Wikipedia External Peer Review

I've written a few posts on the quality of Wikipedia and its move to make the entire wiki available to developing countries free, and my concern that we (those of means) provide high quality information to students who don't have access to competing information.

I wasn't alone; Wikipedia continues to draw attention from others who want to compare its content to other sources like Encyclopedia Britannica. Now you can track all the articles written about this on Wikipedia's External Peer Review.

Personalized Starbucks Card: Round 2

I just went through customizing a Starbucks card - I can't tell you who for because it's a family member. It wasn't quite as much fun as I 'd hoped. There were quite a lot of choices, but frankly, I was hoping to upload a design of my own creation.

Oh well.

My second issue - and this is more of a beef -you don't find out until the very, very last page that there's a $4.00 customization fee. This is in addition to loading the card to buy coffee. And that's my other, related issue - you can't load the card for less than $15.00. Yet without a doubt, if you send this card to someone who goes to Starbucks regularly, they will load and reload this card. The gift should really be in taking the time to create a cool card.

Of course, for Starbucks, that means that each order is a minimum $19.00.

I won't be giving too many friends a $19.00 card. And that's too bad, because I'd take the time to design a LOT of these if the total amount I had to pay was, say, $10.

Next up: how the card looks. Stay tuned ...

Apple Leaves A Customer High & Dry

Last Sunday, while standing outside on the patio at the end of an event, my partner brought our friend Susan over to me then delicately beat a hasty retreat.

Susan's hard drive had crashed. And her back-up hadn't backed up properly in a year. (Note to self: check your back up every now and again.)

She'd been trying to get some assistance from Apple and it wasn't going well. Even though she'd bought a replacement Mac, she still needed her hard drive salvaged if at all possible. When she asked at the Apple store how to do this, they gave her a handful of companies where she could take her hard drive.

That's it.

So Susan was reduced to asking me - a non-Apple user but, okay, a bit of a geek - what I thought she should do. I might add that she was fairly spittin' mad at this point, and talking about returning the Mac she'd just bought. She felt ill-used, in fact; a non-geek amongst the scary techies.

Many of you may have followed Heidi Miller's and Shel Holtz's experience last year when her hard drive failed. Believe it or not, that was the information I drew on to give Susan some advice (with all the appropriate caveats, of course).

Uh-oh: we have PC people repping Apple!

I haven't spoken to Susan since regaling her with all the horrors she can expect from Apple's infamous customer service, but I'll be seeing her in a few days and will get the details then.

Personalized Starbucks Card

I can't wait to give this a try: Starbucks is now letting customers design their own card! I've always appreciated the Starbucks cards designed by employees, but really -- aren't we all designer wannabes?

I'm going to take the plunge and try it. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Third Avenue Funds

I have shares in a Third Avenue Fund. A month ago (or so) I received the quarterly "Letters to Our Shareholders," a 20-page pamphlet that lays out the Fund's quarterly activity. This is the second I've received - and it is the only quarterly report I read. leisurely, over several days.

The second quarter letter was written by Martin J. Whitman and Curtis R. Jensen. Martin is Chairman of the Board, Co-Chief Investment Officer and a portfolio manager. Curtis is Co-Chief Investment Officer and a portfolio manager. The letter is incredibly shareholder friendly while not "dumbing down" the message they want to get across. I can't help but wonder if they write it themselves, or if they have a ghostwriter.

In any event it's a joy - yes, a joy I tell you - for me to read, and oh yeah: educational too.

I'm So Happy, Oh So Happy ...

Oh yes, I am happy, because (a) I had to get a new bookkeeper and it turned out to be the best thing that's happened this month; and (b) Rhonda, my new bookkeeper, has amazing customer service. No - I mean it: so far, top-notch eye-popping service.

It started with her giving me her client agreement to sign. Here's what it states:

Our telephone is monitored between the hours of 7am to 7pm, and it is our policy that if we cannot take your phone call immediately, we will return your call within one hour.

This client agreement was such a shock to me: rather than the usual mumbo-jumbo, it was a bit less than one page and a whole paragraph laid out her customer service credo.

Do you think I wanted to sign this agreement?!? Oh yeah, despite the fact that I was spending money. And with that start, Rhonda turned this whole process from one of pain to one of (hopefully inestimable) gain.

I look forward to blogging about how the process proceeds over the next year.

Go Rhonda!

Airline Customer Service

What is is about the airline industry that has spawned such bad customer service? Despite there being so many carriers, the fact is - as a whole - the airline industry has no effective competition. That means customer service for all carriers can fall to the lowest common denominator.

For example, though I love Jet Blue and Virgin Airlines, neither of those carriers goes everywhere I want/need. None of the carriers do. So I'm captive; unless I want to drive (which I choose to do in California and sometimes Nevada too), I don't have a choice but to fly the carriers that will take me to my destination.

USA Today has an active discussion carrying on: Flight Attendants Feel Wrath of Fliers, and Readers' Opinion.

There's No Escape ...

Listen: no business is immune anymore from having dirty customer service laundry aired in public in the most frightful way. A call between a Dell rep and an angry customer illustrates this.

In essence, the customer was upset because he spent an hour on an automated system trying to find out how to turn off a laptop stuck in shut down mode. At the end of the call, he is told by the human Dell customer service representative to hold down the power button for 1o seconds. But the caller, by that time, was agitated almost to the breaking point (warning: the strongest language is involved).

While the Dell rep does not stoop to yelling back and appears calm, the smirk in his voice clearly comes through, and makes Dell look bad, bad, bad – really worse than if the rep had yelled back. The answer is to be authentic. No one would have blamed the rep if he’d complained about the behavior of the customer: that would have been an authentic, truly human response. There’s only one way to get respect here that I see, and that’s to just honestly care about how much time the customer’s wasted.

Banks : Don't They Have To Provide Good Service?

About a month ago, I got into it with my bank. The problem? BofA had decided that the way I was withdrawing funds was "unusual," based on some algorithm they had created. I could understand that, but the problem was that I'd been withdrawing money the same way for - let's see - about two years.

And how did I discover this new algorithm? You guessed it: when I went to use my debit card on my way to the airport. Luckily, I had another bank card I could use.

Why write about this now? Two reasons. First, I read this article by Paul Gillen over on B To B Online a few days ago.

But what tipped me over was my friend battling with her bank, Washington Mutual, for six days. In her case, she was battling over thousands of dollars, and a frozen account. In the end, after several horrid phone conversations, in desperation she went into a branch. That worked, and the "very nice young man" even followed up the next day with her.

Wow.

So how do we rate something like this? Was WaMu successful or not? In my case, I don't know what worked: I both called and went into the bank, but didn't see results until weeks later. In fact, I was considering changing banks, but what a hassle - and this, I think, is what banks have working for them that allows such awful, uncaring service to exist. Changing banks can be just a pain. So I waited and waited to see if the situation would continue, and lucky for me, it was magically fixed.

Banks also have this whole mysticism thing going on: who knows how they operate? I was told there's an algorithm - does that mean suddenly there wasn't? Did they change it? Or do I have a special notation on my account, allowing the alg-y thing to be bypassed? Who knows, so how can I compete?

My friend was given 3 different reasons why the problem was occurring and 3 different ways to correct it - but nothing appeared to work until she presented herself front and center. In the end, it was the bank's error - to which they never admitted. In her case, I guess you could call it mumbo-jumbo instead of mystical stuff.

The upshot is that banks really need to do a better job. Indeed, given that they are responsible for such an important part of all of our lives, you'd think they'd actually give a hoot.

So what can all of us do about this? You got it: blog, baby, blog. Follow Paul's lead.

"Shoot" the Rapper

This is not amusing:


You can read more about it at All Hip Hop.com. I found this when looking up the MySpace ads for a few of the presidential candidates. These ads are showing up on the pages of Virginia Tech victims. The company is The Advertisers Reward Network and may have been running online for several weeks.

So my question is ... what is MySpace going to do about this?

DirecTV: They Don't Care, I Guess

Tim Jackson over at MarketingProfs says DirecTV struck out; he provides a detailed report of DirecTV's failure to reign in its 100 mph drivers.

Fatburger's Phat Customer Service

The best turkey burgers I've ever had are those from Fatburger. They are succulent and juicy! However, that is not the reason I'm telling you about Fatburger: the service is as phat as the burgers.

Fatburger does not pre-cook their burgers, meat or turkey. So you have to be willing to wait. And I always am when I go because everyone is always pleasant and often down-right friendly. I don't feel like one in a long procession of customers. If you want a great burger (my friends swear by the beef burgers), see if there's a Fatburger near you!

Blockbuster and NYT: Too, Too Much

You know there are too many ads running on a single web page when your browser freezes up, even if for just 5 seconds. I had this experience this morning. Of course, it's not the first time and won't be the last - but I was shocked to have it happen on the New York Times. A banner ad and a side ad were the culprits, both from Blockbuster and both using Adobe flash. If I hadn't been working, that browser window would have been shut down.

I don't think this is providing a good experience for readers.

What's With the Missing Links?

For a long time now I've seen a disturbing trend on some websites, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and others. Reading the newest post from Seth Godin has finally made me comment. Seth said,

I read a blog post describing the best way to get the most out of a Squidoo lens. The author said you should make sure that the keywords and title are perfect and limit outbound links so that you can be sure that people will only do what you want them to.

He was talking about how to make your stuff so good that people just want to link to you. But that's not where I'm going. I want to complain about online news stories that talk about a person, place thing, website, or online company - but don't bother to make it easy for us to find out more.

Here's a great example. (Hint: try to find a link to any of the studies mentioned!)

It's not hard to embed a hyperlink, guys. In fact, you can craft a link that will open in a new window if you're so worried about losing eyeballs. That's got to be it, right? I can't think of another reason why they don't want give out some link love.

As Seth says, "If you make great stuff, people will find you."

[LATER THAT SAME DAY ... ]

Yet another example, in an otherwise fine critique of Edward Tufte's work, shows several links missing. Indeed, at one point the author quotes a writer from, "..the online Business Intelligence Network." Is there a better opportunity to provide a link?

Wall Street Journal: Overdoing It

WSJ.com is running a customer survey campaign. But in my 15 minutes on the site, I was asked 4 times whether I would take their survey. This is the second time this has happened, though the first time, about a week ago, I was only asked 3 times.

Needless to say, after that pestering, I did WSJ a favor by not taking the survey.

Dementia In NFL Players

Some N.F.L players are paying a high price for the glitz, glamour (and in some cases) and big payday of playing American football. More reports are leaking out about the debilitating health of retired players. The latest highlights two players affected with dementia. They are 2 of 20 known, with an estimated 60 or 80 more unknown.

If I knew that the NFL was making such a fuss about church groups gathering together to watch the Big Game so they could support their retired players, I'd be sympathetic.

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Starbucks: I Smell Just Fine

A very unhappy Starbucks customer takes Howard Schultz to task in Time magazine. I enjoyed the well-crafted commentary, but wonder where this person lives. In parts of San Francisco, there's a Starbucks on every corner. Maybe the real estate is too rich where Bill works, so the company can't afford to buy the space. Or maybe no one's willing to sell to them?

Anyhoo, I've used Starbucks to jump on wifi, and think it's fine. Of course, I've not done it where there isn't enough seating. Still, I think it's great they have it. Why would I want Starbucks to stop offering wifi? I know I can always count on a speedy internet at a great price when I've traveling state-side.

The NFL (Death) Spiral?

Nwz Chik has a post on how the NFL is trying to trademark "the Big Game" as a phrase. Oh brother: this is the latest effort by the NFL to shoot their brand in the foot. First they told church groups they couldn't have Super Bowl parties because the big group would show up as one person watching when it might actually be 101. The blogosphere slammed the NFL for that bright move.

And now this. In the San Francisco Bay Area, "the Big Game" refers to the annual contest between Stanford University and U.C. Berkeley (Cal). I'm betting that lots of you out there have your own Big Game.

So I have to ask: Has the NFL had too many concussions? Where is their competition? Arena football? Is that why they've gone into testosterone overdrive? Where the heck else can advertisers go to reach the football-watching demographic? What is the viable option to advertising in the Super Bowl?

I’ve seen perfectly good teams blow themselves up. My team, the San Francisco 49ers, is a good example. And they did it in one season – or should I say, in one off-season. (Did you see Jeff Garcia step up in Philadelphia?) Now let's see how quickly the NFL can do the same, following this new game plan. Should we call this the East Coast offensive-defense? Sounds a mess to me.

Good On Verizon

I just read about Mary Ellen Bates' experience with Verizon, and I was very pleased! I just suggested to my mom that she get a Verizon or Sprint wireless card. She's leaning toward Verizon, and I sure hope she has a great experience too.

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Starbucks: I Can Only Say Wow

My family took me to Circus Circus in Reno for my birthday. There is a little coffee stop (it's not even a coffee shop) where they "proudly serve Starbucks coffee." But what we got was a travesty. In fact, it was so bad, that we went back to talk with the workers.

When we got home, I wrote a letter to Starbucks corporate. What I got back was (a) a very nice email from a senior customer service representative; (b) a 30-minute call from the Starbucks manager responsible for Reno; and (c) a letter from that same customer representative with a few free "Coffees on us" coupons.

The one message that ran clearly through all of these communications was quite simple and powerful: we care that you contacted us, we thank you for your loyalty to our brand, and contact us again if you ever have such an experience.

Papillon Cafe is a local coffee shop that I frequent all the time. Owned by Brenda and Tom, they have created a wonderful community feel to Papillon - which just around the corner from a Starbucks. I sometimes go there when I want something I can't get from Papillon. And of course, Starbucks becomes my "third space" - other office - when I'm about town.

Papillon has my coffee consumer's heart - but Starbucks just earned some of that heart too.

Rock on, Starbucks.