This morning started out in a low tech way. If you read my yesterday's post, "Three Mornings in a Row," you will remember I closed trying to decide how to respond to my neighbor, Randy, who had left a little note in my newspaper box reminding me that he had beat me to the newspaper three days in a row.
I decided to go for simplicity and leave one peanut in a shell on top of his newspaper if I could get there first.
I was actually pretty surprised that his newspaper was still in the box at 7:12 am when I delivered my peanut, but I figured perhaps the paper hadn't been in the box when he came out the first time, and maybe he hadn't had time for a second trip yet. I little later I got a call that he was under the weather but very concerned with only getting one peanut which he considered cruel and unusual punishment. It wasn't long after Randy's call that the morning ritual of e-mail got interrupted or as I like to say became technology gone wrong, but more on that later.
Since I knew how much Randy loves peanuts in the shell, I guess my low tech note worked out pretty well. If was by pure chance that I had a few peanuts in the shell in the house anyway. Our friends Robert and Diane had given me a fake pottery squirrel in honor of my new hobby of taking potshots at squirrels when they attempt to drain my bird feeders. They had thrown a few peanuts in the box for decoration. For some reason I had only eaten six of the eight peanuts which meant there were a couple of stray ones on the counter.
We try not to buy peanuts since they are addictive, especially really good ones. One of our standing debates up on the mountain is whether Hubs or Virginia Diner provides the best peanuts. It is one of tasting battles that you just cannot lose, since both are very good.
Before anyone worries about cruelty to the squirrels, I am using a BB gun that is over fifty years old and which has no sights. Of course the squirrels have figured out what I am doing so it is a great game now. They try to sneak up when I'm not watching and I pretend to be Davy Crockett and creep onto the deck to get a few mid-air shots at the rapidly disappearing squirrels. Since I am shooting down into our ravine with a BB gun that has little power, I figure it is much safer than imitating Robert Duvall and Michael Caine in "Second Hand Lions." They seem to have spent much of their time on the porch taking potshots at traveling salesmen with their shotguns. I have made sure all three of my kids watched the movie so they can be alert for hints that I might headed in that direction. Since I write so much and it is unlikely that the kids read all of my blogs, the odds are that I can safely admit here that twenty acres with a house , a nice porch for rocking, and a pond behind the house would be the first danger sign.
My low tech way of communicating turned out to be one of only two ways I could get a message out this morning. I mentioned earlier, e-mail trouble showed up quickly this morning. As soon as I tried to send some e-mail, I determined the cable modem wasn't getting a signal. As I have heard it said, "the Internet was down." It's a little more accurate to say our connection to the Internet was down. I also found that the cable to the television was out which was actually a good thing since it meant that likely there wasn't a problem with the cable modem. Some cable modems require regular goat sacrifices, but I have a pretty reliable one. I called Sara, Randy's wife, and confirmed that their cable was also down. They use DSL so they still had access to the Internet.
We both ended up calling Adelphia to complain about the outage and were assured that they would have someone out today to fix the problem. Being without television is not very much of problem to me, and I suspect even my wife, Glenda, would not complain very much since American Idol is over for the week. Being without the Internet is a different story. As our older daughter, Erin, who lives in northern Va. says, they would give up their land line phones in a heart beat if they could only have either a phone or the Internet. My son, Michael, who is temporarily occupying one of her bedrooms, is like me and often can do much of his work from home. Our work is different but we both depend on a connection to the Internet to get things done. Now I even depend on the Internet for the phone I use for long distance. I am using a Vonage's $24.95 unlimited calls line as my outgoing long distance line. The voice over Internet protocol or VOIP service has been great so far. I especially love getting my voice messages as an email attachment that I can listen to remotely.
After getting off the phone with Adelphia, I decided to drive down the hill to see if anyone was doing a little early spring planting. Last year our neighbor Ron, who has since moved to Oklahoma, was doing a little gardening and cut his cable line in a number of spots. I believe his wife, Jeanette, told me that he is now limited to planting only in pots, but I know better. We also used to have regular cable outages from builders who completely ignored all the "Miss Utility" warnings and dug wherever they pleased sometimes with disastrous results. This time I only got half way down the hill, and I found two Adelphia trucks parked beside a cable box. I rolled down my window and asked them if they knew that they had cut cable service to the ten houses or so above them. They replied yes they knew, but the cable was now back.
There are times when as my wife, Glenda, will tell you that this would gotten a blistering response from me. I guess I am so accustomed to it now that I just shook my head and drove away. I still wonder why is it so hard to do technology right. I have had our access to the Internet cut just as I was sending a critical e-mail with a hard deadline or just as I was preparing for a video conference. When that happens it is more than inconvenience.
We have become dependent on this technology. It is revolutionizing many aspects of our lives. Is it too much to ask for a little advance notice if my service is going to be shut down? Roanoke Gas called last week to tell us that they were going to shut our gas off while they switched our meter for a newer one. Probably all the high gas bills this winter have broken it. What is it with technology companies, do they think we won't notice the poor service?
Our world is filled with technology. I got a complement from my wife last night. I put a new DVD, "Ladder 49," in the player and it only took a couple of minutes to get it going. She was amazed since I recently spent nearly an hour trying to get a copy of "Ray" to work in three different DVD players. When we carried it back to Best Buy, they calmly told us the whole first shipment was bad. All I could think of is how time was wasted trying to get it to work. Then it occurred to me that likely most people stuck it in and if it didn't work, they quickly gave up on it. Remind me why I gave Best Buy my e-mail address if they can't notify me of a defective product.
Since I like bleeding edge technology, I probably knew deep down that the DVD was defective, I just wanted to see if I could make it work. Sometimes that is the biggest problem with technology. It is people like myself who can make it work, and assume others can do the same so the technology ends up solving problems for only a few people and being too hard for others.
I saw an article in the NY Times this morning, "Doctors' Journal Says Computing Is No Panacea." What the article said was no surprise.
"One paper, based on a lengthy study at a large teaching hospital, found 22 ways that a computer system for physicians could increase the risk of medication errors. Most of these problems, the authors said, were created by poorly designed software that too often ignored how doctors and nurses actually work in a hospital setting."
Basically all this means is that in order for technology to help us, it has to do what it is supposed to without getting in the way of those trying to use it. Generally that means that the people who are going to use the technology need to be involved early on with the people who are designing the technology. Then the designers really need to listen to the users.
The same principle works on cell phones, automated check out machines at the grocery store, ATMs, and self serve pumps at the gas station. Technology has to be usable by the people that really need to use it. Good design in coordination with real users is the key. Forget picking kids in the twenties and thirties as test subjects, they can make anything work. Find some folks in their fifties and sixties if you want to really make some in roads.
The same principle should work when I call my cable provider who should know that someone has turned off my cable for an hour, and the technology should also be good enough to tell before it happens after all they have had my e-mail address since I got a cable modem.
Surely cable companies could use radio frequency identification or RFID tags to figure out where their repair men are working. The challenge is that this isn't a problem for the cable companies. It is a problem for me, not them. If I get irritated enough to move to DSL and enough people do the same, cable companies might figure out a better way than just interrupting what has become an essential service to many. I should not complain too much, in general I have had good service from Adelphia, but as a part of my critical infrastructure these days, I need it to be up more than just most of time.
The worst transgression is technology that is presented as a benefit to the customer but is really something designed more to help the business than the customer. I lump all customer loyalty cards in that category. Loyalty cards are a royal pain in the wallet. I probably have six or seven grocery store loyalty cards counting the northern Virginia ones that are on my car key chain. I miss the old specials and absolutely hate digging out a loyalty card just to get fifty cents off something. Unfortunately they must work for grocery stores because I can't find any in the Roanoke area without them. Of course it's not like we have a lot of choices here or anyone asked my opinion on the subject.
I recently got a loyalty card from Best Buy, but I suspect it was in the same shipment with those Ray DVDs. I bought a new digital camera the first time I used the card. Not long after wards, we got some reward certificates. My wife stuck them in her purse and when she tried to use them, the cashier at Best Buy politely told her they had a problem with all that batch of certificates, none of them were scanning so she should call Best Buy. We all know what calling a large company is like. You'll find an endless phone tree which is another example of technology that doesn't do a very effective job beyond a certain level.
Just try canceling a service like a cell phone or cable. You are likely to disappear in the phone tree and eventually forget why you are there. If you get lucky enough to get a customer service rep, count on being transferred several times. The most amazing example of service cancelling that I have read was by Jennifer Rice whose blog, "What's Your Brand Mantra," is one that I check these days for insights into marketing. She wrote up her experience with Comcast in "I hate Comcast." After reading her story you have wonder why it has to be so hard in a world of always on communications for the right people to talk and accomplish a job efficiently.
Make no mistake this doesn't change things, I still love great technology. It allows us to do things we could not have done before. I hated waiting in line at the bank. I like ATMs. I like Internet sites that let me doing banking and investment. The technology behind them is amazing and works better than I ever dreamed it would. Digital cameras are an amazing invention. The Epson 4000 printer that I got just before the end of the year allows me to print those digital images of large scale landscapes on canvas and a variety of other mediums. It has opened a whole new world for me. Technology done right is very powerful.
It is incumbent on us to all make an effort to force companies to listen to us, if we want technology done right. Otherwise we will have more and more technology that is poorly designed. Another of Jennifer Rice's posts, "Reviving a Brand, Revised," is a good starting point for technology companies that have lost their way. Her number one point is "Listen to customers and understand what they want."
My number one worry is that some brands have so much momentum that it is very hard for those of us buying products to really evaluate them or influence others who are also buying. Some brands are respected more than they should be. I talked about this in my post, "Brand Worship." My complaints about Best Buy and Adelphia will actually do little good. Adelphia is our only choice for cable in our neighborhood so I will put up with a few outages before switching to another technology. I like the choice I get at Best Buy so I'll probably keep going there even if their customer loyalty certificates don't work. However, there is no reason other than poor technology or corporate inertia why things can't be better.
Every time I get near my Acura car dealership, Duncan Acura,
which is located here in Roanoke, I get swamped with customer service
evaluations which are fairly pointless since they never seem to make
mistakes. You would think someone could call me and ask if I was
pleased with the response to my cable outage this morning. Then again
they might just have to implement my technology done right theory to
make that work. Perhaps it's easier for me to sit out on the front
step and use my garden hose to squirt the next Adelphia truck that
rolls by. I know my BB gun would be an inappropriate response,
besides the squirrels would miss me. I haven't seen any today though I
did see my first Robin in the backyard. Just maybe I should use that
last peanut as a squirrel lure. Randy won't mind.
