Trying to stop getting unsolicited postal mail from Comcast

I’m not a Comcast customer, haven’t been for a long time, and never at my current address. I get postcards, letters and brochures from them on a regular basis – sometimes several times a week.  It’s annoying and wasteful.  I searched the Comcast website and the Internet at large for a while for a web-based form to get on a “do not send me mail” list, and couldn’t find one.  I called their 800 number and hung up after too many minutes on hold.  I finally sent in a generic inquiry through their online form, providing the addresses I wanted removed.

Done, right?  Nope.

The first response asked me to come onto their website and fill out another form with my contact information so that I could join an online chat with them about getting off their mailing list.  I wrote back and said “no, I’m not filling out another form, you have what you need.”  The next response said (paraphrasing) “we really need you to join our online chat so that we can get your Comcast account number.”  I wrote back and said, “I’m not a Comcast customer, you have what you need to take me off your list.”  I channeled Jack Bauer: do it now.

The next response, quoting:  “I understand that you want to be included in the Do Not Mail List. We appreciate that you have given us this opportunity to communicate with you and address your concerns as quickly as possible.  I have forwarded your concern to the appropriate management team for your request to be processed Chris.  Rest assured that the request will be honored as quickly as possible, but definitely within 30 days.”

So, if you want to be removed from Comcast’s postal mailing list, all it takes is a phone call, an online form submission, and four clarifying e-mail messages so that your request can then be forwarded to a management team for processing within a month.  Lovely FAIL.

A bagel shop on 5th Street in Richmond

Before I was all the way in the door the woman at the service counter shouted at me across the room, “hi, can I help you?”  In the eternity that seemed to pass between that moment and when I was close enough to answer without yelling back, I tried to suppress the feeling that this would be a FAIL.

But as the server continued to have conversations with co-workers while taking my order, hope started to slip away.

When I asked to have my order just wrapped in paper and not in Styrofoam and she said “okay” but didn’t pass that along to the person preparing my order, I knew my smile was not long for this world.

When I got a spritz of cleaning solution from her as she wiped the counter-top right next to me (still chatting away), my smile returned, this time with little twists of approaching insanity at its ends.

And when the server who packaged my order in Styrofoam anyway glared at me as I politely said, “oh, actually, I’d asked for paper instead of Styrofoam,” huffed and puffed as she fixed it, and propelled it across the counter at me as she turned away, a sense of FAIL calm arrived.

There’s a peace that comes with the clarity of  “oh yeah, I don’t have to come back here again.”

Ordering from Gimmees.com

At Summersault, we recently ordered some custom-made Yo-Yos from Gimmees.com for our open house event back in March.  The order was delayed and there were some communication issues that amplified the inconvenience of that delay.  But after I commented on the issue on Twitter, the owner of the company called me directly and made it right, and we got the order in time for our event.   WIN for Twitter and Gimmees.com.

Customer service lessons:

1. Don’t make simple things complicated. If you’re a company that sends out gazillions of postal mailings every day, have a really clear process for letting people get off that mailing list.
2. Hire staff who can empathize with your customers` experiences. If they can’t, train them better, or get them away from your customers as fast as possible.
3. When something goes wrong, act quickly and boldly to make it right. It’s true, “a happy customer tells one friend, an unhappy customer tells everybody.”

Any recent FAIL or WIN customer service experiences in your life that you’d like to share?

Well, you’re in luck!  I really enjoy cataloging and categorizing these kinds of things, and so I’ve put together this list of 12 kinds of social networking status updates.

Most every status update will fall into one of these categories:

1. I want you to know how happy I am. I have really amazing family, friends, career, hobbies, food, or some other factors that I will go on about publicly to hundreds of strangers, and I just want you to know how perfect everything is in the world right now.
2. I am incredibly busy and productive. But, I’m taking some time out of my incredibly busy schedule to tell you how incredibly busy and productive I am.  But as soon as I’m done with that, it’s back to being incredibly busy and productive!
3. I am kind of a big deal. Here’s some information about me that’s only thinly veiled as informational, but is actually designed to show you how important, successful, athletic, skilled, wealthy, well-connected and/or influential I am.
4. I want you to know how unhappy I am. You won’t believe how pathetic and unworthy I am, but I’d like to try to tell you about it anyway.
5. I am really clever and insightful. Let me just say this really clever or witty thing and let you bask in how amazing I am.
6. I would like to tell you about my physical location. Here is where I am right now.
7. I’d like to share about the activities of my child or children. Let me show you how cute and/or irreverent they are.  If you don’t have children, consider taking this opportunity to feel inadequate.  If you do have children, consider taking this opportunity to feel like you don’t enjoy your children as much as I do.
8. There is an injustice that needs your attention! Some person, organization or company has done something unacceptable and I need you to take action RIGHT NOW to help make it better.
9. I have a link that I’d like for you to click on. It’s really interesting, and it’s possibly going to change your life.  Come on, just click on it.  What if it’s a really cool photo of a cat in some situation you’ve NEVER seen before?  There, wasn’t that amazing?
10. I have a medical condition that I’d like to share about. I’m sick, or I’m getting better, or I’m having surgery, or I broke something, or someone or something threw up on me or I threw up on them.  Let me tell you about it.
11. I would like to comment on some aspect of popular culture. Allow me tell you why a particular television show, movie, celebrity, singer, actor or athlete is in or out of my favor right now.
12. I am mysterious. I would just like to post this string of characters that may or may not resemble words in your language, hoping to increase your confusion while also instilling some sense that I know something you don’t.  598234.

Do you have other categories to add?  What kinds of status updates do you tend to post?

1. Visit public Twitter feeds in a web browser. This may seem fairly obvious, but you can view anything that anyone posts to Twitter just by visiting their Twitter profile page (as long as they haven’t marked their updates as “private”).  So, to view all of my Tweets, just visit http://twitter.com/ChrisHardie – no account required.
2. Subscribe to Twitter feed updates via RSS. Even if you don’t have a Twitter account, you can subscribe to receive new status updates from any Twitter user (again, assuming their updates are public) via RSS.  By putting the feed in a feed reader like Google Reader, you can be aware of new status updates without even visiting the site in a web browser.  So, on my twitter.com/ChrisHardie page, just look for the link that says “RSS Feed of ChrisHardie’s tweets”
3. Use Twitter’s real-time search. You can visit http://search.twitter.com/ and enter a few keywords to see recent Tweets that relate to those words.  This can be useful to find mentions of you, your product/service/company, or just news and events in the world.  It’s also a fun way to see what conversations are happening right now.  (If you like that, you might enjoy TweetGrid or Twistori.)  You might also consider using the Greasemonkey plug-in that will show you relevant tweets as a part of a Google search on any topic.
4. Find people in your community using Twitter. Using Google, you can look for people in your geographical area who are using Twitter, and see if there are any individuals or organizations you want to follow.  For example, I can use the search terms ‘site:twitter.com location (“richmond, indiana” OR “richmond, in”)‘ to find Twitter users in Richmond, IN (as long as they’ve identified themselves as such in their Twitter profiles).  Services like NearbyTweets.com make this search even more fun and interesting, and if you want to expand beyond your local area, TwitterVision shows a neat visualization of Tweets coming in from all over the world.
5. Monitor Twitter for mentions of topics of interest. If you’d like to be notified when someone on Twitter mentions you or your organization, you can set up a Google Alert.  For example, I can decide to be e-mailed by Google Alerts every time they index a tweet mentioning Richmond, using this search: ‘site:twitter.com Richmond, IN’.  Services like TweetBeep.com also provide this kind of feature with additional options.

I hope that’s helpful.  If you have other ways to use Twitter without being a Twitter user, please post them in the comments.  You can also follow along with my Twitter-related bookmarks on Delicious.com.

1. Please don’t assume that you know me because you read my posts or status updates. I’m not saying this because I think I’m mysterious or hard to know, I’m saying it because I believe reading someone’s status updates does not constitute an engaged and genuine human relationship.  I do use the Internet to express myself, but only one very particular slice of myself.  I hope we can talk “in real life” or even via more direct online communication if we really want to get to know each other better.
2. Please don’t assume that I know you because of your posts or status updates. I sometimes try to keep up with what people are saying about their lives on social networking sites, but sometimes I definitely don’t bother.  If there’s something exciting, hard, important, or otherwise noteworthy happening in your life, you should assume you need to tell me about it in an “old fashion way” (e-mail, phone, letter, in person) if you want me to know or care. (Hopefully I will also be asking you how you are doing once in a while too.)
3. I have a sense of humor that sometimes doesn’t translate very well to written electronic form. Sometimes I type things that sound absolutely hilarious in my head, and come out quite confusing (or even worse, alarming) in pixel form.  I guess you should assume that if something I type sounds weird or problematic, it’s just a poorly executed attempt at humor, but you’re still welcome to call me out on it.
4. I don’t act on ambient invitations. Just because you think I may have heard about your (non-public) event, gathering or party because other people are mentioning it online or because you mentioned it on Facebook, please don’t assume that I think of myself as invited.  This may be old fashioned or even self-absorbed of me, but I generally still want to know directly from someone if they want me in attendance somewhere (and will generally give you back the courtesy of a direct RSVP).
5. I don’t really use Facebook for anything other than status updates.  I generally do not respond to requests for joining causes or groups, and I never accept requests to take quizzes, play games, or send or receive strange little objects via applications.  I often don’t have time or interest in responding to comments people post on my status updates.  I know, I know, some people will be like “Dude, you’re DOING it wrong,” and maybe I am.  Just don’t take it personally.
6. I use Delicious.com for social bookmarking, and you should too. If I see a website link that I think you might enjoy, I’m 27% more likely to follow through on that thought and make you aware of it if you have a Delicious.com account so that I can bookmark it for you there.   If I have to send you an e-mail message, I’m less likely to bother.  I’m sorry, it’s lazy, I know, I know.

I realize that this may sound curmudgeonly, especially coming from someone who works with the Internet for a living and who encourages people to use it as a tool for better communication.  But if you do read my blog, you know I feel strongly that we need to be very careful about replacing genuine human interaction with stalking each other on Facebook.

I know it may be futile, but it’s important for me to draw some of these lines in the sand about what kind of life I will and will not live online.

If you maintain some sort of presence on the Internet (via Facebook, Twitter, a blog or otherwise), what are some ground rules you set for yourself, and what should people expect (or not expect) from that online existence?

I did eat a salad for lunch today (nice transition) – radish, green onion, and goat cheese on spring mix greens, with poppy seed dressing.  Everything but the dressing was grown/made at Abundant Acres Farm, the provider of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share that I bought this season.  Friends Kent and Dori have again done a great job making fresh, local, chemical-free food available, and I’m grateful for it.  I don’t have a garden on my own land right now, but having a bag of garden-fresh stuff delivered to me every week is hard to beat.  There’s still quite a gap between my ideals about where my food comes from and my actual diet.

This past week I took a vacation from the office to focus on…not being at the office for a week.  It was a brief but effective period of rest and catching up on life’s other projects – I spent some time hiking, traveling, exploring, unpacking and rearranging the new house, working in the yard, reading and researching, responding to old e-mail messages (I’m down to just 2 personal inbox items, YAY!), spending time with friends, getting my old house ready to rent, journaling, sleeping, lounging, and planning for the future.  I’m grateful to have co-workers and a work life that makes this kind of break possible and easy.

Yesterday I heard a clicking/chirping/screeching noise in the hallway outside where I was sitting, and emerged to find that the cats had surrounded a bat on the floor of my bedroom.  After swearing lightly a few times, I went back into the room I’d been in to compose myself.  When I emerged again, the bat had moved to the window frame in the bedroom, cats plotting their ascent, and I’m pretty sure it was looking at me.  “Your move, help me out here,” I think it was saying. I swore again and then shooed the cats out and closed the door behind me.  Then I did what anyone in my position would do: I Twittered about it.  The immediate responses varied in their helpfulness, from some genuine offers to come assist, to naming the bat Howard, to, “Bats carry rabies and if they bite you in your sleep, you’d NEVER KNOW! I heard it on NPR.“  Gee, thanks.  By the time Becky arrived to take charge of the situation, the bat had gone into hiding, and has yet to re-emerge.  Part of me honestly believes that it intercepted my Twitter feed and knew what it might be in for.  Oh well.  Sleeping in a bee-keeper suit was not too uncomfortable.

Despite being on vacation, I had a few great organizational meetings, and I joined two new organizations/projects this week.  The Creative Industries Task Force is a working group sprung from the city’s comprehensive plan, helping to prepare the ground for a county-wide organization that can support, celebrate and coordinate the arts and cultural environment of Richmond and Wayne County.  The Earlham College Alumni Council works to advance the College’s development and keep its alumni engaged with the life of the institution.  In both cases, I’m honored to be asked to contribute, and am optimistic that both efforts are already so much in line with work I am already doing informally that I won’t notice any additional time commitment. 

Doors are opening all around me with opportunities to dive into more of the community building work that I know I want to do.  I’m still working on some implementation plans following my Transition Training conference last month.  Coming up in June the Imago folks in Cincinnati are putting on a conference on ecology, spirituality and living economies that I’ve registered for, and just a week later the Earth Charter folks are having a conference in Indianapolis to help people create an ethical framework for sustainability in their communities.  I see excitement building locally around local food, alternative transportation, better communication and dialog, alternative media and citizen journalism, and a general openness to new ways of making the community better.  The hard part is no longer trying to get something moving – the hard part is figuring out what I have to say “no” to because there are so many things moving.  I’ll take it!

I saw this Maya Angelou quote recently and found it useful: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.“  I’ve been paying a lot of attention since to how each person I encounter makes me feel, and how I might make them feel.  My attentiveness has not been about striving for the answer to be “good” all the time, but at least to know that something is being felt, that there’s some emotional engagement we can both find worth remembering.

Those are a few of the ingredients tossed into my salad of life lately.  How about you?

What happened?

I honestly didn’t expect anyone to really notice the challenge, but a few people did, and “retweeted it” [what's that?] to their own Twitter followers accordingly.  In the end, I had 10 new followers in that time period, about a 7% increase in my relatively modest following.  Who knows which of them came because of my challenge and which would have followed me anyway; it doesn’t really matter.

Today I’ll write a donation check for $20 to the Boys and Girls Club.

As I said, this was just an experiment to see what would happen.  I think there are some great opportunities to “harness the power of social media” for charitable giving campaigns, especially with great tools out there like Fundable.org, and I look forward to playing around more with what’s possible.

Thanks to all who noticed the challenge, stay tuned for others like it.

But I’m not here to indulge in gadget lust, I’m here to tell you how Sonos, the company, is making great use of Twitter for its public relations and customer service efforts (and, by extension, how Twitter is turning out to be pretty useful for that stuff.)

Thomas Meyer (who is hopefully a real person) is the voice of Sonos on Twitter, and here’s all the stuff he does right:

1. Having a presence at all. By being available on Twitter, the company can engage its customers and users directly and immediately about their experiences, requests, and concerns.
2. Having a real person as your Sonos personality. A lot of companies set up their Twitter accounts and post anonymously as “The Company.”  That can work, but it’s even better when the voice is that of a real human being.  Thomas uses “I” statements, and has some personality in what he posts (as much as is possible in 140 characters).
3. Looking for customers to engage. Thomas seems to regularly scan the public Twitter timeline to find mentions of Sonos and related keywords, responds to their tweets if appropriate, and then “follows” those users.  This happened to me when I posted about my system a few weeks ago – it hadn’t occured to me to look for Sonos on Twitter before that.  Again, this creates an instant, direct connection that is pretty hard to find with many product-oriented companies these days.
4. Looking for potential customers to engage. In addition to scanning for direct mentions of Sonos, Thomas also looks for folks who are out there talking about gadgets, audio, music, and related topics, and knows when to gently respond with “hey, have you thought about Sonos?”  It’s not pushy and I don’t think it qualifies as spam (since, in one sense, everything on Twitter is spam), it just creates some awareness.
5. Suggesting value-added ways to get more from the product. Thomas regularly posts about ways you can get more out of your Sonos system without spending money – free music that’s available for download, cool tips and tricks from other users, etc.  It’s clever, friendly, and useful all at the same time.
6. Responding effectively to questions and concerns. If someone mentions any sort of feature request, concern or question about Sonos on Twitter, Thomas is right there with either an answer, or with his e-mail address so that the conversation can continue directly outside of Twitter.

This is probably the best corporate use of Twitter that I’ve seen in my limited time participating in ITS limited existence.

If you’re thinking about using Twitter for corporate/institutional communications, a few related things to note:

1. You HAVE to make time for it. Engaging the Twitterverse seems like it must be a major component of Thomas’s job description, and I can’t imagine he could do what he does just “here and there” on top of other responsibilities.  If you want to use Twitter at this level, make sure you allocate the people time to do it right.
2. Is Twitter reaching the right target audience for you? It’s no coincidence that there’s overlap between people who have time and Internet connectivity to mess around on Twitter and people who buy ridiculously luxurious audio gadgets.  If you sell animal feed to rural farmers, you are probably not going to have the same level of engagement on Twitter.
3. Don’t get too close to your users. I think it’s possible to over-do the directness of the company-consumer relationship, such that the expectations will be set unreasonably high for the kind of response any one person can get from you via Twitter, possibly resulting in a backlash if something does go wrong.

I remain skeptical of Twitter, now more out of curious fascination in the context of many other cultural trends that worry me, rather than cynicism about this particular tool.  But within the scope of what it means to offer good customer service to a base of product users, I can appreciate that there’s a way to do it right with Twitter, and Sonos has that nailed.

There’s so much of a difference for me between “remember that one time when we went on that amazing hike, and all of the things we saw together” and “remember that one funny status update you posted on your FB account and what I wrote back – oh wow LOL good times!“  And I don’t think it’s just about individual preferences for how to spend time.  The meaningful shared real world experience doesn’t have to be hiking…it could be a deep and/or challenging conversation; traveling together; raising a child together; worshiping or sitting in silence together; coming through some significant sickness or peril through someone else’s care; experiencing the death of a loved one together…and so on.

These are experiences that have a substantial impact on who we are, memories that are worth preserving in some form for the day our lives flash before our eyes.  They shape us, evoke emotion, challenge our thoughts, highlight our vulnerabilities.  The things we experience together online – social networking status updates, blog conversations, etc. – seem like they’re just “meta” stops along the way.

Maybe this isn’t really something to worry about?  Maybe I’m just projecting a wistfulness about more time away from my computer screen?  Maybe all of the intensity and volume I see on Facebook and Twitter that is ABOUT experiences in those virtual places is misleading, and people are still out there having meaningful engagements with the real world all day long?

Or is anyone else concerned that Our Online World is becoming Our World?

Feel free to tell me in person, we can go for a walk together.

• On Friday, I received an e-mail from Aaron Scamihorn at MediaSauce, who apparently saw one of my Twitter posts quoting a line from The Princess Bride (in Spanish, the translation for which I ripped off myself), and decided to create a bit of art because if it – see the image to the right.  Quite nice, well done, wow, I’m honored.
• Two all-around interesting guys from Star Trek: The Next Generation (among other things) are on Twitter now – LeVar Burton and Wil Wheaton.  Rumor has it that Brent Spiner might be next – sweet.  There’s something surreal and pleasant and twisted about now knowing when someone, who once played a character in a story on a show that I was thoroughly engrossed in from quite a distance, crosses the street or drinks some tea.
• I’m starting to get over Twitter, but remain intrigued by its immediacy, intimacy and global reach.  It’s the closest thing to a global chat room that can probably exist with today’s slow hand/keyboard/monitor interfaces (and that may already be going farther than what’s good for us).  But it’s just a bunch of people, all doing their thing, all thrown in the mix, and most of the time, it’s just fascinating.

Okay, that’s all, I’ll stop now, carry on.

I’m removing Google ads from my blog.  I’m tired of them, and they’re not earning their keep.

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