Judging a service from a single interaction

Posted 18 October 2012 in business, research | 1 comment

The other week I received a phone call from a mobile service provider asking me to take part in a survey to rate a conversation I’d had with their call centre a few days earlier. I agreed and the lady began by asking me whether the person I spoke to, let’s call him X but she used his name which I had taken down during the phone call, had helped me with my enquiry. He had, and I said so.

The lady asked me several rating questions on a scale of 0-10 about how helpful X had been before asking “How likely are you to recommend [mobile carrier] based on your conversation with X?”. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable.

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And you know what they call a tweet in Finland?

Posted 11 September 2012 in social media | No comments yet

“They don’t call it a tweet?”

I was looking at a Finnish web site and noticed that they’d translated the Twitter “Tweet” and Facebook “Like” buttons:

Twiittaa and Tykkää

I can’t help but picture a rather frazzled looking bird perched in a tree screeching out “Twiittaa, twiittaa!”

These examples are probably unnecessary translations for a Finnish audience, and while I find it kind of cute, I start to think about some alternatives:

What would communicate “Tweet” and “Like” actions so that people always understand their meaning?

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Can cycleways encourage local consumer spending?

Posted 5 September 2012 in business, urban design | No comments yet

I bought a bicycle 4 or 5 months ago despite only cycling once (in the very bike-friendly town of Lund, Sweden) since my early teenage years. Having never owned a car, I mainly relied on my feet and public transport to get me where I need to go, but my bike has opened up Sydney in a new way.

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Structuring surveys to avoid confusion

Posted 2 September 2012 in business, research | No comments yet

Tonight I went to look at the web site for Australian TV show, The Project, to find information about an upcoming story (which I failed to find.. hmf!) and a little overlay appeared asking me to take part in a survey so of course I accepted. It turned out the survey was being conducted by the same people as the SMH survey I wrote about the other week.

The survey started innocently enough asking demographic information. It asked the same “Where do you access the internet from?” question I’d had in the SMH survey, and happily in this version they provided checkboxes so that I could select multiple options. Then unfortunately the survey began to go downhill.

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