Are You Creating Social Media Bullsh*t?

Two incidents prompted this post, the first incident occurred directly to me, the second was a conversation with strategist and researcher Esteban Kolsky that started via twitter when he was stranded in an absolutely wild  number of airports on an attempted flight home. That conversation continued into several blog posts.  For the background to this, read Mr. Kolsky’s full article here.

Esteban’s Story;

After the twitter conversation and blogging about his trip from hell, (if you have not read that full story yet, follow that link!) some social media monitoring staffer at the airline concerned actually responded. The response included some token gesture, but no ability to go further to drive change within the organization.

My Story;

Mine was much simpler, via a social media channel, someone broadcast a request that basically stated; Hey I need this…”

I responded that; “hey, we do that…let me get one of our sales folks to give you a call ” (ok that was the shortened version, we actually connected via the phone)

In Esteban’s case, the ’social media’ responder was powerless to do anything about the root cause of his problem, in mine, I don’t have the position to enforce a response either. So no one bothered.

Here is the thing.

What we loosely call the marketing (or reputation) side of social media can provide another channel for both raising awareness of your brand (or business) or to assist in defending that brand. (ie support / customer service)

But there is absolutely zero reason to go through this effort, if you have no intention of acting on what you have learned!

If you do a mystery call with your support or customer service team, and they state that for your particular problem, that the corporate policy is something along the lines of; we don’t give a damn. Do you think that the same response via a social media platform is going to make any difference?

Ummmm no

In Esteban’s story, the social media monitor actually offered a token gesture for his very long issue. Which in  my opinion is a company that has a t least started to try to improve. (Can you imagine how many hours the legal teams at a mega-corporation would argue about some front end staffer being able to give even the smallest token gesture?)

Now I really don’t like the word empowerment. It reminds me too much about Dilbert cartoons.

But like it or not, it fits into the theme of this post.

In their Harvard Business Press book IT Savvy authors Peter Weill and  Jeanne W. Ross state;

every employee who interacts with customers can be armed with information on the customer and the firm’s products to ensure a quality interaction.

So go ahead and talk about it

Sure, monitor it.

But if your staff can’t do anything about it – If they can’t make a change. Even if that change is simple acknowledgment that a voice has been heard and recorded,

What good is it?

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Real SMB IT: Repetitive Problems

(Let me guess – You have that complaint as well?)

What are repetitive problems? And what is so bad about them?

Repetitive problems are IT service issues that either do repeat on a regular basis (eg. Jane Can’t print) or seem to occur on a regular basis (eg. The Internet is dead).

In both cases these issues will both suck the life out of your staff, and leave a lasting perception that IT staff or suppliers are never meeting expectations in the quality of IT service and support delivery.

The Quick And The Dead

Sure you want IT related issues and problems resolved rapidly. But it is important to understand that rapidly must be balanced by permanently.

You do not want IT staff or suppliers fixing the same problem again and again. Avoidance of these repetitive problems comes down to investigating and communicating the root cause of that IT service or asset failure. Identifying and communicating this root cause permits a reasonable discussion and decision on mitigating that possible repeat of that failure.

In some cases, it may not possible or desirable to permanently kill all repetitive issues. As an example, perhaps your current budgetary considerations make replacing that defective printer a low priority. But at least having that decision agreed upon and documented can remove that vague perception that your IT staff or supplier is not delivering adequate service.

The SMB Takeaway

I have talked with many SME business owners and managers over the years, and a common theme in complaints about their IT service staff or outsourced service providers is when failures occur in the same IT service or asset consistently and repeatedly. So the discussion must be held on that root cause, that why?

These type of Repetitive problems must be avoided and killed where ever, and when ever possible.

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Photo Credit donnjmck via flickr

Real SMB IT: Dishonest PC Repair

Venus Flytrap

Every couple of years somebody publishes an exposé on some class or type of service business that is fishing for honesty and integrity.

Disappointing as it is, it had to happen. The August 10 2009 print edition of Business Week (I could not find it on-line) had a brief note by Arik Hesseldahl titled; Shifty PC Repair.

Same idea, set up a basic sting operation where a machine has a known minor defect (in this case just a loose memory chip) and take the machine to various service outlets.

In this UK example, only one of six sting targets actually just fixed the problem. While some over charged for non-existent problems, some actually copied data off the machine. If that is a business machine with possibly confidential information, you see where that can go.

The SMB Takeaway

That behavior is deplorable. Period.

But to reduce that risk, as I have written before, planning for the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) when purchasing IT assets is critical in the small to medium enterprise. That means planning for the fact that sooner or later something will need to be repaired.

So here are two ways to reduce that risk;

1) When purchasing desktops or notebook computers, spend the extra few dollars for the vendors on-site extended warranty service

2) On out-of warranty older equipment, have a trusted local vendor that will do the work on your site, and have the repairs watched.

The key point here, they may be able to squeak in a little padding on the bill, but when they are sitting in your facility they sure can’t use a USB stick & grab your entire Quick Books database.

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Photo Credit Wikipedia

Goodbye To Another Bad IT Guy

First, especially in this economy, I don’t want to make light of anyone losing their job

But let me tell you a story.

I was talking to a Regional Business Development Manager for a Fortune 1000 sized global organization. One of his largest customers (this customer would be a sizable business in the SME space – but as it is a low tech business, IT requirements are not complex) was being stonewalled by this IT staffer with excuses on how difficult some little change was .

A web based tool that this SME was using had some default settings that was causing customer difficulties and causing lost sales.

After about 4 months, it took an end-run around this IT staffer to fix (in minutes) the problem.

Now, apparently, there were previous incidents, but this was the straw that caused the termination.

Could, this staffer have been really over his head? Possibly, I will never know.

But I would be willing to bet that this SME business broke every tenet that I write about here. Abdicating IT, not delegating. IT not being part of the conversation.

But at the end of the day, IT staff are there for one reason. To support and advance the business. Stonewalling is not acceptable.

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Support Incident From Hell

 

 

Dante's Gates of Hell

 

This was so minor. Such a small thing.

Yet it escalated into a weeks worth of time, phone calls and frustration.

And it wasn’t even a technology issue.

The Problem

As a small business, we have a standard big name company postage meter.

As our administrative crew were doing the 2009 rate change updates to the embedded software, it blew up and died in a system fault.

They had tried 3 times to do the update, 20 minutes into the process it died each and every time.

Now I don’t know postage meters, but being the tech guy, I said I would help out. And then I tried it once more. Same blow up.

There was no information on the web. So I had to call their support line.

omygawd

Voice options up to 9 deep – not all of them very clear either. And no option to back up! if you made a wrong choice – it was hang up and call again.

I finally navigate the maze and get to the Hooman

Who does the Dump The Chump game – tells me to try it again (as if the 5th time will be any different than the first)

Of course the same 20 minutes later it died, in the exact same place, and error

I then have to wade through the same prompts and wait another 30 minutes on hold. They said that they would send a replacement unit.

The Replacement

Sure enough a new unit arrived – with no instructions on how to properly transfer the fund balance & install the new unit 

You got it : I then have to wade through the same prompts and wait another 30 minutes on hold.

Once I made it through to the human – a two second response that he would fax those instructions -

If it is that common an issue  don’t you think including them in the box would make sense?

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Photo Credit: Stuck In Customs via Flickr

Web 2.0 It Ain’t Perfect Yet, Part 2

SaaS – or “software as a service” – No it is not perfect yet. Microsoft has issues with its Live Services for a good portion of the day yesterday.

It affected logging in to MS Live applications including Hotmail, (and Sympatico mail in Canada) as well as X-Box live and other Live applications.

As more businesses run their applications and tools from third party providers such as Microsoft, these long downtimes will become less and less acceptable.

Of course your own internal network may be more at risk from having a full failure than a company the size of Microsoft. It does goes to show though, you must view your risks and strategies along multiple alternatives

Sales, Service, and Education

I liked this article at 1to1 Media Forrester Research is quoted as saying that 20 percent of High Definition Television (HDTV) sets sold at retail are returned – not because they are defective – but because the consumer had no idea that the set was not going to give the expected HD user experience unless both your cable provider has HDTV services, and that you are paying for those extra services.

I was happy to read this, because I am now aware that I am not alone. Over the years there has been more than one instance where I have purchased something that had a dependency that that would negate its usefulness unless I had that dependent part or piece. Even in speaking with sales people at the time of purchase – in these cases not one had said – by the way – for this to work, you need …

The end result for me is either a frustrating return to trip to the store to either return the item, or purchase its dependencies. Neither of which makes me a happy customer.

On the flip side, the opposite can be true. I purchased an Apple iPod accessory as a gift, the sales representative walked through the requirements of the model compatibility and the types of adapters each model would require. If I ever need another accessory for these things I know where I will go. (I am not an iPod fan, but that is another story)

Although the above article references retail, service businesses can be just as bad. I recently had a services company provide as estimate on some work that I want done. Not once was I told that the quotation was useless unless I already had another particular service performed first. It was only casually mentioned to me by someone else who had already had similar work done. Needless to say I still don’t have that particular work done.

In todays competitive, and very low loyalty market, it makes sense to educate your customers. At its simplest, they won’t be sticking you with returns costs, or just avoiding the product or service. If you are lucky enough to supply the dependency, it is also a cross sell opportunity.

Unless of course, you are one of the lucky ones who don’t need to worry if your customer ever comes back.