Series of Tubes

Consumer Apathy

I hope you haven't come here to gain insight into the problem of shopper malaise now that we've passed Black Friday. I can't do that, because early reports indicate that spending and absolute shopper volume are both up from last year. Things are looking positively rosy in the Land of the Midnight Capitalist.

No, the apathetic consumer is me.

I'd love to be buying stuff for myself, for my sweetie, for friends and family, whatever. I even have a wish list somewhere that I haven't updated (and no, I won't be linking it here). It's just that I don't want to think about making purchase decisions. I'm in a consumer funk that has no relation to religion, culture, finances, or other factors. As Johnny Rotten once sang, "I can't even be bovvered." I wonder:

• how many others there are in this condition;
• how it's going to impact the shopping turnout during the thrice-damned Holiday Season;
• how businesses will try to counter such apathy; and
• whether countering it is even possible.

The last bullet is the tricky one. Part of my apathy is actually antipathy—I don't want to see any more advertising, and any attempt to break through my disgust with the culture of conspicuous consumption is likely to push me further away. A reasonably wise man whom I recently interviewed said, "If you try to change customer behavior so that they come to you and remain loyal, you'll lose." Or something like that; like I said, there's apathy afoot.

There's definitely stuff I want to buy. Unreal Tournament III just came out for PC, and it's going to be mine someday. I like to play first-person shooters that have bots because I suck at shooters, and UT3 has some very good ones. I keep toying with the idea of picking up the much-hyped Nintendo Wii for Meaghan and myself. There are several metric tons of roleplaying-game manuals I'd like to have, even though my dice are currently gathering dust in the bottom of my closet.

We're glutted for choice. Having a few more tchotchkes won't make my life better, so why should I get them? The economy is finally catching up to my long-held belief that we've been living outside our means and it's gonna bite us in the ass. Even though acquiring crap has a momentary pleasure associated with it, in the long run it doesn't add happiness. There isn't a marketing campaign in the world that can break through that.

Plus, the one thing I really want to buy, the 3rd season of Battlestar Galactica DVDs, still hasn't been released and I'm going crazy not being able to discuss the events with Meaghan, who hasn't seen any of the episodes yet. Add to that the writers' strike putting production on hold for the 4th (and final) season, and you could say I'm right pissed. What's the point of life if I can't escape it with good science fiction?

On a side note, I'm making public my wishes for a speedy recovery for Paul Greenberg's mom, who is hospitalized with a painful but not necessarily dangerous medical condition. She's in her 9th decade though, so any hospitalization is big. Join me in sending good vibes.

ca.gov pr0n -- who are they kidding?

I just got this story about the GSA taking California's entire ca.gov Web domain offline because part of one county's site (Marin County Transportation Authority) had been hijacked and redirected to a porn site. A handful of other sites had been compromised as well with drug and porn links—I call that serving the community, but then again I want to write an updated-for-today Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as soon as I can find somebody to come along and be my lawyer.

Apparently, the Marin Transportation Authority had received warnings that something was amiss as early as September, but they ignored the warnings because they looked like phishing attempts. Does anybody else see the irony?

In all seriousness, I understand and support the GSA's decision to take down the domain so that the damage could be contained and neutralized. But this quote concerning said action tweaked my puzzler:

"We apologize for any inconvenience to the citizens of California. ... The potential exposure of pornographic material to the citizens -- and tens of thousands of children -- in California was a primary motivator for GSA to request immediate corrective action," the agency said in a statement.

My emphasis is in bold. Oh yeah, you just know that the children of California are spending their free time on a govenment-operated Web site devoted to transportation. All those little future commuters are doing their civic duty, getting well informed of road conditions and the sort of issues facing truck drivers. 'Coz that's what kids do. "Mommy, do ladies drive 18-wheelers? And do they do things like that to goats when they do? I wanna be just like her!"

This "Think of the children!" crap has got to stop. It's enough to say the site is compromised and must go offline to be repaired. Suggesting that kids are at imminent risk of corruption from a site they will never ever visit is absurd. Yeah, and all that reading they do about Haight-Ashbury is going to make them gay communist hippies.

Screw you, Roaming Gnome

I like Travelocity for booking my travel plans, whether for business or for personal reasons. Their system works well, and has never caused me any problems. I also happen to really dig their Roaming Gnome mascot, despite the title of this post. He's cute, funny, short, and chubby—not unlike some ale-happy bloggers I could name.

Why the inflammatory title? Because I have had it up to here (picture a suitably high place on my 5'3" corpus as the indicated point) with their brainless "targeted" emails. They're giving perfectly good technology a bad rep, and I wouldn't be surprised if it cost them some business.

Here's the scenario: I travel a few times a year for business, and maybe once or twice for vacation or family obligations. So I log into Travelocity.com to book a flight, and usually nothing else (my hotel rooms are generally seen to by the vendor whose event I'm attending, and there's no need to rent a car.) I make it a point to not fiddle around with the parts of the reservation system I don't wish to take advantage of, buy my ticket, and go along my merry way. Sometimes there are interstitials or pop-ups suggesting hotels, rentals, or entertainment at my destination, but I don't mind these; it makes sense for a company to make offers like that.

So I get my confirmation email. And my ticket information. And reminders about my upcoming trip. A little bit much, but not too abusive of my patience. No, what grinds my gears (thanks, Peter Griffin) is the torrent of Special Flight Deals!!! and Last-Minute Offers!!! and Book This Hotel Or You're Lame!!! emails flooding my inbox, before, during, and after the trip. I have already indicated that I do not want your crap. Leave me alone.

On top of these, the Travelocity CRM system assumes that, because I fly a few times a year, I must be a real jet-setter who will pick up and go at the slightest provocation—that provocation being another email or three from bloody Travelocity, natch. Does anybody really do that? And if they do, are they using Travelocity? I'm thinking no.

It's not like I forgot to opt out of these messages, either—I'm pretty stingy with my eyeball-time, and offers I know I'll never take advantage of don't get the green light from me. It saves money, time, and precious electrons. So clearly there's something horribly wrong with Travelocity's terms of service, for assuming that grumpy dudes like me would look on these cross-sell and upsell opportunities with anything but loathing.

But at least I've figured out why I like the Roaming Gnome, in addition to the reasons stated above. The tortures inflicted on the little schlimazel are cathartic, and prevent me from seeking to visit the same upon customer service reps and the people who compose the emails. Good job, little guy.

A quickie about GameStop

I hadn't planned to post twice today, but I ran across this gem while reading Penny Arcade and just had to share it. "28 Confessions of a GameStop Shift Supervisor" will probably get its author fired if he/she is ever identified, but will hopefully either kill Electronics Boutique/GameStop dead or cause them to restructure their idiotic policies. Mad props to Gabe and Tycho (I can't believe I just wrote "mad props") for everything they do, even in when it's just pointing me toward some good reading.

Anybody who wants to see how frustrating it is to work for a company that just doesn't get that the customer is king should read this. This response sums it up perfectly: EB/GameStop think the customer should do business on the company's terms, not the other way around.

I used to love Electronics Boutique. When the company acquired GameStop (or was it the other way around?) I figured it meant that the mainstreaming of gaming was going to make my recreational pursuits easier to manage. I don't hate what they've become, certainly not like so many seem to, but I tend to feel a little dirty after shopping there. The policies that prompted the 28 Confessions are a big part of why.

Spam and Eggs

Originally, I was thinking of summing up my recent trip to Chicago for the Sage Summit (referenced in my last post). I'm not going to do that, except to say that Sage, like the Yankees, is in for a "rebuilding year," and they're being very open about the need to fix what's not working and to continue to have real conversations with partners and customers. Kudos for that—I'm a sucker for honesty. Also, there weren't a whole lot of announcements, so I have no material.

One other thing: Chris Gardner (the guy who wrote The Pursuit of Happyness, and was Sunday's guest address) is a highly engaging speaker, seems like a great guy with lots of wry humor, and had it even harder than it looked in the Will Smith movie. For starters, his son wasn't Jaden Smith's age at the time, but a toddler. Holy shit. There's more, but you should read the book instead of my blog. Wait. You should read the book after you read my blog.

What caught me as the kernel for today's topic was an email from Jason Brown, a business development executive from a company called Optinlists. I'll quote:

Hi Marshall !

I understand that you are the person responsible for prospecting initiatives and lead generation’s program? Optinlists provides online marketing solutions, which can aid you and your customers in their marketing initiatives. To discuss Mailing List Subscription service for the year 2007 -which can get you targeted mailing lists every quarter or every month.

I had a chance to look your website and I thought there might be a need for us to have a quick chat regarding your marketing initiatives and lead generation processes.

...

Please test our email append service by sending 100 sample records with contact name, company name, mailing address and telephone number. We will append missing email and or any other missing data at no cost. Test results will be sent within 48 hours with a match rate analysis report.

OK, it's clear that Jason (if there is such a person) has no idea who I am, is lying about having ever seen my Web site—actually, my employer's site, as this was sent to my destinationCRM address—and is tempting me with a baldfaced request to give him more poorly-qualified leads so he can do this to 100 more people. And these jokers want to have a chat with *me* about *my* lead generation and marketing?

Spam exists. Spam will always exist. But I'm feeling peevish. One of my new missions in life is to serve as an agent of corporate Darwinism. By sending crap like this to a business and social media journo, Jason and his company have demonstrated their unfitness to survive in business. So I will collect and publicize any such things that come my way in the hopes that I can hasten the corporate deaths of the senders.

Also, Time Warner Cable's RoadRunner service sucks. Its unreliability has made it nearly impossible to work from home, and I'm paying a lot of money for an Internet connection that doesn't work. I'll be looking to resolve this dispute, but I've got to say it really grinds my gears how Verizon and TWC slam each other in their ad campaigns when neither of them can get the job done. I'm tempted to go with dialup at this point.

End-User Adoption

In a few hours, I'll be winging my way to Chicago (City of the Big Shoulders, home of deep dish pizza and the Blues Brothers) to cover Sage Summit. This is the customer counterpart to Sage Insights, the partner event held on Mothers Day every year, which I also attend annually (sorry Mom).

This year there's a difference: Not only will I be reporting on the announcements and whatnot that come out of the show—and there should be plenty, what with Sage's recent executive shakeup—but I'll be hosting a discussion on end-user adoption of CRM. And I must say that I'm a little nervous.

It's not that I haven't performed in front of crowds before, goodness knows. Or that I don't have some experience dealing with the topic at hand. I'm just wondering why it's still an issue. How is it possible that, after 20 years, businesses can't get their employees to use software of proven value. Whether it's simple contact management software or more full-featured SFA/CRM, a decently implemented app can help workers stay on top of their accounts, earn more, and keep the boss happy. And that's just the old-school CRM we're talking about—heads might explode if I go all social media on my audience.

I need to figure out how to bring some real insight to these people about how to get their workers involved, without merely rehashing the old crap. (Also, it would be good manners to not mention Sage competitors like Entellium, since they're paying for my trip and all.) I'm not on the hook for the entire hour, fortunately; I'll have a couple of guests (whom I haven't met yet) who can share their own stories of successful adoption. In fact, I'm hoping they can really sell the hour for me, since nothing teaches like examples. Everybody in my audience will come from different backgrounds, verticals, company sizes, and all the other variables that make for a headache in reaching the masses.

I could say something here about how the companies I'm trying to reach are customers for purposes of this event, and Sage does a good job of maintaining a two-way conversation with them. And they do, no question about it. But if they need to get a schmuck like me to talk to their customers about user adoption of established, well-liked, and not unreasonably complex applications that will help those users, I wonder what the future holds. This is a CRM topic, but it's even more of a business process and operations topic; who's going to lead the talk on how to engage customers on their own terms, which is where things are moving? Who reminds them that the best CRM system in the world can't answer the need for keeping your business practices up to date and being willing to relinquish a hefty chunk of the power to the customer?

I guess it's me. I'm not sure if I can do it alone.