Alec Saunders SquawkBox

You may remember a couple of postings I wrote from the summer of 2006 about how Sears Canada had forgotten their brand promise.  The essence of what I wrote was that Sears, by quietly abandoning their commitment to service, had become no different from the legions of other big box stores in the market. 

Ordinarily I don't pay much attention to old posts, but this one is different.  The original post has become a magnet for disatisfied Sears Canada customers, as hundreds have written their own stories and added them to the thread. 

Tellingly, nobody from Sears has ever responded, except for the occasional Sears employee who has come by to defend the new policies.  That is, until now.  Someone claiming to be a Sears employee from the customer service department in Belleville has written to say that she has been put on notice by Sears for caring about customers.  She handles 3.25 calls per hour rather than the mandated 6  to 8 because she takes the time to find solutions for customers.  She takes too few breaks because sometimes solving a customers problem means that she can't get off the phone right away and she's unwilling to hustle the customer off the phone.  It's affecting her team's "score", and that's reflected in her performance review.

Remarkable.  She's concerned that it may result in her termination.  I'd say give her a promotion and let her turn the department around.

The lessons for us all?

1. Pay attention to what's being written about your company on the Internet.  That should go without saying.
2. Make sure that you're measuring the right things.  Shouldn't Sears be measuring customer satisfaction rather than call durations?
3. A company is made up of many individuals who all have different commitments to the corporation and to the customer.  Find the gems in your organization.  They're there.  All you have to do is look. 

One of the oldest marketing tricks in the book is to make something seem bigger than it really is by positioning it against something that everyone knows is really really big. Usually the presenter starts with the phrase "to put that in perspective, if you…" and then proceeds to lay a big non sequitur on the unsuspecting audience.   For instance, when Microsoft launched the MS-DOS 6 Upgrade in 1993, we said something like "MS-DOS is on so many PC's that if you stacked all the boxes end to end, they'd stretch to the moon and back".  We even had a cute graphic of the boxes going out and circling the moon and coming back in the powerpoint deck.

I was reminded of those glory days this morning when illumio popped this little ditty from Cellular News into my stack of relevant reads.  It starts with the following paragraph:

Multimedia Mobile Phone Shipments Surpass TV Shipments in 2008

MultiMedia Intelligence reports the worldwide unit shipments of multimedia feature rich mobile phones will exceed 300 million units in 2008, outnumbering shipments of TV sets. For the purposes of the report - multimedia phones have at least 1 megapixal image capture, MP3 audio, video Playback, Java, USB, Bluetooth, 16-bit screen color, QVGA resolution, WAP and MMS.

Can you imagine the marketers back at Multimedia Intelligence plotting this one out… "yeah, yeah… TV's big… we'll use that!!!"… and finally realizing that the only way they would make their claim stick is by comparing television to some seriously underpowered 1 megapixel phone.  They'll probably need to get a little more real intelligence around the table, rather than that suspect multimedia variety before they publish their next report.  Otherwise they'll be telling us something obvious again, like the fact that more cellular phones are sold than televisions.

I had a need yesterday to use a desktop sharing application for a presentation.  We were giving an iotum presentation to a group in Toronto, and couldn't be there in person. My situation is compounded by Windows Vista  and Microsoft's OneCare Live for firewall and security.  Java applications, in particular, are difficult to install in this environment. I turned to Jim Courtney for some advice, since Jim's been using these systems for ever. 

We had no joy with Yugma, which Jim — a real fan — suggested first.  We were able to share sessions when he started them, but I was never able to successfully install the console software on my PC to be able to start them myself.  The Skype Extra's manager gave a server error whenever I tried. Jim's on Windows XP.  I am not. 

 Lotus Sametime Unyte, however, eventually did work after a little trying.  The problem we encountered was that each time a participant joined the session, Unyte would abruptly terminate the sharing session on the presenter's PC.  The trick?  By default the desktop sharing ports on the firewall are turned off.  Simply turning them on allowed normal operation.

The recipients of the presentation remarked afterward how well Unyte worked.  And the price was right too — free for person to person desktop sharing.

There's been some serious buzz in the last 24 hours about Verizon's decision to allow any device, not just Verizon certified devices, to work on its network.  What Verizon is clearly hoping is that by opening up the network they can blunt criticism that they're closed, and get a new crop of devices built for CDMA networks.  CDMA may not be a bad technology, but GSM is clobbering it in the market place. That means that users on CDMA networks are often stuck with expensive and uninspiring handset choices. 

Close to home, Mark Evans calls on Bell and Telus (two more CDMA-loving dinosaurs) to make the same moves.  Perhaps the best choice for Canadian consumers would be for them to euthanize these evolutionary dead-ends, replace them with GSM networks, and give us real competition with Rogers.

Om Malik sees more questions left unanswered and questions Verizon's motives.  Indeed, while Verizon is unlocking their wireless networks, they're simultaneously pursuing a forebearance action at the FCC asking that the UNE rules be set aside across a swath of the eastern United States.  If successful, they will shut down CLECs like COVAD throughout the area.  What they give with one hand, they take away with the other.

Verizon hasn't magically transformed into an open networks advocate over night.  What remains to be seen is what they'll do next, now that they've dipped the toe in this pool. 

We've had a pretty big day here.  Today iotum announced the appointment of Randall Howard as Chairman of our company, as well as an investment by VERDEXUS, his investment company.  You can read the press release on our website.  My eagle-eyed friend Luca Filigheddu guessed the news a few weeks back. 

Things are going really well.  As an example, iotum recently launched the world's first conference calling application on facebook's platform.  It took a little time to understand the levers of viral growth available to us, but we've got it figured out now.  It's grown from 15,000 to 30,000 users in the last week alone.

We've always attracted great advisors.  Randall Howard is no exception. He's the founder, and former Chairman and CEO of MKS Inc, one of Canada’s early software pioneers.   In 2000, after 17 years at the helm of MKS,  he embarked on a career as a hands on early stage investor through his vehicle VERDEXUS Inc.  He will be helping us with strategy, fund raising, and business development.  I know I speak for the entire iotum team when I say that we consider ourselves fortunate to have been able to win him over.

This afternoon I was asked by a local reporter what this means for us.  "We're at an inflexion point", I told her.  We're building momentum, we've got new investment, and we've recruited an iconic chairman who wants nothing more than to roll up his sleeves and get dirty with the rest of us. 

The future looks awfully bright from where I sit.