That's exactly what the story is with the Just Like You dolls.

(4)Why It Works

American Girl seems to be pretty money hungry, exceptionally pricey, and yet, parents I've spoken to who can afford to provide their children with this experience have no problem with the cost because of the incredible thrill that their kid(s) get from the visit, the stories being told and the totality of the experience.

What you are paying for here are not dolls but the tools for the child's imagination and the memory of the experience. They are engrossed in the story of their doll. It has a specifically imagined personality and also an actual story to go with that personality. That story is supported by the accessories, the clothes, the furniture and then the ambiance and attention that they and the doll get when they go to the store.

Yet, the target market is the parents and grandparents who can pay for it. People are willing to pay for a premium if they see the value in paying for it. They are willing to pay the extra if there is a memorable and sharable experience associated with the purchased goods. CRM 2.0 aims at that experience squarely because it is the experience that binds the customer to the company in ways that a product sale alone never can.

Think of it this way. The memory of the experience will be there when the dolls have long turned to whatever it is plastic degrades to.

Oh, want some numbers? Here goes. While Barbie sales in 2006 were down 13%, American Girl sales were up 15% to $436,000,000 with an operating profit of $100 million. That represented 8% of Mattel's gross sales and, get this, 15% of their operating profit.

To continue this string of left brained return, there were over a million visitors in 2006 and their revenue per square foot topped $500, which outside of Apple stores, which is an insane $2800 per square foot, is the highest rate in the world.

Not too shabby for dolls.

    Technorati : American Girl, CRM 2.0, CRM at the Speed of Light, etc.

DirecTV Doubles to Left

It's that time again.

Every two months as you probably know, Ellen Filipiak, SVP of Customer Care at DirecTV writes a blog entry on the progress they're making in both fixing the problems that they've had with a lot of their customers over a long time and the new stuff they're doing. While the reviews have been mixed, I have to admire Ellen for her absolute commitment for sending me something each two months and always on time. She's been awesome about that.

AND

This month, the discussion is considerably more straight - comparing where they were a year ago (when she came onboard) to where they are now - which is a legitimate horn tooting because it acknowledges the problems they've had in the past with their customers and shows what they're doing to fix them. The fact is, as a customer I want them to both acknowledge it and to then solve it. I don't want them to be bad. I want them to be good. This month, a real live set of steps. Not marketing hype. Straightforward. Good for her. Looks like she might be the person DirecTV needed.

Ellen, take it away.

Filipiak Steps to The Plate....The Pitch....And There's A Drive!...

Hello, Paul!

As 2008 moves forward, I thought I might return back to an earlier post from late last year to highlight actions we've made within DIRECTV as a result of our call center visits to learn more about the customer care organization and find ways to improve on current practices.

We also reviewed our online site and fundamentally asked ourselves how we answer each customer inquiry to discover better approaches to customers' questions.

Here are actions resulting from that review:

First, we made changes to our online platform. We made it much easier to register for online services; we reshaped our programming and hardware ordering areas; and upgraded our e-mail service to help customers find answers faster.

Regarding registration, customers requested two things: make it easier and provide flexible ways to retrieve their password and allow updates to their e-mail address at log-in. Our web team took this feedback and implemented these changes late last year. We've since received positive feedback from customers on these changes.

Until recently, adding hardware and changing programming was not intuitive or well-coordinated. Many of our new offerings are dependent on specific hardware tied to specific programming - so linking both made sense. Now, where programming and hardware choices are dependent and a customer has a decision to make, we added clearer messaging to help them make that decision. So if a customer decides to order our HD Access programming package, we now check their account to verify they have an HD receiver, and if not, we show clearer messaging that indicates it's required to have both. At this point, we provide the customer a choice to continue with their order with an HD receiver added or make another choice. Again, these changes were made by our web team based upon customer feedback.

We are also upgrading our e-mail software so that many questions can be answered while still on the site, rather than waiting for a person to respond. If the question requires a personal response, our new e-mail process will gather more customer information, helping our agents respond in a more timely and accurate manner.

Also, we will be adjusting our hours of operation on May 11^th. We will be available 24/7 to answer technical questions and our automated self-service options (web and phone systems) are also available 24/7. Since most customers call with billing, account, and installation questions during the day, we are changing our hours and are readying our staffing levels to match that. Our new hours of operation for non-technical calls are 8:00am to 10:00pm based on the local time of the customer.

Finally, we are in the process of revising which calls each representative takes to help resolve issues the first time a customer calls. For example, over 80% of the time a customer reports a problem ordering PPV, the issue is related to their bill. From a customer's perspective, it seems like a technical issue - PPV won't work. However, by sending these calls to a billing agent, we can resolve the root cause of the problem. For the small percentage of calls that require technical assistance, we can also get them to a technical representative quickly.

While each of these changes has been quite an effort by numerous teams here, we feel each will make a difference in how we serve our customers as we continue to listen closely to their needs and desires throughout DIRECTV.

As always, I appreciate the opportunity to share the changes we are making and to hear your feedback. Enjoy the upcoming baseball season!

Regards,

Ellen Filipiak

Senior Vice President, Customer Care

Ellen.Filipiak@directv.com

Technorati : CRM, DirecTV, customer service

Politics Online - 15th Annual, 600 Strong, First Class

I'm a political junkie. I admit and I've been politically sober for....ummm....a lot of years. Its important to admit it. I was in politics once and now I'm not but nothing gets the blood rushing to my head (you figure out which one) like political discourse and, with the rapid accession of technology and sudden interest in customer engagement a.k.a. constituent relationship management a.k.a. CRM (thank you, Barack Obama) and the revivification of a 60s-like environment in the U.S. its all good and exciting and I LOVE IT! For awhile now, I've had a spotty (but soon to be official) relationship - far less than I'd like - with the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet (IPDI), a think tank associated with George Washington University. In fact, I like these folks so much that I'm going to be the 2008 Practitioner Fellow for IPDI and I'm proud of that. They are concentrated on the application of web technologies and social constituent strategies to the electorate and I'm proud of being associated with the thinking. Which brings me to what I'm going to be jotting on here: The just finished 2008 Politics Online Conference.

Politics Online 2008 - Tipping Point or Tippling Point

On the balance, day 1 of the conference which was all I was able to attend due to work that I needed to do, was extraordinary with 600 of the most concerned, lively attendees I ever encountered. I have something of a political past and I saw a plethora of the idealist variety of politico - of course mixed in with the usual politic self-aggrandizing type who's in it for the "whatever they are in it for". But this is a younger crowd and IPDI brings that exuberance and social concern out - so that's who predominated. Exciting for an old child of the 60s like me - especially when I saw how they debated the issues that technology brought forth. My expectations on this were sky high and other than the opening plenary session, which I hated, it was amazing. I'll spend some time speaking to why I hated it and then more time telling you about the rest of the conference which more than made up for the "defensive contrarians" on the initial panel that opened the conference. Before I get into it, let me tell you that the work done by the Director of IPDI, Julie Barko Germany (and her staff and partners) was abso-friggin'-lutely spectacular. The level of conversation was something that was balm for the soul and fire for the heart - because it was typically (with some exceptions) about the application of technology for social good in the political realm. These were people who not only thought about the technology as cool but saw it as applicable to solving greater problems in the world - hunger, global warming, etc. They were Republicans, Democrats, representatives of every campaign, federal, state and local offices, party organizations and advocacy groups galore. There were technology vendors, of course, like Blue States Digital who seems to lead in developing state of the art political digital environments - though that is observation, not core analysis (that will come some time soon). But the discussion and buzz around how to utilize social media, CRM and social networks for campaigns, congressional offices, advocacy ad infinitum, was intense and bracing and fascinating and made one (me) want to roar back into action. So, as I listened to the plenary session in the AM, my dismay began to rise as I heard two academic elitists - meaning people who were more interested in defending their quirks and their positions by rising to the level of obnoxious than providing anything of value to the 600 eager listeners in the audience. What was horrible was the arrogance of all but the Google guy (former DNCer Bob Boorstin). I'm not going to give you their names but will call them the USC guy and the "So-Called Futurist." Their fundamental premises were cynical and they treated the audience with disrespect - and had little of value to say. For example, the USC guy bristled over one of the audience saying that 70% of internet traffic was porn and he almost yelled at the guy saying that this was untrue and that a recent USC study proved it was 40% - like that actually mattered. But even more was his assertion that with the rise of ubiquitous computing and the ability to increasingly personalize content delivery, he was afraid of "balkanization" - meaning that you would only receive the opinions and ideological statements and "stuff" that you wanted to hear - and he PROUDLY showed how noble he was with "I listen to Rush Limbaugh every day" - as if he deliberately exposed himself to dangerous toxins each day in the interests of free discourse and contrarian opinion maintenance and purity. While sitting there, I wondered what planet he lived on. Did he ever have sex with another person or go to a conference with 600 people or interact beyond third party communications? If you don't live 100% on the web and can't control all the activity that gets pushed to you AND you in fact, actually meet with other humans out there, then the odds of you never hearing opinions that aren't filtered toward your thinking are about ZERO. We are humans. We interact. We differ by a lot or a little but we differ - all of us. There is NO way his so-called "balkanization" can happen because we live in a society - and we will personalize all we want on the web and still hear contrarian thinking. Way the world works, bunky. The "So-Called-Futurist" was actually more offensive. He not only threw technology terms like WiMax and RFID at IPv6 at the audience without any clear explanation as things that will impact us greatly in the next 18 months but then got into this weird ubergeek discussion about trust, privacy, etc. that led him to say the best way to deal with these issues was by never joining social networks. He was SO proud of this. First, I doubt that the implementation of IPv6 or WiMax will be effectively even near complete within 18 months. For example, Sprint, who was the big pusher of WiMax and planned a 3 billion dollar investment, effectively withdrew that idea and investment sometime in the last few months because they began to see the issues that it brought up. While IPv6 is certainly the way to go, its impact won't be felt for awhile, because at the moment, there is a perception that we have sufficient room in the internet address space to hold on for a bit. He was saying what he was saying because he likes hardware and he likes to show off to audiences. His cynicism was blatant besides. His "I don't join social networks so I don't have to deal with issues" was no different in concept than a recluse who thinks the human species is 'dirty" and the best way to deal with it is to avoid it. Ugh.

But The Best Was Yet To Come - And It Did

Okay, that gets rid of the ONLY blight on this wonderful event. Because the rest of it more than made up for these misogynists. The bulk of the rest of the day was breakout sessions and I attended two and at the same time moderated one of them.

Going to School and Learning Something Important - Two Times In A Single Day

I attended two of the panels in breakout sessions - one on the development of mobile social applications and another on the application of social networking to political campaigns. While both were great, I want concentrate (for space and time reasons - though not the existential variety, the pragmatic - meaning I don't want this to be too long nor do I have much more time write it) on the latter not the former.

Social Networks - Political Campaigns

This panel was run by my friend and colleague, TechPresident blogger and key player at the Center for American Progress Alan Rosenblatt. Also, I might add a truly discerning drinker of single malt scotches. On his panel he had the social web jefes from Ron Paul's campaign, Rudi Guiliani's campaign, John Edwards' campaign, and a guy from Fred Thompson's campaign. As Alan pointed out, Clinton and Obama weren't there because that happened to be the day of the Ohio and Texas primaries so they were kind of tied up. This was packed and fascinating and buzzed the whole time. The discussion was about the application of social networks to campaigns and the lessons learned when it came to failures and successes in how to do them. Justine Lam, Ron Paul's key web strategist, pointed out that he had 84,000 Facebook friends, 106,000 Meetup connections and 109,000 MySpace friends and that level of connection was one of the key reasons that he was able to raise the kinds of funds he did - $20 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 for a campaign that couldn't win. She made the point that actually only Richardson and Obama built their own social networks (though I'm not sure that's the case) but they found that $1 million quotes to build one were too high so that they did more of a reach out and work with existing social networks. Many of Paul's supporters were already on the web - marginalized (her term, not mine) programmers and others who were Libertarians or anti-war Democrats or youth for whom "freedom" resonated as a message. The value of this was that by intersecting social networks of those who were likely to support him, the supporters took ownership of the campaign from the ground up. Guiliani's approach was too late and too little but there was a plan for social networks. The campaign developed a Team Rudy social application and the results were amazing - within a month email signups tripled and fundraising escalated to the point that at the nadir of the campaign (Jan 2008) they had their best fundraising month. But, as she pointed out, a bad message or bad strategy still trumps a web presence. The John Edwards campaign had a web strategy built around integration, interaction and accessibility. They were unique in their creativity too. THey sponsored a contest with Eventful that worked kind of like this

1. Demand Edwards on Eventful in your community
2. Ask Edwards question
3. Then based on Eventful numbers someone won and Edwards would directly and personally answer the question you asked.

Or something like that. They did events online with Elizabeth Edwards - so they were always accessible. There was one really interesting technology they used - Upscoop, a free tool from Rapleaf, that lets you upload your address book and then searches over 400 million profiles and tells you what social networks those friends in your address book are on. Doesn't do Outlook as far as I can tell. But THAT is really interesting and a great idea. I could take you on and on in this particular panel because it was invaluable and shows how important a campaign's use of a social web strategy was critical to any progress and was going to be more critical as time progressed.

Making Data Actionable, Dudes

I was the moderator of a panel that wasn't all that exciting by name, but ended up being very exciting due to the participants. They were:

1. Me
2. Bob Greenberg - President of GH International (a forty person company) and the leading homeland security consultant in the U.S. - with a strong focus around the use of social technologies in homeland security (and he's my brother)
3. Bruce Culbert, CEO of Isymmetry and the former head of BearingPoint's CRM and Supply Chain practices; creator of IBM E-business
4. Scott Rogers, Senior Director of Customer Initiatives at David's Bridal - a practitioner star
5. Thomas Vander Wal, the inventor of social tagging and President of InfoCloud Solutions - a Web 2.0 legend

We had about 40 attendees to the panel and the discussion was wide-ranging from Bruce identifying the key ways to think about data - one of which was making someone accountable for its use; to Bob discussing the Virtual Alabama use of Google Maps Enterprise Perpetual License as a core for this brilliant first responders site; to Thomas identifying how to use social tagging in a campaign; to Scott talking about how David's Bridal handled web complainants with specific strategies and criteria for action. There was a key discussion around microtargeting that bears some repetition because it was a theme throughout the day and a subject of some real interest, concern and occasional ire. For those of you who don't know what it is - it's the practice of granular targeting of a prospect so that a super-targeted highly personalized explicit message could be sent to the constituent OR so that a potential voting pattern could be uncovered. So for example, if I knew what scotch you drank, what books you read, what kind of house you lived in and what car you drove, I'd have a good chance of knowing who you'd vote for AND I could send you messages that reflected all those preferences. One thing that I pointed out, thanks to a discussion with Alan Fuller, a principal in Flat Creek Consulting is that if the culture of the political entity remains the same, then a microtargeted message is still just an outbound message shoved down someone's throat - the difference between refined and raw sugar. Microtargeting's value comes when it helps you understand your constituent in a way that allows you to serve them better - not spew on them more specifically. Social tagging is one tool that allows that granularity and exposes that knowledge but is in the hands of the constituent because its their tags that are the core of the granular knowledge.

Who Won?

There is no question that IPDI pulled off something that is vitally important to the future of politics in the U.S. Why? Because it embraced and started the dialogue on what is the most important issue facing a campaign - win or lose - or an elected official. How do you engage your constituent in an era where their expectations have dramatically changed. This is a conference that actually went a long way toward doing that - and focused on which technologies, strategies and cultures were critical for that success. This was honestly a case where the cynicism of a few was drowned in the enthusiasm of the many. The wisdom of this crowd of 600 prevailed. IPDI Rocks - exactly when it should

DirecTV Progress Report #2 - Ellen Filipiak Takes The Floor Again

Hello all, I'm back from Singapore. Got a bunch of other matters to cover with you including the Singapore trip, the beginnings of the CRM iPhone Bakeoff and something I'm writing on 2007's greatest concept, Neo-Narcissism. Blog entry to follow on that today. But first, I want to present the latest in the every other month progress reports from DirecTV, written by their SVP of Customer Care, Ellen Filipiak. She was timely in getting it to me. The reason its a few days later than August 1 was because I was in Singapore. So the lateness is my fault.

Please feel free to comment all you want about it. I'm printing this exactly as I got it with no changes except to make it bold. In a few months, I'll do an analysis of what we've all seen, but I will say she seems to be making some genuine progress. You'll note the differences between June 1 and this one in tone, content, approach and information....

Greetings!

In my last update, I shared that I was planning to visit most of our call centers with the express purpose of listening to customer calls as well as getting feedback directly from our representatives on ways we can improve service to you, our customers. Many of the comments I heard match what customers say when communicating directly with me or other members of our leadership team.

At DIRECTV, we handle millions of phone calls each and also make about 1 million visits to customers' homes on a monthly basis. The vast majority of these "touches" are handled in one call or visit. Like most organizations, though, we have areas in which we need to make improvements. I would like to share with you some of the areas we will be working on.

Providing accurate and consistent information

During my site visits, I learned that the knowledge tool our representatives use as a resource to help our customers contains some conflicting information. We are in the process of reviewing everything and removing outdated and conflicting information. We have also put into place a new review process so we can ensure this situation does not occur in the future. Pretty basic….we just weren't doing it as well as we could.

In addition, we just completed a review of all of our troubleshooting materials and guidelines, in conjunction with our field operations, engineering and training teams. We have made several modifications to our troubleshooting procedures, which ultimately will help us identify and resolve problems more quickly for our customers. We will continue to refine these efforts as more models of hardware become available, especially High Definition products.

We have also been reviewing how calls are distributed to our representatives, to make sure our customers are getting to the person who can best assist them based upon the reason they are calling. For example, we want to make sure that our customers calling with a question about their receiver or picture quality, is immediately given to a representative who has been trained in technical troubleshooting. Similarly, if the call is about a bill, we want to send it to a billing representative.

We know that it is very frustrating to explain the reason for a call, only to be transferred to someone else. By making some changes in our routing, we have already reduced transfers from one agent to another, although we still have work to do on this.

Simplify our promotions and fulfillment process

It looks like one of the most frustrating issues for customers has been with our rebate and fulfillment process. Earlier in the year, we did not do as good a job as we could have explaining what our customers needed to do in order to receive their rebate or gift (such as a portable DVD player). Also, the forms were not being processed in as timely a manner as they should have been.

We have simplified these processes for future promotions and have given our representatives more tools to help customers when questions do arise.

Better coordination with our field operations team

We are working closely with our field operations team to ensure we have better, more accurate information to provide customers who are calling about the status of a technician arriving at their home. We have not solved this issue completely, but are working on this, and I will post updates on our progress in the future.

We are also working on ways to ensure the order the technician has contains the list of all of the equipment needed to complete the work ordered by our customers. While our technicians carry some additional inventory with them, occasionally, we don't have enough equipment to complete the job at that time. We understand how frustrating this is, and have taken additional steps to review the accuracy of orders prior to them being given to technicians.

I also wanted to remind everyone that there are many different ways to reach DIRECTV. On www.directv.com, you can complete many transactions (such as paying your bill or ordering a movie) as well as find information about our products, programming, pricing as well as troubleshooting tips. You can also complete many transactions in our automated phone system at your convenience.

Finally, I wanted to acknowledge that we have had some challenges over the past couple of months with the software systems we use to support customer care. This has resulted in us not being able to assist customers immediately when they called us. We apologize that this occurred and want to assure that we have taken the appropriate steps to prevent future problems.

My team and I are aggressively working the items above as well as many other initiatives, which are fundamental to identifying and meeting our customers' needs. As always, I appreciate Paul's letting me share updates with you, and look forward to providing more updates in the coming months.

Regards,

Ellen Filipiak

SVP Customer Care

    Technorati : CRM, Customer Experience, DirecTV

Light At The End Of The Satellite: From DreckTV to DirecTV - I Hope

Take a look the right. You'll see that there's no counter anymore on the DirecTV side. Why, you all ask? That is curiouser and curiouser...devotees of Alice In Wonderland might think, lifting their eyebrows.

It's gone because I had what turned out to be a very pleasant and productive chat with the new Senior Vice President (3 weeks on the job) of DirecTV Customer Care, Ellen Filipiak about not just what I saw as my gripes with DirecTV but what I saw as their CRM issues - all those outlined in prior posts. She was candid and because she is THAT new and I admired her candid responses and her charm too, that I won't repeat what she told me. But I will mention what we've worked out.

Ms. Filipiak has agreed that she will post the status of the DirecTV transition from anti-customer (in fairness, my term, not hers) to customer-centric on this blog every two months starting with a post on June 1.

I believe her and with that, down comes the counter.

The calendar for her comments will be:

June 1, 2007

August 1, 2007

October 1, 2007

December 1, 2007

Ad infinitum

I think that she's a good person and was honest and forthright with me. So let's cut her some slack, give her some time and hope that we get the authentic picture from her on what's going on with DirecTV.

Industry watchers and DirecTV customers take note.

I know I'll be watching more than just TV here.

Technorati : CRM, DirecTV, authenticity, customer experience, customer-centric, trust

So Far DreckTV Hasn't Learned A Thing

Further Update: 72 Hours After Last Call

On Monday, I spoke to DirecTV's Office of the President and ran into an account manager, who, as everyone did, apologized to me for the shoddy treatment they received and then, when I asked her to read the blog entry which of course catalogs this whole sordid affair, she said:

1. They have only restricted access to the Internet so they can't go to the blog
2. They have no email address I can send anything to
3. So the only thing I could do is print out the blog and fax it to them.

What, of course, is astonishing, is that this is the President's Team - the high end troubleshooters who are directly accountable to the Office of the President at DirecTV. There is no inbound access to these people except fax and phone and they aren't trusted enough to surf the web.

I asked to speak to a supervisor.

This was Monday morning at about 9:30 PST or so.

They said that a supervisor from the President's team would call me back between 24 & 48 hours.

I gave them my cell phone and office phone to call.

Its now just short (4 hours) of 72 hours.

And I'm waiting for that call....

Comcast and other cable companies got the Major League Baseball package last night.

Just a thought right now.

Random and Tired

Next entry after this one is gonna be the Neighborhood America profile. But today, I'm REALLY tired. Woke up at 2:00am and never went back to sleep. So I'm taking a break from my preparations for the certification series on social media and business that's being co-taught by me and Chris Carfi, the social customer guru who runs the (what else?) Social Customer blog, one of the most influential business-focused, way cool, 2.0 blogs in the industry. We're opening in San Francisco on March 27-28. If you're interested, go to the BPT Partner's website and sign up. This is a good time to do it. You can still get the discounts, and if I love you, I might be able to get you a great deal or even a free pass to the course.

But I have to love you.

Random Musings From a Set ofTired Synapses

Here goes.

Companies to Avoid Like the Plague - You're gonna know these companies because they're big and famous and gross. First, Creative Labs - the Soundblaster people. Why, because they truly suck at customer service. I have yet to run across a company that is either so grossly incompetent that is actually staggers the mind or just doesn't really care about customers. The short story: I have a problem with their wireless G55W 5.1 speakers, which just don't seem to configure correctly. I also have an X-Fi Gamers Edge card that came with my new system (I'm so mad, I'm not even gonna give them the benefit of a product link). I've been emailing with their tech support guys since the beginning of February. Why that long? It takes them 5-7 days to respond to EACH email. The last email indicated that I might be missing a cable. Normally, you would think that they would simply say "We'll provide you with a cable." That's all of $5.00 worth of effort for them - including the friggin' cable. Not them. Their response is the following, word for word:

Dear Paul,

Thank you for responding to Creative Customer Support. We appreciate the opportunity to assist you.

In response to your email, the Green, Black, and Orange cable should have been included with your Gigaworks 550W speakers. If you look on the package contents listed online (http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=4&subcategory=25&p

roduct=14661&nav=packageContents),

should be listed as the "Three mini stereo to dual RCA cables (for connecting to your Sound Blaster or other multi-channel audio card)."

One end of the cable should be the three Green, Black, and Orange 1/8"

minijack connections. The other end should have RCA connections. If this cable was not included with the package, you may need to check with the place that you purchased it from to verify that you didn't get an Open-Box item. If you didn't purchase the speaker system too long ago, you should be able to exchange it through them.

If you still require assistance, please reply to this email with any previous correspondence to ensure the quickest and most accurate service.

Best Regards,

(PG: I REDACTED THE TECH'S NAME)

I kid you not. They won't even send the cable, saving me what is already a massive headache with a VERY expensive speaker set and card.

Avoid these fools at all costs.

The other?

DirecTV.

I'm a premium A-list customer with them, spending a bloody fortune every month and the MLB package every summer. I needed some repair and a new install and they basically said, "hey, A-lister, thanks for your business. We TRULY appreciate it. We'll have someone out there in a MONTH to take care of the repair and install." Then when I spoke to the supervisor, he tried to convince me to be grateful it wasn't three months! He claimed they were adding people as fast as they can. Smart guy but I'm not convinced. As soon as I can figure out an option, I'm gonna take my A-list butt out of there.

A month. So glad they "value" my business - at zero it seems.

CRM for Google. Gag. - Etelos announced their "beta" of CRM for Google, a couple of days ago. I'd like to write a long review on the quality of the functionality and the features compared to other appropriate CRM applications/services on the market, but there isn't enough functionality to do that. After reviewing what Etelos had at their site, including a series of REALLY lame videos on the offering. What's astounding to me is that all this offers is contact management, calendar management and scheduling and some other PIM capabilities with a sprinkling of some sales "stuff" - hard to call them functions. They try to pass off a couple of email marketing features as CRM - and that's about it. I actually thought this might be one of those really funny spoofs from "The Onion" but it was real. This doesn't even qualify as a bad beta, nor does it fit the "throw it out there because we can get fast feedback in a web 2.0 world" sort of way. It simply stinks.

SAP Moving Back to Apps? Heard It On The Grapevine - In the midst of all the buzz around Oracle's purchase of Business Intelligence vendor, Hyperion for $3.3 billion - the same Hyperion that runs a lot on top of SAP applications, and in fact has 55% of its financial base with SAP applications, AMR's Bruce Richardson made this curious statement in his First Thing Monday column this past...Sunday (really):

"In recent days, I have been hearing that SAP is moving away from stressing its position as a platform vendor and moving back to emphasizing its strength as the applications leader. Indeed, SAP issued a statement yesterday saying that "the Hyperion deal is one more way that Oracle attempts to hide the fact that applications is not its core business, whereas applications has been, and will continue to be, SAP's core business."

Last week, John Hagerty wrote about SAP's purchase of Pilot Software, an early pioneer in executive information systems and maker of PilotWorks, a strategy management and execution monitoring suite. He wrote that SAP "is starting to get aggressive in filling gaps in its vision."

I haven't heard that anywhere else, but if last week's CRM conference is a marker, I didn't really get the more democratic "we're a platform that can work with anything" vibe from the event. It was more "we're SAP and we've got a smokin' hybrid model." So maybe he's right. It bears investigation. It would be good news for salesforce.com and bad news for Oracle if that's the case.

Finally, The Onion for Real - You ever read The Onion? If not, you should. Its a newspaper (print) and online presence that pretty well mocks everything with fake and sometimes prescient headlines (they had a mocking article on a 5-blade razor and voila, the Gillette Fusion comes out a few months later. Even sadder, I actually use it.). TechCrunch, on Tuesday, reported that The Onion had a article on announcement by Steve Jobs of the "iLaunch" , a product that will revolutionize launching products. A riot. Check it out at The Onion. Even better, The Onion did an article back in August 2005 that reported on the release of "Google Purge" a product that will destroy everything Google can't index. Although maybe that was the Wall St. Journal....? Nah.

They are just so cool.

I'm tired. Bye.

Technorati : CRM, Google, SAP, The Onion, bad companies

Pro-Am Finally Means Pro-Active

My degree is in journalism. I love newspapers. It is just AWESOME to me to read a Sunday paper and even the ads for (geek alert) Circuit City, Best Buy, CompUSA and others and drink a good cuppa Kona café while perusing the press.

Even better…do all that and I go downstairs into my basement home theatre dubbed the Ecenter and put on something ranging from classical to Christina Aguilera's Back to Basics, or the new tone poem from Norah Jones and read the paper and sip the java.

Ummm.Ummm.UMMM.

But I think its been pretty obvious that one of the domains most shaken up by the web 2.0 world has been media and particularly the print media which is ignored by the younger set for the far more visceral audio tunes of podcasts and iPod songs and the even more engaging visual delights of Web and soon to be ubiquitous mobile video from the likes of YouTube and ESPN.

Let me make this blatantly clear.

would you rather see?

This?

Or This?

I rest my case.

The fact is though, that we're not just viewing things from a visceral standpoint when it comes to reporting. Actually, with all the blasts at the media, and all their exaggerations, vagaries, overhype of stories that are meaningless; their pandering to the lowest levels of taste found this side of Twinkie and their clear and unadulterated claims of no-bias when that's absolutely impossible, the truth be told, most reporters in the print media or on TV are honest professionals - and I emphasize the words "honest" and most germane to this blog entry "professional."

That means that user-created content and collaboration with the customer and "citizen journalism" buzzwords aside, they know more as professionals than we do as amateurs - usually. Not always.

Long Live Heretics!

See, I'm gonna be a 2.0 heretic here. Meaning that despite my clear love of the entire Web 2.0/CRM 2.0 "thing", I'm gonna violate the temple of 2.0 culture and say something that (horrors) I know that people who love all things 2.0 don't want to hear.

All user-created content isn't good.

Yes. Once again.

All user created content isn't good.

The movement that is creating the onrush of user created content is good.

But a LARGE chunk of what is created by the users sucks big time. I mean, did you see those horrible user created commercials on the SuperBowl? That "Chevy Car Wash" winner of the College Ad where guys couldn't get their hands off a Chevy and stripped down as they stroked it. Not really funny. Professionally produced, amateur written.

That would be this one.

Okay, but enough. What I'm saying is that this isn't the era of "anti-professional" just the era of "self-expression," some of which indicates serious talent, some of which indicates serious vitamin deficiencies. So be discriminating. There is something important & valuable about people who are experts in their craft and love it perhaps too, and something important about customers' desire to collaborate and participate in activities that both enhance their own experience and benefit the companies that they are utilizing to enhance that experience.

All in all, the qualified meaning of co-creation of value. Not the unqualified adulation of user-created content.

All of which brings me to something I found very interesting in the world of the print media.

Gannet is a Bird; Its a Plane (well, no it isn't) Gannett is a Media Chain

Innovation springs from places that are often unexpected. While the major media like the Washington Post and the NY Times are making admirable efforts to digitize and be more "relevant" - their efforts tend to be more toward the purist social network side of the 2.0 electronic house. Oddly, the effort is springing from a source that I wouldn't have expected. The ownership of the newspaper that sits outside your hotel room door most every morning you're there - yes, USA Today and bigger YES, The Gannett News chain.

They are leading a charge that according to a Washington Post article last November that I just ran across, is radically transforming the way that they (and hopefully, other print media) do business:

They will be "incorporating elements of reader-created "citizen journalism," mining online community discussions for stories and creating Internet databases of calendar listings and other non-news utilities."

That is amazing when you realize that most of the other newspapers, even including the pretty surprisingly progressive NY Times are thinking that the new media is developing digital editions that can be read with digital readers. Even this slight move to the fore is considered a radical departure from the eras of Heywood Hale Broun, Walter Winchell and Arthur Sulzberger. So what Gannett is doing is beyond the journalists' pale.

The Gannett initiative is all encompassing and has created quite the fervor around the blogosphere. For a whole compendium of posts on the subject, there is a great blog called CrowdSourcing: Tracking the Rise of the Amateur that has a strong blanket thrown to cover this thing here worth looking at.

The initiatives involve transforming not just the structure and practices, but the culture of all the Gannett regional properties like the Indianapolis Star, the Des Moines Register and the Cincinnati Enquirer, among others. They don't even have newsrooms anymore but they are calling them "Information Centers." Here is the Gannett definition of that from a FAQ on it that you can read here:

"The Information Center is a new way of transforming the process of gathering and disseminating news and information. It is the evolution of the newsroom, focused on gathering the information our readers and viewers want using words, images and video and distributing it across multiple platforms: the daily newspaper, online, mobile, non-daily publications and any other media possible to meet our readers' needs. Creating an Information Center means retooling the newsroom, expanding into multimedia, embracing community interaction, shifting resources and rethinking the way a community is covered. Gannett's Newspaper Division, which has conducted a series of pilot programs to create and test the Information Center concept, organized the Center around seven key information gathering areas: digital; public service; community conversation; local; custom content; data; and multimedia. (More about each desk below). Information Centers can be tailored to fit the needs of the individual operations in each division. "

But that's not what I want to talk about. There is plenty out there on that. I'm focused, laser-like, dead-on, micro-directed at the "citizen journalist" part of this; the use of user-created content in this and what has been nicely called "crowdsourcing" by Springwise and many others in the biz. What biz that is, I'm not sure.

Crowdsourcing v. Pro-Am or Are They the Same?

Just to make one thing real clear. Crowdsourcing is NOT a term that applies to just the citizen journalist out there. Its a term for utilizing human resources outside the corporate firewall. So what I've written on Proctor and Gamble and their use of the scientist networks to help provide a significant percentage of their innovative ideas is crowdsourcing. The mod community in the PC and video games world is crowdsourcing. The use of the 400,community members to design, vote on and buy the teeshirts that Threadless sells is crowdsourcing. Expert doesn't have to be the operant term. Amateur sources who can be problem solving humans are perfectly acceptable with this approach.

One permutation or, really, justification, was James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds.

The book's premise was that the greater knowledge came from the vectored results of the totality of the crowd. I think there's some validity to that idea, but it does at least explain how to approach the sourcing of crowdsourcing.

What Gannett is doing is more interesting, really. They are utilizing the strength of their professionals to, as Michael Maness, the VP of Strategic Planning points out in BusinessWeek, " "The pros do the heavy lifting and build the framework and structure...And the audience can come in and fill in." An example of the successful use of this in a Gannett property that seems to be circulating a lot is the Ft. Myers News-Press found that home buyers were being hit with $30,000 bills for water and sewer line connections - WAY in excess of even the supernatural when it comes to this kind of plumbing effort. The news guys put a short item in the paper and online and asked for input from the citizens, providing the online tools for the input.

BOOM!!

Blueprints showed up online, discussions back and forth between the journalists and citizens and between the citizens and other citizens. Then documents began to appear suggesting illegal activities. There was increased coverage. The scandal hit. The traffic on the site (micro-site actually) became huge and the $30K was no longer the price - apparently.

This is great and a new approach to journalism that isn't new in other fields. But there are two problems. One - general. The other - Gannett.

General Problem

The quality of the material is still from amateurs and can be misleading potentially. But this is a really good thing that's going on here. Just be aware of the misstep.

Gannett Problem

This is a notoriously cheap bunch - penny pinchers. So the suspicion is that they aren't being pioneers in something new and exciting, but cost-cutters with the appearance of something new and exciting. So if it starts to cost something then the new and the exciting become the old and boring fast. But if they are truly trying to innovate so that they can engage the readers in a new more interactive/collaborative model of journalism, then its likely the harbinger of the CRM 2.0 approach to journalism - which is the the true citizen involvement in the stories that affect their destiny.

And that's a good thing. I just hope that it stays good.

Technorati : CRM 2.0, blogs, citizen journalism, podcasts, social media, social networks

They Shoulda Waited

I promised on my latest podcast that I would report back to everyone on my "experience" at the Washington National's "Grand Reopening" of RFK Stadium this past weekend in a game on Sunday between the Cubs and the Nationals. The reason for this was that, in their zeal for improving the fan experience, for a last place team, they hired what is apparently a well-respected "customer experience management" firm (I HATE CEM as a term, though I admittedly use it in lieu of anything better at times), LRA Worldwide, though one that is unbeknownst to me, to train the Nats' stadium personnel in improving the "fan experience" at the ballpark.

For those of you who have been to RFK Stadium in recent years, "reopening" the ballpark is reopening the rift to hell - the ballpark is old, decrepit and has little charm beyond the team that's playing there - a team with little charm except for Alfonso Soriano, the astoundingly talented left fielding All Star for the Nationals - on his way to what may be the first 50-50 season in history - that's 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single season, for those of you who aren't baseball cognoscenti.

Thing is, there is a new management. The Nationals, formerly the Montreal Expos, were owned until yesterday (or so) by Major League Baseball, but a management team headed up by real estate mogul Ted Lerner and Atlanta zillionaire (and Hawks NBA team owner), Stan Kasten, bought them and transferred $450 million in MLB coffers this week. So, in celebration of that, the Nationals, trying to get fans to the stadium despite their last place positioning in their division, decided to "reopen" the RFK sinkhole and at least they powerwashed it.

I'll give them credit. They tried very hard. Between outs they had constant giveaways and fan promotions, a new area for local cuisines and they did the aforementioned powerwashing. The announcer was funny with his pronouncements like "fans running on the field will be prosecuted and besides, how will it look when you tell your cellmate that you're in for running onto a baseball field?"

Not bad and he did a lot of that. Kind of the highlight of the thing.

The work of LRA Worldwide might have gone on - apparently they trained everyone for a single day in being attuned to the fans "thinking" and improving the customer ambiance via customer service training. But they get a C- at best, for any visible changes in stadium personnel. The only thing I can think about that might have represented their work was one of the staff who pointed us to our seat - remembered as an afterthought to say "enjoy the game."

Which I did, primarily because ex-Yankee Soriano hit a double and mammoth home run during the game. Otherwise, the experience was non-descript. Chances are if they needed such a vivid experience, even a CEM firm wouldn't help much because the state of the stadium doesn't encourage a new beginning or feeling of "new ownership" or renewal or anything but an old, old stadium with a last place team and fans who are lukewarm.

LRA either did a great invisible job or there wasn't much they could do. It was sad, because teams like the Philadelphia Flyers or the Yankees or the Red Sox or the Dallas Cowboys or the Packers generate a great deal of excitement when they are good or bad because they have the fans engaged in the experience and proud of the passion and commitments. They do what has to be done to make the fan part of the program. This was just a lot of marketing and polite behaviors (which was still welcome. The stadium staff were very nice) in a ballpark that will be replaced with a new one in 2009 in Washington D.C.

Maybe they shoulda waited until then to "open" rather than "reopen." Reopening the door to the bathroom doesn't mean it isn't a bathroom anymore.

Technorati : CRM, baseball, customer experience

Wired For Wireless Failure - Again

CRM Today reported, interestingly enough, today, that Jupiter Research did some, interestingly enough, research, and found that mobile communities are emerging as a strategy for wireless carriers to drive data usage. The widely covered press release (I saw it in about 30 other locations from June 29 through now), says that "consumers experience mobile communities on their computers for free and expect the same on their cell phones. A focus on consumer experience, not revenue will assist adoption of mobile community services in the near term." Julie Ask Research Director of Jupiter (the company, not the planet - she'd be the Empress of Research if it were the planet), said "Shifting familiar online experiences to the cell phone and enhancing them with location, messaging, personalization and presence has emerged as a popular though unproven streategy for wireless carriers to drive data usage."

Very interesting, a bit disturbing though, since the wireless carriers problems exist far beyond their inability to drive data usage. The idea of an improved customer experience in their case should be driven not by the increased data usage it modestly promises, but by the fact that most people HATE them.

They tend to be remarkably dense on this issue.

Wonderful CSRs + 9 = I Hate Cingular

A couple of years ago, KANA sponsored a webinar I did on "Knowledge Management and Contact Centers" that was "attended" by 210 people. It was a wonderfully successful event. I spoke for 20 plus minutes on the subject as a thought leader (which I think really translates to "they think I'm a leader...little do they know...) and it was good. During that webinar, I outlined this experience I had with Cingular when I migrated from AT&T Wireless to Cingular (who, of course, owned them) so I could get a Windows Mobile Smartphone (since replaced by a Blackberry). I thought the migration, since it was the same company, would take about 10 minutes and $18. It took 9 hours, 7 customer service representatives and somehow cost me $175.00. My point in that particular part of the webinar was that all seven customer service reps were unfailingly polite nice people and every last one of them was wrong about what they told me. I told the phantom crowd online,"so the formula was, 7 unfailingly polite representatives = I HATE CINGULAR!"

The next day a VP of Customer Relations who's name escapes me called me to say that she had heard that I had trashed Cingular on the webinar and what could they do about it to make it up to me?

My response was "fix the way your company works with its customers." I offered my CRM Consulting services to them as a FREE OFFER and she was, like, "Oh, that would be great. I'll get back to you soon." and I was, like, "yeah, okay, sure." And she was, like, "no really." And I was like, "okay, I'll be waiting. Bye."

I still am.

The point here is that mobile communities to drive data usage are a pretty short sighted way to view the customer base. They are a lot more than just another revenue squeeze. Here is an industry that is worried sick about the churn rate, but they forget that they're churning customers, not butter. If the way they see mobile communities is strictly as a revenue strategy, then I still hate Cingular and all those mobile companies that think that way - even if they are unfailingly polite in the way they grind our expectations as customers into the dust.