I just read a really interesting column from Roger Ebert (you remember him, from Siskel and Ebert back in the day? Movie critic for the Chicago Sun-Times?) about why movie revenue is dropping. 

Now I love watching movies. I even hesitantly go to the theater quite a bit, but I hate the theater experience. I am constantly annoyed by other theater-goers who seem to have no common sense, common courtesy, and apparently were raised in a barn. Typical annoyances include texting, talking, putting their feet up on the chairs (especially when it’s right next to my head), answering cell phone calls, coughing consistently, coughing consistently and not covering their mouth, and crying babies. 

You’ll see headlines once in a while lamenting the decline in box office revenue. The eggheads in the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) will trip over themselves to blame movie piracy. “EVERYONE IS DOWNLOADING MOVIES ONLINE! WE MUST STOP THEM!” they’ll cry. But it’s really not the case, and Ebert outlines many reasons why in his column.

In a nutshell, his reasons are as follows:

1. There wasn’t a huge “The Dark Knight” or “Avatar” type movie this year.
2. Ticket prices are too high. They used to be relatively inexpensive compared to other entertainment options (sports/concerts) but that’s no longer the case.
3. Moviegoers are tired of the theater experience with the annoyances that I mentioned above.
4. People know that it the margin on a trough of popcorn and a corn silo of soda is 4,000%, and they think it’s ridiculous to pay such high prices for treats.
5. The movie experience at home has been drastically improved, both in choice of movies to watch, and the technology available to delivery it (streaming, huge TV’s, sound systems.)
6. The choice of movies sucks. We get force fed Twilight (which is absolutely godawful cinema) on 18 screens, and high-quality art movies don’t get play outside of large cities.

I think Ebert really hit the ball out of the park on every point. The theater experience sucks, we have to pay in some cases $10-plus to get into a theater, upwards of $50, $60, $70 if we have a family and buy treats, and we could have more choice and a better experience watching things at home.

The MPAA needs to quit scapegoating as to the reasons box office revenue keeps falling year over year, and start looking at re-assessing its broken system of delivering entertainment to the masses. 

Last night I posted some thoughts about the Ocean Marketing episode as an example of how bad customer service can effect your firm. 

Closer to my Utah home, now, another story has come to my attention, and it involves the Snowbasin ski resort east of Ogden. Earlier this week, a young man was coming down the mountain (not sure if it was a skier or boarder) and he was told to stop by a ski patrolman for going too fast. Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for Snowbasin, this encounter was filmed. 

You need to see the video here, but be warned first, there are two instances of the “f-word,” but it’s critical to the story.

This went viral on some boarding and ski websites pretty quick, and really caught fire in Utah’s Twitterverse. By about 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Snowbasin responded on its Facebook page.

First things first, yeah, at least Snowbasin responded with something.

Second things second, that’s a C- response. Yesterday, with the Ocean Marketing thing, we’ll remember that after all the e-mails went public, Paul from Ocean Marketing apologized, but it was an apology more along the lines of “I’m sorry I got busted” than “I am really sorry I have failed to serve a customer.” This statement from Snowbasin is dripping with “I’m sorry we got caught.” 

The video of the ski patrolman was quite shocking. Even if he were in the right, an employee of ANY business should never, ever, under any circumstances, tell a customer to “shut your f***ing mouth.” It is flat out unacceptable. While Snowbasin acknowledges that the incident happened, even saying it shouldn’t have happened, they fail to say “I’m sorry.” They fail to apologize. They released a statement that had probably been so looked over resort management that it lost all meaning. 

What’s more to Snowbasin, this video going viral has prompted postings from other current and former Snowbasin customers who say this type of encounter with ski patrolmen happens more than just this isolated incident. 

Snowbasin’s response needed to have an apology element to it. It also needed to address the actions that the resort plans to take to make sure this type of incident doesn’t happen again. This is what I would have liked to have seen from Snowbasin.

On Tuesday, an incident with one of our ski patrolmen happened on our mountain that involved the Snowbasin employee treating a customer poorly, including use of vulgar language and a harsh tone. We in Snowbasin management apologize both to the customers involved in this incident, and to all who have seen the video that has been posted online.

The behavior shown in the video is not in line with our company values, and will not be tolerated amongst employees of the Snowbasin Resort. We are investigating this incident further and upon the conclusion of our investigation will take appropriate disciplinary action against employees involved. We also have contacted the customers involved in this incident to offer our sincerest apologies and have initiated the process to make this right. Snowbasin is the resort that it is because of our customers, and we never want to lose sight of that. If you are ever on the mountain and see a Snowbasin employee engaging in conduct that does not meet the standards of what you should expect from our employees, please notify us ASAP at 555-5555 so we can investigate and address your issue. 

Thanks to all our customers. We appreciate your business and feedback, and while working to resolve this issue, will constantly work to improve the service we provide.

Not that hard, right?

I’ve spent a bit of time today reading about the story of Ocean Marketing’s major customer service screw up. The full story, including e-mail transcripts, is posted at Penny Arcade but I’ll give you the tl;dr here:

A customer, named Dave, ordered a video game controller in early November. It was a pre-order, with the expectation that the controller would ship in early December. Dave ordered two controllers, and the pre-order required him to pay full price for the order. 

Mid-December rolled around and Dave had not received the controller or heard anything about the status of the order (still expecting it to arrive early December) so he contacted the company, and received a response from their PR/Customer Service arm, which is Ocean Marketing. The reply to Dave’s inquiry about the status of the order was very short.

“December 17.”

Just a date. No explanation. No apologies. No saying whether December 17 was the date it would be shipped or it would arrive. Just the date. So Dave e-mailed back for clarification, and let’s just say the person at Ocean Marketing quickly devolved into name calling, basically begging Dave to cancel his order because there was such high demand he wouldn’t matter as a customer. When Dave said he was going to e-mail the transcript of their communiques to sites like Penny Arcade, IGN, and Engadget, the Ocean Marketing rep replied back that he knows ALL the editors of those sites and suggested they would all side with him because he’s in tight with many important people.

Well, it turned out that no one knew who this Ocean Marketing guy was, or at least they didn’t care who he was. The story of Dave’s e-mails and his poor customer service experience has went viral, and the guy from Ocean Marketing, and Ocean Marketing itself, has been absolutely eviscerated for the past 24+ hours. Penny Arcade posted the entire exchange of emails and it really makes Ocean Marketing look bad. Furthermore, the Internet gaming community has banded together against this scumbag firm, going to Amazon to downrate their products, post bad reviews…it’s just turned very bad for Ocean Marketing. 

See bonus e-mail from Ocean Marketing to Penny Arcade essentially begging for a cease fire here. The scumbag wasn’t sorry for how he handled Dave, he was sorry he got caught.

I read once in one of my favorite books by John Miller, “QBQ: The Question Behind the Question,” that “The customer isn’t always right, but he’s always the customer.” This whole encounter with Ocean Marketing is clearly a “worst case scenario” of poor customer service, but is a good case study of exactly how NOT to respond to customers, even if the customers are making requests that are difficult for your company (even though in this case they are not.) 

Here are a few ways in which Ocean Marketing could have handled this situation better.

1. Keep the customers updated as to the status of their products shipping. When it became clear (likely in late November) that product shipments would be delayed, they should have immediately contacted all customers with outstanding pre-orders.
2. When a customer contacts a firm asking a question, always respond with plenty of detail. The response to the question about shipping status with only a date was very poor. The response should have included the reason for the late shipments, an apology for  the delay, and also offered some type of incentive or enticement to help the customer feel better about their experience with the company. Perhaps a “We are sorry for the inconvenience with your order, and as a result we’d like to give you half off your next order of $50 or more.” 
3. Always…ALWAYS communicate professionally with customers. That CSR’s should always use proper grammar and spelling should go without saying. Training should be given to CSR’s on terminology to use (and to not use) and how to effectively set a tone in responses to customers. Set aside the terrible grammar Ocean Marketing used in their responses, and the harsh language, and the name calling, there was just a wholesale lack of customer-focused strategy used on the firm’s responses to Dave. 
4. Finally, if you can’t deliver on your promises to your customers, find a way to make the situation right, even if it comes at a high cost. Customers who ordered a product (and paid in full) in early November, expecting delivery in early December, but ultimately not getting the product until AT LEAST after Christmas, should have been offered full refunds, or been given the product for free. Ocean Marketing should have been willing to take a loss on this one, as it would have paved the way for them to retain customers going forward. Now, instead, it is very likely that Ocean Marketing will cease to exist entirely.

Congress has put out a list of 142 organizations/businesses that think SOPA is awesome. We should boycott them as much as possible. Well, here is a list of organizations that oppose SOPA. We should support them. 

bitshare:

SOPA has attracted a lot of negativity recently, rightfully so of course. Most recently the 142 organizations that support SOPA which has sparked outrage and people boycotting these organizations. 

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