Deer

I’ve enjoyed seeing numerous deer, in groups of  two or three and at times up to a dozen, grazing and roaming about the large field in the property adjacent to the rear of ours.   It’s nice to sit at the table in the kitchen, and watch the antics over breakfast or dinner.   Sometimes our dogs are attuned and bark, longing to give chase if only provided the chance.   Other times, the dogs seem oblivious as the deer meander through the woods and grassy areas and onto our property.

Recently, I’ve begun to encounter the deer crossing our drive way, or in other places around the house.   When I came hope from work yesterday and looked out the office window, I noted three beyond the front yard.  Two were in the open, and one was foraging behind a parked wheel barrow.

Perhaps siblings, perhaps an emergent couple, this seems to be a young buck and doe grazing together.

Meanwhile another young buck forages nearby.  I took a number of pictures in succession, but most either came out blurry due to the movement of the deer and / or the would be photographer.   A few pics where “head on” and I was able to discern this one as having two points per side.   The tiny fawns, still in their spots and not much larger than a small dog are fascinating to watch but have never stayed around long enough for me to take a picture.

Support Community ROI

The number of corporate sponsored communities is on the rise, and the number of ways for the community to create value for both the participants and the sponsor are virtually limitless.    Why is it often difficult to explain why people want to use them, and why a company should not only launch their own, but continue to invest for success?     As communities have a quantifiable cost they represent an investment, and all investments should have some form of payback or return.  We call this return on investment or ROI.

I’ll skip over the basics, and assume an understanding of community, specifically one in the support genre.

Much of the content found in research papers, case studies, and in discussion by practioners is a focus call avoidance or call deflection, because many companies are establishing peer to peer support communities to help reduce the number of calls that their call centers must field.   If a customer can go online and get his or her question answered by another customer, that saves the company an average of $10-$15 per phone call.   (an oft-quoted range)

Popular in most ROI discussions today are two types of call avoidance – direct and indirect.   Direct avoidance is if one customer asks a question and it is answered online.  That customer did not have to call – the call was directly avoided.   If an agent of the company provided the answer, then there were still some costs associated, but delivery via chat or a community is still fractional compared to a live call.   Even better for ROI is when another customer answers the question correctly.  No company labor required to avoid the call.

Better still, and this is one of the reasons a support community is a better strategy play than staffed chat, is indirect deflection.   When an answer is given, it may be subsequently viewed by tens, hundreds, thousands of other customers who have the same question.  Thanks to the beauty of search engines like google, these customers don’t even have to be members of the community, or even know the community existed before typing their question into search and being offered up the discussion with the answer in the search results.   The best communities of today have ways of marking discussions as solved and guiding new arrivals to the post in the discussion which resolved the issue.   Some communities have associated knowledge bases,  repositories of factual articles, built from the foundations of all the trial and error work performed by the community in discovery of answers.  

Searching the knowledge base provides the reader with more trusted and complete answers.   The support communities of tomorrow may have an knowledge base integrated into the community, building upon the existing user reputation engine so that a workflow to nominate, author, review, and publish articles will exist within the community and the most technical and trusted members can be given the keys to make the content more relevant and effective.

While direct and indirect call avoidance are well discussed today, most of the discussion is limited to avoidance of calls based on the face value of the information in the community, and not upon how those discoveries can be incorporated into the manufacturing or core business process to drive out defects and reduce service events in the field.   As service events can run into hundreds of dollars vs tens of dollars for a call, the opportunity here is immense not only in terms of avoided costs, but higher satisfaction levels and competitive advantage of a superior quality product.

 Communities can surface issues faster than traditional call centers, and it should be a fairly easy study for a company to compare when issues are first observed in community vs when and if they are ever escalated for action from their call center.   One could look at the difference in time – days, weeks, or months and see how many more units were shipped during this interval of time, and what percentage of those will now need some attention in the field.  Multiply this by the cost per event, and potentially this represents the additional ROI the community could provide for just that single issue vs reliance on a traditional call center.

Of course, the opportunities are often more than a single issue, which is why it is important for a company to ensure responsible staff are involved and working with it’s community leaders to identify and work on those issues which may be more broadly impacting.  Consider the following simple illustration.

If time in hours, days, weeks, months were on the X axis of this chart, and this were an illustration of the lifecycle of a discussion, then early identification of a problem, by encouraging and actively participating in the discussion during the  discovery phase is vital.   The point of problem definition is the point where the issue has been qualified in the community by comparative experience posts amongst different users to say what are / are not the common symptoms and variables such that the company can pursue a solution.

While the issue is being worked,  all the additional discussion and views  are potential waste – cost in bandwidth, moderation effort, and potential negative impact on brand image.  It’s a ticking clock in the community.   Internal investment within the company in terms of resources, and sense of prioritization to address a public and broadly impacting issue can shift the point of solution line to the left and stop the clock earlier.  In addition to the forms of waste already mentioned, additional waste in terms of shipped units or other operational costs can be reduced.   Focus in this area can dramatically improve the benefit of the community.

Existing discussion on community ROI today tends to focus on the views of the solution posted back to the community.  Views of this post over the remaining life of the discussion tail represent the indirect call deflection benefit.  A knowledge base can further improve the visibility and accessibility of this answer, increasing it’s efficacy in reducing expense, while improving the customer experience.

Day off

I abstained from the computer for most of today, taking advantage of a company holiday.   Recently, I’ve felt a bit overextended and chaotic in my approach, hacking  away at existing task lists while struggling not to chase every shiny object that arrives in my various in-boxes.

Today, it was nice to drink coffee on the couch,  put my car back together (see the ABS controller issue a couple posts back),  work out for the first time in months, take my cat to the vet (learned all about proteins and  histamine receptors), played with our dogs, and capped the evening with a long, relaxing walk on a greenway with Leslie after dinner out.   It was a decidedly analog day, and absolutely what I needed.

Reluctant to tweet…

I’ve ignored twitter mania with determination thus far.   I highly recommend Adam’s write up on twitter usage.

Twitter strikes me as the social media equivalent of the Nextel phone – the push to talk walkie-walkie that I’ve also shunned.   Sure, these technologies can be used artfully and for constructive purposes, but I find them self consumptive, and devoid of deeper context. 

In the early days of “cell-phonery”, one of my personal peevs was being in the middle of an important, real face to face conversation with another person only for their phone to ring and have them hold up a hand telling me they needed to take the call.  Sure, there are legitimate emergencies – wife having a baby, kids hair is on fire, etc.   But too often it was some moron calling to say “Whazzzzzup!”  Remember those?  

The push to talk feature only seemed to amplify this behavior, and I came to detest working on a project with someone while their phone constantly chirped as members of their social circle repreatedly “hit them” on the phone.   How presumptive this technology – pushing a button, beaconing a response with no regard for what the other person might be doing at the time.    Even worse were the behaviors created on the recipient end.    While building my house I noted the prevalence in the construction industry - Nextels were ubiquitous.   While a worker wouldn’t answer his ringing phone to accept a normal incoming phone call, he would respond to the voice equivalent of the instant message.  Why?  The expectation of brevity?

I’ve viewed twitter in much the same regard.  The sea of tweets that must be followed -would be robbers of focus and time.  How fragmented we are becoming.  We seem to reward and revel in our digital  A.D.D.   As twitter becomes even more mainstream, it is being seen as new ad space, virtual billboards, virtual junkmail full of coupon offers floating about.  The rush to monetize it, or chase the follower metrics as some kind of social status.   Blogging was last year’s bully-pulpit and twitter is on course perhaps to replace it.   While merchants flock to monetize twitter, I have to wonder how long before they are extorted by twitterers with high follower counts and a sense of self importance?   

Maybe I just don’t get it.  My betters in this space are on twitter and I may well have to embrace it one day.

ABS controller repair – Z06 corvette

Removing the failed ABS / Active handling control module from my Corvette was the only really productive thing I did all weekend.   Aside from mowing the lawn and a bit of half hearted piddling on the shop, most of the weekend was whiled away playing with the dogs, doing laundry and watching ‘Dexter’ episodes with the wife.   

For more than a year, the traction control and anti-lock brake features have been offline,  the glowing failure lights and scrolling messages of Service Traction Control, Service Active Handling, Service ABS have greeted me every time I’ve started the car.   Not wanting to pay a thousand dollar plus bill at the dealer, I’ve procrastinated this repair for a while.   After a bit of exploration on some forums, I find that the electronic control unit is the likely culprit, specifically a power relay sealed inside.   The control unit can be separated from the hydraulic pump and valve assembly by disconnecting two connectors and removing 6 small torx screws and gently prying to break the seal.

Here is the module removed.   I tried removing the 4 top cover screws as well, planning to find and replace the power relay myself.   Alas, even with the screws removed, I was unable to separate the cover – though I could cut the silicon seal with a razor blade, I was unable to open it.  No matter, I found a company online that will service these for $150, so I’ll ship it off today.

For those who might be curious, this is what the business end of this control module looks like.   These 12 cylindrical assemblies appear to be electromagnetic coils that actuate hydraulic control valves.  The valve assembly has 12 corresponding stems which mate up with these coils when the assembly is installed.   It appears as though the brake on each of the 4 wheels can be independently controlled whether or not you are pressing the brake pedal by one of three circuits. 

 This allows the car to unlock a wheel that is locked (ABS) while the others are still rolling and you are pressing the brake pedal, or to apply variable braking force to different wheels to help recover the car in the event of a skid (active handling), or to reduce the difference in rotating rates when applied in combination with a reduction in throttle position  (traction control).   All in all, a very smart system that works to undo some of our driving mistakes.   

I’ve missed these features, especially in the rain.

UPDATE 7/3/09:  I received back my repaired module from ABSFIXER this week, installed it and found my problems were resolved.  The repair was done overnight, and most of the down time has been due to shipping both ways.  I was being thrifty and selected a slow shipping method.   For $150, this is an absolute deal on the repair.  Kudos to Brandon at ABS.

Social Milestones

  Most of us have an inherent need for validation and acceptance.    This basic human need, and the way in which social networks fulfill this need helps explain many online behavior patterns.

There are rank and reputations systems built into many social networks to provide rewards for positive participation bestowed by the system, or by fellow participants.  

In the community I manage, as well as one I participate in as an ordinary member, we have a peer recognition system called kudos.  Kudos are a way that other members can recognize your posts as being particularly valuable.   

 It’s symbolic, but track-able onleader boards, and bankable in a reputation system in which the community’s collective opinion on the most valuable members is filtered and piped as one variable, into the ranking system that controls permissions.

In my personal journey of self discovery and growth, I find myself in a rather unique situation.   Among other things, I manage a forum community for my employer.  As part of my strategy, I actively recruit super users within our community to assume volunteer leadership roles, solving problems, providing advice and counsel, and helping both other customers and our company to be more successful.   I know that many of these super users look upon me as a gateway to the company and have hopes and expectations that through our interactions,  they will be able to influence the future course in varying increments. 

In a parallel situation, I participate as a budding super user in another community and have the opportunity in so doing to see things from the vantage point of my customers – from the other side of the glass.   I desire to provide advice and counsel, to see my inputs come to fruition in the course of future products and services.   I want what our customers want. 

Signs of recognition and acceptance, milestones in the progression of social networks are not limited to the online world, although the real world doesn’t provide visible kudo counters above our heads to track progress.   Often the cues of advancement are more subtle and we have to look for them.   

For some time, I’ve brought customer widgets into a lab and gotten involved in the evaluation and repair of them.   Initially, my efforts were misunderstood and the bureaucracy was featured, but as I interacted with the technicians and engineers over time, personal relationships formed and I was increasingly accepted.  A couple weeks ago, they even volunteered to set up a bench for me as I had begun to do some of my own work.   Today, I was gifted a nice screw driver set by someone with whom I just hadn’t clicked.  

Another technical team several floors above extended the offer to clear out a desk that I could use in their area, effectively inviting me to come and work amongst them.   Like Dian Fossey, the gorillas  are finally inviting me in.  I spent the afternoon there and plan to spend more time in the coming days and weeks.  Sometimes, the weak ties become the strong ties in organizational relationships.

Impressions from WordCampRDU 2009

WordPress isn’t kids stuff.   I understand that now.

About 3 years ago, I started blogging and signed up for a WordPress account because it was easy, it was free, and it was recommended without reservation by David Churbuck, a man who knows a thing or two about blogging.   At the time, I took it on faith that there was something special about the platform to deserve this recommendation, but I didn’t know just what.

Several of today’s sessions at WordCamp, really changed my perspective about what WordPress really is. It isn’t just a blogging platform. It can be a content management system, and even a reasonable e-commerce platform for a small business.  Through the use of some plug-ins, a person can build out a flexible and powerful website.

Shayne Sanderson capably demonstrated how easily Instinct’s e-commerce WP plug in could be installed and configured.  I was impressed by the sophistication of the integration, the support for pages, shipping calculator, inventory sku management with stock counters, cart capability, and multiple checkout transaction gateways.  Reading around the blogosphere following the presentation, I can see that experiences on the product may have been mixed a year ago, but it looked pretty good today.  I don’t know that I would recommend it as a platform for enterprise class e-commerce, but it seems like an option worth exploring for someone looking to grow beyond an ebay store.  Possible candidates might be a T-shirt or screen printer, an artist or potter, a custom fabricator, or even a coder who wants to enable downloads for a fee.  (want to start your own app store?)  

Brett Bumeter of Softduit Media  also had a great presentation and demonstration of WordPress as a content management system.  While it may not scale indefinitely, it is far more customizable that I imagined, especially using an application like  Artisteer to create custom themes with drop downs and tiered menus to manage pages, and support more complex designs and visions. (click over to the softduit site to see example of the drop downs)    Brett morphed several themes, demonstrating how easily menus, headers, column layouts and overall appearances could be changed in seconds.   Pages began to look more like conventional web pages, and less like canned blog pages with link lists and sidebars full of widgets.    I mentally combined this CMS session with the previous e-commerce session and quickly realized how WordPress could be used for far more than just blogging.

While WordPress is fairly SEO in it’s own right, the individual blogger can always employ a few additional tactics to improve their results.  Andy Beal  shared several technical tips which have both short and long term benefits to search efficacy.  He also revealed a few clever tactics for post re-titling, improving the post slug, as well as some evolutionary tuning of a post’s focus.  Hats off to Andy for sharing specific things we can all implement today on our blogs.

Kevin Pollak delivers…

“Frankenstein never scared me… Marsupials do….because they’re faaast…”  

We all came to see it, Kevin Pollak  doing Christopher Walken.   Leslie and I love Christopher Walken and his quirky style, and we love Kevin Pollak.  What could be better than Kevin Pollak doing Christopher Walken, live on stage twenty feet in front of us?  Fifteen mins ahead of the show, the audience was settling in, and as we made small talk with the half dozen couples around us, it was clear that everyone was here, first and foremost to see Kevin doing Christopher.  He didn’t disapoint.

We caught the show at Goodnights comedy club last night.   Who would imagine that little old Raleigh would have one of the ten best comedy clubs in the country?   The wall full of signed photos by the elite who’s who of comedy that have performed there over the years should expunge any residual doubt as to the veracity of that claim.  Leno, Seinfield, Pollak, Carrot top, DeGeneres , Rosy, Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy… row upon row of them.  Amazing.

What an extraordinary experience to see a celebrity actor and comedian in person.  Who and what they apear is carefully crafted on TV and in the movies – a function of makeup, lighting, script, location and circumstance.  To see them in person, sweating under the lights, being human, connecting with the audience in person is a unique and special opportunity.  The real deal, not an airbrush retouched facisimile.   I saw the performance, but I think I also got to see a glimpse of the man, some  portion of personality that shines through from one role, one performance to the next.  

Kevin Pollak is the man.  For those who may be unfamilar with this part of the routine…

Wordcamp RDU 2009

 Saturday June 13, 2009 is Word Camp RDU 2009.   WCRDU09 will be my first WordPress blogging event and I hope to emerge with a greater understanding of the plethora of tools available on this platform. 

While I’m generally familiar with WordPress, as it is my blog platform of choice, and also in use by my employer to power our corporate blogs via WordPress MU, I know I’ve barely scratched the surface.   I hope Saturday’s sessions will improve my technical proficiency.

Looking over the roster of speakers, Andy Beal emerged as the sole familiar face.  (Note to self – have to get out more)  Andy’s been on my blogroll for a while, and I’ve seen him now and again, last at internet summit 08 event  inNovember, and will make a point of attending his section to see what he has to share.

When does Batman ever sleep?

Community, blogs, Facebook, and the burgeoning sea of tweets – the growing ocean swell of social media that a brand champion can scarcely risk turning his or her back on for more than a few hours .   A vendor making a presentation on social media monitoring and analytics today really nailed the point when they said, “When does Batman ever sleep?”   The accompanying graphic in the chart deck showed all of the caped crusader’s arch enemies.  It was an easy concept to grasp -  If it’s not the Joker, the Riddler, Scarecrow, Penguin, Catwoman, or Two-Face, then it’s someone else.    Customers to be redeemed,  brand defacing vandals to be thwarted.

How do practitioners prevent all these events, mini-crisis, and personal relationships from becoming a gravitational vortex in their lives?

I think the answer is that one must have a strategic plan to scale investment and organizational involvement along with the increases in the volume of engagements through social networks.  I need to make a time budget, and ensure some hours each and every day are devoted to driving that strategic plan forward.