Is the way your company operates thinking of the customer first? Or at all?  I have recent examples of two companies that did a good job and two that did not.

The surprising instances of customer appreciation:

Bank of Montreal: My husband and I have banked with BMO for a very long time. Every once in a while, we get a “courtesy call” that seems to be more about trying to sell us some new product than find out how they’re doing. This week, a first: We received a letter with a gift of a $5 Shell gift certificate “to show their appreciation.” Wow! I did feel appreciated!

Canyon Creek Chophouse: I organized a group of people to have lunch at this restaurant in December. This week, I received a hand-written note expressing appreciation for doing so, with two $10 gift certificates. (Smart; they are usable one at a time, so I have to go back twice.) Again, wow! I did feel appreciated!

In my customer disservice files this month:

Direct Energy: When my furnace conked out during a bitter cold spell, it was comforting to read (on the sticker on our furnace) that the Direct Energy “24/7 support centre is always available to take your call.” The web site, as I found out later, was more specific: the representatives “will dispatch a service technician for emergencies.” Yeah, they’re there to TAKE the call and SCHEDULE a technician, but not to send a repair person after hours. So they scheduled the call, promising that it was the “first” one next day, “between 8 a.m. and noon.” The fellow arrived about 11:45 a.m.; no, it wasn’t the first call. Consumer advocate Ellen Roseman has skewered Direct Energy before, noting that even those under its protection plan (I’m not) and guaranteed service within 24 hours might not get help until the full 24 hours have passed. So while I was grateful the guy showed up and fixed the furnace, the only warm feeling I got was from the working furnace.

Ticketmaster: Don’t you hate all those charges piled on top of charges when you want to buy a theatre ticket? The tickets to Jersey Boys I bought recently had an extra $7 per ticket “convenience” charge, plus a $2 per ticket “order processing” charge, plus a $1.75 per ticket charge to use my own ink to print out my tickets. TicketKing also now offers a site where it seems you (or perhaps scalpers) can sell tickets you aren’t able to use. I checked for another show I wanted to see. Tickets listed in a particular section at $36 were sold out on the main site, but look, there they are on TicketKing…for more than $100 each.

Has any company surprised you lately, in a good or bad way?

I’m having lunch later this week with an acquaintance who is considering launching her own business and wants to “pick my brain.” While I don’t claim to know it all, I’ve had my own business for about 18 years, so I must be doing some things right! I’m happy to share my thoughts about what works and what doesn’t, and where to find support and inspiration — and that now includes a new podcast by Donna Papacosta of Trafalgar Communications.

Donna also gets requests for advice, and she shared some of it in a podcast she put together on “Thriving as an independent.” Full disclosure: among the tips is a reference to my own post about diversifying your client base through referrals.

Donna also mentions giving, something she has done as long as I’ve known her. As she points out, when you volunteer your time, you will always get something in return, whether it’s building a relationship or learning something new.

If you’re thinking of going out on your own, give Donna’s podcast a listen. If you’re already an independent, what other advice would you give?

Akismet has stopped more than 36,000 spam comments from being posted on my site over the two years I’ve been blogging, a milestone reached yesterday. (Happy anniversary to me!)

I scan through the “holding pen” every once in a while, and usually the spam is obvious. But recently one of the stopped messages took a different approach, boldly promising to “post your promotional message on millions of forums worldwide.” It actually said, “No, this isn’t spam email. It’s penetrating online established communities…” Right, you can generate 400,000 “unique” forum posts, complete with a link to your web site, but it’s not spam. Good luck with that one.

I also ran across something else recently that seemed to be a new form of spam. I was contacted on Facebook by two people I’ve never heard of, wanting to be friends. Here’s a tip. If you want to befriend me and I don’t know you, or it’s been a long time since we’ve encountered each other, write a line explaining where you got my name or where we met and why we should connect. Otherwise, I’m assuming you’re a spammer. Am I wrong?

Thanks to Donna Papacosta for pointing to these amazing photos of the inauguration of President Obama on Tuesday. Between a client meeting, travel and a deadline, I was only able to watch about 10 minutes of the live coverage and had to catch up with the news later.

Big Brother was watching me this weekend, and it kind of creeped me out.

OK, so I was being nosy. A neighbour’s house was up for sale, and I was curious to see how much it was listed for. So I went to the real estate company’s site, scrolled through the listings and found the house and the price. I clicked on “photo gallery” to see the inside, to find that I needed to register before I could see anything. Name, e-mail address; it didn’t seem too intimidating. It makes sense that they want to capture some information about potential clients.

I expected a follow-up e-mail, something along the lines of, “We noticed you were looking at homes in Oakville, and wondered if we could help you find something.” What I didn’t expect was an e-mail from an agent saying, “I have been notified that you have shown some interest” in a particular property. Again, I was being nosy; a friend bought a fractional ownership (timeshare) in a similar cottage, and I was curious to see photos.

Funny, I haven’t received any queries about my interest in the $2- and $3-million homes I also looked at.

You’d expect a “word of the year” to be something special, wouldn’t you? So it’s somewhat disappointing that the American Dialect Society’s word of the year for 2008 is…drumroll…bailout.

Even Grant Barrett, chair of the society’s New Words Committee, said, “You’d think a room full of pointy-headed intellectuals [those voting are linguists, lexicographers, grammarians, historians, etc.] could come up with something more exciting.” After all, this is the same group who voted in “Plutoed” in 2006, signifying something demoted or devalued, as happened to the former planet.

The words the society chooses don’t have to be new, but they do have to be “newly prominent or notable” or “reflective of the national discourse” over the year. So, yes, bailout certainly was on many lips last year, unfortunately.

Still, I prefer some of the words that came in after the top choice, such as “DWT,” for driving while texting; or “Palinesque,” for those who have extended themselves beyond their expertise; or “scooping technician,” for a person whose job is picking up dog poop. But then, I never ran across any of those terms before, so they likely wouldn’t have reflected the national discourse.

Here’s hoping for a positive, inspirational word for 2009.

You can’t argue with the Publication Coach, Daphne Grey-Grant, when she encourages writers to use metaphors. “They add interest, colour and power to your writing,” she says. “As readers, we all do better when we can visualize something concrete.”

So I’m creating a file of great metaphors (and similes - thanks, Gloria!) to use as inspiration. Here are a few I’ve spotted recently that appealed to me:

• “Three infants crawling around the house like Labrador puppies.” Daphne Gray-Grant
• A wine that is “well crafted for the money and widely available - the Honda Civic of white wines.” Wine writer Beppi Crosariol in the Globe and Mail
• “Imagine thousands of brands, stalled like cars in Friday afternoon traffic.” MarketingSherpa
• “As spindly as a mantis” with “his black mock turtleneck…bunching up like a flag on a listless day.” Writer Tom Junod in Esquire magazine, talking about Apple CEO Steve Jobs
• “I am the planet’s most affectionate life-form (something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle).” Author Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love
• “One group stands out, with conversation as relaxed as a lingering autumn twilight.” From an article by Deborah Carr at Homemakers.com
• “Showing a smiling face to a typical Web customer is like showing a crucifix to a vampire.” Gerry McGovern in a Ragan article on web users.

What’s your favourite metaphor? Have you run across any great ones lately?

If all your money was invested in the stock market, you’d be feeling pretty nervous these days. That’s why financial advisors suggest you diversify — mix it up between stocks, bonds, guaranteed investment certificates and other products with varying degrees of risk and reward. (Then there’s your mattress, which is starting to look just as secure as some other places. You won’t make any money on it, but then again, you won’t lose, either.)

Freelancers try to follow the same principle of diversifying. Spending all your time on just one client leaves you vulnerable. What if the person you work with leaves, and the replacement would rather use another freelancer? What if the client cuts the budget for the specific work you do, leaving you with less work, or perhaps even none? These days, you might also be thinking, what if the client goes out of business or moves the work to another country?

That’s one reason why I keep an eye on where my time is spent, including a year-end summary of my billings for the year by client to make sure all my eggs aren’t starting to pile up in one basket. Over my freelance career, I’ve fairly consistently had repeat business from a changing number of steady clients who account for about three-quarters of my time.  The rest of my time is accounted for by one-time projects or irregular work, often by clients referred to me.

The interesting thing is that in 2008, the amount of business that came from referrals was twice the amount referred in 2007. Oh sure, I have increased my online presence this year; but most of those referrals were from people I have met through the networking groups I belong to.

Referrals are like magic, but there’s really no secret to them. You have to do good work; even better if it’s in a particular niche. You also have to be reliable. Meeting both requirements means someone referring you has no doubt you’ll deliver, making the referrer look good. Sometimes you have to ask for a referral, or let others in your network know that you’re looking for work. Other times, your reputation may do the legwork for you.

One of the best ways to demonstrate your talent and reliability — and do a good deed at the same time — is by volunteering for an industry networking group (such as IABC, as I do). Pick an area that showcases what you do, or an area where you’d like to learn something new, or maybe an area where you see a glaring need for what you can offer. There’s one caveat: You must treat your volunteer tasks as seriously as any paying job. Sure, you’re a volunteer, but believe me, people are observing how you work and making judgments about how reliable and talented you are.

Are you diversified? How do you do it?

You knew it, and usability expert Jakob Nielsen confirms it: we’re drowning in irrelevant information, squandering an hour or more each day simply dealing with email and other distractions. So if you haven’t picked a new year’s resolution yet, here’s one:

Set priorities and allocate most of your time to tasks that are crucial to meeting your goals. (Surprise! Updating your Facebook profile probably isn’t one of them.)

Nielsen’s tips include ignoring email, except for a small amount of time each day — say, once per hour — that you specifically set aside for this activity:

“The majority of the workday should be allocated to big blocks of uninterrupted time where any outside influence is banned and you focus on your own priority tasks, one at a time…People who have the discipline to work this way accomplish immensely more than interrupt-driven slaves of real-time updates.”

Some of you will know by how promptly I usually reply to email that, ahem, this is an instance of “do as Nielsen says, not as I do.” However, when I’m working to a deadline, I’m all about uninterrupted focus.

To subscribe to Nielsen’s Alertbox, send a blank email to join-alertbox@laser.sparklist.com.

So your Christmas bills are already coming in, your investments are still in the toilet and newspapers run nothing but doom and gloom. Why should you remain optimistic?

Be inspired by these moving words from “Granny D,” 98-year-old Dolores Haddock:

“Whatever comes, I do want you to remember that the hardest of hard times are not necessarily unhappy times if you will keep to love and empathy and imaginative living. And I want you to understand that you must see beyond the distraction of these present headlines to the true challenges ahead, which have little to do with Wall Street and everything to do with changing the very ways we live, so that intelligent life on earth might prosper and survive.”

Read all about Granny D in the December issue of speechwriter Jean Gogolin’s newsletter, The WordWright (subscribe). You’ll find Jean’s blog here.