26 Jun
Beth’s 3rd Marathon
My pal Beth is running in honor of her mother and close friend, both of whom suffer from a rare form of cancer. Her run raises money for a cure.
Seattle's Rock and Roll Marathon
Follow her race Saturday (tomorrow) on Whrrl… contribute, and cheer her on! Go, Beth, Go! Run for your life! Run for their lives!
Follow Beth on Whrrl!
23 Jun
Emergence
We cannot escape the impression that the Muse has stooped a little in her flight, when we lose our own sense of dignity and sacredness in the mundane concerns of the living. Though the fog creeps and dims all vision, and when we see not but sorrow, the vision yet remains, though seemingly blurred, in reality, solid and true. The wings of truth flutter through the winds of time, and as surely as they move, so we, too, emerge from the dim-lit days and darkest nights.
…Well. I have made an odd profession of saving scraps of paper with incomplete thoughts excised from complete passages by various smiths and artists. I have scribbled and retyped this one on more than one occasion but always, it seems, not nearly enough. Each subsequent encounter with those lines is as surprising and splendid as the first. The man to whom I owe such affection has long since left the Concord but I thank him anyway for reminding me that I am not alone. Thank you, Henry David Thoreau, for your enduring flight from the Concord.
21 May
Twitter is a fascinating technological tool: part party line, part search engine, part trend tracker. It’s also a lot like a Ferrari. You can’t fully appreciate it after a mere test drive. You need time behind the wheel – pushing buttons, exploring features and taking it full-throttle on the open road. That’s what reveals the truth about power, functionality, engineering and design.
I slid behind the wheel of Twitter six months ago so I could tap into conversations with high-caliber professionals and peers. I fully expected to be inspired and entertained. What I did not expect was to witness to the rise of a real-time system of free enterprise checks and balances…with a sphere of influence that spans the globe.
Twitter has reshaped public relations with a power-packed subscriber list and audience of influential consumer groups, journalists, political officials, celebrities and corporate executives. And Twitter has given a voice to the average Joe for the first time since corporations dropped the iron curtain of automated customer service a few decades ago.
I remember the first time I encountered an automated system instead of a voice on the other end of the phone line. “This is the end of customer service as we know it,” I thought – and so did millions of other people.
Public outcry led some to put a human operator on the last automated extension (or hidden somewhere within the layers of other options). Unfortunately call center reps are programmed to be as ineffective as touch-tone systems. I feel for them, though. They’ve got draconian rules on one end, emotionally charged customers on the other end, and no power to exercise independent judgment in between. Ever try to get a customer service person to abandon their scripts? Whoo-ee.
It’s a sad state of affairs, but we have more grey matter than other mammals, and we’ve harnessed it to learn operator shortcuts and code-words like “escalate the case” when we’ve exhausted negotiations. But unless you have hours or more to invest (in my case a year with American Airlines), the odds of a satisfactory resolution are weighted against the underdog.
But now we have Twitter. And early-adopter businesses such as Southwest Airlines have seen how it provides checks and balances for internal operations and external relationships. Twitter is an early-warning system for impending public relations crises, and it may help uncover the size and source of a system failure.
Case in point: I ordered flowers online from Teleflora the Saturday before Mother’s Day. I knew I’d pay a premium for the transgression of dragging my feet and waiting for last-minute deals. I was prepared for that.
I chose the arrangements for both my mother and mother-in-law and worked through pages of online forms. Just before I crossed the Confirmation Page finish line, I was abruptly re-routed by an error code that implied I was crazy to expect same-day delivery… but might I agree to Sunday delivery instead?
Absolutely, I clicked, and slogged through the forms a second time, only to fail again. Sunday delivery was an option on Screen 2, but the payment processing Page 4 disagreed. Apparently 6 million other Americans were ahead of me in line for Sunday delivery. I started over again and cheered when Monday delivery was approved for both orders. I would not have survived a third taunting.
You can imagine my surprise, four days later, when I received an e-mail stating that the flowers were not delivered to my mother. No phone call to the recipient, or me — an e-mail with an option to reply online or call an 800 number. I chose the latter and learned, after much time of the phone, that neither arrangement had been delivered — three days late and counting — and I was offered a litany of excuses.
People spend too much time developing excuses instead of solutions. Nobody wants to know why you dropped the ball — especially when the game involves little old ladies or anyone’s mother. All we want to know is that you delivered a win. Period.
The Teleflora rep promised flowers THAT DAY with an apology note (or an explanation). She offered a 50 percent refund and a phone call when the delivery was confirmed.
Wednesday and half of Thursday passed. We called again and learned the flowers still hadn’t been delivered. This time we were told the flowers might make it by Friday afternoon and the rep offered to take 20 percent (not 50 percent) off the original bill.
I assured Teleflora that Texas and Kentucky have people with flowers and driver’s licenses who are willing to take money in exchange for delivery. We eventually reached another agreement, which I didn’t trust. I called a florist 3 blocks from my mother-in-law’s house and had another arrangement delivered that day. Successfully.
Next, I logged on to Twitter and started micro-blogging about the experience — and what do you know! Within 24 hours I had a senior vice president with Teleflora on the phone. She was absolutely terrific, and as nice and appropriately mortified as she could be, especially now that it was Friday afternoon and my mother still had not received her flowers.
The executive personally took my case, which she fought nobly on my behalf for three solid days. I am happy to report that the flowers reached my mother yesterday, after a 10-day-long odyssey past the Port of Mother’s Day.
Thanks to Twitter, (and to Teleflora for having the good sense to be ON Twitter), I found Jennifer Simms, who had the compassion and authority to personally solve my problem.
It’s a shame, really, that customer service is languishing in an age of technology and advanced human understanding. It’s not just that automated systems that have brought us down. It’s that organizations have lost sight of the fact that people matter.
Employees are not just tools with numbers assigned to them. They are an organization’s greatest resource — people with hearts and minds who can be effective ambassadors of goodwill if given the freedom and authority to do what’s right. Employees should be allowed to exercise independent thought and solve problems in real time on the front lines with customers.
One U.S. company is a model of success in customer relations: Southwest Airlines. Their philosophy and standards of practice are so impressive that they have a single-digit employee turnover rate. In fact, you’d have an easier time getting into Harvard than you would finding a job opening there.
Southwest Airlines gets it. And they’ll get it whether Twitter lives long and prospers or fizzles out tomorrow. The proof is in the pudding — in this case the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).
This week Southwest Airlines was ranked Number One by the ACSI, and they got there because they value people, support and trust their employees — and much more.
“We work from the mantra that we’re in the Customer Service business, we just happen to fly airplanes,” said Linda Rutherford, Southwest Airlines’ vice president of communications and strategic outreach. “It is that focus on the Customer that centers our efforts. We want to use each interaction with a Customer to win their hearts and minds and earn their repeat business. We capitalize the “C” in Customer and the “E” in Employee for a reason. It’s a daily symbolic reminder that it’s the People–our Customers and our Employees–who make Southwest different and successful.”
Linda spoke to my public relations class at St. Edward’s University this spring, and after one student commented about how many things Southwest Airlines seems to do right — and better than everyone else — Linda kidded that her company could probably expand into the consulting business for a number of their successful innovations (customer service, social media, public relations, and more). For the sake of consumers everywhere, I wish they would.
So here’s to you, Southwest Airlines, for earning yet another gold star the honest way. America LUVs you.
16 May
Peppiness: the coveted frontier. Short-lived, trumpeted, fleeting. This is the story of a Canadian Enterprise. The mission: to seek out new vibes and rejuvenation. To explore energy drink alternatives. To boldly chew what no one has chewed before: Launch Energy Drink Gum.
The two-man voyage to an alternative source of human fuel began on a basketball court just outside of Toronto, Canada about two years ago. Mechanical engineer Eric Pilon-Bignell and longtime friend Justin Waxman (a graduate of McMaster University with a background in finance and economics) were playing a pick-up game of basketball when Justin took a shot that missed the net and knocked over Eric’s nearly-full can of an energy drink.
After a short exchange of expletives and retorts that one might expect from childhood friends, Pilon-Bignell said, “Man, I wish they made an energy drink that didn’t spill.”
An on-the-court epiphany led to off-the court research, and in the year and a half that followed, the two friends became entrepreneurs, then business partners and owners of Launch Industries, Inc.
Pilon-Bignell and Waxman sought the advice of trusted friends and business leaders and assembled a small team of scientists who worked in a government-supervised facility in suburban Toronto to develop their own brand of energy-drink alternative: Launch Energy Drink GUM.
“We wanted an affordable, innovative, great-tasting energy product that worked and looked good, so we spent most of our time on packaging, value, functionality and taste,” Pilon-Bignell said.
The beneficial elements of an energy drink – caffeine, taurine and B-vitamins – are optimally delivered in Launch chewing gum thanks to a unique pharmaceutical-grade cold-press manufacturing process.
A single piece of Launch gum packs the same punch as three-fourths of a can of a standard energy drink (like Red Bull, for example)…at a fraction of the cost. Gadget people will like the package, too — the gum comes in a small, resealable (and recyclable) container, which looks like a miniature energy drink can.
When I first heard about an energy-drink gum, it seemed far too good to be true, and I dared not dream of the possibilities.
I am the quintessential multi-tasking working mother of a 4-year-old child with a complex schedule and a husband who has a travel-intensive job. I own a communications consulting firm, teach public relations at a local university, and — when I’m not maintaining a household, or a family, or a business — I perform a half-dozen volunteer jobs.
We young working moms are living in different times than our parents. When I was a child, it Mother’s Little Helper was a little blue pill called Valium, which made momma’s world a happy and mellow place.
Mother doesn’t need that kind of help any more. What we need is caffeine. And lots of it.
I asked Justin Waxman if it was really true that one piece of gum could lift a working mom out of the mid-afternoon doldrums and carry her across the finish line of dinner, bath and bedtime. A week later, a package arrived at my front door. Inside was a half-dozen smart-looking containers of launch gum and a very fun Launch brand T-shirt. I tossed a couple pieces of gum in my mouth and went outside to work in the yard.
About 20 minutes later I realized I had solved all of the problems of the world, and my favorite pastime of gardening had accelerated from leisurely to hyper-drive. If yard work were an Olympic sport, I could have set a world record in the weed-whacking time trials. I felt terrific.
You can imagine how pleased I was to learn that Launch Gum was introduced in the United States in April 2009. This is one Canadian invasion I think working moms will welcome. Who knew a piece of gum could inspire so much good taste and ambition? My biggest problem with Launch Gum is that I can’t find it in more stores around Central Texas.
If necessity is the mother of invention, then accidents must be the father of innovation. If you need a lift, I recommend you stop by your local 7-11 and grab some energy-inducing innovation in the form of Launch Energy Drink Gum. You’d be surprised how far you can go with one of those rockets in your pocket.
Questions? Try the Launch website, or the company’s Facebook page.
15 May
If a dance club collided with a 3-ring circus, you might get something like this:
Strangely compelling.
22 Apr
If I were a mystic who could see energy fields, I’d wager that my good friend Emily Kahn’s aura is green. In fact, I bet it’s more like 67 shades of green. She has what you’d get when you cross a green thumb with the Midas touch in a person who is devoted to preserving and protecting this earth we call home.
And if you had an hour to listen to her (which would be a well-spent and highly entertaining adventure, I assure you), she could tell you about environmentally friendly ideas and practices from the macro to the molecular level, if you’re willing to go there.
Emily is founder of Green Fern Events, a company she’s been building for the better part of a year and officially launched this month. She threw open her company doors today, appropriately, in honor of Earth Day.
Green Fern Events is an absolutely, totally, thoroughly environmentally friendly event planning firm whose capabilities range from corporate events and regional conferences to weddings, bar mitzvas and private parties.
Emily pays shocking attention to detail when it comes to dreaming up and running gorgeous, affordable, well-planned and splendidly executed events. I came to love Emily because of her joie de vieve, exuberant wit, optimism and humanity. I came to respect and admire Emily for her passion, determination and knowledge about her work. She’s the real deal.
And she’s invested an enormous amount of time an energy in researching the absolute best products (often both organic and fair trade) and the most thorough environmental practices. The result: a company that can plan a bad to the bone, green to the core event at a time when we (especially we in Central Texas) want and need it most.
Conferences and events are among the largest polluters on earth — who knew that? Emily did before most of us, and she can give you a dozen reasons why without blinking.
Emily can go as green as her clients want their events to be — right down to a conference Web site that’s hosted on servers that use renewable solar energy.
After each event, Emily’s clients receive a full report that details exactly how they saved the planet, and by how much. And that makes for good corporate responsibility …and good news. How’d you like to plan an event that leaves everyone feeling good – from employees to consumers – and leaves your “green-washed” competition in the dust?
And because Emily loves sharing her knowledge, she’ll teach you as much as you want to know about making a sustainable difference in this world, whether you’re planning an event, or planning a better future for your children.
Indeed, Green Fern Events is not just another Central Texas event planning firm. It’s a kick-ass company run by a subject matter expert who loves life and leaves others feeling pretty good about their lives, too. And, no offense, but that should leave her local competition feeling a little you-know-what with envy.
So here’s to you, Emily Kahn. I wish you and Green Fern Events rip-roaring success (and I rather like the name, too).
20 Apr
I’m proud to reprint, below, an inspiring and informative blog entry by my friend Jim Mitchem, an ad guru and founder of Smash Communications. Jim sat down and wrote about the “I Love You” social media experiment and the impact it had on him (and tens of thousands of others worldwide).
Please see his blog, Obsessed with Conformity, for more wit, wisdom and pure genius. Thanks, Jim, for allowing me to be a part of your brilliant scheme. And thank you for introducing me to the fabulous StaciJShelton, whose talent and work is, well, awe-inspiring. Read on for more:
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Disney World
by Jim Mitchem
Smash Communications
Saturday, April 4, 2009 was a pretty special day. We got up before the sun and filled the car with enough clothes and bulk food items to last us a week at Disney World. It was also the day of our annual fantasy baseball draft. Of course everyone else participating in the draft would be sitting around a kitchen table in North Jersey, while we were driving south on I-95, but we were up for the challenge (besides, we have a movie player in the car for the kids). But before any of the driving or drafting began, I posted ‘I Love You’ as my Facebook and Twitter status. It was an idea that was born about a month earlier – as a Social Media experiment to see if these three words could take SM by storm. Even if for one day. We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare, so I shared the idea with a couple of really good friends on Twitter (@StaciJShelton and @misscharlie), threw a blog post together, and did my own part to add Love to my SM stream early that morning.
We had a really good draft, despite learning that our youngest daughter gets violently carsick watching movies while driving. And by the time we got to Florida, I was overwhelmed with the massive response to our #iloveyou experiment. Not only did we all help make Love a top trending term on Twitter the entire day, but we did so without an open endorsement from any from the Twitterati. Love was a grassroots effort that spread because of its sincere nature. Love doesn’t need big endorsements, as it turns out.
In the end, the post received over 80,000 views in 48 hours (up from an average of a few hundred a day), we had nearly 2,000 Facebook attendees and there was a feeling of Good Will for the entire weekend. I was humbled and grateful, to say the least.
Many people congratulated me on this exercise, and a few people inquired about how I might monetize the effort. But I didn’t get into this project for notoriety or a payoff. It was just a test by a regular guy and some pretty extraordinary people. The goal was to see if Love would have an impact on our SM stream. And boy – did it ever.
Thank you.
Jim
Note: I would be remiss not to mention Mark Murnahan @murnahan as a very important partner in helping spread the word about #iloveyou. Without him, I don’t think we’d done nearly as well. The same is true of Lolly Daskal @lollydaskal and Laurie Smithwick @UpsideUp (who got Kirtsy involved) as well as hundreds of other people that I’m totally grateful for. Thank you.
Jim is a father, husband, copywriter and founder of smashcommunications.com.
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