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Saturday, June 30, 2007

The Starbucks Experience, by Joseph Michelli

The first time I encountered Starbucks was when I moved to Vancouver in 1992, and Starbucks was a cool, little company in the Pacific Northwest. I didn’t know the words “user experience” then, but even in 1992, realized then that it was a company that created an in-crowd feeling by using its own vocabulary and in-store culture. I was curious, then, to read The Starbucks Experience to see what the deal was. I’d lost a few feel-good points over Starbucks, but not because it had grown to be a large chain - I never got that “now that you’re successful, we have you” vibe. My beef was that Starbucks sued a little coffee shop inside a kids’ clothing store, in some remote B.C. town, that called itself Starducks or something similar. This from a company that has a name from a character in Battlestar Galactica? In the vein of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I didn’t shutting down a little puddleduck shop was a very good corporate move. Aside from that, however, I was impressed with what the book outlined as their five corporate principles for creating great user experiences. I wish all executives with retail operations would read this book and implement the principles throughout their organization.

Berry picking season is here again

Part of the family ritual has become berry picking. It started when my grandson was very young, and I wanted him to know where food came from - not growing on the shelves of a supermarket. Somehow going to pick cucumbers (like my sister and I were forced to do all summer as kids) wasn’t going to motivate him to connect with nature, but I thought berry picking might. As each of the grandkids got old enough to walk, they got added to the trip. I’ve taken other people’s children, too, and for some of them, it was the first time they were allowed to their feet muddy in their whole lives. Imagine.

This year, I went with two of the older grandkids, and a first time for a two-year-old and her mom and dad. We went to the strawberry patch at W&A Farms in Richmond - it may have pouring rain in Vancouver and Burnaby, but had dried up (kind of) in Richmond - and we had the entire u-pick patch to ourselves. The older kids got to some turning point at around the age of 8, and they go into complete production mode when they hit the berry patch. I had to remind them that I had only brought $15 with me, so they should stop picking when they filled their plastic buckets. (They would have gladly picked double that!) The little one probably ate as many as she picked, but that was thankfully about 10 strawberries in all. She was more fascinated by the mud puddles surrounding the fields, and splashed around in her muddy buddy while mom and dad picked enough to make a good batch of jam.

That afternoon, I froze strawberries, made some sherbet, and made a batch of rather syrupy jam using Splenda. And soon, it will be time for raspberries, and I can take one of the other grandkids out berry-picking. Maybe I can get her moms go come out and make an event of it.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

What on earth is going on at VanCity?

Don’t get me wrong - I have been a loyal VanCity customer since I moved to Vancouver many years ago. But the past few days have been quite ... let’s just say that I’d might as well be dealing with Big Ugly Bank. First, I walk down to Branch 10 to make a deposit. I get into the business line-up. There are 2 people in the line-up, and 3 people in the general line-up. The teller says to the business person ahead of me, “Sorry, I’m going to take someone from the other line-up.” Hmmm, so what is the point of having a business line-up? Isn’t the point that we have to get back to our businesses? OK, so one doesn’t have to be a genius to be a bank teller. But wait, it gets better. They deposit my money into another company’s account. So evidently, being able to read the numbers off the deposit sheet isn’t an employment requirement, either. Well, I hope that English comprehension is.

Anyhow, calling the customer service line yielded the following comedic routine:
“Hello, I have a problem.”
“What is your account number? Name? Date of birth? Password?”
“Hold on, I’m in a public place.”
“What’s the problem?”
I explain the problem.
“Oh, let me call the branch.”
(on hold)
“Hello? Hello? Hello?”
Sound of the customer service rep hanging up.

This situation repeated itself twice, until I told the third person that he could help me by not putting me on hold. And they assured me that Barbie (or Muffy, or DragonLady, or whatever her name is that made the mistake) would try to fix the problem today.

I really hope that Mercury goes out of retrograde soon, because my loyalty quotient dropped significantly today, and I really don’t want to have to switch banks.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Blowing My Cover, by Lindsay Moran

Sometimes you’re in an airport, looking for a book to read, and a book cover just tickles your interest. Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy, by Lindsay Moran, was that right book at the right time. It’s a fast read that puts the CIA into the perspective that we long-in-the-tooth office workers suspect exists everywhere: it’s a bunch of workers who worry about things like employee reviews and paper pushing, who get budgets for some things that seem really bizarre while other necessities are denied them, whose corporate cultures claim to be one thing to the outside world while employees experience something completely different. The big difference, of course, is that most of us leave our dysfunctional workplaces behind at the end of the day, whereas Moran describes a bunch of workers who carry a world of deception around with them, weaving a world of lies and, more often, avoiding entanglements that would eventually expose them. It’s funny, in that cynical sort of way - just my type of humour.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Talking to people on the SkyTrain

I never talk to people on the SkyTrain. Well, rarely. From where I live, to my office, I can take the SkyTrain a few stops and transfer trains, or board in the other direction, and take the entire loop around, for the sole purpose of not having to transfer at the Broadway Station. That’s what I normally do, because at Broadway, it’s a zoo. You may have to wait for three trains to come before you can wedge yourself into a train.

The other day, I decided to try the direct route; now that school is out, it wouldn’t be that bad at the transfer point. Boy, was I wrong. At the last second, I launched myself into the train, and the closing of the door squished me against whichever riders were already up against the door. As we got closer to downtown and the train began disgorging more passengers than it took in, I made my way to the corner of the car, out of the traffic path. As I sat down, a fellow, who I’d earlier noticed folding an orange origami creature, commented, “As least it’s not as bad as Tokyo. There, the transit enforcement agents use batons to squeeze everybody in so the doors can close.”

By the time we got out at the end of the line, we were chatting away quite comfortably, and began walking through Gastown to our respective destinations. Turns out I’ve been talking with Ken Furukawa, the original “origami guy” from CBC TV’s Sesame Street, who tells me an inspirational story about how he recently discovered that a years-ago visit from himself and Fred Penner to a prairie school inspired a youngster to choose an academic path and ultimately end up as a professor at UBC. I was slightly embarrassed as I felt some tears well up (dang, I can get so sappy - my wife calls me “the tap"), and we parted with a hug. Definitely not my usual MO, but I guess it’s never too late to change a habit, drop a barrier, let someone in, and broaden my perspective.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

The Book of Salt, by Monique Truong

Whenever I go into Little Sister’s bookstore, I make a point of buying at least one book, and this time it was Monique Truong‘s The Book of Salt. The premise is that the protagonist is a Vietnamese cook hired by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. This fellow, Thinh Binh, is a gay lad, and so understands his employers, yet doesn’t, as they are a gender and two cultures away, as he filters their behaviour as Americans living in Europe. Truong counterpoints Binh’s experiences in Vietnam with those in Paris, in the French countryside, and en route. There are multiple worlds inside this book, and the travel is seamless. In fact, I’m planning to send this book to a friend of mine who loves language and would completely enjoy this book.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man, by Charles Barkley

I picked up Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man, by Charles Barkley, on a whim at a bookstore in Oregon. Not being a sports fan, I had no clue who Barkley was, but I’m always interested in understanding more about the current state of race relations in the US, so the subtitle drew me in: race, power, fame, identity, and why everyone should read my book. As I started reading the book, I actually liked who he interviewed, how he structured the interviews, and what they had to say. It was a little depressing - if these prominent people can’t make society move, even a little teeny bit - then how stuck is the US in its social rut when it comes to racial tensions? Yikes! The funniest line in the book is George Lopez recalling a telephone conversation with a restaurant hostess who, upon hearing his surname, declared, “oh, you don’t sound Latino.” At which point he said (or perhaps thought), “and you didn’t sound stupid - until you said that.”

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Dance recitals and high school graduations

Tis the time of year when all the semesters of hard work pay off, and this weekend was the culmination. [deleted] and today was Ben’s high school graduation. [deleted]

What was a huge mindbender for me was inheriting a grandson who just turned 18, by way of becoming Ashley’s foster brother a couple of years back. Ben is a lovely guy, polite and well-mannered, full of wonder about the world, and so on. But if you know anything about my pacifist, left-leaning background, you can understand that it’s taken me a bit of mindbending to adjust my thinking to be able to appreciate Ben’s cadet training. For example, like this summer, when he goes off on his pilot scholarship to learn to fly a plane. I mean, Emma was just giving him driving lessons a couple of months ago! Or when we pick them up to go for ice cream, and he’s dressed in fatigues because he has just enough time to have ice cream before he has to get back for his sharpshooter lesson. Or when he goes away to boot camp for the summer.

I’m sure this is part of what I need to do in this life as part of my personal growth. Every time I get too comfortable in my social comfort zone, a new person or situation comes into my life that makes me have to stretch my boundaries and rethink my prejudices and tolerances. And aside from enjoying Ben’s quick wit and pleasant company, I appreciate him making me open my mind a little more. And aside from being nervous about someone so young learning to fly, I’m hoping he’ll turn to civil aviation at some point - hey, those family points should come in handy, right, Ben?

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Finding George Orwell in Burma, by Emma Larkin

Finding George Orwell in Burma, by Emma Larkin, is a remarkable book. Larkin is a pseudonym, which you start to understand the necessity for as you read the book. She searches for George Orwell on three levels - first, searching for traces of Eric Arthur Blair, the police officer stationed in Burma before becoming George Orwell, the writer; second, searching for people who have read George Orwell’s works, and finding a virtual literary underground of readers who hide their libraries of western classics from destruction by the natural elements and the ever-present spies; and third, searching for the the truth about how the Myanmar society bears out the dynamics of George Orwell’s book 1984. This kind of look inside of a closed culture is invaluable to understanding the dynamics of the world better, as much as we can ever understand it. I highly recommend it.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Night, by Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel’s Night was a hard book to read. I got the book for my birthday, but put off reading it for a few months because reading anything about the Holocaust tends to give me recurring nightmares, but that’s a whole other story. The book was an extremely powerful read - I read it sometime in March but couldn’t review it till now. The seemingly sparse style is actually quite packed with detail; a single sentence says as much as another author might say in an entire paragraph. So this slim volume of about 120 pages packs a huge emotional whollop. And yes, recurring nightmares ensued for about a month. But it was worth it.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Will Telus ever “get it”??

I don’t know why I continue to use Telus as my mobile telephone service provider. Heaven knows that every time I have to deal with them, my blood pressure goes up at least a dozen points. I should have a section on my blog for Dumb Things Done by Telus. Don’t get me wrong, some of the individual service reps I’ve spoken with are pleasant enough, and they’re dealing with the stupid policies they’ve been given. But others have been on the ... let’s be polite and say rather obtuse side ... and then we have the ones who are disinterested and just going through the motions. Heck, I should have an entire section on my blog: Telus: yet another f-up.

So first of all, I call in and, hallelujah, because I am a platinum member (that means they’ve sucked lots and lots of money out of my wallet over the last many years), I get the choice of talking to an agent right up front. Well, hell yes. Because why would I be wasting my time calling if I didn’t have a problem complicated enough that I didn’t need to actually talk to someone? OK, so I enter my phone number get routed and routed, and routed by the auto-attendant and now the “fast service promise” begins. Now let’s back up for a minute. When I use my “park by phone” service, it recognizes my phone number automatically. So why wouldn’t the phone company, the very company who issued me the phone number, recognize my number automatically? Never mind, I’ve now punched it in. And my PIN code.

OK, so I wait and I hold. And eventually get answered by a service rep. Who asks me for my telephone number. Again. And my PIN code. So now they explain to me why my bill is about five times what I calculate it should be for the last month. Ah, it seems that when I had that discussion a few months back about switching my plan to the Talk North America plan, they didn’t actually make the switch. I guess the rep just thought we had a little discussion for ... I don’t know, the sake of my health? So I’m traveling and making phone calls, and unknowingly paying some outrageous per-minute charge, something like $1.50.

So now I have someone else on the phone and this time I get a firm commitment. We’re changing the phone plan over, right? Yes. And to keep my phone minutes from going over, I’m going to take the phone forwarding option so I can forward to a land line on the days I’m in the office, right? Yes. But let’s switch on the 8th of the next month because that will be more economical. OK, let’s do that. Good. I’ll pay $50 a month more, but save $300 a month in overage and long distance charges. Good.

So on the 8th, can you guess what happened? Well, sure, the plan got switched over. But the voice mail somehow didn’t make it. All my voice mail from the evening of the 7th was wiped out, and when I called my voice mail, it just rang busy. Voice mail was part of the phone forwarding option, so I’m not sure what happened, but when I called to ask why my voice mail wasn’t working, I had to go through the whole rigmarole of giving my phone number and PIN code - twice - and so on. OK, so that was a lost 15 minutes.

And now, my voice mail icon has come on and won’t go off. All day, I wait. From time to time, I check my mail but the mailbox is empty. I don’t give up hope till the end of the day because I dread what I have to do. You know, call, wait, hold. Eventually get answered by a service rep. Who asks me for my telephone number. Again. And my PIN code. Again. I call as I walk to the bank, so at least I don’t feel I’m wasting more time on Telus today. But the third time the technical service rep asks me if I have pencil and paper, I want to slap him. I remind him that I’m w-a-l-k-i-n-g down the s-t-r-e-e-t and don’t have a pencil handy. But to his credit, the problem does go away, and with any luck, I won’t have to deal with Telus for a while. Too bad my contract doesn’t run out for a while yet because then I could look at a company that understands the concept of competitive advantage and user experience.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

I love Bollywood movies

There’s something about Bollywood movies that just draws me in. It’s something about the not-so-stereotypically Hollywood plot lines, the choreographed dance numbers, the refreshing lack of sex scenes. Lucky for me, our local multi-culti channel shows Bollywood movies on Sunday afternoons. I don’t watch them all that often - a lot of them are pretty B-list - but once in a while something catches my eye, and today I thoroughly enjoyed Chal Mere Bhai, a comedy-drama revolving around two brothers in love with the same woman. A perfect diversion for a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Bad customer service biggest blow to office productivity, part 2

It’s amazing how another full day’s productivity got sucked away by having to follow up on information I shouldn’t have had to worry about.

Because my laptop was overheating - more so at the office than at home, it seemed - I decided to call the building management and ask if the wiring was good in the office. They suggested I get an uninterrupted power supply, which I ordered from Staples online. I had no idea which to buy, as they all seem to do more or less the same thing, so after some reading and a feature comparison, I chose a mid-range model by Belkin. It arrived the next day and I pulled it out of the box. No instructions in English. Just peachy. OK, well, you should just plug it in and use it, right? Well, I used my high school French and got as far as “charge it for 8 hours” and so did that. But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on - pushing the ON button wasn’t doing it. A phone call to technical support sent me around in circles, and eventually got me to the message that “we’re closed for the weekend”. An email got me an auto-reply that they would answer “in the order that the email was received” (the reply included a link that went to a URL that told me “Sorry, no downloads found for product F6C550-AVR〈=1.") A scan of the website got me a manual about power management software, most of it which is written for electricians, I’m sure (I couldn’t understand most of it), but not to the installation instructions sheet.

Since I couldn’t use the unit, and the laptop was still overheating, I called a friend of mine who is an electrical engineer, and asked him what he thought about the whole situation. His advice: make sure there is enough air under the laptop to keep it cool. So I stopped by Staples and bought a little “under the laptop” cooling unit with two fans to keep the laptop from overheating. OK, so the immediate problem is under control, and I can at least check email. But the larger problem was still out there.

So I struggle with the French instructions, to no avail. However, when I mention that the “Site Ground Fault” light was on, a contractor working at the office comments that her dad is an electrician, and she knew that meant there is a problem with the electrical outlet. So I call the building management company, and they tell me they’ll send over an electrician to take a look. The fellow comes over and finds that there is no ground wire at all, so we have to move desks and bookcases, and he fixes the socket, and then we move everything back and I vacuum up all the plaster and paint that has been dislodged.

Meanwhile, I call the Belkin support line, and get put on hold. The standard high call volume message plays. They remind me several times how I should follow all the instructions that came with the equipment (hah!) and how I should have all my equipment handy, and such other things that don’t apply because I can’t get past first base. Meanwhile, I figure that I might try installing their power management software because at least I can figure out the CD, which is in English. Pity the poor sod who needed a French instruction sheet but got an English CD. The CD tells me to enter the serial number. Fair enough. I turn over the unit and enter the serial number. Error message: serial number is incorrect. How can this be, I wonder? After all, the chances of this being a bootleg product are next to nil - I bought it from Staples online. I try again, no luck. I laboriously copy the number, and try every combination of “O” and “0” to make sure I haven’t mixed those up. Nothing, nada, zilch.

Now I’m getting really choked, and of course, this is when the rather surly - no, actually, not surly but bored - service rep finally answers the phone. She tells me there is no English instructions she can send me. That’s comforting news. But there should be a manual online. With some searching, I do find the instructions sheet, under the guise of being a manual. Then, she tells me to hold the ON button down for 3 to 5 seconds, and it will go on. Hallelujah, we have lift off! But wait - the CD won’t work. Could she explain to me what to do? She tells me that the serial number is needed. (Thank you for that enlightening piece of information, like I haven’t already found that out.) But it’s not a serial number that I need, it’s the serial CODE, the one ON the CD itself. Yes, the CD that’s spinning in the CD drive. So I thank the service rep and hang up, then cancel out of the installation and copy down the serial code. I pop the CD back into the CD drive and start again. And, you guessed it, it doesn’t work. So I do this again, and it turns out I’ve transposed a letter. So I start again, and double-check my input but again I’m told that my serial number is wrong. At this point, I’m completely frustrated but don’t want to call back and be put into a long-distance queue again, so I give up. I unplug everything, set it up at my desk, which now has a new, grounded outlet, a new UPS, a new cooling unit, and so on and so forth. And I may never get the power management portion working because, quite frankly, I don’t need to lose any more billable hours because a consumer product company can’t invest in a little usability before they take something to market.

For all I know, Belkin developers and customer service folks may be rubbing their hands in glee because they’re thinking, “Good, we got rid of another service call!” But the marketers should be thinking, “Yikes, we just lost another customer - and she’s telling the world!” All it will take is a company or two offshore to start doing usability better than the domestic companies, and they’ll attract customers like flies to honey, because not only will their stuff be cheaper, but it will be more usable. And ultimately, for me that translates into more time saved, and less opportunities lost.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Bad customer service biggest blow to office productivity, part 1

Sorry, but I need to rant. I am on hold because I am on hold. Again. This company, like all the other companies I’ve had to speak with over the last few days, is “experiencing “a high call volume.” This is code for “we didn’t hire enough people to answer all our calls and prefer to keep people on hold for upwards of 20 minutes.” I’m sure part of this is in the hopes that people will go away and not bother them. What they don’t realize is that people who just hang up instead of getting help are probably busy packing up their product to be returned to the store. I play a little game with myself while I wait. If I can get the product packed up before the customer (un)service rep answers, I hang up and return the item. I then buy from the competition, if at all possible.

It started last week. Now, Mercury goes into retrograde on June 15th, though June 1st started the shadow period. Merucy is the planet of communication , which means that during the retrograde period, miscommunications are likely to happen until the planet comes out of retrograde on July 24th. I always notice miscommunication and technology glitches.

So first, I get a horrendous cell phone bill for the third month in a row. So I call Telus, and as a platinum customer, which means that I get overcharged a lot by them, it seems, I get to speak to an agent right away. Well, after going through an exercise where I have to give them all my information twice. (Their systems don’t talk to each other, I would guess. Turns out that the long conversation I was sure I had - about switching to the North American plan that avoided roaming charges while I travel - never happened. I guess I must have dreamt all those details about the per-minute charges and how the roaming scheme works. So while I’m waiting on the line (thank goodness I only hear the message about the “fast service promise” once), I play the game of “if I can find an equally good plan online while holding, I’m going to find some sucker to buy my contract and I’m out of here”. But damn, they answer just in time and I work really, really hard to be polite to the nice young man whose job it is to deal with grumpy customers all day.

Then, I call BC Hydro. I can’t seem to get into my online account. BC Hydro has some bizarre system that doesn’t let you choose your own user name and password. So I am constantly forgetting mine. And though I have used the “forgot your password” and “forgot your username” links dozens of times, and entered them into the login fields, and clicked the “Remember Me on this Computer” box, somehow they’re never there when I go back, or they’re there but don’t work. So I try to talk to someone, but am put on hold for a long, long time, and finally get looped around until I am disconnected (by accident, I’m sure - nudge, nudge, wink, wink). So I send off an email to request that I want to opt out of their ineffective online billing system, damn the renewable tree branch each a year that my paper bill uses up. Because if it doesn’t work, and I’m behind by one month’s payment, BC Hydro sends a disconnect notice. (Yes, that’s right, one month - a whole $64, and they’ll cut you off, baby!) Ah, but they have an email address, so I sent off an email, trying hard to be politely annoyed, a uniquely Canadian trait, to say that they should switch me back to paper billing until their online billing works to my satisfaction. A day or two later, I get a reply from someone and yes, they will switch me back to paper and remove my user ID from their system. And at the bottom of the email is the standard blurb asking me to ... wait for it ... sign up for online-only paperless billing today.

Next, I call the Future Shop, where I bought my computer, to see about my laptop, which is overheating like crazy. Their computer department doesn’t answer their phone, and I get looped around and around in circles several times until I get disconnected. Eventually, I call back enough times to get through to a general number where an operator puts me through, where the line rings and rings, until I get disconnected. But I persist, and someone with a voice that sounds like he’s under legal drinking age tells me that I should back up my hard drive because if I bring it in, I’ll have to leave it there and they’ll send it out to be looked at. Now, I’ve heard the horror stories about laptops coming back two months later, and I can’t survive without my laptop for more than a day or two. So now I’m motivated to figure out my problem before resorting to the drastic step of dropping of my laptop for who knows how long.

There were a couple of other phone calls, as well, all in the same vein. At some point, I found myself arguing with an auto-attendant, where the software prompt(er) wants me to press a button that won’t work, and I’m shouting into the phone, “It’s broken!” while the others in the office are shouting out suggestions that eventually lead to, “Agent! Agent!” I believe it was VanCity, now that I think of it. They’ve changed their menu structure, and there is no menu item for “all those complicated things that don’t fit in the menu items, so just let me talk to one of your bank of people who probably won’t be able to help me anyhow but at least it’s a step closer to someone who can.”

So there goes a half-day of productivity. I don’t think we should be worrying about outsourcing as a threat to North American productivity. Instead, we should be worrying about the lack of customer service that sucks away our productivity time. Now that is a definite threat to my personal productivity! Today’s tally: Billable hours: 2. Time-sucking activity due to poor customer service: 5.