10-16-08

TelePresence in public?

Can you imagine when you go into a club or pub or somewhere and the person sat next to you is actually sat somewhere else in the world but has decided to ‘dial-in’ to be there ? Virtual clubbing? Popping out for a drink via your iPhone app? Hmmm. . .

Updated . . . just noticed a ‘what that brings to the table’ non-intended pun from the guy at Cisco !

[Via a 'multimedia news release' with details of the first 'public' TelePresence rooms in conjunction with Tata Communications]

10-07-08

Joining up the dots: Part 1

So, the global economy is experiencing a spot of bother.

Yet online advertising spend in the UK is on the up.

But, advertising itself looks to be pretty doomed these days. So doomed that it’s even starting to point fun at itself.

And over half of social media campaigns implemented by Fortune 1000 companies will fail.

Press releases are starting to feel even more out of place in today’s world of real people and resistance to corporate speak. So much so, the industry is beginning to parody itself and the language we use.

Yet the web is growing all the time and brands want to be a part of it. So what do they do?

1. Make sure that any social media/digital campaign it implements matches the needs of its community as well as itself.

2. Don’t fall into the trap of letting perceptions of short term ‘results’ override longer term, more meaningful ROI from a whole load of effort.

3. Keep focused on innovation and making its products/services better, in all respects (eg customer service).

Just a quick thought as all the dots begin to join up in my mind. Anything to add?

10-01-08

I know I should probably keep working on this, but…

Love this [via here]. That’s me on the right that is, quite a lot of the time.

09-28-08

Blogging FAIL

One of the top rules of blogging: never delete posted content, just update it.

Jason Calcanis has dropped a clanger with his predictions that “50-80% of the venture-backed startups currently operating will shut down or go on life-support (i.e. 3-4 folks working on them) within the next 18 months” and to make matters worse – there’s a big ‘WTF’ resounding around the blogosphere as Silicon Alley Insider and others pulled their posts in which the contents of the original Calcanis email containing the predictions were published.

Perhaps everyone quickly agreed that predicting that 80% of the current start-up community will ‘shut down or go on life support’ was a bit much and not the most optimistic outlook for the industry, by the industry itself?

Here’s Loic wading in, on Seesmic, naturally. . .

09-23-08

Some thoughts on GPS, AR, magic and the technology adoption curve

[Image from tdub303 on Flickr - he uses these to make super cool photos]

Where have I been? What have I been doing? What have I been thinking about? Everywhere. Lots of things. Even more stuff. You could say I’ve had a bit of a blogging dry patch and you’d be right. I’ve been sharing loads of stuff on Twitter, perhaps a little too much, but as you’ll see, I just haven’t been bothered about blogging lately.

So, in order to kick things back off, I thought Id offer up a quick round-up of some stuff I’ve stumbled upon lately, things currently on my radar and just some thoughts I’ve been thinking.

1. Geo-Location/GPS stuff
I cracked and finally bought an iPhone last week. That’s meant I’ve been checking out loads of Apps and thinking much more about the potential of GPS and geo-locational goodies. So far, Vicinity, Twinkle, GPS Tracker and of course Google Maps are all on my homescreen. And I’m well up for trying out a load more. Killer thing that needs building . . . . GPS + Facebook App. Dangerous.

2. Augmented Reality
Iain posted a while back on AR and that rekindled my interest in the area. It kind of ties into GPS stuff of course, then there was that company at TC50 that blew everyone away. Then today I checked this out. Awesome stuff, can’t wait for more exciting things in this space.

Enkin from Enkin on Vimeo.

3. It’s good to be in the audience sometimes
Well not all of us, but most of us. We don’t appreciate what’s going on around us – we’re too close to it. Way too close to it to appreciate it. If we go with the magic analogy that forms the tagline of this blog, then we’re quite literally standing behind the magician and spoiling the illusion. I;ve been doing a fair bit of training recently with all different types of people and that’s been great for making me appreciate what’s going on in the technology world. It’s all happening very very quickly and sometimes I think it would be nice to be in the audience from time to time.

4. There’s still a massive chasm for technology to cross
The technology adoption curve is nothing new. In fact it may even lie behind the name of something I’m working on . Tied into the point above, the tip of the curve is moving super quick, but from what I can see it;s taking time to push things down the curve and gain more early/mid/late majority adoption. Twitter is of course something we geeks love. But has it gone mainstream yet? Nope. This is something (not just Twitter, for all technology products/services) I think about a lot. How do you cross that chasm? What factors need to be in place? Is it simply how good/relevant/magical the product/service is? Hmmm. I’m going to think even harder.

5. Give Twitter back its magic wand
I’m in there all the time and I’ve noticed the following things that have happened. I no longer visit Popurls to get some quick link fixes. I blog less *cough*. I miss outbound SMS so so much. That was the magical bit. Why oph why doesn’t an operator jump in there and basically score the biggest load of love with the early adopter/tech community by striking up a deal with Twitter and taking some of the slack? Just cut out some of those slick adverts or drop a celebrity . . . Orange, Vodafone, O2, 3 or T-Mobile. (And yes I have mentioned you by name in the hope that you’ll pick this up and add it to the nagging thoughts in your mind that it’s a really good idea)

09-02-08

Cringey Microsoft marketing moment

This is unbelievable. So, so cringey – I keep thinking it’s an ironic viral thing. There is so much wrong with this video. “Ease, accessibility and fashion” ? Sorry guys but there’s talking about it and then there’s actually doing it. Trying way too hard.

[via Ars Technica which quite rightly asks if Microsoft should be doing stuff like this. Answer? Just focus on making great products and software that talk for themselves.]

08-31-08

Vodafone *is* listening

Really chuffed today as Gemma (aka Gembo!) from Vodafone has responded to my previous lengthy rant/post about the recent crappy experience I’d had with Vodafone concerning using mobile broadbrand abroad.

She responded in the comments direct and emailed me too and to make sure that everyone who received the original via RSS gets to read what she says I’ve decided to do a fresh post, as well as linking to this in the next comment on the original post. Also, from my point of view, it really has highlighted the need for PR, customer services and other areas of the business involved in a brand’s online presence to be fully integrated and in sync. To be honest I thought I might get an email back from Vodafone’s UK PR agency, not from a forum host at Vodafone itself.

Anyway, here’s how Gemma started her response – which immediately put me at ease and made me feel like I was dealing with a human being:

WOW, what an experience you had there! Firstly I’m glad it’s all sorted out and that you haven’t had to pay that humongous bill.

Secondly I would like to show that Vodafone are listening and address the points you’ve made:

And here’s what she said: (to make things easier to follow, I’ve copied across the original bits of feedback I gave at the end of my post, Gemma’s response underneath point by point and a thought from me under that)

1. Sort out your website so the charges are made explicitly clear for using mobile broadband abroad and what the process is for doing so.

I will defiantly be feeding this back to our online team. I agree with you it’s imperative that our website makes things clear and easy to understand. We are currently in the process of upgrading our online help centre so this is the perfect time for me to give this kind of feedback.

Cool – hopefully you’re asking a lot more people outside the business for feedback too.

2. Make your charges as low as possible. We know you can do it. So do it, before another network beats you to it.

We regularly review our price plans and our call charges. These have recently undergone a big improvement which I see you’re already taking advantage of, £15 for 3GB. I assume here you are talking about our roaming charges for data? We do offer these as low as we can, what we all have to bare in mind here is that Vodafone pay the network you connect to abroad for any usage whilst you are there, we then pass this charge on to our customer. Let’s also remember that we are a business and will add a profit onto these charges. That said I will again feedback you comments and who knows it may just make the difference.

Thanks and yep, understand you’re a business and need to make money – it just seems like there’s a real opportunity there for someone to make the first move and get things sorted. Individually networks in local countries do great deals for people on data – it just feels to me like there’s a real need for collaboration across the borders to get the price down low. 10 years down the line we’ll look back and think how silly all this roaming stuff is I think.

3. Improve your Mac dongle software. There are loads of us using Macs these days. Including a disproportionate number of bloggers and journalists.

We fully understand that a lot of our Mobile Broadband users are MAC users. We do everything we can to support you and if you pop onto our own eForum (http://forum.vodafone.co.uk) you will find additional support, (one of our eForum hosts is a MAC expert!) And yet again I will be feeding this back into the right area of the business.

Thanks for the pointer – I’ve taken a quick look and it looks like it could be helpful. Why didn’t I know about it? Might be an idea to stick a link to it here at the contact us page, as well as on the help page and other places on the site.

You don’t do everything you can though as a business – otherwise the Vodafone site would be fully accessible using Safari, the Mobile Connect software would have exactly the same features on both PC and Mac and things like the problems with Leopard and the application hanging (a problem experienced by myself right now – so this link has been really useful) would have been sorted out much more quickly.

4. Think about using Google maps to showcase network coverage in different countries more effectively. I knew exactly where the villa was I was staying, down to the postcode. Your maps don’t work on a Mac.

I like this idea, a change like this is well out of my scope but I will do some digging to see how feasible this would be and find the right person/people to pass this idea onto.

Great – I’m sure it would work a treat if done right.

5. Use email signatures! Include useful links – I might even think about buying something from you or using one of your services when abroad

Our email customer services team use great signatures, that explain who they are and where they are from (department wise) and they also provide great links to various things, like surveys on our service, latest products, our eForum etc. I think the problem you had was that you had been speaking to a telephone based customer service agent and they aren’t trained or developed in sending emails. They were in effect doing something outside their job role, they probably chose to be a telephone agent for the very reason that they struggle with spelling, typing etc. Regardless of this fact if an agent is offering to provide details of a call by email or letter it should be of a professional yet friendly style. If you would like us to address this with the individual agents then please contact us and we can do so. (To contact us please fill in the required section on our contact us form and in put the code FIT135 in the body of the email, this way it will come through to the eForum Team.)

Both the agents I dealt with were friendly and I think did their job well – up until the point of sending their emails. I didn’t want to email as I had multiple questions and wanted an immediate solution as I was traveling the next day. I’m sure had I done it on email, then I would have had a second set of questions based on the first response, which means more time to arrive at a solution and more typing from me. Plus the original email would have been fairly lengthy I imagine. I understand what you’re saying about people being good on the phone but not so good on email – but I still think that a basic level of quality and the inclusion of signatures etc needs to be implemented. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I want to initiate a customer service experience with a phonecall and back it up with an email. Also – if I do email – I don’t want to use a browser based form. I’d like to use my own email app (mobile/desktop) just in case something crashes.

6. Be human. In both cases the call centre staff were really friendly, this didn’t come across in the emails. Also – apologise if you screw up. The fact I was told that it was a gesture of goodwill really wound me up. Let people in call centres use their names.

Our call centre agents are allowed to be themselves and it is fact encouraged. We want the contact you have with Vodafone to be a relaxed and friendly one. Again this is another issue I will report back on. I would like to say a big “SORRY” to you at this point for the screw up. I know it may not mean as much as it was prompted but I promise you I mean it. J

I appreciate that. And believe you. As I said, both agents were really friendly and human – the lady I spoke to about the billing error just chose the wrong phrase in the situation and I think this was prompted by a manager she spoke (at length) to. She then unfortunately further annoyed me with the email.

7. Train your staff how to use email and don’t be afraid to use it. Most people want confirmation that isn’t sat on your system and it represents a great chance for engagement with customers.

I agree with you here, I like to have confirmation by email. What I would say is that if you do prefer to have contacts in writing then you are probably best suited to our email contact centre. (Use link above for this.)

See above. I think if you asked, there’s a lot of people like me that like to speak to a person to get an issue resolved immediately, then want confirmation of information given on email as a back up.

8. Just like the banks do – don’t let huge abnormal bills run up on people’s accounts. Call them (or email them!) to ask them if everything is OK before those thousand odd pound bills happen and you create unhappy people like me.

We already have a system in place that prevents high bills from occurring. Clearly in your case this didn’t work. We have a department call “Credit Alerts”, their job it to monitor account usage compared to past usage and alert customers, by call, text or voicemail when the usage is unusual. If we don’t get confirmation from the customer a restriction is placed to prevent further charges being run up. At times a part payment towards the bill can be requested to reduce the charges back to a more reasonable rate. This service is supplementary and is not guaranteed to prevent high usage. Networks have a delay of up to 72 hours in the UK and as much as 3 months when outside of the UK, this means that we may not receive the call data in time to warn you.

Fair enough. It didn’t work this time. Next time it might I guess, if you fix the system and make it better.

9. Train more of your staff on mobile broadband/data. Or have a crack team that all calls get passed over to, if so make that team big enough for the number of people now using it.

This is already in place, our staff are undergoing further training on all of our data products and we will continually review and develop knowledge in this area. We also have what we call “product wizards” who know everything there is to know about a particular product/service and are on hand at all time to supports our agents.

Great. Everyone should be a product wizard really if they are in customer service for a product, right?

10. Listen, using social media and simple things like Google Alerts. We’ll see whether or not I’m right on that one. Over to you, Vodafone.

Nice suggestion and again something that is already in place, my team search through Google alerts, online forums and our own eForum to provide help and support through social media channels. I hope you agree with me when I say we’re doing a fantastic job.

That’s great that you do so – evidenced by your response I guess. I really appreciate the fact that you’ve responded to my post and as such feel a lot warmer to Vodafone now. You’ve put a human face on things and made me feel like my whinge was just a little bit worthwhile. Beyond Google alerts and monitoring forums – have you tried stuff like Twitter Search? (check out this global search of “hate vodafone“, this one one for all mentions of “vodafone” within 100 miles of London or this one for all negative mentions of “Vodafone” within 100 miles of London complete with a sad face!)

Also – if you can, try and respond to something as soon as you see it. We’re on Sunday now and I posted on Tuesday – that’s a lot of time in web time. To a highly cynical person like me – it makes me think either someone has emailed the link to you by stumbling across it, you’ve had to spend ages crafting a response and get it signed off and approved by a gazillion people (which strips the ‘human’ out of it a bit) or that you’re dealing with such a volume of complaints and other issues like this that you’ve only just got round to dealing with me. All bad things that are avoidable with a slightly quicker response.

Responding early and getting into the conversation as it is happening also means that you get to have your say while people are listening. I’ve posted since and the only way people would see your response if I hadn’t done this post is if they stumbled on the post via Google, if they subscribed to the feed for the comments on the original post or remembered to come back and check to see if Vodafone had responded.

All the above aside, I want to thank Gemma for spending the time to respond to me in such detail. I’m a decent human being (I hope) and am up for things being constructive – so I’m really glad that I heard back from Vodafone and that someone so ‘human’ got back to me. A great example of how to engage with people online I reckon.

08-26-08

Using Vodafone 3G mobile broadband abroad? My £2,579 experience

Over the last few weeks I’ve been away a fair bit and because I run my own web-based business (Shed) I need to have fast, reliable broadband whilst I’m away. At the beginning of the year I went back to Vodafone (after leaving for T-Mobile a few years back after getting sick of the often unpredictable and always high monthly charges) and signed up for a 12-month mobile broadband contract at £15 a month for 3 gigabytes of data.

Before I left I checked in on the Vodafone website to see what the costs of using the dongle abroad (in Portugal as it happens) would be and much o my frustration, it wasn’t really clear. There was (and still is) also much talk of these costs coming right down for roaming data charges so I thought I’d call Vodafone customer services to make sure everything was 100% crystal clear and I was set up to pay the least amount possible.

After lots of discussion on the phone (there were lots of pauses and moments of uncertainty left, right and centre about mobile broadband in the UK, let alone using it abroad) I established that the best thing for me to do is as follows:

1. Change my contract temporarily for an extra £10
2. Pay £10 (£8.50 + VAT) for every 24 hours of use
3. Don’t go over 50MB in that 24 hour period

But – that came with the big caveat – you have to make sure that you are using the Vodafone Portugal network otherwise you will be charged at £10.28 per MB! Now I’m using the dongle on a Mac and somewhat predictably the software that comes with the dongle in a bit flakey – meaning that to access my modem I click on the app icon a few times, watch it bounce but not open, then open the network connection via network preferences. So, a question: “How am I supposed to know what network the dongle is connecting to?” Answer – “Take the sim out your dongle and put it in a mobile phone to see what network it connects to”. Response: “But, I am on T-Mobile and my phone is locked so I can’t check”. Answer ” Call T-Mobile and ask them for an unlock code”. Fail. In the end I used my wife’s phone (she’s on Vodafone) to check when I was out there.

Just to cover my back, because I’ve seen loads of issues with data before (including Ian’s CPW debacle), I asked for a confirmation email from Vodafone and this is what I received.

From: Customerservice@vodafone.co.uk
Date: 1 August 2008 10:45:14 BST
To: hopkins.jonathan@gmail.com
Subject: Vodafone Customer Services

on preferred network, vodafone potugal telecel the charges for using your mobile bb abroad is 9.99 p 24hrs as ive changed your pp to mobile bb roaming @ 30 p m. if you wander onto a different network the charges will be 10.28 p mb from vodafone

Yes, that’s official communication from Vodafone to its customers. No Dear Jonathan, Dear Sir, Dear customer. No email signature. No helpful links. No ‘have a great holiday’. Just the words. The absolute bare minimum number of keystrokes. And to make matters worse, despite trying to get off the line, I had to sit and listen to it being typed.

Anyway, appalling email aside, I get to Portugal, check that the network is Vodafone Portugal and fire up the dongle. Nothing. Absolutely nada. So, I call up Vodafone and because I recently changed contracts, a bar has been put back on my contract preventing me from using it abroad. Doh. I called to change contracts to a roaming one and they put a bar on. Ok, onwards and upwards, the bar gets removed and everything works fine. So, I use my mobile broadband and feel all good about mobile broadband again and the fact I can sit in the mountains of Portugal by the pool and do all my favourite web stuff.

Then, I get home. Everything is still working fine until yesterday my dongle stopped working. It wouldn’t connect to a carrier and I called Vodafone. After a big long winded explanation about the problem, I found out that my account was suspended and the person on the other end of the phone went a bit quiet. She said she needed to check something and need to put me on hold. So, there I am on hold for what seems like an eternity, I actually started to wonder if she’s hung up on me but then she came on the line and said very sheepishly “I’m sorry to have to tell you this but your current bill stands at £2579.77″. Yes, that’s right. I owed Vodafone over two and a half thousand pounds. It was surreal.

I then obviously outlined the whole situation and explained I’d done absolutely everything as instructed and she disappeared again. More hold music. More waiting. She then comes back on the line and tells me that ‘as a goodwill gesture’ Vodafone is crediting my account and reducing the bill down to £45.44. I then ask for an email to confirm everything discussed on the phone, partly for peace of mind and also to see if it’s from the same mickey mouse school of email that the last one came from.

Which it was:

From: Customerservice@vodafone.co.uk
Date: 25 August 2008 20:40:14 BST
To: hopkins.jonathan@gmail.com
Subject: Vodafone Customer Services

Dear MR Hopkins This is a confirmation email reg what we have disscuessd on your call earlyer to vodafone. there were charges accourde on ur broadband usage while you were roaming in Portugal. The charges where 257.977 but then that have been reversed and 2434.88 has been taken from that bill. the out standing balance now is only 45.44 and your price plan has been changed back to mobile broadband 3GB 12 month contact for 15. Thanx Vodafone

This time at least I got a ‘Dear MR Hopkins’, some more punctuation and a ‘Thanx Vodafone.’ But still no signature, horrendous typos and a glaring error on the first amount. Just for clarification, that figure was £2579.77.

THe reason Vodafone gave for the error was that the network in Portugal had charged them for the data and they had passed that charge directly onto me. Or something like that. Once I had confirmation that the charges were to be dropped, I wasn’t that interested. Vodafone screwed up, they didn’t even really apologise for doing so and to make matters worse, if my two emails are anything to go by they’re communicating with their customers really badly.

So, Vodafone, if you’re listening, here’s some feedback:

1. Sort out your website so the charges are made explicitly clear for using mobile broadband abroad and what the process is for doing so.
2. Make your charges as low as possible. We know you can do it. So do it, before another network beats you to it.
3. Improve your Mac dongle software. There are loads of us using Macs these days. Including a disproportionate number of bloggers and journalists.
4. Think about using Google maps to showcase network coverage in different countries more effectively. I knew exactly where the villa was I was staying, down to the postcode. Your maps don’t work on a Mac.
5. Use email signatures! Include useful links – I might even think about buying something from you or using one of your services when abroad
6. Be human. In both cases the call centre staff were really friendly, this didn’t come across in the emails. Also – apologise if you screw up. The fact I was told that it was a gesture of goodwill really wound me up. Let people in call centres use their names.
7. Train your staff how to use email and don’t be afraid to use it. Most people want confirmation that isn’t sat on your system and it represents a great chance for engagement with customers.
8. Just like the banks do – don’t let huge abnormal bills run up on people’s accounts. Call them (or email them!) to ask them if everything is OK before those thousand odd pound bills happen and you create unhappy people like me.
9. Train more of your staff on mobile broadband/data. Or have a crack team that all calls get passed over to, if so make that team big enough for the number of people now using it.
10. Listen, using social media and simple things like Google Alerts. We’ll see whether or not I’m right on that one. Over to you, Vodafone.

08-21-08

UK bloggers and social media thoughts

(21/8 Quick update – in my haste to post I forgot to include the response from Shiny Media to the TechCrunch UK post referenced below that is well worth reading)

Wow. It’s all kicking off as the UK debates the success of (or lack of) UK blogs in making money and achieving high levels of traffic. Head on over to the original post on TechCrunch UK and get involved in some of those comments. Some very interesting stuff and personally, I think there’s another issue at stake here that this gives some really good insight into.

Scenario . . . You work in PR. You have a client that gets digital, wants to engage in social media and you’re all set to go, BUT – to your client only UK blogs, websites and other forms of social media matter. That’s because they have money that needs to be spent on the UK. The US team has money too, but they (and their US based agency) look after ‘the US’ and will handle the ‘big stuff’. You have to focus solely on UK bloggers and UK online media but the numbers don’t quite add up and there’s not really a decent selection of bloggers you’d recommend engaging with, or that you can find.

What’s the solution? Well, if you go with Ashley on the TechCrunch article then it looks quite complicated and will take a lot of time for the UK to catch up. A shorter term solution I think would be to make it easier to find decent UK blogs so that the space is much more clearly defined. For example BritBlog is closed now and you can’t search by country on blogcatalog. Yes, I know loads of blogs and bloggers through active participation in social media and occasionally someone will spend a bit of time pulling together lists of UK bloggers (often pulled from US/global lists) – but on the whole it feels a bit touch and go sometimes.

The need for absolute total integration of digital teams, budgets and social media activity is getting stronger all the time. There are no regional boundaries on the internet – it’s one big lovely thing and people don’t care which country their media comes from. They’re too busy getting everything for free and participating on the web.

So – the question is, do we try and work with clients to help unify their digital presence and belief in non-UK online media (if it’s important and valuable to them) or do we work together to try and make it easier for ourselves to establish a bigger, better UK blogging community and discover more niche, influential blogs? I think we should do both, but then it’s easy to say that and there’s loads of cool stuff happening already to help fuel the UK blogger community.

The next question is how and what we do in the meantime. Or you could just sack off ‘targeting’ altogether and focus on making your clients product or marketing so good that people will talk about it whatever country they’re in, without prompting.

08-21-08

Top Pages on Facebook (minus all the entertainment stuff)

No Man’s Blog published a list of the top Pages on Facebook today. So, I thought I’d pull out all the Pages from the top 100 that don’t involve celebrities, bands, musicians, TV shows or films and have a little poke around. The list is pretty interesting.

Top Pages on Facebook (Excluding celebrities, bands, musicians, TV shows, films or generic things)

1. (5) Apple Students 560,568
2. (9) Victoria’s Secret PINK 480,854
3. (13) Facebook 442,529
4. (15) Windows Live Messenger 427,058
5. (18) Top Gear 411,455
6. (32) YouTube 334,889
7. (36) Coca-Cola 297,015
8. (37) OREO cookies 296,506
9. (41) PostSecret 282,332
10. (43) adidas Originals 276,125
11. (49) FERRERO ROCHER 251,529
12. (58) Red Flavour Pringles 231,864
13. (66) NBA 218,873
14. (69) Ferrari 217,841
15. (70) MTV 217,688
16. (74) H&M 210,098
17. (88) Wikipedia 185,205
18. (89) Red Bull 185,072
19. (90) Mcdonalds 182,787
20. (99) Coke 179,346
21. (100) Playboy 178,558

(Number in brackets is where they come in the Top 100 including all of the above)

(Image credit/link to the Ferrero Rocher Page, number 49 overall)

That’s it. Just thought I’d share. Might revisit with some thoughts in the near future – am going to have a look at them all and work out what the VALUE is in being a fan, if any. Plus – I want to find out the extent to which the Pages are driven by the brand itself or its fans.

Let me know if you have any thoughts/experiences etc, or just want to point out I’ve missed one.

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