Nice one, Orange. Not only did you hit us with bad news, but you also chose probably the worst possible medium to communicate bad news that man has ever created. Research shows that our ability to communicate and express oursleves is slashed by 92% when using the phone (according to NLP gurus); I’m not sure how much a text message cuts it down by, but I’m sure it’s a hell of a lot more!

And further more, even if someone didn’t have a choice on the medium, this message could have been worded slightly differently to accentuate the importance but not be so blunt…. something like, “We are making important changes to your pricing structure. Please visit the website for more details”, something like that… This way, you get them off the SMS and onto the website, where you can be alot more descriptive about the tariff increase without the 140 character limit!

The lesson here folks is, if you really want to hack off your customers, choose the most inefficient medium to pass along bad news (text messages are a really good one) and then give the bad news to them right between the eyes! I’m sure a few customers decided to drop Orange like a bad habit after that howler!

I am now 21 days in and sporting a nice bushy “Mo”. But there are some issues:

• The wife has stopped kissing me
• Children point and stare at me
• My friends laugh at me
• Strangers cross to the other side of the street
• It itches

If you haven’t noticed there are men across the world growing their mo’s to benefit prostate and testicular cancer. A few sobering points to you:

* 1 in 9 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime
* This year 37,000 new cases of the disease will be diagnosed
* 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime
* 26% of men are less likely to go the doctor compared to women

If you are a man, or have a very important man in your life, take a moment to make a donation to this cause. You can click here to make your donation:

http://mobro.co/geneintheuk

If you want a latest photo of me too, then please click on it… and you will see a very large mo on me… make sure you’re sitting down for this

Thank you in advance for your support in this important cause.

Jason: “Hello?”

Gene:” Hi Jason… You have a Blackberry, don’t you?”

Jason: “Yes.”

Gene:” So how’s that working out for you?”

Jason:”F*ck you, Gene!”

“Click”

I suppose I am not the only one having a bit of fun with my friends who own Blackberry phones over the last couple of days. I suppose for those, its like someone calling you when your electricity has gone out, or your house is burning down. I did feel a bit bad and called him back to apologise. We then had a meaningful chat about the frustrations of putting your trust into a company to deliver fairly important services to you, and they fail… 3 days running.

Some of us find it incredible that a company as big as RIM with millions of customers pushing data through their servers would not have the ability to cope with a server failure. Unless the amount of backlogged data, which they claim was the thing that started killing off the cores, was so gargantuan, that it started filling up hard disks and caches all over the network. Now that, in my expertise, is an Achilles heel in many an IT infrastructure.

Many moons ago, I used to work in a computer operations room for the New York State Lottery. And we would review the DEC VAX mainframes on a regular basis and keep an eye on the myriad processes that had to run in order to keep the 20,000 or so lottery terminals humming away and spitting out lottery tickets. One of the more important fields of data to keep an eye on was, oddly enough, the data cache. This is where the “pending” work would sit, a bit like the meat counter at Sainsbury’s, I suppose. Someone walks up, takes a number, and waits their turn to be dealt with. And when they get their pack of mince, they disappear. But there is only so much space at the meat counter. If this fills up to maximum, it will start effecting everything else. even other people who are trying to come in and out of the very store. This is the principle of the data cache. If a server fails (equivalent to a worker behind the meat counter cutting their hand off, for example), then the delicate balance between the size of the cache and the work starts to go out of balance, and the available space in the cache starts to drop. And if there was a major “core” failure, such as there was as RIM this week, then the space in the cache will quickly drop to zero. And when that happens, well, some of you experienced it this week… missing emails, no BBM, lost messages and a company struggling to recover from it.

This is what I believed happened this week. And its a very painful lesson to learn for RIM. It will likely cost someone their job, for not having the correct “balance” and contingency to deal with massive amounts of BBMs and emails with no available recourse.

It also, some cynics could say, throws doubt into anything “cloud” based. Supposed something like this happened with Google Apps, or other cloud based services. The lesson here is that you can never be too careful. My advice? Make sure there is a physical method to back up things from the cloud if need be, on occasion… say once a month for good measure. These services are usually rock solid. This is one of the first times something like this that has happened on a major scale. But when it does happen, everyone knows about it, and it can bring companies down with it… Let’s hope RIM can cope with this storm… it has been through an awful lot recently.

Thanks, Steve

Firstly, I’ll start off by saying that I am not an Apple fanatic. Yes I own Apple products such as the iPad, but I wouldn’t say that makes me some sort of loyal lamb that hangs on every word that comes out of the Cupertino company. I am more of an Android person than an iOS4/iPhone person myself. but that’s my personal preference, isn’t it? My wife, however, will have the exact opposite view. She loves her iPhone. We regularly challenge each other on how quickly we can accomplish rather silly tasks such as deleting an email, or refreshing a web page, etc… she wins sometimes and I win sometimes.

Having said all of that, I was prompted to post something about Steve Jobs when listening to a story on BBC Radio 4 here in the UK. Columnist AN Wilson today likened Steve Jobs to a “backroom boy”, a boffin and that he will be “forgotten in two minutes”. I am sorry, Mr. Wilson, but I will have to disagree.

My line of work requires me to keep a close eye on the technology industry. I have been following Apple’s progress since my friends and I were poking at an Apple IIe nearly three decades ago. I was fortuitous enough to play with a Lisa when it first came out, mouse and all, and I watched how Apple hit the skids, how Steve created Next, and how, like something akin to a white knight, he returned and with it, Apple’s fortunes.

Who is Steve Jobs? I will say he was more of “the right man at the right time”. Was he a genius? Well, I don’t know him well enough to comment. Probably not, in my opinion. Did he have a good business head? Yes, this is clear by the successes he had with Apple as well as Next, amongst his other shrewd purchases like Pixar.

Now this brings me on to probably his key talent. He was a keen observer of customer insight, especially around consumer products. He knew the PC market was too saturated. So he did what he does better than others, and that was to carve out a new market. He did it with the Apple Mackintosh, created a new market. And although he wasn’t the first to create the MP3 player, or even a phone that played MP3s, he was the first to introduce a strong layer of design, comfort, style and intuitive use to open the market up to “non-techies”… like my wife, for example. This skill was clearly honed during the Apple mac development days, etc. and resonates through everything produced by Apple today, carving out new markets through intuitive and stylish designs which appeal and intrigue a larger market than the “techie” market.

So Steve was more the person with the insight and resources (both financial and technical) to make it happen. Alot of us have ideas, but little or no means to implement. Others are awash with cash but couldn’t find their own backside with two hands and a map.

And no matter what, that has to be admired. He had the courage and the tenacity to see a product through to its fruition. I am told he was a very demanding customer; wanting design, and functionality excellence. And this is because he knew that if he didn’t then someone else would, or worse still, the product would be lambasted and lie on the retail shelves. There might even be a little Steve Jobs in all of us, because no matter what we do, we all try to achieve similar ideals in our life. We want things to be right for us. We want to do good work; we want people to be proud of us, and proud of ourselves, for what we do.

There are a handful of people in this world who get the opportunity that Steve Jobs had. he lived at a nexus of technological advances and emerging mass market acceptance at social driven entertainment that could come in different forms. He took advantage of it, and succeeded. Few others had this opportunity. Henry Ford comes to mind. Someone who took a couple of seemingly disconnected concepts and put them together that revolutionized things.

No, Steve won’t be forgotten. I believe that the white hot fervour and lamentations will soon die out, and history will be left with a glowing, warming ember of a man who led a company who have us instant entertainment and instant connectivity. Thanks, Steve. I won’t forget you.

Checking out of a hotel is never an exciting and delightful experience. It’s usually quite the opposite. But this was a more positive experience by way of a simple gesture while leaving for the airport.

We pulled up to the security gate in our car and half expected a perfunctory nod and the lifting of the gate when the guard approached the car, wished us a safe journey home and gave me and my wife little juice boxes for the trip. It was something we weren’t expecting and it actually did improve my mood and perception of the resort.

So what did it cost the resort? Virtually nothing, other than the cost of the juice box of course, but that is probably chump change to them. But for the unsuspecting, it created a surprise and delight moment.

Then it got me thinking about how other businesses can create similar moments. For us, leaving the hotel was an excellent moment and it was relatively easy for them to create it… There was a consistent moment that all customers go through and they had the insight to realise ways to improve the overall perception of the experience. But what about customers where there isn’t a consistent moment to focus on per se. Or what if there was zero budget to do a surprise and delight moment?

I’ve always thought that a simple “thank you” is a nice way to create a surprise and delight moment… Perhaps a day or two after the transaction or the phone call… Something arrives in the mail. It’s a little thank you card. The message says something along the lines of “thank you for choosing us and staying with us. We hope that this small gesture demonstrates our gratitude and appreciation of your custom”, or something along those lines. It can either come visit regular snail mail or via email if budget are super tight.

I used to work for a company who made boxed chocolate deliveries to your door. Every once in a while a company would send a small box of chocolates to their high value customers. That’s all well and good. But many companies fail to realize that by delighting their average value customers they could save alot more money in the form of customer defection and re-acquisition.

So overall, the process worked. We had a great vacation regardless and it was made that little bit better. Let’s find out where else we can create surprise and delight moments.

Well, on the trip we were in a small tour group (of about 6 people) being shown around Catherine’s Palace, touring the different rooms. In front of us was a large group of about 50. Behind us was a group of about 40 or so.

Now, as a small group, we were going through the rooms a little faster than the group in front. So, my tour guide and us now started to encroach into the group of 60, and walked into the same room as the group.

Suddenly, and without warning, three old trouts (one in each room, and the tour guide of the large group) charged to my young tour guide and started brereating her in russian… fingers wagging and lots of gesticulating… lord only knows what they were saying to her… My guide, trying in vain to defend herself from the verbal onslaught, had to retreat and take us back into the previous room. “I am sorry”, she began, “but we will have to wait for the large group to move out of the other room before we can go in, and we cannot pass them by, either… They are all ‘Soviet’”.

Thats a new description of the term… and I like it. “Soviet” is being too inflexible; not recogising the need for someone to slightly deviate from the norm, with no impact on the overall way of things. It is ignoring the potential of creating a moment of pleasure or satisfaction for the sake of the “process”. Being Soviet is to stick to the exact way of doing things with no regard for the circumstances at hand, or the potential to create positive experiences for people with little or no detrimental impact.

I have come across alot of businesses that behave in this way, missing out on little gems of opportunity because the current process doesnt allow it, or that the agent doesnt have the latitude to allow it.

I see both sides of the coin, though… sometimes things cannot be flexed, because it could cost too much money, or maybe expose the business to a wider range of issues and problems. But shouldn’t we take the customer’s situation into account? For us in that absolutely stunning palace, all we wanted to do was to go past the larger group. What inconveniences would that have caused? In our industry, if a customer asked for something, are we, or should we be, in a position to consider the request? But should it depend on other factors, such as the industry, the risk of allowing the request…

… or perhaps it was the fact that I was in a post communist state?

It was about 2.30 in the afternoon and we don’t usually get many calls from the landline. It will usually be my family from America, one particular friend of ours (because its cheaper for her to call us on that number), and… the dreaded marketing survey call.

Normally I am OK with the occasional cold call. I am polite, I will give them a few seconds of my time and usually send them on their way. But over the past several months I have been receiving a call from an Indian contact centre asking me to take a customer marketing survey.

I don’t have time for surveys. I admit I think I accepted one of these surveys once and the promise of a 2 minute survey call spiralled into a 20 minute call with a sales pitch at the end of it… it put me off for good. So when I hear the promise of it being “only a couple of questions” I immediately get pangs of that frustrating experience. Not to mention that my time is precious, and that’s 20 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

That phone ringing told me instantly that it was this Indian agency again trying to get me to take one of these surveys. Perhaps it was the way the phone rang, or some subtle signal from beyond which tipped me off… but when I picked up the phone I placed it on speaker, wanting my wife to hear this too.

First there was the obligatory silence for a few seconds…  the predictive dialler whirring into action, sensing that there was a real-live human at the end of the line, and frantically searching for an agent to connect me to within a few seconds.

I said “hello” a second time… Then finally the line connects and you can hear the background din of loads of others jabbering on…

“Hello, can I speak to Mr. Reynolds”?

“Yes. Who is this please”?

“Hello Mr. Reynolds. How are you today?”

“I am fine. Who is this please”?

“Oh. I am glad to hear that Mr. Reynolds”

“Erm, yes…. Who is this please”?

“Well, Mr. Reynolds, My name is Bill…”(Mind you that, ahem, Bill, based solely on his accent probably comes from the deepest depths of India), “…and Mr. Reynolds, I need your help very badly sir”.

“My help?”, I reply… Now this is a first for these dudes… They have taken just about every conversational avenue known to try to persuade me to take this survey, from promises of paradise in the afterlife and good karma, to more forceful methods (you WILL take this survey NOW). But this is a first for me…my help?

“Yes Mr. Reynolds…”, this must be the 8th flipping time he’s used my name in the call.. mind you the call has lasted barely 30 seconds or so by now, “I need you to spend a few minutes answering some questions for me. So, I need your help”.

At this point the phone is pulled out from my open hand. The dear missus, now incandescent, shouts, “We’re not interested! Goodbye!”, and promptly drops the call. She exhales… and so does the rest of the planet.

It’s a shame that it has come to that… I have complete and utter respect for the vast majority of outsourced services based in India, or the Philippines, or anywhere, for that matter. The sorts of calls I now experience on a near-weekly basis sullies what is normally a professional, well run industry.

It’s these sorts of calls that immediately stereotype calls from the UK to the Asian continent as a nuisance. It’s why the media some time ago launched a crusade to “name and shame” those companies who outsourced their call centres out to foreign countries, and poor India was made the whipping boy, for no apparent reason other than they were well entrenched at the time being a cost effective alternative to keeping UK centres open.

And now there is a shift back with the announcement of a number of new contact centres opening this week. They cite their main reason as UK contact centres now being more cost effective and mitigating complaints from the general public. I am glad that they picked up on the latter issue. Outsourcing specific parts of your business in order to stabilise costs is always a good thing, but when the corporate bean counters begin to run rampant, outsourcing everything, even your customer interactions, a company can quickly realise they are haemorrhaging customers and getting slated in the press. I have seen this a number of times with big companies and they have all paid the price in one way or another for such actions.

But it is very cyclical. As with sunspots on the sun… it oddly enough seems to move in 11 year cycles… because it was about that time ago, that companies were embracing the prospect of reduced bottom line costs and pushing calls and other services out to the foreign outsources. And now, I see a trend in the reverse. Technology support home and teleworking will only help improve this model here, as more home-bound people can now earn a few quid taking calls in the middle of feedings or whatever… It has now very much become a competitive advantage that companies are proud to promote…only UK call centres is the manta of one particular bank, for example.

But I do suspect that this will herald in some difficult times for Indian contact centres in particular. But I believe overall this will be a good thing for them. Most of the agents working in these centres are highly educated. They are probably wasted talking to someone about taking a survey. I firmly believe there is a place for these outsourcers. There are loads of back-office processes that they can do efficiently. And I am not saying that they should be out of the customer interaction space… for certain transactions and tasks, it is perfectly OK to be speaking to a foreign contact centre agent. But please… no more surveys Bill… Help me to help you and take my phone number off of your calling list. thank you.

Some time ago I posted this blog talking about the purchase of Skype from Microsoft. I talked about how I thought it showed Microsoft’s true colours and where it was setting its sights in the future. I talked about how some new an innovative moves are afoot and how the industry in general needs to be acutely aware of what to do next in this market.

What happened next took me a little by surprise. It was a move that was triggered by a move by Google which also might have taken Mark Zuckerberg a bit by surprise too. With Google announcing their own social network service (Google+) which combined the bet bits of Facebook with the ability to do live voice chat as well (a pretty standard feature for anyone who uses Google Mail these days), chances are Mark and his gang were probably well down the path of discussing deal with Skype. Microsoft saw the truth of it and, like a teenage daughter’s father on her first date, made sure they were in on the party in some way.

But I am not too bothered about the decision itself. It only was a matter of time. Facebook, with its pokes and apps and viral messages etc… is already looking a bit long in the tooth. They needed something to shake things up a bit. Well they weren’t the first. But as history always shows, its not always the first innovator that reaps the rewards.

The alliance between Facebook and Skype will open up a whole new market for people who have never used skype before. Alot of grannies, mothers, et al who use Facebook as a medium to keep in touch with their friends and loved ones will soon discover that they can actually speak to them in real time, for free. I see the potential for facebook phones in every lounge in the western world. with little flashes of people that are on Facebook… just press a button and start talking!

I am also very excited about the contact centre industry. Alot of companies I know have dabbled in social media, putting a like page on facebook, and tweeting their latest products and services. In general these have been run mainly from the marketing departments with the contact centre as the sideshow… marketing sees an email or a tweet and immediately forwards it onto the contact centre for a formalised response… this will turn things on its head, making the contact centre the main focal point for all customer interaction through social media. Imagine a button on a company’s facebook page. Click on it and get connected to the contact centre instantly and for no costs! preliminary call direction can also take place as well as customer ID &V (as they have already logged onto facebook, they have already certified themself).

And if you think its a great cost and effort to bring Skype services into your business, then think again. it costs about $7 a month per Skype line (which provides you with a virtual SIP line), and then ensuring your PBX can support sip trunks… and that’s about it. then, when Facebook is ready, you simply link your Skype numbers to your Facebook page and suddenly you have the ability to allow your customers to contact you by voice through your social media connections….SMVoice!

Customers who are not on Facebook will not necessarily notice anything. And, depending on your customer demographic, you may not require any of what we’re talking about. However, if you see your business as progressive, have a younger and more dynamic demographic (or endeavour to reach it), then introducing this feature will drive customers to you. The Generation Y and such will be deep into social media, and will prefer these methods of interactions, they will also realised the need to talk to people when required, especially on convoluted and complex matters, like home purchases or insurance claims, etc. using SMVoice (oohhh, I like the sound of that). Most people will have their Facebook page open most of the time. Imagine simply being able to key in something like ABC insurance claims into the search, going to their page and then clicking the button. Your company can immediately ID the customer, get their policy ID, etc… simples!

This could be the paradigm change that will usher in a serious move into IP voice for B2C markets, which never really took hold. For those savvy companies who enter into SMVoice will enjoy a more streamlined call flow from their customers, faster ID&V which will reduce overall talk times and reduce costs, entry into a larger audience and a USP that can be used through all forms of media… get it bedded down into your business now. don’t wait for the other guy… it as not as complicated as one might think. Dudes like me can show you how. I believe that this will be the next big communications channel and will be an essential element to simply be in the game in the not too distant future.

And a final thought on this subject…

Back in the late 90′s, after a great big Goliath called Microsoft got a proverbial bloody nose from a small upstart company called Netscape when trying to sell their internet browsers software, Bill Gates got up on stage at their annual conference and told the audience that he had made a mistake of judgement when assessing the potential of the Internet and Microsoft’s business. He told the audience, “The Internet is no longer a priority. It is now THE priority”.

My advice? Don’t be a Microsoft in the 90′s!

But they were mainly looking at it for sales and marketing initiatives, allowing a salesman to enter into a company with key knowledge about the recent moves and changes, consumer opinion, recent acquisitions, new hires or fires, etc…

I offered a new direction to them, which seemed to gain some traction. The concept of improving customer retention through social media.

There are a few socio-cultural dynamics taking place here to facilitate this, so bear with me.

Lever 1 = The acceptance of the “post”… What is this? This could be a Facebook post, a blog post, a twitter post… signposting your day and the events that make up your day is becoming more and more commonplace and accepted. What’s my proof? How about the more than half billion people on Facebook at the moment, not taking into account the myriad other social networks. And the growing opinion of the social media “lurker” (that is someone who is connected, but never posts or never contributes) as a veritable pariah. Only last weekend I was at a party and a group of girls were b*tching about someone else who “never posts on Facebook even though she has an account… what’s wrong with her?” This sort of cultural shift across the globe will encourage people to post more and more about their day and the small micro events in their lives… such as whether they just had a positive or negative experience with a company or business…

Lever 2 = The continuing penetration of social media and the accessibility of these tools, The ubiquity of smart-phones and the improving mobile data network will allow people across the globe to more easily rate an experience instantly… no more waiting to travel home, fuming after a poor experience to vent your rage. Why not do it right outside the shop?

Lever 3 = The ever increasing costs to attract customers. Anyone will tell you its alot cheaper to keep your current customers happy than hunting for new ones. Simple fact, and one which remain in force.

Lever 4 = Speed of adaptation and improvement. those businesses who can react quicker to changes to their customer opinions, or competition shift will fare far better than those who lumber along… its why smaller nimble companies can quickly gain the upper hand when it comes to new and interesting products and services… think of the heady days of the emerging internet. the small company of Netscape gave Microsoft a bloody nose at the time, sealing several marches on them when it came to the internet browser space.

Now, when you consider all of these forces at work, the next natural development is the ability to gauge your public opinion, isolate those users who are commenting, attempt to successfully identify those posts through your current database and/or intelligence tools. and then make a business decision as to what to do with it (based on severity of response, customer value, etc).

How might this be achieved?

1. The service provides the classic “raw” dump of posts and blogs and tweets pertaining to your brand, both positive and negative ones.
2. Each post is linked to a user. each user might have a twitter username, a Facebook name, an email address, etc.
3. Each of these names is indexed and then each name is attempted to be identified through a company’s existing customer database.
4. The business would have already started including social media username details as part of their larger strategy
5. Successful hits will produce a report to the business detail who we believe made the comment, along with the details of the comment, positive or negative responses, etc.
6. The business would then take this information and overlay it with recent transactions, trying to associate the comment with the most recent interaction. This can also include customer value information
7. A sensible and informed choice can now be made around action to be taken (email phone call, nothing, etc)

I see this as “closing the loop” when it comes to social media interactions. I know alot of companies who do the blanket analysis, but how many of them actually try to pro-actively associate comments to your customers? I believe it is one of the new frontiers of building a powerful customer retention model.

I welcome thoughts or feedback on this… if you know of a company who is doing this right now that is product agnostic to the existing infrastructure (no Avaya’s Cisco’s Aspects, etc…) then please get in touch.

Nevertheless, I think it will be worth it. Avaya has had to absorb a hell of a lot of baggage with Nortel, sifting through things of value and discarding other things that are worthless (and I mean people resources as well as technical).

Losses have increased. But, in my opinion, this was mainly through the costs of shedding these overheads. but encouragingly, revenues have also increased. They have released a range of new features and products, and continues to remain the dominant contact centre provider. I have seen some of these products first hand, and I believe it will keep Avaya at the top of the food chain for quite some time.

Yes they are looking for a cash injection. Some can read into this that the private firm is no longer prepared to put any more money into it. But I believe that this is a stock worth buying… The industry will be going through some flux over the next few years, with some more interesting events yet to come… I even predict that there will be a merger or two, in the next couple of years. If that is the case, then have a good look at the market and start thinking about which company is exclusive in the voice telecommunications market? Then look at some of the others where voice might only be one tiny wedge of their complete offering… There will come a time where someone will say, ” Sheesh… we’re getting beat up in the marketplace from <<<COMPANY NAME>>>. how about we just buy them out? It has been done before… many many times.

So, yes, I will be calling my dear brother in the states and ask him to seek out getting in on the ground floor of this stock. here’s to putting my trust in Avaya… don’t let me down!