Series of Tubes

Adventures In TV Buying

Or (referencing their horrible radio spots) "You don't go to B&H; you go through B&H."

Meaghan and I decided to gracefully retire my 19" CRT TV in favor of the latest and greatest, and today was the day to go get it. We are the proud new owners of a 32" Samsung Series 5 (LN32A550, see specs here ), but that's not the main focus. The focus is the store we used to acquire this lovely little gem.

New Yorkers, and in fact most A/V enthusiasts on the East Coast, are familiar with B&H. Originally a camera store, B&H has expanded its footprint to include TV and other home electronics. They often have the best prices, and (at least with cameras) highly knowledgeable staff. They are also possessed of some truly bad advertising, but that's another story. I'd never been to B&H, despite working a block away from it, so today was my first experience.

You know the famous scene in Chaplin's Modern Times, with the machines and the conveyor belts? Lucy's (Lucille Ball) experiences as a pastry factory worker? How about the recent commercials where everybody in a given commerce situation moves in perfect sync, paying with a tap of their credit card? If those three memes had a menage a trois and produced a child from that union, it would look a lot like the inside of B&H. Packed from the entrance to the (thankfully) separate exit, every movement except for consulting with the sales staff is orchestrated. There are queues that lead you to other queues, and New Yorkers aren't famous for their tolerance of line-standing. There are conveyor belts passing items overhead, and elevators bringing larger items up from the basement for handoff to patrons.

It was efficient, it was quick, but I don't think it was even remotely enjoyable. Granted, I was coughing up close to $1,000 for a TV, but that's to be expected, and I don't think that was the source of the unpleasantness. I felt like a cog in a wheel. My impression was that I was there to give money to B&H, with a lovely parting gift when it was over. Maybe if I'd needed more consultation with the salesperson it would have felt different; as it was, I walked in and selected my toy, then got processed out. The all-touchpoints customer experience, shall we say, was lacking.

=========================

Mind you, we're happy with the new set. We calibrated it as well as we could, given that I had an old DVD copy of Avia Guide to Home Theater to work with, poor room lighting, and no way to properly analyze color balance, not had I done any serious HDTV work in close to a decade. The thing that's slowing us down is adjusting for the lag between the TV and the game consoles. (Now you know the real reason we got the new TV.)

Our current passion is Rock Band, a game that requires good timing. It's tough to achieve when there's a delay somewhere amongst the audio, the video, and what the Xbox360 thinks is correct. Just a few milliseconds makes a huge difference, and the calibration tool built in to the game is leaving us flustered. Meaghan just got done playing "Paranoid" (as made famous by Black Sabbath) multiple times, adjusting the lag slightly each time, until she found a setting we could work with.

We tried the Intertubez, and there was no helpful info. Samsung wouldn't have it, either, so we didn't even try them. Plus, it's the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, and nobody's  likely to be answering stupid questions today. We could have asked Microsoft for info, but that would be a similar situation -- compounded by the usual Microsoft consumer support "it's not a problem with our product" answer. The publisher's official site wasn't any more helpful, since its calibration tool is perfect. Yes, I know everybody's got a different TV and other peripherals to account for, but some acknowledgment of the issue beyond some unhelpful forum posts would have made me feel much less incompetent.

OK, I'm done bitching. Now it's time to play. Actually, it's time to eat, and then play. Happy Memorial Day y'all. Try to spare a thought for the dead and wounded of so many wars, whose sacrifices helped shape a world where it's possible for me to bitch about trivial matters. Or, as I put it this morning: "Remember the fallen, because they can't get up." ;-)

His Five-Year Mission

Just a quick note to all you who watch the people who watch CRM on your behalf -- this month marks five years of insight and advice from Brent Leary, author, radio host, and friend. The commemorative post and ensuing love-fest by big names in the business, can be found on his blog. [Edit -- this isn't actually his blog; it's Small Business Trends. I really should check my work. Brent's blog is here. ] Poke around while you're there, and you will see why this industry needs more guys like Brent.

Remember me? I used to blog ...

As usual, I'm apologizing for not being more regular about keeping you folks engaged, so this is a thank-you to all 5 of my fans for not giving up on me. Remember that post I did in March about Microsoft Convergence? Well, I came back from that with flu and bronchitis, so I was pretty much out of action for a month, with my typically limited Internet access. After that, it was a matter of playing catchup to real life, so just getting through that ate up any time I might have devoted to writing for myself (again, with limited Internet).

All those problems are now fixed. I'm healthy (at least, as healthy as I'm likely to get until I get up off my butt and do some exercise), I'm mostly caught up to work and whatnot, and I have ditched my comically bad ISP for a new one. I could give you my impressions on everything that's happened in CRM world for the past 2 months, but that would be an unreasonable chunk of my time and yours. So I'm starting fresh, with recent events and thoughts, such as they are.

Sage's annual partner conference was this past week, and I was there along with the rest of the Gang of Four (or Fantastic Four, as Paul seems to prefer). Sage has had its ups and downs in the past couple of years, but it's really starting to get more right than wrong now.

• The Sage 2010 initiative includes a healthy dose of social media /Web 2.0 that doesn't feel bolted on. Check out their vendor-side blogs, for one, and  then know that they're paying attention to the customer-facing part as well.
• The company is slowly unifying its market presence, making sense out of the chaos caused by three CRM product lines (well , two and a  jumped-up contact manager that still does most of what most companies want CRM to do) and Mitra knows how many accounting and ERP lines -- and that's just in the U.S.
• The new CEO, Sue Swenson, seems to really want to reach the customer through the partners, not just reach the partners. This is important enough that it takes precedence over her lack of experience in the industry, being a former telecom big.

Sue was in something of a no-win situation with this conference. As a CEO who's only been there for 6 weeks, she couldn't sit this one out, but she couldn't have anything weighty to add to the discussion yet, either. She scored some points by being up-front about her lack of time on the job, lack of industry expertise, and by mentioning that she'd mostly been touring Sage sites and getting input from workers at all levels about what could be done better. She also lost some (with me, at least) by not venturing beyond those talking points and maybe energizing the crowd a bit. Again, there was no perfect solution and I think she handled it well.

Let me also say that sometimes I come off as overly critical of Sage, at least when Joe Bergera's in the same room with me. Joe is EVP and global GM of Sage CRM solutions, and a good guy. Very knowledgeable, as open as somebody with his title can be, and I can't seem to avoid putting my foot in my mouth when interviewing him. Thanks for indulging my shoe-leather addiction, Joe.

===============

On a related note, Salesforce.com is apparently buying up all the  Google AdWords that point to ACT!, Sage's contact manager-cum-CRM application. There's nice fat sponsored link to Salesforce.com with the headline "Grow Beyond ACT." Ouch, on one hand. On the other, SFDC shouldn't be going after ACT so much as it should SageCRM.com and/or SalesLogix. ACT users should already know they have other Sage products at hand when they want to migrate upwards in functionality, so it just feels to me like a cheap shot. Of course, this is why I'm not in advertising -- for all I know, this is a brilliant move.