20 GOTO 10, RUN

Some back-and-forth with the American Express interactive voice response (IVR) yesterday.

  • Me: “Representative.”
  • AXP: “I understand you’d like to speak to a representative. If you’d like to report a lost or stolen card, say or press one. For all other inquiries, say or press two.”
  • Me: “Two.”
  • AXP: “OK. To get you to the right place, please enter or say your fifteen digit account number.”
  • Me: “I don’t have it.”

Bad Customers

I learned about bad customers back when I had P&L responsibility for an online store. Once, we ran a gift with purchase promotion where the rule was a minimum $0.01 sale, while supplies last. It was fine, the GWP was out-of-season overstock that had a higher carrying than disposal cost. So we decided to get …

The “last mile” in social business

I started my consulting career by focusing on electric and natural gas utilities. At the time, most utilities were thinking through the impact of potential industry deregulation which at the highest level would unbundle generation, transmission, and distribution functions. Most companies were more than happy to consider the prospect of removing residential consumers from their …

Using Twitter at scale

In three short years, we’ve witnessed the evolution of Twitter from a way to exchange “inconsequential information between friends” to a business communication tool with a US$1 billion valuation. As Twitter’s user base has grown into the millions, companies have followed their consumers onto the service and started participating in conversations. You’re already familiar with …

Who “must die” now?

The title is borrowed, of course, from Bob Garfield’s ongoing digital hatefest of Comcast, complete with its own Facebook group.  But rather than singling any telecom provider out, I think things are in bad shape all around.  Check this out. Last week, I had Comcast TV and Verizon FIOS (internet, phone) installed.  Comcast was quick, …

Verizon Wireless and strange BREW

I have a friend who just can’t get competent help from Verizon Wireless.  See, for the past couple of months she has been receiving strange SMS messages to her phone that consist of a bunch of code, prefaced by the word "BREW." Now she’s pretty sure on why she’s getting these; about a year ago, …

Three strikes for Comcast Triple Play

My Comcast service is out at home.  I am a triple play subscriber.  This means: No TV (not a big deal) No internet access (a hassle) No telephone (potentially a big deal) Here’s the transcript of my chat session.  A quick summary:  "Oh hai.  Can’t help.  Here’s some spam.  Ok bye." user Peter_ has entered …

Update: Thomas and Friends recall

  I’ve been recalled    Originally uploaded by Pete Kim. About five weeks ago, toy manufacturer RC2 announced a recall of Thomas and Friends parts – mostly painted red.  It took me a couple of weeks to find and send our James #5 back; yesterday I got this email. Pretty good customer service, especially for …

IBM lost records: Part 2

OK, so it was nice of IBM to send a letter to former employees as a heads up and offer a year of credit monitoring service. But does it change your opinion if you know that:– they sent the letter seven weeks after mainstream media reported on it?– they sent letters to other former employees …