My wife and I both travel for business. With travel policies being what they are, different companies often have different preferences in terms of airlines and hotels. As a result, she frequently flies American Airlines while I flew United for many years (I stopped flying United after being repeatedly stuck in their crappy base level of service despite having status). As you can imagine, this often raises question marks about what airline to fly on and what hotel to stay at when we travel as a family.
To a certain extent, it's easy to correlate travel loyalty programs to individuals because the airline's business is measured by seats. One butt equals one seat equals one account. Over many years of travel, I never really questioned this idea. At the same time when it comes to travel loyalty programs, over the years, I've primarily been focused on airlines. Hotels and hotel loyalty programs have always been more of an afterthought. One key reason for this is that, while it's not too difficult to use a primary airline for your travel (assuming that they go to most of the locations that you go), your hotel options aren't going to be as clear-cut. For example, if you attend a lot of business conferences, you'll probably find them hosted at different hotel chains. If you travel somewhere like Las Vegas for an event and you stay in a casino hotel, it probably won't be in any of your hotel loyalty programs. And if you're traveling internationally or, at the other end of the spectrum, to rural locations, your hotel options may be limited. So, for me, hotel loyalty programs were always more about hoping the hotel would treat you a little better than a generic guest.
Some Airlines Offer Family Accounts
Last year, I happened to find myself booking a flight on British Airways (you might remember some of my British Airways pricing posts). At that time, I signed up for the British Airways loyalty program. In reading through their account info, I discovered that they let you sign up your entire family and accumulate miles in a pooled account. It turns out that several international airlines offer these kinds of loyalty programs. I also since learned that JetBlue has a family loyalty program, an unusual offering among domestic carriers and yet another reason to like them as an airline.
Recently, while discussing some aspects of our business travel, my wife and I began wondering if the hotels we often stay at offered family loyalty programs.
Here's the thing, when we travel together, we each can benefit from our individual airline mileage accounts. However, when we get to the hotel, only one of us can benefit. Sharing a room means that one of us loses. This year, for example, we've spent six days in Marriott properties, but my wife gets no credit for that time. In that same way, when she travels, there is no incentive for her to book a Marriott property since she won't have been credited for any of the stays that we've had as a family. In fact, you could argue that it's better for her to book stays in another hotel chain such that, when we travel as a family, we have multiple options for status-upgraded stays.
Perhaps the hotel programs look at things from the standpoint of trying to "avoid" giving out benefits to "people who haven't earned it". Perhaps they're looking at it from the perspective of "spouses don't travel for business very much" or "what's the point of incentivizing the wife we already have the business of the husband?" At the same time, if I'm a traveler with hotel chain loyalty status, what's my perception when my spouse stays at your hotel chain and receives a "lesser" experience?
In short, this lack of offering a family loyalty account at the hotel chains is a real customer relations failure on their part. This really seems like something designed in the framework of "the husband travels and works, the wife stays at home." When you break it down in that context, it seems pretty bad.
Showing posts with label branding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label branding. Show all posts
Monday, August 6, 2018
Monday, July 30, 2018
The Intersection Between Branding, Internal Marketing and Employee Communications
Recently, I learned about a company that had hired an outside consulting business to work with it's management and employees in an effort to improve communications and the inter-working relationships in the organization. These outside consultant things always remind me of that part of the movie Office Space where they bring in "the Bobs" and the employees are asked about what they do.
For many that go through this, it's hard to escape an unspoken level of silliness and absurdity -- it's like the company trying to apply a topical medicine (like Neosporin) to fix a deeper, more involved sickness, like depression or pneumonia.
But there's another part of this equation that gets hidden, swept over by the decorum of not being to vocal or outspoken in the face of management when they hold the purse strings of your livelihood (or the other aspects of the culture that drove the idea of the consultant group in the first place). In essence, this is brand alignment problem.
Brand Alignment in the Context of Employees
You can find a lot of definitions and explanations of brand alignment with a quick Google search. In essence though, brand alignment is all about being what you say you are. For example, if your message is that your products are high quality goods, but in reality, your products are poorly manufactured and often break, you have a brand alignment problem. It's an inconsistency between message and factual reality.
The most fundamental aspect of this brand alignment equation that you have to understand is, there is no escaping reality, no escaping the truth that lives outside of the message. You can scream and shout, pay for massive advertising, social, viral, guerilla, -- choose your marketing buzzword, it doesn't matter -- if your products are poor quality, the reality of your brand identity will not be "quality products". In short, a key component of brand alignment is about what you do, not what you say.
Another important aspect of brand alignment is the idea that employees are essential to expressing the company's brand, that in their interaction with customers and the rest of the world, employees are the ambassadors and evangelists for your brand. In that respect, you'll find a number of brand alignment posts that talk about how important it is for companies to provide brand training to their employees.
But here's the thing about training. You can teach employees your company's brand message, but if the relationship with the business isn't aligned to that message, the words are hollow. To quote three questions from this Ignyte Brands post on brand alignment:
The underlying framework of "competitive salary, competitive benefits" is an HR organization that has basically done their version of competitive research and distilled it down to a set of features that they can match without much risk. That's not product design. If I tell you that making a "Me Too" physical product won't win you any business, most people understand that. But when you put that framework around HR, compensation, hiring and retention, suddenly you'll find a lot of people claiming that business doesn't work that way.
In some respects, you can blame HR and the people that run that department for this. Human Resources is not marketing, and they're not used to looking at things through that lens. I can't tell you how many times I've had to work with HR people and, in discussing even something as straightforward as writing descriptive promotional text about the company, found them unable to to produce something more than a copy/paste version of some other company description they found. They're unable to differentiate the company or even put together a basic framework of a story about what makes the opportunity interesting and why you'd want to work there. If your HR person can't sell your company to prospective candidates, how can you expect to have success in hiring and retention?
You've Got A Lot of Nerve To Say You Are My Friend...
Human Resources is Not Your Friend
If you search this term, not only will you find numerous articles written on various aspects of this, you'll also find horror stories of people who sought help from their HR department, only to discover that the HR group was either no help, or worse.
If human resources can't position the company, if they can't produce a compelling framework for why you'll want to work there and if, in the day-to-day work environment, they are not your friend -- how can you expect them to contribute to building a culture of evangelists in your company? Cute newsletters? Internal events? Imagine trying to sell prospective hires on the unique excitement they'll experience because your company also has a summer picnic. Or hosts a pizza lunch for everyone, occasionally. Rah rah rah!
Can you see start to see the framework of issues that are potentially eroding employee enthusiasm for a company -- the elements that are contributing that brand alignment problem?
Another tool that's sometimes referenced in marketing is the Net Promoter Score. For the HR people that might be reading this, here's a link that helps explain Net Promoter Score and how it's calculated. To summarize, rating your feelings about a company on a scale from 0-10, how does the company stack up? Within that calculation, it's important to understand that 0-6 are "detractors", 7-8 are "passives" and 9-10 are "promoters". If the best you can muster from your employees is, what might seem like an average 5 or 6, those people are actually detractors. How's that "competitive salary, competitive benefits" doing for you now?
One thing that I've often heard from HR departments here in the valley is that, "we'll we can't compete with Google. We can't have our own cafeteria, laundry, etc." But the problem is, they're looking specifically at these benefits like features you might offer -- or try to match -- instead of looking at the their constituent base and identifying what would be useful and compelling for them. This is why some of the culture and compensation documents that have come out of Netflix are so interesting.
But even with individual benefits and compensation, you've created a communication framework with your employees. For example, while I've worked with organizations that negotiate a basic package of health insurance coverage and pass some percentage of those costs onto the employee. I've also worked with companies that covered 100% of health insurance costs because, as they said, these are our employees and we want to take care of them. Which message resonates better with staff? Which is more likely to be something that people might evangelize about?
What Message does your Salary and Compensation Package Communicate?
Although salary and compensation are not typically viewed in a messaging context, compensation represents a direct message of employee value by the company to the employee. That being said, many businesses expect that, by implementing a "competitive" salary framework, they have matched a feature and taken that off the table. But what about companies with salaries on the low side? Here's a quick hint, when you're interview process delivers "final stage" candidates and you're making offers -- if some percentage of them choose not to accept, you probably have a compensation problem. Going through a series of interviews is not an uninvolved process on the part of your hiring candidate, so (put in a sales and marketing context), having people drop out of the pipeline at that point should raise a flag. What's more, it should also raise flags about the people who accept -- do they feel under-compensated, but didn't negotiate well or signed on with some sense of desperation?
All that being said, you'll find studies about compensation and salary that offer a few caveats. First, while some people are particularly focused on salary, not everyone is. Additionally, I've seen another salary study that basically said, if people are paid enough, they don't really worry about salary. Rather, the key driver for them tends to be about meaningful work. In that way, I think the key thing to take away with respect to salary is that, while there is no magic bullet for communicating positively through salary and compensation, there are many potential negative messages and wrong turns that a business can make.
Negative, under-compensation messages aren't limited to hiring though. Consider the annual performance review. If the percentage increase a company awards an employee is less than the cost of inflation, the "increase" is still conveying a negative message. Remember the story of Paul Ryan tweeting about the $1.50 per week increase the secretary at a high school got from the Republican tax plan -- enough to pay her Costco membership for the year? When he read that, he was seeing "increase", but what the secretary (and the rest of the world) was writing about was the insignificance of the amount. In Net Promoter terms, she was a detractor -- moved to the point of being vocal about her dissatisfaction.
How Do You Make Employees Promoters?
First, consider the start-up. Start-ups jobs often include company equity -- stock options. In that way, most people working for start-ups are, in essence, partial owners of the company. Often, they will accept a lower salary number with the hope that their efforts will vest in a longer term, larger pay-off. To accept that position, they must buy into the idea of the company, into the potential for it's success.
Another aspect of the start-up that may be even more significant in terms of aligning employees with the company and the brand is the framework by which corporate goals are defined. For start-ups, goals are often simple, tangible, and with a clear purpose. For example, during one business review meeting at one start-up I worked at, they told us, "right now, if everything holds steady, we have enough money to keep operating through to the end of the year." Beyond the long term goal of trying to make the company successful, this set a simple framework -- find customers, grow the business, or we're out of runway.
Contrast this with the goals defined by established businesses like, "last year our business made $200 million, this year we need to make $250 million." There's no why. For the average employee, there's no clearly defined requirement to do anything different than the previous year, no driver to act. Imagine the employee that made an extra effort to help the company hit the $200 million goal -- does $250 provide any meaningful framework for matching or exceeding the efforts that they just made?
For public companies, stock purchase programs and option awards can help provide employees a sense of ownership in the company. This can help mitigate some of the emptiness of arbitrary corporate financial goals. In it's simplest sense, owning stock in the company means that, if the company is worth more, your portfolio is worth more. You own a piece of that and your efforts are an investment in making it worth more.
In this aspect, there's a correlation between the size of the company and the ease of aligning employees with organizational messages. Smaller is easier. It's a lot easier to connect and align employees with corporate goals in smaller organizations. As organizations grow, people become more removed, more alienated, more disconnected from the influence, impact, and reward loop.
It should go without saying that simply adding start-up aspects to an established company isn't a solution. A great example of this is how many established companies these days undertake initiatives to eliminate offices or cube walls. I once worked in for a business that offered stock options and entertained questions of when they were thinking about an IPO -- this was post dot.com bust. Having gone through an IPO with an earlier company, I knew that this company would never go public, but that didn't stop their management from using the whole stock-option framework to grift employees -- they even sold options to outgoing employees. If you're running a grift on employees, you're probably going to have some brand alignment problems. That being said, the employees that didn't have enough understanding to be skeptical, they were certainly excited by the "stock options".
Ultimately, the way to meaningfully connect with employees and make them Promoters is not to simply copy-paste cultural aspects and incentives onto an environment and expect people to perform. Rather, it's something that requires design thinking, something that understands the unique challenges that your business faces and building an environment that's conducive to making business operations easier and better. It's about understanding what the business machine, your business, is trying to do and optimizing everything for that. It's also about making that machine inclusive. Rather than treating employees as cogs or dumb components, think of them as smart components with sensors and intelligence. Or better yet, think of them as people, people who, if they believe in a goal, will make an extra effort to help achieve that goal.
That makes the framework pretty simple. You need to define believable, meaningful goals, and you need to build an environment where people believe you're taking their interests into consideration.
For many that go through this, it's hard to escape an unspoken level of silliness and absurdity -- it's like the company trying to apply a topical medicine (like Neosporin) to fix a deeper, more involved sickness, like depression or pneumonia.
But there's another part of this equation that gets hidden, swept over by the decorum of not being to vocal or outspoken in the face of management when they hold the purse strings of your livelihood (or the other aspects of the culture that drove the idea of the consultant group in the first place). In essence, this is brand alignment problem.
Brand Alignment in the Context of Employees
You can find a lot of definitions and explanations of brand alignment with a quick Google search. In essence though, brand alignment is all about being what you say you are. For example, if your message is that your products are high quality goods, but in reality, your products are poorly manufactured and often break, you have a brand alignment problem. It's an inconsistency between message and factual reality.
The most fundamental aspect of this brand alignment equation that you have to understand is, there is no escaping reality, no escaping the truth that lives outside of the message. You can scream and shout, pay for massive advertising, social, viral, guerilla, -- choose your marketing buzzword, it doesn't matter -- if your products are poor quality, the reality of your brand identity will not be "quality products". In short, a key component of brand alignment is about what you do, not what you say.
Another important aspect of brand alignment is the idea that employees are essential to expressing the company's brand, that in their interaction with customers and the rest of the world, employees are the ambassadors and evangelists for your brand. In that respect, you'll find a number of brand alignment posts that talk about how important it is for companies to provide brand training to their employees.
But here's the thing about training. You can teach employees your company's brand message, but if the relationship with the business isn't aligned to that message, the words are hollow. To quote three questions from this Ignyte Brands post on brand alignment:
Do my employees feel appreciated? Are they invested in the success of the brand? And, most importantly, do they feel like an integral part of the brand story?This essential element of brand alignment may be one of the most underappreciated, misunderstood aspects of branding and brand identity. Not just that, but it probably provides some key insight into whether a business is performing at it's full potential. Consider, apathetic employees may "meet expectations" and execute their duties within the framework of the required tasks, but uninspiring environments are not going to motivate them to go above and beyond. And, if the business' relationship with employees is simply "competitive salary, competitive benefits", don't kid yourself into thinking that this is operating as an effective motivation engine for brand enthusiasm.
The underlying framework of "competitive salary, competitive benefits" is an HR organization that has basically done their version of competitive research and distilled it down to a set of features that they can match without much risk. That's not product design. If I tell you that making a "Me Too" physical product won't win you any business, most people understand that. But when you put that framework around HR, compensation, hiring and retention, suddenly you'll find a lot of people claiming that business doesn't work that way.
In some respects, you can blame HR and the people that run that department for this. Human Resources is not marketing, and they're not used to looking at things through that lens. I can't tell you how many times I've had to work with HR people and, in discussing even something as straightforward as writing descriptive promotional text about the company, found them unable to to produce something more than a copy/paste version of some other company description they found. They're unable to differentiate the company or even put together a basic framework of a story about what makes the opportunity interesting and why you'd want to work there. If your HR person can't sell your company to prospective candidates, how can you expect to have success in hiring and retention?
You've Got A Lot of Nerve To Say You Are My Friend...
Human Resources is Not Your Friend
If you search this term, not only will you find numerous articles written on various aspects of this, you'll also find horror stories of people who sought help from their HR department, only to discover that the HR group was either no help, or worse.
If human resources can't position the company, if they can't produce a compelling framework for why you'll want to work there and if, in the day-to-day work environment, they are not your friend -- how can you expect them to contribute to building a culture of evangelists in your company? Cute newsletters? Internal events? Imagine trying to sell prospective hires on the unique excitement they'll experience because your company also has a summer picnic. Or hosts a pizza lunch for everyone, occasionally. Rah rah rah!
Can you see start to see the framework of issues that are potentially eroding employee enthusiasm for a company -- the elements that are contributing that brand alignment problem?
Another tool that's sometimes referenced in marketing is the Net Promoter Score. For the HR people that might be reading this, here's a link that helps explain Net Promoter Score and how it's calculated. To summarize, rating your feelings about a company on a scale from 0-10, how does the company stack up? Within that calculation, it's important to understand that 0-6 are "detractors", 7-8 are "passives" and 9-10 are "promoters". If the best you can muster from your employees is, what might seem like an average 5 or 6, those people are actually detractors. How's that "competitive salary, competitive benefits" doing for you now?
One thing that I've often heard from HR departments here in the valley is that, "we'll we can't compete with Google. We can't have our own cafeteria, laundry, etc." But the problem is, they're looking specifically at these benefits like features you might offer -- or try to match -- instead of looking at the their constituent base and identifying what would be useful and compelling for them. This is why some of the culture and compensation documents that have come out of Netflix are so interesting.
But even with individual benefits and compensation, you've created a communication framework with your employees. For example, while I've worked with organizations that negotiate a basic package of health insurance coverage and pass some percentage of those costs onto the employee. I've also worked with companies that covered 100% of health insurance costs because, as they said, these are our employees and we want to take care of them. Which message resonates better with staff? Which is more likely to be something that people might evangelize about?
What Message does your Salary and Compensation Package Communicate?
Although salary and compensation are not typically viewed in a messaging context, compensation represents a direct message of employee value by the company to the employee. That being said, many businesses expect that, by implementing a "competitive" salary framework, they have matched a feature and taken that off the table. But what about companies with salaries on the low side? Here's a quick hint, when you're interview process delivers "final stage" candidates and you're making offers -- if some percentage of them choose not to accept, you probably have a compensation problem. Going through a series of interviews is not an uninvolved process on the part of your hiring candidate, so (put in a sales and marketing context), having people drop out of the pipeline at that point should raise a flag. What's more, it should also raise flags about the people who accept -- do they feel under-compensated, but didn't negotiate well or signed on with some sense of desperation?
All that being said, you'll find studies about compensation and salary that offer a few caveats. First, while some people are particularly focused on salary, not everyone is. Additionally, I've seen another salary study that basically said, if people are paid enough, they don't really worry about salary. Rather, the key driver for them tends to be about meaningful work. In that way, I think the key thing to take away with respect to salary is that, while there is no magic bullet for communicating positively through salary and compensation, there are many potential negative messages and wrong turns that a business can make.
Negative, under-compensation messages aren't limited to hiring though. Consider the annual performance review. If the percentage increase a company awards an employee is less than the cost of inflation, the "increase" is still conveying a negative message. Remember the story of Paul Ryan tweeting about the $1.50 per week increase the secretary at a high school got from the Republican tax plan -- enough to pay her Costco membership for the year? When he read that, he was seeing "increase", but what the secretary (and the rest of the world) was writing about was the insignificance of the amount. In Net Promoter terms, she was a detractor -- moved to the point of being vocal about her dissatisfaction.
How Do You Make Employees Promoters?
First, consider the start-up. Start-ups jobs often include company equity -- stock options. In that way, most people working for start-ups are, in essence, partial owners of the company. Often, they will accept a lower salary number with the hope that their efforts will vest in a longer term, larger pay-off. To accept that position, they must buy into the idea of the company, into the potential for it's success.
Another aspect of the start-up that may be even more significant in terms of aligning employees with the company and the brand is the framework by which corporate goals are defined. For start-ups, goals are often simple, tangible, and with a clear purpose. For example, during one business review meeting at one start-up I worked at, they told us, "right now, if everything holds steady, we have enough money to keep operating through to the end of the year." Beyond the long term goal of trying to make the company successful, this set a simple framework -- find customers, grow the business, or we're out of runway.
Contrast this with the goals defined by established businesses like, "last year our business made $200 million, this year we need to make $250 million." There's no why. For the average employee, there's no clearly defined requirement to do anything different than the previous year, no driver to act. Imagine the employee that made an extra effort to help the company hit the $200 million goal -- does $250 provide any meaningful framework for matching or exceeding the efforts that they just made?
For public companies, stock purchase programs and option awards can help provide employees a sense of ownership in the company. This can help mitigate some of the emptiness of arbitrary corporate financial goals. In it's simplest sense, owning stock in the company means that, if the company is worth more, your portfolio is worth more. You own a piece of that and your efforts are an investment in making it worth more.
In this aspect, there's a correlation between the size of the company and the ease of aligning employees with organizational messages. Smaller is easier. It's a lot easier to connect and align employees with corporate goals in smaller organizations. As organizations grow, people become more removed, more alienated, more disconnected from the influence, impact, and reward loop.
It should go without saying that simply adding start-up aspects to an established company isn't a solution. A great example of this is how many established companies these days undertake initiatives to eliminate offices or cube walls. I once worked in for a business that offered stock options and entertained questions of when they were thinking about an IPO -- this was post dot.com bust. Having gone through an IPO with an earlier company, I knew that this company would never go public, but that didn't stop their management from using the whole stock-option framework to grift employees -- they even sold options to outgoing employees. If you're running a grift on employees, you're probably going to have some brand alignment problems. That being said, the employees that didn't have enough understanding to be skeptical, they were certainly excited by the "stock options".
Ultimately, the way to meaningfully connect with employees and make them Promoters is not to simply copy-paste cultural aspects and incentives onto an environment and expect people to perform. Rather, it's something that requires design thinking, something that understands the unique challenges that your business faces and building an environment that's conducive to making business operations easier and better. It's about understanding what the business machine, your business, is trying to do and optimizing everything for that. It's also about making that machine inclusive. Rather than treating employees as cogs or dumb components, think of them as smart components with sensors and intelligence. Or better yet, think of them as people, people who, if they believe in a goal, will make an extra effort to help achieve that goal.
That makes the framework pretty simple. You need to define believable, meaningful goals, and you need to build an environment where people believe you're taking their interests into consideration.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
The Data is Restored: Thanks to Salesforce Customer Support and Our Internal Team
If you've been following the events surrounding the unexpected loss of my Salesforce data detailed in this post, How Passage Technology's Storage Helper Torched My Relationship with Salesforce, or if you've been following my updates on Twitter, you may be interested in the latest update -- as of yesterday, we believe we've restored all of our accidentally deleted data.
In that regard, I wanted to express my thanks to the Salesforce customer support team for assisting with the re-upload of several years of data from our Sandbox instance. As I mentioned in the update to my previous post, after being re-referred to the Salesforce customer support team by their Twitter support, the customer support agent that contacted me was extremely helpful. Not only did he listen and talk with me about all of the issues associated with the data loss, he then took the initiative to re-upload the data. That was no small task as the associated Excel files amounted to almost 250MB worth of data. First, he had to add a custom field for the Sandbox ID of the Invoice header, then upload the Sandbox data, then use a VLookup function to remap the Invoice Line "child records" before uploading them. It actually took him several days to complete all of this. I'm extremely grateful for the support.
With his help, we only needed to re-run our integration script for data going back to last September, (something that took us a couple of days to complete, just to give you a sense of the scope of the data).
Finally, it's worth noting that last week I sent an email to Marc Benioff to express my thanks for the customer support agent that had made such an extraordinary effort. Much to my surprise, I received an email back from Benioff, expressing concern over my experience and the issues that I raised, and forwarding those concerns on to their customer support team. After that, I received a follow-up call by one of their senior VPs. I suspect that, if we had been deeper in the weeds than we were, they would have done what they could to help us get back on our feet.
All that being said, Leo, the front-line customer support guy who wound up catching my issue following the Twitter referral, really exceeded my expectations for customer support, and it's an important reminder about just how important that front line customer support channel is. While it's reassuring to know that my concerns matter enough to Marc Benioff to generate a reply, if it hadn't been for Leo's efforts, I doubt that the whole matter would have taken a path to an executive response.
That's not to say that Salesforce's front line customer service succeeded right out of the gate. Clearly, getting a responsive experience required some persistence on my part.
In that, I think, I can find a take-away from all of this. If you're wrestling with a significant issue like this and you're dealing with Salesforce customer service, don't give up. Like many companies, Salesforce has default practices that are designed to address 80% of the issues that come up. And, like many companies, they probably have a percentage of their staff that wants to stay within the confines of their defined processes. But I think you can take one thing away that response that I got from Marc Benioff -- they really want to be the company that they promise to be.
Having been to (and through) a number of Dreamforce events, there's a feel-good aspect of the Salesforce brand. There's the philanthropy, the 1-1-1 business model, their principled corporate voice -- there's a lot to respect about when and how Salesforce stands up. Perhaps that's why, when you're faced with certain technical challenges, operational restrictions, or dealing with aspects of the company's business processes that seem too revenue-centric, the company that you face can seem very different than the company you imagine.
But at it's core, I think Salesforce wants to be a better company; that it is a better company than most. I can't say that I won't get pissed off about something that they do tomorrow, but in the face of adversity, they did alright by me -- even if it took a bit to get there.
In that regard, I wanted to express my thanks to the Salesforce customer support team for assisting with the re-upload of several years of data from our Sandbox instance. As I mentioned in the update to my previous post, after being re-referred to the Salesforce customer support team by their Twitter support, the customer support agent that contacted me was extremely helpful. Not only did he listen and talk with me about all of the issues associated with the data loss, he then took the initiative to re-upload the data. That was no small task as the associated Excel files amounted to almost 250MB worth of data. First, he had to add a custom field for the Sandbox ID of the Invoice header, then upload the Sandbox data, then use a VLookup function to remap the Invoice Line "child records" before uploading them. It actually took him several days to complete all of this. I'm extremely grateful for the support.
With his help, we only needed to re-run our integration script for data going back to last September, (something that took us a couple of days to complete, just to give you a sense of the scope of the data).
Finally, it's worth noting that last week I sent an email to Marc Benioff to express my thanks for the customer support agent that had made such an extraordinary effort. Much to my surprise, I received an email back from Benioff, expressing concern over my experience and the issues that I raised, and forwarding those concerns on to their customer support team. After that, I received a follow-up call by one of their senior VPs. I suspect that, if we had been deeper in the weeds than we were, they would have done what they could to help us get back on our feet.
All that being said, Leo, the front-line customer support guy who wound up catching my issue following the Twitter referral, really exceeded my expectations for customer support, and it's an important reminder about just how important that front line customer support channel is. While it's reassuring to know that my concerns matter enough to Marc Benioff to generate a reply, if it hadn't been for Leo's efforts, I doubt that the whole matter would have taken a path to an executive response.
That's not to say that Salesforce's front line customer service succeeded right out of the gate. Clearly, getting a responsive experience required some persistence on my part.
In that, I think, I can find a take-away from all of this. If you're wrestling with a significant issue like this and you're dealing with Salesforce customer service, don't give up. Like many companies, Salesforce has default practices that are designed to address 80% of the issues that come up. And, like many companies, they probably have a percentage of their staff that wants to stay within the confines of their defined processes. But I think you can take one thing away that response that I got from Marc Benioff -- they really want to be the company that they promise to be.
Having been to (and through) a number of Dreamforce events, there's a feel-good aspect of the Salesforce brand. There's the philanthropy, the 1-1-1 business model, their principled corporate voice -- there's a lot to respect about when and how Salesforce stands up. Perhaps that's why, when you're faced with certain technical challenges, operational restrictions, or dealing with aspects of the company's business processes that seem too revenue-centric, the company that you face can seem very different than the company you imagine.
But at it's core, I think Salesforce wants to be a better company; that it is a better company than most. I can't say that I won't get pissed off about something that they do tomorrow, but in the face of adversity, they did alright by me -- even if it took a bit to get there.
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
More Indications Apple Abandoning Mac Core
Here's another post with some interesting behind-the-scenes information about the structure of things at Apple. It comes on the heels of the news out yesterday that Tim Cook basically said, "desktop is important to us." However, this Business Insider piece has a lot more info about how things are changing around the Mac OS internally. More specifically, the people who have been working on Mac OS are being rolled into the iOS software team. Here's the quote, originally from a Bloomberg report:
When it comes to product roadmap and buyer's guides, it's becoming increasingly clear that you probably shouldn't hold out for future Apple Mac products, because if you do, you'll probably find you're getting an iPhone with a large screen and keyboard attached. That is all.
Gurman says that Apple has reorganized its software engineering so that there is no more dedicated Mac operating system team. Instead, engineers work on both iOS and macOS, as the Mac has been generally deprioritized in the company, according to the report.For those of us that have been using the platform in recent years, some of this comes as little surprise. Increasingly, the team at Apple seems to be focused on incorporating features into the MacOS that nobody really needs or wants on a desktop or laptop system. Things like the "Notifications" menu bar drop down, or my recent favorite -- Siri. To date, the number of times that I've used Siri on my laptop? Zero.
When it comes to product roadmap and buyer's guides, it's becoming increasingly clear that you probably shouldn't hold out for future Apple Mac products, because if you do, you'll probably find you're getting an iPhone with a large screen and keyboard attached. That is all.
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Food Brands: Kitchen Basics Stock Sucks Now. New owners. New recipe.
Once upon a time, when it seemed like there were more hours in the day, I used to write blog posts more frequently. We also used to post to our food blog more actively. In some respects, this post might be more appropriate on the food blog, but i decided to post it on the marketing blog because it definitely raises some interesting branding questions.
Now, to set the stage for you non-cooking people in the audience, chicken broth or stock is one of these essential ingredients to making better tasting foods -- it's not just something that you buy around Thanksgiving for poultry-cooking projects. We use stock all of the time, typically when you want to add liquid to a dish during the cooking process. Ideally, you make your own stock, but the process of making stock takes several hours, so its not unusual to use the packaged varieties you find in the store. Now, the downside of most store-bought stocks and broths is that they have a ton of salt in them and that gets even worse as it reduces down and the water cooks off -- a typical cooking process that could turn into a salty mess with the wrong product.
Enter Kitchen Basics Cooking Stock, a product that we found years ago and quickly became a cornerstone of our pantry. Back in 2009, we even published this post about Kitchen Basics Stock. Also, if you search the web for chicken broth comparisons, you'll find a number of older posts that rank the Kitchen Basics Stock higher than most other broths.
So imagine my surprise when I was at the store the other day and the familiar mustard yellow package of Kitchen Basics Chicken Stock had changed color. It was still yellow, but lighter yellow now, closer to a lemon yellow color than the mustard color. Initially, my assumption was that the packaging had just undergone some aging/bleaching, but I made my usual purchase (2 cartons) and headed home.
A day or two later, my wife informed me that there seemed to be something wrong with the Kitchen Basics Chicken Stock. When she started to add it to the soup she making, she noted that the stock was different. The color was lighter and the taste had changed. She then noted, as she compared the new one to an older package that we still had, that the list of ingredients on the back was different on the new, lighter colored package. Later, as we discussed it, we searched online for some explanation.
So it turns out that in 2011, Kitchen Basics was purchased by McCormick for $38 million in an effort to grow through acquisitions. You're probably familiar with McCormick from their line of spices. It appears that, some five years since the acquisition, Kitchen Basics Chicken Stock has been reformulated. Here's the original ingredient list (note, it's still listed this way on the Kitchen Basics web site and we had actually had an older package that with this ingredient list).
You'll note the removal of the vegetable stock as the second ingredient in the new version. This appears to be what's driving the flavor change.
Now it may be that this change is fairly subtle for most people, but for us, it was like somebody replaced the ultra-plush toilet paper in your home with one of those industrial toilet papers that always make you dread going to the bathroom in places that use them. It's one of those everyday products that you use and you probably don't think much about until something changes. But for us, and probably other people that use Kitchen Basics regularly, this change marks a complete re-evaluation of the products that we're using. We're now back to looking for an off the shelf chicken stock product that we can be happy with.
What makes this even more mind-boggling from a brand aspect is, this may seem like no big deal. But you also have to understand that Kitchen Basics isn't available in every grocery store and, in many cases, we've made decisions as to which retail store to choose based on whether they stocked Kitchen Basics. In software terms, this is a fundamental change to the core stack, something that affects an entire ecosystem above it. It's now entirely possible that, whatever we find as our new chicken stock of choice, that will dictate at least one of the stores that we shop in.
Thanks McCormick. It looks like we may be done with the Kitchen Basics brand.
Now, to set the stage for you non-cooking people in the audience, chicken broth or stock is one of these essential ingredients to making better tasting foods -- it's not just something that you buy around Thanksgiving for poultry-cooking projects. We use stock all of the time, typically when you want to add liquid to a dish during the cooking process. Ideally, you make your own stock, but the process of making stock takes several hours, so its not unusual to use the packaged varieties you find in the store. Now, the downside of most store-bought stocks and broths is that they have a ton of salt in them and that gets even worse as it reduces down and the water cooks off -- a typical cooking process that could turn into a salty mess with the wrong product.
Enter Kitchen Basics Cooking Stock, a product that we found years ago and quickly became a cornerstone of our pantry. Back in 2009, we even published this post about Kitchen Basics Stock. Also, if you search the web for chicken broth comparisons, you'll find a number of older posts that rank the Kitchen Basics Stock higher than most other broths.
So imagine my surprise when I was at the store the other day and the familiar mustard yellow package of Kitchen Basics Chicken Stock had changed color. It was still yellow, but lighter yellow now, closer to a lemon yellow color than the mustard color. Initially, my assumption was that the packaging had just undergone some aging/bleaching, but I made my usual purchase (2 cartons) and headed home.
A day or two later, my wife informed me that there seemed to be something wrong with the Kitchen Basics Chicken Stock. When she started to add it to the soup she making, she noted that the stock was different. The color was lighter and the taste had changed. She then noted, as she compared the new one to an older package that we still had, that the list of ingredients on the back was different on the new, lighter colored package. Later, as we discussed it, we searched online for some explanation.
So it turns out that in 2011, Kitchen Basics was purchased by McCormick for $38 million in an effort to grow through acquisitions. You're probably familiar with McCormick from their line of spices. It appears that, some five years since the acquisition, Kitchen Basics Chicken Stock has been reformulated. Here's the original ingredient list (note, it's still listed this way on the Kitchen Basics web site and we had actually had an older package that with this ingredient list).
IngredientsNow, here's what I have for the "new" version of the stock:
CHICKEN STOCK, VEGETABLE STOCK (CARROT, ONION, MUSHROOMS, AND CELERY), SEA SALT, NATURAL CHICKEN FLAVOR, HONEY, SALT, NATURAL FLAVOR, AND SPICE AND HERBS (BLACK PEPPER, BAY LEAF, AND THYME).
You'll note the removal of the vegetable stock as the second ingredient in the new version. This appears to be what's driving the flavor change.
Now it may be that this change is fairly subtle for most people, but for us, it was like somebody replaced the ultra-plush toilet paper in your home with one of those industrial toilet papers that always make you dread going to the bathroom in places that use them. It's one of those everyday products that you use and you probably don't think much about until something changes. But for us, and probably other people that use Kitchen Basics regularly, this change marks a complete re-evaluation of the products that we're using. We're now back to looking for an off the shelf chicken stock product that we can be happy with.
What makes this even more mind-boggling from a brand aspect is, this may seem like no big deal. But you also have to understand that Kitchen Basics isn't available in every grocery store and, in many cases, we've made decisions as to which retail store to choose based on whether they stocked Kitchen Basics. In software terms, this is a fundamental change to the core stack, something that affects an entire ecosystem above it. It's now entirely possible that, whatever we find as our new chicken stock of choice, that will dictate at least one of the stores that we shop in.
Thanks McCormick. It looks like we may be done with the Kitchen Basics brand.
Monday, June 27, 2016
Enterprise Rent-A-Car: Mistakes and Credits
So, I've written a lot about Enterprise Car Rental lately. Part of the reason why I took this up again was that, after my contact with Miami regional manager Jose, I expected to receive some sort of communication, either explaining the issue, something confirming that they had credited my account -- something.
Just to check, I went back and looked at my credit card statement and there was a charge of $-54.87 on my card from Enterprise on June 2. Since this charge was in the same date range as some of the hotels that I had stayed at during my trip, I thought that this was the disputed charge.
This morning, after more attempts to get a response from Enterprise customer service, I finally decided to call my credit card company in order to dispute the charge. The customer service agent at the card company informed my that the June 2 number was a credit of $54.87, and that the prior charge was in May for $54.89. Essentially, they had credited me back the entire charge. Or rather, the entire charge, less two cents. I told the agent that I was okay with the two cent charge and we had a chuckle and left it at that.
In some respects, I owe Enterprise Customer Service an apology. They did actually credit my account and respond. At the same time, considering the back and forth that we had -- and the number of times that I tried to follow up with them -- I'm surprised that they didn't email me some notice that they'd credited my account. It would have saved me a month of albeit misplaced frustrations and it would have saved them from the stuff that I posted online.
At this point, I'm unsure as to whether I will rent from Enterprise again. Prior to our trip to Miami, I was raving to everyone about the great rate that we had received from Enterprise. We were excited. I was an evangelist. Now, I just don't know.
Just to check, I went back and looked at my credit card statement and there was a charge of $-54.87 on my card from Enterprise on June 2. Since this charge was in the same date range as some of the hotels that I had stayed at during my trip, I thought that this was the disputed charge.
This morning, after more attempts to get a response from Enterprise customer service, I finally decided to call my credit card company in order to dispute the charge. The customer service agent at the card company informed my that the June 2 number was a credit of $54.87, and that the prior charge was in May for $54.89. Essentially, they had credited me back the entire charge. Or rather, the entire charge, less two cents. I told the agent that I was okay with the two cent charge and we had a chuckle and left it at that.
In some respects, I owe Enterprise Customer Service an apology. They did actually credit my account and respond. At the same time, considering the back and forth that we had -- and the number of times that I tried to follow up with them -- I'm surprised that they didn't email me some notice that they'd credited my account. It would have saved me a month of albeit misplaced frustrations and it would have saved them from the stuff that I posted online.
At this point, I'm unsure as to whether I will rent from Enterprise again. Prior to our trip to Miami, I was raving to everyone about the great rate that we had received from Enterprise. We were excited. I was an evangelist. Now, I just don't know.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Enterprise Car Rental Update: Contact.
So yesterday afternoon I received a call from a regional manager for Enterprise Car Rental in Miami. We discussed the issues that I had experienced and he apologized. He said that they would credit me back the incorrect charges. I asked for a more complete postmortem. I'll let you know when I have more.
Monday, May 30, 2016
One Great Marketing Story: Subaru Markets to Lesbians
I just came across this article from the Priceonomics site, How an Ad Campaign Made Lesbians Fall in Love with Subaru. It's a wonderful historical study of how Subaru began marketing to lesbians along with targeting several other niche demographics. I'll let you read the piece as it's really good. As someone who has worked with Japanese businesses, it's also amusing from that angle as well. Definitely a must read.
Friday, May 27, 2016
My Weird Bad Experience With Enterprise Car Rental
So I just wrapped up a busy two weeks of travel, mostly business, but some vacation. Travel seems to bring out lots of terrible customer service experiences. There are probably a number of reasons for this. When you're at home, you have routines and you probably frequent known businesses that deliver a predictable level of service. When you travel, you're probably dealing with new places, new businesses and your dealing with reviews, reputations and brands that you hope can ensure that you have quality experiences.
In many ways, this is where brands are supposed to thrive. If you're at home in the bay area, you can count on Philz, Peets, or Blue Bottle for quality coffee, but when you're in a town that you don't know, if there is a Starbucks, at least you can count on getting coffee that doesn't suck. Brands are brands because the commit to ensure a level of service and quality -- or that's the theory.
My Crazy, You-Don't-Want-This-to-Happen-to-You Enterprise Car Rental Experience
I've rented from Enterprise Car Rental many times over the years, probably back as far as the early 1990s. While my business travel has had me renting from many companies, I often found myself gravitating back to Enterprise for the lower prices, car offerings, and sometimes they even used to pick you up. One of the things that I was always disappointed with them for was that, for many years, I don't think they had a loyalty program. Several years ago, I finally found their loyalty program and signed up. With many of these things, I never wind up actually using the points, but often the business treats you a bit better because you're signed up.
So anyway, last week was Miami, with a long drive up Florida to visit Jacksonville with my wife. My wife's corporate rate with Avis is really good, so we were surprised when I got a car rental rate that was WAY lower from Enterprise. Enterprise was offering an $7.95 per day rental for a pick-up in Miami and drop off in Jacksonville. My three day rental with unlimited mileage was under $25. Whenever I told anyone how much I was quoted, they were also shocked. It was one of those rates that made me happy -- thrilled -- to be renting from Enterprise.
So we picked up the car on Thursday. It was the usual process of attempting to upsell me on insurance and Florida tolls, but other than that, nothing different from any other car rental that I've ever done. Then the quick inspection, and we were off in a nice new Toyota RAV4. Leaving the Miami metro area, I was halfway kicking myself about not spending the extra $4 for the automated toll coverage so I could escape a little bit of the traffic on I-95, but other than that, it was a pretty uneventful drive.
Fast forward to Saturday morning where we dropped off the car with way more gas than we needed to (only needed half a tank, but the RAV4 gas tank is actually kind of small). Through the usual drop off line at the airport, then the attendant asks if I'd like a copy of the receipt. I said yes, at which point she told me I needed to go the attendant in the Enterprise office there -- something we didn't really want to do since we were anxious to get through security and be ready for our flight. Thinking that it wouldn't be a problem -- I've had car rental receipts emailed to me on many occasions -- I asked if she could email the receipt and she said yet.
Two days later, Monday, May 23 at 6pm I finally received my receipt. The receipt claimed that I had had the car until nearly 2:00pm that Monday, putting me in a five day rental at $55. It goes without saying that my wife and I, having dropped the car at the airport, had been in New Orleans since Saturday, so the idea that I was being charged for two days that I didn't use the car was, in a word, bullshit.
Now, if you aren't really too worried about it, you might think that $55 was a reasonable amount to pay to drive a rental car from Miami to Jacksonville. You might be willing to let the $30 delta slide. But the problem that I have is that we did nothing different that we haven't done 100 times, with Enterprise and other rental car companies. It was standard operating procedure. And so the idea that for some unexplained reason, Enterprise would change the rules this time and surprise me with an unwarranted charge -- I really needed to get an explanation.
Enterprise Customer Service SUCKS
So I called Enterprise Customer Service using the toll free contact number published on their web site. After receiving my confirmation number, the customer service rep told me that there was nothing he could do and that I would have to call the Miami office where I rented the vehicle once they were open (on East Coast Time). He didn't seem to have any ability to log a case, couldn't provide me with a case number, and didn't seem to be willing to do anything other than essentially say, "man, that's a bummer. I'm sorry your frustrated. I can't do anything."
At this point, my frustration had amplified, so I got on Twitter and began telling my story, curious to see if Enterprise Car Rental monitored Twitter. About a half an hour after I started posting comments on Twitter to @enterprise and @enterprisecares, I finally received response with a request to send their customer service my confirmation number. After some back and forth with Enterprise customer service through Twitter direct messages, I was informed that "I sent your comments and concerns, and your contact information, to the Miami regional office for review and response. A manager will contact you as soon as possible," and a reference number was assigned.
Three days later, and I still haven't heard anything from Enterprise Car Rental. As soon as possible doesn't seem to mean what you might think it means. At this point, I'm left feeling like Enterprise Car Rental is trying to rip me off -- and the ironic part is that it's for about $30. Keep in mind that I'm a points-holding member of their loyalty program who, before having this billing dispute, would have likely been a huge recommender for Enterprise Car Rental. Now, I question whether they're going pull some crazy shit when you turn your car in. And I most certainly would get a receipt before I leave!
As I mentioned on Twitter, "this is the critical interrelationship between customer service and marketing." Right now, I'm questioning my entire relationship with Enterprise Car Rental. That affects not just one location in one state, but other locations and other potential business. In one customer service moment, Enterprise could have looked at this and said, "hah, some crazy clerical error, clearly not worth the $30 to even argue it." But instead, they send me into some shitstorm of a bureaucratic devil's triangle, where the issue just seems to get lost. @enterprisecares. Except they forgot to close the <satire> tag.
How do you think things like this promotional email from Enterprise will work with me going forward?
This, my friends, seriously deserves a #FAIL tag.
In many ways, this is where brands are supposed to thrive. If you're at home in the bay area, you can count on Philz, Peets, or Blue Bottle for quality coffee, but when you're in a town that you don't know, if there is a Starbucks, at least you can count on getting coffee that doesn't suck. Brands are brands because the commit to ensure a level of service and quality -- or that's the theory.
My Crazy, You-Don't-Want-This-to-Happen-to-You Enterprise Car Rental Experience
I've rented from Enterprise Car Rental many times over the years, probably back as far as the early 1990s. While my business travel has had me renting from many companies, I often found myself gravitating back to Enterprise for the lower prices, car offerings, and sometimes they even used to pick you up. One of the things that I was always disappointed with them for was that, for many years, I don't think they had a loyalty program. Several years ago, I finally found their loyalty program and signed up. With many of these things, I never wind up actually using the points, but often the business treats you a bit better because you're signed up.
So anyway, last week was Miami, with a long drive up Florida to visit Jacksonville with my wife. My wife's corporate rate with Avis is really good, so we were surprised when I got a car rental rate that was WAY lower from Enterprise. Enterprise was offering an $7.95 per day rental for a pick-up in Miami and drop off in Jacksonville. My three day rental with unlimited mileage was under $25. Whenever I told anyone how much I was quoted, they were also shocked. It was one of those rates that made me happy -- thrilled -- to be renting from Enterprise.
So we picked up the car on Thursday. It was the usual process of attempting to upsell me on insurance and Florida tolls, but other than that, nothing different from any other car rental that I've ever done. Then the quick inspection, and we were off in a nice new Toyota RAV4. Leaving the Miami metro area, I was halfway kicking myself about not spending the extra $4 for the automated toll coverage so I could escape a little bit of the traffic on I-95, but other than that, it was a pretty uneventful drive.
Fast forward to Saturday morning where we dropped off the car with way more gas than we needed to (only needed half a tank, but the RAV4 gas tank is actually kind of small). Through the usual drop off line at the airport, then the attendant asks if I'd like a copy of the receipt. I said yes, at which point she told me I needed to go the attendant in the Enterprise office there -- something we didn't really want to do since we were anxious to get through security and be ready for our flight. Thinking that it wouldn't be a problem -- I've had car rental receipts emailed to me on many occasions -- I asked if she could email the receipt and she said yet.
Two days later, Monday, May 23 at 6pm I finally received my receipt. The receipt claimed that I had had the car until nearly 2:00pm that Monday, putting me in a five day rental at $55. It goes without saying that my wife and I, having dropped the car at the airport, had been in New Orleans since Saturday, so the idea that I was being charged for two days that I didn't use the car was, in a word, bullshit.
Now, if you aren't really too worried about it, you might think that $55 was a reasonable amount to pay to drive a rental car from Miami to Jacksonville. You might be willing to let the $30 delta slide. But the problem that I have is that we did nothing different that we haven't done 100 times, with Enterprise and other rental car companies. It was standard operating procedure. And so the idea that for some unexplained reason, Enterprise would change the rules this time and surprise me with an unwarranted charge -- I really needed to get an explanation.
Enterprise Customer Service SUCKS
So I called Enterprise Customer Service using the toll free contact number published on their web site. After receiving my confirmation number, the customer service rep told me that there was nothing he could do and that I would have to call the Miami office where I rented the vehicle once they were open (on East Coast Time). He didn't seem to have any ability to log a case, couldn't provide me with a case number, and didn't seem to be willing to do anything other than essentially say, "man, that's a bummer. I'm sorry your frustrated. I can't do anything."
At this point, my frustration had amplified, so I got on Twitter and began telling my story, curious to see if Enterprise Car Rental monitored Twitter. About a half an hour after I started posting comments on Twitter to @enterprise and @enterprisecares, I finally received response with a request to send their customer service my confirmation number. After some back and forth with Enterprise customer service through Twitter direct messages, I was informed that "I sent your comments and concerns, and your contact information, to the Miami regional office for review and response. A manager will contact you as soon as possible," and a reference number was assigned.
Three days later, and I still haven't heard anything from Enterprise Car Rental. As soon as possible doesn't seem to mean what you might think it means. At this point, I'm left feeling like Enterprise Car Rental is trying to rip me off -- and the ironic part is that it's for about $30. Keep in mind that I'm a points-holding member of their loyalty program who, before having this billing dispute, would have likely been a huge recommender for Enterprise Car Rental. Now, I question whether they're going pull some crazy shit when you turn your car in. And I most certainly would get a receipt before I leave!
As I mentioned on Twitter, "this is the critical interrelationship between customer service and marketing." Right now, I'm questioning my entire relationship with Enterprise Car Rental. That affects not just one location in one state, but other locations and other potential business. In one customer service moment, Enterprise could have looked at this and said, "hah, some crazy clerical error, clearly not worth the $30 to even argue it." But instead, they send me into some shitstorm of a bureaucratic devil's triangle, where the issue just seems to get lost. @enterprisecares. Except they forgot to close the <satire> tag.
How do you think things like this promotional email from Enterprise will work with me going forward?
DRIVE AWAY WITH SAVINGS AND POINTSAs a business, how much do you think Enterprise's marketing group is spending on ExactTarget for email marketing? And then, to watch that spend get kneecapped by their customer service? It's got to be frustrating. After all, could any number of "We miss you" emails overcome one bad customer service experience? From the marketing end of the business, all we can say is unbelievable. For about $30. It really sounds like a joke doesn't it.
Save 20%.
We miss you. Come back and save 20% at participating locations. You can earn valuable points toward free rental days.
This, my friends, seriously deserves a #FAIL tag.
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Wired Looks at iTunes Alienation of Music Lovers
I've written about it a number of times before, Apple has taken a design and product strategy that is alienating and abandoning many of their most passionate users. In Apple’s iTunes Is Alienating Its Most Music-Obsessed Users, Jesse Jarnow explores how iTunes has evolved into a platform that sucks for people with giant music libraries. Earlier this year, I'd come across an article with related complaints held by classical music fans.
Essentially, all of the crap that they've added into iTunes, plus this overwhelming requirement for iTunes to phone home to Apple, really sucks if you've built a music library. In that way, the core functionality of iTunes has been superseded by stuff that doesn't really relate to music library at all.
If you think about that on an abstract level, this product that used to cater to a very specific set of requirements -- typically the most demanding, passionate users of an application -- has evolved into a giant business engine shaped around promoting selling you crap that they want to sell you. This is less aligned with Steve Jobs, the guy that took days and weeks to decide on the right washing machine, and more aligned with the fluff and seasonality of the fashion industry.
Essentially, all of the crap that they've added into iTunes, plus this overwhelming requirement for iTunes to phone home to Apple, really sucks if you've built a music library. In that way, the core functionality of iTunes has been superseded by stuff that doesn't really relate to music library at all.
If you think about that on an abstract level, this product that used to cater to a very specific set of requirements -- typically the most demanding, passionate users of an application -- has evolved into a giant business engine shaped around promoting selling you crap that they want to sell you. This is less aligned with Steve Jobs, the guy that took days and weeks to decide on the right washing machine, and more aligned with the fluff and seasonality of the fashion industry.
Friday, March 13, 2015
A Nice Look at the Why of a Gold Apple Watch
Here's a good, quick read looking at the why of the high dollar gold edition Apple Watch. Sometimes, you can do things because you're the only one that can do them.
Why is Apple making a gold watch?
Why is Apple making a gold watch?
Friday, January 16, 2015
When did spam become an accepted marketing practice?
If your like me, you've become increasingly frustrated with your email inbox. Somewhere in 2014, perhaps earlier, it seems as though we passed a milestone. Over the course of the year, I've noticed that more and more businesses have adopted spam as a marketing practice. Sorry, in the parlance of the industry, frequent customer touches, lead nurturing, trickle marketing, or -- if you ask me -- spam.
What makes this so frustratingly bad is that most of these are not trying to sell you Viagra or investments in Nigeria, those are easier to block and filter. Instead, these are emails that come from businesses and services that you use.
Perhaps the foremost example of this is Twitter which, in 2014, seems to have decided to send copious emails to each and every account you may have. These emails range from "did you know that so-and-so said such and such?" and "Today on Twitter" to "do you know so-and-so?" You look at these things and think, "dude, I signed up for Twitter and I've used your service. If I wanted to know what happened today -- or find somebody -- I'd log into Twitter and do that." The worst part of it is, if you click the unsubscribe link, it will unsubscribe you from "this type of email". And then it shifts is spam efforts to a different type of email -- from "what happened today" to "do you know" or something to that effect.
Screw those guys. This "semi-opt out" behavior is the kind of thing that builds animosity towards brands. It would be no trouble to include a button to opt out of all of their various 'marketing' emails (like more upstanding retail emailers do), but they don't. Instead, they tell you if you want to 'fix' your email preferences, you need to login -- enabling them to pad their engagement stats. See how successful our email marketing programs are? Again, screw you guys. May your gourmet cafe be filled with nothing but Spam.
Of course, it's not just Twitter. LinkedIn seems to think it's the San Jose Mercury News, or something to that effect. For some reason, they decided that I need at least two or three updates a day. "Remember that guy you worked with 15 years ago? It's his birthday today."
More Anecdotes of Email Marketing Gone Wrong
Another example comes from a colleague that works with a diverse technology company. One day they were contacted by this group, an industry association about advertising in their buyer's guide. Normally, he says, they don't do much advertising, but this is a niche industry. So they decide to move forward with the ad. After agreeing to do the ad, he realizes that the company doing the buyer's guide is not the people that he normally deals with in the industry association, but a third party group that apparently, returns some of the money that they make to the industry association.
So it turns out that this company, Multiview, doesn't just work with one industry association, they work with a number of them. And so, suddenly having been added to the "this guy spends" pool, more emails begin streaming in from Multiview, each one targeting a different industry, each one trying to scrape some more money from the business. So he starts creating filters to block them from his inbox. But the emails keep coming in because each name is different. And he can't block Multiview all together because they committed to the stupid buyers guide.
The whole thing reminded me of old call center place advertising place that I worked with when I was just out of college years ago. It's one of those places where they run a phone room, ostensibly for the firefighters or something like that, and call businesses trying to get them to advertise in something or other. Back in the day it was a tabloid newspaper. I can't tell you how many business card sized ads I created back then. This was one of the things that raised a flag on Multiview for my colleague -- after committing to the ad, they said that the could produce the artwork for the business, no charge.
When I learned about this story, the thing that simply boggles my mind is why these industry associations would let their brand be used in this way. While I'm sure that cash is a nice incentive, you have to ask yourself, what is it doing to the brand. But then again, Twitter is sort of doing the same thing to itself. I will say this about it though:
If the emotion that your brand generates is an unhappy, deal-with-the-devil discomfort where engagement is required by some sense of obligation outside of the core relationship, your brand is on thin ice. Once that sense of obligation goes away -- or if the pain of the experience exceeds the pain of not maintaining that obligation -- your user / customer / partner is gone. What's more, it won't be a sad departure, it will be a spit-on-your-grave departure because that ill will that you're building, it doesn't just go away.
What makes this so frustratingly bad is that most of these are not trying to sell you Viagra or investments in Nigeria, those are easier to block and filter. Instead, these are emails that come from businesses and services that you use.
Perhaps the foremost example of this is Twitter which, in 2014, seems to have decided to send copious emails to each and every account you may have. These emails range from "did you know that so-and-so said such and such?" and "Today on Twitter" to "do you know so-and-so?" You look at these things and think, "dude, I signed up for Twitter and I've used your service. If I wanted to know what happened today -- or find somebody -- I'd log into Twitter and do that." The worst part of it is, if you click the unsubscribe link, it will unsubscribe you from "this type of email". And then it shifts is spam efforts to a different type of email -- from "what happened today" to "do you know" or something to that effect.
Screw those guys. This "semi-opt out" behavior is the kind of thing that builds animosity towards brands. It would be no trouble to include a button to opt out of all of their various 'marketing' emails (like more upstanding retail emailers do), but they don't. Instead, they tell you if you want to 'fix' your email preferences, you need to login -- enabling them to pad their engagement stats. See how successful our email marketing programs are? Again, screw you guys. May your gourmet cafe be filled with nothing but Spam.
Of course, it's not just Twitter. LinkedIn seems to think it's the San Jose Mercury News, or something to that effect. For some reason, they decided that I need at least two or three updates a day. "Remember that guy you worked with 15 years ago? It's his birthday today."
More Anecdotes of Email Marketing Gone Wrong
Another example comes from a colleague that works with a diverse technology company. One day they were contacted by this group, an industry association about advertising in their buyer's guide. Normally, he says, they don't do much advertising, but this is a niche industry. So they decide to move forward with the ad. After agreeing to do the ad, he realizes that the company doing the buyer's guide is not the people that he normally deals with in the industry association, but a third party group that apparently, returns some of the money that they make to the industry association.
So it turns out that this company, Multiview, doesn't just work with one industry association, they work with a number of them. And so, suddenly having been added to the "this guy spends" pool, more emails begin streaming in from Multiview, each one targeting a different industry, each one trying to scrape some more money from the business. So he starts creating filters to block them from his inbox. But the emails keep coming in because each name is different. And he can't block Multiview all together because they committed to the stupid buyers guide.
The whole thing reminded me of old call center place advertising place that I worked with when I was just out of college years ago. It's one of those places where they run a phone room, ostensibly for the firefighters or something like that, and call businesses trying to get them to advertise in something or other. Back in the day it was a tabloid newspaper. I can't tell you how many business card sized ads I created back then. This was one of the things that raised a flag on Multiview for my colleague -- after committing to the ad, they said that the could produce the artwork for the business, no charge.
When I learned about this story, the thing that simply boggles my mind is why these industry associations would let their brand be used in this way. While I'm sure that cash is a nice incentive, you have to ask yourself, what is it doing to the brand. But then again, Twitter is sort of doing the same thing to itself. I will say this about it though:
If the emotion that your brand generates is an unhappy, deal-with-the-devil discomfort where engagement is required by some sense of obligation outside of the core relationship, your brand is on thin ice. Once that sense of obligation goes away -- or if the pain of the experience exceeds the pain of not maintaining that obligation -- your user / customer / partner is gone. What's more, it won't be a sad departure, it will be a spit-on-your-grave departure because that ill will that you're building, it doesn't just go away.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Uber and the Moral Problem of Surge Pricing
Here is an interesting piece about the economics of surge pricing from an editor at the Harvard Business Review. It comes as Uber faces more outrage when, in response to the recent Sydney hostage crisis, surge pricing kicked in on Uber.
While it's easy to feel a bit cynical about the motives of a business when they promote the socially good aspects of their business practices, it's surprising to see the reality of an amoral profiteering engine, the Uber pricing algorithm. It makes you wonder, will people maintain a long term business relationship with a company that operates with no moral or ethical framework? Or, does a business need to find some mantle of good citizenship to wrap itself in lest it become a pariah?
While it's easy to feel a bit cynical about the motives of a business when they promote the socially good aspects of their business practices, it's surprising to see the reality of an amoral profiteering engine, the Uber pricing algorithm. It makes you wonder, will people maintain a long term business relationship with a company that operates with no moral or ethical framework? Or, does a business need to find some mantle of good citizenship to wrap itself in lest it become a pariah?
Friday, October 24, 2014
Celebrity News: Lessons for a Polarlized World
Some time ago I was thinking about politics, our news media, and the stupider aspects of polarization. In politics, the news about politics, and the media that surrounds it, everything seems to pull to one pole or another. Often, this need to align with a pole will transform positions and reasoning into an idiotic farce. What I mean by that is, if you start with a basic story like "President Obama Kisses Baby", before ink has hit the presses groups of people will find the need to author "How dare he kiss a baby", "Presidential baby kissing is destroying our economy", or perhaps even "Obama kisses baby and ignores the dangers of Ebola pandemic". It's a constant game of "I'm Rubber, Your Glue" and for most of us, it can be exhausting.
It's particularly relevant as we swirl through the election season. As election season nears, the madness of all of this polarity comes to a boil. If one candidate uses a serial comma, there will be widespread backlash against serial commas and anyone that uses them. Soon you'll find yourself needing to align with the comma users or against them -- but choose carefully, because the other side is hell-bent on evil.
What makes it worse is that there are ecosystems devoted to echoing and amplifying the two poles. From the cable channels to the papers and the radio stations, the media aligns with an audience and, before you know it, your feed is saturated with one pole or the other. And these ideologies live like religions, with us in the midst of an epic, never-ending holy war. It's so pervasive, that it seems almost a natural part of our existence.
But it's not.
I realized that one day while reflecting on lessons from the celebrity/gossip media. In the celebrity gossip world, you don't really have poles. There is no liberal/conservative split in the news about celebrities. When you get "Justin Bieber Arrested for DUI in Florida," you don't see a knee-jerk response from some other side. There are lots of "Bieber is an asshole/jerk/idiot" stories. Perhaps some teen girls with the "Leave Justin Alone". Even a certain number of publicist-driven, "Ah come-on guys, it wasn't like that" stories. But there is no "other half" of the media saying, "Justin Bieber is not an asshole/jerk/idiot" or "Why do they always bust white Canadian men, nobody says anything about Rihanna being drunk" stories. Or even the "They're just trying to destroy our traditional street racing culture. This is a classic American value. Did everyone forget about American Graffiti? American Graffiti should be mandatory in every high school."
Regardless of where you look in the celebrity media coverage -- if you parse it by celebrity, by communications outlet, or even as a broader sort of survey -- you won't see the kind of polarization that you see in anything that touches politics. That's probably why politics and political news is so disheartening. Put a different way, if every time you opened a story about your favorite celebrity, you knew that somewhere, there was a corresponding series of stories from the side of a "competitive" celebrity" saying that you were an idiot for showing interest in the first celebrity. Odds are, you'd probably buy less product, go to fewer movies, download fewer songs -- and you'd certainly only want to buy, download, or support the appropriate side.
The world we live in... strange, but not as polar as you've been lead to believe.
It's particularly relevant as we swirl through the election season. As election season nears, the madness of all of this polarity comes to a boil. If one candidate uses a serial comma, there will be widespread backlash against serial commas and anyone that uses them. Soon you'll find yourself needing to align with the comma users or against them -- but choose carefully, because the other side is hell-bent on evil.
What makes it worse is that there are ecosystems devoted to echoing and amplifying the two poles. From the cable channels to the papers and the radio stations, the media aligns with an audience and, before you know it, your feed is saturated with one pole or the other. And these ideologies live like religions, with us in the midst of an epic, never-ending holy war. It's so pervasive, that it seems almost a natural part of our existence.
But it's not.
I realized that one day while reflecting on lessons from the celebrity/gossip media. In the celebrity gossip world, you don't really have poles. There is no liberal/conservative split in the news about celebrities. When you get "Justin Bieber Arrested for DUI in Florida," you don't see a knee-jerk response from some other side. There are lots of "Bieber is an asshole/jerk/idiot" stories. Perhaps some teen girls with the "Leave Justin Alone". Even a certain number of publicist-driven, "Ah come-on guys, it wasn't like that" stories. But there is no "other half" of the media saying, "Justin Bieber is not an asshole/jerk/idiot" or "Why do they always bust white Canadian men, nobody says anything about Rihanna being drunk" stories. Or even the "They're just trying to destroy our traditional street racing culture. This is a classic American value. Did everyone forget about American Graffiti? American Graffiti should be mandatory in every high school."
Regardless of where you look in the celebrity media coverage -- if you parse it by celebrity, by communications outlet, or even as a broader sort of survey -- you won't see the kind of polarization that you see in anything that touches politics. That's probably why politics and political news is so disheartening. Put a different way, if every time you opened a story about your favorite celebrity, you knew that somewhere, there was a corresponding series of stories from the side of a "competitive" celebrity" saying that you were an idiot for showing interest in the first celebrity. Odds are, you'd probably buy less product, go to fewer movies, download fewer songs -- and you'd certainly only want to buy, download, or support the appropriate side.
The world we live in... strange, but not as polar as you've been lead to believe.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Heroes of Customer Service - 1Password
I write a lot about bad actors, those businesses and individuals who demonstrate really bad customer service. It's one of those things -- sometimes there are those experiences that are so bad or stand out so significantly -- you feel like you need to share them. But the reality is that we often go through the day with hundreds of customer service interactions, that are all just okay. But what about the amazingly good one?
When I get the chance, I like to call those out too. I think it's a reminder that good customer service can save a relationship. Consider this story of my experience with 1Password and their incredible customer service team.
After the theft of my laptop, I needed to change all of my passwords. I didn't want to use any password patterns that I might have used in the past. I also wanted to change the way that I stored my passwords. After discussing various password vaults with colleagues and reading reviews online, I decided to try 1Password by Agilebits.
1Password had some very strong reviews. It enabled you to sync and carry all of your passwords across multiple devices, Mac and iPhone. It did cost some money, but it also seemed to have some helpful security features as well. Thinking that it was a reasonable software to try, I purchased it through the Apple App Store, and installed it on the Friday beginning the Labor day weekend.
Installation was pretty straightforward and before long, I entered about a dozen passwords into 1Password and was able to see and sync them between my Mac and my iPhone. Everything seemed to be good.
1Password uses a single 'Master Password' to unlock your vault. When I woke up the next morning, I needed to get into 1Password for a login. When I entered my Master Password, 1Password rejected it. I checked the caps lock key. I tried reentering it several times. I even entered it using a text editor, then copy and pasting it in. Nada.
I searched the 1Password site, but I couldn't find any helpful guidance. Using the site, I was finally able to submit a ticket to 1Password customer support. I got a response back in less than 15 minutes. When I say a response back, I don't just mean a generic auto-response, but an actual response from Eva, the "Good Witch of the Pacific Northwest".
Eva worked with me through email through the day on Saturday attempting to correct the issue, running a diagnostic tool for their software, and evaluating the results. In the end, we wound up needed to blow out the old version and reinstall. Unfortunately, because of the cloud-based sync, the corrupted master password rewrote the wrong data when I tried to reinstall. It was Saturday evening and I still wasn't up and running. At what worked out to be 3:00am my time (my guess is east coast office), Steve, the "Ninth Inning Closer" joined in, emailing instructions about how to correct the syncing problem. And, by the time I got going on Sunday, I was up and running again.
Since that time, I've had no hassles with 1Password. The application has run flawlessly. While I had to essentially do a completely clean restart, I felt like I owed it to Eva and to Steve to give the software one more try and the product has performed as promised. When you consider that, on that Saturday morning I extremely angry and frustrated, with more thoughts on refund than on repair, Agilebits' customer service saved their business. I went from being someone who was on the verge of being a very negative word of mouth to being... a customer.
People like Eva and Steve can be the unsung heroes of your brand, but you need to empower them and to recognize what an important part of the customer experience they can play. Odds are, if they had not been able to revive me as a customer, no amount of new features or marketing incentives could have brought me back.
When I get the chance, I like to call those out too. I think it's a reminder that good customer service can save a relationship. Consider this story of my experience with 1Password and their incredible customer service team.
After the theft of my laptop, I needed to change all of my passwords. I didn't want to use any password patterns that I might have used in the past. I also wanted to change the way that I stored my passwords. After discussing various password vaults with colleagues and reading reviews online, I decided to try 1Password by Agilebits.
1Password had some very strong reviews. It enabled you to sync and carry all of your passwords across multiple devices, Mac and iPhone. It did cost some money, but it also seemed to have some helpful security features as well. Thinking that it was a reasonable software to try, I purchased it through the Apple App Store, and installed it on the Friday beginning the Labor day weekend.
Installation was pretty straightforward and before long, I entered about a dozen passwords into 1Password and was able to see and sync them between my Mac and my iPhone. Everything seemed to be good.
1Password uses a single 'Master Password' to unlock your vault. When I woke up the next morning, I needed to get into 1Password for a login. When I entered my Master Password, 1Password rejected it. I checked the caps lock key. I tried reentering it several times. I even entered it using a text editor, then copy and pasting it in. Nada.
I searched the 1Password site, but I couldn't find any helpful guidance. Using the site, I was finally able to submit a ticket to 1Password customer support. I got a response back in less than 15 minutes. When I say a response back, I don't just mean a generic auto-response, but an actual response from Eva, the "Good Witch of the Pacific Northwest".
Eva worked with me through email through the day on Saturday attempting to correct the issue, running a diagnostic tool for their software, and evaluating the results. In the end, we wound up needed to blow out the old version and reinstall. Unfortunately, because of the cloud-based sync, the corrupted master password rewrote the wrong data when I tried to reinstall. It was Saturday evening and I still wasn't up and running. At what worked out to be 3:00am my time (my guess is east coast office), Steve, the "Ninth Inning Closer" joined in, emailing instructions about how to correct the syncing problem. And, by the time I got going on Sunday, I was up and running again.
Since that time, I've had no hassles with 1Password. The application has run flawlessly. While I had to essentially do a completely clean restart, I felt like I owed it to Eva and to Steve to give the software one more try and the product has performed as promised. When you consider that, on that Saturday morning I extremely angry and frustrated, with more thoughts on refund than on repair, Agilebits' customer service saved their business. I went from being someone who was on the verge of being a very negative word of mouth to being... a customer.
People like Eva and Steve can be the unsung heroes of your brand, but you need to empower them and to recognize what an important part of the customer experience they can play. Odds are, if they had not been able to revive me as a customer, no amount of new features or marketing incentives could have brought me back.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Why Isn't Apple More Helpful When Your Stuff Is Stolen?
My Macbook Air was stolen last week. Right after lunch, some guy walked into our small office through a back door that somebody left open and walked out with my laptop. There are extremely sucky aspects to this, but -- for the purposes of this post -- the most significant one is how surprisingly unhelpful Apple is when your device gets stolen.
Sure, when you go to the Apple store, they can look back through historical aspects of your account. They know enough about your devices to determine whether your warranty is valid -- probably more. But how much of that do they share with you?
When your Laptop is stolen, one of the first things you think about is the "Find My Phone" functionality. More recently, Apple added this functionality for Macs (Location Services) and I thought I had enabled it at some point, but -- either because of the sleep issues or perhaps I didn't successfully enable it, it wasn't active.
That being said, while finding the top result for Find My iPhone has information about the functionality, there is no login point on this page. In fact, most of the links in this area of their site won't take you to a login page. Need to log into find my phone? Better try another search.
Find My Phone
To use Find My Phone, you need to use the App on your phone or iPad -- or log into iCloud. Do you want to log into iCloud? You won't find that by searching iCloud login either. You know who does a better job of pointing to the iCloud login page? Google. Here's where Google takes you. Once upon a time, Apple used to have a login link on the main pages of the site... but I digress.
Of course, the problem with Find My Phone in iCloud is that, if your location services isn't enabled, the software has no idea about your system. Your history of devices? No. No access to any of that information. Sure I've authenticated and Apple thinks it's me, but other than access to your iCloud storage and apps, you get nothing. Contrast that to Amazon, where I have access to the history of things that I've ordered.
How about from the Support menu? What you'll find here is crap too. The only time I could actually find helpful information was at https://supportprofile.apple.com. This will provide you with a login page and, correspondingly, access do some of the devices associated with that Apple ID. Once logged in here, I was actually able to get my device serial number.
And what kind of support do you find in the Apple Discussion Groups (other links that Google found)? Here's what they have under "Report Stolen Laptop" on their support forum. And to quote Ryan's question to the Apple response, "I don't see why they couldn't have some sort of feature for this in their portal app for when the look up the serial numbers to see if computers are still under warannty, etc." You'll also find this information there:
You might think that, your device having been stolen, you could head to the Apple Store and get some helpful assistance from the from Apple, possibly doing a remote wipe on the system or something. While the guys at the Genius bar are actually willing to talk to you when you tell them, "my Macbook was stolen and so I need your help to lock it down". They will then direct you to one of their systems and help you log into iCloud so that you can use the "Find my Phone" app on their system. Beyond that, not much help.
Changing the password your Apple ID forces anything that accesses your existing Apple ID to use the new password -- helpful to prevent stray devices from accessing your Apple universe -- but providing little help beyond that.
The "Open Letter to Apple and Tim Cook" Portion of the Post
The idea that Apple has no way to "flag" the serial number of a device is flat out ludicrous. Any time your apple device is connected to a network, it shares a number of communications with Apple. Any time it connects to an Apple ID, it shares data about the user, the device they are connecting from, and more. There is even geographic information shared. Some of this is the stuff you enable with location services, so while the idea of "my system is HERE" may not be straightforward, their systems have to have some access history.
But beyond location, the idea that you, Apple, can't flag a device serial number and say "this device was stolen" is bullshit. What you're saying is that you can't add another field into your database - a simple checkbox to "flag" the system. What would you do with such a flag you might ask. Well considering that, unlike most PC vendors, most Apple devices go through Apple for service, it hardly seems far-fetched to raise an alert if a system with a history that includes being stolen comes into your store.
In the end though, what is the most mind-boggling is that for me -- as a long-time customer who has bought numerous Apple devices over the years and as someone who has authenticated my identity with the company repeatedly -- that I can't go to a page that contains electronic records of all of the systems I've told you that I owned. Like a Facebook timeline, I should be able to see my history of everything, every device, every serial number, and maybe even the times when I've brought them in for service. And if there was a page like that, when my device died or was stolen, I'd probably go in and update it's status.
And why do you have so many portals and so many identities that don't seem to talk to one another?
Honestly, the reason that it comes up (and you can find it if you search on Google) is that we, your customers expect that kind of service from you. We expect better than this... this wave at the problem and say, "bummer for you. Sorry we can't help." Because the result is a sad Mac face on an already sad customer.
One More Thing...
I wrote this post prior to the release of this large number of nude celebrity photos, personal pictures allegedly stolen from their iCloud accounts. For more on that, you can read this, this, or this. While I must say that I have my doubts that all of this data was grabbed from Apple's iCloud, my purpose in referencing it is to underscore the broader thematic message pointed at Apple -- we expect better from you.
Sure, when you go to the Apple store, they can look back through historical aspects of your account. They know enough about your devices to determine whether your warranty is valid -- probably more. But how much of that do they share with you?
When your Laptop is stolen, one of the first things you think about is the "Find My Phone" functionality. More recently, Apple added this functionality for Macs (Location Services) and I thought I had enabled it at some point, but -- either because of the sleep issues or perhaps I didn't successfully enable it, it wasn't active.
That being said, while finding the top result for Find My iPhone has information about the functionality, there is no login point on this page. In fact, most of the links in this area of their site won't take you to a login page. Need to log into find my phone? Better try another search.
Find My Phone
To use Find My Phone, you need to use the App on your phone or iPad -- or log into iCloud. Do you want to log into iCloud? You won't find that by searching iCloud login either. You know who does a better job of pointing to the iCloud login page? Google. Here's where Google takes you. Once upon a time, Apple used to have a login link on the main pages of the site... but I digress.
Of course, the problem with Find My Phone in iCloud is that, if your location services isn't enabled, the software has no idea about your system. Your history of devices? No. No access to any of that information. Sure I've authenticated and Apple thinks it's me, but other than access to your iCloud storage and apps, you get nothing. Contrast that to Amazon, where I have access to the history of things that I've ordered.
How about from the Support menu? What you'll find here is crap too. The only time I could actually find helpful information was at https://supportprofile.apple.com. This will provide you with a login page and, correspondingly, access do some of the devices associated with that Apple ID. Once logged in here, I was actually able to get my device serial number.
And what kind of support do you find in the Apple Discussion Groups (other links that Google found)? Here's what they have under "Report Stolen Laptop" on their support forum. And to quote Ryan's question to the Apple response, "I don't see why they couldn't have some sort of feature for this in their portal app for when the look up the serial numbers to see if computers are still under warannty, etc." You'll also find this information there:
Sorry but Apple does not have a flagging process for reporting stolen property. They recommend that if you have lost an Apple product you contact your local law enforcement agency to report it.Off to the Local Apple Store
You might think that, your device having been stolen, you could head to the Apple Store and get some helpful assistance from the from Apple, possibly doing a remote wipe on the system or something. While the guys at the Genius bar are actually willing to talk to you when you tell them, "my Macbook was stolen and so I need your help to lock it down". They will then direct you to one of their systems and help you log into iCloud so that you can use the "Find my Phone" app on their system. Beyond that, not much help.
Changing the password your Apple ID forces anything that accesses your existing Apple ID to use the new password -- helpful to prevent stray devices from accessing your Apple universe -- but providing little help beyond that.
The "Open Letter to Apple and Tim Cook" Portion of the Post
The idea that Apple has no way to "flag" the serial number of a device is flat out ludicrous. Any time your apple device is connected to a network, it shares a number of communications with Apple. Any time it connects to an Apple ID, it shares data about the user, the device they are connecting from, and more. There is even geographic information shared. Some of this is the stuff you enable with location services, so while the idea of "my system is HERE" may not be straightforward, their systems have to have some access history.
But beyond location, the idea that you, Apple, can't flag a device serial number and say "this device was stolen" is bullshit. What you're saying is that you can't add another field into your database - a simple checkbox to "flag" the system. What would you do with such a flag you might ask. Well considering that, unlike most PC vendors, most Apple devices go through Apple for service, it hardly seems far-fetched to raise an alert if a system with a history that includes being stolen comes into your store.
In the end though, what is the most mind-boggling is that for me -- as a long-time customer who has bought numerous Apple devices over the years and as someone who has authenticated my identity with the company repeatedly -- that I can't go to a page that contains electronic records of all of the systems I've told you that I owned. Like a Facebook timeline, I should be able to see my history of everything, every device, every serial number, and maybe even the times when I've brought them in for service. And if there was a page like that, when my device died or was stolen, I'd probably go in and update it's status.
And why do you have so many portals and so many identities that don't seem to talk to one another?
Honestly, the reason that it comes up (and you can find it if you search on Google) is that we, your customers expect that kind of service from you. We expect better than this... this wave at the problem and say, "bummer for you. Sorry we can't help." Because the result is a sad Mac face on an already sad customer.
One More Thing...
I wrote this post prior to the release of this large number of nude celebrity photos, personal pictures allegedly stolen from their iCloud accounts. For more on that, you can read this, this, or this. While I must say that I have my doubts that all of this data was grabbed from Apple's iCloud, my purpose in referencing it is to underscore the broader thematic message pointed at Apple -- we expect better from you.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Time for a Rebrand - the Silicon Valley 49ers?
So I was reading through this new piece in Time talking about how cool and high tech the new Levi stadium is -- it's quite interesting. Here's one thing that struck me:
Consider, San Francisco often wants to claim a Silicon Valley connection when businesses promote their technology -- like the city is part of Silicon Valley. And while people throughout the world want to visit San Francisco as tourists, cities and regions everywhere want to scoop up Silicon to be part of their regional brand -- Silicon Gulch, Silicon Beach, Silicon Triangle.
And just think of the possibilities. Charlie Chip, the Fry's mascot can hang with Sourdough Sam. Nano-sized beers sold for premium prices. The possibilities are endless.
But we wouldn't have to lose the San Francisco connection entirely. Much like other parts of the workforce here, the team can say that they live in San Francisco, but they just take the Google Bus to work here in the Valley...
Unfortunately, for their first pre-season games, it looks like the team decided to adopt that other classic high-tech cornerstone -- telecommuting.
Wouldn't this whole rebranding thing be SO perfect?
It’s in the center of the tech universe, of course, so it’s only natural that 49ers management decided to devote a significant sum of money to building high-tech infrastructure.Since the 49ers play here and obviously technology is going to be a theme in promotional activities, isn't it time that we rebrand the team the Silicon Valley 49ers?
Consider, San Francisco often wants to claim a Silicon Valley connection when businesses promote their technology -- like the city is part of Silicon Valley. And while people throughout the world want to visit San Francisco as tourists, cities and regions everywhere want to scoop up Silicon to be part of their regional brand -- Silicon Gulch, Silicon Beach, Silicon Triangle.
And just think of the possibilities. Charlie Chip, the Fry's mascot can hang with Sourdough Sam. Nano-sized beers sold for premium prices. The possibilities are endless.
But we wouldn't have to lose the San Francisco connection entirely. Much like other parts of the workforce here, the team can say that they live in San Francisco, but they just take the Google Bus to work here in the Valley...
Unfortunately, for their first pre-season games, it looks like the team decided to adopt that other classic high-tech cornerstone -- telecommuting.
Wouldn't this whole rebranding thing be SO perfect?
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Burying Foursquare in a Folder
I updated my iPhone today. As I was looking at the first page of apps, I noticed an unusual icon that didn't look familiar. I realized that it was the new Foursquare app icon, sort of a weird, red F that reminded me of Fandango -- what I thought it was when I first looked at it.
Needless to say, it's been a couple of weeks since I've actually opened the Foursquare app and seeing the new icon was a reminder -- this icon is not something that I use. While the old Foursqure icon used to serve as a memorial, a tribute to my former check-in life, the new icon held no sentimental attachment. It actually annoyed me with it's presence there. So I decided to move the app to one of the "shit I rarely use" folders.
There are probably others that I should bury in folders too, but I don't find looking at them to be quite as annoying -- that probably speaks to the level of sentiment about killing a feature that I used frequently versus simply not offering functionality that I use very often.
Needless to say, it's been a couple of weeks since I've actually opened the Foursquare app and seeing the new icon was a reminder -- this icon is not something that I use. While the old Foursqure icon used to serve as a memorial, a tribute to my former check-in life, the new icon held no sentimental attachment. It actually annoyed me with it's presence there. So I decided to move the app to one of the "shit I rarely use" folders.
There are probably others that I should bury in folders too, but I don't find looking at them to be quite as annoying -- that probably speaks to the level of sentiment about killing a feature that I used frequently versus simply not offering functionality that I use very often.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
The History Lesson that Foursquare Missed
Remember back when the next big thing was check-ins? It was back around 2010, there were multiple applications for checking in, and there was so much imagined potential for space. Even Facebook and Yelp decided to try and scoop up some of the action. And one-by-one, from the Foursquare competitors to Facebook places, they've disappeared.
For whatever reason, be it user interface, brand loyalty, or just the way things go, Foursqure held out. They held out as people tried other platforms but didn't switch. They held out through the time when the big dog, the 800lb gorilla of Facebook tried to use its giant user base to muscle them out of the space. They held out as location and recommendation engine Yelp parroted their concepts of Mayor with Duke and Duchess of check-ins.
Through it all, Foursquare was still "the Check-in app".
Until Foursquare decided to do what none of their competitors could do -- move check-ins into a competitive app (Swarm) and get Foursquare out of the check-in business.
It's so mind blowing, it almost seems comic, like a scene from a Marx Brothers movie. "The plane is carrying too much weight, we're going to crash. Find something to throw overboard... How about this engine? Too much weight, get rid of it." Of course, that whole scene would still resolve with a happy, funny ending.
For whatever reason, be it user interface, brand loyalty, or just the way things go, Foursqure held out. They held out as people tried other platforms but didn't switch. They held out through the time when the big dog, the 800lb gorilla of Facebook tried to use its giant user base to muscle them out of the space. They held out as location and recommendation engine Yelp parroted their concepts of Mayor with Duke and Duchess of check-ins.
Through it all, Foursquare was still "the Check-in app".
Until Foursquare decided to do what none of their competitors could do -- move check-ins into a competitive app (Swarm) and get Foursquare out of the check-in business.
It's so mind blowing, it almost seems comic, like a scene from a Marx Brothers movie. "The plane is carrying too much weight, we're going to crash. Find something to throw overboard... How about this engine? Too much weight, get rid of it." Of course, that whole scene would still resolve with a happy, funny ending.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
More on the Death of Foursquare
It's feels like a constant reminder whenever I visit a restaurant. I look at my phone. In my brain, there's a Pavlovian bell, "you should check in". And then, the rational part of my brain switches over and reminds me that I don't check in. Foursquare is dead to me.
After so many years of being wired to this behavior, it feels like such a loss.
But I'm not the only one. I came across this great open letter to Foursquare in this post on Pando. It echos a lot of my sentiments, but I didn't bother to download Swarm. And I won't bother. Nor have I opened the Foursquare app since they disabled check-ins. I don't really need a location discovery app.
As you look around the web at the passionate dissatisfaction with what the way that they've killed check-ins, you have to wonder -- if they'd moved location discovery to a different app, would their have been the same level of vocal complaints? While I'm not internal and I don't know user numbers or demographic size, I would be surprised if there was a "passionate location discovery user base" in the Foursquare community.
Like Michael Jordan deciding he should quit basketball to play baseball
This feels more like one of those internally driven decisions, the kind focused on answering a deluded team of managers or MBAs that are convinced that Foursquare should be something more than a check-in app, "if we were this location discovery space, we would be awesome." It's the kind of decision doesn't understand the real value that Pavlovian habit.
Meanwhile, back in the new location discovery app, "this place is popular with people who used to check in frequently..."
One day, Foursquare will be a great case study.
After so many years of being wired to this behavior, it feels like such a loss.
But I'm not the only one. I came across this great open letter to Foursquare in this post on Pando. It echos a lot of my sentiments, but I didn't bother to download Swarm. And I won't bother. Nor have I opened the Foursquare app since they disabled check-ins. I don't really need a location discovery app.
As you look around the web at the passionate dissatisfaction with what the way that they've killed check-ins, you have to wonder -- if they'd moved location discovery to a different app, would their have been the same level of vocal complaints? While I'm not internal and I don't know user numbers or demographic size, I would be surprised if there was a "passionate location discovery user base" in the Foursquare community.
Like Michael Jordan deciding he should quit basketball to play baseball
This feels more like one of those internally driven decisions, the kind focused on answering a deluded team of managers or MBAs that are convinced that Foursquare should be something more than a check-in app, "if we were this location discovery space, we would be awesome." It's the kind of decision doesn't understand the real value that Pavlovian habit.
Meanwhile, back in the new location discovery app, "this place is popular with people who used to check in frequently..."
One day, Foursquare will be a great case study.
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