The Social Media Value Web

Other industries may have a value stream but I'm convinced that we create a value web in social media. Social media is about relationships layered in with the ease of information exchange. That is a powerful combination and now I have anecdotal evidence as to just how much more value is generated by this social media value web.

Ten years ago or so, I had an amazing experience with Hertz. I wrote a letter immediately afterward and have told my story countless times since then. The letter was perhaps framed upon some wall for a while but I'm sure ultimately was replaced by other letters earning a place on that wall. And because it was such a lengthy story in its entirety, I only entertained a few people at a time every once in a while with my saga of the vacation that almost wasn't. As impassioned as I was, I didn't want to intentionally bore anyone.

Not surprisingly, while my experience was itself quite powerful, my sharing that experience has had minimal impact over the years.

Fast forward a few more years and along comes LinkedIn and after a while, LinkedIn starts allowing people to tap into one another's expertise via the Questions and Answers function. Because customer service matters to me, I started paying attention to questions about Customer Service and ultimately ran into two different questions back-to-back for which my Hertz story was an appropriate response. I realized I hadn't written about it on my blog, so I decided it was past time to tell that story for anyone to find who wanted to hear about it.

My Hertz story has attracted a few people here and there so sharing it on the internet does indeed seem to be having more impact, but the increase in value is still pretty minor compared to what has happened since then.

Along the way, LinkedIn got even smarter. They themselves started tapping into the passion of people who really believe what they're doing to help get the word out about what's possible via LinkedIn. As part of the Friends of LinkedIn group, I get to hear when they're looking for people who have had successes with LinkedIn that they can share. When 1to1Media wanted stories about fabulous customer service that they could share on their Everyday Customer Champion website, I quickly pointed them to my Hertz story. Now Hertz has an even bigger audience - and perhaps I do as well.

It doesn't end there. Hertz has apparently gotten smart about social media too. They have a Hertz Fan page on Facebook and apparently picked up on the Everyday Customer Champion post, which they then shared on their FB page. Then "Mike" from Hertz even went so far as to post a comment via Intense Debate which opens up the conversation even further.

And of course, being fascinated as I am by the inner workings of social media and the internet, I'm now writing about the inter-dependencies - which will end up in my own Twitter stream, FriendFeed, and Facebook pages and hopefully benefit everyone else further still in one big positive feedback loop. Sometimes the tangled web we weave works to everyone's advantage.

Inevitably, the internet with the added capabilities of various flavors of social media makes a small world that much smaller. Let's keep using that superpower for good.

What do you have to say to the world that benefits you and others?

United We Stand... Or Fall

It used to be that a company's worst PR nightmare was a parent dishing at a little league game or to be prominently featured on the 6 o'clock news in a negative light. Not anymore. Now a company's worst customer service nightmare is to reap what they sow in terms of suffering at the hands of someone who truly understands how to use social media to make a point.

Hint: musicians love their instruments and rely on them to make a living. Do NOT - repeat, DO NOT - mistreat a professional musician's instrument.



It doesn't matter if it's David Carroll or the previously-better-known Louden Wainwright III.

In the matter of just a couple of days, hundreds of thousands of people have watched, commented on, and retweeted Carroll's music video, United Breaks Guitars (last check, one version showed more than 1.5M views). Tough spot for United to be in at this point, but they're doing the best they can, having completely botched all earlier opportunities to handle the matter differently or avoid the trouble altogether. Sure, the fine print reads that luggage might get damaged along the way, but presumably not through gross negligence.

Lest anyone feel inclined to blame any one individual (such as the poor Ms. Irlweg named in the song), note that more than one baggage handler was involved and Carroll dealt with multiple United employees. This was a systemic failure, all the way from the lack of caring on the part of various employees to the policies that hand-cuffed those who may have wished to handle the matter otherwise.

And it's not just Carroll who has experienced such horrible customer service at the hands of an airline. You don't rack up a million views of a video just because it's clever and well-done (though that certainly helps) - this song strikes a chord with people because they've all had similar experiences. When something resonates this strongly, social media just acts like an amplifier.

Not surprisingly, Carroll doesn't want compensation at this late date. That opportunity is long gone. If United really does use the video for training, it could go a long ways toward improving future customer experience, but no matter what, they have a long haul ahead of them to get out of the hole they've dug for themselves.

If the best way to handle such situations is to avoid them in the first place, let's take a look at what it takes to deliver stellar customer service.

First, the front-line employees themselves have to care. They are the ones who are handling bags, food, repairs, whatever it is that you're selling to or doing for customers. Front-line employees are also the customer service agents, wait staff, front desk people, flight attendants, etc who are interacting directly with customers. If they don't care about customers or their role in keeping customers satisfied, nothing else matters.

So what makes employees care or not care? Each business is a bit different but making them feel treated fairly, including fair compensation, comes to mind. If the business exhibits no loyalty or caring for their employees, it is rare they will show any loyalty toward the business or caring for their customers.

It doesn't mean that you have to throw money at the employees, but in an era when there still exists a larger-than-before pay gap between executives and line employees, and businesses like airlines regularly demand (and get) concessions from employees only to renege on promises later or fail to share the wealth when more profitable times come along, it's wise to think about the impact that has on employee morale. Argue all you want about who creates the most value for the company but just remember that the effectiveness of your customer service initiative is only as strong as your weakest link.

And there are other ways besides financial rewards to motivate employees. Give the middle managers (and their managers) the training needed to find out what is meaningful to each of their employees and the power to act on that information.

Fostering a culture of caring about customers and using that sentiment to guide everyday decisions and actions is another key. This culture of customer service has to spread throughout the organization and not be limited to front-line customer service agents reading from some script. So often we talk about empowering employees to do what's right without really delving into what that's supposed to mean and ensuring it looks, acts and sounds like the ideal of ensuring happy customers satisfied with your product or service.

When it comes right down to it, whatever the excuses are for not doing the things that result in happy customers, it just means you (as a business first, as an employee second) don't care about the customer enough to find a cost-effective way to deliver what they want. Where you might have survived a little league game or a negatively-slanted news story in the past, your chances of surviving a social media body blow today are a lot slimmer.

Now is the time to fully re-commit to your customers on a company-wide basis, starting with re-committing to your employees, fostering a culture centered around satisfying customers, and providing the training needed to make satisfied customers a reality. If you don't, you're just a social media-savvy clever songwriter away from ultimate disaster.

How have you helped foster a culture of service in your organization?

Customer Service and Twitter

I am a major advocate of Twitter these days, now that we're beginning to see some more mature uses of the medium beyond sharing the sort of latte the person in line in front of you is ordering. Reputation and brand management is one such emerging use that makes a great deal of sense to me. Breaking news is another - I do hope 'real' journalists and citizen journalists figure out how to play nicely together in a way that drives the sort of revenue that keeps trained journalists employed. We still need them just as much as we need citizen journalists.

Customer service and technical support, the role in organizations that is most near and dear to my own heart is a bit more complicated than the brand management element and may be looking at a reinvention of its own.

At this point, there are two things that I know. Firstly, Twitter (or something like it) will be involved. Secondly, we don't yet have a serious clue exactly how that will look when it's done right.

Twitter will play an important role in customer service because that's where so many customers are and there are more and more of them on Twitter all the time. To ignore customers in the Twitterverse is to sign your own death warrant.

On the other hand, to engage in brand management efforts devoid of any response that is truly meaningful to the customer is to make only empty promises. Customers figure out pretty quickly (even more so when they're talking with one another) that empty promises are just a way of pretending you're not ignoring them.

Fine - so we'll engage with our customers via Twitter and that's customer service on Twitter.

Not so fast.

To be effective and to provide value, customer service functions and technical support even more so, must be scalable and must provide more than one-off responses that are then subsequently lost. Logging customer interactions and tracking reported incidents and making this data searchable - which ultimately evolved into customer relationship management and knowledge management initiatives - are important elements to efficiently providing effective, valuable, and scalable customer service.

Simply responding to customer complaints that show up on Twitter doesn't take that into account so while it might work for a short time - and look good while it's working - it can't last. And then what you've got is a PR nightmare that no amount of brand management effort on Twitter or anywhere else can save.

That means we've got to figure out the why, the how and the detailed logistics of how to make it work. I believe this is a much bigger conversation, and some companies are clearly beginning both the discussion and the experimentation needed to move it forward. And that is truly just the beginning.

There is a great deal of work to be done on this front, which is rather exciting to me even though I'm reasonably certain it's a bit frightening to those organizations figuring out this train is already running much faster than they feel like they can catch up.

Hint - if you don't feel even a bit concerned about that, then chances are pretty good you don't even realize there is a train to catch, which means you run the risk of being run over by that train outright.

But I digress...

Before we can make much progress, we have to identify what customer service needs Twitter satisfies - and also what needs it creates. We have to identify tools and create process that help fully integrate Twitter into existing "best practices" and create new "best practices that are possible within this new paradigm we're creating. True, Twitter is just another communication method, but I've long held (about 24 years, actually) that the mode of communication actually influences the communication process itself. That too is another digression.

One "for instance" on the tool side, Socialtext might provide a solution for some needs; other tools probably exist as well and there are more needed to be built once we better understand the requirements.

On the process side, it's important to work out how best to handle the matter when a customer captures the attention of the CEO instead of a technical support agent as well as how to drive conversations toward customer service rather than away from them to someone else seen as more effective.

This is an old issue writ even larger by the existence of Twitter. Most customer service professionals dread this happening. Not because CEO's shouldn't talk to customers - they absolutely should - but that they should know enough about their inner workings of their own organizations to make the problems better, not worse, and in so doing, still follow established processes so that someone doesn't jump the line just because they know the right @ name to use.

What it really comes down to is that it's probably no less true of organizations than it is of individuals that the increased attention that comes with something like Twitter doesn't change you so much as expose you for who you really are.

In the meantime, I have some thoughts of my own about what it will take to pull this off and make customer service and support work in a world that seems inclined to tip more and more toward Twitter. First though, I'd like to hear what you think, what your questions and concerns happen to be at this point, and what you've seen and heard that works for you.

What do the people depending on me really need?

When a Major Delay = Fabulous Service

Have I told you my Hertz story yet? No? Then you might not believe it's possible to equate a 3-hour delay in a car rental with the most excellent customer service on the face of the planet but I'll swear till my dying day that it's true.

Although I've told this customer service story lots of times to anyone who will listen - that's what people do when they are ecstatic, incredulous even, over the amazing service they've received - it's been a while since I've shared the whole thing and I haven't mentioned it here. It's time I fixed that.

I was reminded of my Hertz experience twice in as many weeks when members of my LinkedIn network asked related questions about service - what constitutes 5-Star Service and a request for examples of Moments of Truth in Service. Although my answers differed slightly in focus, both brought to mind the vacation that almost wasn't.

First, it helps to know how much this mini-vacation meant to me. While everyone else recently has been ridiculing the passenger who missed her flight, I have some ideas how she might have reached that state of collapse. There but for fortune...

In my case nearly ten years ago, our company had gone through yet another in a series of sizable layoffs a couple of weeks earlier. I hadn't had to let go many people myself, but this was one of the few times the line managers had not had much input into the process and that lack of involvement had resulted in some mistakes that made things messier.

Much of that didn't impact me directly but layoffs are never an enjoyable aspect of a manager's job and this was still even more emotional than normal. Helping people cope - on my team and others - and mitigating the hit on productivity was taking its toll.

Then there was the house that we were supposed to be building. The time that wasn't already spent on coaching employees or caring for a 3-yr-old all went to packing up moving boxes so we could tear down our existing home to the dirt. The packing up was happening but uncertainty and delays over the tearing down part meant we had to cancel our midwest baseball stadium tour. After having enjoyed our northeast baseball stadium tour so much the year before, this was a major league disappointment.

In the midst of it all, Tall Person learned of a family wedding and decided it would be important for him to attend. A weekend alone with a toddler for me when I was already feeling stretched - how fun. I started to feel envious of my sister's planned trip to Telluride that same weekend with her infant son.

When my father caught on, he quickly suggested that I fly into Salt Lake City with Small Person. It would be a bit of a drive from there, but certainly manageable. We'd spend a long weekend together as a sort of mini-family reunion. It gave me something to look forward to and I kept myself focused on that ray of hope the way I've focused at other times on the finish line of a long and brutal race.

When departure day arrived, Tall Person drove us to the airport, then went to work for a few hours before leaving for the airport himself. The flight itself was non-eventful, but when I went to the car rental, Hertz had not yet installed the car seat I'd requested. The attendants wrestled with the installation while the agent stood there with my paperwork and driver's license, waiting to hand it over to me when the car was ready.

Still they struggled with the carseat, so being more experienced with that operation, I jumped in to help. The agent tried to stay out of the way and idly looked over the paperwork in his hands. Doing so, he came to a realization and called me over.

"There is a problem with your license. It's expired."

My heart sunk. Immediately I realized the truth of what he was saying. In the midst of everything else that had been going on in my life, I'd managed to overlook that important detail just long enough to have forgotten about it altogether during the intervening months. And just as quickly, I realized the enormity of the situation, even before he spelled it out for me.

"Without a valid license, we can't rent you the car."

There have been very few times when I have come up against truly irreversible mistakes but when it happens, it has always resulted in the same hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach - no, no, no... it can't be true. In that moment, I may not have become the woman in that video, but I understood how she felt.

Not generally one to allow emotions take control (crying at movies doesn't count!), I was suddenly unable to prevent months worth of pent-up tears as they began to slide down my face. I tried valiantly to keep my composure and found I just couldn't. It seemed there was nothing to do but go back inside and re-book myself on a return flight. I wasn't even sure how I would get home from the airport.

As unwanted as they were on my part, the tears were too much for the Hertz agent. He started casting about for solutions. Could my family come get me? No - they were too far away. Did I know someone else in the area who could take me? No, I could think of no one who lived in the area. I had flown all this way for nothing. I was going back home to an empty house, both literally and figuratively.

Still, the agent kept looking for answers. Still, none of them were workable. He went to make some phone calls to see if there might be other solutions he hadn't considered. I collapsed into the chair near the car I wouldn't be driving, my son trying to offer hugs for tears he didn't understand. I called both my husband and my father to share the bad news.

Ultimately, the Hertz agent returned. The very last thread of hope he'd been following showed some promise. Maybe, just maybe, I could get a driver's license in the state of Utah. It had seemed like a slim chance at first, but he'd called around and he was reasonably sure it could work if I thought I could pass a written test. He'd have one of the attendants drive me.

It seemed like a lot to go through, but I don't struggle too much with multiple choice exams and anything seemed preferable at that point to cutting my trip short. I regained control of my emotions, keeping tight rein on hope as well as distress, and Ahmed drove me over to the nearest Department of Licensing office. I called Tall Person to share the shred of hope I was clinging to.

We arrived at the DOL office just before noon, with lunchtime crowds building. I stood in line forever, filling out the license application form while Ahmed, the Hertz attendant, entertained Small Person with paper cranes he folded from forms others had discarded. Finally, I reached the head of the line and explained my plight. The woman was sympathetic but we hit a road block when she realized I could not supply a local address.

"Don't you know anyone in Utah? Anyone at all whose address you could use?"

I tried to search my brain but it was quickly becoming addled with all the stress and the knowledge that the line was building behind me just compounded the problem. No, no family or friends in Utah came to mind. I could think of women with children my son's age all across the US - Indiana, Texas, California, Massachusetts, Georgia - but none of them in Utah. No work contacts either. I started to feel dizzy. The line continued to build behind me. I was sure I was about to become so much bureaucratic roadkill.

Instead, the woman encouraged me, "I'm sure you can think of someone. Just step aside right over there and when you've come up with a local address, come straight back to me so that you don't have to stand in line all over again." I found it easier to breathe again; the tunnel vision that had been encroaching began to recede. I thanked her profusely then pulled out my PDA and set to work looking through my address book for a clue to a local contact.

Finally, I hit on one. A work colleague of my husband's... I didn't know his wife well, but hadn't she mentioned her family was from Provo? I called Tall Person for a third time. He was at lunch with the colleague in question and they had already guessed what I needed.

"I bet you're calling for Jennifer's parent's address, aren't you? Here it is..."

Two major roadblocks down, one more yet to go. Ahmed the Hertz attendant still patiently entertaining my son, I began working on the open book multiple choice exam. The only tough part was locating the information in the pamphlet they provided. I had to will myself to slow down and not panic, and even to remember to breathe. Finally, I had just two more questions to answer. I kept flipping through the pamphlet and could not seem to find the right sections containing the answers.

Then, with the worst possible timing... "Mommy! I have to go!" For that matter, so did I, which was not helping me think. And we were both hungry, having had very little to eat all day. But just two questions to go... I looked pleadingly at Ahmed. He was kind enough to come escort Small Person to the bathroom while I finished my exam. Clearly that was way above and beyond the call of duty; I knew it and was beyond thankful.

Turning in my exam was an exercise in torture. The man responsible for validating my responses pulled out the correction key and started checking. The first couple responses marked wrong didn't surprise me, given the situation. The next few concerned me; how many could I miss and still pass? Then as his pen bled red all over the paper, I stopped breathing again. Feeling dizzy once more, it barely occurred to me that this couldn't possibly be right. No matter how stressed I was, there was simply no way that I could have gotten every single answer wrong. No way.

It seemed odd to him also and he took a second look even before I thought to ask. "Oh, wrong key!" I nearly collapsed with relief.

Validated against the appropriate key, he reassured me that I had indeed passed. I went through the motions of having a photo taken and scheduling the driving portion of the exam I knew I wouldn't be taking and then rushed back to Ahmed and my son, full of smiles and a temporary Utah driver's license in my hand.

Three and a half hours from when I first stepped into the Hertz office, I dropped off Ahmed at the airport again and headed south and west to Telluride, arriving just an hour after my sister and in plenty of time for a late dinner.

When I returned to Seattle at the end of the weekend, I wrote an extensive thank you to Hertz and set about getting a new Washington State driver's license which, given that I was beyond six months overdue, would have been much more difficult had it not been for the Utah license I had in my possession at that point. Meanwhile, somewhere in Provo is a family who has never even met me, receiving junk mail in my name.

Nearly ten years later, I still love to tell people how out of the way the Hertz people went, both personally and professionally, to help. They didn't just provide excellent customer service; they helped me deal with a problem that was entirely of my own making. And while I have no idea which licensing office I visited, I am equally thankful to every agent there who helped me, encouraged me, reassured me, and in every way possible, made it easier for me to accomplish what I needed when just behaving as we've come to expect bureaucrats to behave would have made it tougher - or even impossible.

Some people talk about delighting the customer or excellence in service. Instead, I believe it comes down to just caring enough to do whatever is in your power to have a positive impact on the customer's experience with your brand. Every customer interaction is a tangible exercise in brand management.

That day so many years ago, every individual I encountered provided me with a brand experience that has stuck with me all this time because of how superbly positive it was in the face of utter hopelessness. Who wouldn't want that kind of customer service? The beauty of it is that it doesn't have to cost the company extra.

Sure, not having Ahmed around for a couple of hours had to have been a bit of a stretch for the Hertz guys. But it's not like someone shows up every day with an expired driver's license, so going to such extremes is probably not needed often enough to drive up costs significantly. And I like to think that my continued raving over my experience with them is worth more than enough to cover whatever costs they did incur. The long-term gains for great brand management in the form of great customer service can be huge.

How is your customer service influencing your brand?

Customer Service Fiasco at Seattle City Light

Remember Lily Tomlin from the days when there was a monopoly on phone service? "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." Apparently, the same has been mostly true for at least one power company the past few days. The good news is that with a spotlight on the story, and enough public outrage, apparently Seattle City Light discovered they do have a heart after all - or at least found one they could borrow, under pressure from the mayor's office.

In what surely must have been a PR nightmare, a 13-yr-old boy who is well-known in his neighborhood for fundraising for good causes lost his cat up a 40-ft utility pole when it was chased by a dog. When KING aired the story in their news broadcast last night, I wasn't the only one shocked and bothered by the stupidity of SCL in claiming the cat could come down on its own from that high up a pole (as opposed to a tree), surrounded by buzzing electrical wires.

While plenty of trolls began advocating rocks and BB guns, there is something about the plight of an animal that finds itself in trouble through no fault of its own that tends to get people motivated to take action. Eventually SCL was talked down out of their own tree and apparently rescued Kitty from the pole. Hurray for angry customers.

Why do I bother to speak out about this in public? I regularly comment on customer service issues because it's not just about technology for me. It's technology AND interacting well with other human beings with an eye toward making the combination personally and professionally profitable whenever possible. In this instance, Seattle City Light shot themselves in the foot though with any luck, their efforts this morning may have redirected the shot so that they'll only have suffered a glancing blow.

Telling strangers motivated only by their own sense of justice to call in support of rescuing a cat on top of a utility pole that (as reported by one such caller) that the owner should have kept better watch on the cat is not good customer service. Some of these people were even in the neighborhood expected to be impacted by a brief power outage, were it to be necessary to rescue the cat and if they are willing to go dark for a bit, then that ought to have been a good indicator of public sentiment.

As a customer service agent with no power to actually change policy, what could these folks who were receiving phone calls have done? Tough call, but here's my best guess from the sidelines...

First, once you realize that you're dealing with more than one call, get more information and take the time to check out the story yourself. It should not be a surprise, even to people who don't care that much about cats, that this issue isn't going to just go away on its own.

Next, notify a supervisor immediately of the issue, just like you would report a power outage or any other big event that is likely to result in a lot of calls. Then begin collecting data on the calls and let each caller know that they are not alone in their outrage and that their comments are being collected and forwarded on for further review of the situation so that they truly feel heard and that some sort of action will result.

For those callers who tried to reach supervisors and were denied, my recommendation is the agents should have put them through. This is not the sort of thing you should try to deal with on your own. If the supervisor already on the line with another outraged caller, then say as much and ask if the individual would like to hold or to have their comments added to the others.

Ultimately, it may be necessary to point out that there is such an extensive response on the matter that supervisors can't talk to callers and take action but worded correctly, this should be taken as good news by the callers.

If they were really smart (and it's probably not too late for this), SCL would begin posting cat rescue updates on their website. I realize that might sound like poor resource management, but really it's not, when you consider the importance of call avoidance. Now that the cat is no longer up the pole without a way down, you don't really want to keep fielding more calls from irate pet lovers. Plus, if you have some good photos and a good story to talk about how you came to realize the situation was a much bigger deal than you originally figured it to be, yada yada yada, you might even be able to turn a PR nightmare into something else that makes you look a lot better.

Whether you're an employee (of any kind), a politician, or a power company, it's as much about perception as anything else. SCL has stopped the bleeding in that area but could really benefit from a blood transfusion now after the fact. Openly pointing out what they did right along with an appropriate amount of humility over what they did wrong will go a long way to improving their public image.

How do you recover from personal PR nightmares?

Some of the Best Marketing I've Seen

Coming out of Top Pot this morning, I came across a smiling gentleman selling copies of Real Change newspaper. Ever since I learned that the paper is a vehicle for homeless to get back on their feet while educating the rest of us on the issues they face, I make it a point to try to buy a copy whenever I run across a vendor. Heading into the doughnut shop, however, I hadn't seen the guy, and I said as much while locating a dollar to give him.

"No ma'am," he responded, smiling even more broadly. "The new issue comes out on Wednesday, so I had to get down there and pick up my copies." He thanked me as he handed me my paper, then asked, still smiling, whether I had last week's issue.

Great question - I'm actually not downtown that often so in fact I had not seen the issue before the fresh one he'd just handed me, and I said so. He sealed the deal by pointing out an important article he thought I might appreciate. I handed him another dollar and he flipped over the stack of newspapers in his hand, pulling out a leftover from last week to give to me.

Smiling that charming grin of his, he thanked me again as I walked off, one delicious Top Pot doughnut and two Real Change newspapers richer - I felt certain that the 65 cents he just made on each copy will make some bit of difference for someone who is clearly working hard to stabilize his life. And while I'm unlikely to know the outcome for him, I can say for sure that he exhibited excellent marketing and customer service skills and truly made my day.

What makes you richer?

Anniversaries

Sixteen years ago yesterday (a Monday that year), I walked into the Attachmate offices in Factoria for the first time as an employee. I didn't have a phone, computer or even any furniture, so it was tough to do much, but they sat the two of us who'd started that day down with video tapes of Lisa Ford teaching great customer service skills. I soaked it up because there wasn't anything else to do with my time.

Though I heard lots of complaints from other people about those tapes, I haven't ever come across anything else that teaches customer service any better than that. For customer service, Lisa Ford is my hero.

I'm not sure exactly when the furniture arrived - that was the joke - "Do you have furniture yet?" Some new hires went a couple of weeks or more in those days without even having a chair to sit on because they hadn't found or purchased a spare one yet. Hiring was outstripping the capacity for facilities to keep up.

What I do know is that the first thing to arrive, even before the computer was the phone. That was in the afternoon of Day 2 or 3. Anxious for something to do that approximated technical and/or troubleshooting, I started punching buttons. Hey, why not?

Here's why not... suddenly I found myself connected with an inbound customer call and I had no idea whatsoever of how to handle it. I had no computer, no product knowledge yet, and no idea even how to transfer the call to someone else who could help. Heck, I hardly knew the names of the guys who sat near me.

"Psst! Kevin! I ended up with a call by accident, what do I do?!" Kevin (I think it was Kevin; honestly, it was 16 years - less a day or two - ago!) was kind and patient enough to walk me through the steps to transfer the call and he took it from there. Whew! Get this girl a computer, stat! It'll be so much safer that way and far better for everyone!

The weekend after I started, I got married so in five more days, I'll be celebrating my 16th wedding anniversary too. Somehow, it never occurred to me to negotiate anything beyond an extra hour of sleeping in the day after my wedding so I wandered in at the leisurely hour of 8am that second Monday of work. Somewhere in there, I ended up with a computer and a copy of the software I'd be supporting - EXTRA! for Windows. We wouldn't be trained until the rest of the new-hires started, so I began by seeing what I could figure out for myself. That turned out to be a pretty reasonable strategy as it also gave me an opportunity to assess how intuitive the software was and provide some feedback to Development.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, the rest of the Summer of '92 class started. One of them is, to this day, one of my closest friends, as is another of my co-workers who had started a month or so ahead of me, and a high school friend of mine who had started there another couple of months before that. Another co-worker who first decoded the mysteries of hardware adapter I/O addresses and interrupts ultimately became my boss, mentor, and well-respected (by way more than just me!) friend, teaching me more than any single other person I know about what it means to be an effective leader.

In some ways, the intensity of that time period, all that we learned and gained, and the lasting impact (friendships and otherwise), had a certain summer camp feel about it. It's tough to believe it was that long ago, or that I lasted at Attachmate a total of nine years.

Long gone are the days when so many calls came in that we could never get to them all real-time, leaving the departmental receptionist to keep up as best she could with taking down names and phone numbers such that we would head up between calls to grab a stack of "callbacks". Ultimately we brought in enough new-hires and refined our processes enough to make that particular approach a thing of the past.

We also matured to the point where we were able to have desks all set up for our new hires - with a chair, even! As a manager, I always ensured that my employees never received a phone without also (or first) having a computer, even if it meant I had to steal the phone for a while until the computer arrived. You never quite know what sort of trouble a geek will get into if they haven't got a computer to play with.

If you have enduring memories of a past experience that still impact you today, do share. Or maybe there is some anniversary you're celebrating. Let's hear about it.

In the meantime, thank you from the bottom of my heart to Shawn, Burkery, Toot, and Eric (E). I'm better for knowing you. And best wishes to Renee and Shauna, whatever you're each up to these days. As Garrison Keillor might have said, it was a group that time (almost) forgot and decades cannot improve, at least in my memory.

As for my husband, the tall person, this is about the time when I remember our anniversary is coming up soon, so I'll say now - thanks for continuing to love me all these years. I know that living with a geek isn't always easy and you've made it seem to me and the rest of the world like it is. I love you (still!) for that and so much more.

What (besides a chair) do you need to get started?

Bliss'ed Out

I'm not just a geek. I'm a geek with a passion for customer service. And now I have a new hero - Jeanne Bliss, author of Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action, because she lays it all out there exactly as I've seen it over the years.

Wanting customer service done right, with the right kind of leadership, was the whole reason I got into management in the first place. Although I've worked with some great support professionals over the years, I haven't always found my passion for the customer matched, understood, or supported sufficiently high enough in the food chain to make a lasting difference.

I've theorized that getting attention onto the customer - the real nuts and bolts of what it takes to make customers truly happy with the products and services offered by a company - requires executive sponsorship and action of a level I've rarely seen before. With a nod to the other ways it is possible to make good customer relationships happen, Bliss essentially confirms that assertion with her own experiences and recommendations. I couldn't be more delighted.

A recent search of "Chief Customer Officer" shows CCO's are relatively new as a phenomenon , and some circles still argue the value of a CCO or Chief Customer Experience Officer (CCEO). Although the concept seems to be building momentum slowly, at least it's out there now.

In my estimation, it's not enough to say that we should be focused on customers. Having a deep understanding of what customer service really is and what it takes, operationally, to make customers satisfied and be business savvy enough to go about it in ways that are both effective and cost-conscious all push the degree of responsibility and interaction with other leaders of the organization up to C-level and even merit Board-level involvement.

Focus on the customer has to be real, and it has to exist throughout the company. It can't just be limited to technical support or customer service. Bliss has a good CCO-or-Not checklist for assessing whether a company needs a dedicated CCO to manage customer experiences.

The nice thing about the Chief Customer Officer function is that it more effectively describes what's needed in emerging companies.

In the early stages of a company, there is typically not enough volume to warrant a dedicated technical support or customer service person. But there does still have some be some understanding of how customer experiences will be managed, and how a service operation will grow. And the CEO needs the ear and support of someone who understands all of that so that it doesn't get lost in the process of getting funding and bringing the product to market.

Granted, it's generally overkill to have that expertise in play on a full-time basis. That's where on-demand or interim management can be helpful. Plenty of startups hire interim CFO's for similar reasons. Maybe it's time to think about an interim or on-demand CCO as well.

Clearly we're all still finding what constitutes level ground on this one, let alone best practices. I'd love your comments. I'm also looking for more resources to add to my growing collection of notes on the Chief Customer Officer function. I welcome your recommendations.

What if we paid the same level of attention to avoiding re-architecting customer service and corporate culture as we do to building good products?

Brain Re-routed

In researching yet more issues with my appliances, I ran across an absolute gem today called Shift Happens.




When I'm not battling appliances and unintentionally crusading for better customer service, this is the world that I live in and why I work with the people that I do. Thanks to the folks at Bring Good Things to Life for both the heads up on the video and also for information and moral support in dealing with the company that brought us flaming dishwashers and exploding oven doors.

Here's a tip - even if you've got good service most of the time, stuff still has to work and people have to feel fairly treated.

What gets you back on track again?

Support for Support

The past couple of weeks have included an interesting confluence of events. First, I ran across someone wanting to know how to calculate costs for Support. This question on LinkedIn came to my attention just in time to use it as a starting point in a certification class for Product Managers, where we discussed some of the considerations involved.

I like to see interest in this sort of thing precisely because it's been so very rare in my experience. While it's great for me in that I don't have a whole lot of competition for my services, it's also not that great for the businesses where no one is thinking about Support until way late in the game.

My co-presenter, Nona, and I won't actually get into the detail of designing and costing out an appropriate Support organization until next Spring, but with a re-design in the coursework, we were able to get in early to at least raise the subject while the students were still working out their revenue models and business cases. This is as it should be and I'm glad that we got to spend some time in front of the classroom so much earlier than most people tend to think of Support.

Apparently some of the students are catching on to the importance too, as we saw at least one comment about a team that had completely overlooked the cost of Support up until that point. Whew, one pretend business saved from one of the many pitfalls that are out there!

After talking at extended length with another student who had a real-life need to make some decent cost estimates, I came home and started adding some more detail to the worksheet that I had developed a few years ago. I hadn't looked at it with a fresh eye for a while, so I'd forgotten how good it really is. Once I add in these new refinements, it should be even better.

As much as I'd like to pat myself on the back, though, for my ability to accurately assess the expense side of Support and how it factors in to the rest of the business, I didn't figure out how to do all of this on my own. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Nancy Truitt Pierce and her Service and Support Consortium for all that I've learned over the years about the business of Support and the confidence I've gained in my abilities.

Sadly, I've just learned today that Nancy is closing up the Service and Support Consortium. Though I don't know why yet, I do have some guesses and can only say that it will be a major loss to the Puget Sound tech community. There are people and businesses all over who probably don't realize the powerfully positive impact that Nancy has had on their ability to succeed because of how much smarter the heads of their Support organizations have become under her guidance and with the help and support of their peers.

The loss of this organization means there will be some large, important shoes to fill. I'm thinking I see an online group in our future somehow...

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the SSC Alumni breakfast gathering on March 13th. It will be important to me, and I'm sure to many others, to recognize the passing of an era and reconnect with some great minds.

Each company pays differing amounts of attention to the business of Support. I'm curious about how much you think about that aspect of your business, how well you understand the costs and revenue opportunities associated with Support, and what sort of support is provided to your Support organization. Do share - it's how we all learn.

What support do you need?

Retro Me This...

As forward thinking as I tend to be most times, I definitely have a nostalgic side. I make my kid listen to Bad 70's Music. If I decide I'm really comfortable in the clothes I wear one day, I might just wear them again the next day. Especially if I think you haven't already seen me in them. Today, I'm wearing my now-vintage Attachmate Hardware team vest, complete with the old heart logo. I realize that old logo caused plenty of confusion - and I'll miss it anyway.

I recently spotted an AmazonFresh truck here in Bellevue, and it brought on such a wave of nostalgia, I nearly swooned. Okay, so not really, but it was a way cooler sighting than most people would probably think it to be. So, does anyone know - are these the old HomeGrocer trucks repainted? It sure looked like it to me.

Despite the ease with which some people ridicule HomeGrocer as a failed dot-bomb, I am proud to wear the hat with the peach and I am glad to see the return of the trucks. I'm not a former employee, as plenty of other parents at soccer games have guessed. Just a former customer who was quite loyal to to the service.

Back in the days when Small Person was a young toddler and Tall Person and I were both working full-time in the corporate world, getting groceries delivered was about the only way food was going to enter our household unless you count doggie bags.

HomeGrocer understood their market very well and did an excellent job bringing treats and fresh fruit samples to keep me thinking of things I might add to my next order. Although I haven't tried out AmazonFresh yet, there are some hallmarks of the earlier service that sound very familiar and I'm guessing it's the same business getting a new life under a different name.

Don't expect to catch me at a casino to see some favorite act from my youth anytime soon, but I do enjoy a good comeback. You can bet I'll be looking for a reason to order groceries online pretty soon... and chances are pretty good I'll be wearing that vest when I do. For the second (or even third) day in a row.

Send your experiences with AmazonFresh to techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com - especially if you're a former HomeGrocer customer, and let's compare notes. I'm curious if the market has shifted enough to make this venture a go or if they'll have learned enough from the first failure to make this effort a success.

What's worth keeping or bringing back in your life?

Missed Opportunities

Lately, I've felt a bit like Colbert's "Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger" with all the customer service stuff I've been dealing with lately - problem appliances and great comebacks and such. Really though, it just makes a point that there is a lot of customer information available to companies that they simply don't even know how to access, let alone use. I've been very clear on this point for a very long time. Past employees and co-workers know this, even if they haven't always understood it and so maybe it's time I share some of these ideas with a larger audience.

Every day, consumers are saying important things about (y)our products and services. Often they are saying it directly to us though it isn't always in the form of a product complaint or request for help. Sometimes it's a side comment made during a complaint or request for help. Unfortunately, we only know how to address the direct problems and sometimes we don't even do that particularly well. The trouble is, we don't know how to hear this secondary information or even the real information behind the complaint or request for help any better than we know how to capture all of the most valuable knowledge and pass any of it on to the right people.

One guy who gets it and even helped me refine some of my thinking on the matter is Bill Price, formerly of Amazon. What he shared with me the day we first met over coffee (okay, mine was hot chocolate) was, "The best service is no service," meaning - it's better the company use all available information to foresee potential issues and address them so that customer never even have to contact the company for help in the first place. Not everyone gets that though, and when they do, they don't always know what to do with it.

I once sat in a room full of service and support managers talking about this very subject, most of them understanding they had vital information to share. "But how do we get the other departments to listen?!" one asked.

The answer seems simple to me. That information is a product. The other departments are your market. As with any bleeding edge product, you must first educate your market that they need what you have. You have to show the value and package it attractively, and when they really 'get it', they'll ask for it, even demand it.

What's so sad about companies not getting this is that while many consumers are out there saying things like, "Don't buy this product," - and many are listening to them - I'm out there saying, "Improve your inner processes to avoid these problems in the first place."

It doesn't have to be difficult, it just takes wanting to get there. For the price of a cup of hot chocolate, I'd gladly discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of customer service for an hour or two. Or, you can just hope customers don't get too mad.

Have you successfully re-architected company culture to be more customer-centric? If so, please share your story with me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com - I'm very interested to hear all about it.

What's valuable about what I know and what do I want to do about that?

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Kimm Viebrock is an ICF-credentialed Associate Certified Coach who helps technology professionals and service-oriented technology groups develop and use their skills more effectively and increase their value within the larger organization, allowing them to do more, do it better and have more fun doing it. Kimm is devoted to finding the connectedness in life.

The Service Is the Company

Some have wondered what ever happened with my dishwasher. I did seriously consider buying a new one but in the end, it just didn't make sense to me for our situation. So last week I called to have the repair done and of course I wondered how that would all turn out.

In a word, it turned out fine. In the first place, I had a miraculously easy time scheduling the repair. I'd sort of wondered about that both because of the challenges I'd had getting my oven repaired recently (hmm - I hope this isn't a trend!) and because of some of the horror stories I'd run across with another recent dishwasher recall. Easy-squeezy though - I went online near the beginning of the week last week and could have had a repair tech out later that same week if I'd been around.

I scheduled the repair for today instead and I'm running the dishwasher right now, as a matter of fact. Not only has the problem been rectified, it appears I have a new control panel as well and besides that, I spent a brief but enjoyable time this morning with the very pleasant and even humorous young man who came out to make the repair.

Here's a good guess - I'm going to remember the interaction with him far longer than just about anything else having to do with my dishwasher's manufacturer. Luckily for them, it was a good experience. They hired well. Apparently they trained well. And so far anyway, he seems to like his work well enough to find it easy to be pleasant on the job. Although we didn't discuss pay - or really any specifics of his job - I know that if he felt he was being treated unfairly in that department, it could easily show up in how he presents himself, so I'm guessing he feels pretty good about that too.

Here's something else they've done right - apparently they also really get that it's better to design a trustworthy system than it is to rely on the intelligence and awareness of individuals. I say this because, unlike the oven repair, where I ran out to the garage periodically to turn off and on the circuit breaker for the repair technician, this time the service rep walked out to the garage with me, watched me throw the breaker, verified that it was off and then red-tagged it so no one else would show up while he was working on the dishwasher and mistakenly turn it back on again. Apparently that happened to someone once - hopefully only once before they came up with this much safer procedure!

Have you had great customer service experiences? Send them to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com and let's share some of the good stuff too.

What can I do to be pleasant with the people who count on me?

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Kimm Viebrock is an ICF-credentialed Associate Certified Coach who helps technology professionals and service-oriented technology groups develop and use their skills more effectively and increase their value within the larger organization, allowing them to do more, do it better and have more fun doing it. Kimm is devoted to finding the connectedness in life.

What Not to Do

So - when I was having all my fun last week dealing with flames and potential flames, I happened to run across yet another example of companies that mean well but don't really take customers into account when they design their processes... or perhaps it's just a matter of not really thinking through what happens if you put a "fake" domain name into your Reply To address field.

What happens is that someone named Chet goes and buys up the domain and airs out your stupidity for the world to see. I felt sad for the companies with such poor customer service and sad that some of their customers don't get the service they want or need and maybe even ended up looking worse for themselves in the process. Okay, so I laughed a bit too - you know, that dark, "sometimes it gets so bad, you just gotta laugh, especially when it makes you feel better about your own problems" kind of way. I mean, what did they think would happen? At least I'm luckier than all the folks who still aren't grilling.

What's particularly sad is that providing good customer service isn't any more difficult and I do see it on a regular basis... though frankly, the bad stuff is far more fun to talk about. Easier to learn from too, which is my primary goal in calling attention to poor behavior. You didn't really think I was so cynically sadistic to just be poking fun at the misfortunes of others, did you? Nah!

Send your thoughts about what you've learned from past mistakes (yours or someone else's) to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com and save someone else from the embarrassment of making the same error.

What will you do differently next time?

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Kimm Viebrock is an ICF-credentialed Associate Certified Coach who helps technology professionals and service-oriented technology groups develop and use their skills more effectively and increase their value within the larger organization, allowing them to do more, do it better and have more fun doing it. Kimm is devoted to finding the connectedness in life.

Customer Service - Up In Flames 2

Flame-throwing appliances seems to have been a theme for our family this past couple of weeks. About the same time I found out about the potential for our dishwasher to catch fire, our outdoor grill was busy spouting fire for real. Too bad the manufacturer's customer service couldn't have been similarly en fuego.

We had some nice weather one of the days my folks were in town, so spousal unit started the gas grill, closed the lid, and walked back into the house waiting for it to heat up. I was at the sink and happened to see flames shooting up inside the grill and some of them coming out of the grill. "Umm, dear? There are flames," I say, none too intelligently. "Yeah, it's a bunch of the old stuff burning off," he replies, with his back still to the grill.

"No... there are flames!" I reiterate, waving hands around in attempt to indicate the seriousness of the situation. Okay, so you try to sound as intelligent as you usually prefer to be when something big like that happens unexpectedly. Anyway, at least he turned around at that point and saw for himself why I was somewhat at a loss for words, ran back out and got the gas turned off without any further incident.

Hmmm... flame-throwing grill. Now what?

Flash forward to Friday morning before Memorial Day Weekend. I'm actually thinking ahead to the possibility we'll want to grill something so I start checking into the trouble of flames leaping out of our CharBroil that's all of two seasons old. Nothing like a recall, like for the dishwasher, is mentioned anywhere on the internet, but careful perusal of the manual indicates spiderwebs inside the burners can cause a serious hazard called a flashback that typically results in - you guessed it - flames. At least one forum discussion out there confirms other experiences similar to ours (though with varying degrees of acceptance of this as an acceptable occurrence) and another one sort of hints at it.

Figuring this is at least a possibility I can investigate and attempt to fix myself, I set about following the instructions to clean the burner and am immediately stymied. The trouble is, when I go to "remove the burner", it won't come out. I check the manual - there too, the instructions are very basic - "Remove two pal nuts, carry-over tube and burners" - implying it should be as simple as lifting them out, but it's not that easy.

I look over the assembly instructions and am dismayed to be reminded that when we put the darned thing together, we had to place the burners inside the grill bottom, then place the grill bottom in the stand, then hook up the control panel and then attach the side shelves. That's a lot of disassembling to have to do just to remove burners that the manufacturer wants you to clean "often" - at a minimum, once a season, more often if the grill goes unused for as little as a month or if you have particularly industrious spiders.

Not finding the information I need in their knowledgebase and not seeing a phone number that looks like it's supposed to be used for anything other than ordering parts or getting warranty service, I try requesting assistance through their website first. While I don't indicate directly that I'm having trouble removing the burner, I do provide the model number and I would think the difficulties I'm experiencing are implied in my request for information:

How do I remove the burners to clean them without taking the entire grill assembly apart (ie remove the control panel and/or detaching the grill bottom from the base)?

The automated response to the request indicated that it could take 1-3 days to get an answer, by which time, of course, I might well run out of grilling opportunities. It's just as well I called - although I had an answer within 24 hours, it consisted entirely of

Thank you for contacting The Grill Service Center. You never have to detach the grill bottom from base. I have attached a link on how to routinely clean your grill. Please follow all steps in it to clean your grill. Thank you Tiffany Grill Service Specialist

along with a link to the same basic cleaning information I'd already located for myself.

Not that the phone call I made ended up a whole lot better. It turns out that the warranty/parts ordering number on the CharBroil site will get you to customer service that's supposed to be able to help out with these kinds of questions but that doesn't mean that they necessarily can.

Don't get me wrong. The young woman I spoke with was quite pleasant. And if the number of times she had to put me on hold is any indication, she quite likely was new to the job.

I cut her a fair amount of slack for all of that. The trouble is, she had no more information available to her than I had available to me on the website and that information was not near enough to help me get my problem resolved. Yes, I had removed the carry-over tube. Yes, I had noticed that there were stabilizing pins from which the burners had to lifted clear. The trouble was that the there is not enough clearance inside the grill bottom to lift the burners clear of the gas valves when the control panel is in place.

At this point, the poor girl did not know what to tell me except to suggest perhaps it would be necessary to remove the control panel to pull the valves clear of the burner tubes. But that doesn't make sense! Surely the product can't be designed that poorly that regular maintenance that's to be performed "often" requires near complete dissasembly? Isn't there some other way to get the burners out? After all, we're talking flames and the potential for fire and exploding gas tanks, something I'm taking quite seriously.

Although she's taking the matter seriously enough to stay on the phone with me, she clearly is flummoxed abou how to proceed. We have so many different models... yeah, but that's what databases are for!

I apologize for ruining her average handle time and she puts me on hold again to see if she can find out more information. When she comes back, she suggests that we may be able to simply loosen the control panel a bit by removing the two screws holding it in place. Okay, this seems halfway reasonable, so I remove the screws. The panel isn't budging. I'm a small person and not necessarily all that strong, but I'm smart enough to figure out if it's a matter of applying greater strength or whether it's just not going to move no matter what I do. I tell the rep it won't budge.

Her response - I kid you not - Is there someone else there who can help you?

No, sorry, there's not! That's actually not quite all that I said, but if I share any more, I'd probably owe spousal unit an apology. Let's just say that despite appearances to some customer service folks I talk with, I really do have far more patience for this kind of work than he does so I figured all along I'd be doing this job without him.

Meanwhile, despite being told that I won't have to remove the shelves, I try loosening the screw on each side for those while I am simultaneously trying to impress upon her the fact that she does not have the information needed to help me and the value and importance of providing feedback to her superiors about that inadequacy.

Amazingly enough, this does the trick - loosening the screws, that is. Just that much, without having to remove the shelves themselves, I am able to loosen the control panel just enough to free the burners. It's still more effort than I'd really think is reasonable under the circumstances but at least it can be done.

As for providing the feedback, it doesn't sound like she got it, though she may have. If anyone sends me a survey, I'll be sure to point out that one of those shelving screws is also directly behind a gas-line fitting that makes it nearly impossible to access even with a stubby screwdriver, as well as the other various hassles I endured in this little adventure.

On the good side, blowing the burners out with water and cleaning out the worst-clogged holes with a paperclip wire does seem to have done the trick and now our grill isn't shooting out flames anymore. I can't say that the process involved is easy enough to make cleaning out the burners in this fashion is anywhere close to a reasonable expectation however.

From my perspective as a user who knows something about customer service, this is a nightmare from start to finish and it took me nearly the entire day to resolve. Product design that does not take into account ordinary usage. Incomplete information about appropriate maintenance of the product available to the consumer. Customer service that does not take into account the possibility that customers might have actually already availed themselves of all available information. And inadequate information provided to the customer service representatives themselves.

As I say regularly to anyone who will listen, customers successfully using supportable products has to be the real goal - not just getting the products to market - just like climbers have to focus more on getting home safely than on simply reaching the summit. This was clearly an example of the summit being more important than the end result. I'm just hoping it doesn't take exploding propane tanks and/or a class action lawsuit to get that point across.

If you have a customer service story to tell, go ahead and send it to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com and we can discuss if there might be better solutions out there somewhere.

How can information that could be used to improve our experiences get where it needs to go?

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Kimm Viebrock is an ICF-credentialed Associate Certified Coach who helps technology professionals and service-oriented technology groups develop and use their skills more effectively and increase their value within the larger organization, allowing them to do more, do it better and have more fun doing it. Kimm is devoted to finding the connectedness in life.

Customer Service - Up In Flames 1

This weekend, we're looking for a new dishwasher because it turns out that the one we have could catch fire. Given that spousal unit Dad and I frequently load up the dishwasher in the evening after dinner and set it to run later at night when we're asleep, that's a bit of a problem. More of a problem has been trying to figure out what to do about it and part of that has been due to less-than-stellar customer service.

When the recall was first announced, I just happened to catch it on Google's news aggregator and read the first "details" in stories like this one that didn't have a whole lot of information beyond the hotline phone number - not even the links to the recall notice with the list of affected appliances or the right place on the GE website to get more information. With only basic description available that matched the basic circumstances of our dishwasher, it seemed prudent to check to see if ours was one of the affected machines. Good luck!

My first stop was to the General Electric website. Nada. You don't think fire-breathing dishwashers that they tell you to stop using immediately don't warrant "front-page" coverage?

Follow the main site link to Appliances (and from there to Dishwashers/Compactors/Disposers), there's still nothing. Another week into this story, and now it's possible to find links to the right appliances page - look for the link to the Dishwasher Recall at the bottom of the left column. At least it's orange and "above the fold".

Still... it makes me wonder just how dangerous this dishwasher really is.

While I had to do a search on the GE site for recall information to find it, I have to say that once I landed on the right page, they at least made it easy for me to get what I really wanted - information on whether the recall affected me or not. The answer is yes, it does. I'll have to thank our ex-wife for getting me addicted to rinse aids.

So, now I get to choose - free repair of my 6-yr-old dishwasher (an appliance, that according to one website has an average lifespan of 7-12 years - or this one that I've trusted a lot longer says it could go as long as 11-13 years), $150 toward on a dishwasher style that's different from the original style we bought (and doesn't include the highly-coveted stemware rack), or $300 toward a truer replacement model that will result in $400 or more in out-of-pocket costs.

Wow, that's about what we paid when we bought this one - I was shocked to find prices have gone up nearly a 100% in less than ten years! I'm guessing not all of those costs are due to increased costs in production. No wonder they feel like they can offer $300 rebates out of the goodness of their hearts.

Suddenly, I'm feeling less like they're trying to make up for a hazardous design flaw, and more like they're trying to jack up sales of durable goods. And before anyone suggests that I repair and sell the old one (or sell as-is with full disclosure of the problem so the recipient can pay to make the repairs him/herself and know it's done right), catch the fine print - if you go for the rebate, you're supposed to attest that you have destroyed the problem machine. I'm guessing a trip to the dump with a major appliance is going to set me back a few bucks too.

While I'm a bit conflicted about what to do about the dishwasher, I am very clear that customer service could be greatly improved - starting with making it easier for customers to find the information that they need. Sadly, this performance is already a far cry better than what Whirlpool/Maytag customers have already been through on a similar recall. Ouch; at least they're learning - though exactly what it is that they're learning and whether it's any real help to us consumers is still a mystery to me.

Send your suggestions, if you have them, to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com along with any thoughts you have about how customer service could be improved in these situations - questions about the recall(s) should probably go directly to the company involved. If you don't get a satisfactory answer, I'd of course be interested in that.

What risks are you willing to take for what you really want?

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Kimm Viebrock is an ICF-credentialed Associate Certified Coach who helps technology professionals and service-oriented technology groups develop and use their skills more effectively and increase their value within the larger organization, allowing them to do more, do it better and have more fun doing it. Kimm is devoted to finding the connectedness in life.

Shelf Life

It turns out there's a word for the reaction I typically have to most of the junk that people - even the people who are close to me & ought to know better - seem to feel with some degree of regularity a compelling need to forward to me. One bit of glurge that has shown up in my inbox from time to time is the one about the husband explaining how he came to see the importance of treating every day as a special occasion after his wife died before she ever found the right 'special occasion' for which to don an expensive piece of lingerie. Even though the story always made me gag, the sentiment isn't entirely lost on me either... though I find now that I have an easier time thinking about it in terms of shelf life.

I'll admit that I came by this notion much more slowly than was probably necessary. I went a long time letting things like bananas and other fruit go bad, thinking that I was leaving it for someone else who might want it. I even have let really good chocolate turn completely tasteless just because it wasn't mine, if you can believe that. In retrospect, it's actually rather amazing that after having been passed by on so many other feminine tendencies that I should somehow get both the interest in chocolate and the kind of self-sacrificing that many men just scratch their heads over. Surely, "You gonna eat that?" ought to apply to chocolate as readily as anything else, right?

While I still hold back on chocolate that actually does belong to someone else, I'm less inclined to stand by and wait for the bananas to get so far as to become candidates for the banana bread I never get around to baking (another of the distaff qualities I somehow missed). I understand now that they have a limited shelf life. If we don't enjoy them now while they're good, it will be too late. Saving such things for later, even if it's something we believe would get used up and not replaced, doesn't work. At least with used up and gone, there's the enjoyment of the experience. Letting it go bad is just wasting that opportunity.

This applies to time too, especially time with people we care about or time spent doing things that are important to us vs. extraneous junk that seems more important at the time than it really is. We usually don't know how much time we actually have; we only know that it is a limited amount like will go on longer than it really will.

There is a shelf life to time and we must enjoy it while it is available to us. Saving it for some unqualified "later" won't work any better than saving Jelly Bellies for a year or more - which I can tell you from personal experience doesn't work well at all. Chocolate Easter Robins' Eggs on the other hand survive pretty well, though I'm not sure if that's because of the armor-like candy coating or the fact that they start out bad enough that it's tough to tell the difference a year later.

So what's a cynic to do - get all gushy and introspective? Maybe. I find it works to remain skeptical if need be and at least temporarily set aside the cynicism long enough to figure out if there's anything worthwhile in the midst of all the glurge before deleting it. Even in falsity there can be truth.

Case in point - Merck is taking some heat for its Make a Connection campaign to create more public awareness around the causal link between HPV - the human papillomavirus responsible for genital warts - and cervical cancer. And guess what - the shelf life of that link is along the lines of 5 years or more.

That means that if you're 'fortunate' enough to have to make several inconvenient trips to someplace really fun like Harborview - and hey, what a treat that is - about the time you have forgotten all the fun you had and why, there's an opportunity to make another series of even less fun trips to investigate and deal with any pre-cancerous anomalies that may have shown up on an annual exam - and can anyone tell me why freezing things that one normally doesn't think of freezing is so often involved? The only thing I can think of that's more unpleasant is the cutting that sometimes happens too. Then, if you truly are fortunate for real, that's about the end of it; only for lots of people, it's not.

Of course Merck's interests are sure to be largely mercenary given the vaccine that they're about to release, and hence the criticism. Anyone who doesn't think so can explain why we haven't seen this campaign say, about twenty years ago when scientists first figured out the relationship.

That doesn't make the program itself a bad thing however. Who wouldn't want to save their sister, girlfriend, or daughter from a cervical cancer scare - or worse yet, the real thing? I'm just amazed that in twenty years, people don't already understand the connection any better than they do. But then ignorance can have a pretty long shelf life. I olnly wish chocolate lasted that long.

If you have thoughts about how long is appropriate to wait to see if someone else is going to take the last slice of pie when you've already had a slice yourself... or the about longest amount of time you've ever waited to eat your last piece of Halloween candy and had it still be good... or anything else along those lines, go ahead and send them to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com so we can compare notes. As long as it's not glurge, I'll promise to read what you send.

How do you tell the difference between patience and immobilization and what does it take to move back into action?

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Kimm Viebrock is an ICF-credentialed Associate Certified Coach who helps technology professionals and service-oriented technology groups develop and use their skills more effectively and increase their value within the larger organization, allowing them to do more, do it better and have more fun doing it. Kimm is devoted to finding the connectedness in life.

Pollyanna Has Left the Building

Sometimes I get accused of looking at the world far too optimistically. I try to be realistic about what I see and then from there generally choose a more optimistic perspective because the cynical views just don't seem to help me get to where I want to go quite as well. Here's the thing though - stuff does still get to me sometimes and today is one of those days. What's sad is that it all comes from being more excited about something than I thought I'd be.

I attended the live portion of the inaugural Microsoft Small Business Summit yesterday and was really impressed. Sure, there were a few misleading comments in describing products but overall, the focus really was on delivering worthwhile content combined with some useful information about a couple of products. It felt more like education (which I like) than the pushy sales-y approach we tend to associate with marketing (which I don't). Just as important, the steps they're taking with their small business-oriented products all seem to be in the right direction even if they're not yet to the point where they're able to solve all the small business problems in the world. I was pleasantly surprised to find they served lunch and even came away with a pretty cool SWAG bag. Nice.

My favorite presentation was Keith Ferrazzi, probably because he reiterated (with great examples and a lot of heart) the same views on effective networking that I've espoused for a long time. Maxine Clarke's story about Build-A-Bear also contained some worthwhile lessons, even for people who don't necessarily get excited about teddy bears; and I'd argue too that they apply even to situations beyond owning and running a business. In addition to having information more readily applicable to more than just business owners though , Keith was particularly captivating as a speaker and very genuine. I highly recommend hearing the webcast.

Here, however, is the chink in the armor although I am optimistic (see, even when I'm annoyed, I can still be hopeful) that they will be able to get the matter resolved. I can only guess that the Microsoft servers have been overwhelmed with people interested in these webcasts.

First, I had trouble logging in, getting errors and timeouts all over the place. When I finally did get logged in, I had trouble accessing the webcast I had scheduled to view. When I wanted to add another webcast later in the day, it wouldn't save. More errors and timeouts. Finally, I got into the first webcast I had scheduled ten minutes late only to find that the audio was terrible. The next webcast I couldn't access at all. After many more headache-causing issues and quite a lot of cursing (yes, I do that too - and quite well, I might add) at having been bounced out of the system numerous times, I was able to get logged back in and into the last session of the day even before it started. It's just too bad it's not really one of the high priority sessions.

The good news is that they are apparently aware of the problems - unlike the first session with the terrible audio, the last session has offered a phone number for dial-up audio, which is a good first step. And I have to believe that they're busy adding servers to improve performance. Already I seem to be having better success getting into the evaluations.

So go ahead, log into the Small Business Summit site and check out the webcasts. I'm sure they'll work when you get there.

And for anyone who has their own business or is thinking of going into business for themselves, it sure looks like the Small Business Center site has some really great tools and resources. Perhaps I'm being optimistic to the point of gullibility but I really do believe the explanation that I heard yesterday for all of this apparent altruism... They're working under the theory at Microsoft (in the Small Business unit anyway) that if they help small business owners become successful, they'll be in that much better position to purchase technology solutions and that much more likely they'll consider getting them from Microsoft. It works for me anyway.

If you listen to Keith's webcast or any of the others, I'm interested in your thoughts and feedback on what you got out of it/them. If you'll send them to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com, I'd enjoy a conversation on the subject. I might even still be in a mood to vent and commiserate over difficulties too if you experience any of the same kinds of issues I have today.

In what way does dwelling on a negative perception help you get what you want? What other perceptions would better help you achieve your goals?

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Kimm Viebrock is a Certified Professional Coach who helps technology professionals and service-oriented technology groups develop and use their skills more effectively and increase their value within the larger organizaion, allowing them to do more, do it better and have more fun doing it. Kimm is devoted to finding the connectedness in life.