customer service

Last week I attended the MESH conference for the second consecutive year and once again the issue arose around evaluating the use of social media technology by a commercial enterprise.

The motto and the objective of The User Advocate Group is to:

"Bridge the Gap Between End Users and Engineers"

Last weekend we set the clocks back for the winter. It's always nice to have an 'extra hour' and to perhaps do something a little special: lay in bed, go for a leisurely breakfast, take a long walk in the park. It's one of the perks of living on a tilted globe.

For me, this time of year also means that I get to be an Occasional User for certain technology interfaces such as the button riddled panel on my car stereo and the monstrous web tool for managing expiring domain names.

Getting back to this story...

A few weeks ago I spent two and a half hours standing (literally) at the counter of the US Airway check-in counter trying to secure a ticket to San Francisco using a free travel voucher. (No the online experience just didn't work for this one. Another story.)

The guy in the copy shop was gesticulating to one of his customers.

"I almost won 37 million this week!"

"What d'ya mean?"

"That guy who won the jackpot - he bought it at the same store I get my tickets!"

The customer chuckled and checked his copies - perhaps imagining, as I was, what it would be like to win thirty-seven-million-dollars. Tax free.

The next day, my neighbours were talking about the lottery too.

"Yeah, he called her and said 'I won the lottery' - just like that - and you know what she did?"

"What?"

"She hung up on him. Thought he was crazy!"

"And?"

"And he called her back and he told her again - 'I won the lottery. Thirty-seven million."

"For real?"

"Yeah. For real!

I thought about the lottery tickets in my back pocket. I was getting a strong sense that if it could happen to someone I almost know maybe it could happen to me - a sort of Luck-By-Association thing. The jackpot was up to 40 million again this week - they had dumped excess money into it - unclaimed prize money. How could anyone not check their tickets? Heck, you can do it on the web!

I thought I should check my tickets soon. I'll go to their web site. The lottery web site has a search by date page - great, that should make it easy. How wrong I was. For your benefit, dear reader, I've scraped off the code from the web site and this is it. Just enter June 13, 2007:

Select Lotto 6/49 Ticket Date and Search Customer Relations and User Relations Submitted by Michael on Tuesday, June 12, 2007 - 17:36. The last straw was the toddler ramming his stroller into the stranger's legs for the third time. The child's mother was behind a mountain of luggage filling out name tags. A slightly older sister was orbiting at high volume trying to get someone's attention. Anyone's. Subscribe Like what you're reading? Subscribe safely via newsfeed or email. Subscribe via NewsFeed Subscribe via Email Recent blog posts World Usability Day Scaling Drupal's Administrative Interface Our Web Site is Dead, Long Live Our Web Site! Arrested Development Authenticity, Authorship, and Authority in Social Media DrupalCamp Toronto 2008 Landing on Planet Drupal (or trying to) Getting It Real and Really Getting It Demand More Turning New Pages more BLOG ARCHIVES Nov 2008 Oct 2008 Sep 2008 Jul 2008 May 2008 Apr 2008 Mar 2008 Feb 2008 Jan 2008 Nov 2007 Oct 2007 Sep 2007 Aug 2007 Jul 2007 Jun 2007 May 2007 The User Advocate Group is based in Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Powered by Drupal