the fix would have to start at the top - which probably won't happen - it would require a complete change in the culture of the business
micromanaging the details from the top while ignoring internal communications - an employee (yes, sloop has fans that work there) sent me that info - its funny that when you call about a problem that is widespread and its the first time the customer rep has ever heard of the problem - i think the reps are put in a position where they have to lie to the customers - i also think they dislike being placed in that position
communicate what the company is doing to the grunts - when i sent in my plc for a 'replacement program', no one in customer service knew about the program - except for one person - every time i called i had to explain to the rep what the program was but could never talk to the selected rep (they sent 'e/mails' to her)
followup on problems - don't just send an e/mail and assume your job is done - allow the reps to do more than take the next call - if one of the reps i talked with about the plc replacement had called me back to see if my problem was resolved, it would go a long way toward fixing my attitude about the company - encourage employees to take ownership of customers' problems
hire (and handsomely reward) people that are professional - celebrate good performance and make a big hooha about employees that go the extra mile for the customer - i had the customer service manager actually tell me that he would not trust one of his employees because it was her last day - sad if that was true - sadder that he would tell the customer that
don't have adversarial relationships with departing employees - when they leave, find out what 'irons they had in the fire' and have their successor take on those tasks - my plm fell into that hole when joe williams left - evidently homeseer's point man left and all communications with homeseer left with him
take a loss for a good customer once in awhile - i finally got my money back for houselinc, 2 boosterlincs and my plc - we all know how houselinc sucked and the promised fixes were delayed forever - and i went with the isy - like i said, i did get my money back but it took months (the returned products were placed in the black hole - it took several long calls - after they were 'found', some were given 'partial credit' - its gone to 'accounting' - checks were sent but never left their building)
the high turnover rate leads me to believe morale must suck - stuff like hiring 'executives' from outside the company whose qualifications are 'marriage counseling' (and evidently a failed one) and dating the boss is demoralizing to the grunts
pass out money to employees that go above and beyond - great motivator for those that get the money as well as the guy that sits two cubicles down from him - not a coupon for a free sub sandwich or a free marie calendar's thanksgiving pie - take the check to them personally and make it a surprise - don't send out a memo that they will get a bonus in their paycheck sometime in the future - don't give them products you sell as a reward - make it enough to buy a 50 inch tv but not enough for a new kia
offer stock to the employees at bargain prices
raise the prices - if that is what it takes to make a product that works as advertised - i paid more for their x10 switchlincs (which actually worked except for the paddle problem)
farm out what you can't do yourself - not to a contractor that is hired to perform one task - someone you can partner with and have an ongoing relationship with
make a scope - offer it for sale and have a pool of them that customers could rent - if a good customer is having problems, send them one free to use to isolate the problem - give xpendable a free one - his product has generated revenue for you
resolve all bbb complaints to the customer's satisfaction even if it costs you money - that rating is slipping as you create more malcontents
throw a bone to those that ponied up $200 to join your secret handshake club - they believed in your product enough to join and deserve your attention - if you can't commit to doing what you promised, offer the members a $200 credit (or maybe $250 since you used their money for months if not years) and disband the secret handshake club
don't make claims that are shady - in real life, x10 is not compatible with 60 insteon devices - when the customer proves that, don't rely on a buried blurb to cover your backside
showcase a few customer success stories - assuming you can find a few (ok - that was tacky but i could not help myself) - make videos of their setups - one from a homeseer nerd and one from an isy fanboi - one from someone with only a few devices and one from an all insteon setup
talk to and listen to companies that sell your products - sell them on your product line so they will sell your products to their customers - i talked to one store and they share my opinion of insteon - they would sell me your product, but pushed a competing product line - they even made me an offer to buy back all the products of a competing product line if i was unhappy with them
have a presence periodically at home automation user groups - send someone to tout your products and answer questions about them - pass out coffee mugs with the craplinc logo on them and maybe buy them cheap pizzas for the meeting - i talked to a user group in my area and was told there was one guy that used insteon and the members 'almost had him convinced' to change to a competing product line - (i never attended because i would feel like the kia member when everyone else had their ferrari parked outside)
consider giving up on the proprietary stuff - they are not good enough to make insteon work - make it an open protocol and hope other companies can make working devices and bring products to the market sooner
open up to your customers that are home automation nerdlincs - when promised deadlines are not met, explain why - when your customers discover that your devices do not support the entire protocol suite, tell them why - when obvious problems arise, explain what happened - instead of silence or denials, i would have more confidence in you if you explained what happened
give your employees $2000 worth of craplincs and sell to them at cost or below - encourage them to learn first hand the products they support - listen to their feedback
close your forum - it is a source of discontent for your products
if you don't close your forums, find a real moderator and encourage your employees to participate - evidently, you could learn about lots of problems with your products (because its always a surprise to you when you finally discover them) - work on reining in your fanbois instead of trying to silence malcontents - when you fanbois tell the malcontents that 'insteon is so revolutionary that expectations for it to work are unrealistic', they are doing you no favors - when they make threats, its time for them to go
fire trevor jones - he appears to announce a new craplinc and disappears - no questions answered - no solutions offered - no status updates - if your esteemed moderator can be believed, he also appears to delete posts
if the above problems are addressed, consider dropping insteon and working on one niche of an existing protocol - insteon will never send me a message if my freezer temperature drops - it will never become the standard - make lighting devices that are homeplug compliant - if you can't set the standard, jump on existing standards that widely accepted
hire michel at any cost - if he won't take the job, work out something where the top managers can learn from his example
these are not problems that can be addressed by the employees - i feel bad for most of them - it can't be fun to face malcontents all day on the phone - especially when they work in a culture that evades and denies obvious problems - i also feel bad for me with $4000 worth of craplincs and $6000 pile of x10 in the garage
sigh
micromanaging the details from the top while ignoring internal communications - an employee (yes, sloop has fans that work there) sent me that info - its funny that when you call about a problem that is widespread and its the first time the customer rep has ever heard of the problem - i think the reps are put in a position where they have to lie to the customers - i also think they dislike being placed in that position
communicate what the company is doing to the grunts - when i sent in my plc for a 'replacement program', no one in customer service knew about the program - except for one person - every time i called i had to explain to the rep what the program was but could never talk to the selected rep (they sent 'e/mails' to her)
followup on problems - don't just send an e/mail and assume your job is done - allow the reps to do more than take the next call - if one of the reps i talked with about the plc replacement had called me back to see if my problem was resolved, it would go a long way toward fixing my attitude about the company - encourage employees to take ownership of customers' problems
hire (and handsomely reward) people that are professional - celebrate good performance and make a big hooha about employees that go the extra mile for the customer - i had the customer service manager actually tell me that he would not trust one of his employees because it was her last day - sad if that was true - sadder that he would tell the customer that
don't have adversarial relationships with departing employees - when they leave, find out what 'irons they had in the fire' and have their successor take on those tasks - my plm fell into that hole when joe williams left - evidently homeseer's point man left and all communications with homeseer left with him
take a loss for a good customer once in awhile - i finally got my money back for houselinc, 2 boosterlincs and my plc - we all know how houselinc sucked and the promised fixes were delayed forever - and i went with the isy - like i said, i did get my money back but it took months (the returned products were placed in the black hole - it took several long calls - after they were 'found', some were given 'partial credit' - its gone to 'accounting' - checks were sent but never left their building)
the high turnover rate leads me to believe morale must suck - stuff like hiring 'executives' from outside the company whose qualifications are 'marriage counseling' (and evidently a failed one) and dating the boss is demoralizing to the grunts
pass out money to employees that go above and beyond - great motivator for those that get the money as well as the guy that sits two cubicles down from him - not a coupon for a free sub sandwich or a free marie calendar's thanksgiving pie - take the check to them personally and make it a surprise - don't send out a memo that they will get a bonus in their paycheck sometime in the future - don't give them products you sell as a reward - make it enough to buy a 50 inch tv but not enough for a new kia
offer stock to the employees at bargain prices
raise the prices - if that is what it takes to make a product that works as advertised - i paid more for their x10 switchlincs (which actually worked except for the paddle problem)
farm out what you can't do yourself - not to a contractor that is hired to perform one task - someone you can partner with and have an ongoing relationship with
make a scope - offer it for sale and have a pool of them that customers could rent - if a good customer is having problems, send them one free to use to isolate the problem - give xpendable a free one - his product has generated revenue for you
resolve all bbb complaints to the customer's satisfaction even if it costs you money - that rating is slipping as you create more malcontents
throw a bone to those that ponied up $200 to join your secret handshake club - they believed in your product enough to join and deserve your attention - if you can't commit to doing what you promised, offer the members a $200 credit (or maybe $250 since you used their money for months if not years) and disband the secret handshake club
don't make claims that are shady - in real life, x10 is not compatible with 60 insteon devices - when the customer proves that, don't rely on a buried blurb to cover your backside
showcase a few customer success stories - assuming you can find a few (ok - that was tacky but i could not help myself) - make videos of their setups - one from a homeseer nerd and one from an isy fanboi - one from someone with only a few devices and one from an all insteon setup
talk to and listen to companies that sell your products - sell them on your product line so they will sell your products to their customers - i talked to one store and they share my opinion of insteon - they would sell me your product, but pushed a competing product line - they even made me an offer to buy back all the products of a competing product line if i was unhappy with them
have a presence periodically at home automation user groups - send someone to tout your products and answer questions about them - pass out coffee mugs with the craplinc logo on them and maybe buy them cheap pizzas for the meeting - i talked to a user group in my area and was told there was one guy that used insteon and the members 'almost had him convinced' to change to a competing product line - (i never attended because i would feel like the kia member when everyone else had their ferrari parked outside)
consider giving up on the proprietary stuff - they are not good enough to make insteon work - make it an open protocol and hope other companies can make working devices and bring products to the market sooner
open up to your customers that are home automation nerdlincs - when promised deadlines are not met, explain why - when your customers discover that your devices do not support the entire protocol suite, tell them why - when obvious problems arise, explain what happened - instead of silence or denials, i would have more confidence in you if you explained what happened
give your employees $2000 worth of craplincs and sell to them at cost or below - encourage them to learn first hand the products they support - listen to their feedback
close your forum - it is a source of discontent for your products
if you don't close your forums, find a real moderator and encourage your employees to participate - evidently, you could learn about lots of problems with your products (because its always a surprise to you when you finally discover them) - work on reining in your fanbois instead of trying to silence malcontents - when you fanbois tell the malcontents that 'insteon is so revolutionary that expectations for it to work are unrealistic', they are doing you no favors - when they make threats, its time for them to go
fire trevor jones - he appears to announce a new craplinc and disappears - no questions answered - no solutions offered - no status updates - if your esteemed moderator can be believed, he also appears to delete posts
if the above problems are addressed, consider dropping insteon and working on one niche of an existing protocol - insteon will never send me a message if my freezer temperature drops - it will never become the standard - make lighting devices that are homeplug compliant - if you can't set the standard, jump on existing standards that widely accepted
hire michel at any cost - if he won't take the job, work out something where the top managers can learn from his example
these are not problems that can be addressed by the employees - i feel bad for most of them - it can't be fun to face malcontents all day on the phone - especially when they work in a culture that evades and denies obvious problems - i also feel bad for me with $4000 worth of craplincs and $6000 pile of x10 in the garage
sigh
