Inspired Impressions

I live about a 2 hour drive west of New Orleans and made my first trip to the area since the hurricanes of last September. I’m not sure what I expected, but I was surprised to see the French Quarter pretty much back to normal. Despite not getting flooded, there was a lot of construction going on in the Quarter. Must be a lot of Federal and Insurance money to go around for rebuilding.

I was very surprised at what was going on once I got out of the business districts. It’s as if no progress has been made in the residential districts. In the areas I visited, I would say 80% of the properties were abandoned and there seemed to be little effort to clean up. I really expected them to be further along by now. Despite total devastation, it’s been 9 months and you’d think the large sheets of roofing material would be removed from the oak trees at busy intersections. I spoke to a lady at Jacque Imo’s restaurant and she said there may be 3,000 people all trying to get the attention of the same adjuster.

Here’s a link to a few more photos I took of the area

I’m not normally one to brag about my kids, but I love this video of my 1 year old, Emily. She loves to dance and she loves to spin around and make herself dizzy.

Wow, its been a really long time since I’ve updated… My mind has been elsewhere on the job hunt at hand. A lot has happened since my last post. I’ll try to catch up over the next few posts…

Brandon

I was going through some of my old presentations and ran across a great piece that I had used as an idea starter at a marketing ideation meeting. I apologize to the original author as I didn’t make note of his/her name at the time; however, his/her points are well worth repeating:

Many retailers go to a lot of trouble making their customers feel like “guests.” I’d like to suggest that they would be better off trying to forge friendships.

Treating your customer as a guest isn’t a bad idea, it’s just short sighted. A guest may be pleased and satisfied with a particular visit, but it doesn’t translate into the same affinity and desire to return again and again, that is felt when visiting a good friend.

Friendships are special things. You go out of your way to see friends. You care about their health, what they need, and you enjoy their company. Guests are frequently unwelcome and sometimes they know it. Friends are rarely unwelcome.

It takes two to create a friendship. Retailers have to get to know their customers and listen to their concerns in order to establish the trust necessary for a strong, loyal, long-lived friendship.
At this moment, hundreds of retailers are trying to capture loyalty. Retailers understand the concept of repeat business and want to do what they can to get it. Both online and offline stores, from Amazon.com to WalMart, use a variety of tactics to get to know their customers’ habits.

Statistics indicate that profits can be increased by 25-125 percent just by retaining 5 percent more customers. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that loyalty, guest, and personalized programs are becoming big business. They all share the same basic goal of capturing market share and gaining repeat business. Smart retailers should be looking at these programs as a way to turn their customers into friends.

It takes patience. It takes more than one visit. However, as friendships develop, great things start to happen. The increased loyalty brings referrals (new friendships). It makes marketing efforts more efficient and effective. It can help a retailer gain co-op advertising from vendors designed to meet their friends’ needs. Friends visit more and spend more because they know that this retailer is a friend who cares about they want.

Friendship is the most effective branding a store can ever use. It isn’t loyalty programs that set retailers apart from their competition, it is friendships.

Edit: The author is Melody Vargas.

I do love Riya, but Picasa has been my application of choice to organize my thousands of digital photos on my home computer. I've always wished I could see those photos from the web, either from my office, or to share with remote family.

Google finally "webalized" Picasa. It's about time. They only offer 250 megs of storage free with an option to upgrade to 6 gigs for $25/yr, and the application is still in limited, invitation only, testing. Philipp Lenssen notes that there is no such thing as a private album, just public and "unlisted". Album titles are appended to the URL of a user's "homepage" so others can merely guess at album titles such as "untitledalbum" and discover your hidden albums. Keep that in mind when uploading photos.

Aside from the privacy implications, it is a very welcome addition to the Google portfolio. link to Picasa Web

Munjal's most recent blog post about his experience starting Riya is the best post yet. The following quote puts into words something that most entrepreneurs, just haven't taken the time to reflect on, and realize about themselves.

Entrepreneurs are an odd bunch. As an entrepreneur you create a vision of what can be and then work really hard to make that happen. It is your imprint on the world. It is your legacy. Maybe 2000 years ago if you wanted to leave a mark you would be Julius Cesear or Genghis Khan. Today you start a technology or Internet company. I believe almost all entrepreneurs seek immortality through their products. This is one of the reasons we all seek to build products that are used by and benefit the lives of as many people as possible. We want to do good, but we also want to be remembered. Some admit this and some don't, but it is true. The greatest crusades in the world are always for the intangible. There is no other explanation for why founder's of companies work so hard and sacrifice so much. Money can only account for so much of this. You have to believe that you are on this planet to somehow change it.

What a great reflection! I would think that most entrepeneurs are more interested in the success of their ideas than of money. For those of you that I'm speaking to about employment, please disregard that last sentence.

I was rooting through some old email looking for something and found this entertaining email thread from a friend of mine that tried to purchase a phone card from Worldphonecard.com

First Message from Worldphonecard.com:

Hello xxx,
Your attempts to order were not complete. You have not been billed for your attempts. Check the credit card number and transaction information to make sure they were entered correctly. If this does not resolve the problem, call the credit card issuer to resolve. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you, and thanks for choosing World Phonecard.

Best Regards,

WPC Support Team
http://www.worldphonecard.com

Reply from xxx:

I tried to purchase a card twice and both times my browser locked up.

xxx

Now for the good stuff from Worldphonecard.com

Hello xxx,

Sorry to hear that. We hope you don't think it was our fault?

Best Regards,

WPC Support Team
http://www.worldphonecard.com

Does your customer support team treat your customers like this? It seems to be an attempt to reclaim an abandoned checkout that could be very effective at driving revenue from a customer that you've paid good money to acquire. That's a sure way to run your business into the ground.

I find that Gmail is incredibly slow in rendering with my FireFox browser. Not sure if it is FF in general or if it's extenstion related, but I found a workaround that speeds up Gmail considerably.

I use a "User Agent Switcher Extension" for other areas of my job including SEO and debugging internal applications. This extension allows you to change the information that you send to the host website and specify whether you're using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, or anything else that you want.

I found that if I use the extension to change my user agent to something like "Googlebot 2.1", Gmail reads my request as an "unsupported browser" and switches to an alternative mode which renders many, many times quicker.

Another benefit to claiming that you're Googlebot 2.1 is that you can sometimes get into password protected areas on news websites.

I received 2 requests by email to participate in surveys today. One from Google regarding a beta service and the other from MSN regarding Adcenter. See if you can determine which survey request is more compelling and which I will take time out of my day to complete.

First Google's:

Hello Brandon,

We hope you're enjoying the XXXX Google XXXXXXXXXX. As part of the next phase of this test, we'd like to invite you to participate in our phone survey regarding XXXXXXXXXXXX. By participating in this survey, you'll help us continue to enhance this product for you. In addition, we'll give you a $100 AdWords credit in exchange for your time.

Survey details:

- We're conducting phone surveys from XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.
- This 30-minute survey will address XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.
- You'll receive a $100 credit in your AdWords account within three days of completing the survey.

To participate in this survey and claim your $100 AdWords credit, please respond to this message with a date and time when we may call you. If you have any questions, please feel free to respond to this email.

Now MSN's:

Brandon,

Microsoft really appreciates your company’s participation in the pilot phase of the roll out for their new pay-for-performance advertising product, adCenter. As a critical part of this pilot process, Microsoft has engaged our firm, Sacerdote & Co., Inc. to gain feedback from early users, customers like you, on their current pilot experiences and future requirements.

The feedback process is a very short 2-part written survey covering satisfaction and technology. Afterwards, we will want to have a telephone discussion with you about a few of your responses to the written survey, in order to better understand your opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of the current offering and what Microsoft needs to do to make it a compelling offer.

Please return the written surveys to us at XXXXXXX or fax it to XXXXXXXX. After we receive your written surveys, one of our associates will contact you by telephone.
If you have any questions, please call XXXXXXXX at Sacerdote & Co., Inc.

Please direct Microsoft-related questions to XXXXX at Microsoft. Thank you so much for your time. Your feedback is a critical part of Microsoft’s product development.

So let's see… One offers $100 and the other offers… nothing. Hmmm 

Google launched Google Finance. I really like the way the graph operates. Mousing over a point in history highlights the day you are on and dynamically refreshes a snapshot of the days metrics.

If you scroll the graph to the past, the news section also scrolls to show relevant news. clicking on a news story scrolls the graph to the point where the release occurred and highlights the day's trading.

If you mouseover the names of the management, a window blows out to show more details and a photo of that person. To not be so Google oriented, I linked to Costco's (COST) financials rather than Google's.
Google Finance: Costco Wholesale Corp.

Cooks Illustrated did a great job of turning a negative technical problem into a strong reassurance that “we will protect your data”

Dear Friend of Cook’s,

As you have probably noticed, our Web site has been offline since Monday. This was due to a file being deleted in the “back office” part of our site over the weekend. We did not know how, or by whom, this file was deleted. As we do retain sensitive personal information from our Web members and registrants, we decided, for security reasons, to take the site down immediately.

As soon as we discovered the problem, we took steps to determine the cause and to determine whether or not any personal information was subject to unauthorized access. As of today, Friday, February 3, we have no indication that any sensitive personal information was compromised, nor can we say for sure whether this event was caused by a purposeful act or by a system malfunction.

Out of an abundance of caution, we have removed all credit card information from our servers before bringing the site back online. That means that all aspects of our Web site are functional except for your personal account information and My Favorites. As soon as we have determined that it is appropriate for us to reintegrate the credit card information with our online services (hopefully early next week) our site will be restored to full functionality.

Although we were, of course, anxious to bring our Web site back online quickly, our most immediate concern has been the security of our customers’ sensitive information, and we therefore wished to move deliberately. This has required a bit of patience on your part and also on ours. Here, as in cooking, haste is no virtue. (Much like you, however, I do find waiting painful.)

We intend to update all paid Web site members by mail or email as soon as we have concluded our analysis.

Thanks so much for your patience.

Christopher Kimball
Founder and Editor
Cook’s Illustrated

Cooks Illustrated could have easily covered up the problem as a non-issue and continued with business as usual. Instead they showed that their customers are their #1 priority.

Kudos to Christopher Kimball and his team for being forthright with their technical issue. Establishing trust is similar to building a brand. You can’t force it. You have to practice it and let the consumers decide where you fall. I will continue to be a loyal subscriber, and now, also an advocate.

I sent an email to batteries.com to complain about their service and here’s a portion of the response I received from Chris McKenna, Product/Warehouse Manager, Batteries.com.

I apologize for the experience you just encountered. We’ve been experiencing some technical difficulties with the live chat software. It randomly kicks our reps out of the program, ends chats automatically, etc. The IT department is working to fix the bugs. I certainly appreciate the feedback.

In response to your inquiries, no, there is not a longer lasting rechargeable AA than the Energizer 2500mAh version. This is the highest mAh rating for consumer rechargeable AA in the market. The 2700mAh is soon to come. However, if you were not satisfied with the predecessor, this will probably not alter your opinion. There are a few steps you can take to ensure you get the most runtime out of your batteries.

Again, if you are having tech difficulties with Live Chat, you’re better off disabling it until the issues can be resolved.

Update: I also received a phone call from Dale Petruzzi, President of Batteries.com telling me that they are having problems with Chat and that they are actively working on the issue. Dale seems to have been around the Ecommerce block and had great insights into their strategies for search and blogging. In the end, I was satisfied with the call and their service.

I was trying to find better batteries for my digital camera so I went to a number of sites and then I saw that Batteries.com had Live Chat and thought….”They should be experts, they’ll be able to help me.” Here’s the chat transcript. This was probably about a 20 minute chat. Ridiculously long.

Your Sales professional today is Jeane
Welcome to batteries.com, Jeane will be right with you.
Jeane - How may I help you today?
Brandon -I’m using Energizer NIMH 2500mAh and they don’t last long in my digital camera.
Brandon -Is there an optimal type of battery for cameras?
Brandon - hello
Jeane - No sir there is not such a battery.
Brandon - I’m looking at it
Brandon - What’s the best battery for a digital camera?
Jeane - Which battery is it?
Brandon - what lasts the longest in AA format
Brandon - Energizer NIMH 2500mAh AA
Brandon - That’s what I have now. I’m looking for a better battery
Jeane - Well I always prefer our brand.
Brandon - that’s because you make more money on your brand. Which last the longest?
Brandon - Is Lenmar your brand?
Jeane - No
Brandon - can you send me a link to your AA rechargeable. the best one you’ve got
Jeane - One moment
Brandon - This is taking too long for a simple question
Brandon - Do you work at an in-house call center or are you working remotely?
Brandon - hello?
Brandon - hello?
Brandon - Are you done?
Brandon - I’m trying to buy batteries from you
Brandon Exits

Message to Batteries.com: If you can’t provide good customer service, then don’t provide it at all.

Been looking for a place to store full resolution digital photos. Found this on the MSN Blog. Think I’ll give it a shot.

Streamload - MediaMax Online Media Center - Store, Organize, Access & Share Your Media Files

This is great from AskYahoo.

Dear Mike:
In the interest of brevity, we’re limiting ourselves to four Uranus jokes. Otherwise we’d be here all day. And while our afternoon is pretty open, we know you have more important things to do than giggle over the scintillating history of Uranus (that’s one)…more