Best Buy Apps

Here’s a quick list of the 10 things I think I’ve learned thanks to Twelpforce

1. Enthusiasm and Passion are traits common to all our employees, and especially those who help via Twelpforce. These DNA traits seem to be shared across platforms, and is a key reason Twelpforce is working.

2. If we don’t know what’s wrong with our business, you can safely leave it to our customers to tell us. Like millions of canaries in the coal mine, it’s a beautiful thing to be able to listen so closely.

3. Trust is a fragile thing. Proving your worth every day is hard. Admitting we’re (I’m) not perfect no matter how hard we (I) try is humbling. The effort is very, very worth it though.

4. Talking about technology comes easily, but finding the answers to all the different questions consumers have can be hard when the info lies in so many different places within our four walls.

5. Sometimes I wonder if the anonymity that is offered online allows people to shed any guilt that comes with talking to people in a way that they would never consider in person.

Recently, I was sitting at my optometrist’s office, and noticed that their office had laid out issues of ‘Life’ magazines dating to the 1950’s for patients in the waiting room. How cool is that? As I was reading through them, it struck me as ironic that many of the same issues people were concerned about back then are the same issues we’re concerned about today such as; the military, health care and government (I’m generalizing, as my point isn’t about politics).

But what also struck me as different was the advertising, and how different it is from what we’ve grown accustomed to seeing. The tone in which “brands” spoke to customers was very direct. You should smoke these cigarettes so you’ll be as cool as Arnold Palmer. Or, “this car company” is a brand you can trust because we supply the most aftermarket parts. There are other examples, but the main thing I took away is that these brands were spending a lot of time, effort and money telling consumers why they should trust them, much as brands these days do.

As one of the Twelpforce leads, one thing I’ve learned so far in this journey is that there are a lot of companies who are very interested in what we’re doing. To-date, I’ve had conversations with our Best Buy Canada and UK teams, the CarPhone Warehouse team, as well as with other major corporations like HP, Home Depot, CarMax and Turbo Tax. I’ve been happy to share my POV on how we did this, and when boiled down, most people want to know how we got “Leadership Buy-In”.

In our case, leadership was already convinced that “social” was a way for us to change the way brands and humans interact. How we did it was still up in the air, but admittedly that leadership “got it” gave us a head start. When I relay this information, I also usually pair it with the comment that any Senior Leader who doesn’t know that conversations are happening about their brand, or their product in the social space shouldn’t be in their leadership position anymore. Seriously.

It has bugs.   It’s a major bummer.

Our Weekly Deals iPhone app has it’s share of problems.  Most notably, it doesn’t seem to display weekly deals.   That rating of “1″ on the AppStore is probably generous at this moment.  We are aware.

The most frustrating part is that the app worked fine prior to committing the new version to the AppStore.

We are working to reveal if the problem is in the code or if the issue is in the service from which the application calls the deal information and digital assets.

On behalf of all of us, thank you for your comments, your candid feedback, and (hopefully) your patience.  We look forward to sharing a completed application that works well and brings value to your experience and service from Best Buy.

Update 8/20/09 2:26 p.m – We discovered that the weekly deals did not appear due to a combination of human error and horrible timing.  This is not to say that all the problems are fixed.  Just know we are working on fixes.  Our roadmap is long and our process is iterative.  We hope to earn “Most Improved App” accolades and strong ratings in the near future.

Here’s a list of the new features in the latest IdeaX deploy. Enjoy.

rt @wkornewald: @appenginepatch has new maintainers: Giftag devs @gumptionthomas and @iffius will take over development – thanks guys!

get it here: code.google.com/p/app-engine-patch/

UPDATE 8/5: Some people may have mis-read the intent of the note below. To be clear, we are not worried about these accounts participating in the Twelpforce initiative. What we’re trying to do is use the tools we have on hand (the Twelpforce network) to root out and expose “brand squatters”. Brand Squatters are people who are not associated with Best Buy, but create accounts that look a lot like they are. Most big brands will battle this issue, but we decided to tackle it head on to help our customers understand that not everyone out there is who they say they are.

With the recent launch of Best Buy’s Twelpforce, there has been a wave of people SO excited about the initiative that they decided they wanted to be a part of it…however, these people aren’t a part of Best Buy.  We’re flattered, but we also don’t think it’s right that they could be taking advantage of YOU, and using our brand to do it. So, in an effort to expose these accounts so you know exactly who you are dealing with when navigating Twitter, we’ve compiled a handy list for you to digest.  We’ve sent the same list to the kind folks at Twitter, and while we expect them to be shut down soon, until they are, please, avoid doing business with these people….!

Here are couple of screen shots of the next version of the Best Buy Weekly Deals app for the iPhone scheduled for release to iTunes on August 4, 2009.

New features:

Search for / browse all products

Get reviews

Sort by…

Purchase via m.bestbuy.com

Add to favorites (later integrated to a central/shareable wishlist)

Link to bestbuyideax.com

And of course, waaay better, user interface

Thanks especially to Joakim Sternberg and Mike Haeg for the hard work and thanks to all our users for the feedback. Keep it coming.

Note: We’re rolling a version 2.0 release for mid September that will have some of the key features a lot of you have been asking for – namely being able to log in using your Reward Zone ID.

There’s an update on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10482 Due to a problem on Mozilla’s web site, you have have to create an account first (on Mozilla’s site), log in and then you can install (after clicking on the appropriate checkboxes)  (Otherwise, you’ll get a cryptic error message when you try to install the addon)

You should probably remove the existing Giftag add-on before installing the new one (just in case there’s a conflict).

twitter.com/twelpforce

It’s been just over a week since the launch of Twelpforce, Best Buy’s new Twitter based customer service platform, but it seems like we’ve been doing this forever!  As one of the Leads for Twelpforce, I play sort of an Air Traffic Control role, and since it’s soft launch on 6/19, let me tell you, it’s been a fantastic experience so far.  One of my first learnings was that we need to be OK with the fact that there’s simply no way to organize an effort like this behind closed doors.  I started comparing it to getting dressed in a glass house.  Everyone sees everything