Christmas is upon us once again. I know it’s a cliché, but I cannot believe how quickly this year has flown past. It seems like only yesterday that I was having one of the worst Christmases ever; one that almost broke my heart. I have recovered, but only just. This year, I declared that I wasn’t going anywhere: I was going to do what I always do. Go for a run (weather permitting), have breakfast with my daughter and her boyfriend, usher them out the door around 11am, pour myself a Pimm’s and lemonade, switch on the TV and proceed to binge
Continue reading...Brian Solis wrote an interesting article that popped up in my Reader this morning. The premise of his post is that businesses need to use social media to enhance the experience of their customers. One sentence resonated with me and it’s this: …the landscape for business isn’t changing because of social media, it’s changing because consumer expectations are evolving. Which brings me to the point of this post: businesses need to adapt and change the way they do business with consumers, because we are revolting. And we are revolting through social media. We are as mad as hell, and we
Continue reading...The other morning, I went to upload a draft to the Diane Lee Show via my iPhone 3GS. I tend to write my posts in AwesomeNote (on my iPhone on the bus to work, would you believe?) and then import them into the WordPress mobile app, save them as drafts, then edit on my laptop or desktop before uploading. But the upload failed. Twice. Hmmm. What’s that about? (Oh well, I thought, I’ll try again later. It’s probably an interwebz connection error thingy.) Later that day, I received an automated email from ifttt telling me that my WordPress settings needed
Continue reading...I bought something from Groupon a while back, and I now wished to God I hadn’t. It cemented in my world view that most companies (as with all things, there are exceptions), despite their rhetoric otherwise, really don’t care all that much about their customers or their experience. All they want is a fast buck. A quick dollar. Profit before people. And I have found companies on social media (generally speaking) are making things worse for customers in many instances, not better. They pretend that they are all kinds of caring on Twitter and Facebook (because their presence implies they
Continue reading...It is becoming increasingly clear that “nice” is, like, so yesterday. Especially in shops. The pretty, young things manning and womanning the cash registers of our nation think that customer service is beneath them (once I finish Uni/Tafe/Business College/Beauty School, you can bite me, ‘cos you’ll never catch ME behind a counter serving the general public! Yuk! How degrading!). Except. It doesn’t matter what business you are in, you still have to deal with people. And the better you are at it, the better you’ll be able to navigate all those pesky career landmines (and people that plant them) that
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