Blogger's Spell Checker

Here's something interesting. The following words are not found and show as misspellings when you run Blogger's spell check on a post.

• blog
• blogger
• blogging
• blogged
• blogosphere

The first recommended alternative for blog is "flog."

Trivial, yet amusing.

Public and Experts Split Over E-voting Security

I blogged on this topic a couple weeks ago. It seems now that the experts are far less trusting of electronic voting than the general public. That's a real surprise to me. I would have expected the techno crowd to be more in favor of it than anyone.

Nevertheless, after reading my proposal from the other day and weighing it against these "expert" opinions, I'm refining my idea.

Let's skip the whole electronic thing for a while. (Presumably, it really will work someday. Apparently, now is not the time.) Instead, let's just implement the second part of my plan. We can call it the Voting Accountability for Morons (VAM) plan or something.

The gist: All voters are responsible for auditing their own ballots before they leave the polls. (This is completely optional. You only do this if you are concerned your punch card won't be read properly -- or if you're a freaky activist of some sort.)

How it works: You scan your punch card in a reader identical to what they will use to count the votes. You receive a printout showing how your card was read (i.e., how you voted). You then have the opportunity to report any discrepancies and make corrections on the spot. Otherwise, what you turn in is what stays in the system. Period.

It's not perfect, but it's got to be better than just putting up a sign that says "Please remove all hanging chad." Does anyone really believe that the folks in Palm Beach County are going to remember what a hanging chad is four years later?

Companies Find They Can't Buy Love With Bargains

Great article in the New York Times about customer satisfaction. I wasn't even familiar with the American Customer Satisfaction Index. It's a neat idea, and despite not knowing how the index is calculated, the contrasting scores reinforce my belief that the products retailers choose to carry often differ from what consumers really want.

The problem? Too many companies confuse selling clever gadgets at good prices with delighting customers. When so many products get cheaper every year, offering customers a great bargain will not necessarily win their loyalty. Someone else is bound to offer a better bargain, and besides, most customers have come to expect good deals. "Price has an effect on whether you buy or not," Dr. Fornell says. "It has less of an impact on whether you're satisfied or not."

Mass retailers perpetuate this problem. In fact, they may be the root cause.

It's virtually impossible to be a successful buyer for a major retailer today and be primarily focused on figuring out what customers want to buy and then carrying it. That's only the beginning, a prerequisite perhaps. The buyer's most important jobs are to:

• Consistently increase return on inventory investment year after year
• Grow top line sales every year

Bonuses are earned and lost on these criteria. Getting vendors to provide annual price reductions (typically referred to as "driving the business" or "adding value") is now the norm. Therefore, product improvements have become mere margin enhancements. "New and improved" usually means that the product had to be changed in order to keep its shelf space -- regardless of whether or not customers were happy with it the way it was.

A buyer's worst enemy is the product that customers buy year in and year out -- unchanged. It's very difficult to grow margins regularly on a product that stays the same. The vendor only has so much to give. Heinz ketchup is the perfect example. It's no wonder that they have the highest customer satisfaction score. They haven't messed with the product, and it continues to keep customers happy! Duh!

Vermont Teddy Bear is a small company whose impressive turnaround shows the power of creating a connection with customers rather than competing on price.

This connection is the relationship between the customer and the product. Retailers either enhance this connection or they hinder it. Price is only one of many elements that define the relationship with the consumer.

Yes, the retailer is also its own brand, but I doubt that has anything to do with the Heinz story. Maybe it did at one time, but those days are long gone. The retailer as a brand is a separate issue.

Why does Amazon produce such satisfied customers? Low prices and wide selection play a part. But plenty of retailers, on the Internet and at the mall, offer good deals and scads of merchandise. The real secret, says Bill Price, a former vice president of global customer service at Amazon, is the site's evolving menu of features and services that make it more friendly, more reliable and easier to use - little touches that personalize the site for each buyer.

Amazon gets it. They understand that price is an element. Free shipping is an element. But so are personalized service, excellent communication, product reviews, wish lists, and so on. Customers trust Amazon.com. They trust Amazon because the company is reliable, remarkable and consistent.

There is always someone with a lower price than Amazon, and some customers will always navigate toward the lowest-cost provider. Most will stick with Amazon, though, because trust doesn't cost much more.

Retailers need to focus more on building trust and carrying what customers want to buy. These efforts will grow markets and, frequently, market share. Healthy ROI and top line sales will follow.

Companies Ignore Customer Email

So much for good customer service. Articles like this one in Internet Retailer pop up once in a while. Although this story pursues the differences in response rates to emails written in English vs. Spanish, the abysmal response rates are just amazing:

Barely half of the world's best-known brands answer e-mail from consumers...

In the first query, a request for product information got only a 42.7% response rate when submitted in English, and a 46.9% response rate when submitted in Spanish.

The second query, a complaint, got a greater response when submitted in English: 49.4% versus 35.8% for messages sent in Spanish.

The third message, a compliment about the site, got almost equal response rates in Spanish and English: 35.4% and 35.6%, respectively.

The fourth message, a question on where to buy the company's products, got the highest response rate of any of the four messages when sent in English: 50%, but only a 33.3% response when submitted in Spanish.

The top 100 brands included in the survey were drawn from an Interbrand and Business Week study published in 2003 and included global companies such as Colgate, Heineken, Kellogg's, L'Oreal, Toyota and others.

How can companies possibly think that this is acceptable? Is it the fact that email is easy to put off compared to a phone call or a face-to-face encounter? Is it because upper management still doesn't "get it" when it comes to the technology?

An email contact from a customer is just as important as any other moment of truth. Ignoring it is the same as hanging up on a caller or slamming the door in a customer's face.

Surviving the Slog of Trade Shows

The New York Times has an amusing filler piece today about working at trade shows. The picture is hysterical -- boy can I relate! Some of the quotes are great:

"It just sucks the life force out of you, and you don't even know why."

"I started keeping a journal because it keeps me busy when the booth is slow and it helps me channel my anxiety," said Kelly Sopp, who will exhibit at half a dozen children's apparel and gift shows this year to promote her Wry Baby clothing line. Typical of her journal notes: "Everybody hates my product."

For exhibitors, commentary overheard from the aisles can require thick skin - and a check on the urge to respond. "One woman walked by and she just rolled her eyes and said, 'Now who would put that on her child?' " Ms. Sopp recalled. "I wanted to yell back, '20,000 people so far,' but you just can't do that.''

Kids Get an Eyeful

The results of this survey featured in eMarketer are truly amazing. Although it's from the U.K., it probably portends a trend here in the U.S. as well.

The "UK Children Go Online" study, for which over 1,500 young people between the ages of 9 and 19 and more than 900 of their parents were surveyed, found that among those young people who go online least once a week:

* 57% have come into contact with pornography online (compared with 16% of parents who say their children have seen porn online)

* 46% say they have given out personal information online (while only 5% of parents realize it)

* 33% have received unwanted sexual or lewd comments online (though only 5% of parents are aware of it)

If seeing is believing, then seeing porn is certainly having an impact on our young people. I remember the effect that a single issue of Playboy had on me in 1976. (And I know where things went from there.) I cannot fathom the depth of the impact that online porn would have had on me at that age.

Today's kids are seeing things that they can never "unsee" just like I did, but they are seeing this stuff with greater frequency and in extremely graphic detail. It is inevitable that this is affecting our cultural values. Porn seems to have permeated our society so much that it has almost ceased to carry any stigma at all among much of the population. I'll never forget the first time I saw a teenager proudly wearing a "Porn Star" t-shirt. Think about what had to happen before this could become even remotely acceptable.

There has been much discussion this week concerning Family Video and the alleged adult section inside their new store in town. Assuming that they really are renting porn videos, should we really be surprised? Before the BlockBuster/Hollywood Video oligarchy, many local video stores in the area had an "adults only" section. Folks, if the statistics are true, then the video store is a yawner compared to what's going on in your living rooms!

This is something we have to deal with in our families and in our church. It's in the community, and I don't think that's going away -- maybe ever. If we're going to petition this retailer, fine. Maybe it is justifiable. But let's at least couple that with a look inside. We have much optical lumber to remove when it comes to pornography!

Lost electronic records from '02 raise '04 concern

This post on Boing Boing and the related news stories really make me wonder how they are ever going to get this whole mess straightened out.

Punch card ballots = hanging chads (i.e., subjective evaluation).

Electronic and touch-screen voting systems = likely crashes from time to time.  It just happens. We all use Microsoft Windows. We know it's going to happen. (Shut up, Mac users. You're in denial! Your computers crash too. I've seen it happen.)

So what are we supposed to do?

Here's an idea:

1) Use both systems -- simultaneously. The electronic votes count first since they're easier and more efficient to tally. If there is a problem such as a super close outcome, then the punch cards get used for the re-count only. (Obviously, this requires a device that records two identical votes at the same time, but that seems doable.)

2) All voters are responsible for auditing their own ballots before they leave the polls. You scan your own punch card in a reader, and then you receive a paper receipt showing how both methods were recorded. It's your responsibility to report any discrepancies on the spot. Otherwise, what you turned in is what stays in the system. Period.

Is this constitutional? Who knows. Half the eligible population, more or less, doesn't even bother to vote anyway, which makes me shake my head even more.

Skunk Gel repellent

I wonder if Dad would have used this when we were kids to stop us from getting into his toolbox (and not putting things back). I can think of all kinds of possible uses. The practical joke opportunities are endless!

Throw Away that Nose Hair Clipper

You know those weird news stories you read on Yahoo! from AP and Reuters? Well, here's a true story that would fit right in.

My large-nostriled brother just went through quite a scare. He has always harbored a deep rooted concern about excessive nose hair. But his efforts to trim the problem had some unexpected consequences this week.

It seems that one of his nose hair follicles became infected early this week. After a couple days, the bugger started to swell. By Wednesday it had developed into a full-blown staph infection and required urgent hospitalization. Oral antibiotics just weren't doing the trick, and his face was literally looking like the elephant man. 

The pain was so severe that morphine wasn't even taking the edge off. By Thursday night the IV antibiotics were winning the battle. All that's left now is a large pustule that requires an occasional Q-tip dredging.

Upon returning from the hospital, the first thing my brother did was throw out his nose hair clippers. It's just too risky to keep on using them.

Blogs Not Hotter than Hotbot

Seth Godin makes an excellent observation about how perception isn't always reality.  When it comes media coverage, by nature we assume that the more coverage something gets, the bigger it is. If it's being reported all over the place, then it must not only be a big deal, it must be a bigger deal than the things that are not being reported. Of course, this is not the case.
 
Although the Alexa data Seth cites may be flawed, it's still interesting that one of the web's most obscure search engines generates traffic tantamount to the entire universe of blogs. Of the dozen or so people with whom I've discussed my blog, only two knew what a blog is, and only one actually reads blogs. Forbes, Fast Company, Business Week -- they've all got articles about blogs and blogging. No one is writing about Hotbot.
 
News is what it is -- news. It is not a comprehensive barometer of actual trends in human behavior. Just look at the number of things on the Yahoo! Buzz Index or the Google Zeitgeist that make you scratch your head. Most of the stuff there is what's showing up in the media, but there are usually a few things on these lists that didn't make any mainstream headlines.