BlackBerry Outage Report 2011

C o p e r n i c u s C o n s u l t i n g G r o u pA social research company3rd Floor, 720 Bathurst StreetToronto, Ontario Canada M5S 2R4http://copernicusconsulting.net

November 2, 2011

BackgroundOn or around October 7, BlackBerry users in Europe started noticing problems with their email and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service. By October 12, the outage had spread to North America. Not all of BlackBerry’s 70 million customers were affected, but a significant portion was.

Copernicus saw an opportunity to understand a little more about the BlackBerry user and their attachment to their smartphone. We decided to strike while the iron was hot! We immediately launched an online survey to get users’ fresh impressions of the BlackBerry outage.

This is the first of several brief analytical papers we will offer, based on the data collected. In this paper, we investigate the open-ended question, “How did the recent BlackBerry outage make you feel?”

Table of Contents

Background......................................................................................................1How Did The Outage Make Respondents Feel?................................................2

Negative Sentiment......................................................................................3Frustration and Anger................................................................................3Disconnection............................................................................................4

Positive and Neutral Sentiment....................................................................5Implications.....................................................................................................5

Brand Equity Impact.....................................................................................5Normalization of Instantaneous Communication..........................................6

Figure 1: Table Summarizing Response Sentiment.........................................2Figure 2: Infographic "How did the BlackBerry Outage make you feel?".........2

How Did The Outage Make Respondents Feel?We offered respondents an open-ended question to tell us how the outage made them feel. 105 of our 116 respondents filled in the text box, suggesting that there was a strong desire to talk about their feelings. i We hand-coded these responses into 3 categories: Positive, Neutral and Negative.

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Figure 1: Table Summarizing Response Sentiment

Negative

Neutral

Positive

82 18 5

Below is an infographic summary of their responses. We generated this infographic using wordle.net. We fed all responses, in complete form, into wordle.net, which then generated this “word cloud.” The size of the word indicates the frequency of it being mentioned. The larger the word, the more frequently it was used by participants.

Figure 2: Infographic "How did the BlackBerry Outage make you feel?"

Negative Sentiment

Frustration and AngerThe first theme among responses is largely unsurprising: respondents were angry about the outage. We can see quickly that frustration, anger and annoyance was a very common reaction. Users were also “disappointed” and “upset.” Some were even “sad.” The complete comments of these respondents give a deeper picture, one that suggests respondents are losing patience with RIM:

Copernicus Consulting Group Inc. -2-


“Annoyed. Again.”

“Out of pocket/ripped off/ NOT loyal”

“Ugh, not again.”

“That I am not getting the services I'm paying for. Very frustrating and after having continuous problems with blackberry I am ready to move on to another smart phone.”

“Angry, frustrated and helpless.”

“Extremely angry and frustrated. I want to leave blackberry because of it.”

Respondents were quick were quick to mention iPhones or Androids as potential alternatives. The competitors were clearly top of mind at the time of the outage. Switching away from BlackBerry is something users said they were considering. While the frustration of the outage was still quite fresh in respondents’ minds, but it is unclear how many of them went right out to get an non-BlackBerry smartphone.

Future research should check the market penetration rate for BlackBerry over the next few months. We suspect there will be a spike in favour of BlackBerry competitors, in periods where carriers offer new upgrades.



DisconnectionRespondents also mentioned being “disconnected,” which is unsurprising, given the nature of the BlackBerry as an immediate communication device. But the sheer size of the word in our infographic indicates the number of mentions it received, suggesting the BlackBerry brand is transforming the way we actually are “in the world.” In other words, the BlackBerry outage could change how we feel about being with and around other people.

That is a significant impact of a single device!

Some respondents equate this outage with “lost opportunity” and their very ability to speak, though the effect was not universal:

“Unavailable. Out of the loop.”

“Feel that I lost opportunities”

“Confused, disconnected, worried that I'm missing critical information for a pitch tomorrow.”

“Well since this doesn't happen often not too bad.”

“It doesn't bother me. It hasn't affected my ability to communicate.”

“It's important to keep it in perspective. We survived just fine before smart phones.”

“Anxious.”

It’s amazing that a single device could have this kind of impact on people. Clearly, some people were able to put the outage in perspective, but others saw the device as their primary conduit to the rest of the world.

The BlackBerry, like the mere telephone before it, has become a device that brings our friends, co-workers and families to us. Likewise, it can cut us off from those people.



Positive and Neutral SentimentPositive and neutral responses were, by far, the minority. It is curious that some respondents used positive or ambivalent words, given the strength of the negative responses. They “liked” the outage and reported the outage “good,” frequently enough to make an impact in the word cloud. Some of the complete comments in the category show how people felt about this:

“Feels good to be unplugged from work email”

“Good. It gives me a break from work”

“Ambivalent”

These positive and ambivalent comments were few, but they suggest there is an uneasiness that some respondents had with the BlackBerry and its impact on their lives.

Implications

Brand Equity ImpactInterestingly, participants also used the word “RIM” quite frequently, indicating that this was seen as a problem generated by the parent brand, Research in Motion. RIM should take notice of this tight coupling between BlackBerry outage and its very company name – the RIM brand is tightly connected (perhaps too tightly) to the BlackBerry brand.

“I'm losing confidence in RIM”

“Disappointed - I had hoped that RIM would wear the storm well and come out successful, but this incident seems to have destroyed the faith of many longtime users, especially those who rely on their BlackBerry for work away from the office.”

“RIM's architecture is fragile. A couple of servers going down takes down email globally. This is rather embarrassing and not something that instills confidence. RIM is known for rock solid email - now there's nothing left for them to compete on.”

“Sad for Rim. Go android”

All in all, it appears that BlackBerry’s central brand values of “approachable, informed, and confident” have indeed been tarnished



by this outage. People have “lost confidence” in the BlackBerry itself, making it all the more difficult for RIM to project this image.

Some respondents noted that they were “unsurprised” or upset at RIM “again,” suggesting that the brand is losing momentum. The negative trajectory of the brand should be of the utmost concern to RIM – turning it around into positive trajectory is an uphill battle.

Normalization of Instantaneous CommunicationIn our other research we have discovered that being available to everyone at all times is becoming the “new normal.” When instantaneous communication is the norm, there are all sorts of unintended consequences for:

Organizations: People spend more time communicating than innovating

Marketing: Brands are expected to be as available as people

Health and Well-Being: 24/7 availability means little time for recharging and reflecting

Trash: Unfinished sorting, filing and organizing of things and ideas begets a subtle, ongoing anxiety of unfinished work

Emergency response: Sudden outages may mean people have lost the ability to communicate using other media

These kinds of pressures are already giving rise to new businesses like self-storage facilities and electronic note taking such as Evernote. But we are also seeing rise in attention fatigue and inability of people to engage with friends, families, and companies. The BlackBerry outage signals that we should pay attention to the ways in which we connect to each other.

We will continue to report on these findings in future papers. Stay tuned for more mobile insight!



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i This survey was opportunistic. We did not have a probability sample, so we do not and cannot offer any generalizability of these findings. We recruited respondents via email, social media and the Web. There is likely a bias toward those more interested in technology in general, and smartphone design in particular, given the profile of our social media connections. We acknowledge these methodological limitations but maintain, as Marsh (1984) does, that surveys are simply the most efficient way to ask many people the same question. We submit that these findings, while not statistically generalizable, are insightful nonetheless.

Copernicus Consulting Group Inc.http://copernicusconsulting.net Sam Ladner, [email protected]

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Documents

BlackBerry Outage Report 2011