John Winsor

Space...The Final Frontier

As I'm editing interviews for SPARK, I came across these words of wisdom from Henry Beer, Principal of Communication Arts.

"A great work environment is the absence of things rather than the presence of things – it is the absence of a program so relentless that you feel like you’ve got to shape yourself to accommodate the space, as opposed to having the space to be flexible."

Is you work environment as flexible as it needs to be?

Contest Update

Thanks to Christopher Carfi and Aaron Dignan for their entries in The Best Cusomter Response Contest! I'm going to hold entries open until the 1st of April. (It seems like an appropriate deadline!)

Now, I need some help judging the entries. Rate the letters that get sent to companies from one to ten.

Turn off the Computer!

I’ve been madly editing away on SPARK and came across this quote from Scott Bowers, Oakley’s SVP of Marketing:

“I think we’re also starting to find that while the Blackberry was a great tool in the beginning, now we’re seeing that it’s closing off communication, because people just sit back and fire off emails all day long. So we’re looking to devise different ways of communicating outside of email that get people back together and communicating face to face.”

Is technology getting in the way of communicating for you?

Contest # 2 -The Best Customer Response

Aaron Dignan had a great idea for a contest. Thanks Aaron!

So, I've added to (co-created?) Aaron's idea and am ready to roll with it. So here are the rules:

1. You select the brand you think gives the best customer service. I will post your name and the brand you selected in the right column.

2. Send an honest and creative comment/complaint email to them. Send me the comment. The comments will be judged by other readers on a scale of one to ten.

3. Post the brand's responses and the response times here. Other readers can then rank each response, including response time and creativity on a scale of one to ten.

4. The person and brand combination with the best overall score in both categories wins a signed copy of Beyond the Brand. Scores will be posted to the right with the name of the brand and your name.

I hope that makes sense and doesn't get too complicated.

Good luck!

A New Era

Spark has been consuming me lately. I just edited an interview with Matt Jacobson, VP of quiksilver Entertainment. He said something that made a lot of sense, "The era of bullies and assholes (in business) is over." I agree. It does seem like we are entering into a new, more holistic era in buisness where everybody has the opportunity to participate and co-create.

Speaking of participating and co-creating, thanks everyone for being involved in my little Audible expirement. We need to do it more often. Anybody have an idea for a new contest I can host?

The End of the Story

I got another note from Jonanthan Korzen at Audible. They have completely taken care of the situation and credited my credit card for the money that was wrongly charged.

Thanks, Jonathan!

While it is great that Audible responded I only wish that I could have taken care of this the first time I tried, saving myself and Audible a lot of time and effort.

Customer interaction is a difficult task for all of us. I think we have to remember that whether we work for a multi-national corporation or our own little corner store, whether our company sells services or products, we will not be around unless we satisfy our customers, both internal and external.

I know it sounds too simple, but it is often hard to execute. As a customer, I'd love to enteract with more companies that aren't remarkable but just listen and respond.  That said, remarkable would be great, but first things first.

Audible Responds!

Jonathan Korzen responded with a nice note at 121 hours:

John,

Please accept my apologies for the lack of response. We failed in terms of your experience at audible.com and my follow-up. We take great pride in our user experience and customer support, but we won't continue to grow if people fall through the cracks when requesting help. And I didn't respond quickly enough to your blog. But please do note that this is the first post I've had to make defending the service (and my inaction) in 8 years as ADBL's pr guy. I beg for mercy in advance...
First and foremost I'd like to get your support issue straightened out today. May I trouble you send me your username and describe the issue?
Again, my apologies for the silence.
Sincerely,
Jonathan
Jonathan Korzen
Director of Public Relations
Audible.com

Considering the weekend, I guess that's not too bad. It looks like the winners are.... Jake and Andreas. Guys, shoot me your email address and I'll get signed books out to you.

Thanks to everybody for participating. I'll let you know how the follow-up goes with Jonathan.

Tick, Tick ,Tick

Well, here we are at 120 hours and no response. Bruce, have you heard anything? Thanks everybody for there participation thus far! It looks like Andreas is in the lead.  I'll announce the winner tomorrow but will keep the counter going until I hear something from Audible.

To make things a little more fun, let's have another contest. This could be a great experiment in co-creation. Whoever comes up with the most creative way to get Audible's attention and they do respond gets signed copy of Beyond the Brand. Don't worry, I will do all of the legwork in implementing the idea.

On another note, I'm in the midst of a big push on SPARK and will be posting some of the really interesting comments from some of hte interviews I've been doing.

The Audible Response Counter

To keep track of how long it takes for Audible to respond to my email and share that response time with you I've started the "Audible Response Time Counter" located in the upper right-hand corner of my blog.

How long do you think it will take them to respond? Post your best guess in the comments. Whoever guesses the closest, wins a free copy of Beyond the Brand!

Audible Update

I got a nice comment on my Audible post (same post as below) on BrandShift from Bruce DeBoer that prompted me to take action. I thought maybe the CEO of Audible doesn't know what's going on and might want to participate in our discussion. Through Google, I found out that the CEO is Donald R. Katz. So, I wrote him an email:

Dear Donald,

We're having an interesting conversation about Audible on the BrandShift blog, www.corante.com/brandshift/. It would be great if you could participate.

Thanks,

John

John Winsor
CEO/Founder Radar Communications
Author, Beyond the Brand

I also cced Jonathan Korzen, Audible's Director of PR. I'll keep you up to date about Donald's response.

I'll keep you updated on this little experiment of customer interaction.