From the category archives:

customer experience

    

I received the email below from the Chief Marketing Officer of Best Buy recently.  The key takeaway?  If you are responsible for customer data, please make sure you are being careful with said data.  You never want to send an email like the one below but you might have to one day.  It’s a dangerous world out there and, while this is probably not an issue for Best Buy in the long term, it sure does sting a little bit.

Dear Valued Best Buy Customer,

On March 31, we were informed by Epsilon, a company we use to send emails to our customers, that files containing the email addresses of some Best Buy customers were accessed without authorization.

We have been assured by Epsilon that the only information that may have been obtained was your email address and that the accessed files did not include any other information. A rigorous assessment by Epsilon determined that no other information is at risk. We are actively investigating to confirm this.

For your security, however, we wanted to call this matter to your attention. We ask that you remain alert to any unusual or suspicious emails. As our experts at Geek Squad would tell you, be very cautious when opening links or attachments from unknown senders.

In keeping with best industry security practices, Best Buy will never ask you to provide or confirm any information, including credit card numbers, unless you are on our secure e-commerce site,www.bestbuy.com. If you receive an email asking for personal information, delete it. It did not come from Best Buy.

Our service provider has reported this incident to the appropriate authorities.

We regret this has taken place and for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We take your privacy very seriously, and we will continue to work diligently to protect your personal information. For more information on keeping your data safe, please visit:
http://www.geeksquad.com/do-it-yourself/tech-tip/six-steps-to-keeping-your-data-safe.aspx.

Sincerely,

Barry Judge
Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer
Best Buy

    

UPDATE: Since posting this article Google has updated their terms of service for the Google Chrome product. Still not entirely consumer friendly it is *much* better than the original and even carries a Google apology along with the terms of service amendment.

Is it just me or does that new model car on the road make the model only 1 year older look like it has aged decades? You know the feeling. You put down a massive amount of money on a new car and 1 year later the new model comes out. Your car looks completely outdated at that point. I suppose we can chalk the sensation up to good design.

Speaking of which…..I hopped on the Google Chrome bandwagon as soon as it was released. Switching back to Firefox 3.0 gave me that old car sensation. Is Google onto something? I wouldn’t say that they have completely changed the landscape but they have created something very useful.

Pros –

  1. Javascript heavy web apps load a heck of a lot faster. Noticeably faster. I mean *really* fast.
  2. The minimalist design is worth mentioning. The amount of screen real estate available for websites is increased without sacrificing necessary browser features.
  3. Desktop shortcuts for your favorite web applications: Similar to Mozilla’s Prism offering you are able to create desktop shortcuts for any web app that you frequent. Handy.
  4. The name….Google Chrome. While I may not have tricked out my car, I have tricked out my internet experience.

Cons –

  1. Third party cookie support…ugh. This is the biggest con for me and something that everyone should be paying attention to. Google Chrome allows for third party cookie support out of the box. You are then required to turn this feature off in the options menu if you so desire. My opinion: By default, all browsers should disable third party cookies thereby creating an opt-in solution vs. an opt-out solution.
    <sarcasm> I wonder if this has anything to do with DoubleClick? </sarcasm>
  2. Privacy. Google Chrome has the potential to leak massive amounts of information about you….the internet user. While nothing catastrophic in the way of an overflow or other attack has been discovered, the potential is there.
  3. As per usual, the Google terms of service is not very consumer friendly.

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Why Design Matters…

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The Yahoo! Design Pattern Library is a great resource. Case studies and examples of best practices are provided for the most common design elements of a website.

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(but you already knew that) What I really like about Seth’s blog posts, books and public talks is his ability to boil things down to the most simple terms. You should read his most recent post on B2B marketing. Twice. The challenge for B2B marketers is still how to most effectively use the internet to [...]