Blog
August 2008
What is it with customer service?
I realize customer service is not easy. You can’t make everyone happy. You can barely make anyone happy.
But what is it lately with the dead silence on the other end of the conversation?
I emailed a rescue a week or so ago. I had reason to believe they were actively looking for help on a task that I could assist with. They had an email address listed on their contact page. Silly me for thinking they check it, I guess, although I know they are active online in various ways, so I know they are technologically inclined.
I could call, I suppose, but I’m not so frantically eager to volunteer with this particular rescue that I feel the need to chase them down in six different contact mediums to be sure they know I’m interested. Ok, that was a little overdramatic, but it’s essentially true.
Somewhat related, I finally figured out the artist of a print I received several years ago as a gift. I love the print and have wondered for a long time if I could get one in a similar style to match, but the artist’s signature is not decipherable. Finally figured it out, and much to my delight found more prints, one or two of which I was seriously considering. I even had a print in my cart and was all set to check out, and then they displayed their shipping prices.
They wanted to charge me nearly $10 to ship a poster. $10! I recently received a poster from elsewhere that cost $3 or so to ship. Poster sites only charge $5, and you know they have profit built in. Good grief. $10 is such blatant price gouging that I lost all interest in buying the print.
And as an update to the advertising posts: I have not heard back from the last company with the post-our-post pitch. My last comments/concerns appear to have disappeared down a great, black hole. Way to reassure a concerned customer that you really do care!
Restless
I’m in the mood to sew again.
Those of you who have been reading for a while know that sometimes my projects turn out nicely and sometimes they turn out very nice indeed, but sometimes I make the Loch Ness Pony.
Anyone want to be a guinea pig? I’m in the mood to make another photo quilt, but I don’t really want one for myself. I just want to make it.
Of course, this means I have to go buy a sewing machine, but hey, I probably should own one of those anyway.
Olympic Eventing: Finals
My boss is awesome and let me take the morning off so I could watch finals. I love my job.
Absolutely amazing weekend for the German team, which took home team and individual gold. All around great riders on the team with lovely horses. Hinrich Romeike did a superb job all the way through and made it look easy.
Australia finished second in the team finals, and Great Britain took third.
The US had some nice rounds, but was too far back to move up at all as a team.
Gina Miles was a superstar—the only US rider with a clean round in the team show jumping, and then she came back for a double clean in the individual. At that point, she was sitting in fourth with the top three individual riders to go.
I wasn’t very optimistic on her medal chances, because the individual course looked pretty straightforward. Lots of room and a very generous time allowed meant that riders could set themselves and their horses up for success. There was no need to cut tight corners or try to catch up time in the longer runs between fences, which meant a pretty even pace all the way through. Early on, it looked like most of the riders were going to go clean.
The closer the order got to the medal contenders, however, the more rails started coming down. Pressure from trying to hold on to whatever spot the had? Mental and physical exhaustion from the weekend catching up with them?
Megan Jones rode after Gina and dropped a rail; Gina was guaranteed bronze. That left German riders Ingrid Klimke and Hinrich Romeike to go, and they each had a rail in the team show jumping round. Ingrid dropped an unfortunate rail in her rounds, putting her in fourth overall and giving Gina the silver and the US its only eventing medal. Hinrich, despite a few rubs, rode a clear round and brought home his double gold.
Great event all around, with courses set up to let the riders show off what they could do without overfacing the competitors.
Now, someone tell the riders that these bug-face looking helmets are absolutely hideous, please. It’s been driving me crazy.
Olympic Eventing: Cross Country
Once again: phenomenal job by NBC and Mircosoft’s Silverlight technology to deliver the live online coverage. I am not a Microsoft fan, but even I can’t quibble with this. The coverage has been absolutely amazing: great quality video, good quality sound, and only a few blips here and there in the video feed.
I know people have had problems with Silverlight, but it’s worked almost flawlessly on my machine. Also, people were complaining about commercials, but I don’t think I had a single commercial interrupt the events all weekend. I expected to see them, especially when others started griping about them, but for some reason I seem to be commercial-free. Sweet.
As far as the eventing itself: some absolutely amazing rides and a few scary rides. There were a couple falls, but everyone (horses and riders) walked away. The course was beautifully designed with some very technical questions in it that really made the difference in ride times. No one made the time allowed, so it sounds like the cross country ride is going to be a huge factor in the final standings. Certainly the rankings changed significantly from what they were after the dressage phase.
The US team is probably disappointed right now. Amy Tryon had a fall and was eliminated, and a couple riders had refusals. They were tenth of eleven teams when Phillip Dutton anchored the team. He did a fantastic job, moving the US up to 7th going into show jumping. However, unless total disaster strikes all the other teams, the US is well out of team medal contention. Gina Miles may be in contention for an individual medal; I don’t know how much standings usually change in the show jumping phase, but she is only six points off the first place rider (Hinrich Romeike for Germany); that’s just two rails and some change, and there will be a second round of show jumping to determine final individual placings. Doesn’t seem like it’s out of the question for her to medal.
Mary King turned in a great anchor ride for Great Britain; it was a lovely, accurately-ridden course. Shane Rose for Australia also performed well in the anchor position, bringing home the fastest time of the day, which must have felt fantastic after his rough dressage test. Germany should be celebrating their four clean rounds, with riders all under eighteen time faults (their fifth rider had 40+ points, but his score is dropped).
Current top three standings are Germany in first (158.10), Australia (162.00), and Great Britain (173.70). Italy is in fourth with 198.40. Like I said, I don’t know how many show jumping faults are typical for an eventer, but I would be very surprised indeed to see the top three change. They might change the order amongst themselves, but I would be surprised to one of them drop off the podium. Unless, of course, something happens tomorrow in the jog and horse(s) are pulled for soundness reasons.
From what I can tell with the time differences, the jog will be Monday evening our time. The actual showjumping phase will be Tuesday morning our time (Monday evening Hong Kong). I would love to be able to watch it (and the first phases of the regular show jumping and dressage) live, but I’m not sure how thrilled my boss will be when I ask him if I can come in at 1 for the rest of the week. I think I’ll be lucky if I can talk him into just one day.
There will still be the archived video on NBC, though, so I’m sure I’ll survive. By the way: I noticed with the eventing dressage video that it takes a day or two for the permanent archive video to show up, so if you check for the cross country video and it’s not there yet, give it some time.
Advertising: “Post Our Article”
A couple days ago, I posted about what I’m calling “post-our-post” advertisements: companies offer to send articles to bloggers, which the bloggers then post on their blogs.
The first email I received was only questionably horse-related, so I didn’t give it much thought. Yesterday, I received an email from a horse-related company that I have always heard good things about. My personal opinion of the company has dropped as a result.
The email I received was informal. Like the first, it said something along the lines of “I have these articles you might be interested in, on these topics.” Someone less suspicious than I am probably wouldn’t bother to check the sender’s email address, and might not have realized the proposed articles were coming from a company with a vested interest in the suggested topic.
I am a suspicious git, and I noticed. I emailed back and asked point-blank what the benefit for me was.
Bonus points: the representative responded quickly (on a Saturday, no less). They were honest about the content of the article (it would reference their own products, and other products—especially if the other products worked well in conjunction with theirs. And then I got some marketing speak about building a resource of health articles and blah blah blah.
Not buying it. If this was the case, why didn’t the first email I received say so? Why didn’t the first article have the company’s name and the representative’s contact information in the signature as the second email did?
Here’s the thing. If the company had built a knowledge base of articles on their own site and sent me an email saying, “Check this resource out. Here’s what we offer, here’s why we offer it; if you think it’s useful, would you post a review on your site?” I would have done it in a heartbeat. If the articles were as balanced and neutral as the company representative is claiming they are, I would have had no problems with giving everyone a heads-up about a company-run knowledge base.
I vehemently object to being asked to turn my blog into a knowledge base FOR the company. No matter how neutral and balanced the company thinks the articles are, they are written by people in the company, for the benefit of the company. Either they are selling the company’s products, or they are selling the company’s reputation. Either way: selling the company.
Now, the next logical response is “but there are sites out there that post third-party reviews all the time, and this is a sort of third-party review.” Yes, and no. Running a review site is hard, hard, hard work. The site is made or broken on the editor’s reputation, and the editor’s reputation is made or broken on the quality and fairness of the reviews. I don’t know any good review site that would post an article written by the product’s own company, unless the company had paid for advertising space.
I do know good review sites that will accept products for review and include quotes and extracts from the company’s pitch in their review, which is fine. The company’s perspective is counter-balanced by the reviewer’s stance. That’s why I would review a knowledge base posted on the company’s site, but I won’t post an article written by the company on my site. There has to be an editorial stance in there; you don’t just post what the company says and pretend like it’s neutral.
If the company really wants to break into the blogsphere (which I suspect is partly what’s going on here), they need to rethink their approach. They need to try building a relationship with bloggers instead of using them for marketing space. Build a resource, let bloggers know it exists, and let the bloggers respond to it in their own words. If the resource is good, the response will be good. Want product reviews? Pick some high-profile bloggers and send out products. I love product reviews. If products showed up on my doorstep, I’d review them. I’ve done that, actually (not with horse-related items, but I did run a site that did periodic product reviews, if someone pitched something especially interesting).
I really am not totally against advertising or relationships between bloggers and commercial entities; I’m just against companies that try to take advantage of bloggers, which is what I mostly see happening.
Off to write an email back to the company now, with the gist of this post in it. It’s unfortunate, because the company really does have a good reputation, and this tactic makes me think twice about them.