Archive for June, 2009
Ask and you shall receive (mostly). Don’t ask and you might tick someone off.
A while back, I got minor-ly embroiled in a little “situation” with a customer of one of my clients.
Here’s the story:
As part of my work for this client, I have frequent conversations with customers. Someone in the marketing group, whom I don’t usually work with, let me know that she was planning on using [...]
Princess Sparkle Pony falls through the customer service looking glass
My friend John alerted me to an excellent customer service story he’d seen on Princess Sparkle Pony.
Princess Sparkle Pony (a.k.a., PSP) is a double oddity: no cell phone, no credit card. But PSP, like the rest of us cowpokes, is not totally immune to consuming cravings. PSP’s was for an iPhone. Here’s PSP’s story:
First I [...]
Test Messaging
I had an interesting little test messaging experience the last couple of days, and it got me thinking about the best ways to go about doing this.
First, I will disclose up front that the two e-mail messages I received were from a political candidate whom I can say with about 100% surety I will never, [...]
So great when it happens…
One of my favorite marketing things to do is talk to customers. I especially like it when I get to do it on behalf of one of my clients in particular. Never, in my 28 years of tech product marketing, have I ever experienced anything like the joy factor that comes out of most of [...]
Half the battle
The other day, I got a letter in the mail that kinda-sorta looked personal. The reason it kinda-sorta looked personal was because, rather than using a printed return address on the enveloped, they used a sticker with a real person’s name on it.
Now, because I don’t know this particular Colleen T, I really knew it [...]
The Gobbledygook Grader
I decided to go ahead and run a draft press release through the HubSpot Gobbledygook Grader, which I had mentioned in a post earlier this week on, well, use of goggledygook words.
I was tempted to review the press release ahead of time to purge gobbledygook words, but held myself back. So I was pleased to [...]
A tale of two Lexus dealers
A few weeks ago, a couple of friends - K1 and K2 - picked me up to go visit another old friend. Even though I am most decidedly a non-car person, I couldn’t help but notice that they were driving a very nice, very comfy, very shiny red Lexus.
Their purchase saga is an excellent example [...]
David Meerman Scott on gobbleydygook
A few weeks ago, I participated in a client’s marketing off-site, and social media expert David Meerman Scott was on the agenda.
Mostly, he focused on viral marketing, the subject of his recent book, World Wide Rave, which I posted about here. But he also spent a few minutes on another topic: the gobbledygook that [...]
Let’s not talk about politics or religion, shall we?
I was watching Keith Olbermann the other night (so I guess I’m kind of talking about politics….), and he had a bit on a Burger King franchisee in Tennessee that had been displaying a rather provocative sign in front of their stores.
I googled around and found the original story (by Chris Davis) in the Memphis [...]
Why is it that excellent customer service so delights us?
Why is it that excellent customer service so delights us? Is it that we’re so used to the opposite? Is it because, by the time we get to a competent, pleasant person on the other end of the line, we’ve been through such menu hell, or a long wait with insipid or jangling music playing [...]
