Geoff Graham

Just an app away from awesome

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:54:00 -0800

I really had to bite my blogging tongue during the iPad hype machine of the last few months, but now I feel like I can say something about it. Like most people, I wanted it more before Steve Jobs presented it in January than after the big announcement. I had an expectation of iPhone proportions and came out laughing at the very name iPad.

Come on, we were all laughing at that one.

Beyond a name, however, I’m still not on board the iPad train and its for a very simple reason: practical use. As of this writing, the iPad has introduced no new functionality that justifies the purchase.

It grabs email.
It plays videos.
It runs iTunes.
It opens and edits documents.

Well, so do both my iPhone and MacBook.

What made the iPod a success was not the iPod. It was the functionality that allowed it to open the iTunes application.

What made the iPhone a bestseller was not the iPhone. It was the functionality that allowed it to make calls and download a slew of apps that enhanced the functionality even further.

So when Apple unveiled the iPad, they were selling a sexy device with a sexy interface but nothing more. Only a few companies can actually do that and get away with it at the same time. Thankfully for Apple, they are one of them. That kind of consumer capital can’t last forever and sooner or later, they will be forced to turn this (or similar products) into something of functional value that is clearly distinguished from other Apple products and other tablets in the market.

Perhaps Apple is relying on the strength of third-party developers to submit kick-ass applications to the app store. That’s certainly a strategy for staying competitive but I don’t think they can lean on that alone to stay relevant. Plus, crowd-sourcing and open development haven’t been Apple’s strong suit, well, ever.

Until I see that one app that makes the iPad worth using, I will keep my wallet to myself. But all it takes is that one app.

"To a worm in horseradish, the world is horeseradish."

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:40:33 -0800

“To a worm in horseradish, the world is horeseradish.”

- What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

Sorry, Cupid

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:13:41 -0800

You know what I’m not feeling this year? Valentine’s Day.

Call me unromantic, unchivalrous a love Scrooge or what have you but I think it has nothing to do with that. In fact, I’m in love, love being in love and just plain love love and believe a day created by Hallmark hardly defines the way I feel about someone.

OK, that sounds a little harsh and maybe it is. I get what makes the day so great. I mean, who doesn’t want an excuse to get dressed up for a hot date? Also, it’s downright heartwarming to know that someone’s thinking about you and cares enough to call you Valentine.

I guess the reason I’m just not feeling it this year has a lot more to do with the fact that my wife and I are headed to about the most unromantic place in the world this Valentine’s Day weekend: Fresno. That’s right, we’re spending America’s one day-o-romance on a road trip to the armpit of the butt crack of California.

At my mom’s house.

the funny thing is this is the second straight year we’ve accidentally booked a trip on Valentine’s Day. Sure, Portland was pretty awesome and we wouldn’t trade that for the world’s largest heart-shaped box of chocolate. But how did we settle on Fresno this year?

So enjoy your candlelit dinners, flower bouquets and boxes of chocolate this weekend. We’ll be watching it from afar from the fertile ground of the Central Valley.

Tragic hero of the here and now

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:03:30 -0800

I’ve been dwelling on the idea of failure so much lately, I’ve thought about taking my name off this blog and just calling it #FAIL. While failure has been a thing I’ve been coming back to time and again this past week, I know I can’t obsess over it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about failure, it’s that living in one’s own mind is the greatest failure of all.

Steven Pressfield calls this the Resistance, an invisible force that stands in the way of turning the inner creative energy of your mind into something tangible and real. It’s the Resistance that tells us we need to be inspired in order to start something. It’s the Resistance that tells us to fear the outcome of what we create.

It’s the Resistance that puts us in danger of becoming a true failure.

F. Scott Fitzgerald created the character Gatsby to show us that money and wealth does not protect us from becoming a failure in the love department. Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman characterized the failure of a destined common man obsessed with greatness. Both are the tragic heroes of their generation and are still relevant today.

If I had to add one more tragic hero to the list, it would be the person who succumbed to the Resistance and refused to fail. It’s the person who never acts on behalf of himself or others to achieve the incredible potential that he has. It’s the person who stays confined in his own mind, fearing that an obstacle in his path means the end of his road. It’s the person who has great intentions but never does anything to make them happen.

That’s the greatest failure I can imagine and the greatest tragedy that’s being written every day.

A frugal failure

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:47:34 -0800

When it rains, of course it pours. This week, however, it’s is raining failure and I love every bit of it.

OK, not literally dancing on top of the people that fail but you get what I mean. Right?

Yesterday, I wrote about failure as a required step for success. Just hours after posting my thoughts, Google Reader fired up another new post by Penelope Trunk that continues the failure streak.

And, Just a couple days after writing about time being the necessary factor in becoming an expert at something, Trunk writes yesterday about the need to be frugal in order to achieve success:

So I guess what I’m saying is that being an expert in something requires frugality. It’s not just a spending frugality. It’s a focus frugality. It’s the recognition that spending money is actually a distraction from the passion at hand. So the less you spend, the less you’re distracted.

Even though she stops short of calling it out by name, the bigger point for me is sacrifice. Filling in “sacrifice” for “frugality” you can see what Trunk is getting at: getting what you are after requires risky choices that may or may not pay off in the end.

Read also: In order to win something, you will probably have to lose something.

So, yes, it really does point back to failure. Andre Agassi gave up his childhood to swing a tennis racquet two million times before he won his first slam. Wilco had to give up their recording contract to release the album that made them famous. The list goes on and on.

Yesterday, I asked myself what I want so much that I would be willing to fail before getting it. Well, today I’m asking a similar question: What do I want so much that I would sacrifice nearly anything to get it?

Still no answer.

Agassi, Baldwin and why failure is an option

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:29:00 -0800

Over the last few days, I’ve been pushing my way through Andre Agassi’s new autobiography, Open. Unlike many Gen X-ers, I was too young to follow Agassi’s rise to tennis stardom, particularly the mullet, denim and “Image is Everything” era in the early 90’s. Most of what I know about Agassi comes from watching his later years, so I am appreciating the context I’m being given up to that point.

I get a lot out of autobiographies, which is why I love reading them. The thing I get most out of a good one is that failure is a required part of success. I am certain I’ve never read (or seen, for that matter) the story of someone who rose to success without a whole heck of a lot of missteps along the way. And if I have, I certainly don’t remember it because it was probably a sleeper of a tale.

The story of Agassi is no different. The book is a little more than 300 pages and took me more than half of them to get to his first gland slam victory, Wimbledon 1992. It’s not until page 200 that he even gets ranked Number One in the world. Up until then as a trial of losses, mistakes, obstacles, near-retirements, injuries and just plain bad luck.

Not what I expected from one of history’s best.

In fact, I am taken aback by the amount of losing that is covered in the book. Several times, I’ve found myself checking how many pages I have left and wondering if he has enough space to cover the incredible amount of success he has in his career. I’m still not sure he does.

Failure plays an integral role in Agassi’s story. He retells so much detail of so many losses that it’s almost uncomfortable, but at the same time it’s a very revealing look at the secret for success. It’s the same thing that has made Penelope Trunk write about what makes an expert and why Alec Baldwin has been a hot topic for Men’s Journal and Wired Magazine in the last couple of months.

The willingness to fail is not just part of the path to succeeding, it’s required.

Which gets me thinking. What am I willing to fail at time and again in order to achieve it? What am I passionate about that would drive me from point A to Z if it meant making 24 annoying stops along the way? What drives me?

Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything. Besides family and marriage, I have not engaged myself in anything that even remotely challenges me. Looking at my easy job, easy home and easy daily routine, I can honestly say I’m not driven; I’m coasting.

Having an easy life has never felt so wrong.

Where faith meets analytics

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:49:12 -0800

As a manager of a church denomination’s website, I often get asked how I measure success.

We don’t sell products on our site. We don’t take donations. We don’t consider other denominations “competitors.” So how do I tell whether or not our site is getting the job done? Or any job for the matter?

There’s no short answer but I can at least tell you where I start and break it down from there.

Figuring out an online identity

When I first joined the Communications team at Foursquare, we were lots of things and none of them were extremely clear from a visitor’s standpoint. We were a children’s department, a church planting department, a missions department and so many other things under this one banner that indicated we were some organization that believes in Christ.

Yeah, lots of things but nothing in particular. We were a conglomeration of departments moving in different directions with different ideas of what “success” means.

It’s taken a couple years, but Foursquare has been able to hammer down who it wants (and needs) to be online. I won’t bore you with the details but it boils down to this: one church with one voice.

What’s your niche?

Having your online identity pinned down is like your road map for the rest of the ride. Knowing who you are enables you to define what your objectives are which—wait for it—gives you something to measure!

And if you don’t think a church can have objectives outside of communicating service times (which is a good one) and increasing the tithe dollar (another decent, though self-serving one), think again.

Try considering:

Plugging individuals into a small group
Connecting people into a church ministry
Centralizing information for multiple campuses
Making sure all pastors have the resources they need to do the work of their ministry
Telling stories of real-life people in the church making real differences in the community because of their faith

I mean, really, this list can go on and on. The point being that in order to exist online, a church should consider what they are adding to the Interwebs so it has a clear direction of what to do and how to measure it.

So, what are we doing?

Glad you asked. Knowing what you want to accomplish online tells you nothing about what to actually do online. So that’s where strategy comes in.

What’s the best way to motivate people to join a small group using your website (or some extension of it)?

Here’s a hint: there may be more than five correct answers and each one is just as good as the others. Or one may be better than the others. Maybe worse.

How do you know?

Measure, measure, measure!

Finally, where faith meets web analytics. Having come up with several ideas for communicating online, a church can safely put them to test.

And this is where I believe a lot of organizations (not just churches) can get analytics flat wrong. When no one opens those email newsletters or the Twitter account hasn’t immediately equaled Ashton Kutcher levels, companies tend to blow off the strategy as a #Fail.

Remember, an objective does not fail just because the method did.

So back to the original question that opened this little diatribe…how do I measure success for the website of a church denomination?

I have a set of key performance indicators (KPI) that tell me certain things.

For example, I care a lot about bounce rates on my site. But not the one I see when I first log into Google Analytics that has the word “Average” in front of it. I care about which pages bounce more than others and why people saw that one page then ditched me for someone else, so I look at which keywords and referring sites brought them in. If I know what brought them in, I can know what they’re looking for; and if they didn’t find what they were looking for, then I know how that page needs to be fixed.

Another thing I really care about is how many phone calls and emails we get into our office asking for a church recommendation in their area. Yes, phone calls and emails are KPIs because I want people to be able to find a local Foursquare church online, so if they call or email saying they could figure out our church locator, then I know something needs to be fixed.

Yeah, sure, the person calling could be the thing that needs fixing, but I can’t always blame it on that. :)

I also really care about the stories we tell online. We’re a pretty big denomination and keeping the Foursquare family feeling connected to another is an important objective for our website. We do that by telling the stories of people, church ministries and even world events as long as they are told through the lens of Foursquare.

So posting articles to our site and measuring pageviews is one thing, but we also see how social networking leverages our storytelling ability by stirring up conversation or how many people are referred to our site through our Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Vimeo accounts.

Can’t think of how to measure the effectiveness of your social networking tool on your overall web strategy? That could be topic for another post, but there are a lot of tools out there.

Wilco will love you, babe

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:06:19 -0800

I had heard of Wilco before, though had never given them much of a chance until seeing them last summer.

It’s very rare to fall in love with a band after seeing them for the first time. Ironically, thanks to the internets, it doesn’t seem to be rare to find footage of the exact moment you fell in love with a band after seeing them for the first time.

Enjoy. I did.

2010: The Year of a Better Story

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:38:00 -0800

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what effect story has on my life. After reading Donald Miller’s latest book and talking about the concept with friends, it was brought full circle during last week’s sermon at Parkcrest, where Rachel Oblon asked one simple question that will be my mantra for 2010:

Is my life worth paying $14 to see in a movie?

Rachel illustrated her point in many ways while clutching the base of a balance beam, comparing life experiences to riding the Disneyland tram and even citing Miller’s book. It was the aforementioned question that stuck with me most, however, and it will be something I ask myself over the next year (or more), whether it be for something as small as the coffee I drink to something as large as whether or not to go back to school or start a family.

Because, if I’m honest with my myself, my life has not been worth anywhere close to even the matinee price admission of a movie. No, not even close to the re-releases of Gigli or Glitter on a good day.

Everyone loves a good story. Even more, people love being a part of a good story. So what would you give up (or take in) today if it meant someone would actually pay to watch your life at the end of the day? This isn’t about a popularity contest or how to get the more attention. Instead, it’s a tool to gauge the success of living the life you were meant to live.

So here’s to 2010, the year of the better story. Hope to see you at the red carpet premier.

I love getting emails marketing in my inbox. I love it so much,...

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:35:08 -0800

I love getting emails marketing in my inbox. I love it so much, in fact, it makes up more than half (OK, three-quarters) of emails I get on an average day.

Yes, three out of every four friends I have are the ones I sign up for on corporate websites.

So getting a Merry Christmas email from my BFF Starbucks really brightened my day when I saw the subject line sitting in my inbox.

(Actually, it was a Season’s Greetings email but I don’t let that ruin the Christmas spirit for me.)

Email greetings are an excellent alternative to the traditional card, though they have to be done extremely well to make up for the feeling of getting something you can hold and show off on the fridge.

That said, the email I got (pictured above) was really disappointing and took the egg out of the nog on a number of levels.

Design

Sure, I love the imagery (and will be changing my blog’s background image right away) but there is nothing here that tells me this is from Starbucks. I signed up for Starbucks emails but would no idea if they really designed this or some cousin I rarely talk to did. Just change the From field in the email and this could have come from anybody.

Lack of Personalization

I’m guessing Starbucks has a heaping pile of information about all their customers. Even if they don’t they should at least have my first name and make the small effort to put it in the copy.

There’s no better feeling than recognition in a brand-to-customer relationship and calling someone by their first name in a holiday email is the least a brand can do to foster that relationship.

No Call to Action

My hat is actually off to Starbucks for creating a truly selfless email during the most consumer-driven season of the year. There is no advertisement, gimmick, product, service or any sort of sales pitch going on here.

Kind of refreshing, but also kind of pointless.

I gave Starbucks permission to sell stuff to me when I opted into their email list on their website. Because of that, I really expect to see something of value each and every time they contact me. Unfortunately, there’s nothing here for me to be merry about—a free drink coupon, special discount when ordering online or even a link to print the email if I really want to hang it on my fridge—by the way, I don’t but would consider it if the email interacted with me a little more.

Content

If you haven’t noticed by now, I purposely highlighted the text in the image because otherwise would be invisible. That’s right, black text on a black image on a brandless email that has no other call to action than to wish me a happy holiday. This could be filed under Design Grievances, but if there was some additional content or products to feature, this may not have been the blunder it appears to be.

Season’s greetings, Starbucks. I appreciate the sentiment but could have probably done without.

Bloom where you're planted

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:22:50 -0800

I got the chance to sit down with my friend Brent the other night. Our one-on-one visits are very few and very far between, but my brain would explode with all the magnificent goodies and knowledge I get from them if they were any more frequent.

Last Thursday was no exception. In fact, about halfway through our chat at Starbucks I realized I could (and should) have filled an entire notebook with the things we covered in just a couple of hours. Since I didn’t bother to even bring a pen, I promised myself to at least blog about one major take away from the time.

So here it is: Bloom where you are planted.

At first, I wasn’t sure where Brent was going with this. I mean, up until that point we had been talking mostly about our thoughts on Donald Miller’s (fantastic) new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and how we appreciated Miller’s focus to live life through the lens of a story that’s being told. We’re all characters, Miller explains, and the story of a good character involves something he wants but must overcome something else in order to get it.

What Brent was trying to get at was something we had casually discussed before about my career path and where I was headed. I had mentioned being interested in going back to school thinking it would be a good thing to accomplish.

“Man, that’s a staller,” said Brent.

“A staller? Since when is school a staller? It’s something that helps people move forward, not backward.”

Brent continued to make his case though the lens of story. A good story, he reminded me, is one that cuts out all the boring crap that has nothing to do with advancing the plot. So unless I plan on making a career out of my current position going back to school plays not part in my story and is uninteresting to anyone who reads it.

There’s a constant struggle between the person I am and the person I want to be. The person I am has certain strengths and talents that I just can’t help having and that just can’t help excelling in the places where they excel. The person I want to be, however, can change from week to week as I fall in love with and discover new things, whether it’s music, photography, architecture, activism, politics, or anything else my heart fancies. The problem is that our nature is already in the process of writing the story we’re living, even if we take lots of tangents to get there. Think about the career path and you’ll see a linear progression whether you like it or not—and how you thought it would be or not.

“So just bloom where you’re planted,” Brent continued. “Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, you’ve to shine then and there.”

How much more sense could that make? As long as we plant ourselves into a good storyline and try to bloom in all the places where the plot takes us, we’ll be living a good story.

And that was just a sidebar to the conversation.

Why I'm being such an asshole today

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:54:12 -0800

A woman who works in another department practically hung up on me earlier this morning. I dug into another co-worker for something annoying he does, told another person how much her last email frustrated me and plan on telling my boss a thing or two before I leave for the day.

“So why are you being such an asshole today?” you ask.

“You mean, why am I building so many awesome friendships?” I reply.

I went to bed last night with a hot head full of frustration from a few bad encounters that occurred throughout the day. It could have been an email that was a little snappy or a passive aggressive comment said in passing, but everything put together made even the smallest thing a big deal by the end of the day.

Normally I would brood over everything while making my wife suffer through the many ways I wished I would have responded or what I would like to say to them in my own fantasy land. But last night was different.

And now today is much different than most other days.

What I’m learning is that conflict and confrontation are necessary for healthy relationships and sanity. Doing a quick Google search on the benefits that confrontation has on friendships and working relationships made me realize why I haven’t done it very much in my life. Most of the crap we’re fed by self-help articles and books advise us how to avoid confrontation like it’s something to hide from when it comes lurking in the dark. Not only is it unhealthy to bottle in your fears and frustrations because of the stress it causes (have you seen or read Fight Club?), but it is also creating a generation of cowards.

And I’m definitely one of those cowards. Taking the steps to let others know about my frustration has been a a big step out of my hard shell.

As I’m learning to own my feelings and make them known to others, I’m also recognizing there is a fine line between productive confrontation and complete asshole that can easily be crossed. Productive confrontation, for me, is determining the frustrations and hurt feelings that will keep me awake at night and making a point to deal with those and those only. The end goal of any confrontation should be the ability to move past an issue and strengthen the relationship that’s being tested. Anything less is complete asshole.

So yes, that’s why I may look like an ass today. But trust me, it’s an investment in my relationships with co-workers.

Time for yourself

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:51:05 -0800

If one thing has become abundantly clear to me over the past few months, it’s that taking time for yourself isn’t just a good idea; it’s necessary. My infrequent blogging during that span is proof in itself.

I just haven’t been giving myself enough time to live life the way I was meant to live it.

And that’s not entirely my fault. Life does happen and sometimes we have to react to the things happening around us. So I do as I do and that’s just how I roll, right?

Well, no. There is something to be said for living flexibly and being able to adapt and react to things on a whim, though I don’t believe that’s the recipe for the good life. Life has to be lived intentionally in order to maximize our time, energy and talents.

Part of living intentionally requires that we occasionally withdraw from the things that put our minds and hands to work. Said more plainly, we gotta take time off for ourselves in order to recharge ourselves.

Sure, go ahead and tape the “Hypocrite” sign to my back. I haven’t been very good at giving myself the luxury of time. I could talk about the new house, how we’ve spent more weekends hosting people in it that living in it, the amount of stuff that has to get done at work, the after-work meetings that seem to come in droves or anything else that seems to take up my time to make excuses for how short on time I’ve been lately.

Yes, we really have had guests stay at our new place more than we have on the weekends since we bought the place in October. My wife and I just looked at the calendar and gawked that we’re booked for the last three weeks in December and the first two weeks in January. I’m definitely not popular, but it sure does feel like it this holiday season.

I normally use this blog to talk about work and internet topics (and the occasional riff on Starbucks) so I promise to tie all that in. Besides, staying on topic is one of the strategies for a successful blog—or unsuccessful in my case.

Creating time for yourself is just as effective in your work like as it is in your personal life. We can easily get caught up with any task that is thrown our way or jump at the opportunity to own a project. Just ask anyone with Responsibility as their number one strength. I don’t have it, but my wife suffers with that curse, err blessing.

So with that, here are a few ways to know if you are not taking enough time for yourself:

1) You think about work at home

This is a no-brainer. If you’re away from work, you should be able to take it off your mind for a while. Yes, we all love what we do but you’d even have to take a break from relaxing in Hawaii in order to spend some quality time with the wife and kids. Since my wife and I work together, this is really hard for us, but we’re working on it.

2) Everyday things start to annoy you

Does going to the gym, taking a shower, shaving heading to church or grocery shopping sound like a drag? These should be as easy as breathing and you’re in a bad place if they stress you out.

3) Your fingernails are too long

This is something I’ve noticed in my own life. If I was to make a list of most important things to do an any given day, clipping my nails would have to be last on the list at all times. It’s unimportant. But if you never get to it and start to walk around like Edward Scissorhands, you’ve got a problem.

4) You hold off going to the bathroom

We’ve all been guilty of trying to finish just one more thing before we make a BM. Then we look up at the clock and see you’ve been holding it for two hours and have to run like a mad man to the bathroom. Nothing pretty about that. If you don’t have enough time to drop a deuce, you’re not giving yourself enough liberty.

5) Your RSS reader has accumulated 300 or more unread items.

Give yourself some time to catch up on your blogs. For some of us, it’s the only continuing education we get so taking time to read them should be top on your list.

6) You can’t remember the last walk you took around the block.

Not sure what your neighborhood looks like anymore? You guessed it, that’s a problem. Get out and be at one with your community.

"One of the biggest [mistakes] companies and brands make about Twitter is that they think it is one..."

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:55:51 -0800

“One of the biggest [mistakes] companies and brands make about Twitter is that they think it is one more “shout channel” like TV and Radio and Magazine ads or Press Releases. Twitter is not that. Twitter is a “conversation channel”, a place where you can find the audience relevant to you and engage in a conversation with them. It is not pitching, it is enriching the value of the ecosystem by participating.”

- Avinash Kaushik

If you're gonna ask, you may as well listen

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:05:00 -0800

I don’t know what it is about having someone ask for your opinion, but it feels great. We spend so much time trying to get people to hear what we want to say that when someone willingly offers their unsolicited time to do it, well, it can be such a treat.

At least that’s the truth for me. I love it when people listen to me, especially when life gets crazy busy and I have a lot on my mind or when I have a customer service experience that has to be shared.

OK, especially when I have a customer service experience that has to be shared.

So you can imagine my delight when I get a phone call or email from a company asking for my feedback on a recent experience I had with them. This actually has happened a few times in the last couple of weeks since I’ve been spending more money than I make on the house I recently bought. I started to feel pretty popular because my phone was ringing a lot more than usual.

I know, pretty sad. But true nonetheless. Counting customer service follow-ups toward my popularity says a lot about my social life.

One of things I love about having a good friend is that when they ask you a question, they listen. They will set back, nod with you in agreement, show empathy at the right times and, best of all, not judge you at the end of a long (and possibly unnecessary) rant about the most trivial thing.

I can’t say the same thing about my recent feedback opportunities with Verizon, Charter Communications and my home warranty provider. Each of these companies must have surveys built into their service systems, requiring their employees to follow-up with all customers that call in and have inquiries. I say they must because each person that followed up with me sounded completely annoyed to be on the phone with me.In one case, I was actually interrupted and asked to be put on hold.

“But didn’t YOU call ME?” I asked?

“Please hold.”

If tone of voice is one indication that someone on the other end of a line is not actively listening, then the questions that you are asked is definitely another. In every single survey I agreed to take in the last couple of weeks, I was asked very direct answers and instructed to rate my experiences on some sort of sliding scale that suggested a was either “satisfied” or “not satisfied” with the company’s service. I was never given the chance to speak into the question to explain my answer.

Surveys can be a great tool to improve a business. For all the praise that quantitative analysis gets (particularly in the data-driven web world), qualitative surveys add another dimension to help a company truly understand how well they succeed at producing a positive customer experience. This includes allowing your survey participants to speak honestly and truthfully in their own words; not the words you made up for them and force them to use. What that does is change your qualitative analysis into a quantitative one.

I mean, as long as a company is going to ask they may as well listen as well. Especially if a customer is willing to spend precious time to sit and answer those questions for 10-15 minutes.

If I ran the customer service department for a company, I would not require surveys for every transaction we make. Surveys would be given at random and would use the sliding scale rating system that everyone seems to enjoy so much, but with an opportunity to elaborate on each selection if the participant elects to. Also, I would make sure my customer service representatives have the authority to fix problems on the spot and that the responses are used to adequately celebrate positive feedback and use constructive criticism to improve the way we treat customers. Easy as that.

In fact, the most important question to ask on a survey is the only one you really need: how can I help? It doesn’t get any more powerful than that.

The bottom line is that if a company is not able to listen to a customer like their best friend would, then contacting them for feedback is a complete waste of time for everyone involved.

"The reason they want you to fit in is that once you do, then they can ignore you."

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:50:00 -0800

“The reason they want you to fit in is that once you do, then they can ignore you.”

- Seth Godin

Making the list

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:40:51 -0800

I’m really enjoying Twitter’s new list feature. The feature has slowly been rolling out to everyone since last week and I was (I guess) lucky enough to be in the early batch for some reason or another.

Creating lists is just a new way to organize the people you follow. Group like-minded tweeps together and you have a simple way to catch up on tweets on your favorite subjects or from your favorite people.

And don’t worry. If you’re embarrassed to admit you created a list of all your swinger friends, you can simply make it private and no one (technically) has to know.

Launching the list feature is a small, but significant step for Twitter. Whereas the social site used to be a mini-sized soapbox for people hoping to amplify their opinions across the masses, this moves Twitter toward a true social networking tool, plugging users into neat and tidy groups and creating little niches like a high school courtyard. The difference, however, is the ability to share these groups by making them private and searchable thus providing a greater ability for people to find new connections around the interests they care about.

Combined with ther recent announcement that they’ve secured new major search deals with Google and Bing, Twitter is in a position to score big and prove those who doubted their profitability to be dead wrong. Should be an interesting story to follow over the next six months or so.

Just find someone with a list that’s discussing it. Bound to be somewhere.

Get to the source of it

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:43:47 -0800

Lunchtime is popular around our office because (among other things, like food) it means our team gets to hang with each other like friends instead of co-workers. Some of us pack lunches, some pick something up and others just tag along but the point is pretty simple: meet in the conference room over TV and conversation.

Thanks to technical difficulties, we often resort to popping in TV on DVD and we’re currently stuck on Arrested Development. For those who missed it while it was on the air, shame on you. The rest of us have already learned a good lesson from the dynamic relationship between the main character, Michael Bluth and his mother, Lucille.

She lies.

He believes.

Awkward situations arise.

He figures out the lie.

The episode we watched this afternoon was no exception to this exchange, but it triggered a lesson that sometimes we jump to conclusions before knowing the full story.

It’s the co-worker who tells you what the boss told her.

It’s the friend who told you what another friend is going through.

It’s the cable news network personality shouting an opinion about health care.

It’s the mother telling her son what his brother thinks about him.

Hopefully the last point is only relevant to the Bluth family and not your own, but you get the point.

It’s easy to mistake speculation and hearsay for real news, especially in an on-demand culture where we expect real information to come at us in real time and send it to us via text message. But make no mistake that the best information is the stuff that comes when it is delivered in a complete package, with all sides and angles attached.

The problem is that getting close to the source often costs us, whether it’s personal (an awkward confrontation) or business (paying for real-time stock quotes). The challenge for us is to recognize when we are given only partial information and learn to not overreact or take it as Gospel when we hear it.

Not easy, but it sure does make for a great sitcom. Even if it was canceled.

Guitar zero

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:31:44 -0700

I’m just getting caught up on some reading after a chaotic couple of months, so I’m quite late on the news that Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain is making his video game debut.

I’d almost rather pack up a house and move all over again than learn that Guitar Hero has reduced a rock icon into a horrific fraction of the glory he once was.

There are not nearly enough words to describe how truly horrifying having Cobain in this game. For those who know as little as I do about the Guitar Hero series, musicians come in two classes: lockable and unlockable. An unlockable musician allows a player to use him to sing songs he would not normally sing and perform in ways he would not normally perform. In Cobain’s case, he can be unlocked to perform Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love A Bad Name” while onstage next to a bikini-clad bassist with angel wings and a skeleton for a drummer.

Nirvana’s “Rape Me” now takes on a whole new meaning.

This whole mess is further complicated by a he-said, she-said argument between Cobain’s surviving widow, Courtney Love, and the maker of Guitar Hero, Activision, over who is responsible for the shameless act of debauchery. If Love hadn’t pulled down her Twitter account, you could follow the disaster in real time.

Before I’m tempted to map out all the moral and ethical misgivings involved in this, I’ll bring it all full circle to say that, as far as marketing goes, Activision is the real loser here. Some things in life are simply too iconic in our culture to make a buck. From Bugs Bunny and Joe DiMaggio to Abraham Lincoln and the Hollywood sign, there is a fine line that, if crossed, will tick your audience more than the possible number of dollars it could possibly bring in.

Love him or hate him, Kurt Cobain is on that list and putting a price tag on his likeness is more likely to upset more people than the number of games sold.

That’s a bad bet in my book and probably why I’m just as disgusted by just the thought of the same thing happening with Michael Jackson.

Did he say it or not?

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:30:00 -0700

There’s nothing wrong with an f-bomb or a good ol’ fashioned finger in the face. But to hide those angry feelings into a secret message isn’t just passive, it’s weak.

The Governator would have been better off saving himself time and tax-payer dollars replacing the final “Sincerely” with what he really wanted to say instead.

It’s a lesson in communication, copywriting and marketing as much as it is about etiquette and politics: just say what you mean to say.

(via SFGate.com)