Startups have their ups and downs, terrible lows and fantastic highs.  In a startup, you are by definition starting -  you don't know exactly what you are doing, and generally more open to listening, advice, and mentorship.  And if you want this, advice, wow does it come pouring in. Unlimited blogs, books, meetups, professional advice givers,  mentors, investors, advisors, businesses that manufacture advice to startups (you know who you are) and massive interweb communties spewing advice about the best things to do.

I hate that stuff.  The advice you get is almost entirely worthless - or at least more valuable for the givee than the recievier.

When I'm down, feeling like everythign is wrong, reading this stuff is like being stabbed with little snippets of smugness - "this is why I'm so great, nha  na nana look at me do it right, do it this way".   In a transparent motivation to gain followers and influence.

And when things are going well.. magical startup time, things are firing..  strategy is working... in the flow - no way is it based on pithy advice.  Definitely didn't read about it in a blog post. For the best startups, that is their only real quality infact. Not doing things the right way, not doing it the normal way, not following advice, not keeping the job.   Doing it backward and turning it on, getting it done.  And most startups that work are the same way, serdipity, lack of conformity, and ignoring advice is the best way to go.

Well, I do like James Altuchers advice. But he would be the first one to tell you not to listen to anything he says.  And ignore this advice too. Pleasantly recursive isn't it?

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There is the right way to manage users with Devise, by setting up the devise admin fucntionality here, but I don't have that setup in my enviroment.

How about a quick and dirty way to log into Heroku console and reset a users password?

I found a lot of bits and pieces of this on Stack Overflow, but not an exact descriptioin for a total nub, so here you go:

1. Open the heroku console (from your local git repository):

$heroku run console

User.all irb(main):002:0> User.all

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Recommendations and referrals from customers are the lifeblood of almost every business.  If your customers will recommend you, you've got something.  You can really run your business off that simple metric... the net result of everything you do comes down to making a product/service that is so good customers will actually stake their own name on recommending you.  Some call it the Net Promoter Score, or the Ultimate Question.

There is also another side to the equation - what's in it for the customer in recommending your business?  What do they get out of it?  At Prizzm we are putting some technology behind helping your customers recommend you, but the heart of why customers recommend businesses is not about technology or rewards.

There is something very human, and satisfying in giving those you like a recommendation.  Here is an email exchange with a company I liked, and didn't give much thought to saying thanks.  But I made their day!  And when I got the reply back, it kind of made me happy, and made my day! 

Isn't that fun??

Recommended:  Betty Normenday (and Ann Corkery) from Fidelity National Title: http://www.fidelitysfmarin.com/pages/meet-our-escrow-officers-347289

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"Obviously, customer service "after a sale" isn't this national big box chain's policy from the top down. National news reported at Christmastime they oversold and couldn't meet deliveries before Christmas on certain product(s). Shame on them!"

http://www.rgj.com/article/20120118/FERNLEY08/201180352/Shame-businesses-put-...

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I've had a terrible issue with credit cards lately, both AMEX and Bank of America. But Bank of America is taking the cake - I'm on my 6th transfer right now.  During one of these interactions, I got a customer satisfaction survey.  This being a very important issue to me, I took extra time to start filling it out...

and filling .... page after page

  and filling..... page after page...

I'm only at 28%, at a massive matrix table.  This is my second day.. being distracted it is still up.

What information does BofA *think* they are getting about customers satisfaction by asking this many questions?  How bout asking one question - "do you recommend us" ? You will get everything you need there BofA, you don't need this fodder for middle managers.

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Wow, it's amazing how stupid corporate systems can be.. and how carefully you are being tracked, often with the wrong information.  I shouldn't be surprised actually, as I have spent so many years installing systems and seeing the lumbering lumbering incompetence of sprawling bureaucracies..  but.. it's not fun to be on the other side.  

My story:

I have a relatively new AMEX Open business credit card that was cancelled today.. It turns out it was because:

- A fraud alert in September cause us to shut down our *personal* account and reopen it at Bank of America, moved the money to a new account

- That caused an overdraft fee (even though we had all the money in the new account) - BofA did not automatically remove the overdrafts as they said they would. I didn't know about the fees - or even know I had that card frankly.

- Bank of America never bothered to call, ask, write about the credit card.. They never sent a statement (supposedly emailed?). They did however, cancel the account and report it to the Credit Bureau.. not the best way to treat your customers guys.. or get paid, you could have just asked for the money, right??

- American Express then took the liberty of looking at the $199 owed, and canceling my *business* credit card.. even though:

-- BofA made the original mistake

-- My business has 30x the amount of assets *in the bank* than the entire amount of the credit line AMEX  cancelled

So AMEX, you stupid robot.. you made a bad call..the wrong call, if you were judging credit risks. You lost my business, that you could have profited from,  pissed me off, wasted a *ton* of my time  with your *stupid* system, that spit out the wrong set of information, and didn't listen.  

You did alert me if Bank of America's almost equal stupidity.. I'm not sure who I'm more pissed at, I suppose AMEX.. Open for business my ass.  

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Amazon has a yearly revune of 43billion dollars it looks like.. and I wouldn't look for that number to go down anytime soon, and if I was a competitor I'd be (more) worried about them.  

As a customer, I had recent interaction that basically blew me away.  The story:

I purchased 2 orders of books recently, after not submitting a Amazon order for quite some time. One on Jan 1st and one on Jan 7th.   Well, it looks like I had left my old address in there as a "ship to" address.  I did have the correct billing address.. it is possible that Amazon checked me out and did not confirm my address (don't recall), but basically it is my fault, I ordered books and had them sent to the wrong address.

So I pinged Amazon on the help site, which wasn't hard to get to (maybe not perfectly inuitive), was able to choose email as my preferred channel.  I described the problem, and figured they would ask  me to try to retrieve them, maybe give me a disocunt... but no, the replied back, appologizing, and reshipped the orders! I was really, pleaseantly surprise. No calls, no procedures checked, the agent who replied just took care of it.

It seems like a unprofitable process.. just ship new orders with no questions?

Well, the profit side of Amazon, at 1.75 Billion, tells a different story.. *excellent* customer service can pay off.  I know I am putting in my next order right now, while raving about them on this blog post.

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Is advertising is dying?  With social media, customers control the message, they can say anything they want, customer influence other customers, and this leads many analysts to prognosticate on the death of advertising and the rise of the customer from social media. 

But... the advertising market funds our consumer culture, with no sign of the industry slowing.   A NPR story cites the super bowl ad for Chrystler as the main factor in raising the sales over the year up to 25%. With payoffs like that, I wouldn't expect to see any decrease in advertising any time soon.  

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Customer reviews are the last bastion of competitive difference.  The article cites 90% of customers trust peer reviews, and of course nobody likes or trusts adversements.  What are you doing to enourage customer reviews for your business?  

The example of Under Amor and Skull Candy, of customers answering other customers questions is outstanding.  As a counterpoint, don't treat your customers like this - it can drag down a business in a day.

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Wow, what happened to a HTML?  I think the standard that built the web has been consumed by the programable browser.

Take a look at the source code on a typical web page..

No longer do you need to know <b>hello world!</b>

This goes on for what seems to be 120 + pages... I didn't print it out to find out out.  And this isn't to rip on the site listed (quora).. most any modern interactive site is driven by javascript and completey unreadable.

Wonder why you can't find any programmers?  I don't.  

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One thing I like about the Social CRM space, is even the "competitors" / vendors are  friendly.  Zendesk, Bazaar Voice, GetSatisfaction all arguably compete with each other.  But just like these companies are trying to bring a customer conversation out to the open, they seem comfortable talking to each other.. no barbs..snide comments... can you imagine the old guard in Customer Service working this way? When I was at Siebel.. wouldn't happen!

YouTube link.

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A great article about how customers are interacting with companies, complaining publicly.  The smallest companies often have the best support..(I know I've been one!) - how are small companies impacted when customers complain publicly?

Social media is used by many customers to broadcast their opinion about brands - while that can be powerful, if there is no conversation, there is no solution.  The change in conversation is affecting many businesses in different ways - small businesses and software developers may be negatively impacted, and feel like customers who could just reach out are broadcasting to the world their issues.  And they also may not be defining their issue clearly enough -  often there is no solution possible if the customer doesn't use more than 140 characters to describe the issue.

Large businesses, who spend millions "managing relationships" with customers, often need the kick and extra pressure to have a conversations--instead of losing feedback in corporate silos.

Conversations are two sided. Social media has given many more people a voice, a part of the conversation. But unless there are two parties there, resolving an issue, you don't get a solution.

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Interesting, I love the title, "Enterprization of Consumer apps" - and bonus points for making up a new term.  But the examples of the apps to me seemed much more in line with the consumerization of enterprise apps.. meaning that the customer is the enterprise, a business, and they expect usability and features typically found in the consumer world.  That is really close to the "consumerization of the enterprise". 

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A great quote from Angela Ahrendts on the impact of Social Media:

"For any CEO who is sceptical at all - you have to. You have to create a social enterprise today.  You have to be totally connected with everyone who touches your brand.  If you don't do that.. I don't know what your business model is in 5 years"

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Great interview with Brian Solis - interviewed by Scoble.

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https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/posts/HqhHAgQ36mn

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This is a nice interface for consumer searches. Doesn't tie in the friend/social network aspects, but it's a relevant site for me.

http://www.goodguide.com/

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It sounds a bit scary... companies are building more and more infrastructure for consuming the information you publish socially.  But they don't actually want to use that against you, the ideal vision is finding out about what customers want, and making them happier, quicker. Ideally by listening to their customers where they are, and what they want, and make products that customers need.

Salesforce.com is building more and more features into their product line that allows companies to listen to their customers over social media, check out a video here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ldVcOOxr5A

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The site http://buy-her.com/ is moving toward what an average buyer might want--but it doesn't have neat categories to search under, and there is no connection to my own social network. A search for "coffee maker" and "refrigerator" led almost nowhere, although there is an email address to write and ask about specific products (which I would never do).

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