This post from Aaron Brazell over at Technosailor.com is a great story that demonstrates how easy it is to provide bar-setting customer service. Aaron had a very annoying experience with his bank and “went ballistic” (his words) on Twitter. The bank responded to Aaron through Twitter and things got resolved. Because of the way his bank responded, he went from wanting to close his accounts to recommending you do business with his bank if you’re in the area. That’s an amazing turnaround.
Look at this experience, after Aaron got annoyed, from the bank’s perspective. One thing sticks out at me – the bank didn’t really do that much. The bank responded to a complaint, as they should have done, but all they really did was communicate with Aaron. They didn’t jump through any huge hoops or bend any rules to make him happy – they just communicated with him. The bank took just a few minutes to communicate with Aaron, and in doing so kept him as a customer.
Communication is the most important aspect of any relationship you will ever have. Whether we’re talking about business or romance, communication is everything. It’s so incredibly easy and the payoff is huge.
It only took a few minutes for the bank to turn a bitter customer into their champion.
I’ve tried many online file backup solutions and all of them have left me wanting. Then I found DropBox. DropBox works a bit differently than other online backups. Rather than merely telling the software what folders you want to back up, DropBox creates a folder on your computer and it’s that folder that gets backed up. I see this as a benefit because it keeps things simple, and it’s outside of the normal Windows ‘My Documents’ structure. I like software that leaves me in control, and DropBox definitely does that.
Place a file in your DropBox folder and it’s immediately copied to DropBox’s servers. This happens as quickly as the upload bandwidth on your internet connect will allow. This is not technically real-time, but it’s fully automatic and doesn’t require you to manage a backup schedule.
There are two enormous benefits to DropBox. First, you can install it on as many computers as you like. Update a file on one computer, it’s pushed up to DropBox, and then in turn pushed to your other computers. This keeps the DropBox folder on your computers perfectly synchronized. I’m not aware of any other online backup solution that offers this.
Second, your files are available online through DropBox’s website. Should you happen to need a file from your DropBox and you’re using a computer without the DropBox software installed, just login to their website and download your files.
DropBox will backup 2Gb of files for free. If you sign up through this link, you’ll get an extra 250mb of space. Higher capacity plans are available for very reasonable rates.
DropBox is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
I dislike most corporate-speak, but two words I do use on a fairly regular basis are ‘proactive’ and ‘reactive.’ You might think these words are opposites, but they are not. In fact, when you’re acting proactively you’re also acting reactively because you’re reacting to a thought or perhaps an item on a list about how to make something work more smoothly in order to prevent problems.
A minor digression: What’s the difference between an issue and a problem? It’s an issue before a customer notices it. Once a customer notices it, it’s a problem.
Like many people, I have an account with an online bank. Not long after I’d opened the account, I had to reset my online PIN. I wasn’t yet used to using the website very frequently and managed to forget my PIN. No big deal, I’ll just use their PIN reset function. I had to answer a few straightforward security questions (the answers to which I had established when I originally opened the account) and they sent me a confirmation email. In the email was a code I’d have to enter in order to reset my password. Except that the email didn’t show up right away. It took a good ten minutes for the email to arrive. This may have been beyond their control, but was still an annoyance.
Every company, from the neighborhood bar to a taxi service to Microsoft to the latest internet startup, has the same two-pronged approach to success: Bringing a product or service to market, and supporting the customers that use that product or service. If either one of these is lacking, the company will suffer.
I’ve worked in customer service for fifteen years. It is my considered opinion that providing outstanding, bar-setting customer service is one of the easiest things in the world to do.
Excellent customer service requires only two things:
1 – A genuine desire to help people. This is the easy part.
2 – Permission to provide great service. This is the harder part because it’s largely out of the immediate control of those charged with supporting customers.
My girlfriend has been visiting a friend in Seattle since the 16th. A total of four flights on Jet Blue with layovers in Boston both ways.
Her flight from CLT to BOS was severely delayed, making her miss her connecting flight. She had to spend the night in Boston and catch an early AM flight. This delayed her arrival in Seattle by a day.
Her flight yesterday from SEA to BOS was delayed three hours, which would have made her miss her connecting flight to CLT. They rebooked her on flights today instead, which will result in her getting into CLT nearly twelve hours after her originally scheduled time. Except that she’s still in Boston, her flight has been delayed 20 minutes, and there’s no plane at the gate yet. They’re supposed to board in five minutes. Hard to do that without a plane to board.
Where is the accountability?
I love Twitter. Use it a lot. It’s allowed me to meet some really cool people. However, it is far from perfect. Here’s a list of Twitter features I’d like to see:
- Groups
Many desktop Twitter clients allow you to create groups. This is a good feature to have, but the groups you define cannot be shared among Twitter apps. This is annoying. If you’re anything like me and you like to try new Twitter apps from time to time, it’s a pain in the neck to recreate your groups. Also, most Twitter apps can’t share groups from one computer to another, Tweetdeck being a notable exception. So if you have a desktop and a laptop, you have to set each app up separately. So, add Groups functionality to the website and then – here’s the kicker – put this functionality into the Twitter API. This way third party apps can easily share group information and make new client installs a piece of cake.
- Search
The default Twitter search sucks. It’s not flexible enough, and you also can only search through the last 3200 tweets of any particular user. Lame. Includes, excludes, groups – this is all easy stuff when it comes to search, and Twitter isn’t doing any of it.
- Filters
I got sick and tired of seeing tweets with a particular Twitter user’s name in them during the ridiculous million-follower race earlier this year. It’s not enough that I don’t follow this person, I didn’t want to even see his name in my Twitter client. Twitter should add keyword blocking ability AND put this feature into the API.
- User Pages
It’s cute that the Bio area on Twitter is 140 characters, but come on. I’d like to see Twitter add full-blown user profile pages, something more like Facebook or Google Profile. Let it be a real landing page for Twitter users.
- Twitter.com
Twitter.com itself should be a killer Twitter app. All these features should be available right on the website.
FuelFrog, TweetDeck and UberTwitter are all cool apps or services, but why is Twitter letting third parties do all the innovative stuff? Twitter itself isn’t much more advanced than it was two years ago.
- Archiving
Twitter needs to grow beyond its simple SMS roots and add services that blogs and online journals have had all along. Why can you only access your most recent 3200 posts in Twitter? Imagine if a huge site like, say, Worldchanging.com deleted or otherwise blocked access to their older posts. Huge amounts of valuable information would be lost.
Twitter needs to stop being transient. That was fine during SXSW 2007, but not anymore.
- Twitter for Domains
This could be great for families, companies with remote workers, etc.
How about you? What features would you like to see in Twitter?
Mixero is a Twitter client. It’s the only one I’ve seen so far that has the one killer feature I’ve been waiting for – keyword blocking ability. I can’t tell you how much I’ve wanted and appreciate this feature.
Overall, Mixero is quite easy to use. Setting up groups only took a minute to figure out, and is quite easy. It remembers window positions when you reopen the app. You can turn sounds off, resize windows, etc – all the basic stuff you’d expect. If you hover over a shortened URL it’ll show you where it leads before you click on it. I especially like the “Follow Conversation” feature.
However, I’ve encountered two annoyances in Mixero that might make me go back to Tweetdeck until they’re resolved.
1 – Usernames cannot be simply left-clicked. You must right-click and select Open Link. This wouldn’t be that big a deal if only it worked. Whenever I choose Open Link I receive an error from Firefox (my default browser): “Firefox doesn’t know how to open this address, because the protocol (event) isn’t associated with any program.”
Twhirl, Seesmic Desktop, and Tweetdeck all work fine in this regard, so I am inclined to think this is an issue with Mixero and not with Firefox.
The Twitter client used to post a tweet appears in the tweet. For example: “NASA, today at 6:20 AM from TweetGrid.” If you right-click on TweetGrid (in this example) and select Open Link, it works just fine. Actual links in tweets behave as you would expect, opening a new tab in Firefox. Only when Open Link is chosen from the context menu on a username does this behavior appear. All this tells me it’s a bug in Mixero and should be very easy to fix.
2 – Whenever I click a link in a tweet, that tweet becomes and remains highlighted. New tweets do load, but I have to manually scroll up to see them. It’s as if the highlighted tweet has locked the position of the column of tweets. I have to close and reopen the group to restore normal behavior.
Now, I click on a lot of links in tweets. This workaround, closing and reopening a group, is something I’d have to do several times per hour, and I’m not willing to suffer the inconvenience. Software should not get in your way, ever.
3 – If you have a group open on the immediate left of the main window and then open the Options dialog, the Options dialog box is behind the main and group windows. You have to move either the group or main window aside to get to the Options dialog box.
Those are the only major issues I’ve found.
The list of features I’d like to see is a short one: multiple account support and the ability to customize the color scheme.
Because personal computers are indeed (or at least should be) personal, I encourage you to give Mixero a try. To get the beta, you have to follow them on Twitter and wait for an invitation. I had to wait three days to get mine, but of course I cannot guarantee what sort of wait you might have.
Twitterberry: I’m running the Beta version of TwitterBerry. When I load my Friends Timeline, it shows me the tweets from the last time I loaded my Friends View. I manually have to tell it to refresh. Then, when it does refresh, I loads the new tweets above the ones I currently see. This is as it should be, but then I have to manually scroll up to get to the newest tweet.
Gmail: The Gmail client behaves somewhat similarly – it shows me the emails I had the last time I refreshed them in the client. I have to manually tell it to refresh.
Facebook: The Facebook app doesn’t show me every post from my friends, nor does it show me every comment I receive. Loading the mobile site doesn’t help, either. The only way I can respond to a comment is via the full (meaning non-mobile) Facebook website. This is downright annoying. Also, choosing Close from the menu should close the app and not just take me back a screen. That’s what the Back button is for.
Typepad: How can a huge and popular blogging service like Typepad NOT be mobile browser friendly? I was reading Seth Godin’s website on my Blackberry earlier. It looked like hell because I had to scroll past Seth’s huge (on a Blackberry screen) sidebar. Come on, Typepad. Get with the program.
Amazon: The Amazon.com app for the Blackberry is pretty darn good, but I do wish it had the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” feature. That would make the app rock.
