Service

The Art of Customer Service

The CEO’s attitude toward customer service determines the quality of service that a company delivers. If the CEO thinks that customers are a pain in the ass, her company will provide lousy service. If the CEO thinks customers are treasured assets, it will provide great service. If you’re not the CEO, either change her mind, quit, or learn to live with mediocrity—in that order.

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Really living service

Marc Silvester and Mohi Ahmed of Fujitsu map talk about a new approach to service which they anticipate as being as powerful in the service world as Toyota's has been in manufacturing.

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Meijer Pressure

Cashiers who are too friendly, patient or careful are likely to be fired for being too slow at Meijer’s supermarkets, reports Vanessa O’Connell in the Wall Street Journal (11/17/08). Meijer’s, a 185-store chain, uses "time-motion" software from Accenture Ltd., originally developed to improve efficiency on factory floors, to make sure the checkout lanes are sufficiently speedy. Cashiers who score below a 95 percent baseline too many times are given "counseling," and if that doesn’t work may be reassigned, or worse.

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Amazon Launches 'Frustration-Free Packaging' Initiative

Amazon is aiming to improve its shopping experience by ditching plastic enclosures in favor of easy-to-open, recyclable boxes.

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Web Sales with a Human Touch

Bringing personalized service to e-commerce consumers.

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Radical Service Innovation

Strategies on the frontiers of service design demand a blend of creativity and discipline. Here are five steps to leverage positive results.

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Discussion Boards: Critical Customer Service Piece

The idea of using public support forums has been around for years, but is increasingly becoming a standard part of the online presence package. Businesses large and small now offer them. Often the discussion forums are the most vibrant, human and active parts of a company’s Web presence.

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A Geek's Guide to Great Service

If it all seems a touch fanatical, well, maybe that's what it takes to do something remarkable for customers. And that's the ultimate goal for Robert Stephens, who also likes to say that "marketing is a tax you pay for being unremarkable."

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Kayak Service

"We fix customer problems in real time," says Paul English, co-founder of travel website Kayak.com, reports Jonathan Blum in Fortune Small Business (June 08). Paul also fixes customer problems with real people — that is, his entire staff of 58, each of whom is responsible for responding to some portion of customer questions or complaints.

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Happy customers - and no service staff

21 MAY 2008 from CNN Money | Read the full story»

Travel website Kayak.com uses a do-it-yourself online database to help keep millions of users happy, without employing a single customer-service representative.

Hat tip: MyBusiness Magazine

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Podcast: Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Small businesses can differentiate themselves from competitors by providing excellent, consistent responses to customers. Ashu Roy, CEO of software company eGain, gives tips for improving service by e-mail, Web chat, or phone. (Audio)

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A modest proposal to fix Dell's customer service

A former leader in its field, customer satisfaction ranking now lags behind most competitors. Here are some suggestions.

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IBM: The New Contours of Service Innovation

IBM and the University of Cambridge released an interesting and convincing report earlier this week calling for increased investment in "service systems."

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Does a New Website Hold the Secret to Great Customer Service?

Thor Muller, CEO of getsatisfaction.com, talks about why companies like Google, Comcast, and Twitter think he might have the answer.

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The New Math of Customer Relationships

21 APR 2008 from Harvard Business School Working Knowledge | Read the full story»

Harvard Business School professor emeritus James L. Heskett has spent much of his career exploring how satisfied employees and customers can drive lifelong profit. Heskett and his colleagues will soon introduce a new concept into the business management literature: customer and employee "owners."

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How to Get Customer Service via Twitter

10 APR 2008 from ReadWriteWeb | Read the full story»

[W]hich companies are using Twitter for customer service? And how can you get a company's attention via Twitter?

Hat tip: Signals vs. Noise

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the $35 movie ticket

Given that we live in a world where experiences matter, it makes sense to see an elevation of the movie going experience.

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The End of Customer Service

MAR 2008 from Time | Read the full story»

Companies love self-service for the money it saves, and with consumers finally playing along, the need to interact with human beings is quickly disappearing.

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The bad table

Hence the marketing dilemma: who should get your best effort? Should it be the new customer who you just might be able to convert into a long-term customer? Or should it be the loyal customer who is already valuable?

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The Best Seat in the Plane

Remember when first-class seats meant the best on the plane? That’s not always the case anymore.

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Baggage Becomes a Big-Ticket Item

11 MAR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Pack light or pay up.

Forcing customers to pay for service previously included with ticket purchases, UAL Corp.'s United Airlines and US Airways Group Inc. will begin charging $50 round-trip for checking a second piece of luggage on May 5, and Southwest Airlines Co. has already implemented a similar fee for checking a third bag. Other airlines may follow, eager to collect hundreds of millions of dollars without raising ticket prices.

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Consumer Vigilantes

21 FEB 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Memo to Corporate America: Hell now hath no fury like a customer scorned.

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On the Internet, Everyone Can Hear You Complain

A San Francisco start-up called Get Satisfaction is the latest online ombudsman to try to mediate customer service complaints. (Subscription required)

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Coming to You Live From the Cockpit

12 FEB 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Listening to air-traffic control communications while flying across the country on United Airlines, Hugh Coppen heard the flight's captain receive a warning of turbulence ahead. A seasoned traveler, Mr. Coppen acted quickly before the captain alerted passengers. "I knew to run to the bathroom, because you may not be able to go for the next hour," he said.

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The Celebrity Experience - Roy

Mary made me feel sort of like Jack Nicholson at the Oscars... It's not that hard for a company to do this. Donna Cutting's new book: The Celebrity Experience gives great examples of how an organization can do this, no matter what! She emphasizes that too many people say no or can't see a way to make things happen. Cutting gives us six tasks or ways to make everyone feel like a Rock Star.

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Humanize It: Bring a five-star sparkle to your customer interactions and watch your business flourish

"The best thing you can do for your business is not about new technology, brute force, or first-mover advantage. It’s something simpler. And more dependable. Humanize each customer interaction, in order to turn your product or service into much more than a commodity. In your customer’s mind, commodities are interchangeable and replaceable. Humanized relationships are not."

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Amazon Obsession

Jeff Bezos attributes Amazon’s success to its obsession with customer service, reports Joe Nocera in The New York Times (1/14/08). "We are not great advertisers," says Jeff. "So we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them."

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The discipline of one ring

When you need to answer the phone in one ring, you discover exactly what it means to provide a certain level of service. Either you're succeeding or failing.

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Postal Service Ends M Bag Subsidy

The United States Postal Service says that, since being ordered by Congress to break even, it can no longer afford to subsidize the nonprofits' shipping costs through M Bags. M Bags are large duffel bags that nonprofit organizations use to bulk-ship textbooks overseas to impoverished regions around the world.
(Audio)

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Airlines plan to pack in more per flight

Passenger jets are flying 80 percent full these days, and it's only going to get worse. The nation's largest six airlines say they're going to fill their planes even closer to capacity. Jill Barshay reports. (Audio)

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Hyatt goes boutique with Andaz

Andaz (which apparently means personal style in Urdu) Describes itself as a ‘personalised casual luxury hotel experience’, and has replaced the traditional check-in desks with what they call dedicated personal hosts; title-less staff who use Tablet PCs to check you in, respond and cater to your personal tastes and preferences, and aim to build a one-on-one host and guest relationship- rather like a personal butler.

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Paying to Hear the Complaints

New Web-based services are making it easier for smaller businesses to compile important customer information. (Subscription required)

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Dell Learns to Listen

17 OCT 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

The computer maker takes to the blogosphere to repair its tarnished image. (Video )

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A Bruise or Two on Apple's Reputation

22 OCT 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Is the company's stellar service keeping up with its hypergrowth? Some customers don't think so.

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Now, the customer's always managed

Most companies try to at least appear interested in how their customers feel. But if you're starting to feel more like a lab rat than a loyal customer, get used to it, says commentator Ian Ayres.

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Is Your Service Language Calibrated?

"How do we define service at this company?" If you were to send that question in an e-mail to the person responsible for operations, the person responsible for hiring, the person responsible for marketing, the person responsible for sales, the head of your company, and a front-line employee (assuming these aren't all the same person)... would they all respond with the same answer?

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Don't make me scream

[A]ny service that forces customers to scream is a bad idea. Screaming is something that we do when we’re frustrated or angry... I can’t imagine a worse association for a company to have.s

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Value-based Customer Service is not Lip Service

Anita Roddick died this week, leaving a tremendous legacy -- the creation and establishment of a small brand that reshaped cosmetic retailing, firstly in the UK and then globally. She anticipated the values of her customers, super served them and never wavered. Her success followed naturally.

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Crowdsourcing Customer Service

10 SEP 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Get Satisfaction's site lets users interact with—and help—multiple companies.

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Yorkville Copy Service

Over the past 35 years, Bill Torres has whipped up intense customer loyalty and beaten back Kinkos simply by treating his customers the same way he treats his friends, reports John Eligon in The New York Times (8/25/07). In fact, his customers insist they are his friends...

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Saturn Rings

Saturn’s sales are up, and it’s mainly thanks to a return to its roots in customer service, reports David Welch in Business Week (9/3/07). Things weren’t so great for Saturn when it tried to ape BMW, with ads bragging on its "horsepower and handling" instead of the "haggle-free selling and friendly service..."

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At Netflix, Victory for Voices Over Keystrokes

Shunning low-cost call centers and e-mail-based service, Netflix is hoping to use customer service as a strategic weapon against Blockbuster’s rival DVD-mailing service. (Subscription required)

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Sprint Nextel Defends Cutting Customers

Sprint Nextel Corp. isn't apologizing for its decision to ax customers it determined were calling customer service too often....

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Top 10 Reasons Why Your Customer Service Fails

It’s no secret that when the time comes to evaluate your customer service, the finger pointing begins – and all fingers point suspiciously somewhere else.

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Customer Feedback as CPR

Customers may be calling in not only to receive support; they are also often calling you to provide useful information. If your product or service is not working, you want to know right this minute, while something can still be done to restore the confidence in your service. And you can actually use that feedback as an opportunity to get an honest conversation going.

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Anatomy of the new customer complaint meme

Delivering shoddy service or selling defective products happens, but there's nowhere to hide from unhappy customers who use social media to highlight a problem you've created and refuse to address.

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Have you had a CUSTOMER Conversation Today?

Have we as customers become more realistic? Or have we just given up? Maybe, after years of talking about excellence in service, brands have finally met our expectations. And some smart companies have found good ways to secure our loyalty.

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An animated customer experience

Recording your call with a customer service rep and sharing it with the world is one thing; recording it and turning it into an animated video takes the idea to a new level. (Video )

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What if Customers WERE the Service?

I walked into my local Best Buy store because I needed technical assistance with my Palm. What I didn’t know is that they don’t support the device, they just sell it. For support, the nice albeit a bit detached girl at the Geek Squad desk said, you need to call the Palm customer service.

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INDIANA JONES in Customer Service

She called asking a very simple question.

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The "NO Effort" Effect

Given all the reports and articles published on negative experiences, I am puzzled at the lack of effort from companies.

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I've had it with e-mail only customer service

I'm up to my eyeballs with frustration at the direction many companies are taking with "e-mail only" customer service. It has reached the point where I will no longer do business with companies that won't talk with their paying customers.

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Project Runway

From JFK to LAX, airports are trying to appeal to an increasingly captive audience. One cross-country traveler puts them to the test. (Subscription required)

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Reasons to Have a Flexible Customer Service Policy

Smart companies have customer service policies in place to protect their best interests and the bottom line. Smarter companies, however, know how and when to bend certain policies for customers who have the right profitability, loyalty, frequency of purchase and long-term revenue potential.

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hyatt's hollow innovation

The role of a hotel has always been to provide the comforts from home, away from home. A place that allows guests to seamlessly blend and manage their personal and professional lives.

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WANTED: Customer Service Champs

It’s interesting to me that every time I read articles and newsletters about leadership, I find references to how true leaders treat their employees with respect and dignity, value their opinions, and ask for their feedback.

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Starting over with customer service

Customer service is broken. Not just because of bad management, though we have plenty of that to go around. Customer service is broken for three reasons...

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Seven steps to remarkable customer service

Seven steps to remarkable customer service — As a bootstrapped software company, Fog Creek couldn't afford to hire customer service people for the first couple of years, so Michael and I did it ourselves.

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"Sorry"

If it's hard to say you're sorry when it's your fault and when there is no money at stake, imagine how hard it is to say you're sorry when neither is true. And yet, if reading the constant stream of horrible customer service stories that cross my desk every day, that's all anyone wants.

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How to Become a Customer Action Hero in 10 Steps

"Rate your experience from 1 to 10." "Would you recommend our company?" We ask the questions of our customers. But what do we do with their answers? Jeanne Bliss gives us the action plan to actually make our customers happy with our services.

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The 10 Best (and 10 Worst) Companies for Call Center Service

03 JAN 2007 from CRM Low Down | Read the full story»

The internet has turned the Customer Relations Management world on its head. Just five years ago it took thousands upon thousands of unhappy customers before a company lost enough business to change its ways. Today, just ONE disgruntled client, through access to the internet, can cause a company to lose millions in a matter of few days.

Hat tip: The Creativity Exchange

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Service Trumps Price for Holiday Shoppers

Harried customers agree.

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Happy New Year

We wish you a new year filled with prosperity and growth, both personal and professional.

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Happy Holidays!

We're observing the Christmas holiday today and will return to posting tomorrow, Boxing day. We wish you a day filled with joy and peace.

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Customer-Focus When the Customer Doesn’t Even Pay

Diego pointed to this article for its uncommon attention to aesthetics, I point to it for its uncommon attention to the customer...

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Tracking the Evolution Of Customer Service

Traditionally, many businesses have defined customer service with a simple mantra: "The customer is always right." Got a problem? We'll fix it. But over time, customer service has evolved.

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A bar with room service

Since hotel rooms have mini-bars, why not shake things up and create a bar with room-service? Located in New York's Flatiron District at 35 E. 21st Street, Room Service is a new nightspot with 9 curtained-off rooms ranging from petite intimate chambers to a roomy presidential suite that offers guests a grand 15 by 20 feet... Most importantly, guests are appointed a personal butler/bartender who's instructed to cater to any whim a guest may have...

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Armchair M.B.A.: And Now a Syllabus for the Service Economy

To help prepare university students for the new services-based economy, I.B.M. wants colleges to teach services as a science. (Subscription required!)

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Happy Thanksgiving

We hope that you all have a day rich with community and contentment. The wire service will resume tomorrow.

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Generation gap threatens customer service meltdown

With Christmas on the horizon and the retail rush beginning, U.S. researchers have warned that a customer service meltdown is on the horizon as the generational gap between shoppers and retail staff widens.

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Love and Money

Joel Spolsky shares this great story from a flight attendant:

"... Once the pizza was brought back, the passengers were boarded, our live tv and xm were turned on and the pizza was served by ALL the crew, not just the flight attendants..."

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Advertisements Revisited

"Ready. Fire! Aim." is one of Tom’s favorite mantras. In that spirit, we've been experimenting with advertising here at the TP Wire Service. We've also considered and researched it for our parent site, tompeters.com. The results have underwhelmed us. We're removing the ads from the TP Wire Service RSS feeds today and will be removing the ads from the TP Wire Service home page in the near future. Tompeters.com will remain ad-free. We welcome your thoughts on the subject. Here's to "Relentless Experimentation!"

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What Costs Are Worth It For Customer Service?

Companies should approach customer service as a balancing of costs and benefits, spending where it will be most effective.

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Ideas to Help Employees To Provide Good Service

The restaurant business, which depends on service more heavily than most other industries, offers a glimpse into how companies juggle rewards and reprimands to motivate employees.

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Avoiding Practices That Baffle Customers

Ask any retail or restaurant executive about the keys to success, and you'll hear something about providing excellent customer service. But there's a fine line between catering to customers and annoying them, and that line is made even thinner by the fact that what delights one shopper may repel another.

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Extended Stay, Extended Pampering

Resorts have been making a special effort to cater to their long-term guests, learning their likes and introducing unusual amenities. (Subscription required!)

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Hospitality for Everyone

03 OCT 2006 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

"[I]t's pretty easy to deliver great hospitality to a celebrity," he says. "What's far more important to do is to focus on all the other guests." (Subscription required!)

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Customer Champion: Burton Snowboards

Bryan Johnson, VP of global marketing, and Cathy Quain, VP of global retail, Burton Snowboards, on impacting customers with a personal touch. (Audio)

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Basic Training

There are no shortcuts on the road to a great experience.

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2006 Customers First Awards

The winners of Fast Company's 2006 Customers First Awards transform ordinary transactions into entertaining experiences -- delighting customers and showing everyone else the way.

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Labor Day

"Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country." [U.S. Dept. of Labor]

There will be no postings today at TP Wire Service in observance of the holiday. Have a wonderful day.

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Technology: Call Centers That Feel Your Pain

Customer service companies track the emotional quality of calls.

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Press '0' If You've Had Enough

Customer service via online chat is gaining popularity as people get fed up with hold times. By James Belcher

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Companies Receive Poor Grades for Customer Service

A new study shows consumers are turned off by automated phone services and hold times.

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Measure Your Failures to Succeed

Jeanne Bliss just wrote a wonderful article for MarketingProfs on how survey-based success metrics are manipulated to help meet and exceed objectives... Jeanne shares how companies set metrics like customer satisfaction, loyalty and net promoter scores to measure their performance without really using these to manage their customer relationships.

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The Italian post office delivers profits

21 JUL 2006 from Fortune | Read the full story»

Poste Italiane's CEO and his 150,000 foot soldiers are making money on everything they do - except the mail.

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Selling the Special Touch

18 July 2006 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

A growing number of companies in industries not known for great customer service -- banks, hospitals, law firms and car dealerships, to name a few -- are increasingly seeking help from luxury hotels that pride themselves on service, like the Four Seasons Hotels Inc. and Marriott International Inc.'s Ritz-Carlton hotels. (Subscription required!)

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Self-Service Sleeping

Customers love to check themselves in at the airport. Can they ever feel the same way about hotels?

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Happy 4th of July!

We're taking the day off in celebration of Independence Day here in the U.S. We hope everyone has an opportunity to relish freedom today. Enjoy!

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Dell, the Ultra Service Provider?

Dell enhances its highest level of support with new features.

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Takin' Off the Ritz -- a Tad

23 JUN 2006 from The Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

The name that has defined luxury as a cross between formal elegance and unwavering service bordering on the robotic is scaling back the 20 rules to 12 "service values" and asking employees to think for themselves. (Subscription required!)

Hat tip: Tim Manners at reveries.

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Toyota Recall

Toyota had the second-highest number of recalls last year, but it also dominates consumer satisfaction polls by J.D. Power, report Joann Muller and Jonathan Fahey in Forbes (7/3/06). Only Ford, with 11.7 percent of its vehicles recalled in 2005, exceeds Toyota, which recalled 10.1 percent, followed by GM at 6.8 percent, Honda at 4.0 [...]

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impatience drives out human service

Obviously, the big challenge for all business is to deliver customer service as efficiently as possible because people don't like to be kept waiting.

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Customer Love: 10 Steps to building a kickass Customer Service Department

18 MAY 2006 from the brandbuilder blog | Read the full story»

When customers call you with a problem, don't fight or argue. Smile, listen to them, and fix it.

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The Art of Customer Service

7. Hire the right kind of people. To put it mildly, customer service is not a job for everyone. The ideal customer service person derives great satisfaction by helping people and solving problems. This cannot be said of every job candidate. It's the company's responsibility to hire the right kind of people for this job because it can be a bad experience for the employee and the customer when you hire folks without a service orientation.

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The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order

The voice at the other end of the drive-through speaker may be coming from thousands of miles away. (Subscription required!)

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Boutique Airlines

29 MAR 2006 from Brand Noise | Read the full story»

A new generation of boutique airlines is taking flight, serving a minimum of cities with a maximum of style. Upping the ante on exclusivity, they offer business-class-only flights, concierge services and a members-only booking policy...

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Customer Service Goes to Hell

E-mail could replace expensive customer-service calls, but businesses are dropping the ball. Here are seven companies that get it right -- and seven that don't. From Forbes.com.

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Travel Concierges

The Observer newspaper picks up on the changing face of travel services. The traditional travel agent, they say, is being replaced by a more personal service - a 'travel concierge': Working as travel-focused personal assistants, concierges will take care of the practicalities of organising a trip as well as ensuring extras are provided...

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Beware of Dissatisfied Consumers: They Like to Blab

When consumers have a bad shopping experience, they are likely to spread the word, not to the store manager or salesperson, but to friends, family and colleagues. Overall, if 100 people have a bad experience, a retailer stands to lose between 32 and 36 current or potential customers. These are some of the conclusions of The Retail Customer Dissatisfaction Study 2006, conducted by The Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative at Wharton and The Verde Group, a Toronto consulting firm, in the weeks before and after Christmas 2005. The biggest source of consumer dissatisfaction? Parking lots.

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Suddenly, an Industry Is All Ears

The big cellphone companies are eager to improve their customer support and service, an area that was an afterthought just a short time ago. (Subscription required!)

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Everyone Likes to Laud Serving the Customer; Doing It Is the Problem

27 FEB 2006 from The Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Executives who sincerely want to satisfy consumers should analyze how they rate service reps' performances -- and make sure they are actually rewarding good service. They should also train their employees well and then rely on them to exercise some of their own judgment when dealing with consumers. (Subscription required!)

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Under New Management: Your Call Should Be Important to Us, but It's Not

How can companies listen to their customers if those customers have such a hard time reaching a human being when they call? (Subscription required!)

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Measuring performance in services

10 FEB 2006 from The McKinsey Quarterly | Read the full story»

Service companies can't measure and reduce variance as easily as manufacturers can. Service tasks vary, depending on the person performing the service, differences in customer behavior, and the business environment. (Free subscription required!)

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Happy New Year

Wishing you a prosperous and fulfilling New Year, the TP Wire Service will resume its postings tomorrow.

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Happy Holidays

Wishing you a joyous holiday season, the TP Wire Service will resume its postings tomorrow.

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Of Buying Cell Phones and Lipstick...

If you come into a Sam's Club store in Texas and a cell phone or a PDA you want isn't available, the salesperson will now get the phone FedEx-ed to your home overnight. This is one more step toward turning cell phone buying -- typically, a long and torturous process -- into an enjoyable experience.

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Happy Thanksgiving

Have a wonderful holiday. The wire service will resume tomorrow.

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Technology Lets High-End Hotels Anticipate Guests' Whims

Hotels are keeping track of guests' preferences and changing the room conditions automatically - from temperature to what's in the minibar. (Subscription required!)

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Enterprise Does It Again

There may be another rental company out there that delivers like Enterprise does, but I'm so hooked I don't even want to take the chance of investigating.

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The Three "Ds" of Customer Experience

07 NOV 2005 from Harvard Business School Working Knowledge | Read the full story»

Eighty percent of companies believe they deliver a superior customer experience, but only 8 percent of their customers agree, says Bain & Company. Here's how to repair the disconnect. From Harvard Management Update.

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Are You Just Good Enough?

I shop at two health food stores.  I am a frequent customer, stopping by at least once if not twice a week.  Nearly everytime I stand at the checkout I end up having a conversation with the clerk.  It's nice to be able to do that, since they're both small operations and the customer flow is decent but not harried.

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David Pogue: 10 Ways to Please Us, the Customers

Dear electronics makers, you should worship at the altar of good design and make customer satisfaction your religion. These should be your commandments. (Subscription required!)

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Itineraries: Hotels Trot Out Perks From the Extravagant to the Restful

Realizing that guests have become a bit jaded, high-end hotels are devising over-the-top perks to pamper guests. (Subscription required!)

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Touchology Trumps Technology

"If we greet customers, exchange a few words with them and then custom-make a drink exactly to their taste, they will be eager to come back." Howard Schultz, Starbucks Chairman & Visionary. [Third in a series of posts on Starbucks Tribal Knowledge]

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The Art of Service

You'd think it would be obvious: Take care of the folks who matter most -- the ones who pay the tab. But truly customer-focused companies are sadly rare. And so Fast Company is celebrating those that get it right.

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Conference Recap...

...wherein we save you from awkward networking, bad coffee, and having to deal with the crowds in Times Square. In this edition, Forrester Research's Consumer Forum, a two-day event at New York's Marriott Marquis, which focused on customer-driven innovation and...

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Advertisements

Tom has generously provided the funding for this site since its inception. Now that we have launched successfully and have a steady readership, it's time to pull our own weight, fiscally speaking, and begin to use advertisements to support the site. By going this route, we're joining such news aggregators as Always On Network, The Huffington Post, and Information Week. We're not sure which method will work best both for us and for you. So you'll see a few changes both to the site and to the RSS feeds in the coming weeks. Feel free to let us know what you think by emailing us.

Filed under Blogging | Books | Brand You | Branding | Design | Education | Entrepreneurs | Excellence | Healthcare | Innovation | Leadership | Marketing | News | Peculiar Picks | Service | Strategies | Talent | Technology | Trend$ | WOW! Projects | Send this

a grocery store with food advisors

Beleaguered British grocer store giant, Sainsbury's has just launched a new marketing campaign using the tagline "Try Something New Today". A critical component of the new campaign is an internal training effort designed to turn the Sainsbury's 100,000 + staff into consultants for the consumer's food choices. Sainsbury's also has a team of food advisors for stores who sample food and provide dietary and nutritional advice.

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Return Of the Hotel Butler

Talk about service: one manservant bailed a famous heir out of jail.

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This is the way it's done here

Mark Sicignano of SoftwareTime told us a story of customer service so remarkable that he was compelled to share...

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When Product Variety Backfires

Consumers like choice--but not too much of it. Presented with too many options, buyers may run to a competitor, says professor John Gourville. Here's what new research says about "overchoice."

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Comcast in the dog house

A Comcast customer representative was ticked off at Elgin, Illinois, customer LaChania Govan who kept having problems with her digital cable recording system (we all do). The rep changed LaChania's name on her account to "Bitch Dog," which showed up on her August bill.

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Study: Dell customer rating plunges, Apple leads pack

U.S. consumers lambasted Dell Inc. for poor customer service in a survey conducted last quarter, sending the world's largest PC vendor into a virtual tie with the rest of the PC market behind the industry-leading efforts of Apple Computer Inc.

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TPWS had a tune-up

Over the weekend, the Tom Peters Wire Service switched servers. As a result, readers may notice some kinks due to the information transfer. Our team has yet to encounter any, so please let us know if you experience a problem and we'd be happy to help solve it.

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Hotel to open women only section

8 AUG 2005 from BBC News | Read the full story»

A hotel is to open a wing which will be available to women only.
Males will be banned from the 68 rooms of the new section of the five-star Grange City Hotel in central London. Even room service staff will be female in the seven-storey building that will open at the end of August.

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To Internet Stores, It's All About the Personal Touch

Robert Beaver, the chief executive of Zazzle.com, said that contrary to rhetoric about how customization can kill profit margins, margins at Zazzle "are very good." (Subscription required!)

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Frustrated and Fleeing

Almost one-half of respondents to a new poll by Accenture said that poor customer service led them to change a service provider in the past year.

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What Consumers -- and Retailers -- Should Know about Dynamic Pricing

According to a recent study, 64% of consumers who shop on the Internet do not know that "it is legal for an online store to charge different people different prices at the same time of day." Yet dynamic pricing is not new. Retailers have been using it for years in ways that benefit not just themselves but also their customers.

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Free Lunches

JUL 2005 from FastCompany | Read the full story»

When companies offer us, of all people, something for nothing, we wonder: What's the catch -- or, for that matter, the business plan? So we asked actual experts -- Ben McConnell, author of Creating Customer Evangelists (Dearborn, 2002) and Jennifer Rice of Mantra Brand Consulting -- to assess a few high-profile giveaways. How do we know they're working?

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Small Banking in a Big Bank World

A hearty band of entrepreneurs are smelling opportunity in customers' longing to be pampered. (Subscription required!)

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Goethe on personality

21 JUN 2005 from acleareye.com | Read the full story»

"Personality is everything in art and poetry."
And now that we've officially transitioned to the "feelings economy" (at least in the U.S.), personality is everything in business as well.
[A peek into CD Baby's customer service.]

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Your minicab has landed

22 JUN 2005 from BBC News | Magazine | UK Edition | Read the full story»

It sounds like a scene from the Jetsons or Buck Rogers but five-seater flying taxis are being touted as the next big thing in aviation - and there's already a "cab rank" near you.

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Geeks On Wheels

Geeks on Wheels are breaking the mould with their bold and focussed services for frustrated technologically-challenged people who are wrestling with their computer problems (as reported on Daily Candy). Operating in the London and Brighton area in the UK, Geeks On Wheels offers help to home and business users, racing to the scene in their speedy Nissan Micra.

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The Frill Is Gone

What began as a gradual decline in amenities at the big airlines has turned into the biggest attack ever on costs, particularly in coach class. (Subscription required!)

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P&G SHUTS DOWN EXPERIMENT IN MASS CUSTOMIZATION

06 JUN 2005 from AdAge.com | Read the full story»

Procter & Gamble Co. is pulling the plug June 13 on Reflect, its once highly touted experiment in mass customization of beauty products, shutting the Web site and retail stores in San Francisco and Chicago.
“We are going to be, per our corporate strategy, focusing on our big brands at P&G,” a spokeswoman said. “We gained significant learnings from Reflect.”

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The Other Side of Customer Service

Good customer service is at a premium these days, from the Starbucks barista around the corner to the IT help staff in Bangalore. So it was interesting to read their side of the story, in this case, through the eyes of a bouncer in New York.

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Is the Check-In Kiosk in the Lobby for Real?

Automated check-in kiosks at hotels are unreliable, but the hotel industry is determined to get the job done right. (Subscription required!)

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NorthWest Airlines Drops The Free Snacks

Beginning June 9, coach passengers who want anything other than soda will have to pay for it on Northwest Airlines. The airline waved goodbye to free meals in February and now they dropped the free pretzels.

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Valet Parking, Comfy Seats, Nice Meal (This Is Flying?)

There is a small but growing exodus of business travelers from the world of commercial flight and all its irritations. (Subscription required!)

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Next Via the Internet: Tailored TV To Suit Every Taste

Watching TV will be getting easier or harder -- depending on whether you like to tune into your favorite NBC or HBO series, or prefer near-infinite choice.

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BUILD YOU OWN NIKE SHOE -- ABOVE TIMES SQUARE

In its customary way of going for ever bigger and more different promotions, Nike has purchased a build-your-own-shoe media placement on the 27-story-high Reuters sign on the Reuters Building in Times Square.

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Microsoft Cuts Call Times

Microsoft has created a Web services software platform to make call center operations run more efficiently and cost effectively for service providers.

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A House Call for Your Car

Car dealers and car makers know that most customers don't like to bring their vehicles in to dealer shops for service. But what if dealer service technicians could make house calls? (Subscription required!)

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Servicism

In Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) “Service” is defined as follows: “The act of serving; the performance of labour for the benefit of another”. Aaaah – “for the benefit of another”. Remarkable, because… Everybody takes service for granted when buying something. Either from the local shop buying a chewing gum for 50p or from the company where the car is bought or from the company you buy an item costing US$ 1,000,000. Service is a strange thing. Everyone agree that service is important. Excellent service that is.

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Sallie Mae's Call Center That Works

For many companies, call centers lose more customers than they help. Here's how Sallie Mae creates seamless customer service without the hassle, using "routine response" networks to connect customers with its agents. A Harvard Business Review excerpt.

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Checking In and Out, When It Suits You

The paradigm of the 3 p.m. check-in and 11 a.m. checkout is at least under review, if not exactly under siege.

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The Self-Service Economy

I suspect it won't be long before I cross paths with hotel front-desk staffers as rarely as I do with bank tellers, gas station attendants, travel agents, photo clerks, and airline check-in agents -- all the people who used to...

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Starbucks Need for Speed

For years now Starbucks has been fixated on reducing customer wait time (i.e. speed of service). However, at some point a fixation can become an obsession and not all obsessions are healthy.

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