Jananas

I’ve been a President’s Choice MasterCard customer for a long time. I’ve been an e-Statement customer from pretty much the day they offered the service.

At the beginning of the month they changed their website (and my guess is likely their provider). Here’s what they did wrong.

1 – They didn’t send out a specific “hey we’re changing our systems so here’s what you need to know” email. Instead they tagged it onto the end of a notification I used to receive which let me know that my statement is available to view. Problem? Those are a reminder email, which means that most customers don’t read them. I got my notification and assumed that everything was status quo. You need to understand how customers use your system and behave and build accordingly.

2 – They didn’t import notification/alert preferences into the new system, so I never received the alert that reminds me that my payment is due. Ergo, my payment was late. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know – as a customer I have a responsibility to check and stay on top of things. However, when you train your customers to look when they receive a notification email that their payment is due and then you stop those emails without warning, what did you expect was going to happen?

3 – You didn’t port my account information over. I had an account on the old system, so why did I need to create an account on the new system? If you wanted me to update my password to meet your new/stronger criteria, then you could have just had me do that. Really, I consider this a standard part of any upgrade – as a business, you need to make sure that people are moved over. Think “seamless” and then act on it.

4 – Make sure to label fields well & specifically. For example, I had an account on the old system so I assumed that I needed to fill out the section that said “re-register / already enrolled”. Not exactly. It turns out that I needed to create a new account, entirely from scratch. I needed the “need to enroll” option. Again, how would I have known that?

5 – Example two for labeling fields correctly. They asked for the name on my card. Normally when I see that field on the interwebs I type in “Jana LastName”. The actual name on my card is something more like “Ms Jana LastName”. Small difference, but different nonetheless. Not necessarily a big deal except for the fact that I’ve never once had a transaction declined because my name doesn’t match which has trained me to think that the first way is fine. Lesson? If you want things to match specifically, give detailed examples. If there is a reasonable expectation that something different will work (especially based on typical transactions) then either a) accept the common variants, or b) let me know exactly what to do. Don’t just block the transaction and make me call your call centre.

6 – Don’t ask stupid security questions. These need to be uber, uber specific. Remember that I likely won’t come across these until six months, a year, or more down the road. If there is any wiggle room about my answer then I will get it wrong. Which means that I’ll have to call you – costing you money and pissing me off. Here is an example of one of the really stupid questions: “What is your pet’s name?” Which one? I have multiple pets. What happens if my pet dies between now and when I have to use this question?

This is bad execution.

I wish that companies understood that bad execution slowly erodes our trust that they are looking out for us, that they can do their job well, that we should trust them. Usability matters. Your customers’ expectations matter. Doing your job well matters.

I’ve been following the #rogers hashtag for a while now, partly because I’m curious what people are saying. Its blown up over the last week as people have responded about Rogers’ iPad pricing (mostly negative, see the massive comment thread over at Redboard) . I’m not going to discuss whether its good or not, as I don’t have the sort of inside knowledge to make that judgement call.

I don’t know where the mistake around the $20 sharing plan started or whose fault it really was. What I do know is that the people who bought first gen iPads are die hard Apple fans. And these customers believe in Apple (and likely believe that they can do no wrong). Compare them to Rogers, a teleco that customers love to hate.  When something goes wrong, the customers automatically blame Rogers (after all, they *always* mess up, make mistakes, are out to screw us!).

When you partner with a company, you need to think about how the customer views you both. When you are the company with the weaker reputation you need to make sure that you cover your ass and have all your ducks lined up before you launch. Because if something goes wrong, its your company that will take the blame regardless of where the issue originated.

You don’t want to lose the brand war with Apple because you weren’t prepared.

By day I’m a financial analyst. I’m the cog in the machine that puts together your business cases  so that you can get the go ahead to launch. Last week I worked on a program that involved DRM (or even more importantly, a move towards the lack thereof!!). I got to explain to my manager what DRM is and why many people aren’t big fans of it. I had to add a footnote explaining it, just in case senior management didn’t understand either. I took it directly out of wikipedia.

“Digital rights management (DRM) is a generic term for access control technologies that can be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to impose limitations on the usage of digital content and devices. The term is used to describe any technology that inhibits uses of digital content not desired or intended by the content provider.”

I understand that definition. It made me think if other people would understand it. If people don’t really think about ownership rights when they buy a song or download an e-book, then they may not understand the implications that DRM has for them. If people aren’t deep into the tech world or the music world or cutting edge authors, then they may not have a frame of reference for what this means.

How else can I explain DRM? How else can I frame the problem? Can I use another metaphor, something with more relevance to everyday situations? Something that someone who isn’t technically minded (and might even be dismissive of those who are) would still get? It hit me last night.

Imagine that you’ve bought furniture for your house – couches, a dining room table and chairs, a bedroom set. Imagine that you’ve moved homes twice in the last 10 years. Tomorrow you’ve moving into your third house. Except that when you go to move in you get told that you can’t take you’re furniture with you because you were only allowed to use it in “two houses”. That’s what DRM is – it is restrictions on how you’re able to use something that you’ve bought.

Imagine a world where someone told you how many times you could move your furniture or how many times you could sit on your couch. That’s DRM.

How else could I explain this? What other metaphors might work to communicate this idea?

The Daily Knitter is a website that drives traffic by offering a free daily knitting pattern. They also have a repository of free patterns, plus some exclusive patterns and articles. They drive traffic to their site by offering free patterns and earn revenue from advertising based on that traffic. My personal experience is that they are doing that at the expense of the designers.

Back in September my Basic Ear Flap Hat Pattern was picked up as one of their free patterns of the day. I was pretty excited because it meant a) traffic to my site, b) more exposure for the knitting pattern, and c) more people knitting my hat. Free patterns of the day are on the site for the last two weeks (backwards from today), however I kept getting traffic for about four months. All of a sudden in January it just stopped. Nadda, nothing.

I sent their editor a first email in January asking (nicely I might add) if the pattern could be listed on their repository of free patterns. No response and it wasn’t added. Apparently it was good enough for their free pattern of the day, but not good enough to be listed. At this point I’m a little annoyed, but hey there could be a million and one reasons why the editor didn’t respond back. So I sent another email early in February and again, no response and the pattern wasn’t added. Now, I’m really irritated – six weeks is reasonable time frame to expect a response.

This is a shitty way to treat the pattern designers. In my case, I wasn’t even asked if I was okay with them listing my pattern as the free pattern of the day. At the time I was glad for the increase in traffic but once that traffic died away but the benefit to their business continued, I was peeved because they continued to profit from using my pattern.

Here’s how I interpret their business model – they use daily free patterns to entice people to come to their site daily, driving their stats and generating ad revenue. Every new free pattern helps drive their business – so while I received a finite increase in traffic, the benefit to them from using my pattern continues long after any benefits to me (the designer) stopped.

Behind that, though, are the people writing the free patterns that the Daily Knitter is the goodwill of the designers whose patterns they use to drive traffic. In an era where reputation and trust are important, why would you risk that over something so minor?

Really, is it that difficult to add all patterns listed as ‘free patterns of the day’ on your ‘free patterns’ pages as well? Is it that difficult to respond to an email from a person whose design you’ve used (and therefore profited from)? I would think that it would be in your best interest to maintain a good relationship with your designers so that they’d be more willing to contribute to your site in the future (and thus increase the value your provide).

Daily Knitter, I think that you’ve behaved poorly and I certainly won’t be recommending that anyone use you.

Edit (March 10th) - the pattern has been added back to their listings. I’m not 100% if it was just that they finally read through their emails and there was simple a system error that I was caught in or if they came across this acted. Regardless, the email I finally got back was pleasant and friendly and the pattern has been added back. WIN!

If you know me, then you know this about me – I do not suffer fools gladly. More than anything else, its that I don’t like incompetence.

Last year I was editor of the Rotman Yearbook. I did a pretty bang up good job and because yearbooks are one of those things that often aren’t given a lot of recognition, I’m going to officially and publicly pat myself on the back. I did a lot, I learned a lot, I put out a good book, and I did it at a profit.

Here’s the problem. The person who took over for me is incompetent. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. This isn’t just me saying this. The situation was so bad (as in they’re two months away from the end of the school year, have missed two deadlines already, and are on track to miss delivery entirely) that the student council called me and asked me to step in and help. To summarize – the current editor messed up so badly that they’re having to pay money to fix his mistakes. In most jobs that would get you fired.

I have of frustration dealing with the current ‘editor’. I’ve been told how much ‘easier’ this person’s job is now that I’m on board to do layouts. Major problem with this statement? I’ve spent as much time tracking down photos and pertinent information for them as I have on layouts. In fact, this person is essentially a glorified admin assistant tracking down the photos that I’ve asked for (and that they should have already had!). I don’t like having the amount of work I’m doing devalued or belittled. Especially when they aren’t even able to provide the information that I do need, thus increasingly my workload dramatically.

For example, we have a section for photos of the first year study groups. Right now I have most of them, however they arrived in folders labelled ‘section 2′ and then something like IMG_7XXX.jpg. The problem with this is that I need to put names (and the correct names otherwise heads will roll) to faces, but I do not know these students and further have no access to school websites to even get access to this information. Thankfully I was able to go through other channels to get a copy of student photos and names, but now I have to go through the photos and essentially match them back to people which dramatically increases the time it will take to get something that should be simple done. Needless to say, I’m not please that a very simple instruction has been ignored completely and that my time is being wasted when I’m doing someone a favour (I guess it just means that the work will cost them more).

Even worse, is that the current editor officially has their PMP designation. Yes, they are an official project manager. I have no idea how they’ve fucked up this badly – they’ve obviously not done any research to define business requirements or deliverables, build a project plan with deadlines (and a work breakdown structure going backwards from a hard and final delivery date), define risks, or even think for that matter. I guess they might think that as a project manager their role is to direct from higher ground, without having to get their hands dirty. Well, fuck that! In fact, they even went as far as to blame some of the volunteers for the confusion that photos existed in. I quickly pointed out that as the manager it was their responsibility to provide direction (which requires understanding what’s needed and why). To which I got the phone equivalent of a blank stare.

You can’t be a good project manager if you don’t understand what you’re dealing with. And trust me, this person doesn’t. Example – they asked if I was doing layouts on my desktop… Which is difficult given that we do it all in an online system, you know cloud computing and the interwebs, and all that good stuff. Really folks, it isn’t that hard to pay some modicum of attention to the world around you. To put this in perspective, I was able to teach myself how to use their online system in about 20 minutes – it isn’t that hard if you read the faq’s and have any knowledge of enterprise software (and I’m not even a designer!).

It kills me that I recently applied for a job and was turned down because I didn’t have my PMP designation. And yet here’s a great example of how little value designations really have. Someone with their PMP has fucked up a project so badly that someone without their designation has had to be called in to fix it. Give me common sense any day of the week.

This post probably would have stayed in my head had I not received a voicemail yesterday asking me for a “status update” on how I’m doing. Oh my, what a good little project manager you are! Here’s the deal, when I’m being paid to fix your mistakes and do 95% of your job and have to go around you in order to get most of that actually done, don’t call me asking for “status updates”. Fuck off and let me do your job.

So yes, I do not suffer fools gladly. I do not appreciate having my time wasted. If I could, I would shout it out to potential employers to not hire this person that’s how incompetent they are.