Dang! This race sure seems to generate lots of drama! Cliff —–Original Message—– From: bama-bounces@sfbama.org [mailto:bama-bounces@sfbama.org] On Behalf Of Randy Devol Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009 12:59 PM To: BAMA Mail List Subject: [Bama] Status of Heatwave Greetings everyone! As many of you already know, in yesterday’s Doublehanded Farallones Race, the J-80 Heatwave capsized, putting both crew in the water. The event got quite a bit of coverage in the radio and TV news shows. The great news is that both sailors were pulled from the water safely, with only mild hypothermia. Race Chairman Gary Helms spoke with David Wilhite, the skipper from Heatwave, and reports the following: Heatwave was about 2 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge, heading toward the bay, at about about 8:15 PM, when they felt Heatwave shudder and begin to roll wildly from side to side, before capsizing. The keel had fallen or broken off. David recovered the handheld VHF from the overturned cockpit, and then called the Coast Guard for assistance. In the dark with no source of light, it took the Coast Guard an unusually long time to reach them. In all, David and his crew, David Servais, spent about 1 hour either in the water, or in soaked clothes sitting on top of the overturned hull, which was slowly sinking. One David was pulled from the water by the Coast Guard, and the other David was recovered by a SF Bay Pilot Boat, which, apparently, is extremely well equipped for just such a recovery. Both were taken to the Goast Guard Golden Gate Station and treated for hypothermia. Both are expected to return to their homes in Bellingham, Washington today. I do not know the fate of Heatwave, itself. The official public statement from the Coast Guard is here: https://www.piersystem.com/go/doc/823/263772/ And, by the way, the results are up on the BAMA website. Be sure to click on the "Refresh" button on your browser. -=O=- Randy Devol 2009 DHF PRO _______________________________________________ Bama mailing list Bama@sfbama.org http://smtp.sfbama.org/mailman/listinfo/bama
I’ve been bitching about use of CRM technology to destroy CRM promise on a number of occasions. It is great to learn about people of Enterprise, seemingly stepping out of established CRM shadow and using social media technologies instead to provide real service to real customers.
The marketers, most enterprising members of business community, are usually first to try any new shtick to push their wares. However bi-directional nature of social media made a lot of large companies to feel vulnerable.
Many businesses are reluctant to participate in social media because they fear negative comments. Guess what? Those comments are happening with or without your involvement. You can ignore them, or you can use them as an opportunity to engage in a dialog. Customers aren’t looking to pick a fight, they’re looking for acknowledgment that their complaints have been heard and are being considered, or addressed.
Ann Handley writes about positive examples of such technology being used by people who care, as oppose to mandated by employer. I’ve had a lot of problems with Comcast’s Customer Service, and blogged about it, but here is what Ann says:
Comcast is a company often referenced in lists of businesses that are successfully incorporating social media. Their Twitter handle is “Comcastcares,” but the account bio lets us know that Frank Eliason and his team are the real Comcast people managing the account. Frank not only provides his followers with a list of links and email addresses to reach Comcast, but gives them links to his personal bio, his personal blog, and his family’s website. One click and you’ve established a personal relationship with a company rep who seems open, honest, and eager to help. For his trouble, Frank has aggregated nearly 13,000 followers for Comcastcares, just about the same number of Twitterers that he follows.
I in fact was eventually helped by a Comcast employee to resolve my problem, who contacted me on his personal time after seeing my complains on Getsatisfaction.com. Unfortunately it was too late, by that time I’ve had enough and left for competition.
Perhaps it is the time to retire “CRM” moniker from software marketing lingo, and start applying it to Strategy only, to avoid the confusion, since you cannot buy strategy, but can waste money for software. The true gift of Web 2.0 (whatever you think it is) is enabling the people who want to be empowered to assume power, to execute without blessing and constrains of corporate elite.
In this time of economic despair many commentators mention great companies that were born in time like that. Many people, me included, probably find such examples to be very inspiring. Who would doubt the importance of Apple, Microsoft, Intel and Fedex to global economy?
With consumer confidence plunging, the jobless rate rising and the gross domestic product falling at a rate second only to the decline seen in the 1982 recession, there’s little hope of good economic news anytime soon. But some economists and historians point out that such fallow ground can make a fertile bed for seeds of innovation and invention.
However I wonder if the underlying reasoning of ‘tough times’ somehow being the best time to start next great company would hold to a scrutiny of factual validation. It would probably be a lot easier to find many more great companies that started in “good times”, but I wonder if that matter – facts are so overrated!
“You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” Pat Moynihan.
I am trying to find a balance in my mind between abundance of wonderful technologies, that allow many interesting business models to come or attempt to come into markets, and lack of interest in operational proficiency, that allow such businesses to become one of the real “great business”. Surely we all have witnessed a few startups in the last decade or so, that came into prominence, succeeded in raising a lot of capital, and bolstered amazing valuations for awhile, before sliding down to relevant or absolute oblivion. If there any anything any common patterns, we can learn from their failures, they are:
1. inefficiencies in our capital formation system where very few players are intellectually curious enough to make new bets and
2. luck of interest in operational proficiency.
The first one is difficult for me to deal with, other than refer to well described limitations of how we, humans usually use our mind. Nassim Taleb exposed very well our propensity to use past for predicting future in his book “Fooled by Randomness”, and Edward de Bono described brilliantly our need to shove new data into “familiar” patterns to produce questionable information in his book “I am Right You are wrong”.
I would like to explore the second issue. Since when has it become acceptable for business to ignore it’s customers and even stop providing them with contact phone numbers? Email as the only form of customer support is not acceptable. Too many of new generation businesses, particularly the ones using freemium model, are bleeding self- or community supported customer service standards, into their premium offerings.
When IBM mainframe business had only 3 much smaller competitors, their customer support model used to be known as “We are aware of your problem, our best people are working on it. Don’t call us, we’ll call you”. At that time they “owned” mainframe business, but can Skype or LinkedIn afford to take this attitude? I don’t think so – both have some significant competition, neither one provides essential service or has such a unique offering that they can afford to piss away customer loyalty. I was an early adopter of both, and converted from free to premium service, but neither provided support when I have experienced problems, and I eventually canceled my paid subscriptions and started looking for other alternatives.
I am sure that these two are not unique. Many large companies provide pitiful customer experience – Comcast is one of the best examples, but not too many people are viewing Comcast and such as one of the great companies of the future. In fact the only reason they can afford such treatment of their customers is enormous regulatory and capital complexities of market entry for any potential challengers, plus they do provide essential services one has difficult time to be without.
A concept, technology or product is not enough – the one who wants to build a great company has also focus on execution.
A blog about experiences, curiosity and the never-ending search for ways to do better things better