In stark contrast to my experience with US Airways on Friday, American Airline really understands what customer service is all about. Since I used to only fly American, perhaps that is why I was so frustrated with the people at US Airways the other day. I have to fly to DC this week as I mentioned, but Kristie and I also have a flight to Miami on FRI where we will spend the weekend visiting my grandfather and friends (yes, South Beach on SAT night till 5am, but let me get to the point here)

Now that my meeting is THUR afternoon in DC, I don’t want to be flying back across the country on TH night only to leave for Miami on FR morning. But since the ticket we have is international, I realized that I would never make it to Jamaica if I missed the opening leg of the flight. So I got on the phone with American Airline’s customer service. When the agent initially looked up alternatives to rebooking the flight through DC onto Miami on FR, the initial cost was $1,800 (approx $1,400 more than original ticket, plus the $100 change fee). WOAH! Way too much, I thought I might not be able to make it work.

But get this, she says to me “Hold on for a moment while I take this upstairs to see what they can do.” I did not even need to ask, she did not try to get me to buy that $1,800 ticket or anything. While waiting on hold, she checked back in with me every minute or so to let me know she was still waiting to get this resolved and to reassure me someone was working on it. How cool and nice of her – am so bummed I did not get her name.

After about 4 minutes or so (yes that is right, 4 minutes, not 40), she came back on the phone with me and told me they would be able to change my itinerary around and it would only cost $350 for the 2 new legs plus the standard change fee – this is actually less than what I had priced it at online for the same flights for SFO-DCA-MIA. I gave her my credit card and everything was done in less than 15 minutes!

Almost forgot one of the best parts – a real pet peeve I have is when entering my customer data for the CSR’s (or when they take it over the phone) most companies do not pass this to the next person providing service. American did just that. I verbally gave their computer voice input system my frequent flyer number, which was handed to the first rep and then on to the international desk. When she answered, she new my name and my number, making the whole thing that much easier.

What more can I say except American Airlines rocks and will always be my carrier of choice.

Technorati Tags: customerservice, americanairlines

CNN reported earlier today that the Journal of Biological Psychiatry has published results of a research study from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) that says people who react with angry expressions to stressful situations are less likely to suffer health related problems than those who react with fearful expressions….

“Analyses of facial expressions revealed that the more fear individuals displayed in response to the stressors, the higher their biological responses to stress. By contrast, the more anger and disgust (indignation) individuals displayed in response to the same stressors, the lower their responses.”

– Jennifer Lerner, Carnegie Mellon University

Seems my thought that “Anger is a better emotion than worry” has actually been scientifically proven!

Technorati Tags: brainjams, brainjams:3dec2005, brainjams:bayarea

Plain and simple. I met the CEO on a flight a few months back when he was dealing with all the BS, and he seemed like a nice guy, but our experience with them over the past few hours leaves no doubt that they just don’t get it.

Kristie bought a couple of tickets on US Airways for us to go to her friend’s wedding and we ended up changing flights and cancelling those tickets. So now I need to fly to DC and we just wanted to use the credit (about $600 less change fees) to buy the new ticket. On the phone with Orbitz, they wanted $130 change fee per ticket. We were just trying to buy the new ticket. They decided to release the ticket to US Airways, so we got on the phone with them. I am a gold member with US Airways, so there should not have been any problems really – seems straightforward right?

We just spent the last hour on the phone with them, most recently speaking with Hernalyn (ID #2HS), supposedly a supervisor in their customer service department. She seems to think that there is no one above her in that department, so she has the final say for the entire airline regarding their policy.

Here is the deal: The original trip we wanted credit on was booked for Kristie and I as 2 tickets. Kristie merely wanted to apply the credit from the money she spent on them to the purchase of my new flight, but they would only let us re-issue the one ticket that was made in my name and would not apply the credit from the other ticket. This would mean she was stuck with that credit for her prior ticket because she has no plans for any other travel which would use this. Regardless, to us it is very simple, we have a credit with the airline for tickets that were cancelled and we want to use it.

To them, this one transaction, on one credit card does not equal one credit, but 2 cancelled tickets that can only be used for 2 more tickets in the names of each people. So if Kristie and I were to break up (we’re not) this would mean she would never be able to use the credit for the tickets. This is a silly policy and it is anti-consumer, perhaps even reason for a lawsuit.

At least now I understand why they are in bankruptcy and having such difficulty, apparently US Airways sucks so badly at understanding CUSTOMER SERVICE that they forget who the customer is and who they are supposed to be servicing. Why is it that most major corporations have customer service departments that are designed to frustrate their customers and prevent them from getting the monies they rightly deserve. I won’t get into the problems we had with Cingular here, but it really does show why corporations are perceived in such a bad light and why customer service reps are getting a reputation that is actually lower than that of a used car salesman.

BTW – Hernalyn did not care that we were not satisifed at the end of the call, she did not care if we blogged about this to the world, she did not care if we ever flew US Airways again and she did not care if we influenced the businesses with which we were involved to never use US Airways either. In short, they don’t care about keeping their customers in the customer service department, even though a large portion of their marketing budget is spent on keeping customers happy. So one phone call with a $20/hour supervisor ends up costing them a couple of thousand dollars a year from our lost business and even more from those people we know.

Not very smart. I predict they won’t be around very much longer, so that gold status I have in the frequent flyer program means nothing. I guess I will just fly American or JetBlue now. So, if you are from US Airways and you are reading this, I have a goatse for you to look at…

usairways usairwayssucks badcustomerservice dontflyusairways customerservice

In my last post I was going to link to a site about South Beach, Miami. As the once naive 25 year old founder/CEO/Chairman of sobe.com in 1995, I figured there must now be a dozen sites that would be good for showing off one of my favorite cities to my new friends. Alas, I was wrong. Could not find a one. Looks like CitySearch and Knight Ridder scared everyone else out of the market. I tried to buy back the sobe.com domain a few years ago when the MyShitty guys were selling off the assets, but did not even hear a reply. I would have made something of that site again… perhaps I still will one day. Turns out the domain is owned by a domain squatting company from Asia somewhere called CyPack.com (which is why I don’t link to it above).

Fortunately for me, sobe.com lives on in its former glory, thanks to the Internet Archive and the WayBack Machine.

Amazing what can happen when you rely on trusted friends for finding out about things. I was talking with Michael Arrington from TechCrunch the other day about BrainJams and our ideas for a national tour. On the way out the door he mentioned the Supr.c.illio.us launch party and the little get together Pandora was throwing. Despite having a dinner with friends tonight and the LaughingSquid 10th anniversary party tomorrow, Kristie and I decided to go. Good decision.

Though we are slightly hung over this morning, I remember the whole evening clearly. We had an especially good time hanging out with the Pandora team. Continuing the theme for relying on trusted friends for finding stuff, this is the exact passion of many of the people who work there and the enthusiasts who love the custom radio stations so much. In fact Tim Westergren Tom Conrad said it best – “I really don’t care if I end up making millions of dollars from this company, what really matters if I get to spend my time doing what I love, helping other people discover good music.” Now in case you are wondering, that is THE POINT. Do what you love and the rest will follow. Quite a different theme this time around, and it is not just these cool music lovers who get it, it is more pervasive than that.

The Supr.c.illio.us crew is really a good part of the heart of our blossoming community. While the other day I was thinking how great it would be to expand our circle to include more diverse people, it was great last night hanging out at Annie’s Bar with a bunch of cool people we know fairly well. It just felt fun and comfortable (though doing that drunk interview with Irina is probably something I will regret later – I wonder if Tara has any tips for how I should handle that?)

But in addition to hanging with great friends, we also get to meet some new ones who are also cool people who get it. Had a fascinating discussion with Alex Barnett from Microsoft about some of the Kurzweil Age of the Spiritual Machine stuff, MyLifeBits, Insytes and the real value of attention. As I remarked at the time, it would have been great to have a liferecorder on at that moment… the details are admittedly a little fuzzy. As Alex reminded me later in the evening – it is always great to put a face and a body and an in-person meeting to the blogs we have been reading. I wish I could bottle up that feeling and sell it sometimes – it would make a fortune. In fact, that is perhaps one of the best things about Blogger Meetups, and one of the things that will really drive the BrainJams national tour we are planning.

Late in the evening I had a chance to hang out with Andy who introduced me to his friend Nate Koechley a “Worker / Catalyst” at Yahoo! We jumped in on a discussion around some fairly deep stuff that I vaguely remember. But I do remember talking to him about Yahoo! Maps decision to use Flash instead of AJAX – turns out he had a part in that discussion and provided me an insight that made sense of it all.

As I have been telling all my friends recently, it is great to be here in the Bay Area at this amazing point in time. In that I was in South Beach, Miami during the first boom (in D.C. for the latter part of it), I remember reading WebMonkey, Wired, Red herring and all those other sites that talked about the cool stuff going on out here and thinking, wow, how cool would it be to just be a part of that! Now I know – it really is cool, fun, exciting and fulfilling to be a part of such a vibrant community that knows it can make THE difference in the world around us.

Rock on.

I love meeting/hearing from people who get it. Clearly Shantanu Narayen, COO of Adobe , is one of those people. They are working on 2 things I had not really thought they were into yet, but obviously are. First is thinking about autotagging vis a vis PDF publishing. He even mentioned the example of camera’s being GPS enabled in order to tag a photo with the location. I always thought how cool it would be if this could be further correlated on the meta layer with an event database by looking up a date/time stamp. Where the photos I am taking not only get automatically tagged here with Berekeley, CA, but also with PlayConference and also with PlayConference:openingKeynote.

This is another aspect of what I call synaptivity, which I need to explain better in light of the Office Live announcement – which is the best example I have seen of this yet. Richard McManus has a great post on this with Bill’s slides included.

Back to the point – the other aspect that Shantanu spoke about which I had not heard of that is also in the realm of what I call synaptivity is the Intelligent Document Format – where it sounds like the workflow intelligence gets embedded in the document rather than around it.

Not only was Shantanu smart and informative, but congenial and able to deftly handle pointed questions (presented ever so politely)

playconference adobe synaptivity

6pm – Discuss the current situation with regards to the many types of BrainJams out there, where it is going and where we see BrainJams fitting into the picture. Figuring out what can we do to serve as a catalyst furthering this understanding with a wider part of the population.

630 – Discuss next BrainJam Event – Overview of situation

640 – Discuss logistical needs and responsibilities

700 – Blogging to promote the event, blogging to capture best practices form other events (interview via skype or AudioBlog perhaps?)

7ish – Pizzas

730 – Content for next event – what is it we really want to change in the world?

8 – wrap – another brainjam sort of event is going on down the street

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc+collaboration, brainjamming, brainjams, brainjams:3dec2005, brainjams:bayarea, brainjams:planning, The+Open+Web

I said that about a week ago when a friend’s sister had not shown up for a party she was expected at and then was not heard from again (despite numerous calls) for several days. She was starting to worry about her, and where she might be and if everything was ok or if she has been in an accident or something terrible happened. Once she finally got her on the phone after some prodding from me, her sister was pretty nochalant about the whole thing – it was then that I realized – anger is a better emotion than worry…

It is an interesting question I think – what are you mad about? when you look out at the world around you, is it the environment, your industry, the government, your neighborhood, or an issue of great personal importance? What systems do you feel are broken that could be made right through the use of Web 2.1/Open Web/Social Media technologies? There is a huge opportunity to work together with the open source community to help non-profits and people with ideas cross their traditional organizational boundaries and connect their knowledge to make things right.

Chris Messina is working on a big part of this with a project called CivicForge that will be a big step forward towards connecting those Noble Pursuits with people who have the technology skills to make it happen. Since we are moving towards collaboration with BarCamp in this regards, I thought it might be best if we spend the first half of the next event BrainJamming in small groups figuring out what is really making us angry. Then we can spend the second part of the day talking about available technologies and open source approaches that can be key contributors towards making it right. When we leave the next BrainJam, we can all blog about what makes us angry (start that now), what is needed, the insytes we developed together and how we would like to go about solving that problem. By doing this we are communicating to the open source community our ideas for projects that need their support. Closing the loop from problem to solution.

It doesn’t always have to be this way – we will make a difference.

I am still thinking about doing 1on1 BrainJamming around passions – perhaps these emotions can be used the same way in this regards – being passionate about solving the problem because you are mad as hell may be an even more powerful way to think about this.

This approach does more than support our broader goals of making the emerging media and community tools more accessible to a wider array of people. It is almost like demand aggregation for CivicForge – a call to arms across the communities of poeple who care as well as the organizations. A way to bring them together across all boundaries except the one that unites us all.

This approach will also support what Jeff Jarvis is doing with Recovery2 and what TechSoup is doing with so many important projects like NetSquared (which you should all attend on Tue8nov2005:6-8pm). It is quite amazing because we are all working towards the same goal, and are able to do so in the commons that is tagging, blogs, wikis and issue focused communities.

There is no more time to worry – it is time to get angry and time to do something about it to make it right.

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc collaboration, brainjamming, brainjams:3dec2005, brainjams:bayarea, CivicForge, NPTECH, open source, Recovery2, The Open Web

I am down here in Las Vegas this week helping a friend with his new startup, seeing how we might work together more regularly. The meat of our work will start popping out today, but in the meantime, I have finally made some progress with the next BrainJams event.

The first piece to get out the door is a new home page for the Web2point1 site – the remainder of those pages will be done tonight. Tomorrow, hopefully just in time for our FR night planning meeting for the next BrainJam on 3Dec2005, I will have a new BrainJams site together. Please do visit the Web2point1 site though for some important updates on the next event, along with photos of the SRI facility in Menlo Park where we will be holding the next event, thanks to the efforts of BrainJam1 alum David Gutelius.

You can’t miss the headline walking through the airport – “Attack of the Bloggers” – having read Eran’s notes on the matter from Super.C.illio.us, I had to buy it. I had started reading it online thanks to the account sharing site BugMeNot which Steve Wrubel shared. But actually feeling it in my hands was quite a different experience. It was much worse than I had thought it could be.

So much so, that when I started reading it, I could not help but thinking – they did this piece, with this tone, with the intention of stirring the hoornet’s nest of hard core bloggers and increasing their reputation before blogging crosses the chasm. So far, it seems to have worked. I hate linking to it here, but you need to read the story yourself for context (go to BugMeNot for a password). I feel even more terrible about playing into their hands by buying the issue, but when you plan on doing a ceremonial burning, you need to have something to burn. just kidding – but that is the sort of vitriol that increases readership, profits and relevance – despite being mostly irrelevant.

Another thought on the matter is that this could be considered a defense of the traditional publishing model – a way to taint the idea of blogging, and the identity one may associate with being cool by blogging, so that more of our fellow citizens don’t become bloggers and compete for the attention that traditional publishing is now losing so rapidly. Whether or not that is the intention, that is the affect – and it is irresponsible of them. I expected better from such a well-regarded source.

I have met some great smart people who work there over the years, and my opinion of them as a decent business magazine does not change, though I have never read them regularly. One bad piece of journalism after this many years does not a downfall make – though perhaps there are other similar stories of which I am unaware where they were equally unbalanced and unfair. I will be more skeptical of their reporting now and don’t plan on picking up a subscription anytime soon. I don’t want to protest it either, as that will just have the opposite effect – playing into the ‘any press is good press’ model, but will probably need to at least address it as we move forward with plans our BrainJams national tour. (More information on that will be forthcoming after this weekends SuperHappyDevHouse when I meet with some other key supporters)

A word of caution for anyone upset by this terrible piece of journalism – however you feel about it, don’t call them names, (especially the author, editor and Forbes himself). Don’t use silly arguments to demean them personally, or go on the attack or anything else like that other than talking about the positives. If you attack, you would just be proving their point, which is perhaps another piece of their strategy – to show they are speaking the truth to the rest of the world that does not yet understand the potential for great advancement that can come from more truthtellers joining the conversation.

We need to lead by example – please remember that.

While their reporting completely missed the mark, they do bring up an issue I have been thinking about a lot lately – how does a person’s bad reputation spread in an appropriate manner? LinkedIn only allows ‘endorsements’ and everyone is afraid of being sued for libel etc… It would have been interesting if they took the perspective of how the people attacking unfairly might have a bad reputation established and be proven wrong. I would really like to hear more discussion on this matter. David Brin has some interesting thoughts on dispute resolution that may be of note here, especially when thinking of how it might be applied in the commons to deal with the sort of matters they discussed in the article – to really get at the truth, which is what most people I know really care about.

Stereotyping people because of a few assholes who share some common interests/characteristics is just plain wrong, no matter who does it.