Google Gets Back to Nick
Nick Saber just forwarded Google’s eventual response to what went wrong. Because thousands of people wanted to know the answer to the question why, here’s the first part of that letter:
Hello Nick,
I understand that you may have questions about the recent actions taken on your Google Account. We understand and respect your concerns about your account.
Our specialists performed a thorough investigation of your account ID: nick.saber@gmail.com. It appeared that your account was compromised on 08/01, and an unauthorized charge of $490.30 was attempted in your Google Checkout Account. For security purposes, we suspended this account to prevent additional activity and charges.
We’d also like to assure you that the security and confidentiality of your personal information, including your credit card number, is our highest priority. Your information is securely stored on our servers, and won’t be shared with anyone except under the very limited circumstances described
in our Privacy Policy at http://checkout.google.com/files/buyerprivacy.html. To learn more about
the security of your account and personal information, please visit http://checkout.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=29075.We also understand your concerns regarding your account security. It is difficult to determine the exact nature of your account compromise. Please see below for useful information on safeguarding yourself online.
The rest of the letter reminds us not to fall into phishing scams, etc. Good advice.
But wow. Couldn’t this have started with an email saying, “Looks like someone was messing with your account. We shut it down to investigate.” Seems a little backwards to make Nick sweat for a day and change, only to reveal that someone tried to rip him off, and THAT’S why they shut him down.
Special note: Matt Cutts came by with lots of information once this story broke, and I’m grateful for that. Note to ALL companies: if you don’t have a respected face person like Matt out there, think about it. It does help.
What’s your take? How would you have handled it, if you were Google?
Lastly, I’m going to talk about this a bit more in my next newsletter, so if you’re not already subscribed, hop in!
When Google Owns You
Nick Saber isn’t happy now. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out that he couldn’t get into his Gmail account. Further, he couldn’t get into anything that Google made (beside search) where his account credentials once worked. When attempting to log in, Nick got a single line message:
Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?]
That’s it.
Nick sent a message or three to Google for support. He got back this:
Thank you for your report. We’ve completed our investigation. Because our
investigation was inconclusive, we are unable to return your account at
this time. At Google we take the privacy and security of our users very
seriously. For this reason, we’re unable to reveal any further information
about this account.
And that’s it.
Suddenly, Nick can’t access his Gmail account, can’t open Google Talk (our office IM app), can’t open Picasa where his family pictures are, can’t use his Google Docs, and oh by the way, he paid for additional storage. So, this is a paying customer with no access to the Google empire.
If he was doing something wrong/illegal/invalid, they might’ve said so (not thinking that he was). If he had been hacked, wouldn’t that be something vaguely apparent? I dunno, but it seems like that’d be the way.
So, what happens now? What does Nick do? He’s sent a bunch of emails. But now what? Locked out of ALL of Google’s apps, the apps that I praise daily, the apps where Julien Smith and I are writing a book. Should we be doing that? I didn’t see a problem until this. What if we’re the next Nick?
What’s your take? And what do you think of hands off customer service in this case?
**UPDATE: Nick got back in after quite a lot of work.
**UPDATE: Jay explains in the comments how this is supposed to work. Mind you, I’ve used Google for years as a non-paying customer, so Jay’s advice wouldn’t help. Right?
**UPDATE: Google Gets Back to Nick. We’ll be talking about some ideas based on this in the next newsletter.
Small Is a Weapon
Seth Godin nailed it in yesterday’s post about a small business making an excuse for slow service. Only, I think the last line is the post in a capsule.
“Small is a weapon, not an excuse.”
I work for a reasonably small company. My president also helps fix paper jams. My CEO and I grab lunch at Subway often. It’s small. We work our faces off.
And yet, the very best parts of being there relate to us being small. We try new things. We respond rapidly. We write (and try to follow) processes that are streamlined and made to move us faster towards the next business step.
What are your thoughts? Are you at a small place or a big place? Where are the good and bad parts of that?
What Does Your Audience Need
Often, businesses think about social media from the perspective of how they can use the tools to reach an audience, build a community, build a customer base, or similar perspectives. With that in mind, you choose to build a set of tools that you perceive will help the audience/customer do what you want them to do better, with less friction. In essence, you build what YOU want, not what they might need. Let’s consider that for a moment, starting with understanding more about how your customers might view your thoughts on implementing new things.
Can You Ask Them?
Perhaps you’re thinking your organization needs a blog. It’s okay to start with your reasoning and your ideas for what it will do for you, but is there value in asking your customers, and other stakeholders what might be useful to them? For instance, in a B2B environment, perhaps you’re thinking that a blog is a great way to keep existing customers up to speed on upcoming products. But maybe your customers don’t have time to stop and read more text in a given day. Maybe they’d prefer the updates in audio format. Would something like a podcast or even Utterz be the right tool to convey the same information? If it’s useful for your processes, ask. It might save you money, poor implementation, and lack of adoption.
Can You Make Things Easier?
Navigating a typical phone voice response unit (the automated systems that answer most customer service lines) is about as fun as sawing your own limbs off. We all know this. But these tools are in place as cost-cuttting. MANY companies try to ease this pain by making a website version of customer service that they hope helps people avoid the phone system (which also saves them even more money). Guess what? Those usually stink, too.
Would a forum/message board help? Could customers solve each other’s problems? Is there a way that you can reward customers who help others? Sure a message board seems like an old technology, and yet, when I look at the cutting edge equivalent of that functionality, Plurk, I see a community-driven, instant message board type of conversation. Not your style? How about a wiki?
Can You Facilitate Even More Value?
What if you visited a hotel, handed over your cell phone showing your SMS texted confirmation code, and received two keys at checkin without any hassle or fuss? Imagine the next step being an opt-in to the hotel’s ad-hoc social network, allowing you the opportunity to declare your presence, to announce that you were interested in business opportunities, and that you had availability for conversations during these two time periods over the next three days. When you check out, or if you’ve had enough, you opt back out, and you’re no longer part of that network.
Walk into a commercial bookstore in the US and there will be one small bookcase of staff picks. Beyond that, there’s absolutely zero recommendation built into the store. Online, Amazon.com facilitates my book interests in over a half dozen ways. Are there ways you can emulate that recommendation-rich environment for your products and services? Can you help customers help me? (And don’t check out of this concept if you’re in B2B. The same ideas apply).
What Does Your Audience Need?
It seems a strange step, but if you’re not asking for that kind of input, how are you part of this vaunted “conversation” that we say social media is all about? If you’re not asking, you don’t know. Don’t feel that you have to cater to every whim your customers and other stakeholders have, but don’t let people’s ideas fall on deaf ears. Respond to their suggestions. Be as timely as possible. And ask more than once. Things change.
In that same spirit, what do YOU need, you who are coming here for insight, ideas, and springboards for your own businesses? What’s useful to you, both in the content that I write about, and/or the design of the site? Does this work for you? How may I help?
Photo credit, Todd Baker
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Will Companies Value Your Personal Network
Your job resume tells people what you’ve done in the past and where you’ve done it. Is that the sum of your capabilities? What about your resourcefulness? What’s the value of the people you can reach in your various networks, online or otherwise? And how should companies value this facet of your professional experience? Do companies need to consider how this might impact their departments?
With Sales, it’s a No-Brainer
Sales is a relationships game. The more folks you know, the deeper your Rolodex, the better your chances of finding the right hinge to close the sale. Building networks of value, where you can be helpful is made far simpler with these tools. They don’t do the work for you, but they give you new ways to reach out and establish connections, and stay just a little more in touch with other people’s environments. A salesperson who’s not exploring tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and yes, even Twitter, is missing some potential opportunities.
How does your organization stack up in this regard?
For Other Departments, It’s Still Pretty Good
Imagine the difference of employing seven software engineers versus having access to thousands of engineers. How powerful is your internal marketing team when they are aligned with social networking tools and the ability to listen to your customers via these tools? What does your HR team miss by not having their listening powers tuned into the robust stream of human capital that roams Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn?
Customer Service is Trickier
In this time of economic downturn, customer service is often viewed as a cost center. Reducing average handling time, and reducing representative headcount are the realities, and no matter what the mission statement says, except for the amazing companies, you’ll find that customer service is more of a “must have” requirement than an empowering strategy. And yet, there’s gold in these hills. It’s just harder to do. For thoughts on how to advance customer service, see Lionel Menchaca and Frank from Comcast for a few simple examples. My take? There can be MUCH more going on here.
And YOUR Personal Network?
When I look at the networks people have built around them, there’s value there. Tangible value. Consider someone like Liz Strauss. She reaches out deeply into her community to build events like her popular and successful SOBCon. She gives and gives, and then when she needs something back, Liz has a strong network of multi-layered contacts to reach into for her needs.
It’s amazing, really. Liz alone is a powerhouse to hire, but if you really did give credit for her extended network, which reaches into the largest companies in the US, UK, and for all I know, the rest of the world.
How do you place a value on that? What does it mean when you can reach deeply into your network for nonprofit fundraisers, or job placement, or contact to land business deals? If you are an employer, or someone involved in the hiring of talent, how much is this influencing your thoughts?
I think this is something that goes into the consideration and metrics of hiring practices in the next handful of years (at least for some sectors). What do you think?
Photo credit, Jurvetson
The Salad Bar Business
Congratulations! You’ve been made owner of the local grocery store’s salad bar. You’re 100% owner and responsible for the revenue generated from the bar. Salad is priced by the pound, so there’s a blend of items that cost less per pound at the bar than if you bought them packaged, but there are many more that cost much more. And let’s be honest: most everything for sale at the salad bar costs way more than if you buy it one row over at the grocery store. And yet, business is thriving.
You’re making decent revenue and the store is happy with what you’re doing, but they want more money for next year. Your customers are mostly happy, though they occasionally ask for something a little different than what’s out there.
What do you do NEXT?
Do you find products that give you an even bigger margin of profit? (Croutons are $1.00 a box, but add weight to a salad.) Do you work simply from your community’s requests: “Sure, we can throw sushi in for the same price” (at a loss)? Do you do NOTHING and start to lose customers from lack of variety?
The salad bar business is not unlike a lot of other businesses, including the business of making content for people. On the one hand, you want to give your community what they demand. On the other, you have cost and profit requirements.
How do you manage the balance? What comes first in your mind? If you’re the salad bar owner (and you are!), what’s your next move?
Customer Service Hoops
Dear companies providing customer service:
Yes, I know it’s cheaper that I use your website, and I’m really smart, so normally your website might even be a viable option, even though it’s laid out like crap, and it’s not exactly intuitive, and it doesn’t answer questions the way I wish they would be asked.
Yes, I understand that you’d MUCH rather I go through 400 steps on your Interactive Voice Response Unit and decide which chute to traverse, and sometimes, I can navigate that and get done what needs doing (best in class for useful IVRs, in case you’re wondering, is American Express), but sometimes I cannot.
PLEASE DON’T MAKE IT HARD FOR ME TO TALK TO A HUMAN OR I WILL BE MIGHTY ANGRY.
This morning, this means T-Mobile. Don’t make it hard for me to get done what needs doing. Don’t hide stuff on your site. Don’t make me BEG for humans.
Customer service NEEDS to evolve. Because just as Google is your *real* home page, Customer Service are your *real* best opportunities to keep me happy with you, NOT a bolt-on cost center.
Thank You Continental Airlines
I promise that this is NOT a bitch and moan session about some horrible disservice done to me by Continental. In fact, I sincerely mean “thank you.” You see, Continental Airlines did something for me that I’ve never experienced before.
They called me.
On my flight back from San Francisco en route to Boston, I had a connecting flight in New Jersey. Because PodCamp NYC was happening, I decided to hop off in Newark and trek down to Brooklyn for the event. This choice brought with it an issue.
I had 3 bags. Rules say I can only carry two on the plane. When I asked the counter agents, they said I could change my ticket, but that would cost about $100. So, it would effectively cost me $100 to move a bag from San Francisco to New Jersey. What to do? So, I made the decision to check the least scary to lose of all my bags, with about 300 labels on it showing that it was mine and how to reach me. And I got off in Jersey, with that lonely little bag flying without me to Boston.
Flash forward to Saturday morning, and my phone rings. It’s Ellen from Continental’s baggage department. She’s very politely telling me that I seem to have left a bag behind. She’s very friendly. I tell her what I did, what the agents said. She was VERY kind, very understanding, even apologetic that it seemed silly to me about the $100 option.
I haven’t flown Continental in a while, and I’m not sure when I will again. But I wanted you to know that they were nice, that they called ME, and that I appreciated that human touch.
File this under “good guys get blogged, too.”
Customer Support on Twitter
Do you have a customer support organization? Is it possible that your customers are web users? I just noticed TurboTax Support has a Twitter account. How brilliant. It’s software. Software users (a reasonably high percentage of them) can potentially be online. Ergo, put “ears” into Twitter and be ready to respond. Brilliant. Truly. This is the customer service channel I mentioned in my post about from a week or two ago.
So, who else needs to be using Twitter as a listening and responding post? I know Dell is here. What about HP or IBM? What other brands should be listening? How can higher ups in a company be convinced that this is useful?
Customer Service Needs New Channels- Or Does It
Michael Arrington opens this discussion by sharing how Comcast responded faster to his complaints in Twitter than they did to his customer service department phone calls. If I said nothing more and pushed “publish,” a business owner should at least raise an eyebrow and ask herself, “Where are my customers? Do I have listening posts and responders there?”
Customer service exists on phones because the bulk majority of people in most countries use and have access to a phone. But do YOUR customers use phones as a primary source of contact? Email? Where are they? What are they using to communicate quickly?
In the 90s, I worked in customer service, and eventually became manager of the local telephone company’s 411 offices (who handle directory assistance calls). I have about six or seven years (a while back) of front line and management customer service experience, so I understand about handling times, about the cost balance, etc.
But are there low cost, flexible, measurable ways you could be improving your customer service channels by investigating and understanding where your customers are spending time and energy online? Absolutely.
For everyone? Definitely NOT. But I could probably name about 1000 businesses who’d do better having someone monitoring blogs, twitter, and facebook than they would reducing handling time at a call center in Dublin.
What do you think? Who are you doing business with that would be better suited to reach you online?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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