Ring Partners

5/8/2010

We interrupt this program…

I am cutting into the series about angry customers and throwing a few thoughts into the Australian federal election. International readers might find the questions further down more relevant to your local scene.

I was with a couple of Gen Y persons the other day and the subject of the federal election breezed by. One of them snorted, “Well I’ll be drawing a line through my ballot paper. Neither Gillard or Abbot do it for me. Waste of time.”

I thought, that’s what you get when political parties let their proceedings fall into the hands of image makers rather than policy makers. You make Australians think they are voting directly for their Prime Minister just as voters in the US vote for their President.

Ahoy there ship mates. History ought to be telling you that if you thought like this 3 years ago and you... [continued]

24/6/2010

A fourth lesson about handling angry people

But first – An historic and weird day in Australia.

Historic? We got our first woman PM.

Weird? The most popular PM in Australia’s history went down choking back tears just shy of completing one term.
You could argue he was unlawfully dismissed by a handful of union officials, who had put him in place to make sure no-one could ever be unlawfully dismissed.
And we the bewildered masses say, “Huh?”.

Was he dishonest? Was he unfaithful to his wife and family? Was he lazy? Did he have his hand in the cash drawer? Nope. None of that. In the mysterious world of political intrigue, his party decided it was being perceived by voters as likely to lose an election if he were its leader. Peter Beattie, former Premier of Queensland commenting on ABC... [continued]

That’s the best way I could describe what is happening in computing – Cloud Computing in fact. It’s all getting closer to wherever you will be. Since the iPhone arrived two years ago your emails and a lot of your other “stuff” can live in the clouds – on servers like Google – not on your personal hard drive – and now with a WIFI iPad, you can walk around with a computer the size of a school exercise book and collect what you want to access, on the go.

It’s all happening
A month ago The Sydney Morning Herald ran an article about hand-held computing, featuring the iPad, the maybe-to-be-released HP Slate and predictions from Nokia.

It’s not hard to get left behind if you think you’ve arrived.

Four Questions
That was April. A month later Apple has just sold its millionth... [continued]

You wouldn’t believe there’s a recession…
I sent 35 people from a customer service seminar into the main shopping strip of Adelaide last week – the famous and oft-said-to-be-struggling Rundle Mall. They had to do a mystery shopping exercise.

My amateur mystery shoppers were armed with the six questions below to which I’ve attached the consistent reports. They were not allowed to initiate contact. The employee had to start the interaction. In one case one of the mystery shoppers stood in the “wrong” end of the counter and was ignored completely.

They visited 43 stores between them. 6 provided a recommendable experience. 1 provided a memorable experience and that was the guy at the Scout Shop who told the shopper where she could get what she wanted but not at the Scout Shop. The rest provided the same kind of experience you get from a... [continued]