Daniel Greene

Tag: opinion

Opinion, provocative, editorial, perspective, call-to-action, soapbox, pet peeves, prescriptive…

  • Straight Talk for Customer Service Reps

    Heads up, customer service representatives! The way you talk to me is bugging me. Here are some of the phrases I could do without:

    “With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”

    You say ‘with’ at the beginning of the sentence or at the end, not both. Better yet, don’t say this prissy phrase at all. Just ask me what my name is, please.

    “I will be more than happy to help you.”

    ‘Happy’ would be more than happy enough. Don’t tell me you’ll be happy to help me. Just help me.

    “I know exactly how you feel.”

    No, you don’t. Anyway, I’m not asking for your empathy. I’m asking for your help. You don’t need to say, “I know I would be really frustrated if I couldn’t get on the Internet, use my apps, or make phone calls and text.” What I really feel you are doing with these empathic paraphrases is subliminally reminding me how much I need my cell phone and your service. Thanks, but I don’t need to be reminded that you have me by the balls. 😉

    “Definitely / Absolutely / Fantastic / Perfect”

    Few things in this world are definite, absolute, fantastic, or perfect. You are using empty superlatives. And it really bothers me when you use them in every sentence. “I can definitely help you with that. I can definitely understand your concern. I can definitely get you over to another representative who can help you with that.” You know what? That’s not communication. It’s interference.

    “Just give me a moment…”

    Believe it or not, I am relatively patient. Ask me to hold and I’ll hold. But ask me to bear with you every 15 seconds and you try my patience. Just put me on hold, do your thing, and get back to me. Every moment you ask me to give you another moment is a moment you could solve my problem while I chill out.

    “My computer’s running slow today… I need to get to another screen…”

    Really? A slow computer? That is so last century. Another screen? I don’t care how many screens you have to get to. That’s your business. I don’t need to know how you do your job. I just need you to do it.

    And finally… “Is there anything else I can help you with before I transfer you?”

    No! 99.9% of the time, no. Your question presumes that you helped me with anything in the first place. If you have to transfer me to a higher level of tech support, you obviously couldn’t help me. I know you tried to help me, but you didn’t help me. And if I asked for your help before but I didn’t get it from you, why would I make the same mistake twice? Just transfer me so I can get the help I need, thanks.

    Here’s what you can do:

    Here’s what you can do, reps: tell your bosses that your customers aren’t happy with the scripts. Yes, I know you have scripts. Everyone has scripts. Don’t tell me you don’t have scripts. Tell your higher-ups that those scripts are tired, old, and irritating (to the customers, that is; you don’t have to tell them you you really feel). Tell them your customers are asking for plain English, short scripts, and real help. And when you don’t have a script telling you what to say, don’t say so much.

    Here’s what you can do, customers: tell your reps what I just told them to tell their bosses. Ask to speak with a supervisor and tell them how you feel. Share this on Facebook. Retweet it on Twitter. Print it and mail it to your granny; that is, if she isn’t on Facebook already.

    Here’s what you can do, bosses: listen to your reps and your customers! If you are a process designer, systems engineer, customer satisfaction specialist, or what-have-you, then you are a highly-educated, well-intentioned person. So take note. Things were better when people talked plain before you taught them to talk pretty. Let your reps keep it short and sweet. Keep their scripts to a minimum. Teach them succinctness and simplicity.

    Drop the nonsense. You could boost customer satisfaction and efficiency by talking less and doing more. You could serve more customers in less time. And you could seem smarter doing it.

    Talk to me

    What are your pet peeves? How do you want to be helped? Do you have any ideas on how to give good customer service without talking so much? Leave a comment, and if it’s not spam, I’ll allow it. 🙂

  • Generic blog spam must be stopped

    Spam filters need to learn new tricks

    Why don’t blog spam filters recognize as spam those generic comments that link to commercial websites? Akismet used to filter all the spam that came into my blog, but now there’s a type it never catches– generic comments linked to a money-making (or even phishing or malicious) websites. These spammers write adulatory comments that don’t address the content or topic of the post. They tell you that you have just earned a new follower and that they will add you to their RSS feed straightaway. They say things like, “This is the best post I’ve ever read on the subject.” Note they say “the subject” without naming it. Sometimes they even write editorial comments that have nothing to do with your blog post. Here is an actual examples taken from a recent comment on my blog:

    Here’s one posted on my blog entry “Comparison of EPUB Download Sites”

    How risky is blogging really? Blog firings are relatively rare. In a recent survey of 279 human resource professionals by the Society for Human Resources Management, just 3 percent of companies reported disciplining bloggers and none reported firing anyone for blogging. You’re more likely to get in trouble for fooling around online or downloading music at work. About half the companies in the survey said they’ve fired or disciplined employees for Internet use that was unrelated to work duties.

    Note I didn’t say anything about “blog firings” or the risk of blogging in my post.

    If there’s any risk of blogging, it’s for your blog to be highjacked by people using your publication to promote their get-rich-quick schemes.

    Here’s one on my blog post “My first Speak & Spell workshop“:

    This is an excellent post. I have a similar blog myself so I will keep coming back to read more.

    And this from a guy who runs a blog about magic spells. At least his comment addressed the topic of my blog post, even if incorrectly.

    I’ll add more examples as they come in, which I’m sure they will.

    P.S. This is not a paid advertisement, but I do like using WordPress for Android because new comments to my blog show up as notifications on my Nexus One and I can follow the notification to open the app and mark comments as spam if I choose. It helps me stop spammers sooner than if I had to wait to get to a computer and log into my blog’s admin dashboard.

  • Google Voice calls are NOT free!*

    *For cell phone users.

    Too much hype has been made about Google Voice being free. As a poor sap who just got a bill this morning for $140 *over* my regular monthly bill from T-Mobile, I can tell you that Google Voice calls are not free. Google Voice calls are calls to an intermediary phone number (in my case, one in Palm Springs) that count against your plan’s minutes. T-Mobile charged me for every minute over my “included” minutes. And I went way over my minutes because I thought that my Google Voice calls didn’t count against my minutes. Boy was I wrong.

    Upon further investigation, I found that you could use Google Voice to make unlimited calls if you added your GV number to a carrier plan that allowed you to make unlimited calls to a select few numbers— plans like My Circle, Friends & Family, A-list, and MyFaves. I don’t know about other carriers, but guess what? T-Mobile doesn’t offer MyFaves anymore. So your only option for “unlimited calls” is a more expensive unlimited calling plan. And if you pay for that, then what’s the point of using Google Voice?

    Google Voice provides some advantages over calls made the regular way, such as the ability to record calls (with the other party’s knowledge), the ability to send and receive SMS (not MMS) without it counting against your text limits (if you don’t already have an unlimited text plan), the ability to receive voice mails over the Internet and have them transcribed for you (as long as you don’t mind that Google is mining your messages for consumer data about you), and the ability to have both your cell phone and home phone ring when someone calls your Google Voice number. All those features may be worth it to you if you understand that Google mines every word in your phone calls, text messages, and voice mails. But as a way to save money? No, sir, no, ma’am. Google Voice calls are NOT free.

    Google Voice is not a VoIP service. If you want that, get Skype. That’s what I might do now that I’ve learned my hundred-and-forty-dollar lesson.

    Did this review help you? Did it save you $140? If so, would you reward the time I took to write this for you by giving me a small donation of even $1? I work hard on these blog posts and I do them without sponsorship from tech companies or advertisements. If you like, please give.

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  • Happy twenty-ten! (Not two-thousand-ten.)

    Why do I hear people saying “two-thousand-ten” or worse “two-thousand-and-ten”? How laborious is that! People, there’s a reason Prince didn’t sing “Tonight we are going to party as if it were nineteen-hundred-and-ninety-nine”! He sang “Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s nineteen-ninety-nine” because brevity is vernacular.

    Sure, it was fine to say “two-thousand.” No problem. I was great with “two-thousand-nine.” But that decade is over, and time’s a-wastin’.

    Let’s look forward. Ten years from now, are you going to say “two-thousand-twenty”? God, I hope not. It takes too much time. And the unity and brevity of twenty-twenty is so much cooler. Well, so is twenty-ten.

    Don’t let ten years of starting years with “two-thousand” stand in your way. Break out, baby. Try something new. If you don’t start pronouncing your years with “twenty” now, you’re going to sooner or later. Might as well be among the cool people who do it right from the start.

    Here’s to 2010. Make it a good one.

    Betcha said twenty-ten! 😉

  • Sexting highlights society’s issues with privacy and shame

    Listening to NPR‘s All Things Considered just now, I heard a story on sexting — teens sending photos of each other naked via text messages — that got me to thinking “what exactly is the big deal?” I don’t ask that question to minimize the phenomenon, but to analyze it for the social taboos that are being broken here.

    Shame

    I recently finished reading The Cluetrain Manifesto, and its message about people finding their voice on the Internet and how this might change issues of privacy had me listening in a certain way. One of my favorite questions one of the authors of Cluetrain asks is, “What would privacy be like if it weren’t connected to shame?”

    Indeed, none of this “sexting” would be an issue if it weren’t for shame– shame that teens may or may not feel about their developing bodies, shame that adults may or may not feel looking at photos of teen bodies, and all the nebulous shame that society places upon the naked human body.

    Self-expression

    What if these kids aren’t ashamed of their bodies? What if, as the authors of Cluetrain assert, people gravitate toward the Internet to satisfy the age-old human desire for self-expression? Maybe these kids are just using these media to express themselves, to say, “Look at me. I exist. I’m unique. Yet I’m a lot like you.” Aren’t adults heaping shame upon these kids by charging them with felony child pornography? What’s the big deal if kids want to show each other their naked bodies? “It may lead to teen pregnancy!” Yes, it may. So may having sex without a condom and/or birth control medication. But I seriously doubt that “sexting” is bringing about a rise in teen pregnancy.

    Privacy

    So, what is the issue? Well, privacy is a big part of it, and it goes along with distribution. To whom are they distributing the nude photographs? Maybe to a few friends, maybe just to one. But if that one friend distributes it to others until it becomes distributed exponentially like viral Internet media, whom do we blame for the distribution? Do we blame the first sender who “should have known better” than to send anyone a nude photograph of themselves knowing that it might end up in the wrong hands? Or do we blame the subsequent distributors? What if the exact chain of distribution could be traced? Do we blame each and every one? Where does this distribution cross the line from acceptable to unacceptable? When does the private become public?

    Intentionality

    I faced some of these questions when I took an artistic nude photograph of myself that I wanted to share. Why did I want to share it? Well, because I liked the way I looked and I liked the way I took the photo. Was my intent to titillate? No. Was it pornography? Well, not to me. My penis wasn’t even visible, for whatever that’s worth. I questioned myself when I published the photo to my Flickr account. Should I mark it Public or Private? Should I mark it Private: Friends Only or Private: Friends & Family Only? If I marked it for Family & Friends Only, would my family and friends feel I singled them out for the viewing of this nude photo? I didn’t want that. So I used Flickr’s SafeSearch filters to flag the photo “Moderate” (“may be considered offensive by some people”). That way, only those people who have their SafeSearch browsing settings on “Moderate” (“You’re OK seeing the odd ‘artistic nude’ here or there, but that’s the limit”) will see the photo, be they friends or strangers.

    Irreducibility

    Socially, it seems acceptable to display yourself nude in an artistic venue as long as you’re not personally flashing people. And I’m all about filtering my content so that people see only what they’re comfortable with seeing (when it comes to nudity, that is). Yet, I am not so naïve as to think that just because I published a photo on Flickr with SafeSearch filters means that no one else will ever see it. I know that a photo on Flickr can be taken out of Flickr, indeed, taken out of context. I have to laugh at what Brian Shaler said in his Twitter bio: “Take me out of context.” (He’s since changed his bio, but that’s what it said last time I looked.) So, yes, people may take me out of context. But I am okay with that because, as one young nude man so eloquently said in an avant-garde play I once saw, “I am irreducible. My nakedness does not diminish me.”

    Self-esteem

    What if we lived in a world in which a person’s nakedness did not diminish them? What if it didn’t matter if teenage girls took photos of themselves in the shower and the whole world saw it? I know we don’t live in that world, but I can imagine it. I think as long as no one is forcing these kids to be photographed naked, it’s not pornography. So what if these kids are playing Doctor on their cell phones? Maybe we should spend less of our energy trying to control their use of our technology and more energy on fostering an “irreducible” self-esteem in children of all ages.

    UPDATE: This blog post was published in in a textbook called Sexting in August 2011.