Right, even when he's wrong

I had just finished a terrific bowl of Farro Soup at Spiga, a small Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side, when the kitchen runner appeared with the entrees for our table.

My wife got the orata. Placed in front of me was a large, cheesy, white mass of pasta--not at all what I had expected.

"What's this?" I asked the runner.

"That's the lasagna," he said.

"That's not fettucine bolognese?"

"No sir, it's lasagna."

"But I ordered the fettucine."

At this my wife piped up. "No you didn't," she said. "You ordered lasagna."

"I did?"

"You totally ordered lasagna."

"But I hate lasagna."

"Well, you ordered it."

"Why would I order lasagna?"

The runner, equal parts confused and amused, asked me if I wanted to exchange dishes.

"I don't know," I replied. "Can I? I mean, if this is what I ordered--"

"I can check, it's no problem, if you don't want this I will see."

"Okay," I said, feeling extremely guilty. "Please let the chef know it's my mistake and not yours. I'll eat the lasagna if I have to, since I guess I ordered it."

"Oh, you ordered it," my wife said.

"I think it's okay. Let me see," said the runner. He took the lasagna and disappeared into the kitchen. My wife gave me a who-are-you-and-what-did-you-do-with-my-husband look, and we waited.

Not five minutes later the runner reappeared with a piping hot plate of fettucine bolognese. I thanked him profusely.

"We're happy to do it," the runner said. "The chef said if it's busy, we might not be able to, but since it's quiet we want you to eat what you like."

The chef voluntarily took back an $18 entree for no reason other than a customer's mental error. No allergies, no spoilage, no poor preparation--just "oops, I didn't want that," corroborated laughingly, yet replaced at no additional charge, and with a smile. Several smiles, in fact, as our waiter ribbed me good-naturedly after the fettucine arrived.

In exchange, our very good meal became an outstanding one. The flavorful meal was enhanced by the excellent service. We left with a story to tell about our experience, which will encourage friends to try the restaurant for themselves. We will certainly be back.

Does your business dedicate itself to this level of customer satisfaction? What would you gain by doing so? What are you missing by not?

Web 2.0 Expo: thoughts from David

Ai technical lead David Yoon made a great compilation of Web 2.0 Expo observations, below. This wraps our conference coverage.

General points from the conference:

Technology: the conference from a technology perspective was very heavily focused on just a few topics:
-- cloud computing and the problem of scaling websites
-- next generation of browsers and bringing web applications even closer to desktop applications
-- graphics and the re-emergence of Javascript as a hugely important language

Wednesday

Lessons from Visual Programming with JavaScript: John Resig (creator of jQuery) talked about Processing.js, a new library that he created to help interact with the canvas element.

10 things we’ve learned at 37 signals
--I thought this was one of the better talks of the conference
-- planning is overrated/decisions are temporary/optimize for now
-- create waves of interest -- momentum is very important
-- interruption is the enemy of productivity
-- out-teach, out-share, out-contribute
-- most of these points are applicable for small, non-client facing tech shops

Go REST with Rails
-- DHH gave a great talk about REST and Rails, aka reasons for a restful architecture (mainly for communication/interaction between sites), and discussed some of the features that are built into the framework to handle it. Most developers here already know the principles/reasons but it was a good presentation.
-- Support in rails 2.1 for etags/not modified headers

Thursday

Building in the Clouds: Scaling Web 2.0
-- Panel discussion about cloud computing from a variety of companies (google, 10gen, amazon), where it currently is and how to make best use of it.
-- Ability to scale massively in a very short amount of time – example of the facebook photo application that scaled from 5 servers to 5000 in a week using amazon.
-- Not suited to all application/companies, developing for cloud applications requires a shift in developer mentality.
-- Relevancy/importance of cloud computing

Designing for the Internet(s) of the future
Very interesting talk by Genevieve Bell – anthropologist researching trends in global internet usage
-- China now has more active internet users than the US, this trend will continue
-- Internet is becoming widespread in the developing world, though generally it’s become shared (1:many people per device), asynchronous (delay of days/weeks between the transfer of information)
-- Trend toward disconnecting from the internet
-- Concerns: Privacy issues, cultural health

The sequel to SQL: Why you won’t find your RDBMS in the clouds
Great technical talk about object databases/cloud computing.
-- scaling databases: partitioning (sharding) over multiple servers is hard/slow when using relational databases
-- object databases
- examples: BigTable (google), SimpleDB(amazon), Mongo (10gen)
-- pros: scaleable
-- cons: - no joins across tables…
- eventually consistent (not good for banking transactions)
- query limits (1000 entities for google, 250 for amazon)

Friday

State of Web Development
-- chrome/gears, web applications are becoming more and more like desktop applications
-- js will become *really* fast in the next generation of web browsers, the language will potentially have much more influence
-- rise of Ajax as the important medium for providing a better user experience.

Web 2.0 Expo: thoughts from Sean

Guestblogging today are David Yoon and Sean Auriti, two of Ai's developer team, who attended the conference and shared their observations.

Here are Sean's thoughts. We'll post Yoon's on Monday.

Sean

"REST with Rails" was a good refresher with some good points on keeping the code DRY as well as providing different formats of content using a single url.

Great takeaway: keep it restful, every resource should have its own controller.

I learned some things on the new rails 2.1 caching methods... can change etags, expire time. Saw how simple coding can be by using rest methodology. Very easy to implement, atom feeds, api calls and csv exports.

Presenter David Heinemeier Hansson is the creator of Ruby on Rails and a partner at 37signals.

Web 2.0 Expo: Me and We, and Seduction

Barry Libert's "We and Me" presentation at Web 2.0 was certainly enthusiastic. In reviewing my notes, I'm noticing that if you combine his concepts with Chris Fahey's session on seduction, you've really got something....

Businesses are not good listeners. The good news is that Web 2.0 allows them to create conversational websites that lure customers in (Barry). To do this, the sites need to dazzle, amuse, and deliver with flair (Chris). Forget about "what I can tell you" (Barry). Flatter them, tempt them, create mystery (Chris).

Be rewarding--use contests and givebacks combined with open communication (Barry). Plan for delight, and evaluate the results with psychology and emotion (Chris). Seduce (Chris). Converse (Barry). And see your sales and satisfaction levels rise.

Web 2.0 Expo: analytics

Avinash Kaushik's session on analytics for the Web 2.0 era was the most informative and useful session I encountered. Not only is Avinash entertaining and knowledgeable, he spiked his presentation with clever lines and actionable takeaways.

Defining bounce rate: "It's my favorite statistic. I came I puked I left."

Analytics: "It's often 90% what happened and 10% what to do. It should be 90% what to do next and 10% what happened."

His statistics callouts are good reminders of what all site operators should be monitoring. Event logging. Success metrics. Visitor loyalty. Visitor recency.

Data mining is a crucial piece of doing business online, especially in a slowing economy. Ai is expanding its analytics team in order to capitalize on the very things Avinash underscored last week.

Web 2.0 Expo: service as marketing

One of my favorite sessions at last week's Web 2.0 Expo (and I'm not just saying this because he's an old industry friend) was Lane Becker's Customer Service Is the New Marketing. Lane runs Get Satisfaction and sees these things firsthand. His insights were smart and useful for anyone selling products in the 21st century.

Lane's big takeaway: "Act like a hotel concierge." Stark and obvious, it is nevertheless an important reminder to anyone in business. Consumers treated with respect and a can-do mentality will develop loyalty and appreciation above and beyond a basic liking of product or service.

This theory is important for us locally, both inside and outside Ai. We don't have an account management team, which makes our project managers (and our president, and assorted other employees) directly responsible for keeping our clients happy. This makes communication a priority and minimizes siloed output, both of which Lane cites as vital to success.

Lane's suggestions have a more obvious application with our clients, many of whom run successful ecommerce businesses. The more they listen to customers and gear their sites toward client satisfaction, the better they will be at pleasing and retaining business. And as Lane noted, even a modest increase in customer retention can nearly double a company's profit.

These concepts also touch upon a recurrent theme of the expo (and of Web 2.0 in general): the power of users to beneficially transform businesses. The time has come for companies to embrace the shift in customer communication.

Web 2.0 Expo, day two

Yesterday was another day of Smart Overload at Web 2.0. To see both Tim O'Reilly and Clay Shirky in the same hour, then attend several thought-provoking sessions, was a great way to continue the week.

Some of the callouts I hope to explore in depth in this space next week:

"Web 2.0 means letting users into your back office." --Tim O'Reilly

"If you continue to try and solve a problem and fail, perhaps it's time to consider it a fact, not a problem" --Clay Shirky (paraphrased)

"It's not technology, not 'what can I sell you,' it's about businesses having conversations, and caring." --Barry Libert, Mzinga

My colleagues are at the conference today, and I'm looking forward to hearing about the sessions I've missed.

Come back Monday for continued commentary and ideas.