Can someone please explain…?

Looking for reason in all the wrong places.

Archive for December, 2009

“We’re sorry. Your call cannot be completed as dialed.”

Posted by jlsimons on December 23, 2009

I wasn’t going to blog about this.

Unlike most of my posts, which have at their core a desire to make things better by understanding how they happen, I have no hope that this situation will improve.

But after weeks of incredible personal frustration, it was the mounting complaints by my friends and co-workers that convinced me that this situation truly needs an explanation. Somebody somewhere made this decision, and I desperately want to know what they were thinking.

I’m talking about the recent change southern Connecticut made to their phone numbers.  Beginning on November 14th, customers in the 203 area code became required to use the area code, 203, before all calls within the 203, whether local or long distance.

Now I know what I said makes no sense, so let me explain for those of you who don’t live here.

203 has always been a pretty conflicted area code with serious identity issues. Sometimes it’s local, sometimes it’s long distance. And there’s really no way to know which is which, because it’s not just based on where the recipient is located. In fact, sometimes it’s both at the same time. I have clients who have business phones and cell phones, all within the 203 area code, but the cell phones are sometimes local while the business phones are long distance.

Have any of you ever encountered an area code like this?

There must be others, although I always thought all the calls within an area code would be local calls. In my experience, living at various times in suburban New York, suburban New Jersey, San Diego, CA and Manhattan, I have never encountered an area code that could be both local and long distance within the area code, and especially within such a small geographic area. (I could understand, for instance, if all of Montana shared an area code that included local and long distance. But Fairfield County, CT? You’ve got to be kidding.)

I’ve lived in Connecticut for 5 years now, and worked here for 10, so I’ve made my uneasy peace with the split personality of the 203.  Besides, the “locals” seemed to take it in stride, chalking up my frustration to my lack of geographic awareness. After all, how could I not know that Weston is a long distance 203 but Wilton is not, and Shelton is long distance from my office, but not from my home 15 miles away.

But this most recent change has the natives up in arms, so that must mean it’s really bad, even by Connecticut standards.

You see, now every call needs to have a 203 put in front of it, but not every call gets a 1 before the 203. And that’s what’s causing the problem.

The reason for the area code change is pretty clear: to accommodate the growing need for more phone numbers, Connecticut is adding a new area code, 475, to the 203 area. You can read the public announcement by the State of Connecticut’s Department of Public Utility Control here.

And the need to use 1 or not to use 1 is also pretty clear: local calls are still local calls. A prefix of 1 denotes long distance. And it matters because there are cost differences between local and long distance, of course. At least on antiquated land line systems.

So, technically, the change is pretty minor, right? In the past, within 203, you dialed 1-203 for long distance, and nothing for local. Now, you dial 1-203 for long distance, and 203 for local.

It should be a pretty simple change to adapt to. And yet it’s got people slamming phones and cursing throughout the day at the those endless, annoying messages:  “We’re sorry. You must dial a 1 and the area code before making this call.” or the dreaded “Hey, Moron, this call cannot be completed as dialed. Do not include a 1 for local calls. What are you, from New York?”

Talk about a frustrating and inescapable customer experience.

Speed dials on office phones have to be reprogrammed. So do faxes. Employee home phone number lists have to be updated, as do personnel records.

One of my coworkers has a 203 based cell phone. He says he has to reprogram the numbers in his phone to include a 1 or not, and it’s not based on where he lives, but where he activated his phone, in addition to where the number is located. (My cell started as a 917 out of NYC, so 203 has always been long distance and automatically gets a 1, so I’m ahead of the game on that one.)

You’d think I’d be enjoying this. All those people who were unmoved by my phone frustrations are now plagued with their own.

And yet I get absolutely no joy whatsoever from their angst.

Because I’m way too busy being frustrated on my own. That simple change now means that every call is 203, but only some get a 1.  I’ve got a 50/50 shot at being right, but for whatever reason, I’m guessing wrong way more than 50% of the time.

As I see it, the problem isn’t really about the change. The problem has been there all along, thanks to the schizophrenic nature of the 203 area code.  There must be a reason. Is it based on square miles of coverage? Is it based on greedy municipalities and usage taxes? Is it a 19th century legacy of a long forgotten battle between local phone systems that combined in some satanic mega-merger?

In other words, can someone out there please explain to me why the 203 area code is just so messed up?

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Posted in Business, CRM, Misleadership | Tagged: , , , , | 10 Comments »

Lands’ End’s Big Warm Up: The best viral video I’ve ever missed

Posted by jlsimons on December 9, 2009

Lands’ End’s Big Warm Up: The best viral video I’ve ever missed

I saw a video the other day that was so good it brought tears to my eyes, which was, after all, its intention. It was so good that it powered Lands’ End customers to bring 33,267 “gently used coats” to Lands’ End shops at Sears to donate to the homeless. (If you haven’t seen it, you can see it here.)

It’s a good video. It’s powerful. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy and makes you want to do something good for someone.

All of which is going to make me look even more curmudgeonly than normal, because I am not here to praise Lands’ End.

I think they screwed up.

I didn’t see the video until  Dec. 1, which was one day too late to actually join the Big Warm Up and donate a coat.

And that really bothered me. Because I have a gently used coat I would have gladly donated. And because I was actually in a mall with a Sears the last weekend of the promotion. And because I love good cause related marketing. I love it so much I actually co-wrote a book about it.

I wondered, how could I have missed out on this? I’m a good Lands’ End customer. I have 3-4 pairs of their pants and half a dozen of their shirts. More than that, I’m a fan. I blogged about them back in July and how they helped build direct response retail with their “Guaranteed. Period.” (R) guaranty.

So I went to my inbox (luckily, I try and keep my inbox at a lean, mean 300-400 emails) and sure enough, there it was. And it had company. Lots of company. The Lands’ End email barrage had started on Nov. 9th, and by the time it let up on November 20th I’d gotten 16 emails in 12 days.

But only 3 of those 16 emails were about the Big Warm Up. The rest were about clothes… and canvas.

The first email in the campaign, on Nov. 11, was actually the second Lands’ End email I received that day. It had the subject line, “Save 25% on a new coat & warm a heart!” Being that I’m not currently in the market for a coat, I didn’t notice that this was actually the announcement of a cause related marketing campaign at www.BigWarmUp.com.

In fact, that grand announcement was considerably quieter than the “Introducing Land’s End Canvas” email I’d gotten earlier the same day with a link to a video titled “What Will You Make of It” about the exciting, Ken Burns-ish history of Lands’ End Canvas.

The Lands’ End email tsunami continued. 4 days (and 5 emails) later I got an email with the subject line “What will you make of it?”

This was intriguing, so I opened it. It lead to an interactive site where I could “explore a unique interactive experience — then make and share my own canvas.” Wow. Canvas again.

So when I got the 15th email in 12 days, this one with the subject line, “Join us in making a difference,” I just assumed it was another email about the glories of canvas and ignored it. After all, it had the word “make” in subject line. What else could it have been?

This is a classic case that highlights the dangers of mailing too frequently. Your customers get so overwhelmed they tune out.

30,000 coats donated to the needy is a good thing by any standard, right? So do you think Lands’ End was happy with the results?

I’m not sure I would have been. Here’s why:

Way back in 2002 when Sears bought them, the NY Times reported that Lands’ End had a customer file of 30 million households. Now, not all of those households has email, and that number could be considerably smaller — or larger — by now.

30,000 coats is certainly a lot of warmth, but in terms of results, 30,000 is only 1/10th of a percent of 30 million.

On a more granular level, the email campaign was ignored by at least one ideal target: me,  a repeat customer, who makes buying decisions based on cause-related marketing and corporate philanthropy, who had a coat to donate, and who is clearly on their email list. And if they missed an easy target like me, how many others did they miss, too?

Maybe if the subject line of the first email in the campaign had led with the cause rather than a discount, I might have noticed it.

Maybe if they’d used some of their fancy personalization in the subject line instead of just in their video I might have noticed.

Maybe if they hadn’t bored me to death with their celebration of canvas and trained me to ignore their messages, I might have noticed their worthy campaign to spread the warmth.

But one thing is definite: if they hadn’t sent me 16 emails in 12 days I would have actually read the really important one.  (I’ve asked around, and I’m not the only one who missed this needle in the haystack of Lands’ End emails… or who regretted missing the opportunity to join the Big Warm Up.)

Good cause related marketing is a win-win for everyone. In this case, more coats donated to help the homeless would most likely equate to more coats sold.

This was an important campaign. So can someone please explain to me why Lands’ End quietly buried it under a pile of canvas instead of shouting it from the highest mountaintops?

And while you’re at it, can you direct me to the nearest Goodwill Donation Center? I have a coat I want to donate.

Posted in Business, Marketing, Misleadership, Relationship Marketing, Social Media, direct marketing | Tagged: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Tough love from Google and the US Post Office

Posted by jlsimons on December 3, 2009

Two seemingly unrelated news items about the US Post Office and Google caught my attention today.

The first was an article in DM News that said that the US Post Office is intending to penalize mailers who don’t

“meet US Postal Service standards for updating mailing lists, according to Jeff Platt, director of solutions marketing for US mailing at Pitney. Those updates must be applied 95 days before the mailing. As of January 4, 2010, mailers that do not do so will be subject to additional postage of 7 cents per assessed piece.”

Previously, the USPS gave discounts to people who made their mail more efficient. Now they’re getting out the big stick and making people pay for their inefficiency rather than rewarding their efficiency.

And the second was the news that Google is changing their policy about free news content and their “First Click Free” policy. That policy says that if you find content on Google News and click on it, say, an article from the Wall St. Journal, you get to read that article for free. Click on the next article on the site and the Journal lets you know that any additional articles is only available for subscribers, and they’re happy to let you subscribe.

Google is amending their policy to allow publishers who charge for their content to “limit the number of accesses under the First Click Free policy to five free accesses per user each day.”

According to Google, “While we’re happy to see that a number of publishers are already using First Click Free, we’ve found that some who might try it are worried about people abusing the spirit of First Click Free to access almost all of their content.”

I say bravo USPS and Google.

Let’s start with the Post Office. When it comes to the USPS, like most other direct mailers I know I’ve railed against the ever-increasing fees and the amazingly complex discount and fee structure for business mailers. (If you want to wade through the 44 page PDF of the Jan 4, 2010 rates, here it is.)

As the director of integrated marketing at a channel-neutral direct marketing agency, I’m an equal opportunity employer of whatever works: direct mail, email, FedEx, twitter, text, search… you get the point. But if the post office went away, my job would get infinitely tougher.

This time, though, when the USPS institutes a fee that penalizes mailers who don’t engage in smart practices in order to help defray costs and stay afloat, I’m all for it.

Running your mailing list against NCOA won’t catch every piece of undeliverable mail, but it does catch many of them. It saves the mailer the cost of wasted printing and postage, and turns missed opportunity into the chance of a sale. Undeliverable mail that could be avoided is a terrible waste that increases the cost of mail by adding extra work for the mail carrier and the post office, all to no good end.

Now let’s talk about Google and free news. Don’t get me wrong… I get most of my news from Google, for free. I love the WSJ, and I’ll miss getting their content.

But free sample content from the WSJ, or any other publisher for that matter, has never enticed me to subscribe to that publisher, if there were a fee attached. If I encounter a fee, I just move on to the next one for free.

I admit it. I’m a freeloader. And I’ve pretty sure I’ve read more than 5 articles from the Journal over the course of a day by accessing them via Google News.

The discussion about the death of journalism has morphed into a discussion about what news organizations are doing to stay alive, and in some cases, they’re exploring pulling back their free content into models that provide better value for their value. They’re fighting for their survival, and like the USPS, my world will be worse off without them.

There are many models that can be applied to online news that don’t involve the reader paying for their content. I proposed a few here in my blog back in June. From crowdfunding (read this great piece in the Columbia Journalism  Review about the NY Times’ first crowdfunded article) to advertising-supported mega blog news sites like the Huffington Post, most  “alternatives” to traditional news still involve some form of cost defrayal.

In this ever changing world in which we live, one thing is becoming fairly obvious:  if we don’t start paying for what we use, we’re going to lose it.

We’re in the midst of one of the most challenging business cycles of our lives. We’ve seen business after business shut their doors forever. Costs are rising, credit is harder to find, competition is global and the rate of change threatens to swamp old business models that can’t evolve.

And yet there are people who complain about UPS and USPS raising their prices to reflect increased costs, or , god-forbid, a news organization like the Wall St. Journal wanting to get compensated for reporting the news.

Can someone please explain to me how you can be expected to run a business without getting fairly paid for your products or your services?

While I wait for your answer, I’m going to go out and buy a copy of the Journal. Heck, I may even decide to pay for a subscription so I can read it online — the way it should be read.

Posted in Business, Media, PR and News, Value for Value, direct marketing | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »