austinklee

My wife and her family wanted to go shopping on Saturday at an outlet mall near their home in Palm Springs, CA.  We walked around for a while, stopping in several stores.  The place was jammed full of people. (On a side note, the people at outlet malls in California are the same as people in Georgia…rude, messy, and spending more money than they should.)

We ended up at PacSun.  We shopped for a few minutes and my wife found a shirt on sale for $7.00.  So, we braved the line to purchase the shirt.  This is where the train jumped off the tracks.  The infrared bar-code scanner would not scan the shirt.  The girl behind the counter scanned it for almost 2 minutes before she asked for a manager’s assistance.

It was at this point I assumed she was a new employee and had not been taught how to manually enter in the bar-code number.  When the manager arrived he, too began scanning the bar-code to no avail.  He instructed his young charge, “Just run it on this one here.”  He gestured to the register on the opposite side of the counter.

At no time during this exchange did either of the employees apologize for the delay.  They did not acknowledge our presence or even make eye-contact with us the entire time.  When it was indicated that the sale would take place at a different register, neither of them told us of this change.  Had we not been paying attention we would have just been standing there.

Two things immediately came to mind: PacSun did not train their employees on how to treat customers when there is a delay, and their system had no back-up in case the scanners were not functioning.

As technology improves and as processes become more automated, there is a real need to also increase the quality of person to person service.  This is not an option.  As a system failed the representative should have apologized and informed us of the reason for the delay and what she was doing to resolve it.

Likewise, there should be an alternate way to input data into the system.  From the action of the manager I could only suppose that their system did not have a process for manual entry of bar-code information.  This runs counter-intuitive to the goal of a business: make the sale.  The bottom line mission for a retail establishment is to move merchandise.

Does your organization design your systems around your core goals and objectives?  What kinds of changes in technology do you need to make in order to be able to function if your core system is not functioning?

Has your customer service quality increased at the same pace as your technology?

Just saw that John Saddington (aka. @human3rror) found a cool tool to build a tweet cloud of your tweets.  Check his out here.  So I went to the site and made mine:

Trackback to my post and let me see yours!

My wife brought to my attention that my personality makes a drastic shift when we go on vacation.  Anyone that has ever met me has probably picked up on my outgoing nature.  I like being the life of the party and meeting all kinds of new people.  I am the guy that at the end of a long day wants to surround myself with more and more people to recharge my batteries.

To my wife’s chagrin, I often sign us up for social activities 5 nights a week.  Simply put, I LOVE BEING WITH PEOPLE!

However, once I get into vacation mode, I want to avoid people at all costs.  I will go out of my way on vacation not to make friends with the people we meet.  I don’t know why this is.

She laughed at me on Wednesday as I got really excited about buying a Coke Zero from a vending machine with my credit card.  She asked, “Why are you so excited?”  My reply: “Because, this means I can get my snacks without having to talk to anyone.”

Am I the only one?  Does anyone else have a personality shift when they go on vacation?

In my normal life, I can’t sit still for more than about 10 minutes.  But get me on vacation and you couldn’t move me with a forklift.

According to Google Analytics I have had as many as 40 people read my blog in one day.  Out of the 6,000,000,000,000 people on the planet 40 choose to read this blog.

I am very thankful for you 40 people.  That means that 40 of you think that the things I write about are good enough to read.  I am overwhelmed by this.  I know that 40 doesn’t seem like many, but when I think about it…it really is.

You are 40 people with jobs, kids, school, holidays, family responsibilities, church activities, and…well – a LIFE!  And you choose to spend part of your life reading this blog.

So, thank you for being part of the 40.  I am thankful for you.

I try not to inject my political views here on the blog, but this morning, I am overwhelmed with something that should cross all party lines.

In my view, with last nights vote, the United States moves one step closer to global irrelevance. No longer are we the country of freedom, standing as a beacon for ingenuity and creativity.  We are now becoming a people whose basic right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, given in the Declaration of Independence is being eroded.  In my mind, the ability for me to choose my own health care, my own doctors, and my own need for coverage is part of my right to life.

The United State House of Representatives last night passed a new version of a “Health Care Reform Bill” in the face of massive disapproval from the majority of the people in the United States. (In a November 2 poll Rasmussen put the number at 54%)

Why would the do this?  There are only two options:

1. They have determined that we are not smart enough to make our own decisions and they, like the parent of a 3 year-old, want to save us from ourselves.
2. They don’t care what we the people of the United States of America think, because it really isn’t about our well-being, its about gaining power and control over 1/6 of the economy.

I understand that there are people who cannot afford to purchase health insurance.  I also understand that there are people that have Cable or Satellite television, Cell phones, Magazine subscriptions, eat at restaurants, buy nice clothes, and take vacations; AND who cry that they cannot afford health-care.

My point is this: When you are elected to REPRESENT a group of people, you must do exactly that.  Your job is to be a reflection of those people.  You must put aside your political aspiration, and your own wants and desires and truly represent your constituents.

If we had a congress that did that, then that bill would have lost by a score of 235 – 183 with 17 members abstaining.

If you are a part of an organization, you represent that organization to everyone you meet.  Are you doing a good job being a reflection of the mission and values of the organization you represent?

I was probably ten or eleven the first time I had Dippin’ Dots.  We were on a family vacation to Tennessee to visit family and my parents took me and my brother to Opryland USA, a now defunct amusement park in Nashville, TN.  We were walking around the park riding rides and eating over priced food when we happened upon a little cart selling ice cream pellets.  They were described in the graphics as “Ice Cream of the Future” and besides the fact that it looked cool it was the future of ice cream so we HAD to have some.

After my Father shelled out $314.17 for four tiny bowls of Dippin’ Dots, we were all mystified at the little frozen ice cream balls that magically turned into regular ice cream in your mouth.

I am now almost 29 years old.  Dippin’ Dots has been the “Ice Cream of the Future” since 1988.  When is the future going to arrive?  It now costs $532.78 for four tiny bowls of Dippin’ Dots.

I went with my wife and three others tonight to see the new Hillsong United movie.   Near the end of the movie one of the members of Hillsong United makes a statement that really struck me.  I will paraphrase: “We are told that we are the future but don’t forget we are the present, too.”

Those of us born after 1979 have always been told that we are the future and we seem to keep waiting for the future to get here before we will help the hurting, before we will feed the hungry, before we will deny ourselves and take up the Cross of Christ.  We put off until tomorrow because we are the future.

As if to say, “We are the future and when the future comes, then we will act.”  All the while forgetting that we are living in the present.  Without action now we will not be ready to lead when the future comes.

Just like I wonder about Dippin’ Dots ice cream, hurting and broken people around the world and in your backyard are asking, “When will the future arrive, we need someone to love us, too.”

I had lunch yesterday with Benj Miller at eyespeak we had a great conversation about the changes that his company has gone through over the last couple of years and I was invited to write a guest post for his company’s blog.

I like what eyespeak is doing for their clients and how Benj really buys into the importance of clear internal as well as external communication.  Organizations need to follow the example set by eyespeak and work on their internal communcation as hard as they do on their external communication.

Check out my post here.

I am on the board of a small non-profit organization where I have helped to initiate a social media presence on Facebook and Twitter.  I have also taken on the added responsibility of creating a new monthly e-newsletter to be distributed to our support base.

As those of you in the social media space know, this is a major undertaking, especially for an organization that has no paid employees.  I am blessed to work for a President that supports social media.  He came up with the idea to pay for a virtual intern to assist remotely us as we move forward with our social media and newsletter.

After an initial selection process we narrowed the field to four candidates and asked them two questions:

1. How and why do you see your particular skill set significantly improving an aspect of ChooseAneed.org?  (And, what is that aspect.)
2. What specific goals would you like to accomplish as a ChooseAneed Virtual Intern?

One cadidate’s response was a fairly lengthy critique about how we are approaching social media.  He went into great detail about all the things we are doing wrong and I got the impression he was more interested in “saving” us from ourselves than contributing to the mission of our organization.

As I read through his responses I agreed with some of them.  To be sure we are not perfect in social media.  (I kind of think that it what I like best about social media: It is Imperfect.)  Many of his suggestions were things that we had already discussed prior to receiving his response.

Then I looked back over his resume.  I was stunned.  He graduated from college five months ago and experience in social media management or strategy is not on the resume.  In fact, his work experience doesn’t include any experience in the social media arena.

It is obvious that he has passion for social media and it is obvious that he wants to work with Chooseaneed.  However, he hasn’t earned the right to answer our questions in that manner.

If he was a business major with a computer science minor, had some experience working in the social media space (outside of his own accounts) then he would have a little more permission.  If he was John Saddington, Tony Steward, or Carlos Whittaker then he would have earned that right.

I have learned (yes, the hard way) to temper my comments and wait until I have earned the right to make a critique.  I want to hire him, I see a lot of me in him.  He’s bright, ambitious, willing to challenge the status quo, and eager to participate.  I hope we hire him so I can help channel that energy and teach him some of the “soft-skills” he will need to really make a huge impact in a future organization.

Do you ever offer an opinion before you have earned the right?  Have you ever been on the receiving end?  How does it feel?

If you are a business leader that is resistant to social media you will want to see this video.  The partner in charge of the Atlanta office of my old firm sent me a link to this video because he knows how much I believe in Social Media.  He gets it…do you?

This video found at Socialnomics.

Last Saturday I met a friend for coffee.  He heard about my recent job loss and wanted to talk with me and share some Bible verses and a CD that he listened to when he was between jobs.  He also wanted to talk with me about his latest business venture and gauge my interested in joining him.

This opportunity was pretty interesting as he had become an independent communications sales agent.  He has several products that he sells and markets at a discounted rate.  Most of the products and service providers are companies that you and I deal with on a daily basis.  The opportunity ended up not being something that I was not interested in and I communicated that to him.

He then asked me to work with him on his presentation.  So, I sat with him for an additional hour or so and we dove into making his presentation sing.  One of the things that I picked up on during the presentation was that he answered all of my questions without me asking them.  Including anticipating that I would see this opportunity as yet another Multi-Level Marketing (“MLM”) scam.

He was putting negative thoughts into my head…FOR ME!  So, we decided that a better tactic was to wait until someone asked if this was like the other MLM companies before making that leap for them.

How many times do we fill in blanks for people because we assume that we know what they are thinking?  Do we over-share information?  Do we unconsciously set ourselves up for failure?

Words are powerful.  So when you are in your sales pitch, be mindful that you are not casting a negative light.  It would be better to “keep em’ wanting more” than to kill the sale before it starts.