A few years ago I listened to a customer service guru (forgot the name, sorry) talking about a certain airline that had a Boeing 727 delayed for more than 5 hours on the tarmac, before offloading the passengers and telling them they weren’t going anywhere. The police had to break up the crowd. The company was thrilled they only had three complaints. The guru pointed out “those three were the only three that cared enough about you to tell you how…
Now that we’re into December, it’s a good time to remind everyone that it’s time to thank your customers. Be it a simple holiday card (hand signed if possible with a personal note…) or something more elaborate, such as a gift basket, etc. We should remember that it’s not 1983 anymore – unless the customer is also a close friend, bottles of hootch, cash gifts and, in general, gift cards are probably not appropriate (I’d like very much to hear…
I had an interesting email from a customer this morning. One of his sales managers was complaining that they’d almost been excluded from a major deal because their company didn’t come up under a particular search term. The problem is that search term, while relevant, wasn’t anything we’d optimized for. It’s very hard to tell someone “You should have listened to me.” I honestly hate that. In this case, it wasn’t the fellow who emailed me but a marketing wonk…
Live in San Francisco….
David Churbuck hit an issue that’s been on my mind for a while yesterday – that is the effect of YouTube on media and news in general. Basically, YouTube and the cellphone video recorder are(have) changed the world. Think about the Michael Richards (Kramer from Seinfeld) incident. No video phones, no racism complaints, career not quite so over. Or the LA police beatings, no video, no issue. The problem is that, regardless what you think of MSM (mainstream media in…
I’ve been wrestling with a bit of a conundrum for a while, and John Rogers at OpinionatedMarketers.com reminded me of it again the other day. If the new marketing philosophy is correct, then the customer owns the brand, relevance is the most important thing, and one must engage and placate ones customers, etc… Here’s the issue: if that’s all true, then why spam, or even worse, adware? Why do companies like Real Media (as John noted in his post) cram…
Masterful guitar, and married to the wonderfully talented Susan Tedeschi… (oops looks like someone violated a copyright there and got their video removed…here’s another good (and legal) one – mnc)
Mary Schmidt had a great Thanksgiving post yesterday, and I thought I’d post my own list of things I’m thankful for: Friends and family of course. Having this creative outlet (thanks Dave Churbuck for the push). I thank God that I can swim well, and that I’m not swimming now. For the people that put a smile on my face. That I love my work because I spend so much time doing it. My customers and readers, they are the…
Jay got me on IM with a question a little while ago. He’s working on the marketing end of a soon to launch web 2.0 project, and had a question about how his engineers are managing pagination. It’s got the look of just about any other pagination scheme, little arrows pointing right and left at either end, with the page numbers with hyperlinks at the bottom…you know 1 2 3 4 5 …9. The problem is this: the developer who…
I just read an article from Sappiens by Robert A. Kelly entitled “Managers: Better Take PR Seriously” and it got me thinking. The premise is basically that PR is all about perception. Most people when dealing with PR think tactically, while quality PR is generated strategically.