(really) entrepreneureal

Photo from Bob Fornal @ Flickr.

It really isn’t a difficult concept to grasp: the presence of a smile is a strong indicator of happiness (at least in the moment).

So many product designers and marketers just don’t get it.  If your product and/or service doesn’t include the option – nay – the requirement that I smile at some point, there really is no point.  Paul Annett at Clearleft gets this, and lays it out clearly in this presentation (which is designed to elicit smiles).

A friend of mine who works as a Cafe Mistress at a local java joint recently made me smile tremendously when she mentioned that for every customer who comes in without a loyalty card, she puts the coffee credit (which eventually results in a free coffee) into my account.  It’s not her job to do this, but since we’ve become friends, she did it anyway.

Lesson learned? Treat all customers as friends (and they will eventually become them).  And I don’t know about you, but if making my friends smile isn’t priority numero uno, then I don’t know what is.

It’s funny how big companies whose business revolves around customer service often fall flat on the issue.  Just take a look at Dustin’s revision of the American Airlines site that got so much traffic, and its clear that even some of our oldest companies are finding it hard to keep up with the changing times.

Turns out that BlueShield has the same problem and my recent ER visit is a case in point.  You would think that the service and insurance providers are experts at making sure that they get paid on time, but this isn’t really true.  Take, for example, my attempts to get new ID cards sent to me: the BlueShield customer portal is actually pretty slick, with a relatively clear layout, but with one major flaw – there is no “Change Address” option!  Speaking of which, there is no “View Current Address” option, either, so I have no idea what information they have on file.

This means that I actually have to call the main number, which I did this morning – to make sure that I actually receive the recent claim that I have pay.  BlueShield has decided to use an automated voice recognition system, which I think is an awful idea, mostly because they are so hard to get right.  Other than sounding patronizing half the time, you’re forced to interrupt the operator with answers to his (and it was a he) questions, which feels unnatural and makes for stilted dialogue.  Anyway, once I’ve gone through a few questions I’m told that my call will be “answered in the order it was received”. But once again, I have no idea how long I have to wait! At least providing a message along the lines of “average wait times are XXX minutes” would help a lot.

Then I make a blunder: I say “ID cards” as a menu selection, which then shunts me over to an automated ID card sender – which is a problem, because they still have the wrong address on file.  With no idea how to go back to the main menu, I hit “0″ and hope for the best.  Luckily, I guessed right, and a nice guy called Jonathan answers the phone about a minute later.  He changes my address in about 2 minutes, which is great, but makes me repeat all the information I used to log in online – this doesn’t really make any sense, but I roll with it anyway.  Jonathan then puts me over to another department to verify my claim, and I’m diverted off into the depths of BlueShield.

Finally, a woman called Michelle picks up, asks me for all of my information (again!), and then asks me what I need. I tell her the story about my address on file being incorrect, my inability to change it online, the nice chat with Jonathan where he changed it for me, and my current chat with Michelle to make sure everything is in order.

Turns out that Michelle’s office isn’t integrated with Jonathan’s, so the recent updated address doesn’t show up on her system.  Further, she has to forward the new address that I give her to “Member Services” to make sure that I get an explanation of benefits.  It seems a little dumb that none of the offices within BlueShield integrated their data and customer management systems.

I say as much to Michelle:

It’s interesting that you guys don’t have integrated accounts, dont’ you think?

To which she replies:

It would be so much easier!

And to top it off, I initially opted in to participate in a customer feedback survey after my call, but as luck would have it, once Michelle signed off the system hung up on me.

BlueShield: listen to your employees and get rid of your crappy system!

Word.

This is why I love our President.

I came across an amazing site today from designer Dustin Curtis.  It’s a personal look into his thoughts, life, and design work.  Part portfolio, part blog (even though he has a separate blog), part expose and manifesto, it’s an amazing work of art that kept me captivated for over an hour.  An hour.

An hour.

For someone firmly embedded in the Gen-Y I-have-a-2-second-attention-span mindset, that’s amazing.

The interesting part for me is that it highlighted the tension inherent to personal design sites: on the one hand, they need to showcase a designer’s personality, her work, her approach, and her success.  And sometimes the best way to do this is to act like everything but a portfolio site – lots of personal flavor, random musings, and beautiful (often non traditional) design elements. On the other hand, the site is generally supposed to generate awareness around the designer’s work, with the overall hope that this awareness (through cross linking, comments, forwarding, etc.) will eventually lead to paying work.

So it has to look like a duck and sound like a duck, but bark like a dog.  What gives?