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I have two stories to add to this discussion, although perhaps this discussion does not need more fuel to the fire. First, when I was 21 (in 1999), I was the founder of my last startup, Tellme. So I have been a young entrepreneur. Second, one of Tellme's customers (in 2002) was American Airlines. So I understand how they work and the challenges they face. At Tellme, we built a lost baggage voice application for AA. They figured if we could make their 800 number keep customers happy when the airline lost your bag, we'd be able to do a decent job on the rest of their apps. I'm proud to say that today Tellme answers every call to American Airlines, but back to lost bags. In the course of building that initial application, I learned things like: airlines issue a ticket number, a PNR, a bag tracking number and a lost bag ID to customers. These numbers are all different and customers don't know which is which. I also learned that at that time, American could not pull up a list of reservations (PNRs) based on your Frequent Flyer number, which was celebrating its 25th anniversary that year. Finally, I learned that passenger names for the lost bags database contained only the first 8 characters of a passenger's last name. Projects were underway with major subcontractors such as Sabre and EDS at that time to resolve and improve some of these issues. But the point is, big companies have complex systems. Some of these things were unbelievably bad at first glance to a tech guy like me, but they were all there for a reason. We also take for granted the fact they manage the incredible operational logistics of taking off a few thousand airplanes and moving millions of people around at 500+ mph in the air every year -- not too shabby! So my takeaway #1 is that it is far too easy for geeks, especially inexperienced geeks, to bash the complexities of big enterprises. At Tellme, we were successful by working within the constraints we had. For the lost bags app, we figured a consumer would never know which bag ID or ticket number we were asking for, so we built an app that found the user's lost bag record by asking the caller for 1) city where bag was reported lost; 2) date of loss and 3) last name of the passenger. Since the last names in the lost bags database contained only the first 8 characters of a user's last name, we used the US Census database of all names to automatically expand all 8-character last names into all the possible last names (e.g. Williams would be expanded to also include Williamson, etc., as a possible match). Throughout our deployment and work with AA, I became really impressed with the talent and dedication of their employees. A woman I worked with closely wore a necklace with a charm she had been awarded for 15 years of loyal service to the company. In 2002 the company was 4 months post-9/11 and to see the people there move full speed ahead on new applications amidst the greatest challenge to their existence in the history of their industry -- not to mention a national tragedy -- was inspiring. Second, I was a 21-year old entrepreneur once. I was brash, insensitive, and abrasive. I grew up an only child. You do the math. At times I made cynical remarks that were not helpful. I was smart, and I seldom doubted my own opinions. As my mother would say, "Often wrong, but seldom in doubt." One of the folks on our founding team suggested I read Dale Carnegie. Another gave me the Steven Covey book. In the end I became a more effective communicator not just from reading books but by growing a little older. Yes, Dustin's remarks about AA where he paints them as some sort of completely incompetent idiots are wholly inappropriate and abrasive and unfair. I think that's in large part because the guy is 21. I also understand that designers can be an especially opinionated bunch. Of course, this type of vitriol is not limited to youth. For example, folks on one end of the political spectrum or the other often refer to Nancy Pilosi or George Bush with disdain that ignores the humanity of these individuals. Whether due to youth or passion, people lose their perspective, and when we do this, our message gets lost in the heat of its delivery. My recommendations would be to try to put yourself in the shoes of the guy you're criticizing. You can be frank in your criticism, but you don't need to be callous. It gets easier with age. I'm still to this day critical of some things, and often I am passionate about those opinions, but it's possible to be a passionate critic without coming off as a jerk. It's something I work at all the time. It's also possible to be an airline and have a good web site. As an American Airlines customer, I hope they improve a lot in that area soon, as Virgin America is definitely setting the bar today for in-air customer experience, and neither has a particularly great Web site. Yet. |