I’m about to be very honest about a topic that could get me in trouble with over half of the people who read my words here. This makes me nervous, but I’m going to do it anyway.
I hate affirmative action.
I’m speaking from the perspective of a middle-aged white male, and that automatically (and correctly) should make you raise an eyebrow at my position on the matter. But everyone speaks from one bias or another, so I’m going to ask you to try and ignore that point.
A common insult used today to shut down people with different opinions than your own is “I see your lips moving, but I can’t hear a word you’re saying”. I’m not sure if Pink Floyd‘s Roger Waters had the same meaning in mind when he wrote the words Your Lips Move, But I Can’t Hear What You’re Saying, circa 1976, but I do know that in the age of social networking and the shrinking world of The Internet, we’re getting sloppy with how we communicate.
This is not a business change you want to emulate.
Another year, another entry on The Answer Guy’s Customer Service Wall of Shame.
What better way to start the year? Kudos to Steve Madden for getting my attention; I don’t wear Steve Madden and am more interested in the felony record of Steve Madden himself than the shoe company named for him (Steve Madden stopped working there when he went to jail for stock fraud).
You’ve seen those commercials, right? People with the latest version of the iPhone just speak and things magically happen, courtesy of the very cool (I’m not kidding; it is very cool) Siri Virtual Assistant software built into the iPhone 4S.
Apple, when asked if Siri would be coming to earlier versions of the iPhone, said it couldn’t be done; the newest iPhone is so more powerful than even its most recent predecessor that Siri won’t run on it—or won’t run in a way that’s up to Apple’s performance standards.
Comedy comes from pain. Art, too. Sure, some people are so creative that amazing stuff just pours out of them, but just as creativity springs from need, pain is the largest precursor to artistic expression.
So what alternate reality creates Service Level Agreements?
I came across this post at GigaOM, and something I’ve been telling clients for many years sprung to mind immediately: Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are Nonsense.
I even commented there, using my two personal favorite examples of the ludicrousness of SLAs and other numeric-based service guarantees. Pure and simple: you cannot adequately define customer expectations or the customer service contract by attaching numbers to them.
A few months ago I wrote a piece accusing Chris Brogan of being less smart than Gary Vaynerchuk. Chris didn’t like it, and he said so.
Because it’s my nature to care about the impact I have on people, it bothered me that I had hurt Mr. Brogan’s feelings. I mean that sincerely. I mean it authentically.
A couple of weeks ago, Chris Brogan wrote on the subject of authenticity. He essentially said that we can’t be authentic because we all have filters.
We’re liars. We’re cheaters. We’re programmed for infidelity, both in business and in our personal lives.
Heard that before? The subject is rarely broken down across business change/personal change lines, but if you subscribe to “once a cheater, always a cheater” ideals it’s hard not to apply the research that repeatedly crops up about how people (as animals) are programmed for sexual infidelity to other subjects.
I’m a big proponent of drawing on your personal life to make the things you say and write in business more “real”. I learned that lesson a long time ago, and although it can sometimes scare people away it serves me well when I do business with folks who know they’re getting the real me.
One of my influences, believe it or not, is radio personality Howard Stern (and he was actually on my mind when I wrote this story about Customer Service at Nissan of Manhattan).
Last month, a years-old lawsuit against Dell Computers was unsealed. And Dell’s actions as shown in the documents about the suit weren’t pretty.
Big deal. a huge company is less than forthcoming about the way they do business, and skirts honesty issues by never quite lying, but going out of their way to do less than what the swearing-in process in most US-based courts demands.
The words are “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth“. Did you ever ask yourself what that phrase means?
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