MEGO: My Eyes Glaze Over

Mobile Picture Monday: Airplane Face

2010-07-11T20:53:57Z

Before taking a flight a few weeks ago we took the kids to a restaurant that is also on the flight path near the airport. We sat in the window and watched planes take off and land. At one point a 767 flew by the window, thundering and massive. The two year old shook with excitement and had the funniest expression of shock. We called it his “Airplane Face”. And, today it is a face he does on demand. When on the same trip the pilot allowed the two boys into the cockpit he was happy to provide them with a demonstration of this face. I didn’t get that on camera- but here is his Airplane Face.

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My Car Troubles – Not as Bad as it May Seem

2010-06-02T00:48:14Z

Last Thursday was one of those days I wished was over at least 10 times. It started out pleasant- the weather was nice for a trip into the big city for a video shoot – and traffic was nothing unusual for big city travel. The video shoot went smoothly and I was even able to leave the city before 5PM. It was a scorcher so I drove- windows down when I was keeping a good click.

Then the first sign the day was going to turn happened. Urgent work call to ruin my highway sing-song.

Then as I am driving down the highway I make for the pass because other drivers are terribly slow. Eek. The steering wheel seems to have locked up. It takes Herculean effort to turn the wheel just slightly to move into the left lane. Of course I am also on a conference call so I stay on – not saying a word – although I desperately want to ask someone for assistance. But, I think…I bet I have done this. I probably forgot to do some regular piece of maintenance and I will get laughed at and later informed I am unprofessional for interrupting an important call.

I continue on driving and talking on the call. The highway is straight. Getting off at my exit had me in a bit of a freak out, so I finally said “I have to jump off the call, having a bit of car trouble.” Pulled over I call Mazda road side assistance, explain the situation. Tow truck on its way. I turn car back on to move the car into a parking space in the lot. Steering works! Who knew a car is just like a computer. Reboot!

I call road side assistance and insist I am hunky-dory. They insist they have to get my car, unless I can get to a dealer without going back on highway. I can’t. They agreed to let me go home where the tow truck would get me. When the tow arrives the pleasant driver tells me he has picked up at least three other Mazda’s with the very same condition. Virus?

After he leaves with my 1 year old vehicle, I call the dealership prepared to beg and plead for a loaner. The receptionist says – sorry we don’t have any loaners. I explain that my car is under warranty and that my power steering is out. She immediately puts me through to service. Odd. Service says no problem we will rent you car. I didn’t need to cry, scream, beg? They tell me they will arrange it all the very next day.

8 am, the dealership calls ME to let me know that they have contacted Enterprise Rent-a-Car. He also gives us a heads-up that they have 15 cars on the lot with the same issue as my car. Pandemic! They have parts arriving on Wednesday, but aren’t sure how many. I guess this is his way of saying- we don’t know how long you will have a rental. I arrive at the rental place assuming I will need to explain my situation again, but I am in and out of the shop in five minutes.

Thursday ended badly. But, Friday morning the customer service I had from the Mazda Dealership and the Enterprise Rent-a-Car gave me hope for a better day. I expected the worst (don’t we all, when it comes to service?) and was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t need to pester, harass or plead for what I deserved. Good job Mazda, and Enterprise for playing along as well.

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Customer Care Online: Interview with Logitech’s Ben Hong (Part 2)

2010-05-24T17:23:14Z

Earlier this week I published Part 1 of the interview with Ben Hong, Sr. Mgr. Technical Services, Global Customer Care and Digital Home Group for Logitech.The first half of the interview gave you a brief introduction to Ben and his team at Logitech.

This is the final portion of this written interview.

Part Two: People, Process, & Tools- Logitech with Ben Hong

What kind of training is required for team members who are active online? And, does your company have a social media policy in place? Can you tell us a little bit about these efforts and how they help (or hinder ) the team.

We train our team on how to be online ambassadors and effective writers for blogs, micro-blogs and knowledge bases (SEO). So far, training has been extremely important to maintaining consistency and control. Without it there would be chaos. Currently, the online ambassador training provides our employees with knowledge of the social media policy. It’s helpful, not a hindrance.

If you could share your favorite tips, best practices, lessons learned or social media must have – what are they?

Look before you leap….have a framework and plan before you get started.
Start with social monitoring. It is incredible what you learn your customers are talking about and provides critical insight about where your early investments should be made.
If you are managing a social media program for customer service you must be social internally as much as you are externally. Key learning’s and shared insights complement VoC programs.

There are many tools for tweeting, listening, and overall participating in social media – which ones do you use either personally or for your work?

Co-tweet, Radian6, TweetDeck, backtype, delicious, FriendFeed, NetVibes, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, WordPress, Yelp, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg, Google Buzz, ShareThis, Technorati

Whether you have your own community on your “dot com” or you participate in existing social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Get Satisfaction etc) – what do you do to build the community and encourage your community members to become ambassadors for the brand?

We have a reputation model in the community that helps us and community member identify and recognize key contributors. Our Logi Legends and Gurus have a close relationship with my team and we work side by side with them in the community. To help them with their work we often send them our products.

Do you reward community members for the work they do? If so, how?

Nothing formal … yet.

When helping customers in social channels do you reply publicly or privately? Does it differ by channel? Discuss how you make this decision.

We reply both publicly and privately. If we are managing a customer escalation in our forums or on Twitter we respond publicly but ask for specific information to be provided privately. We do this to protect customer information. Otherwise we respond publicly to all else.

Is YouTube a part of your support efforts? How do you use this and other video channels for customer service and support? Do you create the videos or is another team responsible for these? Do you engage with the YouTube community? How do you measure success for your video efforts?

Our plans for YouTube are in development. We plan to publish 1-2 videos per month.

Many companies have gone through some highly visible social media gaffs (Dominos, Southwest); while others have seen offline issues go viral due to social media (Graco recalls, Toyota recalls). In your opinion how should a company deal with crisis online? Do you have a process in place that helps you determine next steps in the case of your own “crisis”?

Responses should be quick, open and honest. To that end, Logitech was put to the test recently when the US National Labor Committee reported on Chinese labor issues back in April of this year. Joseph Sullivan, our Sr. VP of Worldwide Operations, responded with a letter to the committee and we posted in online. In his letter which he shared, he stated the plain truth. Thankfully we had severed the relationship with the offending factory, however, he was clear to state when and why. It was met with positive comments and response.

What is next for you and your team? What are you excited about today?

Twitter enhancements, YouTube and Facebook integration are on our roadmap. Right now I am working on Radian6 setup and configuration.

What is your favorite social media tool, network or other for personal use?

LinkedIn. I was an early adopter and have seen how it evolved. It helps me keep up-to-date with colleagues, recruit, participate in communities of interest/practice and share what I am working on.

Thanks to Ben for taking the time to share!

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Customer Care Online: Interview with Logitech’s Ben Hong (Part 1)

2010-05-25T02:10:12Z

Often when we talk about social media in business we talk about “social media marketing” which is a term I dislike for various reasons -one reason being that it supposes it only lies in one department rather than an integral part of how we communicate with customers, employees, and stakeholders.

One area that should be part of the grand scheme when it comes to social media is customer service. Today many companies are finding ways to connect with their customers directly via the web, often offering support and help. Since this is a focus in my work I wanted to highlight the subject on my blog. Through my work I have had the opportunity to chat with many others that are using social media for support. I have learned a lot from them and want to share some of these conversations through a short series of interviews. My hope is that you will find this information helpful in building your online customer care communities.

In order to facilitate these posts I sent a series of questions to a few folks and they were kind enough to respond. The first interview is with Ben Hong, Senior Manager Technical Services, Global Customer Care and Digital Home Group at Logitech. Due to the number of questions I have broken this post into two posts. Part two will be published later this week.

Part One: Customer Care Online First Steps- Logitech with Ben Hong

Can you describe your career path that brought you to where you are today?

It has been one focused on creating the best possible experience for customers by implementing service innovations and managing for high performance.

How would you describe a typical work day?

Busy, busy and busy…so it usually starts even before I leave for the office by reading and responding to email, tweets and Facebook. When I arrive, I try meet with each member of my team individually to discuss projects/tasks and provide the team with feedback or direction. The rest of the day is spent managing programs which normally involve participating or chairing meetings, preparing and delivering presentations, briefs and reports. For the last few months I have also been spending time throughout the day monitoring our discussion forums, Twitter, Facebook and Blogs. Putting into action our social media support program is what excites me about work these days.

What responsibilities fall into your department or team? Where does you team fall in the organizational structure ( eg. customer service? communication?)

My team and I lead social media, knowledge management, VoC and training initiatives within the Global Customer Care and Digital Home Group organizations of Logitech.

How many people work on your team? What are you able to accomplish with this size team in the social space – e.g channels? quantity of daily responses?

My team is made up of two products specialists, curriculum designer, and various contractors that provide technical writing, training and video content.

Blogs – We write one Tips and Tricks blog post each week for the corporate blog and respond to on average 2-3 comments each day.
Customer Forums – We monitor customer forums from 20-30 responses per day for the team.
Internal Forums – We monitor internal discussion forums for our customer care agents and respond daily to 10-20 posts per day.
Twitter – We co-tweet with marketing/PR teams and respond to 2-5 customer care or technical support questions each day.
Social Monitoring – We just acquired Radian6 as social monitoring tool. However, we have been using a variety of free tools to track blogs, twitter, product reviews and other social media. We typically report once a week on social media trends/buzz for our Harmony Remote Controls products.
Videos – Currently creating prototype videos for publication on YouTube and Viddler. Our plan is to publish 1-2 videos per month.

Social Media plays a large part of your role, but typically people associate the use of Social Media with Marketing, what are the biggest benefits realized by your business due to your team’s participation in social media for customer service?

We are early on in our adoption of social media for customer service, month three. There are two early benefits to our participation in social media responding to and managing negative customer experiences, learning more about our customers through social monitoring. Our long term goals are tied to the mission of delivering an engaging online customer service experience.

How did you initially convince the business that engaging with customers via social channels for customer service was the right strategy?

It’s a work in-progress, but we asked to create an incubator team. Our chain of command from CMO to VP to Directors have all been extremely supportive and eager to see the program grow.

Generally, customers don’t care what department you work in when they connect online. Do you work closely with other internal departments to integrate social media communication efforts? If so, which ones?

Absolutely. We work closely with marketing, sales, PR, CX, QA and product/software engineering teams. Our marketing and PR social media programs are more mature and we have learned a lot by partnering with them.

There are many social channels where your customers will engage with each other – how do you decide which social spaces you will participate in?

Given where we are with the development of our program we have focused primarily on mass social media applications and networks. Social monitoring tools will help us to decide if and where we move next. For us it is critical to look before we leap.

As social channels grow, and customers come to expect businesses to respond online to their requests – there has been a lot of talk about scaling efforts. Is this a concern for your team? If it is how will you scale to meet the growing business? If not, why?

Yes, scale and resourcing is a critical part of our plan, which is why we have decided to take a measured approach to building out the program. Currently we have a small team, with a roadmap for adding resources.

How do you measure the success of your social media efforts?

Success is and will be tied to our corporate and departmental goals. So, NPS and cost will be key measures of our success.

Do you have KPIs for your team (for example time to response) if so can you share what these are and why they were chosen?

We are working on them.

Watch for part two…

In part two I ask Ben questions around the people, process and tools he is using to accomplish the work they are doing online for customer service.

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FTD = Failed to Deliver

2010-05-16T14:25:11Z

Creative Commons (Flickr) - Carlos Lorenzo

My husband ordered flowers on the Friday before Mother’s Day for his mom. He went through FTD because he needed to have them delivered as we wouldn’t be seeing her that weekend. According to their website if you get your order in by 2 pm – in most cases the flowers could be delivered “same day”. He was pre-ordering for Sunday, so he was giving them nearly 48-hours notice.

From the FTD website:

In most areas of the United States and Canada, orders placed as late as 2p.m. in the recipient’s time zone can be delivered that day (earlier times may apply to some areas and at holidays).

So, we should have expected that there would be no issue delivering flowers to my mother-in-law on Sunday. But, when he spoke with her that day she had not received the flowers. They chalked it up to the fact that she was out during the day and missed the deliver person.

On Monday there was still no sign of the flowers.

On Tuesday my husband emailed FTD (he prefers email than phoning).

On Thursday morning we received a generic response from them:

Thank you for your recent purchase from FTD.COM for _______. We apologize but the arrangement that you ordered was not yet delivered. Please contact us thru email or call us regarding this concern. Again, we are very sorry for what happened. Thank you for choosing FTD.COM. Sincerely, Princess Email us via this link: http://www.ftd.com/custserv/email.epl?type=email&AID=orderinquiries&nextpage=orderinquiries Call us: 1-800-SEND-FTD (1-800-736-3383) (Toll-free in the U.S. and Canada) 1-630-719-7756 (Outside the U.S. and Canada) Shop with us: www.ftd.com Shop with us: www.ftd.com

So on Thursday he called and FTD finally delivered the flowers – only four days late for Mother’s Day. As an apology for the four days he got 10% off that purchase. Wow. That doesn’t even cover the taxes. It doesn’t cover the long distance charges between son and mother trying to determine if flowers were received. It doesn’t cover the time he spent online and on the phone sorting the issue out.

What should have FTD done to guarantee they don’t lose a customer? In my opinion, a full refund! If they had come back and said – we are truly sorry this happened and we understand that we were unable to deliver on our promises and therefore we will refund you this purchase. I would consider using their services again…as they would have taken ownership of their mistake. Maybe I am asking too much. So perhaps they could give us 10% and remove the delivery charge…since that was lacking. Instead we got 10% and an excuse – “not our fault” said FTD “the florist lost the paperwork”. Do I care why it happened? No. Do i care if it was Mary’s fault and Flowers R Us? No. I ordered from FTD. When it comes down to it…it is FTDs fault.

For FTD – make these notes in your customer service handbook: Ways to not lose a customer

1 – Take ownership over failures, don’t make excuses and don’t blame someone else

2 – Give the customer a refund worth their time and troubles not one that feels more like an insult.

3- And, even if you must use a generic form letter (obviously they don’t deliver a lot of flowers) have it be from a person. Sign a name. Give me a human to talk to.

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Wordless Wednesday: Super Heroes

2010-05-11T01:43:18Z

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The Semantic Web = Information Overload

2010-05-11T02:28:34Z

Via Mashable. Mine eyes glaze over. But this is good, despite brain being fried due information overload. I must sleep…

Watch some great thinkers discuss the notion of categorizing the web, including Clay Shirky and David Weinberger. Then rest your brain and watch Glee or maybe Yo Gabba Gabba.

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

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Checkin’ In: The “rules” of Foursquare

2010-05-08T01:57:05Z

I get a kick out of Foursquare. I am not a gaming sort, unless you count MarioKart and Rockband, but badges and points and mayorships give me the giggles. But, please don’t invite me to Farmville.

What do I like about it?

Cyber stalking my friends
Sharing notes about what I am up to at that location and sending it to my Facebook update
The thrill of getting mayorships when you least expect them and the excitement of a new badge
A little competition with friends (badges and weekly leader board)

Foursquare has grown in popularity since I started using it, and with popularity comes the folks that look for “the rules” or the “etiquette”. And, then slowly we see an unwritten gaming protocol form or best practices emerge as we did for Twitter. But still, for the individual who prides themselves on neat little buckets, and proper rules and regulations – Foursquare may not be for you. In fact it may seem downright chaotic. The truth is anyone can add a location, which means some places can have more than one “Check-in”. Egad! Which is the “real” one!! And, while you may envision a “check-in” as the building or retail shop – someone else decides they can check-in at the front door, backdoor and toilet.

I say it is all in good fun. If the randomness of this bothers you – maybe read up on tagging in my article on Social Bookmarking or read about folksonomy from one of the most collaborative sites on the web**which at one point gave people heart burn when they thought about letting the crowd create an encyclopedia

I am not saying there shouldn’t be “rules” or “etiquette” – but it is all in fun. So, relax. If your friend feels he wants to check in on the Highway – hey, it is his life. No one is handing out free tires because you are the Mayor of the 401 and Winston Churchill. But, Peter Kim makes some fair points in his post “Should You Be Checking in on Foursquare” – maybe it isn’t cool if you are the mayor of the coffee shop you work at…unfair advantage and it loses out on the shop getting any play for loyalty. But, at the same time – if there is no free coffee or discounts for the mayor – does it really matter? Peter also mentions one that I think has some weight – a sales person checking in to a prospect. This could have implications for their work, and could cause issues with regards to up to competition – unless that user is carefully guarding their check-ins.

So what “rules” do I follow on Twitter?

Generally speaking I check-in to “real” places. Mostly because I am not inclined to set up a venue for “my coach”. And, I don’t think my friends need to know when I go into the public washroom. That said, cool if you want to. But, don’t be surprised if eventually you don’t get points for checking in to your “Superman underpants”. If you read the Foursquare Blog they talk about tweaking the program by adding some neat little cheater code so mayorships and badges can’t be taken from your sofa.
When I check-in I choose carefully how I share…some I don’t tweet out, some I don’t update on Facebook. Some just go to my Foursquare friends (who are just that…friends).
If the location already exists I use that one. If I don’t like how it is set up (maybe it doesn’t have a cute icon, or the address) I go in and change it later on – not create a new one!

While it is a fun game, the best thing about Foursquare is keeping a tight reign (hehe) on your friends and (over) sharing with them. While the badges and points are cool…and I love seeing my name at the top of the leader board -

the coolest thing is realizing that a friend is at the same place…at the same time as you. So, while it might make your obsessive compulsive side cringe with the chaotic. Step back, relax. Have fun. But, play fair -they are your friends afterall.

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Mobile Picture of the Week: Me and a Black Eyed Pea

2010-05-02T02:57:32Z

Yes, this is Will – I – Am…

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New Years Resolutions – A Quarterly Review

2010-05-02T00:43:11Z

I started out the year with an incredible list of “to-do’s”. I wouldn’t call them resolutions, because those aren’t a part of my belief system. Well, perhaps the truth is that I have never been terribly good at keeping them. So this year, I decided I would have “objectives”, and even looked up tracking calendars and considered sharing a Google Calendar with a friend so that we could keep each other in-line.

So, what was on that list.

Lose weight ( I will not tell you how much, do not ask).
Read a book a month.
Write a blog post every week

There may have been others – but let’s review how well I did.

Lose weight
The intention was to join a gym and go at lunch hour twice a week. Then go once on the weekend. I have yet to join the gym. Why? – lunch time at work is spent working.

Read a book a month
This should have been easy – I have a snazzy new Kindle and about 50 books i haven’t read on it. I have finished Tribes, and half of Linchpin. (Yes, I appear to be on a Seth Godin trip).
Why have I sucked the big one on such an easy task? Night time is for watching my PVRd shows (Lost, Lie to Me and Law and Order) and ummmm working.

Write a blog post every week
See above.

So chalk January, February, March and part of April up to bad organizational skills, an unfair workload, and an obsession with keeping my inbox under 50 emails – and let’s move on. The plan is – i have my blog live again and the summer opens up opportunities of sitting in the sun with my book as the kids play freely in the yard. As for the gym…well I might need more motivation for that. Perhaps, a first step will be taking the Wii Fit out from under the coffee table.

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