Experiences
Why Comcast still does not deserve my triple play
Thursday - February 19, 2009
Every week I receive a new offer to convert my analog AT&T telephone service to Comcast's Voice-over-IP at a very affordable price of around $30 per month, combining Television, Internet and Phone (hence triple play) from a single provider. And I have been very close to switching over. But nothing makes it more clear to say no to them after having spent another frustrating hour at 5am in the morning on the phone trying to restore my repeatedly disconnected internet connection.
I do not usually use my own circumstances to highlight a vendor but this example emphasizes a much bigger issue: how destructive the experience can be to the acceptance of a product or service. Vendors need to learn that what sells is the experience, not the product or service.
Case in point. From the old days of Palo Alto's Cable CoOp (and MediaCity), the original provider of broadband some 10 years ago and final acquisition had landed my Television and Broadband service under one roof with Comcast. Fed up with receiving two separate bills for about 5 years I called in to Comcast to merge the two accounts into one. Four endless calls (one each month) and cumulative no less than ten hours later, I decided to throw in the towel and visit the Comcast store, one week before the inauguration. There, a helpful gal quickly assessed the situation, merged the two accounts and gave me a new cable-modem to serve my needs. Proud of my newfound face-to-face experience I returned home, installed the new modem and went on with life...so I thought.
Returning home from the inauguration in Washington DC a week later, expecting to relive the event we had witnessed in-person, I could not be more disappointed to find my Comcast DVR empty. A call in to Comcast led to the quick discovery and admission that they had disconnected ALL my cable activities by installing a physical terminator on the side of our house. Eager to reconnect and four hours later, with the help of a knowledgeable service technician my service was restored. Since then, consistently every month around billing time my service is being disconnected, requiring me to put in another 2 hour call to Comcast to repeat the saga and reconnect the service.
That gives new meaning to their Comcastic slogan, doesn't it. Needless to say I am not going to entrust Comcast with my phone service, or any other service.
But this case is symptomatic for many other consumer technology experiences we encounter.
We confirm again that:
- In this automated world face-to-face interaction still trumps phone support
- Customer relationship management does not come from an automated system (nor does it come from sales)
- Support is crucial to selling more services (or losing them) and should have profit and loss responsibility
But to Comcast specifically it proves it has no business in penetrating our life with consumer products of any kind. Let alone your most sacred connection to the outside world, your telephone. We named the Comcast DVR the most horrid consumer device ever built and combined with their incapable support provides for an unacceptable user-experience.
Just like AT&T in mobile telephony we expect (and demand) a consumer vendor like Apple to reduce Comcast to its core competency, providing nothing more than a reliable network connection.
I have high hopes for that new Apple TV coming our way soon, that with the help of the government mandate for cable-cards that is already in place, will make the choice for best-of-breed back-end provider very easy. I'll be the first one to take a hard look at the network provider.
Three rules for successful consumer technology companies
Monday - December 08, 2008
We spend a lot of time with consumer technology companies and developed the following rules for success:
1/ Undeniable benefit.
The majority of companies accept the path of evolution developed by the first entrant in that segment and use manufacturing optimization to drive down cost and price as the basis for greater customer adoption. While that is a viable business strategy for some, real disruptive innovation is less price sensitive as it triggers new behavior. New behavior in turn, taps into new allocation of disposable income.
So, rather than looking at the competition, technology companies need to have a sound strategy as to how they will reach 30% adoption rates of the total-addressable-market that the current vendors have not. Macro-economics, the buying decisions and experience beyond just the scope of technology are important to assess.
2/ Impeccable product quality and user experience.
Consumers are both demanding and often uninformed about the technology language that many vendors impose on the use of their products. The combination is a battleground from which only well developed products emerge. Simplicity is key (and too many usability options are NOT good).
Many technology companies develop products with an engineering centric view of the world, insufficiently realizing that no consumer wants to learn a new language to understand how to use a technology product. Consumer centric interfaces and methods are just as important as product intelligence.
3/ Great support experience.
Support is no longer just a painful cost center to a business, great support can be an asset that recovers the mounting cost of product returns and prevent market adoption issues from spiraling out of control. So, great support helps perfect product quality, but only if it provides a direct closed-loop back into development. Great consumer companies engage with their customers directly and get better at defining what a market-ready product really means.
Technology companies with thousands of entries in their support and third-party forums are ignoring free research that will make their product better. Support cost should be captured in the product P&L and managed by a single manager, responsible for R&D and support. Runaway support cost is often the result of a product that simply isn’t ready for prime-time.
So, macro-economics, product quality and product experience are the main ingredients to create success for consumer technology companies and in turn will provide incredible loyalty for the next version.
The odd face of Facebook
Wednesday - September 17, 2008
By Georges van Hoegaerden
Facebook, one of the fastest growing social network sites has really screwed up User Interface (UI) design with its new look. Take a look at the screen capture above. Now you tell me in 5 seconds the intuitive difference between clicking on: [Facebook] and [home], [home] and [profile], [profile] and [Georges van Hoegaerden], [settings] and [profile], and [settings] and [Georges van Hoegaerden].
But more importantly, Facebook has clearly not read my blog on removing the technology language to appeal to consumers, an issue that prevents many consumer technology companies from maximizing their growth potential. But who’s counting at Facebook these days?
Facebook is a technology company that exposes social networking capabilities in a very technological fashion. The examples are plenty: the workings of the UI described above, the categorization of data optimized to suit their internal data-models and the very complicated way to add applications to the platform, and we can keep going on. But for now, they’ll get away with it. Other consumer technology companies won’t be that lucky.
A great user interface can never be an objective by itself as that just presents a pretty face, try living with a person that only has that. The ultimate user experience (and this is where I politically depart from the previous analogy), is defined by an ecosystem of capabilities, cost and ease-of-use that creates the real and sustainable appeal.
BMW figured out early on that the Ultimate Driving Experience™ is what sells cars albeit their engine capabilities and timing was their initial core strengths. Today they sell the sum of all parts, The Ultimate Driving experience: great engine capabilities, spiffy performance, practical design and excellent comfort - a thrilling way to drive from A to B.
Facebook currently has a horrible “Ultimate Social Experience”: good (but no longer unique) social networking, so-so performance, impractical design and pretty bad comfort. Those are probably the reasons why 90% of my Facebook friends never use any Facebook features but simply create an account.
Many of Facebook’s recent poor decisions (including ad network issues etc) are evidence that user growth is outpacing their ability to grow up. And that could be catastrophic. Facebook is a great social networking platform with a lot of potential that many people rely on.
Facebook better watch out and prevent that too many people will start hating it. Those same users may use Facebooks own social networking capability to turn it off as fast as they initially turned it on.
What makes Apple different
Tuesday - June 10, 2008
Is the question that was posed to me recently. My short answer is: macro-economics.
1/ Apple technology is proprietary, all the way
Apple is creating a premium computing platform, rather than an open and commoditized one. Premium markets precede open markets and dish up much higher profit margins. Proprietary environments also allows Apple to control the differentiated customer experience.
2/ Apple is focused on lifestyle computing
Apple is focused on creating solutions to support our lifestyle - a massive addressable market - that consists of music, photography, video etc., rather than esoteric office software for people with lots of technology expertise.
3/ Apple is building an ecosystem
Apple is focused on supporting a differentiated ecosystem, rather than building competitive technology silos. The sum of all lifestyle components interacting with each other make it unique. The iPod remains competitive because of the iTunes store that is accessible through a (Mac) computer and vice versa. Their capabilities are tied to each other.
4/ Apple is building an unique customer experience
The experience of purchasing, innovative design, great product quality, and unique (in-store) customer support provides the evidence of a company that wants to please you.
There are many other differences, some of which also lie in a fundamentally different product development strategy. But top-level differentiation drives micro-economics.
Other companies face an uphil battle if they don’t compete with Apple at the macro level first.