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Seth said on his blog that “no one reads anymore.” Maybe he should stop writing books, then?

Excuse me for not worshiping him.

Seth and Mark sound very academic to me.

Just my 2 cents.

I think Google’s weakness will be their attempt to hire “the best”.

Perhaps a few non-zoomers around the office might help show a different perspective on things, before they die of group think in the style Microsoft made famous?

People are much more than their ability to get with the times.

Doesn’t it seem weird that good execution keeps coming up? It seems so basic, yet it’s such a problem. How can this be? Are we all just so worried about the sexy that we’ve been skipping out on the basics?

This chat has inspired me to take a good look at what we’re doing with our little business and see how we can improve the experience and tighten our execution. Seth is always a great read. I really need to buy the rest of his books.

bottom line, its about what profit vs what companies can get away with. so if we as consumers tolerate poor service, we’ll be shoved it every day.

and guess what, the bulk of consumer population today shops primarily on price. we are the fatwallet generation.

and good customer service isnt free nor is it cheap.

not that i agree with it, not that i wish it wasnt so. but thats what it is.

the good news, i think (i hope!) the tide is turning. and lets give credit where its due, the 37s are playing a healthy part in this process.

so thank you, please keep it up!

Jason Google could go private. I actually think we’ll see more companies making that move over the next 10 years.

Couldn’t agree more, at least I hope more companies go private. Or at least have more Berkshire Hathaway’s out there, not conglomerates, but capital allocators. Not every company that wants to gain access to public markets needs to go public alone, why not have the capital allocation part be optimized for a group of companies at central level, and have the companies focus purely on operating better.

I continue to believe the reason more bars aren’t raised is because people don’t think it’s sexy to execute on the basics beautifully.

While I don’t like paying for insurance, but USAA has the absolute best phone service of any company I’ve ever dealt with. I called them at the wrong number, got transferred, told them I moved, dropped a policy, and transitioned another one in a total of 15 minutes. Every other time I’ve called them has been 5 minutes tops including strange requests like what my driver’s license number was two states ago. I only give them my account info once and the only additional info I have to supply is the ID check when I get transferred, which I’m fine with.

Why can’t my internet and cell phone providers do that?

If I had to close this thing with one message to the 37s reader who is reading at work when she should be reading, and who is busy blaming her boss for the low bar and lousy service and the Dilbert world she lives in, it would be this:

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY ! If there’s a problem, fix it. If your job can’t be fixed, quit. How dare you waste your life in exchange for a paycheck. You have high speed internet access, bub, you’ve got no excuse. You don’t live a hovel in Ghana. Go do it!! Pick up the phone and call someone.

I’d like to point out to Seth that this is a lot harder than it sounds, and it has a lot more to do with luck than anything else.

I’m in this position for the third time. My job can’t be fixed: the customer-facing execution is the last thing any manager cares about, and not only is there no support for improving it, there’s active resistance. It’s obviously the cause of the company’s problems, but rather than fix it, upper management tries ideas in a shotgun approach, firing off a dozen initiatives in the direction that they think the problem is, and well, you can’t hit the broad side of the barn if you’re aiming at the fence.

The problem is, I’ve known about this for more than six months, and I’ve been applying for other jobs in that time. (I knew about during the interview, to be honest, but I needed those paychecks, and I had hope that I could improve the system, as it’s a small company.) I don’t want to move somewhere that I can tell will be just as bad; I don’t want to move somewhere that won’t be there within six months. And the number of companies that are willing to hire remote workers is vanishingly small. To be sure, they’re some of the ones I’d want to work for most, but I’m probably not even aware of 9/10 of them.

Finally, I’ve thought about starting my own business, but in a phrase, I’m a task-focused introvert, and that was what killed my last attempt at starting a business. I have all the technical skills to get the job done, and even the social and communication skills to interact with management, but I am horrifically bad at rainmaking, and my attempts at drumming up business mitigated my burn rate, but after six months it was clear that the business was not likely to be sustainable.

I don’t think there are any simple solutions; this is just a vent/rant. I’d like very much to take responsibility, but if I try to fight the system here, I wind up burning out (which is pretty much the state I’m in, as you can probably tell); if I try to find a system I can work within, the search comes up empty; and if I try to go it on my own, I wind up bankrupt.

I’ve wondered about the cell phone companies for a while now. Not only are they hard to deal with, but their service usually ends up sucking.

I hate having my calls dropped. Not because I’m so important, but because its annoying. While I’m amazed at the idea of the cell phone and how well it works, I’m more amazed that some company hasn’t found a better way to address this. It seems like one of them should step up and say, ok every network has dropped calls. We realize this, so if you get disconnected, and redial the call within X number of seconds, you will get rebated the minutes of the first call. That may not be the exact answer, but it seems like someone would take it on. Instead, we all sit and take it. How would we feel if periodically, driving down the road, our engine would start and stop? Or worse, we take it in to get it repaired, only to continually have the same issues?

The contracts are another issue as well as just general customer support. I hate that the solution to fixing my broken phone I bought new, with a refurbished phone is just annoying. Give me a new sexy phone of equal value and don’t make me buy the lame equipment insurance to do it.