Here’s a great story from the annals of customer service.  My friend Fady Hadid is a young Iraqi filmmaker with whom I worked on Hometown Baghdad.  After working on that documentary in Baghdad, he came to the US to study film.  At the same time, many of his friends were scattering around the world as they rushed to escape the civil war in Iraq.  He found himself desperately needing a way to stay in touch with his friends and to find old ones who left without providing a way to stay in touch.  So he did what everyone does when they want to find someone who they’ve lost touch with: he turned to Facebook.  But alas, there was no network for the University of Baghdad.  So Fady went on a mission to get one added. Here is the email chain between Fady and Facebook customer service.

From: Facebook Support
Date: Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 11:44 AM
To: Fady

Hi,

The Facebook Team has received your inquiry. We should get back to you soon. In the meantime, we encourage you to review our Help page (http://www.facebook.com/help.php).  There, you’ll find answers to many common questions.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

The Facebook Team

———-
From: Facebook Support
Date: Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 11:21 PM
To: Fady


Hi,

We can look into this, but for security reasons we need you to respond to this email from your school email address.  Also, please write your email address in the subject line and include all of our previous correspondence so that we can refer to your original inquiry.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

XXXX
User Operations
Facebook
———-
From: Fady
Date: Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 4:57 PM
To: Facebook Support


Hi XXXX,

Unfortunately we don’t really have email account for University of Baghdad (or Baghdad University for that matter) because we never had such infrastructure, but I wrote an email just because it was needed. I wished if there was a network for our university’s students and alumni anyway, because I am sure we are so many on Facebook. And sorry for the inconvenience.

Best,
Fady

———-
From: Facebook Support
Date: Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 5:40 PM
To: Fady


Hi Fady,

We’re hoping to add your school.  In order to do so, we’ll need you to reply to this email with the information below.  Please be aware that we only support schools that are still in existence and that we do not support elementary, middle, or junior high schools.

1) Does your school supply email addresses to students?  Please respond “Yes” or “No.”  If yes, you must respond to this email from your school email address in order for us to add your school.

2) Please tell us your:

Full Name of your School
City
State/Country
School’s website
To:XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Subject: Re: I Can’t Add a College Network

———-
From: Fady
Date: Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 5:49 PM
To: Facebook Support

Hi XXX,

Thank you so much for your quick response. Yes it is a university and it still exists. It is actually the biggest and the most major university in Iraq. Unfortunately it doesn’t have an electronic infrastructure so it doesn’t provide emails and there’s no official website (that I know of). Here are my answers:

1. No.

2. University of Baghdad
Baghdad
Iraq
www.uob.edu.iq (I’m not sure if this is the official site - it’s still under construction too)

Thank you so much and keep up the great work!

Best,
Fady
———-
From: Facebook Support
Date: Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 3:46 PM
To: Fady


Hi Fady,

I have made note of your request.  We hope to add it as part of our next network expansion.  Sorry in advance for any delay. Let me know if you have any further questions.

Next thing Fady knew, there was a network for the University.  Despite the facts that there was no functioning website for the school, there were no school email addresses and Facebook was probably unable to contact the University to confirm what Fady told them. Only 385 students have joined the network so far but he is confident that more will eventually find it.  I don’t want to overestimate the importance of having a network for your college, but it certainly sends a warm, inclusive message to these Iraqi students.  They belong here as much as Mark’s Harvard buddies.

Note: I have obviously removed some names and email address from this exchange.

In my ongoing series about how Joshua Porter’s great Designing for the Social Web helped us develop the Qwidget, I now turn my thoughts towards chapter 4 “Design for Sign Up” in a series of posts that will cover a few aspects of his thinking on this matter.  At the end, I will describe how the Qwidget sign up process was influenced by  this very important chapter.

When creating a social web product or service, it can be dangerously easy to imagine throngs of new users beating down your door to use your fantastically innovative, convenient, feature-filled, awesome new tool.  But as Josh points out, when they first encounter your social software, most potential new users are skeptical and perhaps confused by what you’re offering.

He suggests that you approach designing the sign up process in the same way a journalist would approach writing a news story: by focusing on who, what, where, when, why and how.

What is it?

This is the first question that you must answer for any potential new user.  The key here is to explain very clearly what your product/service does without being confusing.  A user must immediately grasp what you do and consequently which of his/her problems you can solve.  Porter gives a great example of a website that aces this task and another that doesn’t.

Example 1: If you looked at the top of Blinksale’s site for only two seconds, you’d still know what they do.

Example 2: Bill My Clients has a clear name but does the design immediately convey what they do? As your eye travels across the page, you’ll probably see the login box before you see anything about what they do.  All that communicates to me as a new user is that this page is not really meant for me.

Note: Porter’s book has an image of a previous version of the Billmyclients.com homepage.  However, the new version pictured above is as unclear as the one in the book.

The launch of Cuil, a new search engine founded by ex-Googlers, has been covered extensively in the blogosphere so far. But a couple of great tech bloggers have begun to point out the amusing/strange results that come from “Cuiling” their names (doesn’t have the ring of googling, does it?).  These are people whose names are plastered all over the web, theoretically giving a search engine much to work with.  Chris Brogan’s own blog didn’t come up when he cuiled himself. A cuil search for Louis Gray turns up some of his social web profiles with hilarious mismatched photos.

Joining the fray, I was surprised to learn that Hometown Baghdad was not about three Iraqi students trying to survive during wartime. It was about American football. Who knew?

In all seriousness, I am in no place to criticize a new tech product. We are a few days away from launching our very first release of the Qwidget. So tiny bugs in first releases are something I can certainly forgive. I just couldn’t resist posting this screen grab.

With all the information Facebook collects about its users, they have a strange habit of showing users ads that are obviously meant for completely different demographics.  One 33 year old was shown an ad for a social site for people over 35. I just signed in to Facebook, went to my profile page and saw this.

Notice the ad that I circled. Here’s a close up.

“Hey Jew” is how they address me. Not only is that weird and borderline offensive, but I am most certainly not Jewish. While I don’t publicly announce my religion in Facebook, I have checked off my preference.  It’s not Jewish.  Strange. Who’s fault is this? Facebook’s ad targetting? The advertiser’s misdirected campaign?

Chapter 3 of Joshua Porter’s super-helpful “Desiging for the Social Web” focuses on a common theme among the web’s cognoscenti: customer service is the new marketing.  Since this new age of social media is all about community and conversation, the way a company speaks with its customers is inherently part of their product.

Joshua also points out that many successful web apps are developed by the same people who use them.  Reading this had a very reassuring effect on me.  The Qwidget was built for web publishers who want to create more dialogue around their content.  That’s us.  We began as a company as content producers and we continue to produce television and web video with the aim of fostering conversations.

With our stated mission being “create dialogue,” it wouldn’t be very helpful for me to aim for a huge distribution without helping people maximize the use of the qwidget.  Web apps like Top Friends on Facebook don’t necessariliy need action to be successful.  You install it, pick your top friends and you never need to touch it again.  But the dialogue we aim to create requires constant attention.  So I will always try to heed Joshua’s advice and give my all to helping our users.  We also don’t have a marketing budget so providing good customer service is kind of my only shot.