Photo Credits: garrulus
They say customer service is the new marketing. Many companies, however, still don’t “get” phone customer service, and they consider it a cost rather than a marketing opportunity.
In addition to having overly complicated automated systems and poorly trained representatives, some companies make things worse by doing this:
Forcing callers to dial “1” for […]

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A few weeks ago, while in a conference at a high end Miami Beach hotel, a copy of USA Today was delivered at my doorstep every morning. Since I don’t read the newspaper any more (I get my news from the web or through RSS feeds), I just left it in a corner […]

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Photo Credits: aplumb
Businesses often overlook simple ways to build competitive advantage, little things that are easy to implement and don’t cost much that are nevertheless very important to the end user.
One example is snacks on planes. The cost of a small snack is probably not more than $5 per passenger, yet airline bosses have decided […]

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Photo Credits: edans
A few days ago, my wife came home with a story about bad customer service that unfortunately is becoming too common.
She was at an Office Depot store in Miami, picking up some office supplies. She was standing in line to pay, with four other customers in front of her, at the only cash […]

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I don’t like to spend money on cars, but with $4 per gallon of gas and my 12 year old Jeep acting up I decided to just move on and buy a smaller, more efficient vehicle.
A friend at work had recently bought a Scion xD, a cool little car loaded with features, a decent engine […]

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Photo Credits: garybembridge
The true character of organizations is often revealed by how well do they respond to customer feedback. Doing the right thing for the customer has always been good business sense, but never more important than today, when blogs and social media have given consumers the power to share their experiences with […]

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A couple of weeks ago, I started my personal blog on a relatively new platform called Tumblr. Tumblr is technically a “tumblelog”. Basically, it works like a blog but it’s lighter on features and much easier to update and maintain (some people compare it to what blogs looked like in the early stages […]

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Photo Credits: linnybinnypix
Last weekend I rented a car for a day. I stopped to have a cup of coffee and, fiddling with my rental papers I noticed a blue sticky note attached to the envelope with something written on it. It was a disclaimer that said something like this:
If you drive less than […]

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