Improving customer relations

Wow, it’s been over a week since I wrote here. Great was the rejoicing, but now I’m back. It’s been a busy week, not least because I’ve been without an internet connection since last Thursday thanks to those that shall forever be known as The Worst Internet Service Providers In The World.

The saga ongoeth, but when I’ve got a bit of time I’ll put down here the entire story so hopefully other unsuspecting punters won’t get caught out by these cowboys. In the meantime I’d like to draw your attention to this gem from Guy Kawasaki. My favourite bit is this:

Question: What’s the best way to improve customer relations?

Answer: This is almost too simple—actually take care of customers! I am sure we have all heard the recorded message, “you’re call is very important to us.” Well, if the call were important to the company who has recorded the message, maybe they would answer it in some reasonable time instead of either playing music or bombarding the caller with advertising messages. When you make a mistake, fix it and admit responsibility. Tell the truth. By the way, the airlines seem to be the worst at all of this, with a few exceptions.

Standard URLs: a MacroFormat?

There’s a really interesting article at ReadWriteWeb proposing a standard URL format to enable simpler searches. It’s a good idea, but as they say it will take a huge effort to make this happen.

Would it make things easier for searchers? I’m not sure. After all, search engines have been designed to find information with little regard to the actual URL it appears at (but it can have an effect on how well that page is ranked).

It seems to me that power-users, those that understand what the URL is and how it denotes a hierarchy of information, may be the only ones to benefit from this – certainly in the short to medium term. That’s no reason to not do it, though, and I’ve tried to do something like this in recent projects I’ve worked on.

Will it happen? There’s no reason why not (I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’d have mod_rewrite’s babies if I could), but it will take a lot of work to educate people regarding the technologies and tools that can make this happen – and the reasons why it’s a good idea. In some ways it’s like the campaign for web standards: we have to be realistic and acknowledge that it’s still a minority movement despite there being clear reasons for using them.

So, for me, I’ll bear this in mind whenever I do a site (I love clean URLs anyway) but maybe we need Dan or Tantek to start MacroFormats.

Big business, big attitude

I felt this dubious exchange (hat tip) was worth highlighting, not just because it’s a prime example of how NOT to interact with your customers, but because the rest of Andrews blog is so interesting. One for the feed reader, methinks.

And speaking of interacting with customers the wrong way, I’ve got a cautionary tale to tell you soon about a company I deal with. However I’ll wait for them to pay me the money they owe me (no, I’m not holding my breath) before I spill the beans. Trust me, this is a masterclass in bad P.R.

Eric Sink on Requirements

I often read Eric Sink’s blog for down-to-earth discussion of technology. You won’t find many fuzzy marketing phrases there, let me tell you. One of his recent articles about requirements struck a chord with me because of the ridiculous escapade I’ve just started.

Planning is great, as long as the plans are going to be useful as the project progresses. Paperwork for paperwork’s sake is useless. Specifications should be detailed enough so everyone knows what’s expected, but not so detailed that everyone loses any creativity. And, of course, you should only require the things that really are required.

It’s a tough ethos to stick to, but one that every modern web entreprenuer needs to get sorted. I am, as you may have guessed, just beginning.

Web developers hold the power

I read somewhere recently how web developers (designers, usability people etc) are far more important that they are given credit for. I’m not going to disagree 😉 The thinking is that in this increasingly web-centric world we live in, the people building the web are the ones who hold the power.

That isn’t so hard to understand. After all, the people who held the power during the Industrial Revolution were the ones developing steam power. Back a few more millennia and the ones holding the power were the ones developing fire. Power isn’t just about physical brute strength, power is about knowledge. And without the knowledge of the increasingly numerous ranks of web workers the Digital Revolution ain’t going to change a thing.

Which makes Patrick Kennedy’s article all the more true. We do hold the power to shape the future. The web is changing everything, this web we hold in our hands and shape with our fingers. It’s changing politics, fashion, entertainment, commerce, communication – hell, it’s changing what it means to be one human in a world of other humans.

So the question is, how wisely are we using our power?