Cox Bundled Service (Permission Not Included)

May 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I’ve got cable internet and digital cable through Cox Communications, and so far have been quite happy with it. The internet is always up, super fast and the cable server hardly has any problems. Usually Cox is great when it comes to customer service, they’re always friendly on the phone and quick to answer questions. However, when I called earlier tonight to ask about a CableCard™ for my new Tivo™ the guy I spoke with was a departure from what I’m used to.

Preface the Pitch

If you’re going to pitch me something, the least you can do is make the experience up to the point of the pitch desirable. This customer service tech sounded like he really wanted to go home (it was about 15 minutes till closing time). He had a pretty bad attitude about the call and I was ready to get off the phone with him before he even got to the sales script part.

Relevance Sells

I was calling to ask a technical question about something related to cable television. I was pitched bundled phone service. The thing is, my wife and I live in the year 2008 and having a home phone is useless to us, had we needed a phone line I would have already bundled it. The second problem of this sales call was that I was pitched something that had nothing to do with my original call. A better approach for selling me something I don’t already have would have been to relate the sale with my question about the CableCard™. “Have you considered ordering the premium movie channels? With your new HD Tivo™ and this CableCard™ you’ll be able to record some awesome movies on HBO™ and Showtime™!”

I probably don’t want premium movie channels, or I would have ordered those also, but this sales pitch has such a better chance of being perceived positively by the customer.

  1. It’s related to what I’m calling about so I’m not thrown for a loop
  2. I’ve shown that I’m indulging in a Tivo™ over the Cox DVR so I might be likely to splurge a bit more and get some premium HD movie channels
  3. It shows that this employee is paying attention to what I’m saying and is actively trying to improve my experience with the company

Instead I got some stupid pitch for $2.05/month phone service.

Pretend to Care

At the very least this guy could have pretended to care but instead he made it obvious that he didn’t care (I wouldn’t either) but undoubtedly there is probably some quota or performance review where his manager counts all of the tick marks next to “BUY PHONE SERVICE” and tells him he’s a good person or a worthless POS.

It was obvious that this guy didn’t want to read his script or make his feeble attempt at selling this phone service, somebody told him to and it was clear. The problem is, had he not said anything and just ended the call with “Thanks for calling…” I wouldn’t have thought much of it. But, instead, he had to pitch me the irrelevant service with his bad attitude and I’m not going to forget about it, I’ll probably be on the defensive next time I call, hoping I don’t have to explain to someone that I really don’t want or need a phone.

Who Called Who?

As Seth Godin frequently reminds us, permission is key. By calling Cox Communications I gave them permission to talk to me. I think they’re aware of this since they’ve got it setup where they answer your question and then pitch. Unfortunately they soured it by having returning a bad attitude and irrelevant offering. If you’re going to accept calls from people and you plan to solve their problem AND give them a reason to open their wallet, you can’t half-ass one or the other (or in this case both). If you can’t graciously help people in a positive way, don’t bother asking for a hand out. There is a word for this that people use to describe peers, acquaintances and co-workers who act this way, “asshole”. Don’t be an asshole, seriously.

Filed Under: Marketing, Riffs Tagged With: ,

Goals and Personal Accountability

May 27, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I was watching a show over memorial day weekend on the National Geographic channel about recruits training to become Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies. These people go through what appears to be a fairly intense eighteen weeks of physical training, classroom work and weapons training. They didn’t really go over the barriers to entry as far as applying goes, but from the looks of it, they were not too stringent. One thing that was interesting were the varying levels of dedication that each recruit had toward the end goal of graduating and becoming an actual Deputy.

Highly Motivated, Truly Dedicated

The recruits had a motto that they shouted during various exercises. They were “highly motivated” and “truly dedicated”. I liked the sound of that, it means a lot if you actually believe in it. This got me thinking, how motivated and dedicated am I with my projects?

I’d like to think that I’m highly motivated and truly dedicated to completing some task or tasks related to bringing life to a project, but for the most part I’m not sure that I am. It was easy to sit there and scoff at the people who didn’t put 100% into their efforts and had “failed” but in a moment of honest personal accountability I realized that I wasn’t much different.

My 50 / 30 / 20 Rule

Going forward I plan on trying to spend my time based on the following breakdown. 50% is spent on tasks directly related to completing my project (coding, writing, solving). 30% is spent on tasks in-directly related to completing my task (reading, learning, trying) and 20% is not related to completing my project (web, e-mail, feed reader).

I took an hour of time over the weekend and tried this out and I found that I was closer to 30/30/30 spending about the same amount of time working directly on my project as I did goofing around on the internet, not exactly motivated and dedicated. I was able to keep myself accountable for the time I had “wasted” not actually working, and it helped to put things in perspective.

How much longer are you going to let that stack of projects sit and collect dust? You owe it to yourself to spend a little more time being accountable for your lack of success.

Filed Under: Development, Riffs Tagged With: ,

Acting on Ideas

May 24, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I’ve got a lot of ideas for various web applications, online communities and business opportunities. When I started writing these all down about a year ago I figured it would be something I’d stick with temporarily, but lose track of. Luckily I haven’t and I’ve managed to grow my list from a few concepts to about a dozen very well thought out ideas.

I really enjoy going through my list every once and a while improving, changing and evaluating my ideas, but I’ve recently been trying to actually act on them. I’ve found that implementing these ideas is by far the most challenging part.

Maybe I’m wrong but I think a lot of people feel like they’re particularly talented in some respect, but they just don’t have any good ideas. They’re great at wood working, but they can’t come up with an interesting design, so they don’t start. My advice to this person would be to come up with some design and build that table. Chances are they’ll find out that they’re not as talented as they thought, and they’ll learn things along the way. Add the benefit of the sense of accomplishment and it’s a great experience.

My whole point is, if you feel like you’re in a rut, or you’re unhappy with your job or you’re just feeling like you’re floating through life not really doing anything, grab onto an idea you’ve got and see it through to the end. You’ll be motivated to do it all over again, you’ll learn something and you will feel good about yourself.

Filed Under: Ideas, Riffs Tagged With: ,

Dead on Arrival Deadlines

May 23, 2008 By Leave a Comment

If you’ve done even a small amount of project management for a web development project you have probably been responsible for and have issued a number of deadlines. Deadlines make sense, they feel right, there’s just something about them that says “productivity”. You can make a deadline for some aspect of your project and it feels like you did something, you set a goal, you drew a line in the sand; I’m going to need to take a break after taking about it. Unfortunately, deadlines are as easy to ignore as they are to make, they are usually one directional in nature and they are a poor measure of productivity, accomplishment and satisfaction.

Purpose of Deadlines

Deadlines usually serve as a method in which to shift responsibility from one person to another. As a stakeholder in a project I can shift my responsibility of launching my project on such and such date to my hired development team. As a manager I can shift my responsibility of getting the project completed and delivered to the customer to my development team. As a developer I can find ways to shift my responsibility of completing the deadline back to the manager or client in the form of “I need…”. No one ever wants to own a deadline, they just want someone else to accept the responsibility for it’s failure and receive the accolades when it’s successful.

Responsibility Shift

During the deadline assignment process, do you find yourself using a lot of four letter words ? Every deadline is usually “easy” and “can’t” be that bad. You usually hear these type of phrases at the “responsibility shift” point in the deadline life cycle. When the project manager is shifting the responsibility to the developer they’ve got their rose colored glasses on and their attitude seems to be one of hope, relaxation, ponies, rainbows and lollipops.

  • Well that shouldn’t be too hard
  • There isn’t too much complexity here
  • I can’t imagine this is too difficult
  • That won’t take long

Not Really Deadline Deadlines

My favorite type of deadlines are the ones that nobody pays attention to from the get go. You’d think that everyone in a professional environment would be wise enough not to bother with making and pretending to adhere to deadlines that all parties agree are impossible to meet. However, this seems to be one of the favorite uses of deadlines, all going back to the feel good nature of saying you’ll get something done at a certain point in time.

Imagine this scenario:

Your client wants something done in a week that would normally take two weeks, you agree but charge them more money due to the “rush” nature of this particular job. Your development team warns that it is unlikely that you will be done on schedule, however you proceed anyway. Two days go by and now the client is relaxing their own requirements. They thought they were ready for the responsibility shift, but they were missing some content and didn’t quite have the final design in place. Now responsibility has shifted back to them and they’re forced to meet their own unrealistic deadline. Of course, they know this isn’t possible so they relax the deadline and get back to you a few days later. At this point you’re not taking the deadline seriously, so it gets pushed back a bit more.

Had a realistic deadline been put in place from the start, one that gave everyone time to get their ducks in a row, the project would have been completed in the same amount of time, the developers would not have been overworked, the client wouldn’t have had to scramble to get the content together and end product wouldn’t have been so rushed.

Improving Deadlines

  • Consult the people who are doing the work required to make the deadline attainable (usually the developers)
  • Make sure you’re not taking ownership of something you don’t have a good amount of control over
  • Don’t use the four letter words describe above
  • Speak up when you hear a deadline that’s probably going to fail
  • Fight the urge to appease people by agreeing to deadlines that can’t be met
Filed Under: Development, Riffs Tagged With: , ,
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