Customer disservice files

Can you tell me… Why my bank has hired people to make “courtesy calls” to customers — which seem to be thinly disguised ways to sell other products/services — but cannot tell me that they have discontinued my paper statements? I have no...
Sue awards her own gold medals

Sue awards her own gold medals

Phew. It’s been all Olympics, all the time for the past two weeks, and I’m ready to say goodbye to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. But first, my own gold medals go to the things I loved about these Winter Olympics. Gold medals: * Patriotic feelings....

Red Cross gets it right

There aren’t many companies that have earned the trust the Red Cross has. In my in-box today was the latest example of how they do it. I had made a donation to the Canadian Red Cross in support of their earthquake relief efforts in Haiti, and today they sent an...
Is the client buying ‘you’?

Is the client buying ‘you’?

While at the dentist’s office getting my teeth cleaned, the dental hygienist mentioned something we both found shocking: The dentist got his sister-in-law to buy everything for his wife’s Christmas stocking. Okay, so spinmasters will say Dr. P. was...

Bell’s upgrade looms

As the end of January approaches, I’m a little nervous. Bell has alerted me that they are “making changes to our e-mail systems which will require you to update the settings on your e-mail software…Please note that if you do not update your settings...

We heart Best Buy CEO

Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn had the communicators at the IABC conference in San Francisco in June in the palm of his hand, as I mentioned talking about highlights of the conference. He seals the deal with this interview in the The New York Times published August 15. If...

Make surveys make sense

Customer/employee surveys are important. I know this, and I try to go along with companies who take the time to survey me as a customer. But they need to do a better job of asking questions that are both within the customer’s ability to answer and that they can...
Zappos CEO gets it

Zappos CEO gets it

It’s so refreshing when a CEO sends out something that actually sounds like a human being might have said/written it. That was the case when Zappos’ CEO, Tony Hsieh, issued an announcement about Amazon buying Zappos. I liked that he apologized “for...