The last 48 hours has really brought something into focus for me: customer service is going to be as important to the coming wave of new media as it is in retail.
Think about walking into a department store where the sales clerks avoid eye contact, tell you that your questions can’t be answered by anyone there, and occasionally tell you at the checkout that they can’t process your payment today so come back later. Would you ever come back?
Hell no. In fact, not only would you never come back, but you’d actively search for alternatives and tell everyone with ears about them. The only time you’d ever come back is if they were the only department store in town, and even then, you might be willing to drive out of town to get some decent service.
Why do you think so many of us English-speakers are experimenting with HiPiHi and NovoKing instead of just continually singing Second Life’s praises? I mean, Second Life rules, but they really have to do something about that customer service.
As we chose our interactive information and entertainment sources in the future, this will be the pivot point. Ten (maybe even five) years from now we’ll have at least six of every kind of world we can think of to chose from. Ease of use will be the first selection criteria we’ll use, and customer service will be the second. Veoh vs. YouTube is a great example of this – one could even argue that Veoh provides a much higher-quality product, but YouTube is people-focused vs. company focused. I don’t have to tell you which one is bigger.
There are nearly an infinite number of things to say about customer service, but we’ll come to that in later posts. The only thing I really wanted to say is this: customer service is not a wiki, nor is it a trouble-ticket system, and it has nothing to do with ISO or Six Sigma or any of that nonsense. It’s the art of doing business.
UPDATE: I was just made aware of the latest customer service / public relations blunder by Linden Lab. Someone claims they licensed user-created content from inside the world of Second Life by paying the Lab for it. When asked, the Lab said: “Read our Terms of Service. No comment.” Guys… could you be any more suicidal?
We got a new search in Second Life. It works much better than the old one. Hell, it’s Google-powered. Unfortunately, as Tateru Nino recently discovered, there’s a huge bug when it comes to working around the Intellectual Property system. You can basically obtain any texture in Second Life now for free, and nobody will know.
I suppose it’s the nature of Search to be a work-around to access controls. It indexes things the way it needs to in order to get the job done, and doesn’t “think” any further than that. I’ll leave the “information wants to be free” blah blah to an etc etc whatever…
Well you know, it’s not the first time Google has found itself in this kind of situation. It’s way too early to tell if this is going to be a big problem or just a quickly squashed bug. We’ll see.
Massive, horrible griefing over this past weekend in Second Life. A few had fun at the expense of the many. Some people decided to move, and others left Second Life entirely so that they could just get through a day without being harassed.
This isn’t, however, a story about griefers.
Earlier today I caught a group notice that some Lindens were holding office hours about the whole affair. I had an hour before my meeting so I figured, what the hell. Prokofy Neva has been good enough to provide a full transcript of the affair.
At first I was just idly curious about these two Lindens I didn’t know; Socrates and Zara. After watching the group make various demands and ask for Philip, it occurred to me that the Lindens present weren’t saying much. I started asking them questions to find out more. I really only had one question: what’s going on at Linden Lab to deal with the griefer problem?
This is just a quick note on why I think user-created content in Web2 and in 3-spaces has been so compelling to so many.
See, we’ve had this dream. It’s a dream about a metaphor become reality, about extending ourselves, about being more than what we are and doing things that were impossible before. It’s a fool’s dream, this Metaverse idea.
I’ve thrown myself into it. Many of you have as well. In this moment, we share.
I’m a huge fan of cosplay and, slowly but surely, am developing a deep appreciation for fashion. People express themselves through their appearance. It’s a bit of a radical artform to use your entire body as an expression of an idea. In the virtual world this has extended itself into avatar creation, and people make the fashion statement not just with clothes but with body shape, size, and skin tone.
When most people “switch avatars”, they mean logging out and logging back in under a different account. The idea is that people get used to seeing you a certain way and, if they saw your name floating above another avatar’s head, they would have a hard time accepting it. I’ve known people to have several alts (alternate logins/accounts) for use in different roles: one for work, one for play, one for sex, etc…
I switch back and forth in Second Life between the avatar above and one I call “Mr. Generic”, but I don’t bother switching accounts. They’re BOTH Onder Skall, but one I use for fun and the other I use to avoid completely freaking out the newbie business professionals I often have to help get oriented to the virtual world.
This cavalier approach to my appearance at any given moment is hardly a widely-accepted practice.
Others would find this a horrible thing to do. They would be loathe to represent their avatar in any way other than what their particular iconography dictates. Immersionists, especially, see their avatar as a unique identity. To toggle between appearances as casually as I tend to could be considered bizarre behavior at best, and morally reprehensible at worst. Just who am I? Why can’t I present a true representation of who Onder Skall really is? What in the world does Onder Skall’s typist have to do with his identity? How can I miss the point so severely?
Well it’s not all that severe of course, but you get the idea. The truth is that there are very few who do what I do (Torley Linden being the one exception that comes to mind), and most settle on a single avatar for which they purchase a few outfits. That’s the convention. It’s what people are comfortable with.
To me, though, it’s a horrific idea to be locked into one look, or even one personality. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been a big supporter of this whole Interoperability project and the push for OpenID. For me, personally, it’s a complete waste of resources to help me avoid re-creating myself in each world. I actually want to re-create myself. Daily, if possible. It’s how I grow.
The point remains moot as long as we’re all allowed to do things whichever way we see fit. It only becomes a problem if, in the future, mainstream culture demands a single look, a single name, and a single identity. Enforcing that kind of thing would carry an unwritten message: “we know you this way. Do not change.” The thing is, if people become that concerned over whether or not you can change your appearance, you start to get drawn into the follow-up thought: people don’t want you to change your behavior either.
The day that happens, none of us will feel like we’re allowed to change who we are inside. We won’t be able to let go of our signature bad habits, our quirky slang, or even become interested in things we’d had no interest in before. There will be this ever-present notion that, if anybody know knows us is around, we have to fulfill their expectations of us (high or low).
Redemption moves further out of reach than it already is.
I switch back and forth in Second Life between the avatar above and one I call “Mr. Generic”, but I don’t bother switching accounts. They’re BOTH Onder Skall, but one I use for fun and the other I use to avoid completely freaking out the newbie business professionals I often have to help get oriented to the virtual world.