Category Archives: Helpful Hints

December 18, 2012 · 12:33 pm

Witch Doctor Technology

Like many of you who read the screed, I’m a fairly literate person when it comes to technology.

English: Witch doctor of the Shona people clos...

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I know – given what I do for a living one would hope that’s true.  That’s why my recent experience with some very common technology – a cell phone – is so frustrating.  Over the weekend my family all upgraded their devices.  The girls all moved to iPhone 4S and I moved to a Samsung Galaxy S3.  Both are great devices.  However, they both illustrate a point that’s all too common and what I want to discuss today.

My phone came with the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android.  I knew that there was a Jellybean update available – an upgrade to the latest version of Android.  While the ability to update the OS via an over the air download exists, because the manufacturers and the carriers can’t get on the same page, one needs to install the upgrade via a piece of software that lives on a computer.  I installed it on a windows PC, connected the phone and waited.  And waited.  Apparently, it’s a known issue to connect the device to the PC – a software issue.  I tried it on a Mac.  Same issue.  A few minutes of searching the web told me that there were a number of potential fixes that involved editing the Windows registry (not for the faint of heart), modifying phone settings, uninstalling and reinstalling device drivers, etc.  Nothing worked.

I used Samsung’s live chat customer support.  They had me try a few things I had also found on the web.  Nothing.  They said to uninstall the software which, of course, involves a reboot of the computer, which means you lose the person with whom you’re chatting and can’t get back to the same person again so you start over.  After many hours of this, I’ve given up.  Before the Apple fanboys and girls chime in, let me say that upgrading an iPhone to a new version of iOS ended up bricking my wife’s phone for a while and the number of issues I’ve had with Mountain Lion on my Mac is frightening.

Here is the business point.  No other industry with which I’m familiar releases products with known issues, and when the issues become public doesn’t seem to be in any particular rush to fix.  The G3 is a best-selling phone and to get to the latest operating system shouldn’t take the technologic equivalent of tossing chicken bones and burning incense.  Thousands of people are frustrated by this – I’m sure Samsung and the carriers (it’s not just a one carrier issue) are well aware.  If we want tech to be integral – more integral – in customers’ everyday lives we can’t behave this way.  Imagine if airplanes or cars were released with the kind of stability we see in most technology.

I don’t know what anyone can do other than to vent as I’m doing.  For me not buying the product is not an option.  Maybe that’s why these companies don’t seem to care.  But witch doctor solutions to these issues has to stop.  Do you agree?

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December 17, 2012 · 1:48 pm

Learning From Hospice

I’ve written many times here on the screed about customer-focused business behavior. I want to tell you about several professionals who exemplify what I think is the ultimate in customer focus.  These are the people who provide hospice and palliative care.  While it may sound a little cold to look at what they do as a business (and it’s a lot more than that, I know), there are a few really important things we can learn from them.

First, we often focus on the lifetime value of a customer and we prioritize the kind of service we deliver predicated on that.  After all, the new customer who walks in to take advantage of a GroupOn offer is very different from the loyal customer who comes in once a week.  How do you prioritize your customers when the entire reason you’re there is that you’re going to lose them in the near future?  The answer is to do it as they do – deliver an incredibly high standard of service to everyone, looking at them as if they’ll be customers for life.

We all have customers who are demanding.  Imagine a customer who can’t do much of anything for themselves.  While we might talk about our jobs as 24/7 situations, very few of us actually live with our customers.  These folks do, and they are on duty 24 hours a day for several days at a time.   That might make anyone a little cranky, but part of the job is maintaining a positive attitude in the face of a lot of negativity (terminal illnesses tend to breed bad vibes…).  Something to consider, perhaps, the next time we have a 30 minute meeting with an unhappy client or a customer rep who needs to engage an angry consumer on the telephone for an hour?

I can list a bunch of other comparisons here but the entire point is to change your perspective a bit as mine was changed over the last few months.  A family member was fortunate (strange word to use when anyone needs this) to have had some excellent care from professionals providing hospice and palliative services.  The way they went about their jobs, even when their customer was grumpy and difficult – was inspiring.  It opened my eyes and hopefully I can pass that along.

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December 13, 2012 · 11:46 am

Playing Nice

I had a completely different post written this morning but it’s off in the digital ether.

Cougar / Puma / Mountain Lion / Panther (Puma ...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s gone as a result of a misbehaving computer.  Yes, I save as I go but in a burst of prolific writing I got a lot text on the page in between autosaves and when what I’m about to describe happened, the brilliance I spewed was lost.  The topic was the balance between large audiences as measured by TV ratings vs. buzz as measured by Facebook.   As it turns out, they’re not one and the same.  According to a list published by Facebook the other day, most of the widely discussed shows on their platform don’t have large ratings.  Maybe I’ll come back to that another time.

Instead, I want to spent today dispelling what I’m suddenly finding to be a myth – that Apple stuff “just works.”  Ever since I installed Mountain Lion, my MacBook Air has something called kernel panics every day.  Chrome and the OS aren’t playing nicely, and I’m not the only one having this issue.  In fact, enough people are having it that when you search for “chrome and mountain lion crashing” you get nearly a million search results.  Yes, I’ve tried nearly all of the suggested fixes (as have many others on the product support forums I read) but none of them seem to solve the issue.  Honestly, I (and many others) am not even sure where the issue is.  Apple says it’s Chrome and we should switch to Safari, but other browsers seem to cause crashes including Safari.  Google says it might be Flash or an extension or Apple.  The only thing different is the new OS (which has all the updates installed as well).  Putting aside the walled garden ecosystem discussion for a minute, what I think of a lot is kindergarten.

We all learn very early on in our lives to socialize.  For me it was really around the time I began school (no pre-school 50 years ago!) and the message to “play nice with the other kids” was reinforced by my parents and teachers all the time.  Why the hell can’t that lesson get through the skulls of hardware and software folks?  It’s a good one for the rest of us as well – very few businesses exist on their own.  We process payments, we deal with suppliers, we (hopefully) have customers.  Play nice with the other kids if you want to succeed!

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