Under the hood of Pinterest

Hi there (good folks of Pinterest),

the link that you provided to re-open my ticket did not work, hence the email:


Reactivation did not work this time either. Or it did .. until I tried to log in again:

Oops!
Your account has been deactivated, but your pins are safe and sound.
Please contact Support and we'll get you pinning again soon.

1) So please do something to release this burden of my email/username pajaratorio@gmail.com
2) Why on earth "are my pins safe and sound"? I deleted my account to remove them! Why do you keep that information?! Really!!

Personal touch

Today I received a letter from Gässling. First I had no idea about the reason, but I soon realized. Also pretty soon the letter made me smile. In the end I was laughing despite that they just had informed that their original ambitious design had failed in few cases and they were sending me spare buttons.

I have been writing about how an error in service or product should be mended for the customer.
Attached pic tells a story how personal touch can make a difference when something goes wrong.

Naturally personal touch requires actual use of personality leading big companies being hesitant with that kind of approach. Fresh exceptions can be found among recent web startups. They boldly use language that is both approachable and clear for users.

Mending an error smoothly is proved to create even more loyal customers. I cannot evaluate this case objectively, but clearly I'll be happy to change my buttons in case something really happens to them and will not hesitate to buy my next pair of underwear from Gässling =)

Better service through accepting mistakes?

Just like people reveal their fundamental characteristics under stress, so do services. Giving feedback to service provider creates a conflict that reveals how well the service culture is understood and cultivated in a company.

Being passionate about services I usually tell if there is something wrong - because I care. Regular customer do not usually care - they just change company. Giving feedback has offered a front row seat in observing how is feedback taken. Companies operate through individuals and their defence mechanisms usually determine how feedback is received. -This is where service culture steps in.

If a company does not take a stand on 1) how feedback should be received, 2) how and within what limits the situation is settled and 3) how the feedback is eventually processed, the employee falls back on ones own defenses or in best case builds on the self confidence, wits and positivity.

Katja Okkonen writes in Helsingin Sanomat about poor service in the article Saitko surkeaa palvelua? Tästä se johtuu.  She points out that following rules and regulations diligently and being afraid of mistakes often creates poor user experiences:
-Tuulikki Juusela calls finnish culture a culture of regulations, which could be interpreted as bureaucracy. Hiding behind rules and regulations has become common and common sense is used less and less.
- It is easy for me to agree when Juusela assumes that finnish people have gained a significant fear of mistakes. We are highly cautious for our manager or coworker to give negative feedback. Current economical turbulence has also made the fear of losing one's work very real. When customer gives negative feedback, the fear of mistake and fear of losing one's work is combined and that can create a strong need to be right.
-Janne Löytänä has written that the best way to receive negative feedback is to response promptly and personally. Löytänä further reminds that compensation is actually cheap marketing for a company. If a company is able to turn negative experience to a satisfactory, the customer becomes a 15 times more loyal than a regular customer - and that must create a lot of good reputation.
-While Juusela mentions that Finland is a true self service culture with all possible technical innovations to support it, Camilla Reinboth takes another perspective reminding that engineering culture might also lead thinking that errors in product can be fixed when they occur. With services employees need to know how to deal with mistakes before they occur.

Egolocical thinking as a strategy; Patagonia and Basecamp Oulanka

Some might say that Patagonia is crazy company when launching a campaign with the motto "Don't Buy This Shirt Unless You Need It".

For me, it made read through their values and find out that Patagonia is one of the leading companies in the world really finding ways to produce it's outdoor gear in the most ecological way possible.


Outdoor lovers use enormous amounts of different kind of synthetic fibres, plastics and composite products. It's about time that there are some leaders in making our consumption leaner so that we will not destroy our environment while enjoying it.

Another good example of ecological thinking in nature travel is Basecamp Oulanka in Kuusamo. They arrange a range of wilderness activities from extreme adventures to well-being holidays - all with high environmental, social and economical standards.
Seeing what modern wilderness tourism has done to many areas of Finnish Lapland, doing things really in the original way and minimizing operational footprint in every way is a refreshing, delightful and not a bit less fun.

Buy a Patagonia - if you really need one, and go to Kuusamo to enjoy some real experiences!

The moment of choosing a strategy

CityDeal launched itself in Finland about a year ago. It has offered quite good bargains of quality products and services, but now it seems that the revenue expectation has contradicted with the growth and the offers include items that would be more suitable for TV store.

This clearly presents a critical moment in how CityDeal builds it's customer base and who do they focus their marketing. -At least I will delete my account in near future if this starts to be another channel for the crap available from TV store.

Consumer complaint case: Talisker whisky with a fly

When I poured a glass of Talisker whisky last autumn and found a partly dissolved fly from my glass, I had a romantic vision about small distillery and scotts and I though that I'd better inform the guys in Talisker that some part of their process is not bulletproof.

After a long search for contact information I managed to get an email address through discussion group in Talisker Facebook group and I sent my mail with these pictures.
After three months of email discussion with Diageo (owner of Talisker) I was requested to send the sample with the fly AND the remaining bottle to UK to be studied.

I have to say that all the romance about Scotland and small scottish distilleries being proud of their products vanished: Diageo representative quite clearly implied that I had put the fly into my glass to hoax a replacement bottle. Any kind replacement was not even discussed, although I would have been happy for that in the beginning.

Conclusion: When you find a fly in your Talisker whiskey - don't even bother to complain.

Final report


Dear Perttu *******,


Thank you for raising your concern with regards to a fly in your 70cl bottle of Talisker. We have received a 4cl sub sample along with the bottle that you had sent back to our Technical Centre for investigation. On receipt we noted that the bottle was 40% full and the 4cl sub sample contained a fly, there was no labelling on the sub sample. We have now completed analysis with the following results: The strength measured = 45.8% (Label strength indicated 45.8%) Higher alcohol congener analysis indicated that the sample in the bottle was a genuine sample of Talisker. Higher alcohol congener analysis indicated that the sub-sample was a genuine sample of Talisker. Sensory assessment found the sample to be similar in character to the control sample of Talisker with no off notes or tainting detected. The sub sample was filtered and was found to contain a fly measuring 2.6mm in length. Conclusions: The sample was filtered and was found to contain a fly measuring 2.6mm in length. As the sample was received open it is not possible to determine when the fly entered the sample. We would like to thank you for taking the time to return these samples to us for analysis, although we cannot ascertain at what point in our process the fly could have entered the product, due to the bottle being received open. The pictures initially provided also showed the fly was in the drinking glass and not in the bottle, again we do not have any evidence to support the claim of the fly in the bottle. Unfortunately we will have to close this concern as we have do not have any conclusive evidence to support the claim.  

Kind Regards,
Customer Account Manager

To complete the story I paste here also my response.
It's quite easy to see how Diageo could have solved this smoothly and hard to imagine why they decided not to pursue user satisfaction.

I was waiting for further comments from you, but thanks for informing that you agree with my species identification.

I wouldn't have needed to ask you that though. I saw it carefully enough to know that it was not part of Finnish fauna.

I actually thought that you guys care and my input would help somehow the quality of your products. I'm quite shocked that you think I went through all the trouble just to hoax you.

I also want to remind you that I asked three times that do you really need also the bottle or would the sample be enough. And you requested to have also the bottle, causing me even higher shipping cost. -In future I suggest that you tell the policy in early phase and save a bit of customers nerves and your reputation.

It is understandable that manufacturing processes have flaws. But when policies and communication have flaws or intentional difficulties, that is totally something else than understandable.

After your latest mail, I'm relatively pissed off and I'm going to publish your response on my blog.
On the meantime, I assume that you send me back the 40% of the bottle that was left. -Not that I'd drink it, but still it's mine to pour into the sewer.

Sincerely,
 Perttu ******* 

Couple of weeks after this I received a delivery. It was quite sad moment, but mostly because I felt so bad for the company I felt so strongly before. -Somehow the whisky just wasn't that good anymore..

Meaningful feedback resulting as motivation?

Finland is a country of self service. Where this is most imminent, is cafes and restaurants. Mostly, you need to get your orders yourself and even clean the table afterwards. In a bit better places you might get service, but often it's poor or unmotivated.

Despite few exceptions it seems that service is clearly better in cultures where waiters salary consists mostly of tips. For long I considered tip based salary somewhat bad deal, but I have changed my mind.

Compared to fixed salary, tip based salary creates immediate feedback channel between customer satisfaction and waiters behavior. Furthermore, the feedback is truly meaningful to the waiter. Skilled waiters can even make a career and climb up the ladder to better places with better tips.

The experience of the profession becomes this way totally different than in Finland, where common understanding is that anybody can be a waiter resulting in that nobody actually wants to do it nor be proud of ones profession.

User observation for better breakfast?

For a moment I was sure that I was a subject in a user study:

I was balancing on my left foot, with two plates on my left hand, trying to push slider door open with my right foot to place the milk jar from my right hand into the fridge. All this while the waiter observed.

Unfortunately this was not user study - they were happy with their service.

Graphics work: theme for a homescreen clock

My strengths are on the product and services concepts and not so much on the graphical design. Despite the tendency I sometimes have artistic urges to fulfill.

Not so long ago, we realized a co-operation possibility with my ingenious colleague, who has coded a clock/timer application to Ovi Store on his spare time. I had a vision to work with fonts covered by paint or dirt and he could use a theme for his application. As in design work generally - there was a feeling of magic in bring this -this time artistic- vision alive. Theme builds on the Symbian Anna software refresh.


Here's the preview of the theme, but you can as well download the whole application to your smartphone to get a better picture :)
 

Extra effort caused by elimination of disposable packages

Although elimination of disposable packages in eg. Scandic hotel chain has been a great action for environment, some challenges that originally influenced to the very trend remain.

One of those is cleaning. Especially anything related to toiletries should deserve extra attention. Unfortunately this is often overlooked by maids, as well as the people who make the cleaning contracts.

Xbox Live credit card hoax disquised as Automatic Renewal

I spotted an interesting line from my credit card bill, which said Xbox live 19,90.

This was clearly unauthorized charging since I paid extra attention to my choice of Live membership and payment method after warnings from my colleague who had previously experienced continuous charging of credit card.


I decided to remove my card data as once from my xbox. -Unfortunately this move had been thought at Microsoft headquarters. Removal was not possible to do on the xbox!! Instead the prompt asked to visit http://www.xbox.com/support for membership info and how to turn of automatical renewal...

At this point I can give you a hint. It's nowhere near there. You might get a better start from the address https://live.xbox.com. -The end result is not any better, but least that's wehere it is supposed to be..

The guidance what you'll in the end find is useless:
 

Ok, lets find that billing information then manually...
You'll probably find several errors from the system:

 

But if you hit the right spot, you'll find your billing information:

 

There it is finally; "Cancel my service".
-But let's first think for a moment that which service it was you wanted to cancel.......





Ok, here we go. Thumbs up everybody!!


 

Still not possible. -It Really is made impossible to cancel the automatic renewal and charging from the credit card!

Time for some conclusions:


I consider this a criminal credit card hoax, with the difference that this is done globally, diguised as legitimate and sealed with the human lazyness and self accusations. -And definitely not good businness on the long run.

Next: Calls to Consumer Agency and Microsoft.

Suddenly everything stops

Imagine that you rush into your hotel room with you hands full and drop your keycard to the floor when trying to shovel it into the main light switch while the door is closing behind you.

Suddenly you get a feeling that there's no rush and the best thing to do is crawl on the floor in total blackness.
-Further you can't avoid thinking that this was not considered, when the brilliant idea of key card operating main switch was introduced to hotel businnes.

Special coffee automate - automated poor service?

What's the point in having a machine for special coffees?

Usually coffee shop staff do not know what kind of coffee they are selling from the device.
What IS know in this equation, is the higher quality expectation when customer orders special coffee. -And for this expectation regular coffee shop answers by ignorance - selling a product they have no control over (not even quality control)?!

Why do they even bother, when they would have perfectly ok coffee on the pot to serve - with normal expectation level? -Maybe the disappointment would be lower..

Is the first Encore already too much?

This is a sight which makes me shake my head every time I see it.
-I really don't want any 'encore' to happen to my work papers..

Report a problem - Google style

Google has realized it. Keeping something up to date or in order requires continuous feedback. And for continuous feedback, reporting needs to be simple and Effortless.
-See the video from Google to see how they have succeeded to implement these two drivers.

Ravintokoodi.fi - try to sign in

I signed myself to Ravintokoodi.fi few months ago. I thought that it's a great service.

Not that there is anything wrong (quite the opposite) with the content, but after few months of trying it seems just annoying just because they didn't know how to make the sign in.

1) If all social web services (with confidential content) use cookies and allow Keep me signed in, why doesn't this obsolete service containing only my nutrition details?!
2) At least it could hold the username in place - after all I don't have a slightest clue how this service wanted it..
3) And finally, why do I need to go to a different site (www.pirkka.fi) to reset my password?!.
3.1) It would be nice if the link went straight to appropriate password reseting page instead of www.pirkka.fi mainapge to start the quest from.

Send a postcard with your own photo from your mobile phone - Posti/Itella

Sending a postcard with your own photo from your mobile phone sounds like a great idea. -Heard about it from my friend and rushed into Posti (or Itella) site to download the Mobile Postcard (Mobiilipostikortti) application.
There's so many things wrong in the application that it's unbelievable that somewhere there is a Symbian coder, who is so unaware of basic principles.
You need to know about hidden and visible drives on your mobile to find your photos and know how to change seccurity settings to avoid  question about wheather application can access your data. -And finally, there's no preview the picture you are sending - at any point. -Not even thumbnails in the folder view. Which I managed to get visible only that one time I took the pictures below :/

-My god XP

 

 

 

Oulu city sculptures -tool

Outdoor sculptures of Oulu city can be found easily from this tool.

Photo albums ease of use

So far I have been force to use Flickr web albums because of its appealing simple looks and UI. When lookin photos, you don't want anything extra to bee visible. Difference between Picasa and Flickr is evident at least to my eyes.

Not that selection of webgallery for an Average Joe would be based on one single interaction, but still this is something to consider: In my default PC viewer(IrfanView) next picture is selected by simply using arrow keys. Also Facebook and Picasa has the same functionality. When using Flickr I have to use my mouse to click a small thumbnail to get next picture..
-So of to Picasa I go, thaks for great time Flickr. Disadvantages in this change are the looks and complexity of Picasa but advantages are simple and intuitive use and the fact that now I have all my stuff behind one Google account :)

Celebrating tacit knowledge through service design

Even a simple service product or infrastructure -like rail transport- forms an information system including hidden knowledge and inbuilt need for learning.
It took me some 15 years of intensive railroad usage to learn that after the announcement "Train leaves from gate 2", there is exactly 3 minutes time. Today, after 18 years, I learned that there is a yellow color coding in the timetable posters for leaving trains in opposite to arriving.

These information bits are examples of tacit knowledge, which would be useful if know, but is either difficult or considered less important to communicate. In modern world, consumers do not necessarily have time or will to start learning. -Experience should be readily available in full extent.

One task for service design is to find ways to communicate these service and company specific information bits, celebrate those and build a better brand and user experience through those.

-After all, you would like the customer to see your product as excellent as you see it, wouldn't you?