Paul's Posterous Page

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Accidentaly [sic] Composed: Poem by Ch'eng Hao (1032-1085) Sung Dynasty

One piece that I really enjoyed within the Denver Art Museum's Asian works exhibit is a multi-panel calligraphy screen. It's a poem called Accidentaly [sic] Composed by Ch'eng Hao (1032-1085) of the Sung Dynasty. I wish I could post a photo but it was behind glass and I couldn't get a decent image without using a flash. I did manage to copy the translation which appears below.


In leisure, everything can be done slowly.
In my sleep, the sun at the east window has
become red and hot.
If you see them in quiet, all beings are happy
with themselves.
In the four seasons of the year, my pleasure us
the same as that of others.
The way transcends the forms of nature,
The thoughts enter the ever changing winds
and clouds,
If a man does not indulge himself when he is
rich and high, and can be happy when he is
poor and low.
He is a hero.

This is How You Win Customers!

OK, I have to admit that I've been a fan of Shui Tea for some time. I don't even remember how I stumbled across his website or why I made my first order from Shui Tea. Maybe it was the subtly irreverent attitude of the purveyor that just meshed with my personality or the product descriptions on the website. Regardless, I've been really happy with the quality of the tea that I've ordered from him and have placed a few orders.

I'm relatively new to tea, but have been recording my tea reviews on this website called Steepster for a few months. I tend to be brutally truthful and in all honesty, I have really enjoyed everything I have ordered from Shui Tea.

Today, I received an e-mail from the owner of Shui Tea that had, in part, the following: "I wanted to thank you for sharing so much about Shui Tea on Steepster and online. I just put a $10 store credit on your account to use if you order again. No expiration, and feel free to use it anytime and with other coupons you might see in e-mails or on Twitter." I took advantage of the generous offer immediately because there were already a number of new items from Shui Tea that I wanted to try. 

The whole purpose of this post is to point out what a customer service and marketing genius the owner of Shui Tea has revealed himself to be. I was already a devoted fan of his brand. Through a very short and simple, yet personal, contact he has secured a customer for life. If there are ever any issues in the future (which I don't expect but can happen) I'll be more than willing to forgive them given the treatment he's afforded me to date.

Tea Vendors and Merchants-Your Packaging Matters!

Yes, ultimately the quality of your tea is what’s important but the attention you give to how that product is packaged tells us a little about how much care went into its production.

I won’t embarrass the two merchants here but I just recently received two shipments from what are considered to be “premium” tea suppliers. This is based on the price paid as well as their reputation in the market.

In both instances, the packaging made the product look like it was thrown together in someone’s basement. From one supplier, the tea had hand written labels on foil pouches that were completely illegible. From the other, the tea was in a tin. However, the tin was labelled with a standard Avery address label run through an inkjet printer and the label was slapped on the tin crooked.

My little, local shops take pride in the presentation of their teas and they always look professional whether you’re buying 50g or just a sample. I know you want to keep production costs low, but if you want to be seen as a “premium” brand then you have to look at least as good as something coming out of Wal-mart.

Niche Social Networking Websites Serve an Important Purpose - @Steepster is a Great Example

In the past, I've worked diligently trying to consolidate all of my on-line social activity to a few choice sites. I was worried about being spread too thin and I thought most communities would eventually become an adjunct to one of these "mega sites" like facebook or LinkedIn anyway.

I recently came across a website that opened my eyes to the value, even necessity, of niche social communities. Steepster, currently in public beta, is an on-line community for people that enjoy tea.

Once you have created an account and logged in, the user is presented with a very clean and user friendly interface. I think this is one benefit of having a focused community; you can plan your layout better because you have fewer unknowns as to the needs of your users.

This site has everything that this particular community needs. Users can catalogue and rate teas they've had (in the form of tasting notes) and keep a running shopping list. It's very easy to locate teas in their extensive database to add to any of these lists.

The real value of the site comes from the community it's building. Remember, these are all people that are "into" tea. Some people provide better notes on teas than others, but you now have access to a panel of experts to help you find products you might like. There are also very active discussion boards allowing one to become more educated about teas and the website has some of the common social site elements such as allowing users to "like" your comments and to follow each other's posts. 

A difference I noticed in this niche environment is that merchant interaction isn't "in your face." You no longer need thousands of meaningless ads popping up on the screen because merchants are already provided with their targeted market. They can simply interact with customers more informally on discussion boards. Steepster does have a "select" program which is a daily deal offered through one of their merchants to members only, but it's not intrusive. These vendors will also periodically offer Steepster exclusive sales through the discussion boards which is another benefit of joining the site. I made an impulse buy as the result of one of these sales from a site that I may not have otherwise visited.

I've really enjoyed using this website for the short time I've had an account. People are friendly and they're interested about what you have to say. I'm sure my posting something about tea on facebook would get a lot of not-too-valuable replies from old fraternity brothers. Now I have a place to go to get real advice and to share with others about something in which I'm interested.

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Why we use both @Zendesk and @GetSatisfaction

I was contacted by someone today asking for more information about why I chose to implement both Zendesk and Get Satisfaction within our customer care department. He wanted me to be specific as to what I saw as the benefits and shortcomings of each system.  I believe that, while they share similarities, both are unique yet also compliment each other. In case others have read my past posts and have the same question, I thought I'd share my reply to him.

Our customer base is a bit unique in that they are all within law enforcement. Some issues need to be handled more securely, so we need to work with customers in a closed environment. Also, by contract, we can only offer support to specific individuals within each agency. To meet these requirements, we use Zendesk. The major negative issue we have with Zendesk is that you cannot edit or delete a comment on a ticket once it is logged. If one of our customers accidentally includes an individual’s name or some other sensitive information when logging or commenting on a ticket (remember, we’re talking law enforcement) we need to expunge that information for privacy reasons. Right now, we have to completely delete the ticket and start over. Also, we’re an ISO registered company and the level of reporting and the built-in SLA targets within Zendesk don’t meet our requirements. We have to do a lot of data review outside of the system.

I mentioned that we limit service to a select group. However, we wanted to create a self-help and knowledgebase area for all of our users. That’s where Get Satisfaction comes into our workflow. My agents and our customers love that system! It really creates a feeling of community and we’ve been able to make a lot of people really happy by providing quick solutions to issues that were nagging them as an end user. The only down-side is that, in Get Satisfaction, you can’t assign a topic to a specific individual and all topics are open to the entire community. If we could assign topics and make them visible to select people, we could probably forgo Zendesk. The people at Get Satisfaction practice what they preach and provide top-notch service. I really enjoy working with them!

Tending Your Social Gardens

The number of social sites available to all of us is overwhelming. Some sites service a niche like goodreads for book lovers. Others, like Facebook, can be a catch-all. Not only does the sheer number confuse but then there's much overlap. Goodreads and LibraryThing, for example, serve the same purpose. Which you choose is a matter of preference. Of course, the whole idea behind these sites is being social. If your friends use a different site then that may force your decision.

Unless you're a professional social media mogul, no one has the time to develop that much interesting content and update all of their sites. I think it's a good idea to periodically step back, review how you're using these sites, and clean up a bit. 

I've used the analogy of a garden before when talking about social networking and maintaining a lifestream. You have to weed out some of the distractions, fertilize relationships that may be lagging, seed new ground and prune off anything that is no longer growing. I mapped out my current land holdings to help create a plan of action for the upcoming gardening season.

Online_garden

I'm really into books and music, so I'll always have some activity on one or more of these specialized sites. I used LibraryThing but recently stumbled across goodreads. I learned that goodreads may not have the same caliber of content as LT, but it's more social. It's very easy for me to share book information with friends across other sites. I planted a new goodreads garden and LT is now fallow. For music, I listen to last.fm for 6 or so hours each day, but download most of my music from emusic. I don't participate in their communities but instead share with friends elsewhere, so there isn't much maintenance required on either site.

One plot that really needs some attention is LinkedIn. I'm just now beginning to appreciate its difference from Facebook. I see how it can be useful for maintaining professional contacts and staying aware of resources. I'm not looking for a new job anytime soon, but when I do, I'm pretty sure LinkedIn will play some role. It's best to keep those trees growing in case I need to harvest sometime in the future.

After experimenting with tumblr for a few months, I've decided that's one site that can easily be pruned. It's dead wood. The usability and layout of the site is pleasant, but it doesn't provide the level of interaction I expected. It's completely visual and most of the content is duplicated through endless reposting. There's not much of substance and anything I can do on tumblr I can achieve just as easily on Posterous.

One quick word about flavors.me. It's not really a social site; instead it's a social media aggregator. This may be one of the coolest sites I've discovered in a while. It allows you to create one page that acts as a table of contents for all of your other social media sites. Instead of distributing a whole list of URLs to your friends, you can simply provide a link to one site. People can follow their interests from that single point.

Just like a real garden, social sites require some attention. It might even take a few seasons before your effort bears fruit. Without watering and feeding however, you'll only be left with a barren dust bowl.

@Zendesk President Considers Customer Feedback "Noise"

In the past, I've found the support staff at Zendesk (one individual in particular) to be abrasive, argumentative and arrogant. As the manager of the customer care department for a software company, I could never understand how these people kept their jobs. After the treatment Zendesk's customers received today, it all makes sense. The hubris percolates down from the very top.

Today, with no warning, many Zendesk customers were told their service fees would be increasing by as much as 300%. While the company also announced a few new features, the customer community is outraged as there is no perceived increase in value. My company, for example, will not make use of a single new feature.

The introduction of the new plans not only increases license fees but puts previously non-existent caps on how much the system can be used. Watching the posts on their internal forum, Zendesk has been evasive in their answers and each post in which they try to explain their position only leads to more confusion. 

To further demonstrate his level of arrogance, the President of Zendesk tweeted that the heart-felt feedback he's receiving from his customers is nothing but "noise." Seriously?!

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To be honest, I feel personally betrayed. Not only did I push for the deployment of Zendesk within my company, but I've been an evangelist. I've been telling everyone that asks how much I love the product and recommending ways to fit it in their organization. Because it has become engrained in our processes, we'll probably take what they have deemed the "grandfather" deal (which is a whole separate issue) and stay on Zendesk for one more year to avoid an immediate 250% increase. However, we'll definitely be looking for a replacement system in the coming year.

I really liked Zendesk as a product, but they have so battered my confidence and sullied my opinion of them as a company that I don't think the relationship can ever be repaired. I feel like I just found out the neighborhood priest that I trusted with my kids got caught diddling the 14-year old altar boy.

Tracking Organization Details in @Zendesk

One challenge we had in moving to Zendesk from our old issue tracking system was that we needed to record a lot of information at the organization level. Zendesk provides note fields that can be updated by agents, but we had pages of information that needed to be migrated.

Also, when we open a ticket it's related to a requester (contact) that belongs to an organization. However, events occur that may span multiple issues and these events need to be recorded at the customer or organization level. For example, we might record when we complete a major system upgrade. This information has to be easy to find and review quickly. Using an agent only forum (we have labeled our forums "Reference Materials") allows us to meet our needs.

First, we created an agents only forum called Customer Data Sheets.

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Each customer, or organization, has one topic that details their assets, licenses and any other information we need to record about that customer.

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Events that pertain to the organization as a whole are simply attached as comments to this page. This gives us a "stamp" of the date, time and responsible agent.

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Finally, the global search capability of Zendesk makes this whole setup extremely useful. If a requester calls with an issue about a piece of hardware, we simply do a search for the serial number. If it's been recorded, the data sheet appears in the search results and we can quickly open the topic to see if the item is still supported under warranty.

I've been pleasantly surprised by how versatile Zendesk has proven itself to be. By purposely NOT specifying too many workflow rules and just being flexible, we seem to be able to work out a clever (and often more simple) solution to all our record keeping requirements.

Rolling out Get @Satisfaction , @Zendesk and Basecamp by @37signals to @JusticeTrax Customers

I'm working my way down the home stretch of a very long (and anxious) rollout of a whole new suite of business systems for use within our customer care department.

Over the past 12 years, we've interconnected and jury-rigged one system on top of another as our business requirements have changed. From the diagram below (product names are blocked for obvious reasons), you can see how complicated things had become. Customer care agents would deal with a dozen different systems on any given day and they would often need to transcribe information back and forth multiple times. It was time consuming and lead to errors.

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It was time to make a change, but I was really anxious. You'll notice that everything centers around our issue or ticket tracking system and replacing that with a bad match for our company could be fatal. I needed something that was flexible enough to meet our needs as they changed, but I was also looking for an opportunity to simplify. Additionally, we had a company-wide objective to better engage our customer base and that needed to be accommodated by the new system as well.

Our company has also become geographically distributed over the past few years. I saw moving to more "cloud based" computing as a way to decrease our IT infrastructure expenditures. Since many SaaS products allow monthly billing, an added benefit was that we could complete the upgrade without a huge upfront investment. I was asking a lot, but I couldn't afford to settle.

I investigated close to 30 different products and completed trial runs of half. There were some products that, at first, looked great but failed to meet expectation. Others were simply too expensive and short on functionality.

After months, I finally decided that no one product was going to do everything we needed. However, after brainstorming with my team, we were able to neatly compartmentalize what we do into three separate categories: customer engagement, technical support and technical services (which includes custom development and systems integrations.) I looked for products that were "best in class" in each of those areas and have found what I hope to be the perfect mix; at least for us.

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After the roll out is complete, our new system structure will be much cleaner. Get Satisfaction is going to be the linchpin in our engagement efforts. I was impressed by the level of interactivity it provides and, simply enough, it's fun to use. Zendesk is unique in that it encourages third-party integrations and there appears to be a lively user base. The product is clean and simple and is going to provide a host of new features for our customers. Finally, Basecamp by 37signals will become the sole tracking, collaboration and CMS tool used for any project based activities. If it involves more than two people over a period of time, it goes in Basecamp. We've actually been using Basecamp for several years, but it is being more widely adopted and used to its full capacity.

These new systems are being introduced to our customers in phases over the next several weeks. I believe they'll be excited by how much more involved they'll be in the entire lifecycle of our products' development and our company as a whole.

Using @Contactology and @Zendesk Integration to Automate our Release Notes Process

Working for a small software company, we need to do a lot with a few people. We're currently evaluating several new applications to possibly replace some ten year old systems and streamline processes at the same time.

One task that currently takes too much effort is the organization, production and distribution of release notes for each new release of each of our products. Because of our development cycle, that can be as often as once every three weeks.

I "tinkered" with the integration offered between Contactology and Zendesk and I believe I came up with a rather elegant (though probably not novel) solution to our problem.

Setting up the Integration
In Contactology, I created a list called Admins. These are the individuals that would be interested in receiving notices of new releases.

Each list in Contactology is given a unique e-mail address. Sending an e-mail to the one address sends the message to everyone on the list.

I set up the integration between Contactology and Zendesk by inserting the Contactology widget onto the ticket detail screen in Zendesk.

I can add to the mail list either through Contactology or customers can be added to the list from within Zendesk by clicking the appropriate option button.

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In Zendesk, I created an e-mail target that sends a message to the single Contactology e-mail address that distributes to everyone on the Admins list.

In Zendesk, I created a trigger so when a ticket is tagged with "release_notes" and is marked as "Solved," then notify the target (the one above) with a message that says:

There's a new release. Please click the link below to login to our help desk and see the details.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/forums/98931-release-notices/entries

Doing Release Notes

When it comes time to start working on a set of release notes, we create a ticket in Zendesk that is a task and assign it to an author and set a due date for the release. The ticket is tagged with "release_notes" and with the product to which the notes are related.

The author can add comments as they have time. Each comment will be a separate section in the notes.

When they are done, the author sets the Status to "Solved" and then they use the Update Ticket and Post to Forum option. The ticket is posted to the "Release Notices" forum (the link to which is included in the e-mail target message above.) You have to use a ticket initially to have the triggers fire, but the information needs to be in a forum topic so all users with a Zendesk account can get to the page.

The conditions of the release_notes tag plus the Solved status causes the trigger to fire which sends the message to Contactology.

Contactology sends me an e-mail message to confirm that it's OK to send to a whole list. (Nice security feature.)  I click a link in the confirmation e-mail and the e-mail that originated from Zendesk is off to all our admins.

Release_note_email

When our admins receive the e-mail sent from Zendesk through Contactology, they click the link in the notice and are taken to the forum containing the release notes. This gives us the control we want over the information since they need to login to Zendesk to access them.

A nice plus is that Contactology records click throughs so we know who saw each set of release notes!