Archive for feedback

Online reputation management case study: VoloTV listens to feedback, makes changes

May 14 | by Sam Deeks | feedback, online reputation management
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My brief encounter with VoloTV shows the basics of good reputation management – with an extra ingredient

Proof you can use a laptop in a VoloTV seat

Earlier this week I found myself in a train seat staring at a newly-installed VoloTV screen that was unexpected, a bit too close for comfort and impossible to switch off.  The 3 colleagues travelling with me felt the same – so, by way of feedback, covered the screens with large-scale bright orange Post-It notes saying how we felt.  Later, I blogged and tweeted about it.

The next day, I got a call from Yeshpaul Soor, the MD of VoloTV thanking me for the feedback (‘I’ve got your notes here in my office’) and assuring me that he was resetting ALL the VoloTVs in the First Great Western network so that the customer (and non-customer) alike will be able to switch it off.  He then invited me to visit the VoloTV office to learn about the system and get set up for some free viewing on my trip home to Plymouth.

Simple online reputation done really well:

1) Monitor the web for news items, blog posts and particularly Twitter tweets about your business

2) Go out of your way to connect with those people – pick up the phone!

3) Admit what you’ve done wrong and offer to put it right

4) Go the ‘extra mile’ to win the respect of your critics

And the extra ingredient?

Having first chosen to locate VoloTV in the distinctly unglamorous bowels of Paddington Station, Yeshpaul Soor then made it his business to get to know everyone there – from the gateline staff to the train cleaners.  The same cleaners who picked up our feedback notes and took them to him within 30 minutes of our having written them.

Is VoloTV for me? Not really – but that’s just a matter of taste, and with a business model that only needs 7% of passenger journeys to pay, VoloTV can afford me not to be a paying customer. I found myself listening to several episodes of Outnumbered while Tweeting and playing Scrabble on my iPhone. The sound and picture quality is great but I’m not much of a TV watcher at the best of times. About the only thing I did look up for was highlights of a 2006 football match between Liverpool and Arsenal where Peter Crouch scored a hat-trick and got to keep the match ball. Nice.

I suspect that I’ll carry on booking myself into the Quiet Carriage for my journeys but one thing’s certain: with a willingness to listen to and act on difficult feedback, VoloTV has earned my respect and improved it’s online reputation at the same time.

User reviews into Adwords??

May 1 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, critical approach to online media, culture, feedback
1 Comment

What’s Google doing adding reviews to Adwords listings in search results?

For some time I’ve been thinking that the anonymous user review + the competitive environment of Google search = a disastrous formula for all concerned.  Why? Because anonymity pretty much guarantees that reviews end up being used to ‘game’ the market. This isn’t me being negative about human nature, this is just pragmatism.  If 97% of all email sent everyday is spam…well, you get what I’m saying.

Now, Google is going to put user reviews into the search results beneath paying advertiser’s ads. But which reviews? Apparently, those that come from a ‘closed’ system provided by a partner,  Bazaarvoice.com.  According to this report, review information will only be added from a review system if the organisation using it agrees.

(picture from Earthblog News)

So who’s going to want truly open and potentially critical reviews turning up in the search results next to their carefully crafted, paid-for Google ads?  Er, no-one. They’re going to want nice reviews that will make their ads look more attractive. Bye bye transparency.

All of which continues to make a mockery of the noble ideas about feedback and transparency that social media pundits like to talk about. The true value of feedback in business (as in life) is its role in driving learning, development and change but Google – like every other business dealing in ‘user generated reviews’ – is only interested in feedback as a commodity it can trade to businesses seeking competitive advantage.

So what’s Google doing adding reviews to paid ads in the search results? Just more of what it’s always been doing from the start: converting human knowledge into cash via the technology of the ‘keyword’.

Don’t be evil? Don’t make me laugh. I can’t help think that Google has been nothing but – and that we’ve colluded with it every step of the way ;-)

Online reputation monitoring tools: I just don’t get it

Apr 2 | by Sam Deeks | feedback
2 Comments

Why am I finding online reputation monitoring tools so ineffective?

First of all, I expect this post to bring some responses from various people behind the reputation monitoring tools that I’m going to mention.  You wouldn’t expect anything else, right? :-)

I’m posting because I’ve now tried out a few of these tools and I just can’t make sense of them.

Of course, that could all be down to me.  On the other hand, it could be something they’re doing wrong.  I genuinely don’t know which it is.

Continue Reading…

How to give great customer service – not :-)

Jan 14 | by Sam Deeks | feedback, what do you think?
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Enjoy this real-life customer service interaction that I had yesterday

Background

I signed up with a UK-based online graphic email marketing company a couple of days ago to help promote a friends’ short charity campaign. We had 4 days and counting to get 2000 emails out. It’s a ‘vote for my YouTube’ campaign – cut off point Friday, so time (clearly) was of the essence.

Having used this particular company before (doh!) I went straight to their site and tried to sign up. Ah, no buy button. Anywhere. Bizarre. I know what I want… I just can’t buy it.

I phoned them and asked how I could buy the product I knew I needed. I was told rudely that I had to sign up for a free account. Uh? ‘Then you convert it to a paid one’. I offered him the feedback that nowhere did it tell me that information. He couldn’t care less.

Despite that experience, I signed up for two reasons: 1) I’d used the software before and although it was cranky, at least I knew it worked in the end and 2) my friend was running out of time. She paid her money and I then spent a full 4 hours (yes, 4) fighting with the visual editor to create the newsletter email.

I triumphantly pressed ’send to mailing list’ – and got a message saying ‘cannot send until your account is verified’.

Nothing in the help made sense of that message and there was no online help (as it was 8pm in the evening by that time).

So we lost 14 hours or so – until I had the chance to get onto them via a live support chat widget the next day. Here’s what happened.

Sam: Hi – signed up yesterday, been trying to send to mailing list since yest PM but says ‘account not verified’ – verified account yesterday afternoon.  Can you pls look into that for me

Joe: Hi Sam

Sam: Hello – did you see my question?

Joe: yes

Joe: let me check your account

Sam: thanks

Joe: your account is now verified Sam

Sam: Thanks, any explanation what happened?  Lost us quite a bit of time out of a 4 day campaign.

Joe: all accounts need to be verified before they can send anything other than test sends. You need to request verification when you are ready to send out to a list.

Sam: We clicked the verification email link yesterday.  Is that what you mean?  If not, where does it tell me we need *another* kind of verification?

Joe: no, problem – you’re verified now and can use the account to send straight away

Sam: Joe, would appreciate an answer to my question

Joe: there is no < verification link >

Joe: maybe you mean the < activation link >

Sam: Ok.  So I clicked < activation link > in email.  Where does it tell me I need to < verify > my account before I can send?

Joe: when you try to send an email, the pop-up will tell you that you need to contact support to have the account verified

Sam: Nope.  It just pops up and tells me ‘Can’t send because your account isn’t verified’  it doesn’t tell me to contact support.

Joe: what point are you trying to make Sam ?

Joe: the account is now verified

Sam: The point I’m making is that your system a) uses ‘verify’ in a way that a customer won’t understand is different from ‘activate’ b) it then fails to send but doesn’t tell me clearly why c) it doesn’t say contact support

Sam: Result is I couldn’t get this send out last night, costing my friend 14 hrs out of her campaign

Joe: would you prefer us to cancel the account and refund your money

Sam: Did I ask for that?

Joe: you state that this caused ” your friend ” – is this YOUR account Sam ?

Sam: Listen, Joe – before you start trying to be confrontational, please be aware that I work in online reputation management – I will be blogging this experience

Sam: This account is for a friend who is running a campaign

Sam: a charity campaign

Joe: actually – if you are a charity

Sam: She signed up for the account, I created the newsletter

Sam: She isn’t a registered charity yet

Joe: we do offer a free account to not-for-profit

Sam: thank you but she is not a charity yet

Joe: ok

Sam: Ok, before I go

Sam: I called Aacme Graphic Email Marketing yesterday to offer you some feedback about how hard it was to buy your product

Sam: – I got a rude reception

Sam: I eventually signed up and haven’t had a satisfactory experience with information definately missing

Sam: with the result I couldn’t send, have lost time and don’t feel very good about Aacme Graphic Email Marketing

Sam: I contact you for support and you’re reluctant to either accept my feedback (which could possibly save you a lot of lost sales) or give me a satisfactory account of why the site doesn’t offer the right information

Sam: so…

Sam: it’s not great.

Sam: Thank you for ‘validating’ – I have sent the emails

Joe: the reason for the verification process is to limit our exposure to spammers. Every account needs to be manually verified

Joe: this gives our clients a better experience once they have been validated

Joe: as there is less chance of our systems and network being corrupted by spammers

Joe: we are sorry if this has caused you any inconvenience

Sam: Joe, that’s fine – but if you p*ss them off before they even get ‘validated’ (by not telling them that’s what needs to happen) then you won’t get to give them a better experience

Joe: This is not usually the case

Sam: Seriously how would you know?

Sam: Who ever takes the time to fight through your defensiveness to give you this feedback? Hmm?  Seriously

Joe: via the amount of sign ups we get

Joe: and yes we do get feedback

Sam: Oh, lordy.  How about the ones you DON’T get

Joe: generally via our live support

Sam: Anyway, look, I still hear you don’t want to accept my feedback

Sam: so thanks for sorting this out

Joe: no we do

Sam: and I’m outta here

Joe: and it has been taken on board

Sam: ciao

Joe: have a good day Sam

Sam: you too

Adsense phone verification fail

Dec 4 | by Sam Deeks | feedback
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Trying to verify my Adsense account leads to classic ‘designer cant think like user’ fail

Yes, Google. You techie people are soooo guilty of this.

The classic ‘we can’t possibly imagine what it’s like not to know what we know’ mindset. The one where, for some reason designers and programmers aren’t able to imagine how their interface appears or works to other people. Y’know, people who aren’t them.

The result is that I blew up the Google Adsense phone verification system because it gave me no feedback.  ‘Too many attempts’.  Right.  Next stop, 48hrs of waiting for their support to do something vague to sort it out (whatever it actually is).

Same for Google Wave.  Watch the video of two smug techies geeking off with their latest cleverness.  What’s missing?  Some kind of real-world, human communication about what the hell it might actually be any good for or what all the various bits mean.

Communication failure.

Posting a comment on a Blogger blog

Sep 29 | by Sam Deeks | blogging technique, business insight, feedback
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Why I can’t be bothered to post a comment on a Blogger blog

I went to add a comment on a Blogger blog.  I got a box to type my comment which I stupidly spent 5 minutes writing.

I filled out the ‘Captcha’ box to prove I wasn’t a spamming auto-bot. No problem there.

Then it asked me for one of two ways to sign in – either using my ‘Google ID’ or ‘Wordpress.com’ ID.  Hmmm.

Why ‘Hmmm’?  Well because I just don’t feel happy signing into Blogger (yes, even though it’s Google-owned) with the er, username and password that controls all my adwords, analytics etc. Why not? Because Blogger is chockablock with spam content and spammers for starters.  Not exactly confidence inspiring.

And nor do I want to sign in with my ‘wordpress.com’ ID because it automatically links the reader to all my Wordpress.com accounts (whether connected to blogs or not).  That’s a step to far for my liking.

What happened to being able to comment as a private individual so long as I left my IP address (in case of being a nasty terrorist or inciting racial hatred or the like) and made sure I wasn’t a machine by filling in the ‘captcha’ correctly?

Well, sorry Blogger but I’m not going to bother commenting on Blogger blogs if those are the only options available.  I’m not willing to add to that subtle but somewhat sinister ‘interconnection’ of personal information you’re trying to build up.

Spotify Premium: review time (coming soon)

Sep 28 | by Sam Deeks | feedback, review
No Comments

Ok, it’s time to review Spotify Premium and the iPhone App

Since I’ve benefitted from loads of traffic to my site since first blogging about Spotify back in January and giving out 600 free invites, I think it’s only fair that I finally give the paid version a go and report back here.

So long as it’s ‘easy in, easy out’ I’ll sign up when I get back from holiday, give it a full go and update this post.

Watch this space for the full ‘can-it-really-work-on-an-old-iPhone’ warts and all review from someone with truly rubbish broadband access.

;-)

BBC news iphone app: complete dud

Sep 15 | by Sam Deeks | Big Marketing Mistakes, feedback, iPhone
2 Comments

UPDATE: Turns out it WASN’T the BBC’s app after all.  So how come somebody could misuse the BBC name?

ORIGINAL POST:

The BBC’s news app for iPhone has been broken for over 6 months

What a Big Marketing Mistake!

How hard can it be to make an app that will serve news summaries?

[UPDATE: 14th November 2009 - the new version of the App seems to be working (finally).  Well done BBC.  Now I can dump the ITN one.  I want my news serious and deep, know what I mean?]

[DOUBLE UPDATE: December 2009 - ended up dumping it finally because it still doesn't work]

I’m blogging this purely to give a little shout out to the BBC that their inability to a) create a working app or b) take the reams of feedback at the app store seriously sends a very strong message to the world: we are crap.

Big Marketing Mistake!

I wanted a BBC reader on my phone but it didn’t work. So now I have an ITN one instead. I’d far rather a BBC one. Geddit?

Installing a vodafone dongle on your mac?

Sep 8 | by Sam Deeks | feedback, how to
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Tips for installing Vodafone’s USB Modem stick on your MacBook Pro

vodafone-usb-modem-lite-h11) Make sure that Vodafone have assigned numbers to your sims.  Didn’t happen for us.  It took an hour of 0870 phone calling to get that part sorted.

2) Use installer disk to install Vodafone Mobile Connect software (put icon on your dock)

3) Use this software to ‘connect’ to internet with your dongle

4) Try running browser…ah.  Not connected to internet.

5) Go to Network in your system preferences

6) Choose ‘Vodafone 3520′

7) In ‘Telephone number’ box, overwrite what’s there (in my case it was something like “*/***99*#”) replacing it with “*99#’.  Account name is ‘web’, password is ‘web’

8) Click connect and it should work

So how come this installer disk placed the wrong phone number in my preferences?? Another half an hour on the line to (very helpful) technical support lady at Vodafone confirmed what I suspected: that Vodafone really haven’t been that bothered about supporting Mac users.

Or giving them any readable instructions either.  Which is a pity because it then falls to people like me (and other bloggers) to fill in the information vaccuum.  Oh, and if you’re trying to do it with Snow Leopard, you’ll have even more trouble. ;-)

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