Flickr sucks (kinda)

Don’t get me wrong – Flickr is a great service. They have done some really cool and innovative things. Their pro account is the best deal out there if you want to put up your photos on-line, either for sharing or as a backup/storage option. Recently however, there have been some kinks in my user experience.

It all started out as partly my fault. One day, I cancelled my pro account only to learn later that Flickr does not refund you the balance of your fees. Nowhere is this stated during the cancellation flow. Only the user boards talk about this and I see that others have also been bitten by this in the past. This apart, why can’t they refund the balance fees? Its fairly standard practice on the part of all service providers. The good thing was that after contacting their service folks (via email of course, which sane company these days wastes money on providing a phone number to its paying customers?), they offered to restore the pro-ness of my account. My photos were gone of course, but I knew that up front and so can live with it. This was followed by a series of me filing more of their service tickets, since they simply don’t reply to your emails on the original tickets. File a ticket, expect a single response and that’s it. I had to include the previous emails in my tickets to get a response from them.

On the positive side, they are offering to give me back the pro account. On the (significantly) negative side, this customer service experience has left a sour taste in my mouth, and I’m not sure if I want it anyways.

And while I’m on the topic and ranting, in Flickr why is it so difficult to delete photos quickly or to sort uploaded photos in the “Date Taken” order? In some ways, its a very cool service but in other ways it frustrates the heck out of me. I don’t expect anything out a free service, but if I pay then dammit, I have a right to expect good customer service.

Lessons?

• Give users the information they need
• Users will judge you through your customer service. Give it as much importance as a revenue generating product.
  
• User goodwill is an intangible revenue

UPDATE: After more than a month, Flickr did reinstate my pro account. My criticisms of their service and features still stands though.

What is my innovation strategy?

I attended an excellent strategy session today by John Metcalfe on Innovation (how do I innovate and market in an increasingly commoditizing marketplace) and Management (how do I manage innovation?). This was particularly interesting since I’ve been recently involved in some efforts and initiatives to innovate on our product offerings.

Here are my notes from his talk:

• Darwin (survival of the fittest) is at work in the industry. Hence, differentiate or get marginalized.
• Over time, factors that differentiate your product become commoditized, either due to your success or the collective success of your industry.
• Innovation is key to differentiation and a competitive advantage.
• “Best in class” is over-hyped

Return on Innovation

• Innovate to achieve competitive separation and distinction
• Identify your
  • core – products, processes that enable your factors of differentiation. Re-engineer everything to enhance your core
  • context – everything else
• Know why you’re innovating – classify each initiative to aim to meet one of the following innovation goals: Differentiation, Neutralization, Productivity, Failed attempts, Waste

Innovation Strategy

• The strategy to adopt depends on the product maturity life-cycle. New products need product innovation. Mature products may need process innovation (operational excellence and/or customer intimacy). Products close to end-of-life need renewal innovation.
• Examples of innovation types include – eBay (disruptive), Apple (design), Nike (marketing), SAP (integration), IBM (renewal).
• This was really eye opening to see that innovation is not limited to product/engineering; it can and should happen in all areas of a company.
• Over-invest and over-perform on core factors

Funding Innovation

• Core becomes context over time. Resources and priorities within the organization tend to get focused on context
• Need to identify and extract resources from context to re-purpose them for core

Perpetuating Innovation

•  As a manager learn to identify the innovators, deployers and optimizers in your people. Put them in the appropriate tasks.
• Focus on role expertise (long term benefits) vs. task expertise (short term benefits).

• Use the innovation matrix to determine priorities and resource allocation

  

All in all, a lot of food for thought.