J. O'Conner

Using online chat services can be very frustrating, especially when the expert chat professionals just can’t or won’t answer questions. My recent attempt to order Time Warner cable service got weird after a while…admittedly after I couldn’t get an answer about the HD recording capacity I began to wonder if this was a bot.

My transcript follows:

User John_ has entered room
Analyst Paul has entered room

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:50:59 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable Online Customer Service, my name is Paul. May I have your complete name please?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:51:13 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
John

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:51:20 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for providing your name. How may I assist you today?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:51:38 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
What size is the HD DVR box on new service installation?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:51:51 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
How many hours of recordings can I make?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:52:35 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I understand that you would like to know about HD DVR box. Is that correct?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:52:39 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
yes

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:52:49 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I will be glad to assist you.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:53:33 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Hmmmm…Paul are you there?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:53:51 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Yes, I am here to assist you.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:53:57 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I would like to inform you that view our Cable Box Comparison Chart. High-Definition (HD) boxes will provide you access to HD programming. Digital Video Recorder (DVR) boxes will allow you to Pause Live TV, Record 2 shows at once, and Record, and Record 30+ hours of programming. HD-DVR box provides combine the capabilities of the (HD) and (DVR) boxes.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:54:22 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
30+ hours of HD recording?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:55:46 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Please bear with me just a few moments while I research this information for you.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:55:52 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Can I add my own Firewire or USB drive to increase the recording capabilities?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:57:15 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for being online; I am still in the process of checking the information. Please bear with me just a few moments while I research this information for you.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:58:43 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for your patience.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:58:55 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I would like to inform you that you need to contact our local office further information. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:59:01 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Would you like me to provide you the number?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:59:37 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
no, that’s not needed.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:59:50 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
so, which question is not answerable?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:00:08 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:00:21 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
ok, but which question is difficult?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:00:51 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I do apologize for the inconvenience; unfortunately, this chat support center specializes in online offers.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:01:13 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
of course, I understand that. I want an online order.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:01:23 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
to do that I have questions first.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:01:54 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I will be glad to assist you.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:01:56 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
May I know the services you are interested in?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:02:21 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
well, I bet you can guess at least one of the services…the one named above.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:02:46 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
HD DVR cable service

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:03:29 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for the information.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:03:36 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
May I have your complete address along with the zip code?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:03:52 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
sure, but will you answer my questions?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:05:05 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Paul, you’re making this awkward. I want to order cable service but have a question about the HD recording capacity of the HD DVR machine. Additionally, I’m asking whether I can increase the recording capacity by providing my own external drive.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:06:16 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Please bear with me just a few moments while I research this information for you.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:08:57 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for your patience.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:09:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I would like to inform you that after installation you can contact our local office in order to increase the recording capacity. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:11:01 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
May I please confirm if you are still connected with this chat session?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:11:16 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Paul, do you know how much wood a wood-chuck chucks if a wood-chuck could chuck wood?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:13:25 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
This chat support center specializes in online offers. I will be more than happy to assist with questions about these offers.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:14:07 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for your help Paul.

Personally, I think I had a ‘bot online. What do you think?

No, I have some other observations about this chat, particularly about the time stamp time zones, but I’ll leave that for another post.

We’ve already decided that determining a timezone for a desktop application is easy. It’s too easy, and so let’s not even waste our time there. Instead, let’s think about something more difficult: how do you determine the timezone of a visitor to your website?

If your site authenticates users, you have most of your problem solved. Along with your user’s preference for username, password, and favorite soccer team (if soccer is your web site’s focus), you can encourage users to register their locale and timezone. This really isn’t so much to ask, not if you are going to offer them rich, useful, or entertaining content.

So ask for a timezone preference! When you ask, however, make sure you ask for something more useful than a simple UTC time offset. Knowing that a visitor is in a UTC-8:00 time zone is helpful but not as helpful as knowing that that same visitor is in the Los Angeles/America time zone. The latter option obviously provides more information about the user. Of course, the Los Angeles/America time zone tells your system that a visitor requires a UTC-8 offset, but it also differentiates this user from someone in Canada that may use the same hour:minute offset. It’s more information! More information usually translates into a better user experience, especially if you take care to utilize that information to customize the experience.

It is also possible to get the browser’s default timezone using a bit of JavaScript. Is this the user’s preference? Maybe, maybe not, but it is available. I’ve heard arguments that suggest that this is not the correct timezone to use. However, my opinion is emphatically this: the timezone of the user’s host pc is probably the best thing you have available in the absence of a specific user preference setting. Yes, people move around; yes, a user can visit your site on the west coast one day and then the east coast the next day without changing the pc setting.

var d = new Date();

var tzOffset = d.getTimezoneOffset();

Is this perfect? No, not at all. In fact, this javascript really just provides a minute value offset from GMT and local time. Still, for formatting a time with a correct timezone offset, this is useful.

If you don’t use a user preference setting in your app or a bit of JavaScript to query your visitor’s host timezone, what else do we have? Hmm…that’s an interesting question. What else is available for determining the timezone of a user visiting your site? Well, they do have an IP address. There are public services and databases that attempt to map this for you, but I just don’t know how accurate this is. I suppose I don’t have any specific reason to doubt its viability; it certainly seems possible at some level. But I’ve not actually spoken with anyone that has used this accurately or successfully. If you have, let me know.

Until next time!

Web applications have an unusual problem regarding timezones and formatted, user-viewable dates for a few reasons:

• several timezones are usually involved, and the determination of which should be used isn’t particularly clear
• date formatting code for even a modest list of locales isn’t available in browsers by default

Timezones Everywhere

Desktop applications have it pretty simple. Their users work on a host, and that host has a configured timezone. Windows and Mac users have convenient access to those settings in their “System Properties” or “Control Panel”. If a desktop application needs to display the date or create a time, it has access to the local host timezone. Usually there’s no question…this is the correct timezone for an application to use. If a user temporarily relocates to a different timezone, the user is responsible for changing that setting in his system settings.

Web applications have potentially several timezones to juggle as they manipulate time:

• client timezone
• server timezone
• event location timezone
• site timezone
• user account timezone

The client timezone is the computer’s system timezone — the timezone set within system properties or the control panel. This timezone is controlled on the local desktop or host environment. JavaScript in a browser has indirect access to this host provided timezone, and that timezone is available as the default — and usually the only — timezone available to a browser-confined application.

The server timezone is the timezone of the physical server on which your application runs. In a global, world-wide application, this server timezone is probably the least relevant of all the timezones because a server can be almost anywhere in the world and is most likely not representative of the user majority.

The event location timezone is the timezone of an actual event; it is the physical event’s location. For example, world cup soccer matches are held in South Africa this year. It might be tempting to use the event’s timezone when publishing soccer match times. Unfortunately, if I’m a Brazilian fan trying to determine a game time, the South African timezone and time display may not be useful and may be confusing. Here’s an example from a Google search page that shows game times for a U.S. English-speaking user:

The site timezone is the timezone associated with the web app’s domain or site. Let’s use world cup soccer again. Yahoo has dedicated sports sites for various locales/regions around the globe. For example, sports.yahoo.com is primarily the U.S. site, but it has navigational links to allow a user to go to other regional versions of the sports.yahoo.com experience. If you look at a similar schedule of existing or upcoming games, you’ll notice that Yahoo chooses to display times using the site’s timezone.

One view of upcoming games looks like this on the U.S. English site. Notice that it uses Eastern Daylight Time for the site’s timezone:

A different look from the Brazilian site shows this. Note that the times use the BRT timezone:

The point here is simple: you have lots of choices for displaying time and time zones to your users. Making the choice is difficult. Once you’ve determined which zone to use, the technical issues aren’t nearly as hard to solve.

In this specific blog, I’ll not solve the technical aspects of displaying time in the proper time zone and format, but I will leave you with my personal suggestion. In general, I think a web site should use as much information as it has available to customize information and to present it clearly to its users. For times and dates, it makes sense to me to present that information in the timezone and format that the user is accustomed to seeing. If your site knows that I’m a U.S. English speaker, maybe you should at least display times using a U.S. timezone. Of course, some regions have multiple zones, and that becomes a new problem. However, in the case of the U.S, which has multiple zones, a California resident is probably more likely to know that EDT is a 3 hour offset. It is doubtful that most California residents would know immediately that South African time is …. well …. some other offset. You see, the South African timezone just doesn’t help me much if I intend to actually watch or record the event. EDT is at least a bit more familiar.

There you have it…some ideas about timezones and their display. Use what your site knows about users to display information. The more localized in formats, the better in my opinion.

Recently I had the opportunity to sign up for health benefits with a 3rd party site that manages these things for my employer. Sites that collect data often limit the set of characters that you must use for each field. That’s reasonable for numeric fields, date fields, etc. After all, you don’t want invalid data in a field, and you’d like to help users enter correct data wherever possible.

However, I think it’s unreasonable to limit characters that are legitimately used in a field type. For example, these characters show up all the time within perfectly valid names:

• APOSTROPHE ‘
• HYPHEN -
• ACUTE ACCENT ´
• DIAERESIS ¨

Come on…in 2010 these are not exotic characters. They exist in all kinds of unimpressive, common names….like O’Conner for example! In the figure below, the data collection form dislikes the apostrophe. Come on, it’s part of my name.

Unfortunately this is all too common. Do you have a problematic name? Share it with me…what name causes you grief in online forms?