I'm on Twitter and I love it. I love it because of the multi-threaded, real time social networking it provides me. I love it because of the opportunity to build new relationships with folks such as Sam Lawrence or Gia Lyons or David Armano or Erin Kotecki... I also believe in the customer experience a tool like Twitter provides. It has multiple easy to use interfaces - that's a good customer experience, heck that's a great customer experience. I like the extensibility of Twitter, the fact that an ecosystem of tools and related Mashups have sprung up to enhance the overall experience... There is one major problem with the experience tho and you all know what it is - the Twitter dial tone is frequently absent. And there's talk of the Twitterati moving to FriendFeed... why?
Inconsistency is a death knell to any customer experience.
Folks like you and me have expectations... for just about everything. How will our favorite restaurant be tonite? How much traffic will there be on the roads? How will our car drive? And how much uptime to expect from our online services? Everyone has expectations. Those expectations get set from our total experience with a service or product. And when expectations are not met, over time they fall below an internal threshold (which only you know what that is) we seek alternatives, in everything in life, everything. Twitter's downtime issues are no different, its users/customers have expectations around ease of use, portability, extensibility and availability. Each of these affect the customer experience to more or lesser degrees but availability is a biggy! Twitter is an incredibly sticky tool not only because of its ease of use, portatbility and extensibility but because of the human networks that develop on Twitter - because of the relationships that are there. But not even these great elements of a customer experience can withstand having our expectation threshold blown. Once doubt is sown, once expectations are missed, trust is blown.
Once trust is blown it doesn't matter if Twitter fixes its availability issues in a week or a year. Its already lost the opportunity it currently has. One might say, its already lost that opportunity for good. Time will tell.
Inconsistency is a death knell to any customer experience.
Folks like you and me have expectations... for just about everything. How will our favorite restaurant be tonite? How much traffic will there be on the roads? How will our car drive? And how much uptime to expect from our online services? Everyone has expectations. Those expectations get set from our total experience with a service or product. And when expectations are not met, over time they fall below an internal threshold (which only you know what that is) we seek alternatives, in everything in life, everything. Twitter's downtime issues are no different, its users/customers have expectations around ease of use, portability, extensibility and availability. Each of these affect the customer experience to more or lesser degrees but availability is a biggy! Twitter is an incredibly sticky tool not only because of its ease of use, portatbility and extensibility but because of the human networks that develop on Twitter - because of the relationships that are there. But not even these great elements of a customer experience can withstand having our expectation threshold blown. Once doubt is sown, once expectations are missed, trust is blown.
Once trust is blown it doesn't matter if Twitter fixes its availability issues in a week or a year. Its already lost the opportunity it currently has. One might say, its already lost that opportunity for good. Time will tell.
Great insights into some of the personal economics of this situation. It's not always about 'ugly' (ala. Amazon Kindle http://twurl.nl/htk6hj) or challenges with the experience. But it IS about equal choice. So far, no one has provided the core value that Twitter does (and the 'invested equity' for so many).
At the core, it's always about the economics. We need more practitioners who embrace economic thinking (http://twurl.nl/1gj8ik older edition, used just as good -- I learned the principles from the first or second edition)
Posted by: Paula Thornton | July 25, 2008 at 02:39 PM
Paula... i agree re: economic thinkers, unfortunately, not many folks are schooled let alone comfortable in thinking along those lines, at least thats my humble opinion. I know it took me years before i was comfortable thinking in that domanin, let alone becoming good at it, which I consider myself.
Its a shame and you raise a point that exposes deeper issues within our society eh?
Posted by: Steve | July 25, 2008 at 05:23 PM
Moreso, they've got the infrastructure in place. My bet is on others who take it further (ala. Tweenky http://twurl.nl/cwaqjr).
Posted by: Paula Thornton | July 25, 2008 at 05:31 PM
Hate the name, like the service, like the Hebrew support :)
Posted by: Steve | July 25, 2008 at 05:59 PM