George Favvas

Almost as interesting as the launch of Yahoo!’s Pipes service — which lets users create their own feeds by combining and processing multiple RSS feeds – is the way in which the project came about. A quick look at the Pipes site and it’s easy to miss the association with Yahoo! The site uses Yahoo! accounts for user management, and sports a tiny “this is Yahoo!” icon at the bottom of the home page, but otherwise does not fit the typical model of what a Yahoo! property looks like, what is does, nor how it integrates with its Yahoo! siblings.

The major web properties have a history of maintaining distinct brands for popular web properties. Yahoo’s Flickr and Google’s Youtube are prime examples. But these are all properties which were launched independantly and managed to build strong brand awareness before being acquired by their parent.

Pipes, on the other hand, is a Yahoo! baby from the start. It was incubated within Yahoo!’s new Brickhouse division, physically located away from the Yahoo! campus, where teams are given more freedom to think outside the box and experiment.

An article by BusinessWeek, points out how Yahoo! has acknowledged the risks that come with being big:

Yahoo’s brand is another challenge. People associate the company and its trademark yodel with one of the Web’s prime destinations for mail, news, entertainment, and search. But Yahoo’s status as an established, family-oriented, commercial brand can turn away some cutting-edge users.

The article goes on to state that Yahoo! plans to launch additional products off-brand.

Google is known for allowing their staff to spend 20% of their time on personal projects, but the projects that even see the light tend often languish on the Google Labs page.

Yahoo!, on the other hand, is demonstrating a real commitment to allowing innovation to not only take place internally, but also to launch. They are getting edgier and taking more risks. They’re getting traction with new uses of community and social networking concepts — witness the early popularity of Yahoo! Answers, launched as as Google pulled the plug on its equivalent. In short, they are being entrepreneurial. This is great news for Yahoo! and entrepreneurs everywhere who can take a page from their book. Where they go from here will be fun to watch.

Tags: Yahoo, Yahoo Pipes, Brickhouse, Entrepreneurship, Flickr, Youtube, RSS, Yahoo Answers, Google, Google Answers

Few people I know would disagree that Bell Canada has just about the worse customer service they have ever encountered. 

As a subscriber to their DSL service several years ago, I tried to return a defective DSL modem they had supplied me with. She went through insisted her little decision tree, which eventually concluded that the problem was either with their modem or my network card.

The only way to exonerate my network card was by running a utility she supplied, but which was not compatible with my system’s configuration. I knew the modem was the problem, because I tried a friend’s and it worked perfectly with my setup. I told the Bell customer support agent this.

It was to no avail. I tried to explain to her the logic of what I was telling her, but she wouldn’t sway from her script and pre-planned decision steps, before finally getting angry and me, blurting out:

- Sir, do you want me to get fired for helping you?

Suddenly, it all made sense. If you work for Bell Canada, you shouldn’t help your customers, lest you risk getting fired. 

So figure how surprised I was when my mother received a card from Bell after dumping them as her local telco. How thoughtful that a company the size of Bell Canada would take the time to send a cute little card to tell their customers “it was better with you here.” This, after she made it very clear to their telemarketers that she was not interested in returning to their service. Here’s a scan of the front and inside of the card:

In case some of you don’t get the message Bell is trying to send, here’s a rewrite, in plainer English, of their text:

It was better before deregulation.

Dear [xxx],

I’m writing to say that we are sorry to have lost our monopoly position in the market. Even though greater choice, lower prices and better service are driving millions of Canadians away from us, there’s still a sucker born every minute.

Unfortunately, since you asked not to be contacted again, we have to wait three months before resuming our harassing calls to you. We’re counting down the days because we’d rather spend time harassing disatisfied customers than figuring out how to actually provide a service that people want.

Tags: Bell Canada, Bell, marketing, telemarketing, permission marketing