Outside Look

In November I switched my primary airline from Northwest to United, in part due to moving away from a Northwest hub, and in part because I was tired of the mediocre service. For the first few weeks I was quite happy. The service was generally good, and despite not having the Gold elite status, I was impressed by the better service from the flight attendants, gate crew and customer service people. Sadly, the honeymoon appears to be over.

During the month of January I have had two canceled flights. The first on left me in Denver for 4 hours on a Friday afternoon. I was re-booked on a later flight (not the next flight) automatically, but with no explanation of why the flight was canceled, and hardly a sorry for the inconvenience. After a snack and sitting around for a few hours I arrived at the gate for my seat assignment. Now, I fly a lot and am reasonably tall, so I pay a few extra bucks from my own pocket to upgrade to ‘Economy Plus’ which provides a nice bit of extra legroom. Upon receiving my seat assignment, I find myself in the back of the aircraft in the middle seat - no where near the ‘Economy Plus’ aisle seat I’d paid extra for. Fully understanding that this flight is completely full with others re-booked from the canceled flight, I didn’t expect to get my upgraded seat, but I did expect some acknowledgment that was ticketed in a different fare class and would receive a refund. Oh, not so!

When I pointed this change out to the gate agent I was greeted with the blankest of stares then a ‘I dunno’ shrug. Here is where I got a little upset. Give me a freaking break - can you not provide me with some information on resolving the situation? As my frustration became apparent the other gate agent rudely indicated they could not process a refund with a ‘you’re shit out of luck’ sort of tone and proceeded to continue processing seat assignments. My response was to ask they at least give me a phone number to call to resolve it, which he grudgingly did. And it turned out to be a wrong number.

I didn’t place a real high priority on getting the refund thinking I would just take care of it next time I needed to call customer service, which didn’t take too long. Today, another United flight I was booked on was canceled, and another flight I paid a little extra from my own pocket to upgrade. When I called to get booked on the next available flight they told me they could not process refunds and gave me the refund number. After a solid 20 minutes on hold I was basically told they needed me to fax in a boarding pass for my first flight to show what seat I did end up in (they re-booked me, how can they not know?) before they could process my refund. On top of that, they could not process my refund for the current day’s flight, despite seeing the information in the system for completely inexplicable reason and I would need to call back in 48 hours. I guess they somehow need to prove that I did not actually fly on a canceled flight or something.

United - how can this process be beneficial to the company or your customers, especially business frequent flyers who are your bread and butter? I called in 2 weeks ago to get my status transfered from NWA to United and told the agent I expect to fly over 100,000 miles in 2008 and would like most of them to be with United - I don’t think this is the type of customer you want to lose. In addition, this process is clearly an expensive one for you. It will take me no less than 3 phone calls and time with agents to get this sorted out - that’s not cheap - in fact the cost has to be running close to the amount of the requested refund. In this age of computers and the Interwebs one would think such refunds could be processed automatically when the fare class changes….wouldn’t that make sense? Or are you counting on not enough people actually completing this insane process so you get to keep the money, in which case your business practices are marginal.

Dear United - I am available for consulting if you would like help leveraging technology to make your business more efficient and your customers more satisfied.

UPDATE: I did manage to find a place on the web site to request an upgrade refund. This must happen a lot. I can’t believe no one through this processes, nor the automated on hold messages (which covered a number of things I’m not the least bit interested in when requesting an upgrade) mentioned this. I tried it and it didn’t seem to work too well anyway. The instructions are a bit confusing and it appeared to not work with little explanation of why. Off to the fax machine I go with my boarding pass.

This week I bought a Blue-Ray player. I wanted a new DVD player, and thought it was time to go hi def rather than grab the old technology cheap. So, why did I buy Blue-Ray rather than the equally good HD-DVD format? Two very simple reasons: there ‘appeared’ to be more Blue-Ray titles available, and I could get 5 free titles out of the store, and 5 more free by mail (which isn’t as good as it sounds as the titles are very limited by mail).

It was really nice to see just a few days later that Warner Brothers announced they would be shifting to Blue-Ray, resulting in a significant shift toward the format. But that point aside, it was the marketing that did it - I could leave the store with player and discs in hand - 30 minutes later (long walk) I was watching a Blue-Ray disc in all its hi def brilliance without spending an extra cent. So, what was the HD-DVD option? A player slightly more expensive and 5 free discs by mail.

Oh, also, did I mention I could have gotten a PS3 for the same price as the player, with Blue-Ray capability? One of the hottest gaming systems can handle the format.

The cost of the 5 free discs I walked away with from the store was about $150, but it guaranties that whenever possible I will be buying a Blue-Ray title going forward - and since most consumers skip a generation on technology (e.g. most people replaced LPs with CDs rather than LP-cassette-CD) I will replace my few remaining with VHS tapes with Blue-Ray (for example, I will be getting the excellent Rattle and Hum from U2 on Blue-Ray).

Sorry folks, Blue-Ray more than likely has it, and it was the product marketing, and a bit of a gamble that did it. Sony just had enough reach between consumer DVD electronics and gaming systems to tip it, and frankly that’s fine - there was no discernible difference between Blue-Ray and HD-DVD, we just need to get to one format anyway.

The New York Times has an excellent short article on the barriers to innovative thinking. One of the key points is the fact that we become experts in a field and then have a hard time thinking ‘outside the box.’

Many managers wish to hire people with significant industry experience, yet think they are bringing in ‘new blood’ - and it won’t work. Bring in new ideas from people who have proven successful in other businesses - B2B marketing managers with consumer packaged goods experience, banking managers with automotive experience. Whatever it takes to bring in new ideas.

The other key task is to ask dumb questions, and allow dumb questions to be answered. It is through the examination of our practices and long held norms that we can begin to innovate and solve new (and old) problems. It takes time, and sometimes the experts get frustrated (and so do the learners), but the fruits of this labor have great value.

The other day I went looking at banks to see what they were doing with blogging, and I wanted to share my results here. I looked at the top 20 US banks by deposits, and left out a few with high deposits but low consumer presence. My expectation was that of the top 20 banks, 4 or 5 would have a blog presence, and I expected that they would be focused on things like retirement planning, online security, and new products. It turns out I was completely wrong.

List of bank web sites reviewed:

I did a pretty basic set of searches looking for blogging activity at these banks, thinking that if I could or couldn’t find blogs, the average person would have similar results. I looked at the web sites looking for consumer information destinations that could lead to blogs and the corporate ‘about us’ information. I also did a search through Google Reader’s feed search capability. I am only a customer of one of these banks (though I did not log in), so there may be more content available to current customers. Here is what I found.

• Only 2 of these top 20 banks had blogging activity
• Only 7 had press releases/news via RSS
• Wells Fargo has 4 blogs, including one for commercial customers, and one devoted to the Wells virtual world that is similar to Second Life, one for students/student loans, and one collecting history associated with Wells Fargo
• Wells blog posts appear to have 2 - 5 comments per post
• ING was the only with a C level executive author (CEO of Asia/Pacific
• ING posts appear to have 0 - 1 comments per post
• All of these top 20 had static looking pages on retirement planning and online security

So, I thought I had set my expectations low, but even low expectations weren’t met. None of these banks are having online conversations with their customers. In a time where financial institutions are fighting for deposits and struggling to keep consumer customers who are no longer highly loyal to one institution, this seems a little surprising. As these banks are big and getting bigger through acquisitions, and consumers are more willing to move to community credit unions and local banks for the level of service, large banks need to take steps to connect with people.

What does this say about these institutions? Subjectively, from reviewing 20 sites in some detail, my thoughts are that

• Big banks are generally lagging in embracing online communities
• The big banks are providing a lot of consumer information and education on their sites - you just have to look for it
• There is far too much sales and marketing, and far too little conversation
• The banks that offered PR/news through RSS did a pretty good job explaining RSS and linking to lists of RSS readers

It is no secret that large financial institutions are slow to adopt new ideas and technology (outside of information security, which many banks do well), it is also no secret that large banks tend to be rather conservative in every conceivable way. Yet, it will serve these institutions well to think about new ways to connect with their customers, especially the younger ones who they may be able to create long term relationships with, and online conversations are one of the best and cheapest ways to do this.

My next look will be searching out community banks and credit unions using online conversations. Credit unions and community banks are often much quicker of the marks to adopt new technology and new approaches.

Phew, what an afternoon. Hopefully someone can find this frustrating experience useful.

I picked up my iPhone this afternoon and found it had apparently spontaneously rebooted and was hung on the boot screen with the Apple logo. A few home+sleep/wake reboot cycles with no change left me quite concerned. The best choice seemed to be to force a restore, which was the best advice I could find from the net.

As seems to be the case for many (though most often with jailbroken iPhones, which mine was not), I got an “unknown error (6)” during the restore process. I’ve had this before, but the cycle twice (three, four times) route didn’t work. Apple’s support document on unknown error (6) turned out not to help at all - I tried each one, in order, in hopes of success. I would recommend trying these steps before doing anything else though, there’s a pretty good chance they will work. Throughout this process, the restore process would get to 10-25% done and pop the “unknown error (6)” message.

After additional Google searching, there were suggestions to switch USB cables, USB ports, and even turning to tools like iBrickr. Here’s what worked for me, I’m not sure all factors are significant, but it worked:

• Realized I was using an old iPod cable, switched to the original iPhone cable
• This time the restore process got to 100% before presenting the “unknown error (6)”
• Unplugged the iPhone, did a home+sleep/wake reset
• Received the ‘plug in USB cable screen’
• Plugged the USB cable in and allowed the restore to move forward, and OMG! It worked

This led to great relief, and a martini made with the best vodka ever - Ruski Standart Platinum.

I hope this doesn’t happen to others, but if it does, I hope this will help you sort it out. I haven’t figured out why this worked, or what was wrong with the Apple approaches, but for some reason it did.

There are so many lists about the amazing things that happened this year, and at the risk of sounding cynical, there are a few things I was hoping would happen that didn’t. I think 2008 will see some of these things happening.

Social Networking in the Enterprise

Corporations over a certain size have a terrible time maintaining internal communication and coordination. Different groups within the same company duplicate efforts because they are in silos that don’t talk to each other, and expertise that is available isn’t leveraged because the people who need it don’t know it is there. There is a ton of room for social software such as Twitter or something like Ning to be white labeled and installed in larger organizations. Lotus took a nice step with Connections and Quickr, but I don’t know if those will hit the sweet spot. I haven’t yet run in to anyone using them, and haven’t heard much buzz about them - could be great, but tough to try out.

The Ready Made Network

Email is the ‘ready made’ social network. My inbox and email history is the most accurate picture of who my friends are and who I interact with. Most social networking sites have made a step by letting me look for friends based on my Gmail contacts, but that is really just a start. My email history tells who is closest to me in my social network and is a great place to start in describing my ‘graph.’ Google has made some strides in this area, particularly connecting chat to email, and my Google contacts to Reader for easy sharing of links. But this is only a start, there is so much further to take this. There are some pretty handy looking plugins for Outlook that move toward this goal - Xobni looks particularly interesting.

Referring to the point above, it seems email is the place to start for corporate social networking activity - the comprehension curve won’t be as steep as throwing Twitter at people.

The Visibility Continuum

As social media and communication move to the enterprise we will need new ways to group contacts and define visibility. Some items may be public (internet), partner/customer only (extranet), internal only (intranet), or sub-groups only (network). Users need one place to go to broadcast information at various visibility levels, and corporate IT departments need tools to ensure sensitive information doesn’t slip out while not hampering the users’ ability to communicate and collaborate. Facebook has made some progress in this area with Friend Lists, but this isn’t yet rich enough.

The Rise of Niche Networks

Sure, there are plenty of niche networks, and it is getting easier to create them - but there aren’t a lot of professional niche networks (outside of technology) getting people talking about their professional needs, questions and common interests. For example, I did a search on accountants social network and didn’t find any sites devoted to getting accountants talking to each other. Sure, there are forums and message boards for just about any profession, and LinkedIn Answers does a pretty good job, but there aren’t a lot of opportunities to go beyond just Q&A. Wouldn’t it be great to know someone else in the same field is on the same flight going to the same conference and you can share a cab?

Calendar Coordination

One of the things that corporations need is inter-company calendar capabilities. Scheduling a meeting between a client and vendor is excruciating - it is hard enough to do with internal people. I know there are a few services out there that provide some functionality, but none seem to be there yet. Scheduling is a very social thing, it shouldn’t be so hard to set up a one hour meeting.

What Will 2008 Bring?

I would love to see some of the developers of social networking sites white label the software and sell it to corporations - especially if they are implementing OpenSocial. This could allow corporations to have open internal networks and some connectivity to the outside world. Those same providers could provide a ‘town square’ or ‘meeting hall’ environment to connect corporate hosted instances. I think this could be a great way for Twitter, Jaiku or Pownce to monetize the idea (and for Google with Jaiku, to get corporates interested in other Google offerings).

2008 will hopefully see messaging (both email and IM) more closely integrated in to the social network. Messaging is the heart of anyone’s social life, be it SMS, email, phone conversation, voice mail, writing on the ‘wall,’ blogging or carrier pigeon. The trick of social networking software for the enterprise is to provide a variety of messaging options to fit the context and audience. The trick for the user is selecting the proper channel for the context.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what 2008 will bring for enterprise technology, it seems the time is coming that these technologies will change the way we work the same way the fax machine and email did.

This seems pretty obvious, but some Mac + Firefox users may appreciate it. I recently upgraded to OS X Leopard, and one of the things I really like is the stacks feature. This isn’t a mind blowing feature, but as someone who doesn’t like a lot of files on the desktop, but does like quick, easy access, it works quite nicely.

Safari automatically downloads files to the downloads stack, and I was irritated that by default FireFox downloads files to the desktop. As someone who tries out a lot of software, I download a lot of files. The solution is simple, but some folks may not have thought of it, I hadn’t until today.

• Open FireFox preferences and choose the “Main” tab
• In the downloads section, set the “save files to” to “/Users/userName/Downloads”

Now, all the downloaded files will wind up in the downloads stack in the dock. Quick and simple way to make the ‘Fox work more seamlessly with Mac.

LinuxWorld has good advice for companies:

Via Kottke.org.

This speaks to what I call ‘analysis paralysis’ that you see in many large organizations (not just software organizations). Planning, risk analysis and management are important - but as some (early) point you have to just give it a shot. All too often, going out and giving it a shot has value. Even if something is a failure, but just giving a quick try you can cheaply take the lessons learned and have another go at it, wiser for the experience.

I’ve seen organizations think about a market opportunity so long they missed the market, or spent so much time trying to come up with the ‘perfect does-everything-ultimate-makes-breakfast’ solution to a problem they bombed in the market.

There is something to be said for taking a quick shot and seeing how it works out.

Did you even want to work on a document with a full featured desktop client, but have the flexibility to access it anywhere and collaborate with others easily? Sure you have, most everyone has.

downloadsquad is featuring an article on a new OpenOffice extension that offers import/export between OO and Google Docs. This is an exciting first step, and one I certainly need to try out. I think we all dream of a “write anywhere, access anywhere” method of authoring and managing documents, but that may not be in the cards for a while. It is another good reason to give OpenOffice another look, and it certainly makes MS Office looks a little less useful for the types of things most people need to do day in, day out.

Hopefully we’ll see a true synchronization, maybe via Google Gears, in the not too distant future.

One of the key things Google is doing correctly is making it easy to access Google services from a variety of places and a variety of devices. Just today a mobile version of Google’s Notebook service was released (found here). Suddenly, Google Notebook has become nearly as valuable to me as del.icio.us.

The key element is Google is increasing the value of their services, increasing the stickiness, and increasing the general use per person (and therefore advertising). For example, with Gmail I’ve been able to access my email from my Mac, my work PC, my Blackberry, my iPhone, and any public terminal. Now with IMAP it is even better. I can access Google Maps from any computer, plus my iPhone, Blackberry and SMS.

The sheer volume of options for accessing these services leaves me not the least bit interested in looking at any other services. They all work so well, across so many devices there is no need to look elsewhere. And this is the strength Google is creating as a company - and this is why Google will continue to earn strong profits and have happy users. These are the reasons I really think Google has room to continue growing, and to come up with new ways of monetizing an increasingly attentive user base without alienating those users which are the lifeblood of the company.