Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Why Our Internet Delivery Service is Broken - A Tale of Woes With Charter Communications
How many cable guys does it take to provide me with Internet service? It sounds like the beginning of a "lightbulb" joke, but this question is pretty real for me. Turns out to be somewhere north of a dozen. I moved into my new office two weeks ago, but it took until yesterday to get the Internet turned on there. Turns out a combination of factors, aided by some bizarre complications from Charter, my cable supplier, caused the delay.
At the center of my difficulties was my office was using a new street address that wasn't in anyone's database - including the Post Office. It took numerous phone calls to find the right person in the City of St. Louis - not exactly your best example of efficient government under most circumstances - before that was fixed. I think. The PO updated their database, but it took a couple of weeks before I could go in to usps.com and see it for myself. Why? Because speedy delivery of Web data isn't in the PO's motto.
It is amazing to me that we have such poor Internet delivery in 2010. Back when broadband meant getting 56k ISDN, the phone companies ruled the roost. You could get T1s for thousands of dollars, but you could get them just about anywhere you could string a twisted pair of copper wires. Now the USA is well down on the list of countries that have lots of broadband available to their citizens - indeed, China has more Internet users than we have total population now. And Singapore is putting megabit connectivity everywhere. What happened?
Part of the problem is that we have the absolutely worst communications customer service entities to deal with. They answer the call with "we want to provide you with superior service today" and apologize when they don't deliver, but they never take ownership of the customer. They can't marshal the field resources to find and fix problems in their wiring plant. And for communications companies, I was amazed at how often my call was dropped after being on hold for many minutes. Come on, people, this isn't rocket science. (And given the state of NASA, I am not sure that is a good comparison either.)
Having cable and phone companies compete for Internet access hasn't helped the customer either. I tried to order just a regular land line from AT&T (who is my local phone supplier here) but was told repeatedly that my address wasn't in their database. Back to the PO problem. When the AT&T technician coincidentally showed up at my office yesterday, he claimed he couldn't give me service because I ordered my phone using a nearby address. Yet after spending an hour on the phone with his supervisors, he managed to deliver dial tone to my office. Thanks, Roger, I appreciate that tenacity. But why tell me you can't do it and then you can?
Meanwhile, Charter took several visits with an ever-changing cast of characters. One time I got the guy that actually laid the cable along the street and in my condo development - he brought a map showing where the lines went. While that was encouraging, trouble was, one of them wasn't connected properly. That brought out another guy who hooked up one of my missing links. Then another woman came (who was the most entertaining tech among my crew) and told me that I was missing a "tap". That took someone else to install the tap. Why couldn't she install it herself? What, they have a tap specialist? Someone else needed to find the right person with a key to open the box that the tap went in. I am not making this stuff up. Then I finally had two guys yesterday that actually had to locate my line and hook things up. At least they came with the key.
All throughout this process, I Tweeted and called various Charter people, trying to plead my case. At one point, I actually tried the live chat feature on their Web site, but that was agonizingly slow and like talking to a six-year old child. There was one woman in their call center in South Carolina, she did take some ownership of my problem but didn't seem completely in touch with the crew on the grounds around my office. It shouldn't be this hard. If we are going to become a first-world Internet country, we need better broadband suppliers who can take customer service to new highs, not new lows.
David Strom is a noted speaker, author, podcaster and consultant who has written two books and thousands of magazine articles for dozens of IT publications such as Computerworld, eWeek, Baseline Magazine, Information Week and Information Security magazine. His blog can be found at http://strominator.com, and he can be reached at david@strom.com.
Charter Communications Company
Charter Communications Incorporated is the third largest publicly traded cable operator in the United States and services over five million customers in 29 states. Charter is recognized as a Fortune 500 company, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, and is on the NASDAQ stock exchange. The ticker symbol is CHTR. The chairman and largest shareholder of Charter is Microsoft's co-founder Paul Allen.
Charter offers a wide range of products that include video, high-speed internet, and telephone services. They are able to provide their customers entertainment, information, and electronic connections to the rest of the world.
Charter cable television offers customers high-definition channels along with the basic cable television offerings. Also provided are digital video recorders and an impressive collection of on-demand titles.
Charter's high-speed internet is available in two speeds, five and 10 megabits per second. These speeds allow customers to download at lightning fast speeds and be able to play online games and stream video with ease.
Charter's telephone service is and has always been a high quality service that provides residents with unlimited local and long distance calling to all of the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Charter offers call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding, voicemail, and enhanced 911 services at no additional charge.
Charter also offers business solutions to tailor the needs of businesses with communication needs. Business products include Internet access, data networking, video and music entertainment, and business telephone service.
Charter has come a long way from where they started and they are continually looking to improve and grow the company.
Find the best Charter deals, Charter.com specials, and Charter Communications offers at Squidoo.com/charterdeals.
The Six Sigma Project Charter - Communication
The project charter is designed in the Define phase of DMAIC. It lists out details from the project title to the role of the various Belt levels, project start and end dates, importance of the process being improved, problem areas and various measurements.
It is highly important to communicate the project charter to all those concerned with the project and the process.
Communication Considerations
The Six Sigma project charter is the blueprint of the project.
The various considerations of the communication plan are defining who is responsible at various levels for proper communication, how it will be communicated, and so on. Communication starts from defining who will be communicating the project charter at various levels like the Master Black Belts, Black Belts and so on.
A well-designed project may also fail if there is no communication strategy designed for communicating the Six Sigma project charter. A Black Belt should at least have a design in mind about how the communication will be undertaken and to whom that sort of communication will be directed.
Even a simple table designed to list down what will be communicated to whom, the communication medium, the information to be stored and so on is a good base for the Black Belts to communicate to the appropriate people.
Consideration has to be given as to what type of communication strategies will be used - by way of regular team meetings, project status reports, project reviews, project tollgates, storyboards and so on.
Communication planning also needs to consider the plan to be followed in certain situations. The rationale behind the project charter communication plan has to be established and enforced. At the same time, it should also be communicated where such communication will be placed, via emails, notice boards and so on.
It is important to decide the frequency of such communication - if it will be weekly, monthly, daily or according to the requirements.
The Communication Plan
A communication plan is not just communicating about what the project is all about and what stage it has reached. A communication plan will have details ranging from when the project team meetings need to take place, who the participants will be, how will the meeting plans be communicated and even where they will be conducted.
A project charter communication plan even considers reporting on the status of the project, who the status reports need to be given to and when such reports are to be sent. It involves reviewing of the project with the Master Black Belts and top management.
After such reviews are done, any modifications, improvements and changes will be communicated to the champions and sponsors. The project budget and reviews also need to be planned and communicated to the finance department or the finance analyst.
Everything about the project deployment and its preparation should be communicated to the project deployment leader.
The project charter communication plan involves all those who are expert members on the matter and provides valuable guidance for the project. Project members have to be kept well informed, so that they can contribute well in the success of the initiative.
Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solutions - Six Sigma Online ( http://www.sixsigmaonline.org ) offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
The Jury Is In - And It's A Split Decision On The Google Book Search Program
The jury is in... and it's a split decision. Split on the Google Book Search Program that is. Some people love it. Others think it's the apocalypse. I really don't want to get into the legal ramifications, copyright law and every other argument out there. The bottom line: From a book marketing standpoint, it's a good thing. Why? It's simple. People can't buy what they don't know about. Google Book Search lets people find a book with the topic they're searching for and allows them to peek inside. If they like it, and want more they can buy it.
Most authors should open up their books to Google and submit them. I say "most." There are some that should think twice. Academic books that have a low print run and have tiny markets, where there may only be hundreds or dozens of potential buyers may be better off avoiding Google Book Search. For the remaining 378,000 books published in the U.S. and U.K. in 2005, I say go for it!
And that's the point. The world is awash in books. Bowker says 172,000 books were published in the United States, plus 206,000 published in the UK last year! How can Borders, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, your local library or anyone else effectively sell or showcase that number let alone the millions of previously printed titles? Google has created a way for author's and publisher's current and back-listed books to be found, read and purchased. Book marketers, authors and publishers should embrace this enthusiastically.
Are there some issues in the program? Yes, and Google in my opinion is trying to deal with them by keeping the rules and policies flexible and by reacting to the feedback and legal decisions. But they are truly trying to move the world forward and improve distribution of knowledge while still protecting copyrights and ownership of that information. Google is being bold in their efforts and should be applauded by the publishing industry and authors alike.
Obviously Google is not doing this for its health. Their motive is clearly for profit by making money offering sponsored ads the same way they make it on their regular search service. Although Google management thinks they are a bit more altruistic. "The main motive is to make search more comprehensive," said Jen Grant of Google. "Many of the books that we include in the program do not include sponsored ads. By including the books of the world in its search engine, Google is increasing the relevancy and usefulness of search for users and connecting them to more information from more of the world's authors and publishers."
Authors and publishers profit since the book is linked to their respective websites. Google does not profit directly from book sales as of now. How long that will last is up for debate as they are clearly leaving money on the table. With a market cap north of $100,000,000,000 Google (GOOG) is by no means as selfless as the transcribing monks of yesteryear. But, hey, profit is a good thing.
As a book publicist the one thing that's very clear to me is that any serious promotional campaign must make use of Google Book Search since search engines are the first step taken by people seeking information. And Google remains the leading search engine by about a 2 to 1 margin over Yahoo! (YHOO)
Here's how it works. Go to https://books.google.com/partner/, sign up for the program. If Google determines you are eligible they will e-mail you information about your account, including instructions for shipping your book materials to Google. Eligibility requirements are that the book must have an ISBN number and must not contain illegal content. Besides English, books are accepted in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian and most European languages. Once Google receives a physical copy of your book the key portions will be scanned and indexed.
As a result, when a user conducts a search with key words related to your book, a link appears in the Google search results. Each Google Book Search result listing shows the books' title and author, a short excerpt containing the highlighted search terms and the excerpt's page number. This information then leads users to a Google-hosted web page on which the search terms appear along with a scanned image of your book and publisher information and links to the online booksellers handling your book.
The Google-hosted web page is generated from information that is scanned from your book. Links on this page include "About This Book," "Copyright", "Index," and "Buy This Book." An image of the book cover appears along with the portion of your book related to the user's search terms.
Google protects the content of a book by preventing anyone from copying or printing selected portions or from downloading the entire book. Pages displaying the content have all print, cut, copy and save functions disabled. Google only shows full pages of the book if the publisher agrees. The Snippet View offers the potential buyer the opportunity to view a few sentences from the book and some information about the book. The Sample Pages View offers the potential buyer limited number of pages of the book to read. The Full Book View allows the entire book can be viewed. The author or publisher still retains all content rights. Google Book Search is a book-marketing program, not an online library, and so the entire book will not be made available online unless the author chooses to do so.
Arcadia Publishing in Mt. Pleasant, SC, is one of the book publishing firms that has learned it can reach new buyers for several thousand titles with Google Book Search. When the Arcadia team heard about Google Book Search in the fall of 2004 through colleagues in the publishing industry, they decided to explore adding the program to their marketing efforts. Everingham notes that initially, "Within the company, we had some questions about how this would work with our current contracts, and our general consensus was that our standard contract allows us to use a certain percentage of the content to promote the title," says Kate Everingham, Director of Sales. "And Google Book Search clearly has copyright protected every page, so we were very satisfied." Arcadia submitted all of its front-list titles, and then submitted every single available title in its catalog.
The appeal of Google Book Search for Arcadia is that it provides a tool to increase visibility and public awareness of what Arcadia does and that ends up influencing sales. Google Book Search provides a means for Arcadia to market its books outside of the predictable, and limited, local areas they reach. Currently, Arcadia has more than 1,000 titles in Google Book Search, another 1,000 in process.
Another book publisher that experienced significant success using Google Book Search Partner Program is Crossway Books of Wheaton, Illinois. Crossway is the book division of Good News Publishers, a not-for-profit Christian ministry. Crossway's catalog contains some 400 active titles in fiction, nonfiction, gift and children's books. Crossway produces about 60 new books a year.
Crossway's online marketing consisted of keyword advertising through Google AdWords. This drove qualified traffic to their website, but when Google Book Search launched in October 2004, Crossway's director of operations realized the value in enabling customers to search the full content of Crossway titles. Google Book Search offered another way to raise visibility for its titles as well as drive additional traffic to the website.
"Our objective was to instantly connect readers and potential readers with the content of our books, right down to the word level," says Crossway Vice President of Marketing Randy Jahns. "We strongly believe that letting people browse our books improves sales through all channels. Google Book Search makes them available to people who might not otherwise encounter them - in homes, libraries, and businesses around the world." At present, more than 350 of Crossway's 400-plus title catalog are live on Google Book Search. On the Crossway site, each title features a link to that specific book on Google Book Search.
Once signed up, you have your own account that will provide detailed book level reporting on page impressions (a viewing of one of your excerpt pages), ad clicks, "Buy This Book" clicks, and ad revenue generated on your account. Your reports are updated throughout the day as activity occurs, allowing you to track performance.
One more thing. Microsoft must like the idea as they too are planning to enter the market with a competing service some time in late 2006.
Scott Lorenz is President of Westwind Communications, a public relations and marketing firm that specializes in book marketing and author publicity. His clients have been featured by Good Morning America, FOX & Friends, CNN, ABC Nightly News, ESPN, The New York Times, Nightline, TIME, PBS, NPR, USA Today, Woman's World, & Howard Stern to name a few. To discuss how Westwind Communications helps its clients get all the publicity they deserve and more visit: www.westwindcos.com/book or call 734-667-2090 or email scottlorenz@westwindcos.com
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Charter Communications Company
Charter Communications Incorporated is the third largest publicly traded cable operator in the United States and services over five million customers in 29 states. Charter is recognized as a Fortune 500 company, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, and is on the NASDAQ stock exchange. The ticker symbol is CHTR. The chairman and largest shareholder of Charter is Microsoft's co-founder Paul Allen.
Charter offers a wide range of products that include video, high-speed internet, and telephone services. They are able to provide their customers entertainment, information, and electronic connections to the rest of the world.
Charter cable television offers customers high-definition channels along with the basic cable television offerings. Also provided are digital video recorders and an impressive collection of on-demand titles.
Charter's high-speed internet is available in two speeds, five and 10 megabits per second. These speeds allow customers to download at lightning fast speeds and be able to play online games and stream video with ease.
Charter's telephone service is and has always been a high quality service that provides residents with unlimited local and long distance calling to all of the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Charter offers call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding, voicemail, and enhanced 911 services at no additional charge.
Charter also offers business solutions to tailor the needs of businesses with communication needs. Business products include Internet access, data networking, video and music entertainment, and business telephone service.
Charter has come a long way from where they started and they are continually looking to improve and grow the company.
Find the best Charter deals, Charter.com specials, and Charter Communications offers at Squidoo.com/charterdeals.
The Six Sigma Project Charter - Communication
The project charter is designed in the Define phase of DMAIC. It lists out details from the project title to the role of the various Belt levels, project start and end dates, importance of the process being improved, problem areas and various measurements.
It is highly important to communicate the project charter to all those concerned with the project and the process.
Communication Considerations
The Six Sigma project charter is the blueprint of the project.
The various considerations of the communication plan are defining who is responsible at various levels for proper communication, how it will be communicated, and so on. Communication starts from defining who will be communicating the project charter at various levels like the Master Black Belts, Black Belts and so on.
A well-designed project may also fail if there is no communication strategy designed for communicating the Six Sigma project charter. A Black Belt should at least have a design in mind about how the communication will be undertaken and to whom that sort of communication will be directed.
Even a simple table designed to list down what will be communicated to whom, the communication medium, the information to be stored and so on is a good base for the Black Belts to communicate to the appropriate people.
Consideration has to be given as to what type of communication strategies will be used - by way of regular team meetings, project status reports, project reviews, project tollgates, storyboards and so on.
Communication planning also needs to consider the plan to be followed in certain situations. The rationale behind the project charter communication plan has to be established and enforced. At the same time, it should also be communicated where such communication will be placed, via emails, notice boards and so on.
It is important to decide the frequency of such communication - if it will be weekly, monthly, daily or according to the requirements.
The Communication Plan
A communication plan is not just communicating about what the project is all about and what stage it has reached. A communication plan will have details ranging from when the project team meetings need to take place, who the participants will be, how will the meeting plans be communicated and even where they will be conducted.
A project charter communication plan even considers reporting on the status of the project, who the status reports need to be given to and when such reports are to be sent. It involves reviewing of the project with the Master Black Belts and top management.
After such reviews are done, any modifications, improvements and changes will be communicated to the champions and sponsors. The project budget and reviews also need to be planned and communicated to the finance department or the finance analyst.
Everything about the project deployment and its preparation should be communicated to the project deployment leader.
The project charter communication plan involves all those who are expert members on the matter and provides valuable guidance for the project. Project members have to be kept well informed, so that they can contribute well in the success of the initiative.
Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solutions - Six Sigma Online ( http://www.sixsigmaonline.org ) offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.