I went to the Apple store yesterday to purchase a new MacBook Pro. I wasn't shopping, I was purchasing. When I arrived at the store, they told me it would be 30 to 40 minutes before someone could help me. I asked where the checkout was because I didn't need help, I knew what I wanted. There is no longer a "checkout" at Apple retail stores. You wait for a consultant to help you purchase what you would like. I understand the perceived efficiency of arming the entire staff with the capability to process orders. When you are purchasing a pair of headphones ($95 for a pair of Bose headphones - what?!?) it makes sense that any staff person can process your credit card on the spot and send you on your way. However, our expectations are that when you walk into a retail store, you can stand in a line and purchase the product you've selected up. It is not our expectation that you need to wait for a free consultant. Imagine if all retail stores adopted this model. "Excuse me Mr. Coriale, I understand you would like to purchase some laundry detergent. Tell me about your washing machine and personal preferences so we can show you the appropriate brands." said the Giant sales associate. I hope this isn't a future we see anytime soon. I will order my Mac online - which is ironic. Apple has shifted the consumer away from dealing with their people to dealing with their Web site. While they thought they were improving a business process, they were actually making it harder for some of us. They were focused on the customers that have questions and need help and they forgot about the customers that simply want to walk in and buy something. Has your organization made changes to address an issue that has helped some members but created problems for others? Have you gone back and evaluated the changes you've made? Make sure to revisit any changes you make to your business processes (e.g., online user experiences, registration process, etc...) after they have been in use for a short period.
I was talking to Reggie Henry, ASAE/CTO, yesterday and we started talking about search tools - both internal and Web-related. He suggested I check out www.thebrain.com and I suggested he check out - what was its name again? That was the problem, I couldn't remember the name of the search engine I found so interesting years ago. Naturally, had I not become a Google fan, I'd still be using it. It displayed results in a web format that allowed you to move from node to node and see how each term relates to the others. Similar to a mind map. Long post short, I started searching for a search engine. I found this list of search engines from a 2007 blog post. As I spent time going through the different search engines, I realized you find much better results if you are looking for specialized information and you use a specialized search engine. Check out the list and let me know if you have any we can share.
BTW - my initial take on Bing is that it isn't that impressive.
Sometimes you’re so proud of the team you have to talk about it (or blog about it in this case).
Last week’s DC area storms were particularly harsh. Several times throughout the week flash flood watches and warnings were issued, creeks flooded, roads were closed, and downloading ‘arc’ blueprint plans spiked on the internet. Really, we’ve had A LOT of rain.
One morning during a storm, our network monitoring agents alerted Ed Hunter (Manager of the Network Operations Center) that a client’s network was down. This client is part of our managed services group. We usually find it is simply a power or internet issue connectivity issue that is easily resolved. Ed called our client to let them know that there was a problem and we were already troubleshooting the issue. It turned out there was a big problem - the server room was flooded.
At this point Ed notified Brian (Vice President of Network Systems & Support) and Chris (CTO) and set our disaster recovery plan into action. Within 45 minutes Ed was on-site assessing the situation. He could see a ceiling panel had bowed down and buckled from the weight of the water entering from above. The balcony drain on the third floor had clogged, sending water through the doors and the ceiling to the second floor and into the server room.
Because of the unique aspect of the ‘issue’ and critical nature of the outage, Brian and Chris arrived onsite to assist Ed. By 11:00 am they were pulling the servers out of the rack and deconstructing them. Each time a server was removed it drained a few gallons of water. Six servers, representing the organization’s entire network and data, were removed from the rack and drained.
After many hours of drying the servers were powered up again. By 5:00 pm, five out of six servers were operational. However, the MS Exchange server was still down and required a motherboard replacement. We were able to obtain a replacement motherboard and install it by 7:30 pm. Everything was back up and running by 9:00 pm – less than 15 half hours later.
We had two other plans in place which included a virtualized server bank or co-locating their file servers at our data center. We, and they, were happy we didn’t need to go to plan B or C.
While not everyone can emerge from a situation like this quickly and with minimal damage, everyone can take steps to minimize their vulnerability to these types of disasters. It’s important to assess the location of your servers for dangers and try to eliminate them. What’s above your servers? How quickly would you be back up and running?
The bottom line is a significant level of effort went into our managed service offering and seeing the team execute it flawlessly is certainly worth the shout out to our network systems and support team.
Next time you’re at a soccer game, at lunch, or in a meeting, watch the folks around you to see if you observe this as well. If one person checks their phone, it spreads like a yawn. Slowly the crowd check their Blackberry devices, iPhones, iPods, WMDs (that’s Windows Mobile Device – not that other WMD), etc… it never fails. The other experiment might be to see if you can ‘not’ check your email when you see someone else do it or try to catch yourself doing it subconsciously.
There is quite a bit of discussion out there about Twitter and its advantages and disadvantages as a PR tool for organizations and businesses. Recently two businessmen attempting to relocate a vintage diner from Upstate New York to NE Washington DC used Twitter to their advantage to get the attention (and a resolution) from the DC Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs and WASA.
According to their Twitter feed, the new owners of the Capital City Diner were unable to get a phone or email response to their inquiry about when an inspector would visit their site. Frustrated and confused as to how to achieve this, they tweeted the following:
@dcra How/when do we get foundation inspected? It's done, and I heard we have to get inspection before we backfill. No such info w/ permit.
Amazingly DCRA responded with a tweet a little over an hour later:
@capcitydiner Call 442-9557 and they'll get someone out there.
For the moment the crisis was averted and critical information was sent. An inspection was now scheduled for Wednesday. Two days later however with the diner on the back of a flatbed only miles away, Capital City Diner once again tweets several desperate calls for help to the DCRA:
It has arrived and @dcra inspector left w/out approving foundation. Said if we place diner it is illegal.
After days of no return calls, and us following previous guidance, @DCRA just issued stop work order. Diner in middle of Bladensburg Rd NE.
To this the DCRA inspector via Twitter responded quickly:
Not exactly @capcitydiner. We 're trying to work with you and help walk you through this. You need to do it right though.
@capcitydiner We're coming to you right now. Check your email as well
We've been at your site for awhile, @capcitydiner, and are working out your issues. @ddot stopped worked you too. http://twitpic.com/5khxo
While the bureaucratic snafu played out very publicly over Twitter, not everything could be resolved over the internet. The problem: the diner’s architect had not built the foundation according to guidelines and the approved plan.
The bigger story here is the fact that the Capital City Diner was able to cut through the tiring and slow process of bureaucratic channels to achieve results via twitter. But why were the owners of Capital City Diner able to illicit responses much quicker by appealing via twitter? The answer may lie in the fact that other users can view the dialog between them on Twitter. By placing an @ before a Twitter user name it starts a public conversation with that user that anyone can see, even if the other user is not a follower of your own tweets. So to avoid damage to the DCRA’s public image, they may have responded quicker than normal since all correspondence is public.
This is important to remember if you are thinking of using twitter as a method to communicate with your members. Since a Twitter site is as much a mini blog as it is a conversation; the value of it depends on both the user who posts and the followers who engage. Your organization must actively use twitter and respond quickly if someone directs a comment at you. If you fail to do this, you risk damaging your public image when a question is asked or concern is voiced via Twitter and falls on deaf tweets.
In the era of emerging new media technologies it seems there are an infinite number of ways to connect with your members. Understanding the full extent of Twitter or any other social media technology is important before implementing it. Just because every organization is using a particular tool to communicate doesn’t always mean it will be the right one for your organization. Overall Twitter is a great tool, but as the above case shows it requires the organization to be vigilant about updates or risk damaging their own reputation.
Naturally, we are monitoring the H1N1 Flu situation. I find the Center for Disease Control a good source of facts and information so I visited their Web site earlier today. The H1N1 page is current and seems to change quickly so I thought I would subscribe to the e-mail updates. The problem is you can't tell if you're subscribing to updates from their entire site, or just the page you are on when you click "Get e-mail updates." I certainly didn't want to subscribe to all updates on the CDC site so I backed out of the subscription. I am positive that if this "task" was part of a usability test, the CDC would have changed the text on the subscription page in order to give users more confidence about what they are doing. As the page is now, you simply can't tell if you're subscribing to all updates or just updates on one particular page. How clear is your subscription page text?
To the newspaper industry, the web has been the silent killer, sending print sales the way of 8-tracks and VHS. Why should readers pay for information they can get for free? Are there not more convenient ways to get news? Is the print newspaper not useful anymore? These are the questions editors have been struggling to answer.
But what if you could turn this trend around for the news industry? What if through redesigning and rethinking the user experience you could actually increase the readership and revenue of your paper?
This would be nice right? You’re probably thinking that you are facing some of the same issues with your website and association online experience.
Well, an architect from Poland may have the answer. Jacek Utko, an architect turned art director, has been able to reverse trends, increase readership, create value in the user experience, and increase revenue for five newspapers in the former Soviet Bloc. Some of his advice is certainly applicable if you’re thinking of changing how your association presents itself online.
Let’s apply some of Mr. Utko’s logic to your web presence. Your website is more than just content; it must be well designed and carefully crafted. You have seconds to get the attention of new users. Here are two lessons we can take from his work.
1.) Make your website your identity, it is your "front page." Is your website memorable or not? Are your users faced with too much text or clutter when they first reach your site? No matter what your association does or who they represent, a visually appealing, easy to maneuver, and well-designed home page is critical to ensure that visitors stay and members remain engaged.
2.) It’s not only about the homepage though. The website needs to be treated as one body of work, as Mr. Utko compared it to a piece of music. You have to look at your site and ask, is there logic to how things are arranged, how easy is it to navigate from one item to another, is there a flow? Treat your website like a magazine or a portfolio of photographs; you need to have a flow from one page or section to another.
----- “The design was just part of the process; the changes we made were not about just changing the look but changing the function completely”
Mr. Utko used the function:form logic and changed it to content:design. He asked himself each time they needed to make a decision on the layout and design: “Why do we do it, and what is the goal?” He first adjusted the content to answer the question at hand, and after two months began the re-design to fit the new mission of the content. Ask yourself, why do we have this content here, what is our goal? If you don’t know why you have this content or can’t figure out a goal behind it, get rid of it. If you can, clearly articulate it, implement it. Do this for your entire site. Then build a design that fits all of these needs you have articulated. Never design before you’ve justified and given a purpose for the content which you will have on the site. Put that content on the site as much as possible before the new site begins to be designed. This will help you gauge its effectiveness for your members and save wasted time later when you need to eliminate or change the design around a change in content.
One of the measures Mr. Utko used to benchmark his success in the newspaper industry was subscription sales and readership. While you probably don’t have subscriptions to your association website, user traffic is the equivalent of your subscription and readership levels. Leverage the power of Google Analytics or to measure how your content and redesign is working. Google Analytics has a wonderful tool called the Website Optimizer which allows you to test different content with web users and measure their interest and time on your website. Use this data to make your revisions and find the perfect fit between your content and your design. As a website you have the ability to receive instant feedback to your work and move to make changes much quicker than a print publication could.
I see many similarities behind newspapers and association websites. Somewhat pedestrian and plain looking, both newspapers and websites are often only referenced only when needed and rarely are compelling enough to drive traffic outside of this. As in both cases the information the newspaper and association website provide can many times be found elsewhere in a better format. You can change this; there is no reason that it has to be this way. Your website is likely the most important and public facing statement your association can make about itself, take time to ensure that statement was worthy of your mission?
Have I blogged about this before? I didn't look, and I don't care. I am just as curious (read: mad) about the thought process at Southwest Airlines now as I was last time I ran into this problem. I was booking a flight and wanted to enter my Rapid Reward number. The form doesn't have a place to recover the number so I opened a new window and tried to find a recovery tool on the Southwest Airline Web site. I was able to find a My Southwest Login menu item. The following image is the result of clicking that link:
As you can see, there is no tool to recover you account number, but there is a tool to reset or request your password. I followed that link hoping it also allowed me to retrieve my account number. Nope. Just my password. And to recover my password, I needed my account number.
I looked in FAQs – nothing about recovering my account number. I looked at the Rapid Rewards page – again nothing. So, rather than give up I called the customer service number listed under contact us. The agent asked me my name, address, phone number, and last travel destination on Southwest. Ummmm… I haven't flown Southwest in a few years and I couldn't remember. I asked her if there was another secret question she could ask me so she could give me my account number. No. I asked if she could e-mail the account number to the address on file. No. I had to remember where I last few on Southwest. It was like being on a bad game show. Finally, I took some guesses –
Me: West Palm?
Agent: No, but you're getting close…that's the right state.
Me: Miami?
Agent: We don't fly to Miami.
Me: Orlando?
Agent: Yes, that's right – and here is your account number.
I finished my transaction and purchased the ticket, but if this is the thought process behind helping a customer complete their task of booking a ticket, I had to wonder why they are the only airline that's always been profitable. Why can't I recover my account code using my e-mail address? Again, I ask you to look at your login ID and password recovery process.
Hopefully you’ve noticed our spiffy logo on our home page. It’s been ‘treated’ to reflect our 25th year in business. Throughout the year we will be changing it to reflect a different chapter in our 25 years – currently we’re in the late 80s. We’ve also posted a timeline of special moments in DelCor’s history and other events to give some perspective of how long ago we started this adventure – by ‘we’ I mean Loretta of course. She started the business in ’84. I, being the younger one, was still in college in those days but joined her shortly thereafter in ’87. (I’d be scared but I am pretty sure she doesn’t read my blog) Back then we were known as Business Information Technology (BIT). Our name change to DelCor didn’t occur until the mid ‘90s. We changed the name because another BIT and our company were getting confused and they didn’t have a sterling reputation – since then they’ve taken their shingle down. I digress. We’ve been very fortunate as a result of selecting the association and nonprofit community as our home – we’ve met some pretty awesome people. Here’s to another 25!
Also, I’ve setup a post I will keep up where you can comment on any particular memories or thoughts you might have about the past 25 years. Some of you have been with us for a long time – it would be great to hear from you.
