Amazon kindle’s PPQ - A Personal Vendetta!

(If you are reading this, please post a link on your FB page or tweet it out when you’re done. You’ll understand why by the time you finish reading. – Thank You)

Product quality, more than innovation, is the cornerstone of any successful product and business. Without it, no matter how innovative or convenient the products might be, they ultimately end up being a major inconvenience for the end-user. This is a real life story of bad quality and its real life repercussions (with a bit of humor between the lines).

Even though in the past I misjudged Apples iPad calling it a super-sized iPod (I had never seen, much less touched, one when I wrote about it), I can definitely say I had to eat my words. The iPad is convenient, fun to use, and yes, RELIABLE! The Amazon kindle (yes, it does not deserve a capital ‘k’), well that’s a different story.

As I write this, I have now experienced my third kindle failure. All three failed the same way; the screen froze and became unreadable (see Picture). The first one was a gift my son received and we never purchased a cover for it. It quickly became a highly convenient item since we were able to add some of his school books on there. When the screen went bad I assumed that he mishandled it (i.e.: something impacted the screen, although I found it was odd that there was no surface impact marks).

Assuming my son had damaged it we decided to purchase another kindle (#2) for my son. Months later we learned that we could get a replacement for the original damaged kindle, so we got #3 (which we kept in a drawer… my wife didn’t need it since she already had an iPad). We got leather hardback covers for both to make sure they wouldn’t meet the same fate as the first. However it was all in vain, because of the kindle’s PPQ. Last week my son came home with k#2 experiencing the same screen failure as k#1. He was scolded (like with K#1) for not taking care of it. Because of the convenience (his class was currently reading Lemony Snicket’s a Series of Unfortunate Events – can’t help but laugh at the irony) we gave him k#3. Yesterday, less than a week after the k#2 incident, he came home (visibly upset) because k#3 had failed.

At this point my blood was boiling! Not only did kindle’s PPQ provide for a third failure (exact same failure mode), but for two of those I unjustly put the blame on my son. Not this time though! This time it would become personal! The Piss-Poor-Quality of the kindle had gotten to me! (yes, as global electronic manufacturers strive to achieve 6-sigma quality, it looks like the folks at amazon have found a way to invert the equation!)

My initial reaction was to tweet about it to see if there was any kind of response from customer service. After all, knowing the kind of damage Twitter can do to an image, I thought they would quickly try to put out the ‘kindle’ (hahaha, ok, admit it -- that is funny)

-          @amazon our 3rd kindle (Keyboard) has now died. All three suffered the same fate. Garbled screen. POS quality. Want my money back!

-          @AmazonKindle 3rd kindle (Keyboard) has now died. All three suffered the same fate. Garbled screen. POS. Want money back!

-          @AmazonKindle Horrible quality! My 3rd just died of garbled screen syndrome. Don't want replacement, just money back!

I sent a total of three messages on my (500+ follower account) and none received a response from amazon (yes, that’s a lower case ‘a’ )! WOW, I could not believe it!

I called customer support this morning (or their late-evening… since their accent put them somewhere on the dark side of the earth) and the comedy continued. Because of the time windows when these units were purchased, they could refund k#3, but they could only replace k#2 … (I really don’t feel like going through k#4’s failure.) I pleaded with them that after putting me through 3 failures they should either refund both units or at least replace k#2 with a kindle fire (just to try it out - after all, it’s a completely different unit manufactured at a completely different facility.) The best they could offer was to return k#4 for a refund or exchange it for a kindle fire (plus $60) after I received it… (at this point the whole ordeal was turning into many trips to the post office, and I’m sure amazon will not pay for the gas!) They kept denying me the options I had proposed so I proceeded to warn them of the Twitter Fire-storm I was going to ignite. After 40+ minutes on the phone, they were steadfast on their procedures (and did not head my warning), so I decided I would do as they wished… but not without first lighting some ‘Twitter-Kindle’ to start the FIRESTORM!

In conclusion, there is a clear design and/or manufacturing flaw with the kindle. After three failures, and researching the web, it is obvious that many customers have experienced this problem. Nevertheless, amazon continues to sell the ‘keyboard’ version of the kindle. To make matters worse, their customer support system seems to be geared towards getting users to ‘upgrade’ to the kindle fire… We’ll see if I can’t change that!

As an advocate of innovation and quality, I get enormous satisfaction from making things better for others.  If you too have experienced PPQ on a product, or inadequate customer support, please help spread this story via social media and unleash some “Lemony Snicket” back on amazon. This will undoubtedly either A) Make the kindles a better product, or B) make amazon exit the e-reader business, or C) get amazon to cover the gas money for the lifetime supply of defective kindles they seem all too willing to send me so that I can turn around and drive them to the post office when the screens fail.

Efficient marketing with social networks – Keeping the “sister’s-friend’s-cousin” out of the conversation.

We are all familiar with Facebook and Twitter and the ‘general’ social networking sites available to all. For businesses, organizations, and even political movements, these tools provide a method for creating brand awareness and engaging people with similar interests. However, generic sites such as Facebook and Twitter do not provide the tools necessary to focus the audience. There are too many distractions (games, photos, videos, other posts, etc) and your followers might not share the same beliefs or passion for your topic. Essentially these sites provide a shotgun approach to engaging your audience. What I mean by ‘shotgun’ is that for every topic you post, relevant to your business and organization, only a small subset of those people networked through your Facebook page or Twitter account will likely be engaged by the post… and not all will likely be ‘positive’ contributors.

Another drawback is that sometimes organizations may want to explore topics that are suited for specific people and thus are too private to discuss on public sites. Not having the ability to control who is engaged in the conversation takes away from the flexibility needed to discuss truly relevant topics. Engaging ‘irrelevant’ people into the discussion only detracts from your mission and adds noise which needs to be filtered out.

There is an alternative, nevertheless, to public social networking. Private social networks are quickly becoming the tool of preference for many organizations. The most common varieties of these are idea management systems. Depending on their setup, they allow users who share a passion for the organization to post and discuss topics regarding improvements, requirements, and innovation… all while keeping their “sister’s-friend’s-cousin” from engaging the conversation.

Dell (IdeaStorm), Adobe (Acrobat Ideas), and many organizations are using idea management software to further enhance their marketing efforts through crowdsourcing. They use them to gauge and harness their customers ideas and sentiments in order to provide better products and services. The benefit of this method is that only people interested in the organization’s products, services, or mission will engage the conversation thus eliminating the ‘noise’ factor created by out-of-topic comments by the “sister’s-friend’s-cousin”.

Innovation Management and KPIs

One of the biggest questions faced by innovation managers is how to measure success. Finding the right combination of KPIs which deliver relevant and actionable information can be difficult for the unseasoned Innovation Manager. Most organizations require a different set of data since their strategies will differ; however there are a few ‘core’ KPI that no innovation strategy must be without.

Our philosophy at INCENT is not to focus on the end result as much as the execution phase of the innovation process. Ensuring execution of your strategy will likely guarantee the end results. A good starting point in defining the KPI for your innovation strategy, (and more so if using idea management software across a vast group of users) is to measure the following items:

1) Participation
     a. The more people are engaged the likelier the chance of finding the 'diamond in the rough'.
     b. Recurring participation will indicate the team continues to be motivated to participate.
2) Idea Quality:
     a. Is your team proposing very random ideas or are they focusing on specific challenges?
     b. Are most ideas discarded? Or are they turning into actionable items?
3) Aging:
     a. If it takes too long to process an idea participants may lose interest.

If you can stay on top of these then they will ensure the other KPIs (financial gains, patents achieved, or any other end result KPI that you want to measure) show consistent progress.

FACEBOOK with substance.

From USA Today 2/16/2011.

Facebook has managed to unite people across the world and open up communication amongst humanity to a level not imaginable just a few years back. The power of Social media and social networking has unleashed a level of collective collaboration powerful enough to topple governments. As impressive as this is, the majority of Facebook’s community has remained largely engaged in chatting with friends and relying on its well tuned algorithms to connect with lost ones.

For organizations looking to harness that level of collaborative power in order to drive continuous improvement and innovation, the new breed of idea management solutions feature Facebook-like interactivity while offering secure settings and tools designed to harness their team’s collective intelligence. Teams can collaborate across desks, walls, borders and even the general public while game-mechanics help drive motivation to engage in the conversation.

Front-end tools and back-end algorithms help link talent to ideas to ensure the best ones are identified, developed and ultimately driven to implementation. Idea management systems are like Facebook… with substance.