The Smelly Bill

Puget Sound Energy has a very creative campaign called "Stinky Bill". The aim of this campaign is to raise safety awareness of natural gas by teaching customers to recognize the smell of gas. A brochure that includes a scratch-and-sniff circle is included in the customer's monthly bill. This campaign nicely illustrates the coproduction experience elements of Expertise and Access:Nuance (using the sense of smell to develop customer performance).

Guitar Pee

Several years ago I posted a blog article regarding the urinals at the Amsterdam airport in which they silk-screened an image of a fly. The purpose was to enhance the co-creation of value - to eliminate the mess men made when they had bad aim. It worked - guys aimed for the fly and no more mess.

Now, it has gone one step further. Guitar Pee is a urinal that plays, records, and posts online the music you make when you pee. Appears to be first installed in Brazil. Visit www.guitarpee.com to see a video of how it all works.

Don't Get Run Over!

One of my students posted this image to our online discussion about the Vision and Access components of the Coproduction Experience Model. It was taken on a street in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It appears that if you want to more safely cross the street, you grab a flag, start walking and waving it like crazy, and then place it in the flag hanger on the other side of the street. Not sure of its effectiveness, but it sure has a lot of customer performance elements.

Okay, can't resist. I can easily see pranksters turning this flag thing into something like Monty Python's "The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights."

You know you have a customer performance issue when...

Your customers have to post a video online that explains how to complete a task with your product. One of my students turned me on to this. http://screencast.com/t/g4jyZMOPTZwg. Enjoy!

All My Cars Are Old - And I'm Not Baffled

All of the cars in my family are 1998-2001 models. And they are wonderful because they all lack one key feature: the crazy array of dashboard electronics now found in today's cars.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, car owners are so baffled by "proliferating dashboard electronics" that automakers like GM have had to beef up call centers to support customers. Call centers have even gone so far as to install a dashboard simulator in the call center to customer service reps can sit in a simulated car while they are talking with the customer so they can better explain how to use certain features. The photograph below illustrates this.

Over the past 15 years we've suggested (and developed) similar kinds of resources and simulators. One was for a scientific instrument that analyzed DNA. We provided call center representatives a simulator of the user interface so they could navigate the product along with the customer. Same thing with our utility clients, strongly suggesting that functioning simulators of in-home energy displays were available in the call center so that reps could provide better customer support.

So, while one can applaud GM on providing great resources to their call center representatives so they can better help customers perform, it still doesn't get around the interface issues that are the root cause of the customer performance problem in the first place.

While our family might not have the nicest looking cars on the block, we certainly aren't baffled by them.