Category Archives: Reality checks

March 21, 2013 · 9:48 am

The Bluetooth Runaround

Today we have yet another tale of consumer woe and multiple corporate failures.  This one is a doozy, since it affects a couple of popular products and is generating a lot of chatter on the interwebs.  In fact, one popular site has over a hundred comments on this topic and that’s just a subset of the problem.

Android invasion, Sydney, Australia

(Photo credit: Pranav Bhatt)

As our featured players we have a very popular phone, a couple of very popular families of cars, every cell phone carrier (notice I didn’t use the term “popular” with them) and a LOT of consumers.  Let me explain.

A coupe of months ago I upgraded my phone to the Galaxy SG3.  I love the phone – great display, very fast – no complaints at all.  It came with the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android and I use AT&T as my carrier.  When I got the phone I linked it to my car – a Nissan Altima Hybrid – using Bluetooth and was happily using the car’s built-in hand’s free system to chat and drive safely.

A month ago I became even happier when AT&T pushed an upgrade to Android, installing the Jelly Bean version.  The phone seemed even faster, I got Google Now, and  I was happy to be running a more current version.  Until I received a phone call in the car.  It sounded like an alien calling and I had to pull over to pick up the phone and talk.  I rebooted the phone, it connected to the car, but the sound was bad.  Unusable, actually.  I tried pairing it again to the car, hard resets of the phone and a few other tricks but the audio is completely garbled.

A search on the topic showed me that we have a multiple part blame game going on.  It is an issue affecting not just Nissans but VW/Audi, Inifinitis and a few other models.  Just this phone, every carrier, and only when the phone is upgraded to Jelly Bean.  The carriers say it’s Samsung’s fault.  Samsung says the auto guys need to upgrade the Bluetooth software in their cars.  They all blame Android for not making the Bluetooth version in Jelly Bean backward compatible.

Here is what none of them are doing:  taking responsibility for fixing it.  What they’re not seeing is that it’s costing them money as well as massive amounts of goodwill.  At a minimum  it’s hundreds of calls to customer service, each of which costs money   In the case of the carriers, many people are demanding new phones (which have the older version of Android) to replace the upgraded one.  That’s expensive.  Does any business have too many customers?  There are a lot of cars/phones/carriers from which one can choose, and while very few people are going to make an immediate change to their car or carrier, people don’t forget how they were supported when the time for that evaluation comes.

I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with this.  Maybe I’ll just try to use the phone’s speaker if I get a call while driving.  Maybe I’ll go get a new S3 and not upgrade it until I see this is fixed or they push another version of Android (the rumors are 4.2.2. fixes it).  I’m really interested to see if any party to this mess steps up and does something other than point fingers.  Why am I not surprised?  Isn’t that sad?

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March 8, 2013 · 11:39 am

Tips

The end of a snowy, wet week here in the Northeastern US and it makes me glad we can have a little Foodie Friday Fun.  We usually go out to eat on Friday nights and as we did so last week I got to thinking about how servers get paid.  That, in turn, lead to a broader thought about restaurants in general and how their business has changed with the growth of social.  Let me explain.

Servers work primarily for tips.  There’s usually some sort of minimum wage paid but their livelihood depends on the instant feedback a tip provides.  Bad service can mean a couple of hours working for not much money.  Doing a great job can mean extra cash.  Oh sure – in some places  tips are pooled and a good server gets shafted while the lazy ones and the owner take an equal share.  For the most part, however, how much you earn is tied to how well you do your job.  As an aside, that’s why I rarely leave a bad tip – unless there was no service or it was an absolute disaster the server did some work for me and they should be paid.

It’s an interesting dynamic.  The server can be perfectly competent but if the kitchen is badly run the service seems to be a mess as well.  The difference is the cooks are all on salary in most places while the servers can suffer the consequences.  Where the overall operation feels the pain is in the magnifying effect of social media.  A bad experience used to be a secret.  Today they’re aggregated, searched, and considered as people make their dining decisions.  It can kill a business or it can help everyone involved to do very well.  Why do I bring this up?

We should all operate as if we’re servers.  While for some of us compensation can be tied directly to how well or poorly we do our jobs, for most people in corporate life we make what we make – compensation is something we negotiate when we’re hired even if some of it might be tied to a bonus or to stock holdings.  We don’t go home most days with a paycheck that mirrors how well we performed.  Too bad – it might force a lot of people to consider the performance more often.

What would you earn if everyone with whom you came in contact had the option to tip you for the job you did?  What kind of tips would you give out to those with whom you’ve chosen to do business?   Something I’m thinking about as the week comes to an end.  You?

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March 7, 2013 · 12:20 pm

Why You Can’t Find A Great Person To Hire

One of my favorite Shakespeare quotes is from Julius Caesar and is spoken by Cassius. He’s trying to get Brutus to stop Caesar and reminds him that “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings”. In other words, we control our own destinies, not fate.

 

Employment Exhibition

(Photo credit: Modern_Language_Center)

 

I thought of that this morning as I saw some research on recruiting from the folks at Bullhorn. It’s an annual survey of recruiting professionals and in it they asked about what those folks perceived to be the biggest challenge they would face this year.  As MediaPost reported:

 

Recruiting professionals listed their biggest challenge for 2013 as a lack of skilled candidates (33%). Additionally, in a separate question, 76.1% of respondents claimed to have a shortage of skilled candidates in their respective recruiting sectors.

 

What does this have to do with the Shakespeare quote?  We’re in the midst of a nasty employment cycle.  You’ll notice I said “employment” cycle, not economic.  The stock market is back to where it was in 2000 and  corporate earnings have doubled since then.  Even so, employment is soft.  Part of that has to do with how technology has made many processes way more efficient.  I think it’s had another effect which has to do with why qualified job candidates are so hard to find.

 

Many managers have come to think of employees as disposable.  They’re lucky to have jobs and if they’re not happy there are lots of people available.   Due to this, there’s less of an emphasis on training and development   The tech factor is at work here as well – think about how many people can’t write properly because the machine checks spelling and grammar (but not meaning or homophones or homonyms).   We don’t train so people are less skilled.  Because they’re less skilled, the recruiters have a small pool from which to draw.  The fault, dear hiring employer, is in ourselves.  You agree?

 

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