Oh To Be With Any Provider Other Than Mine
I’m motivated to rant about the customer service provided (there’s a misnomer) by our beloved telephone network providers. Be they Bell, AT&T, Vodafone, Telus, Orange, T-Mobile, Movistar or Jungle Drums; they are very adept at “slamming” us but very INEPT at serving us.
Via your BlackBerry, Your iPhone, Samsung or Motorola, YOU have the power to make them sit up and smell the roses.
One Man’s Motivation
I read with pleasure a recent post by Andrew J Scott, a digital entrepreneur writing entertainingly and entitled “ I Love You, I Hate You: The New Influence Economy”
At the time of writing he had just broken off a long romance with Virgin Atlantic Airlines, thanks to the slavish subservience of check-in staff (or their anonymous back room controllers).
The essence of his story was that Virgins booking web-site was down (Must have been HIS fault No1) so, in an emergency he chanced a dash to Heathrow with only hand luggage, arriving five minutes after the dreaded security deadline had passed (obviously HIS second fault) BUT a clear fifteen minutes before the First Class Passenger cut off (HIS third fault / obviously being poor qualifying him for contempt).
Further Motivations
I enjoyed these gripes so much I feel a gravitational pull to repeat them:
Your call center asks you to type in the number of your phone or sixteen-digit account. You hold until some picks up, asks you name and asks for the number of your account. They then pass you on to the person you REALLY needed to speak to who asks for you sixteen-digit account number. Patience is a holy virtue.
The Same Man’s Prediction
Andrew Scott opines that the more savvy companies are finally awakening to influence of social media – creating “The Economy Of Influence”. Online rants via Facebook or Twitter will possibly entertain your circle of friends, but frequent rants may lead to your being dropped, rendering you friendless.
However, e-Bay having shown Amazon the way, we are all now accustomed to rating the vendor. But that beneficial feedback hit snags thanks to the abusive fringe (who spend the rest of there leisure time abusing umpires in Neanderthal language).
FaceBook “like”, intended to acknowledge that you “liked” your second cousin throwing up while in line to graduate Suma Cum Laudenum has been subverted by wily entrepreneurs blatantly obliging twenty facebook relatives to “like” their home made jelly that they now sell online and need 25 likes to satisfy the google bots.
Enough Already, What Did He Predict?
Sorry, these poor call center slaves have upset us all; reading their prepared responses from a script, they make our experience personal and emotional. Where was I ?
Scott suggests that site’s such as Klout and Peerindex who evaluate the actual influence of an individual face-book devotee, making vendors aware (with hard statistics) that Joe Blow or Felicitous Frank are worthy of some surreptitious attention. Felicitous’ flattery of her new “green lip luster” could be viral (if not a virus).
Scott poses an intelligent, studied and reasoned scenario of what the future may bring. Chech it out at http://urbanhorizon.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/i-love-you-i-hate-you-the-new-influence-economy/
The Neophytes Take On Prediction
We take a less academic stance at unlockworldwide.com and our predictions of the future are often as accurate as predicting the winner of next years Kentucky Derby. But, we enthuse over those who do seriously ponder the direction that our smart-phone, smart-apps and smart-attitude will take us.
Seems to me that “like” (at least for the generations not get on gin-seng) is a phenomena her to stay. But how and why?
Forget the profound logic or the moral paucity ….. a quick “like” after reading a sound bite by our Glorious Leader (or thumbs down) will have an immediate influence that a crafted e-mail cannot; the depth of thought needs reading and categorizing. Forget snail mail … by the time your letter reaches Nixon’s desk he’s resigned already.
Politics and Commerce
Politics is mostly a four year term; errors can be reversed and the fickle public re-persuaded if you keep ahead of the “like” category.
Selling a smartphone is different. Your Curve 9360 may be technically ahead of the Samsung Galaxy but if your followers don’t tweet …. or are not motivated to tweet by their uber tweeting influential facebook “friend” … it may be too late to develop any momentum before Apple swing into action with the iPhone Steve (the memorial edition) 5.1
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU
We know that you have failed to “like “ this article. Your Nokia Windows Mango Nexus reported your failure to do so. Your friend DID “like” us on his Samsung.