FatDUX | blogging about user experiences

7 rules for customer service

2009-11-03T08:00:04Z

Bill McLaughlin

CEO – Select Comfort

Minneapolis, MN

Dear Bill,

I have the most wonderful bed in the world, a Select Comfort bed. It has two air chambers zipped into a padded quilted mattress cover, and attached to a pump with two controls. Each sleeper can adjust the firmness of the mattress to his own preference with just a button. We’ve had it for over 15 years.

Its only flaw is that every two or three years one of the air chambers inside the mattress starts to leak, and pretty soon it mostly deflates every night. The only thing to do is to get a new one shipped out from the company.

Because it was my side of the bed this time, I was pretty motivated to solve the problem. I went to the Select Comfort website, found their customer support contact page. It was late, outside of their call center hours, so I decided to get the process going by email. I chose my problem from their dropdown list (“Previous purchase questions”), entered my name and address and phone number and email (all required). I also entered a description of my product and my problem. Oddly enough, this was not a required field. I unchecked both the “o please send me more promotional material!” boxes and submitted the form. Immediately in my inbox was an automatic confirmation that they had indeed received my email, and would gladly get back to me within two or three days. And that if I wanted to call them, they’d take my call right away.

Rule No. 1 – Respect your customer’s mode of communication.

If you’re going to offer email customer support, it should be at the same level of service as phone support. A real response should come by the end of the next business day at the latest.

Two days later I got a nice email from the customer support specialist telling me that my name and address wasn’t in their database, and asking me if I could send any other names or addresses that might have been used. I did, and shortly received an autoresponse thanking me for my interest in their product and informing me that they would be sending out the DVD package that I had requested right away.

Rule No. 2 – Listen to what your customer says, and remember it the next time you speak.

I had already provided them with a description of my problem AND a backend database code for their use by selecting “previous purchase question” as my subject. And remember? I had also unchecked both boxes asking them to send me more promotional literature. (I’m still getting it; the DVD arrived in less than a week, and I’ve gotten follow-up postcards every three or four days so far.)

I replied that I didn’t want any DVDs, but that I did want a new single-port chamber for my dual queen size bed and inquiring how I could go about getting one, just as I had in my original email to them. I got another immediate autoresponse telling me that they had received my email and that they would gladly get back to me in two to three days.

In a couple of days another nice customer service rep gave me instructions on how to confirm that the problem was indeed in the air chamber and not in the pump, and asked me to get back in touch with them after I’d verified the problem. I was pretty sure that the problem was with the chamber, but I followed the directions and confirmed it for them by email: definitely the chamber. After getting the expected autoresponse from the customer service ‘bot (2-3 days!), I then got an email from the support staff that said that it sounded like I needed to replace the chamber, and that I should order it from Customer Service. They gave a toll-free number. They also let me know that they couldn’t find me in their database.

Rule No. 3 – Respect what your customer knows.

Not only did I already know what the problem was with the bed and what I needed, I also already knew that I wasn’t in their database, and I already knew that email responses were running at 2-3 days’ response time. A full week was wasted with this back-and-forth.

Meanwhile I’m sleeping on stacks of pillows every night because I start out with a bed full of air and by 3am it is nearly completely deflated, my butt on the slats of the bedstand. I can’t pump it up in the middle of the night because the pump makes a heinous racket to which the DH for some reason objects most obstreperously. My neck and shoulders and lower back are all killing me. And then fall rolled into Los Angeles, and I found myself at the mall, looking for sweaters. And there, across from the Build-a-Bear was a Select Comfort retail store. So I popped in, spoke with the nice man there. He listened to my story, looked me up in the database (“Yep, you’re coded as a prospect!”) and surreptitiously gave me a queen dual chamber that he had lying behind a big cardboard display. I took it home and pumped it up, but it turned out to have a leak as well.

I was at the same mall a few days later and returned it to him. He gave me another one, but while he was digging around looking for it, another customer in the store who was purchasing a bed and some accessories asked me if I liked my bed. O how I did wax prolific on the wonders of the bed. I truly love it. At least fifteen years of slumbering bliss on this bed. A testimonial, dear brethren! After this, the nice store manager gave me the chamber. I asked him, “If this one doesn’t work, can I come back here and order it from you?” No, he said, I had to order it from Customer Service.

Rule No. 4 – Empower your service workers to provide service.

There was a customer sitting at the counter while I was there, checkbook in hand, ordering a bed and accessories. We all of us there in the store know that orders can be placed through the retail store. Why can I not get the replacement item I need from the nice person I’ve now got a relationship with? Why can the email support staff not take my order?

I got the second replacement chamber home, and it leaked even worse than the first one. I’m not too upset, because I didn’t pay for either of them. I girded my loins, picked up the phone, and called Customer Service’s toll-free number.

It was busy.

I called again. I got a recording that said, basically, that they were too busy to take my call, and I should call back later. Click.

I called three more times and it was busy.

The fourth time I got put into the queue, after selecting the most likely-sounding option from the voice menu. After about 10 minutes I was connected with a lady who asked me briskly for the name on my account. I gave her my name.

“I can’t find you in my database. What’s the phone number that might be on the account?” I gave her that.

“I can’t find you in my database.” I tell her what I want to do, to buy a replacement chamber. She begins to go through what I recognize as the troubleshooting script, the one I have already been through with the email folks. I stop her and start to say that I’ve already identified my problem, and that I just want to order the replacement chamber.

“I’m trying to solve your problem!”

“You haven’t even asked me what my problem is yet.”

Rule No. 5 – The customer’s problem is the one that needs solving.

So far my primary topic of conversation with these people, across ALL their modes of communication, has been about their database. Now I didn’t call them up because I’m not in their database. I’ve got a bed that deflates every night. I just want my good nights’ sleep back. I called them up because I need a single port dual queen replacement chamber, stat.

I tell her that I’ve followed directions given by the email team and have confirmed that I need a new air chamber. “Well you can’t buy that from me!” She says she’s going to put me in the database and then connect me with the right department. I give her all my information (again) and she enters it all into the database, and she gives me a customer number (2275984) that I can give to the next rep so she can pull up my record. And then she transfers me.

After a few minutes on hold I am connected to a new person who promptly barks, “Name on the account?” I give her my name and, she says, “I can’t find you in my database.” At this point my weasel is pretty steamed. I tell her that I have just gone through this exercise with the previous rep, and that she had put me into the database. “She even gave me a customer number so you could find me.” She asks for it, and I give it to her. She tells me, “I can’t find that in my database. You’re not in our database. What did she use to give it to you?”

“Her voice,” I said. “And I wrote it down with a pencil on paper.”

Rule No. 6 – Don’t ask the customer for any of your internal codes or identifiers.

How are the customers supposed to know which of your internal systems were in use? At this point I’m pretty sure that I am in all of their databases and that customer number 2275984 is CSR-speak for “Give this customer some serious hell!”

She begins the troubleshooting script. I stop her. “I’ve already done that.” After a fair amount of wrangling I force her to take my order NOW for a non-returnable $200 item. I ask for the name of the VP of Customer Service and she gives me the name and mailing address of the CEO.

And since it had been such a pleasant experience overall, I replied to the last email that I had finally managed to order the replacement chamber from customer service, and that I’d be grateful if they could let their VP know that he could expect me to pitch him soon for some business process redesign work. A few days later I got this response:

My replacement chamber did finally come, and it has worked very well. I still love my bed, and I’m sleeping great again. But I am afraid that any recommendation I make for Select Comfort’s product in the future will have to be tempered by serious reservations about their service. And in the 21^st century, is there any difference between the two?

Rule No. 7 – Customer service is the product too.

Give us a call, Bill. We can help.

Sogni d’oro,

Lynn

FatDUX Los Angeles

Cultural literacy

2009-10-22T08:58:53Z

Yesterday, I walked down to our local discount grocery store. I needed a bottle of milk (for breakfast), a tomato (for our turtle), and a bottle of vodka (for Cosmos and Bloody Marys).

We’ll start today’s post with the vodka.

Snarky story starts here
The store has a lousy selection of booze, but when vodka is drowned in cranberry or tomato juice, most of the stuff is palatable. I asked for a bottle of “Rasputin” (cheap, Czech, and surprisingly mellow).

“Oh, you mean ‘Rezz pew TEEN’” corrected the kid behind the counter, perhaps a fan of the historically flawed 1978 Boney M hit.

“Thanks. Yes. ‘Raz PU tin’” I replied.

“Rezz pew TEEN,” he insisted.

“Well, I want the bottle you’re pointing at. But it’s actually pronounced like ‘Vladamir PU-tin – without the ‘ras’”

“Who?” he asked?

“Who?” I asked back, “The monk who influenced the Czarina Alexandra? Or the current prime minister of Russia?”

“Who the fuck cares?” he replied – which in retrospect was probably a reasonable response from an underpaid kid at a crappy discount grocery.

That said, my patience in these situations is notoriously low – my close friends say “non-existent.” My unspoken reply was, “you probably should care if your career plans go beyond minimum wage and a bar-code scanner.”

How Thomas Edison hired folks
Edison invented the phonograph, the electric light, and a couple of other things. He had a special written test he gave to all new potential employees. It included stuff like “What is the capitol of Albania?” and “Name a poem by Longfellow.”*

Engineers and other skilled job applicants hated this test. They argued it was completely irrelevant to their work. But Edison replied, “The questions I ask are all related to things you should have learned in school. I’m not really interested in what you know. But I very much want to know what you’ve forgotten.”

How I interview
Whenever I interview people – from freelancers to salaried positions, I always look for people who can think outside the box. Of course to do so, folks have to know there IS a life outside the box. They need to be culturally literate. I’ve never given a prospective employee a formal test. But I do ask off-the-cuff questions you probably won’t hear at other interviews – I want to draw people out and find out if they know something of the world around them.

Personally, I have no long-term interest in the people who go through life wearing professional blinders. Nor do I want to work with folks who spend more time on self-promotion than on self-improvement. And I have absolutely no use for folks who, armed with a couple of expensive university degrees, insist they can change the world before they’ve taken the time to understand it.

Learning from my own dumb mistakes
My attitude has made me more enemies than friends - conviction is often mistaken for arrogance by the youthful. Nonetheless, this standpoint has made my life is richer and my company is stronger. And I build on hard-earned personal experience having made all three mistakes myself. When I arrived in Denmark at the ripe old age of 22 with a hot degree and a hot job title at the Royal Theatre, I thought I knew it all. Boy was I wrong. And thank goodnesss I had patient mentors who put up with my immature self-importance and helped me move forward.

Well, I’m a lousy mentor because I don’t have much patience with either arrogance or unjustified self-importance. Today, I seek out people who think, who are well-rounded. I want to work with people who are smarter than I am for only they can help me expand my own weltanschaung.

I don’t mind being told I’m full of shit. In fact, I welcome it. But be prepared to teach me why and help me grow.

Thank you, David Blumenthal
There was a memorial plaque on the wall of my high school to David Blumenthal (1936-1952): “Cease not to learn until Thou cease to live. Think that day lost wherein Thou draw’st no letter to make Thyself more learn’d, wiser, better.” This wonderful quote is credited to Guy du Faur de Pibrac and has since become my creed.

Cultural literacy should be a prerequisite in every job description. “Knowledge of HTML” – hell, that’s the easy part. But remembering your grade school social-studies class is tough. Nevertheless, I honestly believe that that is what’s going to help move our industry forward.

* Tirana and “Hiawatha” are acceptable answers. BTW, if anyone passes by Highland Park High School (north of Chicago), I’d love a photo of the plaque – if it still exists. It was near the north entrance, by the auditorium.

A method for quantifying user experience

2009-10-13T10:24:11Z

Back in January, 2009, I published my definition of user experience. UX, as user experience is popularly called, is a difficult subject to discuss with business clients. To them, “UX” is just more expensive hot air from the folks who brought us the dot bomb.

The basic problem is that discussing an experience – any experience – is highly subjective. And although others have attempted to set up metrics (notably Robert Rubinoff’s User Experience Audit, and Livia Labate’s User Experience Health Check), we don’t always end up with particularly useful data. Here at FatDUX, we were looking for a simple tool that could help us turn observations and subjective conclusions into useful dialog with our clients.

Our UX quantification model will undoubtedly be criticized by the scientific hardliners. But it does help us uncover many problems and communicate these to the client. And it works better than beating them over the head with statistics.

Please note, we take a very broad view of “user experience,” incorporating both online and offline interactions of three types:

- active
- passive
- secondary

Please refer to the original user-experience blogpost for details regarding these types of encounter.

Avoiding complicated algorithms
There are lots of complicated ways to work numbers, particularly when dealing with the subjective data that invariably lies at the heart of any discussion of user experience. But rather than putting together confusing formulae to present our research, we work directly with our clients to quantify empirical observations in a very simple model.

The model in brief
We start by consolidating our research findings in a single first-person narrative – an X-log (experience log). This is somewhat related to phenomenology. Once we’ve assembled this story, we work together with the client to:

1. mark each individual interaction – we call these “snapshots”
2. assign a value from 1 to 3 to each snapshot in relation to its contribution to the overall experience
3. grade the experience on a scale from -3 to +3
4. multiply the value by the grade to get a score (this is the really useful number)
5. note any events that are recurring, unique, or may be influenced by chronology (cause and effect relationships).

Plugging in the numbers
We mark each interaction, but some may later be thrown out if they are sufficiently trivial or so unique in character that they are deemed irrelevant in the broader, generic sense of the project. Although no individual snapshot can be assigned a value of 0, if you really think it deserves a value of 0, this is probably an interaction you’ll want to ignore.

When we grade the individual snapshots, we use the following scale:

+3 = fantastic
+2 = good
+1 = better than expected
0 = no effect on the ultimate user experience
-1 = poor
-2 = awful
-3 = mission critical

Unique or chronological events won’t always influence the score, but in the case of repeating events, the interaction clearly needs to be looked at carefully.

A sample narrative
Here’s a simple story based on a trip to the movies. It represents an amalgam of several user interviews, onsite research, review of user-satisfaction surveys, etc.

My family (my wife, myself, and our two kids) decided to go to the movies. We checked the internet and found the website for our local cinema complex after a quick search on Google. But we had to click three times to get to the program page and wait through a silly animated ad for a movie that hadn’t even been released yet. Worse still, we were forced to download a pdf to find out the specific movie names and playing times. And after all that, we couldn’t even order tickets online, much less purchase them, so we couldn’t avoid waiting in line when we arrived. You’d think a big four-screen complex would have a more sophisticated website. But we did find out what was showing, decided to see the latest Harry Potter movie, and piled into the car.

Finding a parking place was easy. The theater has a big lot, which is important since driving to this particular theater is really our only option. Just as we were leaving the car, it really started to rain, but happily, the entrance wasn’t far away.

There were three ticket windows open, so the lines were short. The girl behind the counter was noisily chewing gum and barely looked up during the entire transaction. In fact, she didn’t say a single word to me except to ask for the money. Wow, prices have really increased this past year. I was surprised at how expensive it was.

The lobby was inviting and quite clean. We bought popcorn and soda at the concession and found our way to our particular auditorium. It was easy to spot the signs pointing the way. As we approached, we noticed overflowing trashcans with popcorn and other garbage from previous audiences.

The seats were well-marked and easy to find. The seating was comfortable but there was old popcorn underfoot. The temperature in the room was pleasant, although all of the wet people made it get a little steamy. The sound was great and really enhanced the special effects, so we really enjoyed the movie. When we left, there was a nice usher, who opened the exits and wished us a pleasant evening as we went out. And it had stopped raining. A nice end to a nice family outing.

Defining the interactions
Reading through the narrative, we mark the individual interactive events – the snapshots. This gives us the following list:

1. Find website on internet
2. Click three times to find relevant page on site
3. Reaction to irrelevant animation
4. Find schedule (download PDF)
5. Reaction to lack of purchasing options
5a. Opinion of website
6. Park car
7. Reaction to parking lot
8. Reaction to rain
9. Reaction to proximity of parking to entrance
10. Reaction to short line
11. Reaction to rude ticketseller
12. Buy tickets
13. Reaction to ticket prices
14. Reaction to lobby
15. Buy popcorn and soda
16. Find auditorium
17. React to overfilled trashcans
18. Find seats
19. Reaction to seats
20. Reaction to popcorn on floor
21. Reaction to temperature
22. Reaction to steaminess
23. Reaction to sound
24. Reaction to movie
25. Reaction to nice usher
26. Reaction to dry weather
26a. Opinion of evening

Note that opinions are not really interactions, hence we have 5a and 26a.

Assigning values and grades
Ask your clients to help you fill out the values and grades. This is a great way to get clients emotionally involved in the design project without having to show them pretty layouts.

Conclusions
Having made this chart, there are several things that become painfully apparent. First, the lack of purchasing options is really a major problem. The need to watch irrelevant animations and resort to PDFs for information was also pretty bad. Snapshots 11, 15, and 25 suggest that additional emphasis should be placed on customer-service training for front-line personnel. Snapshots 17 and 20 illustrate that cleaning is a problem. Snapshot 22 revealed that the climate-control system was out of whack, which proved to be an easy repair.

The most important point of the exercise, though, was that the client suddenly understood how all of these events ultimately contributed to the total perception of the movie-going experience. The X-log narrative started a productive dialog about user experience and not about the color of the links.

We hope you’ll find it useful.

Welcome to FatDUX Zagreb!

2009-10-04T06:10:43Z

FatDUX Zagreb is now well on its way to becoming a reality. Our new Croatian CEO, Vibor Cipan, and his outstanding team, are in the final stages of incorporating the company – and we already have several important clients.

Croatia is a fascinating market with a wide range of opportunities. Obviously, tourism and the hospitality industries rank high. Agriculture, too. But more importantly, Croatia has a growing and highly innovative high-tech sector. In fact, I recently addressed a group of IT executives at a meeting hosted by Microsoft Croatia on this very subject – innovation.

It’s interesting that here in Denmark, where “innovation” is on every company’s list of so-called “value words,” true innovation remains as rare as tits on a turtle. But in Croatia, they don’t talk about innovation, they just do it.

We’re delighted to have this opportunity to effect real change in Southern Europe. And we look forward to building our professional network in the region.

Why Rio is going to be the Olympic Committee choice for 2016

2009-10-02T13:50:58Z

I’ve been involved in choosing venues for conferences for a couple of years now. I’m curious as to whether the international Olympic Committee uses the same methodology I do – and examines similar user-experience issues. If so, they’re going to choose Rio de Janeiro tomorrow for the 2016 Olympics. Here’s why:

The case against Tokyo, Madrid, and Chicago
Everyone is busy making the case for their city. But being best is not how decisions of this kind are usually made. The slimy truth is, decision-makers always start with the case against a given venue. Here, are four considerations:

- has the city already hosted an Olympics recently?
- is their geographic area interesting in terms of promoting the Olympic concept?
- is a particular choice going to get the Committee into political hot water?
- is a particular choice going to rob the Committee of a PR opportunity?

Evaluating the venues
Tokyo – not likely. This was the venue back in 1964. And they got it primarily because the start of WWII cancelled the 1940 Tokyo Olympics (in fact, my mom was to have been a U.S. high-jumper at that event). The Committee is probably going to look at other options before returning to Japan.

Madrid – forget it. Barcelona got the Olympics in 1992. Two Spanish cities within a 25-year period? I just can’t see this happening.

Chicago – slim chance. With Los Angeles in 1984 and Atlanta in 1996, there’s been too much U.S. exposure. And honestly, pulling in Barack and Oprah to plead the case is simply overkill; this may ultimately work against the Chicagoans (no one wants to be perceived as buckling under to pressure from American superstars). Moreover, with the U.S. spearheading military “conflicts” in two theaters of operation, I think the Committee will go for more neutral ground.

The case for Rio
South America has never held an Olympics (Mexico City doesn’t count). In this age of sustainability, holding the Olympics in the country that governs the greatest part of the Amazon rain forest can focus the world’s eyes on the country – and hopefully bring about positive change. Rio is only an hour ahead of New York in terms of time-zones, which means events can be scheduled for TV transmission at optimal times for U.S. viewers. Finally, the Brazilians could use the money – South American economies are not the strongest around.

A final note
Mr. President, Ms. Winfrey, please don’t doubt my loyalty to the cause. As an ex-Chicagoan, I would love for our “toddlin’ town” to play host. But I just don’t think it’s going to happen.

Calculating the length of an internet year

2009-10-13T10:36:37Z

We know technology moves fast these days. But how fast? And which technology?

Most folks know a “dog year” equates to about seven human years. Although this is not a particularly accurate actuarial device (little dogs live longer than big dogs), it does give us a rough idea as to when Bowser is going to be chasing that chariot in the sky.

We have other measurements, too. For example, Moore’s Law suggested back in 1965 that the number of transistors in a chip would double about every two years. Again, a generalized barometer that has proven to be more accurate and useful than one would have thought.

So where are we at with the internet? With the web? How can we measure the maturity of our apps? Or predict business cycles in the online world?

I think I’ve found a useful answer. Here’s how I worked it out.

Establishing a baseline
My first task was to find a suitable industrial-era baseline. I needed to find a well-established, highly industrial segment that had demonstrated:

- a period of invention, followed by
- a period of adoption, followed by
- a definitive end to an era of pioneering, followed by
- a long period of slow, incremental innovation
- a long-term, on-going global presence

Finding such a segment is easier said than done. The obvious-in-hindsight choice was the automobile industry – a sudden inspirational flash in the middle of a presentation on innovation I was giving in Italy.

Autos and the web have a lot in common
The first commercial vehicle was a Daimler, produced in the United Kingdom in 1896. Interestingly, the first commercial websites started to appear about 100 years later. In my calculations, I will use 1993, which marked the introduction of the first true graphic browser, Mosaic. Most experts agree that the introduction of Mosaic represented a turning point in the history of the Web – much as the original Daimler represented a turning point for those experimenting with horseless carriages.

Certainly, no one would contest that websites in 2009 cannot represent the final phase of online evolution. If we compare ourselves to automobiles anno 1909, it would seem we haven’t come very far at all. If nothing else it strongly suggests that a “calendar year” is significantly longer than an “internet year”.

End of the pioneering period
The era of pioneers, where most of us working in the online arena were pretty much making things up as we went along have long since passed. Today, we have pretty good sets of best practices. But when did the age of pioneering actually end? We need a date for our calculations. Although the current economic crisis has caused unimployment in our industry, it’s doing that in all industries. We are not seeing the great “weeding out” of questionable practices that we saw back in the early years of this decade. From a development point of view, we need to go back to the burst of the dot-com bubble of 2001.

Even given the rise of social media and other innovations during the past decade, the market reaction to events of 1998-2001 equate, from a business point of view, to many other technology inspired booms, including autos in the 1920s (other similar technology booms include railroads in the 1840s, radios in the 1920s, and transistor electronics in the 1950s).

So which year represents the end of pioneering for the automobile industry? The introduction of mass production by Ford in 1908? The U.S. entry into World War I in 1917? I pondered this for over a year before I accidentally came across a footnote in a book on antique cars that stated “The stock market crash of 1929 marked the end of the pioneering period for car manufacturers.” Conveniently, a crisis again seems to have marked the end of an era.

The similarities observed in the aftermath of both 1929 and 2001 have erie commonalities. For example, a study of the car industry suggests that there were more makes and generally better cars in the 1920s than in the 1930s. After the market crash of 1929, bad ideas (and poorly built cars) became more prevalent. And I would argue that in many semi-developed online markets (Scandinavia for instance), websites did deteriorate in quality during most of the decade following the dot-bomb; while pretty, these applications did not successfully build the shared frames of reference needed to establish credibility, trust, and a willingness on the part of site visitors to deal with these business entities. Indeed, there is still far too much “brochure-ware” polluting the ether.

But back to 1929. If the Wall Street Crash marked the end of the pioneering era in automobiles, it should be possible to work some numbers.

Doing the math
If 1896 and 1929 mark the age of pioneering for the auto industry, we have a period of about 33 years. And if we accept that 1993 and 2001 represent watershed years for the Web, that works out to seven years (late 1993 to early 2001). The months of introduction are critical when calculating the length of the pioneering period for the Web as the difference between seven and eight years has far too significant an effect on the calculations.

Setting up a simple ratio, we find:

33 = X
7 1

And that means X = 4.7 years.

Proof of concept
So is 4.7 years a viable figure? Just like Moore’s Law, Reiss’ Law will be proven or disproven by history – it is impossible to provide hard proof. But the anecdotal evidence is already compelling. For example, economists put the average business cycle (as defined by Burns and Mitchell) somewhere between 3.5 – 7 years. This appears pretty much the same for cycles triggered/ended by exo- and endogenous causes. The average time needed for a traditional business to establish a business model, gain goodwill, and prove its worth is about eight years – longer than a single business cycle, but usually shorter than two.

So if my number works, one calendar year should roughly represent slightly less than one complete business cycle in the online environment.

Curiously, if you look at the online ventures that have succeeded this past decade, you’ll find that an incredible number of them have been sold or expanded their ownership base within the first two years of operation – which fits surprisingly well with the timing of the offline experience, using my 4.7-to-1 adjustment; if we look beyond the get-rich-quick IPO mania of the late 1990s, many successful offline ventures typically seek alternative financing early into a second business cycle.

If you look at the online ventures that have failed this past decade, you’ll find that the same cyclic pattern repeats – ventures have roughly two calendar years to make it or break it. We, of course, knew this from our emprical observations over the years. But using the numbers I’ve laid out here, it’s easier to see why this is so from a business-economic standpoint.

Of course, I haven’t yet identified the triggers that mark the beginning or end of an online business cycle. But I’m working on that, too.

So where are we now?
If we compare, for example, websites to cars, we’re 15 x 4.7 years into our development. With a calendar starting point in 1896, that puts current web development on par with the car model year 1960.

If we continue to use cars as our barometer, we can see that a number of things have been invented and standardized – the number of wheels, shift patterns, basic controls (pedals, steering wheel), the placement of heating and ventilation controls, etc.

In web terms, perhaps this suggests that many of the basic navigational devices we use today will be around for some time. But it also leaves us wide open for innovation. For example, web servers account for an incredibly high proportion of CO2 emissions – almost as much as the aviation industry according to the UK’s Health Protection Agency task force.

Should we be using gray backgrounds rather than white to reduce electrical consumption? Maybe AJAX isn’t a good idea seen from a sustainability point of view.

If we look at the development of the automobile these past 50 years, two issues really stand out: safety and fuel economy.

So my question to you is, what are OUR safety and fuel economy issues? And how long do we have to make these improvements? Can we use my magic number to predict the future of our industry by examining the past of other industries?

FatDUX recipe #2 – BBQ chicken, big duck style

2009-10-06T06:28:16Z

For me, barbeque is truly a user-experience nonpareil. So, here’s the second in what could be a long series of my favorite recipes.

I’d like to take credit for incredibly simple, incredibly well-tasting BBQ chicken recipe, but I can’t. It originally comes from the LBJ Ranch, the Texas home of former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. I assume his wife, Lady Bird, is responsible for inventing it.

What you need
A chicken – cut into quarters
Salt and pepper
Garlic (optional)
1 chopped yellow onion
1 stick of butter (about 1/4 cup melted or 125 g in stick form)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup Worchestershire sauce.

Note: an American cup is about 250 ml. 1 stick of butter is about 125 g.

What to do (Step-by-step pictures below)
Wash and dry the chicken and cut it up. I usually just use the breast and thighs. But you can use as much or as little of the chicken as you like. Generally, our cat Gus gets to chew on the stuff I don’t use.

Melt the butter, sauté the garlic and onion until the onion is transparent. If you don’t like garlic, leave it out. But the onion is critical. Add all the rest of the ingredients and bring it to a boil. You can do all of this ahead of time and just bring the sauce up to a boil just before you need to put the bird in the oven.

Now, season the chicken with salt and pepper, put it in an oven-proof dish, and broil it until it gets a little crusty. Golden brown is nice, but you don’t want to overdo this. About five minutes should be about right.

Finally, take the chicken out, pour on the sauce, make sure the meat is drenched. Then stick it back in the oven at a medium heat (about 375F, 190C, gas mark 5) for about an hour. Baste a couple of times along the way – the more often you baste, the better it will be.

Serve with rice or potatos.

Simple? You bet! And it tastes great!

Chicken washed and quartered.

Seasoned and lightly broiled...

Bringing the BBQ sauce to a boil...

Pouring the sauce over the pre-broiled chicken

Make sure to cover the chicken completely

Umm! About 20 minutes to go...

All set to go. Use a new dish if you're fussy about presentation.

A little wildrice goes great!

Why I hate the United Parcel Service (UPS)

2009-10-02T13:49:47Z

Wednesday
FatDUX needed a book – fast. Amazon US had it, Amazon UK didn’t. So, we ordered from the American .com site and paid a fortune for two-day, international courier delivery. This was last Wednesday.

Friday
Friday comes and goes. No word. No tracking number. No joy in Mudville.

Saturday
Saturday, a disturbingly thick envelope arrives via snail-mail from UPS. Tanya Neerskov from UPS Danmark A/S has determined that FatDUX Copenhagen ApS (an officially registered company in the Kingdom of Denmark, with a completely legitimate tax number), is not registered as an “import organization.” Er…well…no. We design websites and such.

The thick envelope contains masses of paperwork that will need to be filed before we can receive our book (to be sent via snail-mail – “changes will be effected within 14 days”). According to Tanja, FatDUX Copenhagen must be re-categorized as an ”officially registered importer of goods from outside the EU.”

There is a telephone number I can call for assistance. I call Saturday morning (about five minutes after the letter arrives). A recording tells me that if I really am desperate (I am) I can call another number (I do). The second number also tells me that I am out of luck until Monday at 8:30 AM.

Sunday
Sunday, I write the client report that might possibly have benefited from the knowledge purported to be in the book we ordered from Amazon.

Monday, 08:32
I call UPS. Unfortunately, Tanja is out sick that day. But Charlotte is very helpful. She explains that we need to pay sales tax on the book (normally, we do this at the post office and it takes no time at all). But because UPS has set these strange procedures in motion, we must now go to our “local tax office.” (Jeez, the total charge is only about USD 12) Good news: if we pay this today, UPS will send the book the very next day (Tuesday).

Charlotte explains that Tanja certainly must have called our office to determine the best way to expedite this package (she didn’t – I questioned everyone at FatDUX who was near a telephone on Friday when the book arrived at the UPS terminal). Also, Charlotte reminded me that we really should re-register our company so that we can avoid these problems in the future (er…I paid more for shipping than for the book and suddenly the delays are my fault???)

Next task – finding out where the local tax office is – we’ve never had cause to visit them. It turns out, the “local” tax office is about as far from our offices as two locations can be within the confines of Copenhagen County. But WTF…

Monday 12:16
Just after noon, I’ve now fought my way across town, arrived at my “local” tax office, and paid my sales tax (12 damned dollars). The genuinely charming woman behind the counter at the tax office explains that she must now fax (yes, fax) a note to the customs officials that the sales tax has been paid. “They go past the fax regularly. Your book will be released from customs very soon.”

Monday 13:55
I call UPS to hear the status. I am transferred to the sales department. But they need a shipping number, which I don’t have – only my customs number. No. They cannot transfer the call. No. Their system cannot access customs-clearance numbers. No. This is just not the right number for any help whatsoever.

Monday 14.01
I call UPS again and am transferred to the customs department. I get the proper freight number. No, they cannot transfer me to the sales department. No. They cannot expedite the package. No. This is just not the right number for any help whatsoever.

Monday 14:05
I call UPS again (the operator now recognizes my voice). The sales department checks my freight number. No. The package has not cleared customs. Sorry, nothing they can do about this. I will need to take this up with the customs department.

Monday 14:07
I call UPS (the operator and I chat about bureaucracy and the limitations of modern technology). The customs department asks me to fax my tax receipts to them. After some negotiation, we agree that a scan sent as an e-mail attachment is also a viable legal instrument. At any rate, UPS promises to send a reminder to the Danish customs authorities.

Monday 14:11
We scan all our documentation and send it to the e-mail address provided by our new friend at UPS, Hinna Somia. She (and the operator) are the first sensible people we’ve encountered at UPS.

Monday 14:13
Hinna forwards our mail to Kim Andersen at the tax office.

Monday 17:25:36 +0200
Kim Andersen announces that our book has cleared customs. Clearly, it took Kim from three to five hours to take care of this major task.

Tuesday (all bloody day)
We wait. No book. No e-mails. No nothing.

Wednesday 08:31
I call UPS. Message? The book went on the truck at 06:47 this morning “This is an express package, so it’s getting special priority”.

And I’m silently cursing, “don’t pee on my boots and tell me it’s raining…” Define “express” please…and “priority” too.

I then ask, “Why didn’t the book go out yesterday as you had promised?”

“Promised? Who promised? UPS can’t make promises. We cannot be held accountable for unforseen delays. Besides, your company isn’t registered properly. And even after it cleared customs, we had to wait for an inspector to come by and approve the package.”

“Er…someone from the tax office came by to inspect the package? Yesterday,” I ask, slightly astonished.

“Yes,” came the cocky, self-confident reply.

“Why? I’d expect an inspection to take place BEFORE I paid import duties and tax.

“Don’t tell us how to do our job!” The UPS phone didn’t slam down, but it came damned close…

“Hello??” I asked…but the line was dead.

Wednesday 10:54
The book arrives. The package is unopened. Not sure what any “inspection” might have consisted of…

Aftermath
Gosh, I’ve been receiving books in my company’s name for almost a decade. No problem – the customs people ask me to pay sales tax or import duties and I do. Simple – I do this at the post office when I pick up my package and it takes no time at all. And no one has ever asked my to reregister my company! Why should the procedures for importing a book be so much more difficult when a courier service is involved?

Honestly UPS, how could you possible waste so many people’s time? My goodness, the Kingdom of Denmark has actually lost money on this deal. My tax was DKK 79.70 or about USD 12. But if you work out the salaries for everyone involved it must be at least 10 times this amount). And UPS, why did you lie and say you had “agreed on procedure with my office” when you never called? And I strongly suspect you of lying again when you tell me that a package needs to be inspected after it has been released from customs.

Most importantly, how can you, dear UPS, rationalize delaying a priority shipment for five days after its arrival? What authority have you given Tanja Neerskov have that she has the audacity to tell me my company is improperly registered? (Tanja and Charlotte are what we used to call “skrankepaver” in Danish.

And Amazon.com. Are you aware that I will NEVER EVER EVER use this service again?

Is offshoring ever good?

2009-10-02T13:50:42Z

What are the so-called benefits for a company that offshores? More importantly, what are the dangers?

Why companies go offshore
Mostly, offshoring occurs in order to reduce wages related to folks on an assembly line. In these cases, the only winners are the owners of the company. Yet this form for “profitizing” is a double-edged sword.

When offshoring industrial products, workers are usually not required to think – they probably aren’t even encouraged to do so. But because wages are cheap, production efficiency doesn’t have a high priority. Alas, failure to empower your assembly line to think causes quality problems to remain unnoticed too long. And there will be no manufacturing innovation whatsoever.

How offshoring can kill innovation
Innovation is not invention – although it builds on inventions and the related best-practices that evolve. Specifically, innovation means solving a problem. Here’s an example of assembly line innovation. A woman ran a machine that stamped out rubber parts from a flat mat that was fed into the cutting die. Looking around the production hall, she noticed that her machine was the bottleneck – it was the single slowest operation. She also noticed that the die travelled 6 inches each time a new sheet of rubber entered. Yet the rubber was only 1/4 inch thick. The travel time was considerable, as were the security measures that prevented fingers from getting caught in the machine. She suggested reducing the travel to about 1/2 inch. This was done and total production for the facility increased by over 70%. True story.

Alas, most employees just do what they’re told and don’t ask questions or suggest improvements. So much for in-line innovation.

Offshoring and agile development
Successful offshoring (and outsourcing) also requires the original manufacturer to specify details to an incredibly minute degree. The specification alone can take hundreds or thousands of man-hours. Yet in most instances, this document only serves as a legal cover-my-ass tool when litigation arises because something is not done correctly, not an instrument designed to promote efficiency.

In software development, “agile” is currently the method of choice if you’re really interested in benefiting from the combined wisdom of your team. Most offshoring/outsourcing models don’t allow this, which is why the Ukraine, Romania, and India, are generally awful choices for offshoring of software development, not because of the quality of the work, but because of the lack of feedback and dialog. You want a team that thinks and spots errors in the specification, not one that just follows orders. And ideally, one would think that low-income countries would be better off building their own economies instead of fostering a community of wage slaves.

How to kill a brand
Brand is another issue. Today, Burberry in the UK has offshored all of its clothing production to China, with the exception of its famous trench coats. Georg Jensen “Danish” jewelry is made in Thailand. Even the iconic American Radio Flyer “little red wagon” is now produced in China – and 45 former employees in Chicago are out of work.

Will I buy another Radio Flyer? No. Today, it’s just more plastic junk from China; the brand has been devalued and no longer represents an American company.

Should I buy an expensive Georg Jensen ring from a high-street shop? Or should I travel to Chang Mei and buy one on the street from the same worker who toils at Georg Jensen during the day and files and hammers at home during the evening. “Royal Copenhagen” china is also made in – well – not China, but Thailand.

I’d be interested to hear from folks who can tell me when offshoring is truly in the interest of the company and their customers.

Some thoughts on immortality

2009-09-28T09:24:09Z

My grandfather had a long, good life. He had a successful professional career. He was respected by his peers. He was married for 50 years and raised a fine family.

Carl E. Zibold died in 1965.

Apart from my vague childhood recollections, I have little to remember him by – a few photos and his wallet (I have no idea how I happen to have his wallet). The wallet is a curious microcosm – a driver’s license, an insurance card, a lodge membership, and professional accreditations – the paper ephemera of a distant era.

As is often the case, after a generation or two, folks from the pre-digital age are quietly forgotten, even though they may have impacted on many lives. The artifacts are few, the memories faded. There are only five living family members who ever met my grandfather.

We continue to experiment with social-networking tools, yet I can’t help but wonder what effect this will have on our own “immortality”. Will our digital personae last longer than a human generation or two? Will we be remembered beyond a small family circle? If so, how? And why?

Will we be judged on our number of LinkedIn connections? Or friends on Facebook?

Will we be remembered because of our profile on Crowdvine? Or our musings on Twitter?

What legacy will we leave?

Perhaps some of us will achieve wider recognition because we left the world a better place. Because we contributed actively to moving mankind in a positive direction. Because we understood that personal priorities must ultimately sync with the greater good.

Perhaps immortality depends on the value of our ideas, not the breadth of our network.

What do you think? What DO you think?

Hi Grandpa! Welcome to cyberspace. Who knows where we'll end up? I miss you.

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