Series of Tubes

The word from Microsoft Convergence

The good news: I got 30 minutes to interview Steve Ballmer about Microsoft's CRM strategy. The bad news: I can't talk about it here. I promised Kim Stocks (MSFT PR handler and all-around skilled woman) that the discussion would be used for an upcoming feature in CRM magazine, and I'm not the sort to break a promise if I can help it. I will say that I'm grateful for the opportunity, and that it's gratifying to know that the guy who runs things in Redmond is so interested in my little corner of the software world. The same is true regarding Brad Wilson, general manager of Dynamics CRM and a terrific guy to spend an hour with. He is the right man for the job, if knowledge and passion mean anything.

There were a lot of other good reasons to come here, almost all of them two-legged. I was able to renew my connections with a number of great people in the press and analyst community, to finally meet others I'd never shaken hands with before despite numerous calls and emails over the years, and to find some new faces. This goes for the Microsoft people and their Waggener-Edstrom PR buddies too, as well as some MSFT partners. There are good people in this business, and they care about what they're doing while still putting it in the proper perspective (which is that few outsiders know or care about what's happening here).

It's hard to overemphasize the value of personal relationships -- imagine that, coming from a guy who writes about CRM -- but that's a major part of what makes conventions and trade shows worthwhile. Without familiar faces and shared insights, the endless cycle of travel, hotels, briefings, and product demos would be unbearable. I don't even like to look at the booth babes (yes, we still have those), pleasing though they may be to the eye. Granted, there are a lot of men in the IT profession, the sort who only regularly see or touch the type of racks that hold servers. But CRM is not an IT issue; executives in sales, marketing, customer service, and the like come in all shapes, sizes, genders, and orientations. It's a little insulting that the exhibitors at Microsoft Convergence thought they needed such ... exhibitions to get our attention. (Save that stuff for the party after the show floor closes!)

There wasn't a whole lot of breaking news at Convergence, though several partners and their booth babes would say otherwise. (Thanks for the peek at your lovely cleavage, my dear, but I don't "do the CRMs," as you put it.) Even Microsoft's big announcement was an expansion of a partnership that's been in place for 20 years. Granted, the deal with EDS is big, and will probably go a long way toward establishing Microsoft as a serious CRM and business apps player, but it's not the sort of thing you hang a conference on. I guess Redmond and its supporters need to reconnect from time to time as well.

My personal reaction, though, is that while Microsoft is trying very hard to get to a place where one can say, "Those folks are CRM," the company isn't there yet. The software itself probably is -- its innate flexibility and depth of integration, combined with what the ISVs can add, make for a worthy entry on the short list of vendors to consider. But the general opinion among the pen-and-notebook set was that the passion for CRM isn't part of Microsoft culture yet. They're still coming at it as an adjunct to ERP (an idea expressed by Denis Pombriant better than I can, and I'd link you if he'd posted anything yet). The Microsoft user's customer seems like an afterthought, something outside the corporate consciousness that must be managed and handled, studied and recorded, but not let "inside." There's very little sense of connection to the customer, very little social connectivity, very little of that elusive 2.0 stuff.

Having said that, I want to make it clear that I'm not completely knocking Microsoft. The executives seem to get CRM, and the ones who don't quite get it at least want to. The tools are there for MSFT's customers, and the company has the resources to keep innovating. Dynamics is on the cusp of something big, and I genuinely want to see it make the turn.

IT Expo: At least the steak was good ...

People have referred jokingly to Florida as God's Waiting Room. I was just there, and I'm not convinced that the office visit we're waiting on is upstairs.

Miami was a humid, foggy swamp for my day's sojourn at IT Expo, but it's not the weather that had me down. It was my hotel room. It wasn't even the hotel room itself; it was the fact it was provided to me by another hotel, one that doesn't care what I think of it.

I had booked a room for one night at the Newport Beachside Hotel and Resort, a lovely little spot with parakeets and very nice ceiling fans in the lobby. Quite lovely, really; I felt as though I was in luxury's palm from the moment I arrived. Of course, it wasn't to last. They told me, upon my arrival, that "unforeseen difficulties" meant I couldn't have the room I booked, or indeed any room at the place whatsoever. The concierge was nice enough to provide a letter of introduction (and $10 car fare) to the Ramada Marco Polo, further down the road. I was already rather far from the Miami Beach Convention Center and the new hotel would be even farther, but I saw no point in arguing. After all, the guy said they had no room, and the Ramada was "very nice, just like this place" in his words.

Note to travelers: "very nice" means in hotel-speak just what it means in dating, dining, or any other human endeavor where you don't know what you're getting ahead of time. It means "I am lying to you; the (person, place, thing) sucks, but once you're gone it's no longer my problem."

The Ramada was to  Miami Beach resort hotels what boy bands are to modern music. While it qualified as such a place—it was in Miami Beach, within a reasonable distance of the ocean, and had rooms to stay in—it felt more like a retirement home. I always thought the elderly who lived in Miami owned homes there, but it seems I've been wrong all these years; they hang out in crappy hotels and play bridge. Yes, there was a bridge tournament being played in the basement when I arrived. The elevators had old-person smell.

(Please note that I have nothing against the elderly, and in fact I managed a few nice conversations while I was confined to this little corner of purgatory. It's just creepy when I go on a business trip and see, in great profusion, what time and gravity have in store for me.)

The hallways smelled less like old people, but only because they smelled more like an old dog that had been left outside in the rain. The room was clean, technically, but it felt old, used, second-hand. Kind of like me, actually. The air conditioner was largely non-functional (in Florida, yet) and thrummed like a farm tractor on idle. There was not enough light. There wasn't even a desk. The wireless Internet barely had enough signal to get me connected—and I couldn't without calling tech support. That was complicated by the fact that my phone couldn't call outside the building until I had it fixed. No room service. A view of the pool. Plumbing fixtures that were only minimally attached.

Now, everybody's had bad hotel experiences, myself included, so this wasn't actually the low point of my life or anything. And I know that not all accommodations are created equal (Ramada Inns being somewhat lower down in the rankings), so I can't say I resented what they provided me per se; if I'd booked the Ramada, I'd have expected less than the best. But I booked the Newport, and they smiled and apologized and sent me to the ass end of hotelry. I will not be angry with Ramada; I will save my ire for the Newport, because their backup option absolutely sucked and I have no way to set things right except by writing them this poison pen blog post.

That said, the food at the Ramada was surprisingly good, though I admit I only had one meal there. The menu was fairly limited, and the restaurant was more like a tremendous Elk Lodge with tables, but I had a perfectly-cooked 12-oz. sirloin strip, juicy, tender, lightly seasoned with cumin (possibly chili powder with an excess of cumin) and very well trimmed. It was better than some I've had at honest-to-goodness steak houses. The vegetable (broccoli, since they'd run out of mixed veg) was steamed perfectly and very tasty. That dinner surprised me so much that I regretted not being able to get my free breakfast the next morning. Alas.

IT Expo, or what I saw of it
My reason for being in Florida was to moderate a panel discussion at the aforementioned conference. I can't say for sure why I was chosen, since my topic—"Leveraging VoIP in the Contact Center"—is not one with which I have a lot of experience. Fortunately, I didn't have to have much beyond my normal level of business technology competence, as my panel was a gifted bunch. We had never laid eyes on one another until 10 minutes before the session (which was at 8 a.m., incidentally, further proof that the coordinators didn't know who they were dealing with), but the discussion went off smoothly. Thanks to panelists Brian Spraetz of NICE Systems, Rachel Wentink of Interactive Intelligence, and especially to Srinivas Mantripragada of RedShift Networks, whose slide deck got things off on the right foot and also ate up a good 15 minutes.

The big question seemed to be data security. While voice conversations have never been truly secure, what with the old-school Phone Phreaks and anybody who can get hold of a technician's butt set, they're even worse now that voice is just another kind of data. In the end, the consensus seemed to be that the war between hackers and security vendors will remain more or less at parity, and the most important places to tighten up gaps are in business processes and social exploits. Most security breaches are inside jobs, or are perpetrated by people who know how to take advantage of another person's natural inclination to be helpful.

I think I'm done venting for the moment, and I thank you for humoring me. My next post will probably back to the usual CRM goodness; I'm trying to work out a message on that topic that fits my outlook and isn't just repeating what other, smarter people have said before me, and you fine folks will be the first witnesses. My previous post was the start of that; now that this gripe-fest is out of the way, perhaps I can get back on track.

Return of the Blogger

First, allow me to apologize for my fairly lengthy absence. My paying job felt that I should actually do some work for them in exchange for the money they lavish upon me. Between the rapidly slipping print deadlines and the fact we were running with half a crew, things were seriously hectic. On the few occasions I wasn't working late, I was either too beat or too uninspired to post anything.

That's unfortunate, because a few of the things I had meant to mention are now old news. I've got the time now, so I'm going to necro-blog a couple of items. (Lexicographers please note: If nobody has claimed coinage of this term yet, I'd like to do so now. Blogging about things that are no longer quite current may seem pointless, but it deserves its own catchy name, dammit!)

1. Congratulations to all the people who appear on InsideCRM's Top 20 CRM Blogs. I'd like to make special mention of Paul Greenberg, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary, Chris Carfi, and John Carini—I respect their work a lot, and I know them all personally to some extent. I've spoken to about half the list at least once, and I need to get to work meeting and reading the other half. If I eat all my vitamins I might grow up to be on such a list someday.

2. Burger King is seriously pissing me off with their commercials, which shouldn't be so surprising since the entire premise is them pissing-off their customers by playing practical jokes. What sort of genius thought telling hungry American fatties (of which I am one) that their favorite fast-food burger will no longer be sold was a good idea for an ad campaign? Of course people are going to be angry and confused when you tell them the Whopper is no longer available. Cognitive dissonance will do that to them,especially when it's tied to jackassery like what you pull. It's not even a new idea: Go listen to the first verse/stanza/whatever of Run-DMC's 1980s classic You Be Illin' and you've got the same shit happening in reverse at Kentucky Fried Chicken. BK customers would act the same way if you responded to their order by saying, "Your mother is a whore, would you like fries with that?" Don't tell me your burger is off the menu; don't try to give me a Big Mac instead. Trotting out your 1970s-throwback mascot with his big head is not a suitable consolation prize for jerking me around on camera. Give me my Whopper or I will murder you. Customers are not toys, you assholes.

Now for today's lesson: It's entirely possible to get angry at an airline for being too efficient. I just flew back from North Carolina where I was visiting with my sweetie and her family. My flight (Delta 6158) pulled away from the Jetway slightly early, and we were on our way to be first in line for takeoff. This did not work out as planned, and we had to wait 10 minutes or so while other flights went ahead of us. "Not a problem," I thought, figuring that the crew was trying to right by us. Our approach to JFK was similarly delayed as the tower tried to fit the still-early arrival into the pattern, and we circled a few times.  "Perfectly understandable," I mused—there are a lot of planes in the air today, and  we're doing things out of sequence a bit. A smooth landing was followed by another brief delay as terminal space was cleared for us.

I was the third person off the plane, and I made my way directly to baggage claim, where I waited. And waited. No announcements were made for which carousel would host my flight's luggage, and the flight was never posted on those lovely LED signs. I asked a few workers if they knew where 6158 would unload, and they waved in the general direction of the only carousel that appeared to be working. I'm used to waiting 5 or 10 minutes for the bags to catch up with the passengers, but I was there for nearly an hour. The place was getting sort of empty, and I was getting frustrated, when I happened to glance behind a corner, back near a service access door. I noticed a handle that seemed familiar, and went to investigate. I had found my bags. Apparently, the plane had unloaded fully in the 3 minutes it took me to get to the baggage claim area, and everybody knew about this but me—the guy who practically jogged to get there first. Did I mention the lack of announcements, signage, and assistance? On the strength of their performance today, I'd like to offer up a special "Snatching Defeat" award to Delta Airlines for turning speedy service into something bad.

Venting complete, for now.

Happy Holidays to all, whatever your holidays may be. I pretty much missed Hanukkah this year; Christmas isn't my thing, though I gave and received richly and with love—that whole sweetie-and-her-family thing I mentioned; I'm pretty much ignorant of the Muslim holiday that happens this time of year; Kwanzaa seems to have lost currency lately; and Festivus ain't nothing but an ice cream. Just be good to one another, and enjoy the new year if you can.

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.