The Tortuga Lair

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past week, you have probably heard about Search+, a new initiative announced by Google which aims to include your personal Social Media information into your own search results. For instance, searching for “Georges” would not only bring those lovely pictures of Georges Clooney, Georges Brassens or Georges W Bush giving the middle finger. The results would also include pictures of you and your friend Georges, you know, the one from pre-school, which you diligently uploaded into your social media gallery along with hundreds of other things relating to you and your personal life.

Now what’s the problem with that? Privacy? No, not really since those results are personalized for you and for you only. It’s not as if Google is going to include your social media content into the results of a total stranger. Then what? Many people who cover this issue point out the fact that Google will only incorporate results from Google+, their late-to-the-game nerdy social media platform, and altogether skip Facebook or Twitter results, arguably the 2 most prevalent social media platform these days. Why would Google do that? They claim that Twitter and Facebook do not want to let them index their data but that they would be happy to talk to them. This is complete BS from a technical standpoint (read the article on the previous link to see how many Twitter pages Google has in its index for instance).

This move has had a lot of people gone berserk on Google renaming the new feature Antitrust+. Of course, it does not help that at the same time Google is caught with their pants down ignoring their own “Do no Evil” motto. For a good sample of the reactions, take a look at MG Siegler Google+ articles over the past few days.

But is this the real problem with Search+? From an antitrust standpoint, it sure is, but do I, the user, really care about it? Do I care that my search results only include Google+ results and not my Facebook or Twitter results? No. And you want to know why? Because I don’t care that my search results include *any* of my personal social media information in them (don’t get me wrong, I do care about getting general social media results in my search, such as for instance most popular twitter posts on a specific hashtag in my news results).

I don’t want my search results to include any of my personal social media content in them because this is irrelevant. This is not what I go to Google to. I go to Google to search for things outside of my personal circle, I go to Google because it opens up a window to the rest of the world, not because it brings me back to my little MeWorld. The way I see it, this is just going to make my search results less relevant and get me to spend more time combing through the result list before finding something I like. If I want to search something on my Twitter timeline, I go to Twitter Search. But why on earth someone at Google thought that this was a good idea for the user to see both regular search results and personal social media search results is beyond me.

At the end of it all, I believe that Google achieved 3 things with this: they gave ammunitions to those who have been calling for an antitrust investigation into their business, they gave a reason and an opportunity to 2 of their biggest competitors to join force and build a common social search platform that would exclude Google itself, and they possibly alienated a segment of their user base (the same people they sell to advertisers for big $) by decreasing the relevancy of their core business with search results pollution.

All the while showing to everyone that “do no evil” is gone for good. Well done. Will this be remembered as the beginning of the end of Google dominance?

So, for those of you who haven’t followed the saga, let’s just say that I recently had a very disappointing experience with Rogers (see ‘How Rogers lost one more customer‘), to the point where I had cancelled my subscription. After posting my rant on this blog and spreading the word out through my Twitter and Facebook accounts, I promptly received a Twitter message from Chris Clarke (@Rogers_Chris), a Rogers employee who works in their social media help department. I have to confess that when I wrote my original post, I was obviously disgusted enough that my cancellation was a done deal and I was not going to get any further with Rogers, but at the same time I was curious to see whether a blog post and a couple of tweets and mentions on Facebook could get me anywhere.

Well, it did. After exchanging a couple of DM with Chris in the span of an hour, we left each other on the promise that I would be called within 48-72 hours by someone from the Office of the President that would try to solve my problem. At that point, my cancellation was still on, and I was curious to see how far this would go. While I was writing my previous post, I had also sent the content of the post as an e-mail to several Rogers help addresses and on Monday morning, I was contacted by Theresa from the office of the ombudsman. After apologizing for the trouble and the fact that it had to arrive to this (Chris did the same by the way), she offered me to take care of my upgrade personally and have the phone delivered at home ASAP to minimize my trouble. I accepted and received another call this morning to tell me that the phone was on her desk and she was sending it through UPS. Needless to say, I cancelled my cancellation and am looking forward to receiving the iPhone.

Funnily enough, we had brunch this week-end with a friend of ours who had had a similar experience with Bell (all phone providers are the same, I didn’t have the slightest illusion about that). What was interesting to me was the effort it took him to get to the same point where I am today. He explained to us that over the span of 1 month he probably spent close to 15 hours on the phone talking to various Bell representatives, had to go to 3 different selling points and had to throw a couple of big tantrums before he got what he wanted. Don’t get me wrong. I know he loves that, the argument and everything. I don’t think anyone else but him would have gone through the same amount of efforts for just one phone. However it was interesting for me to compare the amount of time, energy and overall effort he spent to get to the Bell equivalent of the Rogers office of the president, while in less than 72 hours after my initial cancellation I had received the attention I wanted, got in touch with people in a position to solve my problem and finally got my phone in the mail.

Wanted proofs that Social Media work? Well, here you go.

Two quick things before closing this chapter. First, I really want to thank Chris and Theresa who have been courteous and efficient all along. I’m sure there is a good reason while they are in those positions and I can only thank them for their professionalism. Second, I was wondering about the limits of the social media help model. As illustrated by my story, social media can be very effective for any company trying to salvage a customer relationship. But how much of those cases can you really solve like this? How many people (like me) will resort to social media to bring their problem forward, hoping that someone will be able to help? Social Media will never become your only customer care infrastructure, it will complement it. So to all the companies out there who are offering social media help departments, you should ask yourself what type of customer care experience you offered in the first place for your customers to resort to Twitter to get things sorted out. Social media is not only a tool to help you salvage customer relationships, you should also use it to measure the nature and quality of that relationship before it gets to a sour point.

Here is a copy of the e-mail I just sent to the Rogers customer service explaining my experience with them today:

I have been a Rogers customer since 2006, but today I had to make the decision to stop my contractual relationship with you. Here is why.

I’ve owned multiple phones and plans from Rogers, but a little less than 2 years ago I decided to switch to an iPhone 3G and signed up for a 3-year plan for that device which brought me bills of around $90-$100 per month. 2 months ago, I went to my Rogers Boutique in Rockland Centre in Montreal, and asked the representative whether my iPhone was eligible for an upgrade to the iPhone 4. The employee diligently took my phone number and contact information, and after punching them into the computer, told me that I was indeed eligible for an upgrade. Since of course there was no iPhone 4 available at that time I patiently called in every day for the past 2 months to know whether a shipment had arrived.

I called today and was told a small shipment had arrived. I immediately rushed into my car and 20 mn later I was at the Rogers Boutique in Rockland Center talking to a representative happily on my way to upgrade to an iPhone 4. She punched in my information, and to my surprise, told me that no, I was not eligible for an upgrade. I was bitterly disappointed and when I asked her why I had received contradictory information 2 months earlier she was, of course, incapable of giving me any clue. She advised me to call customer service and maybe try to see if I was eligible for an early upgrade.

So I called customer service, still on site in Rockland Centre, in case something good was to happen. I spoke to a helpful person who understood my problem immediately and after looking up my record told me (and if you have the recording of this conversation as you claim before passing calls to representatives you can check for yourself): “The reason why there has been confusion around your upgrade eligibility is that indeed your iPhone contract was not quite 2 years old (by 3 months), as mandated by the upgrade policy, but because you’ve been a customer since 2006, that was probably the reason why the 1st person you talked to 2 months ago told you you could upgrade. But given your history with Rogers, we should be able to proceed to an early upgrade, you’ve been a long time customer and we recognize that.”. At that time, he offered to transfer me to another representative, claiming that he could not do the upgrade himself but it should be no problem.

I then got connected to another gentleman, to whom I repeated my story, informing him that I had just been transferred to him to do an early upgrade. I was expecting him to fulfill on the promises that I had just been given (for the 2nd time) but then to my dismay, he flat out told me I had to wait another 3 months to to get the upgrade. I told him the whole story again, but he was completely unmoved and refused to do anything for me.

At that time, I asked him: so how much would it cost me to cancel my current plan. To which he answered: $280. This was pretty much what I was ready to pay to upgrade my iPhone 3G 16GB to an iPhone 4 32GB. So I asked him: “So, I can spend that money 2 ways today. Either I’m going to pay around $300 to get my upgrade and sign up or another 3 years with you which would probably bring your company another $3,600, or I can just spend the same amount of money to cancel my plan and never give you any money in the future.”. His answer: “Your choice sir”.

So I cancelled. I cancelled because as a consumer, I expect more from a company to whom I have already paid thousands of dollars in plan fees than this. Because I am upset and disappointed that I am the one who has to make the link between your 4 representatives in the span of 2 months to get different stories and ultimately not be served to my expectations (expectations that you set yourself). Because I would have expected a little bit of good sense when I presented the representative with the realization of what was going to happen.

The sad truth is that Rogers, as a company, is so short sighted that it has groomed a culture of anti-customer practices where I, as a customer, feel like no one cares about what I want. Even worse, the company is not even capable of seeing where its own interest lies. Tell me honestly, if it was YOUR business, would you rather get $300 from someone to cancel his contract, or would you take his $300 to lock him up into another 3 year contract which is going to bring you another $3,600 of revenue for the next 3 years? Same short term money, different long term outcome. The fact that your employees do not recognize that simple logic tells me 2 things: they don’t care about customers because the company does not, and they don’t care about the company either.

You’ve offered me one of the worst customer experience in my life, and whether this letter will make a difference or not is not important to me. At least, you will not be able to claim you’ve not been warned. Now it’s your choice to either fix it and get a real competitive differentiator, or remain phone peddlers which will only stay relevant as long as your prices are.

Regards

Xavier Chaillot

*Update #1*: About 15 mn after I posted this entry, I received a Twitter DM from one of Rogers customer representative who offered to help me escalate the issue higher up. I agreed to have one last conversation with them. I’ll post the result here. Stay tuned.

*Update #2*: new post – Social Media work! How #Rogers got me back.

OK, first it’s time I resurrect this blog and second … ARGHHHHHHHHH !!!!!

Those were my thoughts a few minutes ago as I was just reading my morning stream of news, a good portion of them, as you would have guessed if you knew me, are about Apple. I stumbled across this article from 9 to 5 Mac: “Vancouver Apple Store robbed, shots fired”. Let me tell you upfront, you won’t find the article anywhere, they removed it and you’ll understand why in a few lines.

The article went like that: “The Oakridge Center Apple Store in Vancouver, Canada has just been robbed within the hour and according to first hand reports, shots were fired. The story is still developing but it appears the armed robbers may have hit a jewelry store as well. You may want to follow the situation by browsing tweets about the incident.”

The last sentence caught my attention and I went to the twitterstream which you can find here: http://twitter.com/#search?q=oakridge%20apple

I went to the bottom on the stream and started to look for reference of the incident. The first message I found was this one:

        @shopaholica
        Somebody just got shot at Oakridge Mall but on the upside Apple fixed my MacBook. #Vancouver

Wow ! Nothing close to “Vancouver Apple Store robbed, shots fired !”. I read on and after a few tweets found that one:

        RT @News1130radio: Callers to News1130 say the Apple Store at Oakridge Centre has been robbed, and multiple shots were fired

And then mayhem started. The rest of the stream was just people re-tweeting the news ad nauseam, some of them introducing slight distortions in the message but all of them nurturing the shooting at Apple Store story. By chance, someone who’s an Apple Store enthusiast (trust me, there are weirder hobbies than liking Apple Stores) quickly posted this:

        ifostore
        CKWX – NOT an Apple store robbery at Oakridge Centre, but next door at jewelry store. 2-3 gunshots, security guard beaten.

Unfortunately, this did not stop the stream of stupidity that had been unleashed and it took another 2 hours for the news to die. Those 2 hours were, of course, a perfect opportunity to meet some of the best specimens of what human genius can produce such as:

        RT @robotrob Reports of an armed robbery at the Oakridge Apple Store. [WTF??? You bastards! DIE! DIE!! DIE!!!]

In 4 hours:

• Something happened in the physical world
• The true information was reported in the virtual world a few minutes later
• A false information was spread in the physical world at around the same time
• That false information made it to the virtual world and started spreading like a bush fire
• It took an hour for the corrected information to make it from the physical world to the virtual world
• It took another 2-3 hours for the wrong information to die        

Here are some lessons from this:

• People should stop being obsessed with Apple. I, for one, have decided to change all my apple logos into dragon fruits

• News in the physical world is not dead but should be: this case is a classic where the news reported through traditional media was slow, unreliable and unverifiable. Funnily, it took one person to bring the news over to the virtual world and boom ! This, to me, proves that although the traditional media model is not actual anymore, it still has a high nuisance power, especially when crossing over to the other side.

• By the way, I’m not saying that social media will always be right, on the contrary, but the very nature of communications through social media will result in quick self-corrections being immediately applied and propagated through the system.

• Finally, if you needed any more proof of the power of social media, look no further. Sure, it helped that people are simultaneously obsessed by Apple and Shooting incidents, but consider this:

• The correct news was first reported to a social media venue the minute it took place
• Any information (true or false) that strikes people’s chord and makes it to social media gets amplified and spread a lot faster and in a more powerful way than in the physical world
• Although it took a couple of hours for people to realize that the shooting incident did not happen at the Apple store, the truth eventually prevailed. How long would it have have taken in the physical world?

I called this blog the tortuga lair because I like turtles and I also like the fable from Jean de La Fontaine (who actually stole it from Esope) the turtle and the hare. Once thing I’m learning about social media these days is this: in the world of social media, you can’t choose between racing fast and completing the race, you have to do both, or you’ll fail.

Those of you who work in a Marketing capacity already know what a conversion is. For the others, a conversion is the process by which a marketer manages to get a prospect to perform a desired action. For instance filling up a form to obtain a whitepaper or purchasing a good after receiving a promotional e-mail.

Conversion has traditionally been the objective of every marketer. If scoped and executed well, the conversion process gets him closer to his ultimate goal: nurturing a contact into a lead and passing it on to sales. A lot of things are measured against it. Most ROI calculations for a given marketing activity involve the conversion rate (the percentage of contacts who ultimately performed the conversion action out of the total initial base). To say it’s at the heart of every marketer’s life is an understatement.

Enter Social Media.

If there’s one thing that Social Media is changing forever, it’s the very act of “converting”. How do you measure conversion in social media ? What is a conversion in this new reality ?

Certainly not the fact of filling up a form and register. After all, the individual and his/her identity (you and your audience) is at the very heart of the social media activity, so there’s no need to play hide and seek anymore. Does this new conversion consists in getting someone to attend an event, download a piece of content or click the purchase now button? That’s certainly part of it, but if it’s your only way of measuring conversion, you’re missing the entire point of social media.

Conversions have become conversations.

That, in my opinion, is the key to social media marketing. It’s not about blindly pushing content or offers in the arms of your audience praying for some of it to stick. It’s about triggering (sometimes), provoking (often) and participating in these conversations. You can’t ‘convert’ contact anymore these days (or let’s agree less and less), but you can certainly ‘converse’ with them, and that is a lot more powerful than any other devious marketing scheme you could come up with.

What do you think ? Are conversations the new conversion ?

It’s been a while since I’ve fed this place however unlike countless others before me, I’m not going to make any promise on future notes. That said, I’m embarking on a interesting journey and I decided to use this place to talk about it from time to time. I want to give it some sort of public scrutiny and officialization at the same time, probably because I’m halfway between masochistic and egotistic. Here’s the big news: I’ve decided to let go of anything that has to do with my health.

OK, before anyone gets the Moralizator™ going, let me rephrase. I’ve decided to let go of anything that has to do with my health and let my better half be in control. Yup ! She’s going to be in charge of my diet, medical exams and exercise program from now on. I’m fully and wholeheartedly putting my health into her hands. And she’d better succeed, let me tell you !

Those who know me a bit will tell you two things. I’m seriously overweight and I like to be in control. The one thing I’ve come to realize is that unless many other things in my life, I’ve can’t solve #1 by making use of #2. I’ve tried. It does not work. At least not for me. So I have no choice: since being in control is the only thing of the 2 that I still control, what I need to do at this point is … relinquish the control. Get my point?

I don’t really want to think about what’s it’s going to be like. I’m sure some of it will be uplifting, some of it depressing, some easy, some tough. Nothing really different than anything else in life. One thing I know for sure though, is that it’s going to be different from anything I’ve done before. So as I’m going to learn to let go and trust a good chunk of my life in her hands, if you happen to know her, wish her luck !