More Yoga Teachers

There’s been an explosion in the number of certified yoga teachers  — 70,000 at last count  (NAMASTA, 2005), plus the many newly minted teachers since then. The pressures of a sustained economic downturn are causing many to seek alternative careers.

Some of the newcomers want a more rewarding second career, a means to give back to their community. Some are recent college grads who’ve struggled to land a job that they find meaningful, people who see value in the yoga lifestyle. Others are people who have faced a major life passage or health crisis, been transformed thanks to yoga, and now want to share the joy of their practice.

Whatever their motivation, yoga’s increasing popularity has led to an explosion in teacher certifications, but this is not without risk for both newcomers and existing studios.

More Challenges for Yoga Teachers

If there are too many teachers within easy driving distance, it’s hard for new teachers to make an adequate living until you succeed in attracting a loyal set of students who attend your classes on a regular basis… Studio owners manage a limited inventory of available class times and space, so they prefer popular teachers who can fill the classes.

This is the classic “Catch 22″ situation for the the teacher.  It takes time to earn a good reputation as a valued teacher, time to build recognition for your contributions, time for word-of-mouth to generate referrals from your students to their friends.

The question is, how can new teachers speed that up? The answer is, by standing out, being different in ways that matter to students and the studio owner. (In the business world, this is referred to as “personal branding.”)

The challenge boils down to figuring out the authentic path that will enable you to attract the right students — people who will benefit from your particular teaching and interaction skills; people who will enthusiastically recommend you and your studio to their friends and family.

In a crowded urban market you need to stand out, be recognized for what is distinctive and meaningful about your services, your studio and its location, the caliber of your teachers and the vibrancy of your studio’s community.

Be Different — But in Ways That Are Meaningful

Start by spending some time looking around to understand what the other studios are offering in your area. Talk to other studio owners to see what’s working for them. Talk to yoga students about what’s missing from their current class experiences. Ask them how they would describe their “dream classes.” When and where would those classes take place. What would be different about the student-teacher interaction from what they’ve experienced today.

Then invest some quality time thinking about how you can make your offering more distinctive — more directly relevant to prospective students within driving distance of your studio. What’s special about the people who live in your area?

If you’re in a highly competitive area (like Los Angeles, New York or the Bay Area), think about ways to position your studio or some of your classes to appeal more narrowly to a specific set of students who share common needs or interests. For example,

• Classes for boomer women, or mother-daughter classes
• Classes for people struggling with specific health or mobility challenges: such as chronic arthritis, back/spine issues, or cancer
• Classes for people who need help restoring their self-esteem (or even their youthful appearance), as a result of being laid off or other painful life passages
• Classes for bikers, skiers and runners who need help relaxing those overly tight leg muscles, or to build upper body strength
• Classes for tennis players, or skiers, or golfers — you get the idea

What about classes that target specific pain zones — the kinds of anatomical or bio-mechanical problems that many people in your area are likely to experience? How about team-teaching with a like-minded physical therapist?

• Classes for people with tight shoulders, disk issues or neck problems — the kinds of issues faced by people who spend too many hours at the computer
• Classes for people with lower back weakness, or balance challenges
• Combined nutrition and yoga classes for people who want to manage (and maintain) weight loss in a non-faddish way

Increase Your Reach

Have you explored whether people who work for the larger employers in your area might be interested in classes offered at their workplace (after hours, before the workday begins, or during lunch hours)?

Classes at over-55 communities, senior centers, churches, etc.?

In addition to your private tutorials, have you developed classes or other services to help your students get more benefit out of their home-based asanas?

Do you offer asana guidance via podcasts that your students can download and listen to at home or when they’re traveling? If you get good at this, you might be able to offer a subscription service for a series of weekly or monthly podcasts that you market over the Internet.

If you have a friend with a digital camcorder, why not post some videos of your teaching style and philosophy on YouTube?

Have you thought about ways you might provide some online instruction (yoga sequences, guided meditation, etc.) that students could use to guide their practice, at the student’s convenience, on days when she can’t get to a studio for a scheduled class?

Some Examples from a Seattle Studio

The studio where I practice is quite sophisticated; their classes are overflowing. Here are some of the things my teachers do to keep themselves in front of their students when we’re not in their class:

• Create and sell an annual yoga calendar that features real students in a series of poses (including women over 80!)
• Send monthly newsletters by email to students who choose to receive them. The emails contain poems or stories written by the teachers, often with photos that inspire meditation — and reminders about upcoming classes, retreats, and special events.
• Host several special events each quarter (like weekend retreats in lovely settings within a few hours’ drive of their studio) or classes on special topics.
• And of course, they have a web site with information about the teachers, the classes, the events calendar, etc.

If you’re struggling to keep your yoga studio vibrant and full of students, I hope one or more of these ideas will lead to increased business success for you.

Society as a whole benefits when yoga values infuse people’s daily lives and activities. But for the struggling yoga studio or newly certified teacher, explosive growth in teacher certifications leads to increased competition in the local market. To thrive and grow in a crowded market requires a thoughtful strategy, one that’s put into practice via a focused and disciplined set of tactics.

Namaste.

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From the consumer’s POV, Netflix’ latest plans to split the offering into two unrelated services, Netflix and Qwikster, are utterly ridiculous. Infuriating. And perhaps fatal to the company’s longevity.

Netflix has given its customers the reason — and the motivation — to look elsewhere for a better value.

A Broken Brand Promise

The heavy-handed moves by the company are causing me to rethink how much, if any, I want of Netflix’ service in the future. Like millions of other Netflix subscribers who have become disenchanted with the brand.

One of the reasons for the furor that’s fueling the consumer backlash is Netflix’ broken brand promise. We used to believe Netflix stood as a shining example of a consumer-centered modern corporation.

Now we realize it was just a big myth that we collectively bought into. Myself included.

Netflix has squandered our trust and lost our loyalty. They’ve polluted their brand. Can they overcome this damage?

Setting Up for Streaming Is Not Easy

Netflix is clearly staking its future on mainstream adoption of streaming and digital downloads as the preferred way to “consume” movies, music, TV episodes, games, etc.

But there’s a lurking problem that no one has acknowledged in the furor that’s raging across the blogosphere. And that’s user experience.

If you plan to stream movies to a PC, Mac or an Apple-branded consumer device (like Apple TV or iPad), configuring Netflix and entering your credentials are not too difficult. It’s easy if you’re using a device that’s equipped with a keyboard.

But heaven help you if you’re using a traditional consumer electronics device and must enter user credentials with a remote control device. (You might want to consult a teenage geek who’s comfortable with remotes as an input device.)

To make things worse, just because you’ve gotten it working once doesn’t mean your Netflix configuration will keep working indefinitely. Software updates by Netflix and/or your consumer electronics device manufacturer can cause the configuration to stop working. So you confront the user experience issues all over again.

Netflix doesn’t exert much influence over the consumer electronics ecosystem, so the user experience problems are systemic and likely to persist…

The Remote Was Not Designed as a Keyboard Substitute

Over the past several months I’ve wasted hours trying to keep Netflix streaming to our flat-screen TV, using Sony PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation network as the interface to Netflix. My first attempt to configure streaming took several hours (including several sessions on my Mac to get online help).

After the initial setup it worked just fine — until Sony’s PlayStation network was hacked and everything had to be reset. Since then I’ve had to reset the configuration more than once. I’m not sure if this is caused by Sony’s frequent software updates or some conflict between the PlayStation network and Netflix.

Needless to say, if your interface to a consumer electronics device is a TV remote, having to enter multiple sets of user IDs and passwords is a non-trivial and frustrating exercise. The fact that whatever you type when entering your password is masked with asterisks — ******** — increases your chances of wasting your time due to typos that occur when you use a remote as an inferior keyboard substitute.

My Netflix Solution on the PS3

To fix the broken Netflix configuration required consulting both Netflix’ and Sony’s support resources online. Not surprisingly they weren’t coordinated. Netflix’ site turned out to be distinctly unhelpful, and Sony’s site required some real digging to find the solution.

Not to mention waiting until server maintenance was done (during prime time, I might add).

The eventual solution was:

1. manually reset the date and time on the PS3
2. uninstall the Netflix app on the PS3
3. download and reinstall the Netflix app
4. re-enter my user ID and password for Netflix (using the remote, of course).

Oh — and I forgot to mention that Sony required me to reset my password to the PlayStation network before beginning this whole procedure — yet another frustrating battle with the remote as keyboard substitute.

This may sound simple, but using the remote as an input device for activities designed for a keyboard meant that these steps took well over an hour — once I understood what was required to fix the problem in first place. Finding the solution required use of a computer.

Net net –

Given the on-going lack of coordination between Netflix and consumer electronics companies when it comes to user experience, usability issues like these will prove to be Netflix’ Achilles heel if their future depends on happy customers.

Thankfully, Netflix has listened to their customers and responded. Plans for Qwikster have been abandoned — the service will not be split in two.

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A landmark event in 20th century music, the 1964 Ed Sullivan Show ignited the outbreak of Beatlemania in America. Like every other girl in America, I fell in love that night. With rock ‘n’ roll, and the Beatles.

Photos © Apple & the Beatles

Today marks another landmark: the Beatles have finally agreed to distribute their music via Apple iTunes (to their relief and Apple’s). This agreement has been more than 20 years in the making (and has probably enriched multiple lawyers on 2 continents in the process).

Apple’s web site offers a loving tribute to the Beatles via streaming videos of landmark performances, gorgeous photo albums, and more. All presented with the design flair you expect of Apple.

A Long Journey to Resolution…

Anyone who has been following the Apple vs. Beatles saga knows that the two have been at loggerheads for more than 2 decades over trademark disputes to the name “Apple” and the logos (finally resolved in 2007).  Here are logos from the 1980’s for the two marks. We all know what Apple’s logo looks like these days…

If you’ve owned a vinyl Beatles album (pre-CD days), you may recall the Granny Smith apple symbol, a reference to the Beatles’ corporate entity, Apple Corps Ltd, a multi-media publishing empire. One of their main divisions was “Apple Records.”

As long as Apple Computer competed only in the computer and IT technology realm, the two giants maintained an uneasy détente. But once Apple started to market enabling technologies for music, such as the early MIDI board that connected synthesizers and musical instruments to their computers, the battle began in earnest. Since then Apple’s amazingly successful ventures into consumer electronics and music distribution — their achievements of the past decade — have dramatically upped the stakes to this conflict.

The Labors of Many…

As a former Apple employee, I had some insights into this dispute… For some of the time I worked in Apple’s marketing organization, the music marketing team reported to me.

Charged with market development, those marketers were passionate evangelists: driven to educate musicians and composers that music could be created, performed, or enjoyed with the help of Apple Macintoshes. (This was 10 years before Apple introduced the iPod.) Those were early days; so few musicians recorded or performed with Macs on stage that my team knew everyone who was doing anything.

Even so, that 2-person music marketing team spent an inordinate amount of time briefing Apple’s lawyers. (Inordinate relative to the revenues being generated.)

The legal team was locked in a seemingly endless dispute with the Beatles’ business managers over rights to the “apple” trademark. My team was frustrated by the fact that the Beatles themselves couldn’t be bothered to venture an opinion on the subject (most likely because Apple’s impact on the music business 20 years ago was so small). Year after year, Apple’s lawyers engaged with their lawyers — and the army of “suits” who sheltered the Beatles from nasty real-world issues like copyright disputes and competitive realms.

Fast-forward 20 years, iTunes has become the most dominant force in music distribution, Apple’s brand the world’s most respected (or one of the most respected), and the Beatles have finally reached agreement with Apple… Everyone wins, especially music lovers.

It’s a bittersweet moment for people who know how long this dispute has raged. But it helps me understand why Apple has devoted so much time, energy and money to the Beatles tribute that appears on their website today.

It’s been a long journey. Finally, music to our ears: the Beatles’ music can now play on our iPhones, iPods and iPads.

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One of my friends has just had a big promotion. An expert in personal branding, she’s in the process of changing all of her online profile photos to be more consistent with her new role as a worldwide executive for a major software company. Personal branding is also an issue for my brother and his daughter as they plan how best to market their book and increase the audience of potential readers.

Given the “Big C” subject of their story, their book’s credibility could be undermined by their physical beauty. The authors have chosen to work with a photographer who earns his living shooting fashion models for glossy magazines. This makes handsome people downright glamorous.

But fortunately, for the sake of marketing his book, my brother’s face hints at the story he has to tell. He has blogged extensively about his fight, and has begun mentoring others who confront similar battles. The book is his response to his fans’ requests to hear more about his story.

At least to those of us who know and love him, his face reveals some of  the pain of his battle with head and neck cancer (caused by a virus). In many of her photos, his step-daughter’s face seems less marked by her bouts with cancer. The blessings of youth, perhaps?

I’m glad they chose a photo that reveals some of the anguish they’ve suffered. Had they not done so, had their photo been “too beautiful,” it might have raised questions about the authenticity of their story.

It’s a beautiful story, and one that could help many others when their book is finally published. Beautiful faces, beautiful story, but scary subject matter.

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Here’s the deal: my recycle bin now contains somewhere between 5 and 10 pieces of unopened direct mail offers from Qwest, addressed to my home address and home-based office (2 different accounts from their POV). All of these pieces have been delivered within the past 2 days.

All tout some variation of their so-called high-speed Internet service. Or service bundles based on high-speed Internet bandwidth. Meanwhile, Qwest can only deliver 256K of bandwidth to this location — a situation that has not changed in >10 years.

Living in the Northwest as I do, where the swaths of clear-cut forest are painfully visible, receiving so many useless direct mail pieces is offensive. It makes me sick to think of how many trees are being cut down to produce paper that will be wasted so fruitlessly.

I wish someone at Qwest (or their agency) would figure out how to link their service capabilities database (NOC operations side of the house) with their prospecting databases. This may be politically difficult, given internal silos, but surely it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to develop this data mining and targeting strategy. They could fund it by the improvement in their conversion ratios, by the savings generated from not sending offers that are 100% guaranteed to fail.

If they had a more intelligent data mining and targeting strategy, they would know that this address (and others like mine) should be eliminated from their prospect database until they can radically increase bandwidth delivery to these locations.

Right now, based on actual bandwidth to my office, they are so far from being competitive that it’s laughable — and it tarnishes their brand when they make claims that they cannot deliver on. As a result of these poor marketing practices, whenever I see a direct mail offer from Qwest, my first reaction is “stupid” and “wasteful” — “not sustainable.” They’ve trained me not to open their mailings. Do they even care about their brand?

They send me dozens of useless direct mail pieces every month, not to mention many telemarketing calls that I no longer answer. (I’ve probably told their CSRs a dozen times that until they can deliver >10-15 MB to this location, they have zero chance of persuading me to switch carriers.) What a waste of resources.

Will someone please help this marketing department evolve from the Stone Age?

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The cycling sub-culture offers an interesting environment for observing the power of branding in action. Over the years I’ve learned that the “boys who bike” are very status conscious, and proudly display team affiliations and other brand badges all over their bodies, their bikes and their gear. I’ve also learned that if you ride the “wrong” bike, you’re invisible to your fellow cyclists.

Here in the Pacific Northwest biking is a year-round phenomenon. People are passionate about it. Everyday you see folks commuting to work by bike, rain or shine. There are numerous active cycling clubs for racers, cruisers, seniors, tandem bike riders, and so on. Municipalities invest in bike lanes and the county in bike trails.

Mercer Island, a couple of miles across Lake Washington from Seattle, is a favorite place for bikers to work out or socialize while enjoying lake and mountain views. The loop around the island is just over 14 miles and features several heart-pounding hill climbs. You can get quite a workout with one or two loops around the island. Therefore it’s loaded with bikers year round, whenever conditions permit cycling. As a Mercer Island resident and sporadic cyclist, I’ve had lots of opportunities for brand spotting and observing the behaviors of the biking tribes.

During the warmer seasons you see gaggles of guys on bikes training for upcoming races, like the annual biking ritual, the STP (Seattle to Portland) race. This reaches a frenzy before and during the Tour de France race. These cyclists all sport club uniforms or the branded apparel of the pro teams that compete in the Tour de France and other famous international races. I find it humorous to see weekend road warriors sporting the uniforms of pro riders. Who do they think they’re kidding?

About that Branding…

Over the years I’ve biked on Mercer Island, I’ve learned that a bike’s brand status is more important than the effort you invest when it comes to your “visibility” among the biking crowd.  It’s a curious thing.

Co-motion

When my husband and I cruise around the island on our “Mango Tango,” a yellow-orange Co-motion tandem bike with nice components, we get lots of head bobs and greetings from fellow bikers. Co-motion is a niche brand, a maker of semi-custom and custom bikes in Eugene, Oregon, recognized and respected among Northwest bikers, even if not a mass-market brand. So when we ride our Co-motion tandem, we get noticed and acknowledged as members of the biking tribe.

Here’s our Co-motion “Mango Tango,” with Mercer Island off in the background. Note the relative lack of branding on my husband’s biking gear – a sign that we’re definitely outliers when it comes to biking and branding…

Hybrids – No Glamour, No Respect

For the past 10 years, when not on the tandem, I’ve ridden a Canondale hybrid bike, one designed to cruise comfortably on off-road trails and paved streets alike. Compared to performance road bikes, it offers no mechanical advantage (although lots of shock absorption.) The tires are relatively thick, they only inflate to 80 psi, and the bike is heavy. Consequently I expend twice as much energy to circumnavigate Mercer Island on the hybrid as I do when riding the tandem or my new Roubaix road bike.

But for serious cyclists there’s no sex appeal to a hybrid – it has no brand status among the biker boys. As a result when I ride that bike, I’m invisible to other bikers. No head bobs, no greetings, no acknowledgements – even when riding in non-fair-weather conditions, when only the truly passionate (or desperate) cyclists are out there pedaling away and racking up miles.

Roubaix

Now that I’ve switched to a current generation road bike, Specialized’s Roubaix Elite Comp, I’m visible again. When I encounter other bikers heading toward me, they nod their heads (with a quick glance at the bike and its components) and some may actually grunt a hello. I smile to myself and think, if I were riding the 10-year-old hybrid today, you wouldn’t even notice me – and I’d be working twice as hard…

Because of its performance characteristics (and relative shock dampening), I love my Roubaix.

But color matters to the brand status crowd…

It’s a funny thing. The first Roubaix I bought featured a compact gear set; however, its color was white, which is apparently considered dorky among the biking community. So when I rode my white Roubaix, I was usually invisible, brand-wise.

When I exchanged my Roubaix for one that came with the triple gear set (I had missed the “granny gear” on those Mercer Island hills), the new one came in carbon color – much more pleasing to other bikers. Yes, the carbon colored, Roubaix-branded road bike merits head bobs and greetings. The very same bike in white does not… Among self-styled “gear heads,” I believe the compact double gear set is sexier than the triple, but clearly color trumps double versus triple…

Gear

Unlike most of bikers my husband and I do not indulge ourselves with club uniforms or highly branded team apparel. We’re outliers in that regard. We wear practical clothes suitable to the weather and the mileage we intend – often things that do double duty for hiking, kayaking or other sports. (I’ve even worn yoga gear from time to time.)

But, oh yes, we love those Pearl Izumi padded shorts or cropped tights, just like the other bikers…

It’s amazing, the power of branding on the mind-set of the biking tribe…

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Shop windows in Paris do a wonderful job of conveying the idea of what’s being sold — of conveying the brand essence, helping you envision how you might benefit from the products or services on offer. For a moment or two, you’re experiencing the dream, fantasizing about how you might look better, happier, healthier or whatever, based on the nature of what’s being presented for your delectation…

The most powerful windows don’t crowd the display area with a representative sampling of everything inside the store (as you sometimes see in America). This is not a functional or utilitarian approach to marketing what the merchant has on offer.

The power of simplicity. I love the idea — but it’s so hard to put into practice, given all the factions and stakeholders that marketers must contend with.

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Both offers focus on helping women overcome the gaps in our understanding of mechanics – things most fathers don’t teach their daughters. Both examples are post-sales service offers; one will immediately drive incremental revenues (via auto repairs), which I understand is one of the higher-margin aspects of the auto industry.

Tactics for Local Markets

The two examples I’ve seen most recently target women in local markets.

• Bikes: My local bike shop offered a special clinic to teach women cyclists basic roadside repairs (tire patching, cable fixes, etc.). My secret has been to rely upon the gallantry of male cyclists to help me patch tires when cycling by myself. But it would be less embarrassing to know how to make simple repairs myself.
• Cars: A BMW dealer in Massachusetts is offering a “women’s only tech session” this weekend, focused on diagnostics and explanations. This will undoubtedly drive up service revenues and also potentially sell branded accessories.

The idea of educating women about what’s involved in maintaining our cars and bikes is probably very sound. Many women treat their cars like “black boxes,” so who knows how many undiagnosed problems are lurking, just waiting to strand moms when they’re already late for daycare pick-up.

What’s under the hood has always been a mystery, so I rely on my car’s on-board diagnostic computer to alert me when it needs service. I also pay attention to obvious signals like rough starts or unusual noises… As for my road bike, I can put the chain back on the derailleur on the rare occasions when it falls off, but that’s about it.

If the offers had been delivered in way that seemed like they’d be fun, I might have tried one (if not for my schedule conflicts).

Sponsoring women-only clinics may also help with sensitivity training for the salespeople who work in the dealerships. I know I’ve often felt invisible when walking into a dealer’s showroom, for bikes or cars… It’s a humiliating experience – especially when I’m the buyer.

BMW Example: Good Idea, but Execution…?

The execution of this tactic by the BMW field marketing team in Massachusetts leaves something to be desired. For example, the email address is mine, but the personalized message is addressed to my husband, who is neither female nor the car owner.

Moreover, the copywriting is probably a bit off-target for a female audience. What the heck is “the DIS/Modic Computer/GT1?” Is it a chip in my electronic key, or a device at the shop?

I’m not sure I really care – but do appreciate the fact that BMW maintains a log of fault codes that helps them determine what aspects of my car need servicing.

Improving the Execution

The visual design of the email has a nuts-and-bolts industrial feel – probably not too appealing to most women. But at least the designer didn’t fall into the trap of using pink.

If BMW is going to take this women-only tech clinic tactic to other markets, they should rethink their execution. Among other things it might be a good idea for their brand team to work with the field marketing team on a visual language that’s true to the BMW brand while being more compelling to women if we’re the primary audience…

They also missed the opportunity for women to reply with a “good idea, but I have a schedule conflict. Can I go at a later date?”

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With its most recent release, QuickBooks Pro 2010, Intuit has convinced me they’ve decided to walk away from their origins as a customer-focused software provider. They used to be a shining example of customer centricity, and now they strike me as having adopted the persona of a me-centered teenager.

Bloatware?

QuickBooks in the early days was a great example of function drives form: like an entry-level BMW, it did what it was designed to do really well, without a lot of frills. And like a 3-series Beamer, it used to offer good handling and very nice performance.

Nowadays (much like current 3-series BMWs) QuickBooks feels sluggish, bloated – perhaps designed by committee or product managers overly incented by up-sell revenues. (More on that shortly.) The UI has gotten encrusted with features, and the snappy performance disappeared years ago.

For Whose Benefit?

I was peeved at having to buy the 2010 version, just to run my accounting system on an upgraded PC with Windows 7. From my research the feature delta between 2008 and 2010 not worth the upgrade price, at least for my business. But this was clearly a case of planned obsolescence, to drive their revenue engine, so I ordered the upgrade.

Starting from the perspective of a reluctant upgrader, now I’m really  annoyed — by the multiple ways in which Intuit signals that it no longer cares to invest in processes that learn from customer interactions. As a result they waste my time on processes that benefit them, but not my business.

Since my upgrade a few days ago, I’ve found QuickBooks and the customer experience delivered by Intuit to be on a downward glide path from their previous quality standards. It took several attempts to install without crashing on my high-end Vista PC. The installer’s UI was unreadable at times, so it was not clear when or what to click. After an hour of gnashing my teeth, I finally managed to get the software installed properly.

What’s Wrong with Their CRM?

And then there’s the fairly lengthy registration process. I’ve been a customer for more than a decade, but they still ask the same questions every time I register online – despite the fact they’ve clearly saved my profile in a CRM record somewhere (based on comments from their rep).

Before you can complete the registration process, of course, there’s the dreaded call to a customer service agent to get a “validation code” in order to activate the software. What with hold times and the questions they have to ask, that process took 2 tries and about 10 minutes total. (I gave up the first time: on hold for 4+ minutes with no feedback from their phone system as to whether my call had been disconnected, or was in a queue.)

Annoyingly, the rep asked several questions that I’d previously answered moments before via the registration form. His system was slow so it took him almost 5 minutes to supply the validation code to activate the software. (He was quite embarrassed at our mutual wait.)

To his chagrin and my dismay, QuickBook’s UI on my PC did not work as expected, so we were unable to verify that the activation code was actually installed properly. (So far, so good, but I may discover next week that I have to repeat the validation interaction with a CSR.)

I find myself wondering, why can’t they just complete the activation process electronically, the way everyone else does? There’s no value to the customer in the phone-based process – it simply exposes us to more unwanted service pitches. It’s not a constructive use of our time, although I understand why Intuit wants to put us through this.

Is It Bloatware – or Ad-Ware?

One of the most annoying things about their recent product releases is the way they lard the UI with links to online services they want to pitch you. There’s no obvious cue in the UI (by design, no doubt) to tell you which of the icons on your display represent features already installed, and which are simply “up-sell links.” I can tell it’s going to take a while to learn which icons or screen real estate to avoid…

Today I was forced into an online “wizard interaction” to decline services I’ve declined twice already this week (via the registration process and the rep). What is wrong with these guys?

I already hated the fact that my prior 2008 version would repeatedly try to up-sell me features I’d previously declined – sometimes more than once a quarter. How many times do I have to say no before they stop asking? It looks like this behavior has continued into the 2010 version.

Besides what it implies about Intuit’s unbridled commercialism, what’s so infuriating about these embedded ads is that they interrupt the user’s concentration and workflow. There’s no way to turn them off. They distract us from our task focus. We’re doing our accounting because we have to, not because we love spending our time here.

It appears that Intuit has decided to treat the QuickBooks customer experience as if we had agreed to operate under an “ad-supported” content model. And yet we customers are paying fairly hefty fees to upgrade.

We’re operating under a paid-for content model, so they should stop their “interruption advertising” behavior and let us focus on getting our accounting done, with as few interruptions or distractions as possible.

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Right now the tool is in the fun and exploratory phase, but it offers food for thought. Have you ever wondered what your digital fingerprints might look like, if there were a way to represent them?

For example, here’s an expression of the digital persona for Christine Thompson (courtesy of Aaron Zinman of MIT Media Lab):

This visualization conveys the impression that there are many facets to Christine Thompson – too many to be credible, or relevant to me. The specific facets of the persona shown here result from limitations in this beta-stage tool, which casts too wide a net.

Why? The digital persona shown above is actually a composite of the many people who share the name “Christine Thompson.” This composite set of impressions becomes very clear when you watch the data mining process in action (assuming your name is not unique to you). It’s amusing to see references to many other people who share your name, if not your persona.

The persona looks a bit different when further qualified by the name of my consulting firm:

But this representation is still not accurate, due to the relative importance of news and music as key dimensions of this fictitious persona. Because I’m neither musical nor newsworthy, this must be a consequence of my firm’s use of common English words in the company name.

I wish there were a way to calibrate and focus what drives MIT’s data mining persona tool. If results were more accurate, it might be interesting to track progress over time to changes in your digital persona. These changes might reflect shifts in the relative importance of key aspects of your online persona, based on the footprints you leave through blogs, product reviews,  newsworthy activities, online comments, tweets, what other people say about you, and so on.

But for now, it’s just amusing.

Source (Creative Commons license):

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