Because of time limitations, I had decided not to blog in English and am trying to dedicate some time to my Portuguese Blog - so much to say and so little time to do it - I know it's a matter of discipline...

I had to write about this topic. Here is the comment I left on the blog of my favourite podcast FIR:

"Here’s a fact: Michael Righi is an arse (ass). Whether he is right to stand up for his “rights” is open to discussion, but in my opinion what makes him an arse is his misuse of the emergency services let alone what he put kids through by “playing dumb”. He didn’t play dumb - he was dumb. He should have been arrested for wasting valuable police resources.

I wonder if he was mugged or attacked and the police came to his rescue whether he would abdicate his “rights”? I really dislike hypocritical people with double standards. You see, his profile is on Facebook yet he doesn’t seem to have a problem with Facebook’s policy of “owning” his assets and doing what they well please with them - where are his concerns (more founded I would have thought) with his “rights”?

As far as suspicious behaviour, which from his account is unquestionable, it will always warrant a reaction. He should try behaving suspiciously in an airport and then, and only then, would he truly witness first hand an “assault” on his “rights”.

When asked for his driver’s license, after all, perhaps the officer assumed that he was the driver and hence asked for the relevant documentation, a simple “I’m sorry I don’t have a driver’s license and I was not driving but I do have a social security number ...etc. But no, he had to further his stupidity by further proclaiming his “rights” - from his post you get the idea that at the time he was actually not completely aware of his “rights”. Let’s face it, anyone of us has the opportunity to trigger this type of behaviour - but why would we? We have better ways of being known.

As far as Circuit City, whether or not they should react and enter the conversation, is debatable. And how would you answer his complaint without fuelling the conversation further?

I hope that Circuit City learnt a lesson, there are more arses out there… so you should remember that the customer is always right, or as I read once, who cares if the customer is right - it’s the customer. I learnt from my experience that sometimes it’s better to let go when you are faced with this type of person. The financial loss is minimal and it’s not as if other customers will suddenly see the apparent opportunity of becoming shoplifters.

As for the police, I hope no one died or was unable to have the necessary urgent assistance as this officer wasted his time and American Tax Payers money. Shame on all those who are, or will be, financing his ludicrous crusade. In the end there will be no winners and no point made (at least not a favourable one).

911, as we all know, is for EMERGENCIES. As for his lack of respect for his family, enough said. There are battles worth fighting - this is definitely not one of them. He should pay his fine, apologize to the police and then do whatever he thought with Circuit City."

Writing a blog is a huge commitment - imagine in 2 languages - so for now only the Portuguese blog will be updated until I find a full time interpreter!

Thanks
da management

Our offices are on the 7th Floor of an office building in one of the main avenues in Lisbon. There are several predominant companies with strong ties to some of the largest companies in Portugal.

This morning, a sales person from Elis, a company that supplies “services to businesses and administrations”, walked into the reception of our office building and asked at security to visit all the offices. As the building has in the past suffered several security breaches and all those present have communicated that under no circumstances can people disrupt their working day, especially as one of the offices, which is a specialized recruitment company, conducts evaluation tests for some of the largest companies in the World.

The salesperson, who was identified, dismissed the security’s request and for half an hour tried to get through acting in a highly provocative manner. Security had to call the police and this was only resolved when two police cars arrived and the salesperson was asked to leave the premises – which he did.

You have to ask the question – not how much revenue did the salesperson from Elis accomplish from this visit; not how much this cost to Elis in salary terms, but more importantly what type of damage does an episode like this bring to a brand such as Elis.

Analyze the following: Ignore for now that I will use this as an example probably for the rest of my life as an example of WHAT not to do and the hundreds of people who are either decision makers or have close links to decision makers that will hear this as an example and then retell it when discussing an example of exceedingly POOR customer service.

Security guard works in a company that has hundreds of security staff that work in hundreds of office buildings. This will no doubt be a hot topic discussed for the next few days and passed on and passed on. Not intentionally, but because bad news travels quicker than good news and in this case, an unfortunate disadvantage to Elis, the security guard is female (and the salesperson male).

In turn, the next time that someone from Elis steps into the foyer of any office building serviced by the same security company, I doubt they will even be able to open their mouths. Those with Elis contracts in those office buildings will inevitably be retold this story. Not that that will persuade companies to switch service provider, but certainly next time Elis underperforms their customer’s tolerance may be that much smaller.

The security guard informed me, as she did to all other offices, fuming at the episode and all companies in the building will no doubt be retelling this story (again to the disadvantage of Elis that not only do they not know who’s talking about this but also when they will talk about it – a mere reference to Elis, the service they provide, their competition or any reference to poor service will bring about The Elis Story.

The companies will talk to companies who talk to companies. So what did the salesperson accomplish in 40 minutes? Incalculable damage. If you think I’m being dramatic, ask Comcast (nearly 700,000 views in 3 weeks) and AOL (nearly 300,000 views not to mention a special appearance on WNBC). Word of mouth is one of THE most powerful methods of unfiltered communication wrapped in trust & transparency presently associated to those you believe most – your friends & colleagues.

Luckily the video and audio footage from the security cameras is not available to anyone as it would no doubt have the hallmarks of a YouTube blockbuster, including police!

I'd always heard that great executives should always alocate 1-2 hours per day to read an get informed. The reality, is that like many, I was always TOO busy... But now there's NO excuse! You can now download NewsGator that runs in your Outlook 2003 - so if you aren't too busy for e-mails you can't be too busy for blogs. It's actually like tapping into the brains of all the people that could answer all your queries, all your fears and in the meantime you'll stumble across great ideas and sometimes quite inspiring stuff.

Blogging really kicks off when you start to interact with your consumers. We moved our web pages for Paradise Garage to the blog format and we jumped from 250 unique visits to over 1000 but the greatest move only started to take effect today as we replied to our first comments and not very favorable at that - but they were actually very tuned in. They should be - they are straight from our customers!

It's the beginning but it's all about gaining their trust and we've sat for hours looking at a comment wondering whether to remove it - once we had some basic rules - applied to life - opinios are fine, personal attacks not - it was easy. I was VERY surprised however to see these stats on the post in eMarketer.com titled "Executives Not Quite Hot to Blog".

For many companies, the call centre (support line) is increasingly becoming the only point of contact between the company (brand) and the consumer (the experience). The whole point of these call centres was never to give the consumer f&q type answers – there’s the frequently asked questions section for that. But many companies still don’t understand that they are actually making it increasingly difficult to maintain any loyalty to the company with the type of (dis)service they are offering.

There are several factors, according to Adam Faulkner, that influence how the consumer relates to the company during the call. How long they have t o wait, do they receive a recorded message or do they get to speak with a live agent and whether their problem/query is resolved.

When I started to receive e-mails offering solutions to "my problem" with an added assurance that I wasn't the only one (how comforting!), I began to worry. Viagra and N-largement pills. How could they know? Was this smart targeted e-mail marketing based on some small socks I had purchased? I began to notice many other people were receiving the same thing - we were in fact being spammed. Relief.

I soon came to terms with the fact that for now, this type of spamming from e-mails such as Rachael Casey [NBZIMAXRZT@yahoo.com] was not going away. What really infuriated me now was a new breed of dubious "non spamming" that came from fully identified individuals/companies that had managed to get my e-mail probably through some people's inability to understand the difference between cc and bc when bulk sending e-mails to their lists.

Guess what. I've found the way to drive "legally" (logical translation: Police don't do anything about it so it must be legal) without the need for a driving licence, car tax, licence plate, permission, regard for others or common sense.

                                     

We had a great idea - a great yet simple idea. We wanted to give our customers added value in our venue by adding Wi-Fi broadband. So, we decided to contact an ISP provider. We identified a company, that shall remain anonymous (rhymes with Twix), that is advertising a new broadband service. In return for their free service, we would provide publicity for them at the venue, in all our printed communication as well as all internet applications - we have a database with profile of over 80,000 users nation wide. Sounds fair, don't you agree?

I searched through our CRM application and found the marketing manager. First test: had we been able to maintain our CRM up-to-date? Well most companies fail at this but after one phone call, I realised that we were fully loaded and had all the right details. Imagine my surprise when the e-mail was returned. Another phone call later and I was at ease. We were in fact correct but should try an alternative e-mail as the person in question would return the following day.

When that e-mail was also returned, I decided to wait for the Easter Holidays to pass and asked someone from my team to contact him. She did so. But... he wasn't there. The assistant claimed he would be back in the afternoon but probably too late to be able to speak to anyone.

Plan B: we tried to get a different form of contact having exhausted the try the other e-mail or wait and resend it later - as if that is ever going to work. We insisted so much that she placed us on hold while she tried to figure out what was wrong with the e-mail. Five minutes she returned with the following bombastic explanation...

The person we were trying to contact (marketing manager!) was no longer with the company. In fact that person had left the company a while back! So... hold on. Wasn't he coming back later that afternoon?

HELPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP. Get me out of this.