Category Archives: Business stuff

I commute to San Francisco a few days a week, using Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor line from Davis to Emeryville, then the Amtrak bus connection to San Francisco that stops a block from my office. Wednesday was a normal commuting day, except that I had my carry-on suitcase in tow, as I was flying from SFO that night for a two-day business trip. I almost forgot the suitcase on the train in Emeryville, only remembering it because I happened to select the door to the left of my seat which led me past the storage shelf where I left it when I boarded in Davis. Whew… Crisis avoided.

After I disembarking the train in Emeryville and boarding the San Francisco-bound commuter bus, I placed the suitcase across from my seat in an open space.

Well, I think you know where this is going by now…

Here’s play-by-play of my story retrieving the suitcase after I left it on the commuter bus. Plenty of customer service lessons here from a company that clearly hasn’t thought through “Customer Service” from the perspective of the customer. I have praised Amtrak in the past, most recently during the BART strike in October:

In the end, my suitcase was found and left at a spot where I could easily retrieve it. It only took me 11 phone calls and 46 minutes of phone time over 66 minutes to reach that conclusion. Too frustrating. Should have been 1-2 calls. Most of the frustration was due to a lack of communication system interoperability within Amtrak and how the front line Amtrak agents communicate with customers. Once I reached the back office operations team, the problem was resolved quickly. Getting to them took persistence. A customer should not feel that they put in all the work to resolve an issue.

This was my mistake – I’m the one that left my suitcase on the bus. I just can’t believe that I’m the only person that’s ever done this.

Here’s my phone log of the entire escapade:

Here’s the play-by-play:

7:40 – Disembarked Amtrak Bus #3323 at the corner of 9th and Market Street.

7:48 – Sat down at my desk and realized that I left my suitcase on the bus. I initially think this is a nuisance but one that should get figured out pretty quickly considering the proximity to the bus line that runs every hour near my office.

I thought this would be resolved by 1) called Amtrak Customer Service, 2) having them contact the bus driver via dispatch, 3a) ask the driver to either hold the bag for the next loop around and I would retrieve the bag or 3b) take it to Emeryville where I could retrieve from there. I expected 3a to be an acceptable and realistic outcome.

7:49 – Called the Amtrak Capitol Corridor line at (800) 872-7245. The recording told me – “Thank you for calling Amtrak Capitol Corridor. Our office hours are from 8am to 5pm, Monday through Friday…” Now I’m annoyed that I need to wait another 11 minutes and the bus is moving along on its route.

7:50 – Called Amtrak main line reservations line and after six minutes on hold, I talked to a reservations agent that told me that the main Amtrak reservation system was not connected to the Amtrak Capitol Corridor system, and that I’d have to wait to contact Capitol Corridor (CC) when they opened at 8am.

8:00 – Called Amtrak CC line and spoke to Alexis. She told me that there was no way for reservations to contact dispatch at the Emeryville station. I asked if there was a phone number for the Emeryville station. “I know that the drivers are constantly in touch with the station. If we called the station, they could radio to the driver.” She replied – “ No, there is no phone number for that station. We don’t have anyway of contacting them.”

To reiterate, the reservations team is in Oakland, the next town over from Emeryville, and there’s no way to contact that station.

Instead, the agent told me that she could connect me to Customer Service “upstairs” at (510) 464-6995, which I learned after asking, is in the same building as her in Oakland.

I explained to her – well actually, I begged her – “Please understand – I am flying from SFO tonight for a business trip and I really need to have my suitcase. I’m sure you can appreciate this situation.” She told me – “There’s nothing we can do” and asked if I’d like to speak with a supervisor. I declined the invitation and asked her to transfer me to Customer Service.

I was greeted with a voicemail message – “If you’d like to leave a comment, please leave a message.” The recording also offered the Amtrak Lost and Found number in Sacramento. I didn’t leave a message.

8:13 – Left VM on the Lost & Found line. Their recording indicated that all goods found on Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor train would be delivered to Lost & Found in Sacramento. Now I’m really starting to worry that my bag will filter there for no other reason that I’m not able to speak with someone to stop it.

8:16 – Called back to Capitol Corridor reservations line and spoke to another agent. She also said the reservations could not contact stations or dispatch, and suggested that I talk to Customer Service. I explained that I had left a message with Lost & Found, and that time was an issue. She transferred me to Customer Service, where I was greeted with the same recording. I left a message this time.

8:37 – Posted a request to Twitter:

8:40 – I realized another bus would be coming around for next round of commuters a block away very soon. I checked online and saw the next drop off time was scheduled for 8:55am. I walked outside, crossed street and saw the Amtrak bus already pulling over a block away. It was ahead of schedule.

I took off at full sprint and caught the bus driver. I explained my issue and to please call dispatch. He said he would and had to keep motoring along to make his next stops. I headed back to office.

8:43 – I called into the Customer Service line again and Georgeanne answered. A real live human!! Told her my issues and she quickly transferred me to Hubrit Harrington (sp?) in Operations. He took my info and said he would call me right back after contacting Compass Transportation, which is the outside company Amtrak Capitol Corridor contracts for the bus service.

8:50 – Hubrit called back and said Compass would contact me. I asked Hubrit if I could call him back with questions. He said he would be there until 11am, and if I needed to call after, to call back to Customer Service line and ask for Tamika White.

8:52 – Andrew from Compass called me to tell me that the bag has been found and would be left at Amtrak ticket office at the Ferry Building. He gave me his personal cell phone number in case I had any questions.

8:54 – I called Hubrit back to thank him for his help.

9:46 – My awesome wife saw my Twitter post on Facebook. She found the phone number for the Emeryville station that supposedly did not exist: 510-450-1080. Fortunately I didn’t need the number at this point.

11:49 – Ordered an Uberx for a ride to Ferry Building and back.

12:19 – Back at the office with my bag.

Phone numbers: Amtrak Capitol Corridor in Oakland: (510) 464-6995Amtrak Emeryville Station: (510) 450-1080

Captain’s Log: Friday, November 22, 2003. 4:16pm.

Location: Cloud Forest Cafe, where all non-office SalesQualia productivity takes place

Report: We launched our “Startup Selling” course late on Saturday, and had a small flurry of sign-ups on Sunday and Monday. We flattened out around 25 users after the initial posting, then on Thursday the rocket ship took off.

Email after email came in – “____ just joined your Startup Selling Udemy course.” We couldn’t figure it out. Well, turns out someone posted a link to the course on a forum, which has been driving traffic to us ever since. We’re now north of 225 users and climbing.

I spent the afternoon sending out a few more invitations to friends and colleagues, with lots more to go on this front. We’ve also earned two reviews.

Udemy sent us a list of updates to make – relatively minor (from their perspective) – such as cleaning up the audio and adding better images. Yes, the course is under constant improvement.

Comments on the Team: Robert “The Man With No Title” Wharton is a beast. He’s been handling all of the technical issues like a champ. From Robert earlier today:

Subject: Finished Sound Editing!!

Robert Wharton
1:51 PM (2 hours ago)

to me
The subject line says it all!!! Don’t take this personally, but I’m really tired of listening to you… All I have to do now is finish exporting all of the revamped videos and then upload them to Udemy.

I’m almost finished with all of the lecture descriptions as well and will then create a new cover photo.

Hurrah!

He even updated his LinkedIn profile. We are in rock-and-roll mode right now.

Next Steps: Udemy will post to it’s public forum after the updates, then it’s off to the races to hit 1000 users.

Current State: Happily tired. Relieved that the course is taking off. Satisfied with our progress. A little surprised by how much we’ve accomplished this week, and over the last four weeks.

I clicked “Publish” on our Startup Selling Udemy course last night.

Then I emailed all of the people prepaid and preregistered for the course via our numerous landing page campaigns this week.

This morning, I already started updating and revising the course. It’s now 12noon, and we have our first two completely random people join the class. Cool. I sure hope it’s good.  So many more ideas – ways to improve, more work to do, paranoia that it’s too long, too complicated, not complete enough, that the video angles should be better, that I should have included quiz questions, that I should have presold more, that I should have set up better marketing channels, and …, and …, and …

Time to start learning – both for the course takers and me.

Life coach
Western day
Concierge@sq.com
Culture names
License plate after a year
Culture book – employee generated. Like a year book. Core values after books written.
6pm.com
Un-Wow
Vending machines are .25 each and $ goes to charity of the quarter
Fred is the No Title Guy
All employees take 8 hours of phone service time.
Personal service levels monitors performance – call reviews once a month. 85% is minimum. Rating based on Connection and Accuracy. 80-85% call time of total work time.
Resource desk is customer service to customer service. “The Pirate Team”
Shift bids every six months.
Open 24 hours
Zapponians.
Accountabilabuddy
Get Off Your Butt Sean Stevenson
$2000 offer to quit
Monkey Room. No Executives.
Time Ninjas.

[Big thanks to Tim Rosenblatt for his time.]

Semiotics. Symbology.

Blech. I’m almost out in front of my skis. But not quite. 🙂

Lots of little details with finishing our website redesign, like having to log a case with Salesforce asking why we’re getting an error from Gravity Forms because of API access (or lack thereof) with my Salesforce account. I’m going to be really pissed if I have to upgrade my Salesforce account to the next subscription type just to use this one form. Really pissed.

We’re working through the final production steps of the sales class, and much like moving out of an apartment, the last 20% is going to take 80% of the time and focus. We’re still in the early stages of marketing the class, and I’m feeling like I should have started this process weeks ago, which I did with the website work which is taking weeks longer than it should have.

Learning many, many things from customer development interviews. Had five calls yesterday, and another ten scheduled for the week. Overall, we’re indeed on the right track though I’m feeling the need to make some changes that I really don’t want to change given the timing. I want this class launched by mid-November and we have seven real weeks of selling time left in 2013. Seven. In between there’s Dreamforce and The Lean Startup Conference, both of which are prime guerilla marketing opportunities.

Today is a focused day with our big advisory client after an early morning customer development coffee meeting. Up at 4am to catch the 4:45am train to San Francisco where I’ll be all day. Tomorrow I leave for Las Vegas in the afternoon for a workshop on Thursday.

Tick, tick, tick…

This has been a product development and marketing week since returning from the big industry conference on Tuesday night. Did some more filming for our Udemy course, and frankly, I was mentally drained. Took us 10+ takes on each of two segments to plow through. The good news is that we’re nearly done the course content.

Had a wonderful call with a couple of friends helping out on the digital marketing side. Tons of experience and willing to help me out pro bono.

Then started the march to customer development and pre-selling the course. I spent the day in LinkedIn on Thursday, hammering out emails and InMails. I’m 4/6 on cold outbound emails/InMails. (More on this at the SalesQualia blog when the site goes live). Set up 15 appointments next week. Woohoo! Let the march commence.

Spent today hammering through final website edits. Well, I say “final” when I should say – “final enough to go live.” Going with the 80% is done rule on this.

Had a good call with our biggest opportunity in development for our advisory client yesterday, and another set for today. We’re motoring along. Never quite finished, and that’s okay. Celebrate the progress because we’re only comparing ourselves to ourselves.