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METAFORIX MAIL Volume 2, Issue 7 November 27, 2001 Sites and
insights for the Information Age Since our last edition, Metaforix Incorporated and eWayDirect.com, our e-letter publisher, have each spent protracted periods in technology hell. So we've been missing from your in-box for the past several weeks -- and it's great to be back. Thanks for reading. CONTENTS AT A GLANCE
ON MY MIND: Tech Retort II
Please Hold for the Next Available Representative In my experience, the occasional few days in technology hell have remarkable potential to sharpen one's understanding of the love-hate relationship between technology providers and their customers. What's more, each unplanned expedition into the technological netherworld yields more nuanced understandings of why this relationship is so dysfunctional and what might be done to fix it.A year or so ago, I wrote a column I called "Tech Retort.". In it, I sublimated my rage against the inadequacies of tech support into a light-hearted disquisition on the language used to assure long-suffering customers that they are truly in the warm, fuzzy embrace of "customer care." Recently, during two excrutiatingly long forays into the "customer care" apparatus of a wireless phone company and an Internet service provider, I have had the opportunity to refine the concept of "Tech Retort." "Tech Retort," I hasten to admit, is how I phrase the problem on my better days. After a couple of hours on hold, what I have to say is not printable. To place my perspective in context, I should tell you that I spent most of my career in large organizations. I had access to on-site technical support and facilities management personnel -- however inadequate or unsatisfactory they may at times have been, as well as an assistant or office manager to track the progress of needed repairs, returns, renovations, or revisions. Perhaps even more important, vendors routinely assigned one or more account reps to keep my division or the organization as a whole more or less happy. Not so for free agents or very small businesses, especially those whose daily commute involves a trip from the bedroom to a corner of the living room. Many large businesses now assign a monetary value to each customer, based upon the actual or potential dollar value of that customer's contribution to the bottom line. Customer service "perks" -- what used to be thought of as good, "ordinary" customer service -- are then parceled out according to that calculation. For example, high-value customers get to talk directly to a human without waiting on hold; low-value customers endure five minutes of automated menus before they are permitted to enter the cue for an audience with even a first-level support representative. During six hours on the phone with Roadrunner and three with Sprint over the past two weeks, I had plenty of time to contemplate the Tech Retort problem during those lengthy periods on hold. Here's the theory I've come up with: Tech Retort stems from the same linear thinking that has made it so hard for small businesses, free agents, and other individual actors to buy affordable health insurance: Companies treat each transaction individually, not as part of a category that is very valuable when considered as a whole, both financially and in terms of good will. This concept undergirds the efforts of Working Today, the nonprofit advocacy organization started 1995 by MacArthur "genius grant" recipient Sarah Horowitz. Working Today has brilliantly demonstrated that, when free agents are marketed as an identifiable demographic cohort that commands significant money, influence, and votes -- rather than a ragtag collection of time-consuming pests who are expensive to service and powerless to respond -- attention must be paid. Businesses, government, the media, the philanthropic community, and the public at large have begun to do just that, in areas like insurance, financial services, and group discount programs for travel, hotels, and rental cars. But the problem of too many hats and too few hours in the day has been widely ignored. Costly concierge or (ugh) "rent-a-wife" services, available to those who can afford to pay, are treated as discretionary individual purchases, not legitimate, necessary business support services. Whether offered online or in real time, they tend to be limited in scope to self-contained tasks, such as choosing and wrapping Christmas gifts for clients or waiting for new refrigerator to be delivered so that its purchaser can attend to business appointments. Concierge services have even found their way into high-end corporate benefits packages for executives and professionals -- along with more generally available benefits such as on-site childcare and telecommuting arrangements that allow full access to employer-provided equipment, tech support, and other resources. Similarly, critical business tools such as proprietary online databases, expensive industry-focused publications, and premium software support are important elements in the competitive advantages enjoyed by large corporations. These, too, are available to small businesses and solo practitioners, but only at costs that most of us find prohibitive. As the independent American workforce continues to grow beyond its current 30 per cent level, collaborative business infrastructures must be created to supplement the personal infrastructures for which Working Today and its partners have so successfully advocated. Free agents need and deserve high-quality, responsive tech support, access to proprietary databases and information services, customized training programs, and related services -- all priced and managed in ways that treat us as the valuable "account" we are.
Cordially,
A
SILK PURSE: eWayDirect.com During those two weeks, the entire eWayDirect staff provided extraordinary communication and service to clients while working round the clock to get the system up and running again. Our hats are off to CEO Neil Rosen, relationship manager Jenn Rotruck, and their colleagues. Neil turned a potential business disaster into an opportunity for renewing customer loyalty and for publicly recognizing the efforts of talented and dedicated employees. A textbook case of how to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.
Access previous issues of Metaforix Mail by date by visiting our archives. Or use the search box on any page of the Metaforix site (www.metaforix.com) to search by keywords.
INFORMATICON "Scientific
Elites and Scientific Illiterates" "The situation is not merely paradoxical; it's downright perilous. We face an era that promises ever accelerating technological change in every aspect of our lives, while at the same time the very survival of our civilization may depend on our ability to make wise decisions about how to manage our resources, our climate and our conflicts. In the next century, we will need to be able to deal confidently with technical issues, and a responsible electorate will need to have some reasonable mastery of how the world works. . . . "While the problem of science education is often framed in terms of a perceived lack of PhDs -- too few elites to fuel our scientific and technological progress in the future -- it's clear we actually have a process in place equipped to multiply our kind 15 times over with each succeeding generation. What's lacking is a means to provide the rest of our population with even the most basic understanding of science in an increasingly science-driven world. . . . "The revolution would have to extend right down to the first grade. Teachers would have to be literate in science, and kids would have to find learning science as cool as following the fortunes of rock groups. That's an awful lot to ask for. But then again, only our future depends on it."
POST - 9/11 NEW SITES AND PAGES Citizens
of Cyberspace Respond
Here
are some additions to our series highlighting innovative, comprehensive,
and/or just plain excellent Internet responses post-9/11:
Learn how Metaforix can help you and your business take a byte of the Information Age. See what we have to offer at www.metaforix.com. CYBERSPEAK
A User-Friendlier Computer Everyone who has ever spent time working with computers, or has ever tried to, knows that personal computers are notoriously difficult to use, compared to other such essential machines as cars, televisions, and refrigerators. The user interface of most PCs -- that is, the hardware and software that the user must master in order to get the machine to perform desired tasks -- is complicated, counterintuitive, and frustrating for the vast majority of people who depend on them. And the vast majority of people do depend on computers in one guise or another.As a result, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding a number of major research projects aimed at designing systems of invisible computing, also known as pervasive or ubiquitous computing. Using a combination of technologies including speech recognition, vision and speech synthesis, and artificial intelligence, these systems will reduce or eliminate the time we now spend inputting information into computers, telling them how to carry out tasks, and adapting to the peculiarities of the machines themselves. Instead, computers will collect the information without human intervention, carry out process-oriented jobs without being told, and adapt to the user's needs. Professor Daniel Siewiorek, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Human Computer Interaction Institute, points out that ""The most precious resource in a computer system is no longer its processor, memory, disk or network. It is the user's attention." The invisible computing systems now being developed by Siewiorek and his colleagues will minimize the attention users must devote to the computer itself, thereby maximizing the attention they can devote to the work they wish to accomplish. Source consulted: "A Failure to Communicate", by Niall McKay. Darwin, November 2001. Who's Reading the Papers? The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) has just issued a study profiling the "single-copy" newspaper buyer. Aimed at publishers, the profile is intended to supply demographic information that marketers can use to increase sales.NAA has posted highlights of the study on its web site. Here are some of them: - About 25% of American adults are single-copy buyers of weekday newspapers. Among newspaper readers as a group, 55% of men buy single copies and 45% subscribe. Women newspaper readers, on the other hand, are more likely to subscribe, by a margin of 53% to 47%. - Single-copy buyers tend to be young males with a median household income of $40,000. About half have attended at least some college, over 60% are employed full time, and a third are renters rather than homeowners. NAA points out the similarities between this profile and that of the typical convenience store customer. - Over half of single-copy buyers read the paper three days a week or less. When asked, about two-thirds say they read a paper the previous Sunday. - By contrast to subscribers, single-copy buyers are much more interested in sports, clothes, and fashion. They look for ads that they perceive as helping them save time and money, especially ads for jobs, clothes, sports events, health and beauty products, cars, and real estate. The full, much more detailed report is also available online, although I didn't spring for the $80 download fee. However, I must admit I was tempted to find out more about the relationship between newspaper buying and other convenience store purchases. It made me wonder: If the findings of this study were to result in a huge increase in single-copy sales at the local 7-11, what impact would we see on the overall editorial content of American newspapers?
Please note that the links contained in Metaforix Mail are current as of the time of publication. Some of them may no longer be operative at the time you access past issues. To
Volume 2, Issue 6 November 2, 2001
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