All posts by Evan Hamilton

Setting expectations can literally change attitudes

Customer Service, ,

“There were plenty of complaints regarding baggage claim time [at the] Houston Airport. They reduced the average wait time to 8 minutes, well within industry standards. But the complaints persisted.

So the airport decided on a new approach: they moved the arrival gates away from the baggage claim area. Passengers now had to walk six times longer to get their bags. It resulted in complaints reducing to almost zero.”

Via FlightComputer

This is the same thing I wrote about for UserVoice regarding listing response times. People expect speed. Sometimes unreasonable speed. You can try to hit expectations, or you can set entirely realistic external expectations and then outperform them…which will utterly delight your customers.

Fall in love with the journey, not the destination

Life, ,

illustrationThis article rings so true. Falling in love with the journey is the right way to reach success.

“If you look at the people who are consistently achieving their goals, you start to realize that it’s not the events or the results that make them different. It’s their commitment to the process. They fall in love with the daily practice, not the individual event.”

I’m good at half of this. I like inventing things and making them work and figuring out how to optimize them.

Where I fall down is the follow-through. I’m stoked about inventing something but once it’s reasonably established I’m not as interested in following through with the minutia that makes it a long-term success.

I attribute this to two things:

1) Weakness of character. Honestly, I just need to get better at following through.

2) Delegation. Previously I had very few resources in terms of delegation, so any detail-oriented follow-through fell on me. I’m happy to do anything, but trying to balance company-wide strategy and editing HTML emails is hard.

I need to fall in love with making the minutia happen. I hope with a fresh attitude and a passionate team I can do this.

Start a dialog before you NEED to

Community

This is a fantastic article on why the lost art of schmoozing led to the government shutdown.

The key lesson: if you start a dialog with key parties before you need to, you’ll be able to deal with the rough patches better.

This is why we build customer communities instead of just having faceless users. This is why we build company culture instead of just a business. This is why lunches and coffees are not a waste of time.

5-star rating systems are useless

Community

Randall Farmer was one of the first community managers, before it was even a “thing” and long before it was a “hot job”. This experience, along with his intense interest in furthering our craft, means he has a lot of great knowledge to share.

One of the most fascinating things I’ve ever learned from Randall was about 5-star rating systems and the J-curve. When he worked at Yahoo! (back when working there was a “hot job”) they implemented 5-star ratings systems for Yahoo! Sites. They hoped this would help users identify the best sites and avoid the low-quality sites. Instead, this is what they saw:

j-curve

With one exception, the average rating was 4.5 out of 5 stars. Wow, that’s great content, right? Nope. That’s the J-curve.

There are some major problems with 5-star ratings systems:

  • Generally people only rate things if they love them or hate them.  If you love the dustpan you bought you might bother to go online & give it a 5-star rating. If it broke immediately you’ll angrily seek out the ratings system to punish it with a single star. But if it was just ok? You’re not going to bother adding a 3-star rating.
  • People are lazy. If you’re highlighting the top-rated items on your site, you’re unlikely to ever get ratings on the other items. Most folks aren’t going to take the time to go rate items on page 2.

(The exception in the above graphs is Yahoo! Autos, because users were rating each other’s work. They knew these ratings would have an effect and keep the quality of the Autos community high, so they took the time to give accurate ratings. Yelp would be another good example of this.)

Takeaways:

1) Don’t use a 5-star rating system to try to determine quality of commodities. Try simpler systems, like thumbs up/thumbs down or positive-neutral-negative.

2) Try to find a way to get users invested in giving multiple, accurate ratings.

Goals

Life

Transitions are always a good excuse to build new habits. After finishing the phenomenal Power of Habit, I’m even more jazzed about the idea about building new habits for myself. As I transition to my exciting and challenging Director of Community & Customer Loyalty role at ZOZI, I’m going to try to establish the following habits.

Saying “maybe”

I’m good at saying no. As a practical person who has had to manage people and projects for years, I can easily find reasons to say “no” to most proposals. On the flip side, I like people want to make them happy, so I say “yes” to a lot of things I may not have time for. I’d like to be better at saying “maybe”, and really weighing the pros and cons of what I’m considering. Defaulting to one or another only causes problems.

Taking time to breathe

sun and clouds

We live in a world that seems to be increasingly harried – especially in tech. But studies show that we do a lot of our thinking unconsciously when we let our brain relax. I’m going to work my ass off for ZOZI, but I’m also going to make sure I have downtime. I’m going to make sure to go out in the world (especially since ZOZI has so many adventures I can choose from). And I’m going to take the time in my day to breathe. I’m going to take walks. I’m going to go to the cafe and brainstorm and breathe and think. These things aren’t wastes of time, but exactly the opposite.

Never stop learning, never stop sharing

I’m actually a bit excited that my job will no longer require me finding and serving up tasty community management & customer service articles. It was a great excuse to get immersed in some great blogs, but it became a chore. I’m determined to relish going through those same blogs now as a learner, taking notes and letting the lessons within really sink in. I no longer professionally have to blog about this stuff…but I love blogging because I like helping people and it helps me gather my thoughts. I am going to force myself to blog here, even though it’s not my job. Take a look around, I’ve already posted several items!

Be more organized

I’m an artist at heart (shameless plug: check out my music!) I often act like an artist; I love to conceptualize something and bootstrap it off the ground. It’s a great feeling. But sometimes I do this at the expense of good documentation, scalable practices, and integration with other departments. It doesn’t have to be this way! I am going to work my hardest to balance my artistic inspiration with thorough planning & documentation.

beersBe healthy

I’ve often, especially in the last 6 months, let stress & work schedule dictate my health habits. Drinking too much beer or eating too much food to let off stress just makes me unhealthy and more stressed. I will not  let stress define what I consume. I feel my best when I balance the delicious things in life with exercise and rest. And I’m going to need to be my best for this new job.

Let people try (and sometimes fail)

I feel that I spent too much time micromanaging Carter Gibson at UserVoice, because I often get obsessed with quality. I wish I had given him more leeway to try…and sometimes fail. A few failures are worth it if your employee gets better at what they do and feels empowered. And if they don’t get better, then you can talk to them, rather than assuming they won’t do things up to your standards.

Will I succeed at all these things? Most likely not. But I’m going to do my best. Feel free to post your personal goals in the comments or just give me emotional support. 😉