Pattern Finder

My Productivity Tools Aren't Making Me Productive

HELP!

Auugh! I'm going through a period where my productivity tools aren't making me productive. Maybe the group name should be changed to "time sink" tools:

• Microsoft Outlook: A month or so ago, Outlook 2007 decided to create new Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, and Notes files without telling me. So someone would book an appointment, the appointment would turn up in e-mail, I'd accept it, and the appointment would go "poof"--it wasn't in the Calendar. (It was lurking in the new, invisible Calendar.) After some near misses--"So, are you going to be on the customer call in ten minutes?" "What customer call?"--I eventually figured out what had happened and began working with two Calendars open: the one that I'd been using for three years and the one magically created by Outlook that received all new appointments. No one seems to know why Outlook decided it didn't like the old files. The fix is to export information from the old file into the new file. Umm, yup, that's what I want to spend time doing.
• Microsoft Live Meeting: Last week, I created a Live Meeting invitation and then couldn't get into the Live Meeting. I spent 45 minutes trying to fix it (downloading the latest software, altering parameters) and then punted: I hijacked a Live Meeting one of my co-workers had set up earlier in the week and used it. That worked. (There was some humor in all of this. I'd set up the Live Meeting for a demo by Sun Microsystems of its StarOffice suite; when I apologized to the Sun attendees for the failure of the "Microsoft software" there were loud guffaws all around.) It turns out the password that I'd used for the last three years was no longer valid--Live Meeting passwords now had to include some uppercase letters. So when I created a meeting, instead of Live Meeting telling me that it couldn't verify my credentials, it blithely sent out invalid invitations. Umm, sounds like a design flaw to me.
• BlackBerry Storm:I finally up-reved the software on my BlackBerry Storm cellphone a week ago, and it blew away my Enterprise Server password so I could no longer receive e-mail as well as blew away most of my ringtones. (It took me awhile to figure out that my phone was ringing--when it wasn't). That took me about two hours to research and fix. Umm, that was a pain.

Over the years, I've had the motherboard fail on my desktop PC, the LCD screen stop working on my laptop, newly installed software blow away other software...the list goes on. This recent flareup will fade away and I'll have to battle other problems down the pike. I just wish it weren't so.

Comcast: Continuing to Irritate Its Customers

Comcast continues to get bad press for capriciously shutting down users that consume too much bandwidth. The latest ding is an April 14th article in The New York Times entitled,  "Say Goodnight, Bandwidth Hog." This follows an article in PC Magazine as well as a blog started by a disconnected customer.

I say "capriciously" because although these customers are downloading much more content than their peers (and so slowing down that network leg), Comcast won't tell them the  magic consumption number they must fall below to avoid being disconnected. I have no problem with Comcast imposing a surcharge for high consumption, or disconnecting customers if they consistently exceed a predefined limit, but a magic "poof" with no metrics attached is just bad business.

We Just Sell Content Management, We Don't Practice It: Part 2

Since my January 10th post of the same title was such a hit (at least according to my Web logs), I thought I'd revisit this subject. To summarize: on January 10th, 50% of the content management companies I track hadn't updated their copyright notices to say "2006," even though the ability to update content at a specific date and time is a common feature of such packages. As of early January, the guilty parties were: ATG, BEA, CrownPeak, Day Software, Ektron, Interwoven, iUpload, Mediasurface, Open Text, and Stellent.

Since we're almost entering the second quarter of the year, let's see how we're doing. The answer is better -- but four are still stuck in 2005.

PR Goofs and Guffaws

As an industry analyst, I receive a fair number of press releases and PR pitches via e-mail.

Most are fine, along the lines of, "Hello, we're announcing our latest whiz bang Zing! product...." The standard format is a first paragraph containing the FBO statement (First, Best, Only), then a short product description, followed by quotes from the company president (and sometimes a customer or analyst), and then the "About the Company" boilerplate. They're stories putting a positive spin on a new product or service, but that's fine: they're about markets I cover, and as long as I have my bullshit detector shields up, they're one of the ways I stay abreast of what's happening in the market.

However, some I get are just bizarre, and consequently do the pitching company more harm than good.  They're about product categories I don't cover and never have, or contain pitches that make me go, "Huh?"  For chuckles, I'll give you some examples (and resulting lessons), and to keep things semi-short, I'll only use examples from this week.

Yep, Guy, You Got It Right

Read Guy Kawasaki's "The Art of Sucking Down." As someone who has worked in Customer Support, I highly recommend it.

The Microsoft iPod

For a good chuckle, take a look at what the iPod packaging would have looked like if Microsoft had designed it: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=36099539665548298&q=microsoft+ipod. The Microsoft packaging team put this parody together to show what they're up against.

If you're wondering about the driving soundtrack, it's "Breakfast Machine" from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. One of my eagle-ear co-workers noted it's the same music used in The Blue Ball Machine: http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com/

We Just Sell Content Management, We Don't Practice It

The new year has arrived yet a whole bunch of Web sites still think it's 2005.  Let me explain.  As an analyst, I often pay attention to details, such as copyright notices on Web sites.  If a a company updates the year promptly, it signifies to me that they're careful about the small things.

So, more than a week into 2006, how are we doing?  Well, a lot of companies are still sticking with 2005 -- including a lot of Web content management companies.  You'd think at least they'd get this one right.  After all, a common feature is the ability to set triggers for Web page changes -- for example, ensuring that the press release doesn't go up before the company has briefed the analysts.

So even though they sell the feature of automated content updating, ten out of twenty Web content management companies that I track aren't using the feature -- that is, they still have 2005 copyright notices on their own Web sites.  The laggards are ATG, BEA, CrownPeak, Day Software, Ektron, Interwoven, iUpload, Mediasurface, Open Text, and Stellent.   

Dell Strikes Again

Last night I got a call from a Dell rep.

Figuring it was a follow up to my motherboard replacement adventure, I was surprised when the woman on the other end was perky, named Julie, spoke with an American accent, and said, "Hello.  I understand you purchased a Dell computer back in July, and I was calling to find out how you liked it."

I said, "Well, the motherboard has already failed."  A certain amount of stunned silence on the other end.  I think she was about to launch into an upsell script after I followed the script and said, "Just peachy keen."  Still, to give her credit, she recovered admirably.  "Oh.  Have you called Dell Support about it?"  "Yes, and it was replaced several weeks ago."  "Oh, good."

I said, "But while I have you on the phone and you're asking how satisfied I am, I still haven't received the rebate check I was supposed to receive for the Dell laptop I purchased last January."  "Oh.  Have you e-mailed the Rebate department?"  "Oh, yes."  "Hmm, well I'll have to follow up on that.  Well, have a nice day."  Click.

I guess she figured -- with my failed motherboard and absent rebate check -- that I wasn't a super upsell candidate.  Go figure.

Testing Dell's Support - Part 3

The saga continues.  I received a call from "John," on Tuesday, December 20th, telling me he'd be coming to my house to replace my motherboard on Wednesday, sometime between 9 and 12.  He arrived at my house at 10:25 on Wednesday in a non-descript station wagon.  No Geek Squad orange and black, no blue Dell logo plastered on the side of a van.  So I was a bit suspicious -- but then figured, who in their right mind would walk around with a Dell motherboard to talk their way into someone's house?

John, quite a personable fellow, came upstairs, quickly got to work, and left at 11:10 -- taking all of 40 minutes.  Turns out he works for BancTec and fixes PCs for Dell and HP.  In addition, I discovered why he was turning up on business day 3, rather than business day 1 as Dell specifies in their contract.  BancTec suddenly decided that their techs needed to use up all their vacation by the end of the year.  So rather than 10 techs, this week only four were available.

Before he put the case back on, John did the prudent thing and said, "I'm just going to make sure everything is where it should be," and carefully looked at the board and other innards, and discovered a connector not connected.  After a certain amount of contortions, and noting, "Next time I'm make sure to connect this first," he attached it and closed it up.  We rebooted, and the PC came up fine (other than a lot of BIOS messages early in the boot process because everything had gone back to the factory defaults).

After he left, I suddenly noticed that the PC was louder.  It's still very quiet, but every once and awhile a variable speed fan kicks in, runs for 10 seconds or so, and stops, often after the disk drive has been kachunking for awhile.  All of a sudden it was clear to me as to why the motherboard had failed.  Some bozo at the factory hadn't connected up that variable speed fan, so it never kicked in, and five months down the road the board failed.

So all in all, not too bad an experience, at least from the people side.  My PC does work, and we didn't get into the, "Well, let's try this, oops, that didn't work, hmm, let's try that, oops, that didn't work...."

Of course, they were outside their Service Level Agreement (SLA) of one business day by 200% and I still haven't received my $200+ rebate check for a Dell Inspiron 700m laptop that I bought a year ago....

Testing Dell's Support - Part 2

It's Tuesday, and no word from Dell yet as to when a technician will arrive to replace my motherboard.  Considering that the service contract says they will dispatch a technician the next business day (the board went south on Saturday), the technician should have arrived on Monday.  I can see why Dell Support is slipping in the Consumer Reports ratings....

Continued: Testing Dell's Support - Part 3

Testing Dell's Support - Part 1

Well, I got to test Dell's support over the weekend.  On Saturday afternoon, December 17th, my Dell Dimension 9100 (bought in July, nice and zippy, and extremely quiet) decided to get temperamental.  I was editing a Word document when all of a sudden a notice popped up, announcing that the system had lost contact with my printer.  At the same time, my mouse stopped working.  After a little testing here and there, I discovered that all of my USB ports had failed -- kind of a toughie when you have a USB-connected mouse and keyboard -- even though they were all giving off power.

So, I called Dell Support.  After about five minutes on hold and listening to pre-recorded suggestions such as, "Most computer problems can be solved by rebooting the machine.  Go to the Start menu, select Turn Off Computer...,"  Veronica came on the line -- with a heavy Indian accent.  She asked me what my support number was (even though I'd been forced to give that earlier to just access the line) and then we started through the list, asking me things such as, "Are you sure both your mouse and keyboard haven't failed?" [Nope, tried them on my laptop and the work], and "Why don't you reboot and try to go into Windows Safe Mode" [OK, but considering that the screen shows "Keyboard failure" after the POST test, I don't think the system is going to register that I'm hitting a function key.]

Eventually she decided that my motherboard had failed, and so Dell would send out a technician to replace it.  Having been a Customer Support Rep (or CSR as we say in the biz) for three years, it wasn't too bad an experience.  Some of her requests were nonsensical (such as asking me to go into Safe Mode when the keyboard wasn't being recognized), but at least she was thorough.  I have certainly kicked myself more than once for debugging a customer's problem for hours only to find out I didn't ask the most obvious question that could have resolved the problem in two minutes.  She was polite and her accent wasn't too thick, although I did have to ask her to repeat her questions about half the time.  [Now that would be an interesting study -- how much longer call times are when support is done offshore because the customer and CSR have to repeat themselves.]

So, we'll see how things go.  First, when the technician turns up -- Veronica was predicting a four-day wait -- and whether the motherboard swap actually fixes the problem.  I'll keep you posted.  (And in case you're wondering how I'm able to post to my blog with a non-working PC, I've pressed my laptop into service.)

Continued: Testing Dell's Support - Part 2

Verizon: The 412 Area Code Is a Figment of Your Imagination

Kevin Barkes of KGB.com sent around an amusing Web site design story several weeks ago.

I was on the Verizon website the other day attempting to get information about some of their advanced services. To get to the FAQs, you're presented with a screen in which you select the state, then enter your area code and local exchange.

If you enter 412, you get a message that it's not a valid Pennsylvania area code, and you're stopped dead in your tracks.  There's no way to proceed. The information you need is inaccessible.

Despite the obvious problem -- Verizon has cut off access to one third of its Pennsylvania customers to web-based information about its services -- it's also embarrassingly bad web design. I had logged in to pay my bill online. The site already knew my phone number. For that matter, it had access to all my account information. Why force me to re-enter data that leads me to a defective function?

Of course, there are no links on any pages to report problems with the site. I eventually went through several screens, dutifully filled out a contact form on the most closely-related subject I could find (again, re-entering information the site should already know about me), and clicked the button to send them my message. I was presented with an error screen -- and was told to contact Verizon either by phone or snail mail.

Of course, it was 1 AM when I was doing this, and their Call Center was closed.

So I call first thing Monday morning, and after going through several menu choices and transfers, I get a recording that says all of their operators are busy and that I should call back or *go to their website for additional information*!

Nothing like a nice recursive plunge on a Monday morning.

In addition to paying my bill, I was on the website to sign up for Verizon's Iobi service. It went live last on my account last night -- sort of. It forwards voice mail messages to me on my PC, but none of the other functions work.

Unlike Verizon's main portal, Verizon Iobi has a prominently positioned toll-free number on its support page. So I called the Verizon Iobi phone number this morning, was promptly connected to someone who reviewed the problem, gave me a trouble ticket number, and said the situation should be resolved within 24 hours.

While I was on the phone, I asked for the number to report Website problems. I called that number, and related my experiences to a sympathetic customer support rep who, of course, has no real way of reporting my problem, since she admitted they have no mechanism to directly contact the people who are responsible for maintaining Verizon's Website.

She also said that they've been aware of the 412 area code problem for three weeks.

Three weeks?!

Another example of a large corporation that hasn't quite figured out that people really use its Web site -- and that it should maintain it with the same speed that it uses to send out bills to its customers.  (When was the last time you received a 3-week late bill from Verizon?  My point exactly.)