Nontraditional value exchange, or a plain old good time.

Services come in all shapes. Some you pay for with money, while others you pay for with effort.

The components are universal. A promise is made, enabled, and kept. Both provider and customer have a role in successful production. The service is concurrently produced and consumed. The end result is more intangible than tangible, and the customer often has to look for visible cues as to a successful outcome.

Brainzooming’s Mike Brown asked me to participate in his hosted #BZBowl yesterday – a twitter-enabled live analysis of Super Bowl XLIV ads from a group of seasoned marketing, branding, and social media observers.

Being “more Bud than Bowl” as Mike puts it, I was happy to participate in what was one of the more pleasant service experiences I’ve had in my still brief venture into social media.

Mike’s event – his semi-public service – promised an opportunity to connect with some like-minded people, expand my network, share with them and learn from their perspectives on big-event marketing, branding and social media. Twitter and the Brainzooming site enabled what was a lively and engaging (not to mention exhausting) discussion about the Super Bowl ads as they appeared. Each of us involved produced commentary as we consumed both the ads and each other’s commentary. My takeaways – the value that I received - were unbelievably rich, having met an enormous number of like-minded marketing professionals in a very short period of time and learned from their collective perspective & experience.

Though a nontraditional exchange of value, Brainzooming promised everyone involved an opportunity to reach beyond their existing network in a fun environment and learn from the marketing perspectives of others. With the co-production effort of everyone involved, it was a tremendous success.

Social media-enabled business is making this type of exchange not only more valuable to businesses and individuals that use them, but much more common.

I look a gift horse directly in the mouth.

Should you complain when receiving a service free-of-charge?

I expressed some dissatisfaction this weekend when taking glass products to my local community recycling depot.

The source of my displeasure was that this was my 2nd attempt at doing my green duty to all the glass we’ve consumed over the past few months.

The previous Sunday morning, I rolled up, ready to do some recycling, only to find the recycling depot closed. A sign on the locked gate clearly informs all that recycling hours are Tuesday-Friday, 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM, and Saturdays, 8 AM to 4 PM. Which means that in my week, I have exactly 8 hours available to engage in this form of environmental stewardship.

So, when an absolutely friendly volunteer asked me how I was, I replied honestly that I wished I could take care of this tomorrow, and that their hours of operation were inconvenient. The response from the attendant expressed, “Hey, we’re here doing a public service. The least you can do is show up when it’s convenient for us.”

I think I was in the right to complain, but it sure didn’t feel welcome.

My take is that a service is free, likely because of what the provider gets out of it.

Their benefit is usually monetary, either from what they receive in return for a by product of the service or from third party who acts as payer for the service (though if funded by tax dollars, you could argue that the service is not truly free). It turns out both are involved in the case of the recycler. If this is the case, the relationship looks very much like a traditional service transaction, and even if you aren’t paying anything at the time you use it, the party performing the service still gains enough benefit to hear your criticism.

Even if the benefit is truly altruistic, the provider has the objective of maximizing how much altruism they can produce, which still requires the fundamentals of good service management. Alerting them to delivery issues helps them correct for the shortcomings and provide a service capable of doing ever more good.

Of course, I’ve seen cases where my opinion is not appreciated nearly as much as I think it would be.

So I ask again: Should you ever complain for service that is being rendered for free? When and in what circumstances? When (if ever) shouldn’t you?