Customer feedback - how not to do it

I recently received an interesting package from American Airlines.  It was a bunch of certificates for recognizing employees for their outstanding service excellence.  I achieved Gold status with them and I assume that is the reason for this package.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that frequent flyers were given the opportunity to recognize outstanding service.  I am all for recognizing great work.  But, what surprised me was the medium chosen for gathering feedback. 

A couple weeks ago was in a situation where I wanted to commend an American Airlines employee who went above and beyond her call of duty to find me something vegetarian to eat.  I passed my appreciation to her and it made her day.  But, I now have this card and am wondering how I could use this.  Based on the instructions on the card, here is what I have to do:

Chances of me following this procedure and commending someone: 0
Chances that someone will follow this procedure: 0 (unless they are related to the AA employee)

Imagine, I have to run to a post office, get an envelope and stick a stamp on it and mail the envelope.  I can't think of the last time I went to the post office.  All for what?  To send feedback!

I don’t know who devised this plan, but in this day and age of technology and connectivity, it is a no brainer to use technology to achieve better results.  Look at the following process, and tell me how many people wouldn't gladly use it to provide feedback (assuming that frequent flyers like myself will have the App and will always be logged into it):

Here is a mockup of what it would look like on an iPhone:

If this process was implemented, I would have gladly utilized it on my plane journey on American Airlines (albeit, I would have had to wait until the plane landed).

I have used the example of QR codes here, but that could be replaced by any other technology (like NFC, for instance).  

In another incident, I was at a local Home Depot and all of us know they suck in customer service.  You go to an aisle looking for the things you want, and if you don’t find it, you look around for a HD rep and cannot find any!  After walking around for some time you find a rep who tells you that he does not work in the area!  Duh.  After all these frustrating visits, I finally met one salesperson who was extremely enthusiastic to help everyone.  He would be in plumbing, but if you asked a question about electric switches, he would gladly walk over to that department and help you.  On the way, he would talk to any customer who seemed lost.  He was proactively helping out every customer with a smiling face.  That was quite a change and I passed my appreciation to him and told him how helpful (and different from everyone else) he was.  He immediately whipped out his business card, wrote the email ID of the HD CEO and passed it to me with a simple request: "Could you please send an email to my boss with the exact words you told me?  I would really appreciate that".  I was glad to do that, and hopefully, his boss recognized his outstanding service.  It was as simple as that.  An email.

But, if HD had an app that I could use, it would have been even better.  

Simple systems and simple processes guarantee results.  When you design a system, make it as simple and brain dead as possible.

Steve Jobs speech from 1983

Here is an amazing speech by Steve Jobs from 1983 (before Macintosh).  It is great to listen how well he articulates his ideas and drives his point home.  A must listen.

Clay modeling on the computer

There has been tremendous advance in computing power and computer technology but not a lot has changed with the way we interact with the computing devices.  Lots of companies have created Natural User Interfaces and tried to make our interactions with the computer seamless.  I have played with 3D mice and haptic devices like Phantom.  But, none of them have really replaced the mouse. 

Recently, LEAP Motion introduced a new device called Leap.  Leap is like Kinect but in a much smaller scale.  Microsoft has plans of bringing Kinect interface to the laptop, but LEAP Motion beat them to it.  This is very exciting technology and based on the claims Leap is going to be very sensitive and able to capture minute gestures.  This is a breakthrough in natural user interfaces in many areas. 

I have used 3D mice in the past and they are good for controlling a cursor in 3D (duh), but can be clumsy.  They are great for traversing 3D spaces and for CAD modeling, but do not provide any haptic feedback.  What I like about the Phantom is the haptic feedback, which is invaluable when you are modeling art in 3D or when you are simulating a surgery.  Phantom simulates a pen in a 3D space.  The only dis-advantage of the Phantom is that it just simulates one point in space.  This is where Kinetc/Leap comes in.  It can detect multiple input points and hence can detect your whole hand and all its fingers.  What is lacking, though is the haptic feedback.

Imagine building a clay sculpture on your computer.  You can do it with Leap using your hands just the way you would in real life.  I have done it with Phantom, but it is not natural.  You don't use a pen to sculpt in clay.  You do use some tools, but most of the modeling is done with bare hands.  But, Phantom does offer awesome feedback. 

Wii controllers provided some tactile feedback (vibration) whereas Kinect [controller] provides none.  I have played with both the controllers and since the feedback from Wii is not realistic, I don't miss it in the Kinect at all.  So, we will get used to natural user interfaces which provide no tactile feedback and Kinect/Leap may become second nature.

Leap is exciting technology with unlimited uses in a variety of areas.  I have already pre-ordered (at $60, it is a no brainer) the Leap and cannot wait to get my hands on it.

Android TouchPad

I was one of the lucky few to bag a TouchPad during the fire sale, thanks to a friend at HP.  I have installed a few of the available apps for WebOS and have been playing with it on and off.  Not as much as I play with my iPad though.  The limited app availability made me wonder if I should continue to keep the TouchPad, especially with the advent of the shiny new Android tablets.  But, the new tablets have a smaller form factor and I was not too keen on getting a tablet the size of my Kindle.

So, I decided to keep my TouchPad and breath new life into it.

I installed Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, to be precise.  Until the beginning of the year, only Gingerbread was available for the tablet, but then the CyanogenMod team released CyanogenMod 9 (CM9) built on Ice Cream Sandwich and I knew it was time to jump ship.  There are several sites that take you through the process of installing Android 4.0 on the TouchPad and I won't go through the details here.  The installation can be tricky from what I hear, but mine went smooth but for some starting trouble.

The only issue I had was with the Universal Novacom Installer.  I was installing it on my Win 7 64-bit machine and it would just hang trying to initialize the installer.  Then, I found out that you can download the webosdoctor file from Palm (found here) and point the installer to use this file instead.  From here onwards, the installation went flawlessly.

I now have an Android tablet with all my favorite apps installed on it.  I didn't delete WebOS so I actually have a dual boot.  I can switch over to WebOS whenever I want with just a reboot.  The only dis-advantage of installing CM9 is that it renders the camera useless.  If you want to use the camera, you will have to boot the tablet to WebOS.  I am waiting for the build with a fix to the camera so I can use Skype on the tablet.

If you are one of those people wondering what to do with the TouchPad, this is a great alternative which will open up the app world for you.

User Interface

This is what I call beautiful, simple and intuitive user interface design.

Future of presentations?

Marco does a great job of choreographing this presentation. I assume he is using gestures to 'trigger' certain prerecorded sequences. But still, it is an impressive presentation. Couple this with what we see at Ignite (controlled timing and synchronization) and you have a perfect presentation from the future.

Waiting to see when I can use this technology for my presentations and get rid of PowerPoint.

Google Android Market or Amazon Appstore

I recently worked on an app (520or90.com) as part of Seattle StartupWeekend. We developed a web site, an iOS app as well as an Android app. When it came time to publish our Android app, we had to make a choice of where to publish it? Google Android market or Amazon Appstore or both? We finally ended up publishing on Google Market. We are planning on publishing the app on Amazon Appstore at a later time. Here is the reasoning behind the decision:

Timing:

We had to get our app out on time because our release date was inflexible. SR520 tolling had started, and the commuters were going to hit it as the new year (2012) rolled in. We wanted to be there to help the commuters make an informed choice when they had to cross lake Washington.

Google market promised to publish the app instantly as long as we adhered to their ToS. And, our app did.

I had heard that Amazon market took about a week (or more) to review and approve the app. [We were having the same issue with our iPhone app. It was the first one out of the dev gate, but had stalled in the iTunes approval process. Thanks to the holiday season and all.]

Timing-wise, it made a lot of sense to go with Google market.

Access:

We wanted the users to have easy access to the app, and wanted a seamless install process.

All the Android devices (phones) I have seen come with the Google Market app installed on them. As for the Amazon Appstore app, one has to install it manually. I am sure the Kindle Fire will come installed with it, but we were targeting all the Droid phone owners.

Usability:

Based on all the apps I have installed from the Amazon Appstore, they seem to suffer from the 'ET phone home' syndrome. I for one, do not log into the store all the time. So, the apps stop working when they cannot call home. I understand that some of the paid apps are licensed on the server, and they connect to the mother ship to verify the license. But, what about free apps? Why do they have to connect? Download new ads? We didn't want our users to go through this.

Cost:

Android dev license fee is one time $25. Amazon AppStore subscription is $99/yr. But, Amazon waives the first year fee, to lure new developers. So, cost was not a driver in this decision.

Reach:

Google Market can publish apps around the world.

Amazon Appstore only allows publishing within the US.

This really didn't matter for us since we were hyper-local (Puget sound only). But, our Droid carrying friends in India and other countries could not have enjoyed (tested) the app if we were on Amazon.

I do know that Amazon Appstore has other advantages: Ability to use Amazon account to pay (1-click). Ability to purchase once and use on multiple devices using the same credentials. Amazon does market the apps by offering them free for a day. You need to be lucky to be picked, though. This has its own pros and cons.

Of course, with the Kindle Fire, there is only one place to buy your apps - Amazon Appstore. So, if you want your app on the Fire, then you better publish on Appstore.