The show’s writers and producers get extra bonus points from me for taking on the issue of healthcare, and having the stones to come right and say, “This is a business, and we need to make money.” They even couch the message in a scenario that most people should be able to appreciate from both sides. Very timely given all the discourse surrounding healthcare reform.

44 minutes, well worth it.

My good intentions were met with a lot of headshaking and a terse, “No, line’s full.” I apologized, and started to explain that I was just trying to help him out, and he repeated the same answer in the same cold tone. I took the cart off the end of the line, put it in the corral, and headed back to my car.

I didn’t even get to the car before I decided that, had that been one of my employees, I would have fired him on the spot.

From my perspective as the consumer, this gentleman couldn’t have done more to make me awful. He pointed a mistake I made, and blew off my explanation. I even apologized to him, and he still chastized my actions.

I walked away feeling like I had done wrong, like I had acted foolishly. No one likes making a mistake, but he only exacerbated my feelings by dismissing me again when presented with my explanation.

Having moved passed the experience, the business owner in me kicked into gear. I would be utterly mortified to know that one of my employees has left a customer feeling the way I did.

In this age of abundance, every consumer knows that they have a million options when it comes to just about anything. As a vendor, you simply cannot afford to give them excuses to look elsewhere. Forget being the stellar standout in your field, this is a minimum requirement simply to compete.

There is only one right answer for the employee in this situation: just say “thank you.” Wait for the customer to walk out of sight, pull the cart off the end, and go back to your job. I don’t care how much work they create for you, the customer has zero clue when it comes to the intricacies of shopping cart retrieval. And justifiably so: it’s not his job. I use the term “intricacies” here in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, but the same reality applies to almost any job.

The road to market failure surely begins where good (or at least neutral) consumer intentions meet employee apathy and negativity. If you can’t save the bad apple, cut it off.

I couldn’t find an index of all of them, and I wanted to watch them all in chronological order, so here you go. If there are videos for the presentations I’m missing (here’s the full presentation schedule), please let me know so I can link them.

Taking your Site from One to One Million Users by Kevin Rose

Introducing Atlas: A Visual Development Tool for creating Web Applications by Francisco Tolmasky

Start-up Metrics that Matter by Dave McClure

Branding and Marketing Essentials for Your Web App by Alex Hunter

Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk

The Future of HTML5 by Bruce Lawson

You-Centric: The Future of Browsing by Aza Raskin

The Future of the Cloud by Simon Wardley

Getting support meant a huge telephone system to navigate, long wait times, and typically routed you to India. Never had need of a guy on-site (thank god!), but I did have to wait in a DMV-style line for close to two hours once to return the set-top box and transfer the account to my roommate when I moved out. Honestly, couldn’t I just mail the thing in and transfer the account over the phone? It’s not a bank account, why do I have to do it in-person?

So after I got married, I decided to try my luck with Verizon. No cable service obviously, so I had to go with DirecTV for television (Fios still not available in my area). Cheaper than cable, but unreliable in windy or stormy weather. DSL connections are okay, also cheaper than cable, but are a pain to use with a home network. PPPoE is garbage.

This past week, the home phone line dies. We had no dial tone, and anyone calling in got a busy signal. Interestingly, the DSL keeps working, but sporadically drops out. I learned that a disconnect in the middle of a Rambo-inspiring killing spree in Team Fortress 2 is the most infuriating way to get bumped off the net.

After their online repair request system completely flopped — submitting a help request would tell me that my session expired, despite logging in 15 seconds before — I used an automated phone system to request a repair (not sure if I like or hate that). This was Tuesday; Ms. Automaton promised me that the problem would be solved by Friday (today) at 8:00 pm. Ms. Automaton follows up with me on Thursday, saying I had to be available all day Friday for the technician. Super…

They come rolling in around 7:00 pm, and I only know that because I called the service department an hour beforehand to ask if they forgot about me. It seems that damnable Murphy decided to jump into the fray on this one, as the technician called saying he had a dial tone. I pick up my handset and, sure enough, I hear expletives coming out of my mouth.

I reiterate how that hasn’t been the case in over a week, hoping he’ll investigate further. He says it will be no problem…for the technician who will pick up the case tomorrow morning…before noon…which almost guarantees that I’ll be getting a call before I’m out of bed. Apparently that 8:00 pm deadline includes the time it takes for them to drive the truck back to the service station, pack up, and go home.

Don’t let me keep you!

Oh and did I mention that this is the second time this line has given you trouble?

Okay, now I’m pissed and wondering, “Couldn’t I just drop their service, keep the DirecTV, and get a basic cable modem package?”

Why share all this, aside from venting? To illustrate an opportunity.

Out of my fury, the question presents itself: “Would I leave my current provider(s) to go to one that may not offer as much, but definitely treats me well?” Personally, I know my answer is a resounding yes, and if I had the means I’d be willing to bet that a good portion of you guys agree with me. I don’t, so that’s an opportunity for someone else.

Everyone has horror stories from the phone and cable companies. No one likes dealing with them because they are big bureaucracies that make everything way more painful than it needs to be. This is a massive opportunity for differentiation. Any one of them — or a new player — could step up with a halfway decent product offering while nailing the customer service element, and make serious inroads to the markets of the others.

You are likely not a cable or phone company. If you are, quit fighting over your stupid “value adds” and focus on delivering cheap, effective service. We all know your “bundle” deals are a load of crap. Major market share to the first one who can figure out that selling cheap internet access by itself is a good idea!

Here’s the takeaway for anyone else: If you’re not happy with something in your world, chances are you’re not the only one. Take a step back and see if you can do something about it. I try to apply the same approach to every pain point in my life. I look for the opportunity in what’s wrong or missing in a given situation. Do it enough, and you’ll eventually find one that you’re in a position to try and solve.

Aside: This is also why I’m not a big fan of government involvement in anything. The regulation reduces or eliminates the opportunity to try something new, different, and possibly a whole lot better.

Update 9-19-09: They called at 4:00 pm to let me know that they’ve identified the issue “in the Verizon network,” but it won’t be fixed until Monday. My gut tells me the lazy-ass I chatted with on Friday probably could have done what this guy did today, allowing today’s guy to actually fix the problem.

However through the tribulations of one of my testers, I found out that Comcast goes the extra mile for users of their comcast.net webmail. Unlike most setups, where spam is simply redirected to a spam-specific folder, Comcast will delete the message outright, without issuing any kind of notice to the sender or recipient.

Truly, above and beyond (belief).

Of all the lousy IT practices I’ve seen over the years, this one takes the cake. No spam filter is perfect, so it’s guaranteed that they are dropping legitimate emails (case-and-point: I’m losing Fwd:Vault account emails). Plus it appears they default to a “highly suspicious” mode with newer systems, as fwdvault.com, my IP address, and my DNS records are completely fresh and unblemished.

Finally, the sheer size of their operation means that getting a hold of anyone to actually fix the problem when it happens to you is virtually zero. I’d go so far as to say that they can get away with this nonsense precisely because they are a large ISP. As a former “your company IT guy,” I can imagine getting at least an earful, and at worst a pink slip, if I were caught doing this.

Despite my astonishment, I couldn’t deny reality. Through my logs I watched Fwd:Vault’s mail server find their systems, connect, and deliver the message and get a 250 response code (i.e. all good). Then over in my comcast.net inbox I’d get exactly nada, ditto for the spam folder. Since the actual delivery had no technical issue, I had zero clue as to the cause of the problem. I wasn’t on any blacklists, the IP was static, and my DNS records were in good order, including a reverse DNS record with my hosting service.

Fortunately, it seems that someone in the trenches at Comcast is fighting the good fight, as I took two long-shot attempts today and it seems one of them paid off. Here’s what I did, hopefully it works for you.

1. Use the feedback form at comcastsupport.com
I tried to retrace my steps on how I found this one, but their sites are so damn convoluted I kept going in circles. However I know I started from inside the web mail interface, aka their “SmartZone”.

(See kids? That’s what we call irony. Can you say, “irony?”)

Whatever, here’s the link. You don’t need to log in to use the form:

http://www.comcastsupport.com/forms/net/sccfeedback.asp

I selected Spam or Junk Mail in the checkboxes and wrote something to the effect of:

I am not receiving mail from example.com in my Comcast email. I own and operate the mail server for this domain and have confirmed through my logs that the message is delivered properly (response code 250) to Comcast MX servers.

My tests delivered via the server mx.comcast.net (IP 00.00.00.00). It’s been over 24 hours and I have not received a bounce, nor is anything showing up in my inbox or spam folder.

As I have nothing else to go on, I am looking for help from your end.

I did not receive any reply, however I also took another step…

2. Use their RBL Removal Form
This should only apply if your mail server has actually been blocked by Comcast, in which case you would likely see an error code of 550 in your logs. If your server picks up the full response from Comcast, you may also get additional helpful information as outlined in their list of custom mail delivery error codes.

None of this applied to me, as the connection and delivery went off without a hitch. Still, I figured it was worth a shot; a bureaucracy this big is bound to have systems running into one another.

I sent in a request to be removed from their RBL by way of this form:

http://www.comcastsupport.com/Forms/NET/blockedprovider.asp

Most of the information will depend on your setup, however I did check the boxes for Implemented technology to filter or prevent transmission of spam and Changed the rDNS records to reflect a consistent and non-dynamic setting just in case. I included text similar to what I outlined earlier in the Issue Description box.

I saw emails coming through less than 30 minutes after sending this message. However, I sent the feedback first, followed by a brief online chat with their support, who directed me to the RBL form. All told it was at least an hour between my first step and the delivered message.

Update: I received this message back in response to my RBL request…

Thank you for contacting Comcast Customer Security Assurance. We have received and reviewed your RBL removal request.

Below each IP address you submitted in your request, we have included the result of our research. Please do not reply to this message.

[IP address(es)]

We have received your request for removal from our inbound blocklist. After investigating the issue, we have found that the IP you provided for removal is currently not on our blocklist.

We need the IP address currently blocked to further investigate this issue. The IP address is a number separated by decimals and is located in an error code starting with “550″ in the returned email from Comcast. You can learn more about how to identify a blocked IP by visiting our Frequently Asked Question page at:
http://www.comcast.net/help/faq/index.jsp?faq=SecurityMail_Policy18667

Please verify the IP(s) and resubmit your request to http://www.comcastsupport.com/rbl

So it looks like the RBL request didn’t do anything. Unless it did, and some numb-nut at Comcast was covering for their idiotic policies.

My gut tells me that I caught a particularly helpful support person manning the feedback desk who was able to punch the few keys it took to rectify the problem. If that’s the case, thanks for the help, and I hope the rest of you get to run into him/her as well. I sent the message around 2:00 pm on a Monday.

You can find more helpful information, including a link to the Blacklist Removal Request Form, on the Comcast Postmaster Site.

Best advice I can give: encourage your users to switch to Gmail.

I thought unsubscribing from legitimate mailing lists was already pretty easy, but Google decided that one step was still one too many. The usability focus these guy extrude is mind-blowing at times.

If you’re curious, that “Learn more” link heads to a Gmail Help article. It just discusses why they did it, and nothing about how. So it’s less than helpful if you run a mailing list and are looking to leverage this feature for yourself. If anyone finds out how to tap into it, please comment or email me.

However, in most cases the decision to fire a customer stems from one or both of the following basic scenarios:

1. The client is a calculable drain on resources (i.e. the client is a net negative income)
2. The client is a complete pain in the a**

My personal feeling is that both situations grant justifiable cause to at least consider dropping the customer. In the case of A, something is seriously screwed up with the terms of the relationship. You initially charged too little or promised too much, or the client somehow wrangled you into that position after the fact. Whatever the case, the relationship has to be balanced or eliminated.

Scenario B is self explanatory. In addition to generating a massive amount of stress and anxiety around the office, these cases often lead to Scenario A.

In short, I would try to repair a relationship in Scenario A, but I would get rid of a B client as fast as humanly possible.

Today a friend presented me with Scenario C, which is a landmine for businesses.

The web developer for my friend’s company dropped them as a client recently. In the Dear Jon email on the matter, they stated that the relationship was “no longer engaging for less than $XX per month.”

*Smack* No! Bad web developer!

Let’s put aside the possibility that it was cover speech for the aforementioned Scenarios A and B and assume that the profit margin was the primary reason at work here. Unless there’s another con in the relationship to point to — perhaps toeing the line on B — this is never ever a good reason to drop a client.

Businesses grow by building on past success, and you have your clients to thank for the opportunity to create that success. Dropping smaller clients for bigger fish is a helluva way to say “thank you” to clients who helped get you started and/or grow.

No matter how awesome the work that my friend’s company received, that developer will only get bad reviews from here on out. Referrals, both good and bad, are the most powerful advertising you can’t buy. I’m on several business networks, and participants are often asking for web help. This developer has actually come up in a few cases. Guess what the response will be the next time someone asks about my experience with them?

And consider the payoff to the developer. There are always bigger fish, so this practice only helps engender a reputation as an “ambulance chaser” of sorts. It’s a clear indicator that money is your first, last, and only motivation, and no one likes working with a company that’s purely concerned with the bottom line.

You generate bad blood, and only get the opportunity to make more money in return (Which you had to begin with! Expand, hire more people, work harder!). There’s no way you come out looking like anything other than a money-grabber.

Firing a customer is fine, but you better make sure you have your head on straight before doing so.

He’s got a good regular column called Dave Says, answering questions about personal finance and business (with a focus on entrepreneurs and SOHO’s). The following came from the latest post, and I thought it stood out as a gem for anyone who’s their own sales force:

Dear Dave,
What’s the key to becoming a great salesman?
Brent

Dear Brent,
I can sum it up in one word – serving. And don’t think for a second that serving means being subservient. I’m talking about being proactive, and making an effort to ensure that customers and potential customers alike are served well. Serving means you’re excited about what you have to offer, and you believe you’ve got a great product at a great price. It means you’re determined your customer is going to have a great experience, and if you happen to hit a bump in the road you will take care of it in a way that will make them forget it ever happened.

Serving is an attitude. You have to provide goods or services in a way that makes your customers willing to trade their time or money – things that are very precious to them – to interact with you and your business. You can pressure people if you want, but that’s going to lead to a dull and frustrating life of one-shot deals. But if you serve people well, you’ll not only have clients for life but they’ll also send all of their friends your way.

If you help enough people, Brent, and make that your first order of business, you’ll never have to worry about money. That’s a different attitude, isn’t it? But I’ve got news for you – it works!
- Dave

There’s a feed for all the Dave Says articles.

Fwd:Vault’s claim to fame is the marriage of email with backups, eliminating the software in the middle (details in the launch announcement and the official site). Consequently, how the addresses are arranged from the systems end is critically important. The signup process and basic use instructions must make it clear where and how to send requests to store and retrieve data. Two addresses could confuse the issue, but then again so could one (“Hello, CS Rep, my request for my stored document got stored as a new item instead…”). I see this issue as one of the most fundamental hurdles I’ve faced with the system yet, so I sat down and laid out pros and cons for each. I came up with the following lists…

Arguments for 1 Address:

• Simpler usage process overall
• Less instructions required
• Simpler mail headers — no need to worry about different reply-to in storage receipts; less likely to be ID’d as spam

Arguments for 2 Addresses:

• Cleanly separates store/recover processes
• No processing logic to “guess” message intent
• Simpler code logic — less chance for errors/bugs in general

When I sat down and compared the lists, the decision to use a single email address became a no-brainer. Here’s the trick: do you see the natural break occurring in those lists, making the decision so easy?

As the post title indicates, its all a matter of perspective. Each list represents problems and benefits for entirely different sets of people. If you still don’t see it, reread each bullet, then ask yourself, “Who is this actually a problem for?” Easy use, less instructions, and simpler mail headers are all benefits to the user, while separation of processes, message analysis, and bugs are all problems that the developer can overcome with enough time and attention.

In short, if I chose two addresses instead of one, I’d be robbing the user of a better experience in exchange for saving myself some development effort. This of course turns around and robs me of more users down the road, effectively nullifying any short term gain in time I might have. In an age of endless choice, the best overall experience always wins.

When putting together any product or service for any target audience, tie always goes to the customer. If it improves the experience, and costs of both time and money are within reason, then you should always go the extra mile. Long tail economics will pay back that effort in spades over time.

Enter the NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner, which I recently purchased to help eliminate my paper bloat. Scans full-size pages, business cards, and all manner of receipts. Then it will catalog them for you. Nice.

I of course was one of the lucky ones to run into a weird install issue. The system uses a trimmed down version of Microsoft SQL Server to store its data, and the server simply would not install. A quick online chat with a customer support rep from The Neat Company, and a tech was remotely diagnosing the problem in a few minutes. No hoops, no “check your cables” nonsense, just a few up front questions and then she was on it. I was honestly impressed with her speed and professionalism.

Until we diagnosed the problem, anyway. Allow me to summarize the end of our exchange. (We used LogMeIn Rescue—great software—and I did not realize until afterwards that chat logs are not saved locally. Lesson learned.) While attempting to run a fixup batch file, she consulted with her manager on an error that popped up. The meat of the message was that wmiprvse.exe hit an error at a “procedure entry point” in fastprox.dll. I don’t speak Microsoftish fluently, but she was helpful enough to point out that the core problem lay with my installation of Windows Management Instrumentation, or WMI for short. This was a specialized issue, would require direct intervention from Microsoft staff to correct, and I would have to contact Microsoft to fix the problem.

The end result: I was on my own to fix the problem.

At that point, I had entered the feared “other guy zone.” This is what you enter when you have an issue that offers an “out” to the support line you called. You know, “It’s not us, it’s the other guy. Our [printer / router / hardware] merely uncovered a preexisting issue with your existing [operating system / internet connection / software], and you’ll have to contact [insert vendor name here] to get the problem rectified.” In a former life I did phone support, and I continue to provide direct support to end users in homes and businesses, so I’ve been on both ends of this conversation countless times.

The problem here is obvious: with the “right” problem (or the “right” explanation from the poor end user), your can end up in an endless loop of support calls. These problem seems to exist just outside the boundaries of whichever vendor to whom you are talking. [A] refers you to [B], who refers you back to [A]. God help you if [A] refers to [B] who refers to [C]; I advise you throw you up the white flag right and just return the product. Your remaining mental faculties may be at risk if [D] enters the picture.

The reality, of course, is in the middle. Some problems really are outside of the control of [vendor], but there are also plenty of times where [vendor] is simply being lazy. The customer is stuck in a Möbius strip of support teams, each blaming the next. If anyone is going to break the customer out, one of them is going to have to step up to the plate, take charge, and see to it that the problem is fixed. Otherwise the customer will eventually give up, return the product, and send their business elsewhere.

As end users, we are all screaming the next question: “Why don’t companies recognize this? Now, why doesn’t every company take this to heart in their support structure? Why do we hear endless horror stories about ‘customer service’ that’s anything but?”

Meanwhile, a lot of support guys respond to this line of discussion with something to the tune of, “The customer bought it, they ought to take responsibility for making it work.”

For the support reps out there, your end user question is a non-starter: all they want to do is use your widget, they could care less about how it’s done. The fact that they spent money to purchase your widget is evidence of this fact. They bought a product to simplify something in the life. Did you ever buy a product to make your life more complex?

For you end users, banging your head on the wall while on hold, let’s go back to my WMI issue. Technology is a series of dependent systems, one part builds on another. The Neat Company uses SQL Server, which uses WMI, which sits on top of Windows. If one part doesn’t work, the whole thing comes down. Neat couldn’t get SQL Server running because of WMI, and punted to Microsoft. Technically, they have pretty solid ground for doing so. The issue was “below” SQL Server, a part of the chain that they, on some level, have to assume is there and functioning properly.

However, has anyone with a standard desktop copy of Windows ever actually gotten through to Microsoft Support? I’ve been doing technical support for almost 14 years, and I have yet to get a real person on the phone, India or otherwise. If this WMI problem is “removed” for Neat Company, it’s on the moon as far as Microsoft is concerned.

In this instance, Neat Company suffers from the reality that it only has one point of view: their own. Every human being naturally looks out for themselves first (moral arguments about caring for your fellow man notwithstanding). Businesses are people, and thus are subject to the same follies.

On top of that, you have the financial realities of running a business. One of those realities is that support structures take up a cost column in the company ledger. Support is an expense, not a source of income. A business is naturally going to do everything to minimize costs, which can (and often does) affect service quality. I’m not making any claims about Neat in this regard, only pointing out what most people don’t stop to consider.

Now, all that explains why customer service sometimes fails, but it doesn’t do anything to explain why things go so awesomely well a lot of the time. My tech support agent, AJ, was great! She was on the issue immediately, and had an obvious grasp of what she was doing and how to fix the problem. When she remote’d into my desktop, I’m fairly certain the mouse was moving too fast for her to simultaneously read a stepwise guide. She also seemed genuinely disappointed that she was unable to solve my problem, maybe almost as bummed as I at the prospect of having to contact MicroMassivesoft. She didn’t finish the call until she gave me as much information about the problem as was at her disposal.

Two reasons why this happens. First people like AJ genuinely enjoy what they’re doing, which makes them better, which translates to a better customer experience. Second, there are companies out there who do in fact appreciate the value of good customer service. Think about it; the company whose customer support solves the problem, and pulls the user off the Mobius strip, will have their undying gratitude. As the problem persisted, the value in a solution increased.

By going the extra mile and solving the problem, the “winning” company walks away from the situation with a raving fan, instead of just a customer. A fan tells great stories to friends (who loves viral marketing, show of hands?), comes back for more goods and services in the future, and is harder pressed to seek alternatives from competitors. If that’s not financial incentive enough, your company might as well call it quits now, because your head is a little due south.

My rule is that a company should be an expert at diagnosing and fixing the systems with 1° of separation from the product. Running a website? You better know browsers inside and out, and have some operating system knowledge. Advertising Design? You better have a rock solid understanding of printing, and know your way around a computer. Chimney sweep? You better understand roofing and a little masonry.

In our example, Neat Company’s 1° here would definitely cover WMI issues (SQL Server -> WMI). WMI certainly overlaps enough ground that support staff should be at least versed in how to correct the most common issues.

As it turned out, AJ’s info on the issue was enough to get me going down the right path, and eventually I landed on a solution: rebuild WMI. After getting myself sorted out, I sent the steps to fix the issue back to Neat Company to help anyone else with this problem. I’m a geek, I take pity on any layperson faced with this kind of issue.

For those of you here because your own instances of Windows Management Instrumentation is busted, here’s what I did to rebuild the WMI:

1. Start > Run: net stop winmgmt
2. Rename %windir%\System32\Wbem\Repository folder to something else (e.g. Repository_bad)
3. Start > Run: net start winmgmt
4. Start > Run: rundll32 wbemupgd, UpgradeRepository
5. Start > Run: cd /d %windir%\system32\wbem
6. Start > Run: for %i in (*.dll) do RegSvr32 -s %i
7. Start > Run: for %i in (*.exe) do %i /RegServer
8. Run (or rerun) Neat Database Setup.exe from your Neat Company setup CD or download
9. Make sure that the SQL Server (NR2007) service is started
   (Start > Run: services.msc)

And here’s where I got it. People with more complex issues may also want to check out the WMI Diagnosis Utility. I also highly recommend that people with issues relating specifically to Neat Company products contact their customer service first. They definitely fall in the exceptional category (I’m giving AJ’s supervisor the benefit of the doubt).

5 hours later, I’m off to track down that receipt shoebox…