US and Europe

Europe – This week I was walking through the train station when someone handed me a free copy of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. On the front page there was a very colorful picture of President Barack Obama and a fascinating story about the latest cultural craze in Germany – the Obama musicial. I studied to be a profefssional singer,  so  this story mixed well with my penchant for politics. I read with interest how “Hope – the Obama Musical Story”puts the 2008 presidential election to music. I was surprised to find that this musical did not come from a zealous Democrat based in the States but rather Europeans who have been inspired by President Obama’s promise of change at home and abroad.

This musical comes to the stage at a time when President Obama’s performance  is under close scrutiny. He is also facing a blow to his presidency and the Democratic party with a recent special election to replace the late Senator Edward Kennedy and the success of Republican Senator-elect Brown. I do not think we can quite call this a dark time for the Democratic party but storm clouds certainly do appear to be gathering as mid-term elections draw nearer. I am sure many Democrats are longing for the days leading up to the election in 2008 that brought Obama to power with the claim “Yes we can!” Maybe putting this claim to music will put new life into this claim – who knows. In any case, President Obama and his team can take comfort in the fact that his popularity is so solid in Germany, he has inspired people to burst into song and dance.

EUROPE  - This week I was in a meeting. Present in the room were three men, including myself and four women. Each of these women is very respectable, educated and polished. At the beginning of our meeting, one of the men made a very off-colored joke. I was offended at what he said and was embarrassed for him. I even think he was embarrassed, because he turned red. In addition to offending me, I was most concerned about the women in the room. His joke was about women. Two of the women in the room are his employees. I wondered how he dared make such an offensive comment and still hoped to maintain our or his employees’ respect.

This is not the first time I have encountered this, nor will it be the last. Unfortunately, I have seen this happen more often in my time in Europe than I have in the United States. I get the  feeling that some men think the same way as Silvio Berlusconi does, who when asked about his indiscretions stated, “Well, I”m not a saint.” None of us are Saints but we can sure try to be. Should this be any excuse for men, or women for that matter? Certainly not.

Many have said it before but we are losing the thread of common decency that used to permeate Western society. I am grateful for parents who taught me to 1) not be perverse 2) respect and honor women. I really think we are missing this on both sides of the Atlantic.

My wife and I flew home to the United States for the holidays with Air France and SkyTeam founder, Delta Airlines. My experience with Delta has almost always been outstanding. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for their colleagues at Air France. In the past, Air France has lost my luggage and I found their staff to be less than helpful or pleasant, which is typical of many continental European companies. This time was no different but I really felt that Air France stooped to a new low.

As the time approached for our return to Europe, my wife and I decided it would be good for her and our seven month old twins to spend more time in the U.S. with family. Naturally, we thought we would be able to change her ticket without any difficulty. Our greatest challenge was to find someone who would be willing to travel home with my wife and accompany one of our children. Once we identified who this person was, we started the process of changing my wife’s ticket. Our first call to Air France was with someone who was not a native English speaker and who we thought had difficulty understanding us. We were told that we could not change our ticket. Thinking that there was some kind of misunderstanding caused by a language barrier, we decided to go directly to the airport and speak with a Delta agent (we have no direct Air France presence at our airport). The agent looked at my wife’s ticket and told her she should be able to change her ticket with no problem but that he could not change the ticket since it was issued by Air France. The agent advised that we call Air France when their U.S. call center opens, so that we have someone who is a native English speaker and who may be friendlier and more helpful. I decided I did not want to wait and called that evening. To Air France’s credit, I finally got through to someone who spoke excellent English. I explained to the service representative what the situation was and he said it would be no problem to change the ticket. He then put the ticket on hold for 24 hours in order to give us sufficient time to coordinate with my wife’s friend and her brother who would be booking their tickets that evening.

The next day, everything seemed to be in place. Air France had indicated we could change the ticket, we had two other adults booked to fly with my wife back to Germany and we were planning for a smooth departure for me the following day. When we called to confirm the ticket change and pay the expected fee, Air France informed us that my wife’s ticket could not be changed. We were dumbfounded, since we had spoken with Delta and Air France, who after reviewing the restrictions informed us we could change the ticket. This began a struggle with Air France, that lasted for hours as we repeatedly pointed out to them, that it was their own agent who told us we could change the ticket and had even put it on hold for us. For hours they refused to take responsibility for this. They did not seem to care that not only were they inconveniencing my family of two adults and two children who had spent thousands of dollars on tickets but also two other individuals who had bought their tickets based on the green light from their own agent. Eventually, a call center manager spoke with my wife. This woman was decidedly more helpful than the others had been and decided to listen to the conversation we had with the agent. She told us she would call us back (it was approximately four hours before our flight was to leave) as we scrambled to get everything packed in case my wife had to fly. Two hours later, we called (yes – WE called) and got through to the call center manager again and she changed the ticket.

While in the States, I was at a shopping mall and while waiting for my wife, was reading a sign from by the shopping mall’s management that read:

1. Rule number one, the customer is always right

2. When in doubt, refer to rule number one

I really think Air France could benefit from abiding by rules like these. Does a company ever really lose when it offers exceptional customer service? No! Companies must understand that word inevitably gets around – especially with tools, such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook. As I indicated earlier, I really feel that many European companies lag behind in customer service and Air France is definitely no exception. I hope someday they will learn their lesson and make improvements. To their credit, they came through in the end and made the change but the hours of wasted time I could have been spending with my family are to me inexcusable. What I really want is a refund!

I returned yesterday from an extended vacation to the United States. After a brief layover in Paris, I flew over a white a gray patchwork of fields covered in snow to Hamburg. I was told when I moved here that most people did not even put snow tires on their cars (not that it does not get colder here – I can attest to the fact that it does indeed get VERY cold) it simply does not snow like this in this part of the world. My taxi driver last night told me they have not had weather like this since 1979. Reading news reports on the topic, it appears that cities near the Baltic Sea by snow and waves. Here is a picture of what I woke up to this morning on my way to the train.

I’m a regular reader of  TechCrunch. In fact I visit the site several times a day at work and when I’m away from the office, it is one of the blogs I regularly check in with via Twitter. Today, Mike Arrington (TechCrunch founder) wrote a post that brought to my attention what Google announced today regarding their operations in China.

The post, written by David Drummond tells about how in December 2009, Google detected a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on [Google's] corporate infrastructure originating in China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.” Drummond goes on to say that this was just not a one-time security incident but that “a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.”

Now, keep in mind that in 2006 while launching Google.cn, Google agreed to play along with the Chinese government’s censorship policies. At the time, Google said they did this “in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed [their] discomfort in agreeing to censor some [search] results.” Google went on to say they would monitor the situation on the ground in China and that if they would “not hesitate to reconsider [their] approach to China” if needed.

Then Drummond makes his point and says what Google plans to do.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

When I first read all this, my gut reaction was a swell of admiration for Google to take such a courageous stance. I mean, they are #2 behind the current Chinese search king, Baidu. China is a huge market and will get much, much bigger as hundreds of millions of Chinese  go online over the next few years. That Google would be willing to shut down operations in China, cede market share and revenue to a competitor all in the name of human rights and protecting their customers should be a rallying call…but probably not for China.

I don’t know why Google really took this stand. The optimist (like Robert Scoble) in me wants to believe their motives were pure and that this will eventually lead to Chinese consumers standing up and demanding freedom of information on the interwebs. However, Google has a responsibility to their shareholders. They are a public company, after all. This is a very, VERY clever PR move for Google everywhere else in the world and probably also in China (if consumers there ever get the whole truth). There just might be less altruistic business motivations afoot here (read this post from TechCrunch blogger, Sarah Lacy.

My enthusiasm has been curbed and even though I hoped we might have a busy night watching a revolution unfold as everyday Chinese stood up against a tyrannical and evil government, China is not like we think they should be. In fact, as of this posting nothing to do with this incident is a top trending topic on Twitter.

We’ll see what happens but for now–nice try, Google.

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