In the latest issue of Nick Usborne’s bi-weekly Excess Voice e-newsletter (about writing online; subscribe here), he talks about the similarity between e-newsletters and blogs:

1. Good newsletters and blogs seek to engage your attention at a personal level.
2. Good newsletters and blogs both deliver timely information.
3. Good newsletters and blogs expand their readers’ world with outbound links.
4. Good newsletters and blogs both invite interaction.

I have a great fondness for newsletters, which make up a large part of my freelance writing business, and in fact I sometimes introduce myself as the Newsletter Queen. That may be why I feel comfortable with a blog. The big difference is that blogs don’t have a schedule and a deadline the way newsletters do, which may be why I don’t post as often as some bloggers do. I may have to set myself a schedule! Until then, there is no danger of being mistaken for the Blogging Queen.

Seth Godin has been writing about customer service a lot lately, and in one recent post, pointed to “Seven steps to remarkable customer service” by Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Reading what his company does about customer service makes me want to buy the software and I don’t even know what it does! I particularly liked #2, “Suggest blowing out the dust.” It reflects the desire to make things right without making the customer look foolish.

Customer service is on my mind, too, after an experience this week with Blue Mountain ski resort. It was reading week for the university my older son attends (President’s week in the U.S.), so I took my younger son out of high school for two days and we went to Blue for a one-night getaway. It’s an Intrawest resort so has their typical village at the base of the mountain, with restaurants, shops and bars; a fun spot. Check-out time is 11 a.m., but the package I had booked provides a lift ticket good any time you get there and all the following day. We arrived about 1 p.m. to a line-up at the front desk. Of course our room wasn’t ready (check-in is 4 p.m.), but we got a voucher for our lift tickets and a parking pass, went to line up at the ticket office and eventually hit the slopes.

At 4 p.m., I called to find out if our room was ready. No; they suggested I call back. At 5 p.m., still not ready, although apparently the housekeeper was just starting it and they expected it would take about 45 minutes. At 6 p.m., still not ready, nor was it at 6:30. Profuse apologies. Several of these calls featured long waits on hold, with one song playing in an endless loop. In the meantime, we could not access the ski lockers so had to leave our equipment outside. At 7 p.m., we finally were able to get in the room — which turned out to be the farthest possible distance away from the ski hill with no nearby access to the street level. There was a piece of dental floss in my sink and a crumpled tissue and gum wrapper tucked beside a dresser.

To “make up” for the delay, the front desk allowed me an extra hour before we had to check out, after I asked for it. When I checked out (and stood through another lineup, with four vacant stations where staff could have been handling more guests), I got another fairly meaningless apology and a hope that we had otherwise enjoyed our stay. My response was less than enthusiastic.

I really should have filled out the comment card. I brought it home and may yet do so. Here’s what I’d like to suggest to Blue:

1. Hire more staff on the front desk and in housekeeping, especially during what you know is a busy time. Have all hands on deck at peak times.

2. Change the way you store skis and snowboards so the guest doesn’t need to know their room number, if you won’t give it out until the room is ready.

3. Give the lift tickets at the front desk to avoid sending your guests to yet another lineup.

4. Empower your staff to give an apology with meaning, such as a voucher for appetizers at a local restaurant or a coffee at the Starbucks.

5. Change the music that plays when people are on hold.

6. You know when things don’t go smoothly at check-in, and you have the guest’s contact information. Get in touch with them and find out how you can improve the experience next time.

I’ll be at a ski resort in Colorado next week. We’ll see how the experiences compare.

Ragan Communications’ free monthly newsletter, Grapevine (“Tips and tactics from the world of corporate communications”), shares a beef of mine this issue. Among the tips in a story called “What do you want from a Web site?” is my favourite: avoid downloadable PDFs. Ragan elaborates:

“If a PDF is the only sensible option — for example, to deliver a printable, multipage, graphics-laden report — make that clear, and specify how large the file is.”

I just ran across two examples of Web sites ignoring that fine advice while looking for some information. I clicked on the links expecting the file to open in Word; instead, Acrobat launched. The first site had no indication that the document would be a PDF. The second had a tiny note at the bottom of the screen, which I didn’t see in time.

It’s a simple courtesy I wish more sites would extend!

(I tried to link to the story itself, but due to a URL with a huge number of characters, it didn’t work. The above link should take you to the Ragan’s Grapevine home page.)

My 20-year-old son is home from university for reading week, and I notice that every time he takes the car out, he changes the radio to CD mode. He says it’s because he has no patience for radio. Two reasons: (1) the stations don’t often play what he wants to hear and (2) he can’t stand the frequent commercials and inane discussions by the on-air personalities. He has the same impatience with TV commercials, so the remote control is never far from his hand. The second a commercial comes on, he switches channels.

I suspect this is a common reaction among the Millennial generation, and it’s rubbed off on me too. I still listen to the radio, but I frequently jump channels among my favourites to skip commercials or chatter. With the TV, I may let the commercials run, but I’ll mute the most annoying ones. (Top of the list these days: the nasty “Stephane Dion is not a leader” attack ads run by the Conservative party. I’d link to them here, but they frankly aren’t worth it.)

Despite his best efforts, Matt is occasionally subjected to ads, such as when he doesn’t have control of the remote, and he says the most annoying commercials have the opposite of their intended effect: they drive him AWAY from the product. For instance, he thinks all Coors Light ads are stupid and for that reason alone won’t buy the product. (He does fall for the patriotic call of Molson Canadian, though.) And don’t the annoying ones seem to be on all the time? I personally wish that TVs came with a button that lets you send a message directly to the advertiser: “This is an extremely annoying commercial. I don’t want to see/hear it even once, and certainly not five times in one program.”

Advertisers are starting to rethink traditional advertising, but it seems they are looking solely at where to reach Millennials, especially online. Looking at the bumper crop of stupid commercials out there, I’d say they also need to give more thought to the content and typical delivery. Give us more clever, funny, thoughtful ads. Stop bombarding viewers/listeners with the same ad multiple times in a row. Stop thinking that “annoying” equals good recall. What do you think? Wouldn’t that be an excellent start?

The only surprise is that it took so long: I’ve just received my first “comment spam,” which Wikipedia says is “done by automatically posting random comments” in the hopes of increasing a site’s search engine ranking. Of course, that only works if the comment gets posted and readers actually click through to the highlighted site.

In a way, you have to give spammers a tiny bit of credit for ingenuity. Although surely fewer people every day are falling for “enhancement” offers and invitations to receive large sums of money in return for delivering a bank account number, spammers keep coming up with new ways to trick us. Lately I’ve received a few breathless messages telling me “someone” has sent me an e-card (sorry, I don’t follow those links unless a friend’s name appears somewhere) or sternly advising me that I must update my online banking information — with an institution I don’t even use. Spiders and bots sweep the Web trolling for e-mail addresses. Bloggers get comment spam.

Ah, the evolution of the Web. Isn’t it grand?

Now here’s a word you don’t run across very often: bedeguar. I had to search many places to find out it means “a gall produced on rosebushes,” gall being a type of fungus. Looking at that definition, you might be surprised to find out the word was not used in a gardening article. No, in Saturday’s Globe and Mail newspaper, columnist Ian Brown said “he felt the bedeguar of bookstore despair.” A fungus of despair?
You have to be a Globe Insider subscriber or 5- or 6-day newspaper subscriber to read the full article, called “The urge to purge,” which begins:

Maybe you’re this kind of person: For three months, you tried to cull a handful of books from the shelves that line your house, and you failed. It’s not like it’s impossible. You haven’t even read half of them. You just can’t pull the trigger, you wuss…”

An interesting read about letting go of books, and an interesting use of a uncommon word!

You just never know what you’re going to learn from reading. Today I found this interesting tidbit in Natalie MacLean’s well-researched, informative and often quite funny e-newsletter:

Researchers at Glasgow University have discovered that if you consume two glasses of wine, members of the opposite sex appear more attractive by about 25%.

(From Nat Decants, free wine e-newsletter at www.nataliemaclean.com)

Of course, we’ve all observed that same phenomenon in the local bar! I wonder how they measure the exact percentage?

Just had to share another book that recently showed up at my local library (I was 29th on the “hold” list!): Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman.

I had read an excerpt in a magazine and found it hugely funny, especially the parts where she laments the increasing amount of time she has to spend on “maintenance” now that she’s in her sixties — hair (wanted and unwanted), nails, exercise and skin. She also talks about purses, New York, parenting and more.

The unexpected part was a very moving account of her best friend at the end of the book. I won’t spoil it for those who might read the book, but it changed a funny read into something else. I’m still not sure how I feel about this, but I am jealous of her talent!

An e-mail newsletter to which I subscribe (Writer’s Web Watch) recently recommended “improving your vocabulary” and using resources such as a thesaurus, grammar book, style guide and dictionary. I do have all these books on a nearby shelf and refer to them often. I have another dictionary in the family room, near where I do crossword puzzles, and one in the kitchen for schoolwork. No one in my family wants to play me in Scrabble because, well, words are my business and I often win. (To be fair, I’ve offered to play the hockey trivia game any time they want because that’s sure to even the playing field, so to speak.)

My 16-year-old son will use a dictionary if forced to, but more often he’ll ask me what something means. If I don’t know and suggest looking it up, he can’t be bothered. If confronted by a word I don’t know, I immediately WANT to know the meaning and will look it up. Is this a “writer” thing, or maybe just a generation thing?

When I run across a book that’s highly recommended, I check if it’s available at my local library and put a hold on it. Quite often I have a number of books lined up, so when the call comes in that my “hold” is in, it’s always a surprise to see what’s waiting for me.

Not long ago, the book was about cancer. This may not be something you would consider “good reading,” but it’s a topic relevant to all of us. Chances are, someone you know has had cancer — and I sincerely hope, triumphed over it. Not every recommended book has turned out to be a “good read;” in fact, some have been downright frightening. Not Cancer Vixen.

It’s actually a graphic novel by Marisa Acocella Marchetto, which means she draws in cartoons her experience finding out about and dealing with a lump on her breast. “Cancer,” she says, “I am gonna kick your butt. And I’m gonna do it in killer five-inch heels.” (That explains the cover illustration.) Highly recommended!