Jeff Hester

Posted on April 25, 2013April 25, 2013 by Jeff Hester — 3 Comments

Customer Service, Social Networks and Fixing What’s Broken

It’s easy to pick on the cable company. Most of them are easy targets for derision. The services are overpriced and the customer service often ends up the butt of jokes.

I’ve had my own ups-and-downs with my current cable company — Time Warner Cable. Most recently, this centered around a single episode of a single show: Homeland, Season 2, Episode 11.

The Backstory

I have been catching up on the Homeland Season 2 replay on Showtime, recording episodes using a Season Pass on TiVo. For whatever reason, episode eleven eluded the long arms of my HDR while we were away in Sonoma. My challenge? How to legally get the missing episode.

The first option would normally be to use the on demand functionality provided through TWC. Unfortunately, because I use a TiVo box with a cable card, the on demand functionality is not available.

HBO has a great app for the iPad that lets you view pretty much any episode of any of their series, going back for years. You can even view it via AirPlay and your Apple TV. Too bad Homeland is on Showtime. Fortunately, Showtime also has an iPad app with similar on demand playback. Unfortunately it only works with certain cable providers — and TWC is not one of them.

Fortunately, TWC has it’s own iPad app called TWC TV which provides on demand functionality, including Showtime series (if you’re a subscriber, which I am). This was promising. I searched for Homeland, found Season 2, clicked on Episode 11, and… FAIL! It would not play. Check episode 10. That works. Episode 12? That also works. Episode 11 is the only episode that won’t play.

Calling TWC customer service led to the typical, unfulfilling canned responses. “Are you able to play other episodes?” Yes. “Have you tried the on-demand feature on your TV” No, I cannot because I use a cable card and a TiVo, not a cable box. “Have you tried reinstalling the TWC TV app?” Yes, with the same results. Finally they were able to confirm with another tech who had an iPad that they, too, could not play Homeland, Season 2, Episode 11. The answer? They would have to re-load the episode on their on-demand server, and to keep trying in a few days. I would not get any notification when (or if) it were resolved.

Two weeks later. Episode 11 will not play. In fact, it’s disappeared from the episode list entirely.

This time, a tweet was in order.

Been trying to watch Homeland S02E11 for two weeks. TWC cannot get it it working via their iPad app. @TWC_Help #fail pic.twitter.com/swbUxEJe3k

— Jeff Hester (@jeffhester) April 18, 2013

Next, TWC is calling me, to help sort out the problem Again, we repeat the dance. “Are you able to play other episodes?” Finally, I get them to realize (again) that the problem is with that particular episode on their server. And again, the solution? Wait a few days and try again.

Frustrated, I finally decide to bring the cable box out of the closet, dust it off and hook it up. Had to dig out a couple coaxial cables and a splitter, and add to the tangle of cables. Finally, it’s all hooked up. Fire up the cable box, press the “on demand” button and… FAIL. Ugh.

One more phone call to TWC support, and they send a signal to the box. Finally it’s working (though still not on the TWC TV app).

The Lesson Learned

There’s a few lessons in this experience. First, it was interesting to note that TWC is actively monitoring Twitter. It’s a smart move for them, even though they weren’t able to actually solve the problem.

…Remember, these days, when you’re talking to one person, you’re talking to a thousand. -Zoe Barnes, House of Cards

From a consumer perspective, I got more intelligent response from a tweet than from a phone call to their toll-free customer service line. Of course I made a point of mentioning the TWC twitter account, but it got action–and more intelligent action–much faster. Social networks empower consumers.

Which leads to the more important lesson. Having responsive customer service is only meaningful if you can actually fix the problem. In this case, TWC failed. Granted, it may be fixed eventually, but they weren’t equipped to resolve the issue even after several weeks. It’s a problem of bureaucracy, and a symptom of broken processes in the organization. The real problem for TWC in this case is not one of sloppy customer service, but an inability to fix what’s broken with their own internal processes.

A Broader Application

All of this begs the question: What’s broken in your company? In your organization? In your life or relationships? If the experience sucks, something must change. Fixing the problem involves change. Embrace the change.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. – Albert Einstein

Postscript

For what it’s worth, I was finally able to watch Homeland, Season 2, Episode 11 last night. And yes, it was worth it.

Photo credit: Nickwheeleroz on Flickr

Posted on March 20, 2013March 20, 2013 by Jeff Hester — 2 Comments

Why I Ran the LA Marathon

On St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th, 2013, I completed the LA Marathon–my second marathon, and the first in over five years. Though my official time was a modest 5:28:44, my previous time was just over 6 hours. Running a marathon requires a huge commitment of time and energy — two resources that are finite and precious. The training can be tedious and painful, and the race itself strained my 50-year-old body.

So why did I run the LA Marathon? Let me begin with a little background.

I started running back in 1976. I was in ninth grade, and I joined the cross-country team at Center Grove High School in Greenwood, Indiana. When the cross-country season ended in November, we’d start the “Roadrunners Club” to keep up our endurance for the spring track season. We’d tally our miles accumulated through the winter, and the coach awarded us with a red t-shirt with the cartoon Roadrunner on the front, and our mileage ironed-on the back. We didn’t call it gamification back then, but that was the general idea.

I continued running when my family moved to Irvine. I didn’t break any records, except occasionally my own. I wasn’t the fastest, and not the slowest. But I showed up, and I ran, even though I never really considered myself a runner. I’ve heard it said that “a jogger runs, but a runner jogs.” Clearly, I was a jogger.

I’ve run on-and-off through the years, though not consistently. But in 2007, I decided to run my first marathon. I trained with Team in Training, raising over $2000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. A month before the marathon, I came home from a one week vacation with a bug that turned into walking pneumonia. I was in bed for one solid week, and missed my longest training run. But the training still paid off, and I completed the San Diego Rock-and-Roll Marathon. As in high school, I wasn’t the fastest (not by a long shot) but I wasn’t the slowest, either.

After that first marathon, I turned my interest to other physical activities, first mountain biking, and then (after breaking my wrist on the San Juan trail) hiking. I set my sights on a new goal: through-hiking the John Muir Trail, 30 years from when I first hiked it at 18. This epic backpacking trip required months of planning, training and preparation. And in the process, SoCal Hiker was born. I focused all available time and energy on training for hiking long miles on the trail at high elevations, carrying everything I need on my back. There is a time for everything, and this was not the time for running.

Last year I decided it was the time for running once again, and I began training for the La Jolla Half Marathon. This is a beautiful course, running along the coast from Del Mar to La Jolla Cove. I followed the Jeff Galloway run-walk method, and finished with a time that I was happy with (2:20, and my personal best). I thought about maybe running a marathon again, someday. But not until October 2012 did I commit to running this year’s LA Marathon. I blame my friend Jeff Turner for lighting the fire under me.

Just completed a 2.83 mi run – With this run, I am publicly declaring my I tent to run the LA Marath … http://t.co/GHKQbWGR #RunKeeper

— Jeff Turner (@jeffturner) October 27, 2012

This time, I followed Jeff Gaudette’s beginner marathon training plan through RunKeeper… mostly. I started training in November, and logged 369.7 miles and over 80 hours of running. A few snafus kept me from completing all the runs I had scheduled, including travel with 18 days in Mumbai and a brief bout with the flu. But I kept plugging away, and on March 17th, I was proudly among the 25,000 runners wreaking havoc with LA street traffic. I finished in 5 hours, 28 minutes — improving my 2007 marathon time by more than 30 minutes.

Why I Ran the LA Marathon

As you see, it’s been a long journey to get there, with a lot of sweat, blood and probably a few proverbial tears as well. Was it worth it? Why did I subject my fifty-year-old body to such a demanding task? What’s the ROI?

I ran this marathon for LA. My wife and I moved to Los Angeles last year, and are loving it. This marathon was my tribute to a wonderful city, and the route itself takes you on a grand tour of that city– from Dodger Stadium to Chinatown, through the soaring skyscrapers of downtown LA and the gleaming Walt Disney Concert Hall, through the heart of Hollywood, past the Chinese Theater, the Walk of Stars; down the Sunset Strip, Rodeo Drive, and stretching out to the beautiful bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica. It’s a terrific route, and the crowds lining the streets, cheering, passing out orange slices or water, and sharing high-fives made it even better.

I ran this marathon for me. Because I still can. Because I have the persistence to stick to the training, and the determination to reach the finish line. Because it makes me stronger.

Most of all, I ran this marathon for the ones I love. I ran for my wife, who inspires me to do more, and cheers me on. I ran for my children and my grand-children, to inspire them as well. To demonstrate that my “old man powers” (thanks, Dan) can do pretty amazing things. And to show them that if I can do it, they can do amazing things, too!

There are life lessons in training for and running a marathon. Like so many things in life that we aspire to, it requires planning, hard work and preparation. Obstacles will arise, and you may have to adjust and adapt. Set big, bold goals. Do the hard work, and cross that finish line. That lesson is worth retelling– to myself, my family and my friends. And that is why I ran the LA Marathon.

What is your marathon? Are you ready?

Posted on March 19, 2013October 31, 2017 by Jeff Hester — 5 Comments

Social Media Explained (with Donuts)

Social media takes on many forms, and is ever-evolving. This infographic explains the common perceptions behind some of the popular social media applications, illustrated with a use case that we can all relate to: donuts.

[jpshare]

You can quibble over the inclusion or exclusion of particular social media applications, but the intent remains much the same.

What exactly does this tasty infographic imply? Each social media application serves a unique purpose.

Twitter allows people to share brief updates and popularized the concept of #hashtags that has spread to Instagram and is now spreading to Facebook and Flickr. Of course, the real value for me is to connect with people around a subject (usually based on a hashtag), collecting and sharing ideas. Personally, this has been extremely useful to me in keeping up with the latest on #KM (knowledge management) and #hiking (my weekend passion).

#Hashtag Trivia: Chris Messina was the first to suggest the use of the hashtag in Twitter, back on August 23, 2007.

Facebook makes it really easy for people to share what they like, and in the process, collects valuable demographic information about you that they can sell to marketers. Mark Zuckerberg has promoted the concept of frictionless sharing, making it even easier for them to know what makes you tick. The benefits to you? The social graph search. This also benefits marketers. With over one billion users, is Facebook too big to fail?

Location-awareness application Foursquare gives you the opportunity to check-in at restaurants, stores, and businesses. The initial idea was that your friends in the area might see that you’re at a certain bar, and that would prompt them to join you. That never really took off (at least for me… my friends are apparently privacy-shy Luddites) but it has evolved in to a useful app for finding tips, recommending places near you, and even occasionally offering discounts and special offers for checking in. Facebook and Google have both been trying to get in on location-awareness for local marketing, but no clear winner has emerged.

Instagram isn’t the only smartphone photo-sharing application out there, but it’s one of the most popular. Instagram’s major innovation wasn’t the groovy, retro-photo filters that people either love or hate, but that it launched as a mobile-only social network. When they launched, you could only view or interact via your mobile phone. That’s since changed, but they recognized that a significant shift had occurred — we use mobile devices to connect to the Internet more than traditional computers.

YouTube has given everyone a chance to become a video star, and established itself as a black hole that bends time like nothing else. I’ve only dabbled with YouTube publishing, but some people have embraced the social network capabilities, using them to connect with others in new ways. And almost everyone I know ends up viewing a few videos on YouTube at some point during their week. For higher quality content (but lower views) check out Vimeo.

While most of the social media tools listed are primarily for personal use (and yes, I know there are businesses using all of them), LinkedIn is squarely focused on professional networking. Connecting with colleagues and clients takes precedence over grumpy cat photos and selfies. Although some people find LinkedIn boring, the focus on business is what sets it apart.

Pinterest approached the idea of sharing content from a fresh angle, letting people “pin” their favorite things to a board. With a focus on great images, it really took off, especially with women. Dozens of copycats have tried to replicate their success, but none have come close.

Many people haven’t heard of Last.fm, but this venerable social network has been capturing music listening habits for many years. Last.fm lets you autoscrobble the songs you play and–over time–knows what artists, genres and songs you like the most. Based on that, it can recommend new artists that it thinks you’ll enjoy, and can connect you with other people who share your taste in music. I’ve setup Last.fm to scrobble my plays on iTunes and Spotify, and occasionally listen to the Last.fm app on my Xbox, streaming music through my home theater system.

The punchline in the infographic is Google+. Of course, many, many more people use Google+ than just the folks employed there, but from the people I know, they are the early adopters. Google likes to tout high adoption numbers, but their figures are murky; clouded by the inclusion of users of other Google apps like Gmail. How many people really use Google+? We may never know. But they have a lot of potential users.

The Business Case for Social Media

Most people look at these social networks as primarily targeted at consumers, using them for the personal benefit. But that doesn’t mean the companies don’t have a business focus. And while all of these products are free for you to use (although some offer premium versions), you should remember this advice:

If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold. – blue_beetle

Advertisers and marketers love the rich demographic data available as a result of our living out loud through social media. This helps them deliver highly targeted advertising that you are (theoretically) more inclined to find useful. And it gives advertisers the tools to hyper-refine the targeting of their messages. Instead of merely targeting camera enthusiasts they can target female Canon DSLR enthusiasts in the Los Angeles area. Hyper-targeting.

And though they were the punchline of my infographic, Google stands to gain handsomely from all of this data. They reign supreme as King of Search. And as their other suite of applications grows, they gain further opportunities to aggregate, correlate, and repackage you to advertisers.

So WIIFM?

What’s in it for me? Why do I use these various social networks? I use them to make new connections, and strengthen existing ones. I also use them for my personal data collection, as I grapple with the concepts behind the quantified self and how to apply that data for positive change.

What about you? What do you get out of social media? What do you love (or hate) about these tools?

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Jeff Hester — 1 Comment

Election Day, the Wisdom of Crowds, and the Enterprise

In The Wisdom of Crowds, author James Surowiecki suggests that leveraging the collective can often yield better results that asking any single expert. On election day, there are plenty of examples of crowd wisdom and prediction markets to draw from.

In business, we’re often focused on efficiency innovations — incremental improvements in efficiency that save time, money, or preferably both. So can crowdsourcing be used to automated processes effectively in the enterprise?

The answer? It depends on the question.

If the problem can be represented by a simply solution such as single number (42?), or deals primarily with optimization, then crowdsourcing can make a lot of sense. In the presidential election, leveraging the crowd to predict the winner fits the first dimension perfectly. There can be only one winner: either Romney or Obama.

If the problem, on the other hand, is complex, requiring wisdom and expertise, the crowd will be of little help. If you need to engineer a fuel system for a new airplane, the crowd may actually do more harm than good. While “asking the audience” may work statistically for “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” remember that those questions also present multiple choice answers. And do you want to be on the maiden voyage of a new aircraft designed by the crowd?

Part of the problem–and therefore, the solution–comes from defining what we mean by crowdsourcing. Is it asking for an answer, even from the uninformed? If we’re talking elections, yes. If we’re talking jet propulsion, absolutely not.

Can we apply the wisdom of crowds in the enterprise? Certainly, but we must do so thoughtfully. Polling the crowd, whether that be inside our outside the firewall, can help inform decision-making. The crowd can either confirm or challenge our conclusions, but it does not replace the need for critical thought. And when safety is on the line, we have to be vigilant that we don’t allow a confirmation by the crowd to lull us into happily accepting our hopeful answer as the correct one.

After all, the crowd can be wrong.

What do you think? How and when would you apply the wisdom of crowds inside your organization?

Posted on November 1, 2012November 1, 2012 by Jeff Hester — 4 Comments

November, Movember, Knowvember: Day 1

November is an extremely busy month for me, for a variety of reasons. Here are just two:

Knowvember is an annual celebration at work with employee recognition through the KM Pacesetter Awards, the annual KM Success Story contest, and coordinating workshops with KM Champions in offices on six continents. This week I wrapped up four “train-the-trainer” sessions and over the next four weeks will be presenting this year’s message at a number of offices (including Mumbai). This program is in it’s 11th year, and it while you might think it would get easier, the reality is that you are constantly raising the bar and expecting something more… something innovative… something new. This year, that’s involved a lot of work on recorded screencasts. It’s the closest thing to being in two (or twenty) places at once.

Movember, on the other hand, is a lighthearted way to raise awareness for some serious men’s health issues. This annual awareness campaign involves men shaving their faces completely clean — no beard or mustache — and then proceeding to grow and groom a mustache — and only a mustache — over the remainder of the month.

For those men who normally wear their face clean-shaven, Movember is a bit of a lark. For me, it means shaving off the mustache and goatee that my wife has never seen me without. Needless to say, it’s a different look.

All this silliness serves a more serious purpose, and you can join in. Show your support for men’s health by spreading the word. And consider making a contribution. The funds go to several groups that raise awareness and provide research on testicular and prostate cancers.

Men, be sure you’ve scheduled an annual physical. Ladies, show your love and nudge them to get checked.