It’s that time again, the funnest holiday of them all. Seriously, what other holiday do *you* have permission to turn yourself into an insane butler or a slutty French maid and have people respect you for it?
Stay safe, and wish me luck that my flight today doesn’t have me sitting next to the insane butler (although I wouldn’t necessarily mind the slutty maid…)
I know I’ve written frequently about my various horrendous customer service issues in the past, but I’m happy today to be able to share a fantastic story of wonderful, unexpected customer service and customer loyalty. Here’s the background:
I’ve always been a big fan of Hertz for rental cars because they tend to have the best service, cleanest cars, and funnest models (convertible Mustang, anyone?). Sure, Hertz is often the most expensive of the rental companies, but damn do they earn their money. Most of the time, anyway.
In a recent trip to Orlando for blogOrlando I rented from Hertz. When I arrived at the off-site rental counter, I was faced with an incredibly rude desk clerk. When I finally got to the car, it smelled (literally) like urine. Fortunately, when I returned inside to get an exchange, the second desk clerk was extremely helpful.
The day after I returned home, Hertz sent me a request for feedback survey link. I filled it out, sharing my disappointment. As soon as I hit the submit button, I completely forgot about it.
Imagine my absolute delight today when I received a letter today from (the office of) John Cherry, Orlando General Manager. Not only did he apologize for the poor service, he signed it personally. In ink. This wasn’t a standard form letter! And to make things absolutely amazing, he included a $100 gift certificate.
Wow.
I don’t know about you, but it’s been a fun week with the Community Contest! We’ve given away a tons of great prizes, thanks so much to the sponsors:
But onto the good stuff. The winner of the phat prize pack for Day 5 is…. Jennifer Van Grove! Her Picnik treatment (shown below) beat out the (fantastic) competition because:
Big congrats to Jennifer! (Jennifer, I’ll contact you offline to send your goodies)
My clients often find it odd when I don’t recommend the latest, greatest tech. I even had one person tell me “I thought we hired you to tell us how to implement Web 2.0?” I’d try to explain my reasons why I suggest the right solution, which isn’t always the most geeky solution, but Jon did a much better job!
The web is clearly evolving, and when I’m thinking like a futurist, I can go on about virtual worlds, ambient intelligence, ubiquitous computing, digital lifestyle aggregation, 3space, Identity 2.0, accelerated web application development and issues of software as a service, specialized devices, increased mobility, evolution of presence, etc. There’s a lot to think about, and we’re thinking about it every day.
But not every minute.
In fact, when thinking as a strategist and consultant, especially for organizations that might have monetary or other constraints, I’m far more conservative. I focus on technologies that are well-established, usable, and unlikely to go away (though they may be changing somewhat). Email is a good example: lately I’m hearing that email is considered old school by SMSing young ‘uns, and the implication is that email will in fact go away. I chuckle (or groan) at this fantasy as I try to key text messages longer than a sentence. Yes, SMS is useful, but it’s not ideal transport for long-form messaging; to replace email, SMS will have to become so much like email that you won’t know the difference.
The time to the deadline of the last challenge of the Community Contest 2007 is ticking away. The final challenge runs until 7a tomorrow (Monday) morning, and the prizes are worth giving the contest a few minutes. What are you waiting for??
Day 5 Prizes!
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| $25 Threadless Gift CertificateThanks to Jake Nickell from Threadless! | HP C4280 All-in-One PrinterProvided by Ants Eye View |
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| Picnik T-Shirt & Free Picnik.com Premium AccountThanks to the Picnik team! | Custom LEGO model design from the incredible LEGO sculptor, Sean Kenney!(This is going to be WAY cool… can I win?? No? Damn.) |
Nobody can say I’m not flexible: I’ve heard from several fine readers that they need some additional time on this last challenge. Since it’s Friday and I’m in a fantastic mood (brought on largely by all the fantastic participation this week!), I’m going to extend the deadline for the Day 5 challenge until Monday morning at 7a CST. This gives you all weekend!
One other bit of clarification: If you’re hesitating to sign up for a Picnik Premium account in case you win the free account as part of the prize package, don’t worry about it. Go ahead and sign up and you’ll have your registration fee comped if you win.
Go forth and Picnik!
Wow, what a week! I’ve had a blast with the Community Contest, and I hope you have too. (Let me know via email or in the comments if you liked it enough for me to do it again) Before we get to today’s discussion and prize (another doozy), let’s recap our previous lessons this week:
Perhaps the most important thing to remember about sharing is that it’s a participatory activity. It’s ongoing, and it takes work. You have to open yourself up, overcome potential discomfort, and stop thinking only about yourself. Great sharing is an ongoing process that gets better over time.
Want to truly share? Start participating!
Day 5 Challenge: Share your own mad skillz
Alright, here’s how today’s challenge works:
(This contest isn’t associated with, supported by, or a product of the fine folks at Picnik. I just love their service and think it could be a great part of this contest)
Day 5 Prizes
Today’s the last day of Community Contest 2007, so the prize package is one last hurrah! One person will get the following:
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| $25 Threadless Gift CertificateThanks to Jake Nickell from Threadless! | HP C4280 All-in-One PrinterProvided by Ants Eye View |
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| Picnik T-Shirt & Free Picnik.com Premium AccountThanks to the Picnik team! | Custom LEGO model design from the incredible LEGO sculptor, Sean Kenney!(This is going to be WAY cool… can I win?? No? Damn.) |
Original Opening Photo Credit: Jonathan McKnight
I’m extremely excited to announce today’s winner. My buddy Jeremy Harrington has offered an incredible prize: A completely custom designed WordPress theme. That’s right, one lucky winner will be able to work directly with Jeremy to create their hot new blog look and feel.
I really liked today’s submissions, and reached out to Jeremy to help me select a winner. Together, we were both very impressed with Judson’s submission of Flickr. For those of you who know my unnatural love for Flickr, this comes as no surprise. But it wasn’t just the fact that Judson was recommending Flickr, it’s the points he made about why it’s such tasty Web goodness.
Congrats, Judson! You’ve just earned yourself a one-way ticket to bloggy heaven. I’ll put you in touch with Jeremy to let the magic begin. Thanks, Jeremy!
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Design extraordinaire, Jeremy Harrington |
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Community Contest 2007 rolls on! (Today’s prize is HUGE, so read on)
It’s Day 4, and we’ve covered a lot of ground since kickoff a few days ago. We’ve talked about how sharing is a trust exercise, how worthwhile sharing requires sharing pieces of yourself, and how you have to put others first in order to fully benefit from the act of sharing.
Notice that we’ve not really even started the sharing process? Good communicators don’t rush in and start spilling their guts before they’ve surveyed the landscape. Great sharing comes with great context. It might be interesting to share the development cycle of your latest widget development with your community members, but it’s even more interesting to explain to them why the development cycle has played out like it has. Adding the context, hopefully one with some amount of personal depth, helps me understand not only what’s happening, but why I should care.
Day 4 Challenge: Convince me to like it too
As with the rest of the week, today’s challenge is straightforward:
See, nice and easy! Be warned, however, points will only be scored (on my magical score card) for really great explanations, as well as unique selections. Amazon’s great, one of my favorite sites on the Web, but not a very interesting selection for this challenge. Bring me new stuff!
Day 4 Prize: A custom designed WordPress theme!
The wonderful, fantastic, talented Jeremy Harrington has donated his mad designer skillz to the contest. He’s offering a custom designed, totally personal WordPress theme for your blog!
Deadline for Submissions: Midnight Central Standard Time (CST), 25 October. That’s tonight, so what are you waiting on??
Original Photo Credit: wcamlin
I think I like this “giving out prizes” business; everybody loves the guy with the prizes. But the Day 3 prizes aren’t about who loves me, they’re about how is loved by you. You shared some great background on why you love the bloggers you do. If not for the fact that Janey won yesterday, she likely would have taken home the prize again with her incredible pointer. So who did win, you ask? Drum roll……..
Isabel Hilborn! I loved her suggestion of Faris’ blog. Great tagline, great photography and throughly interesting reading. Stop by, you won’t be disappointed. (Be sure to read the rest of the nominations too… they’re all fantastic)
Which means that Faris Yakob will receive a $15 iTunes gift certificate, and Isabel will also receive said certificate for such a great recommendation.
Thanks to Ants Eye View (you know, me) for the prizes!
Be sure to stay tuned; the Day 4 challenge is launching in just a matter of hours!
Jake McKee is the Chief Strategy Officer and Ant Wrangler at Ant's Eye View, a customer experience strategy practice focused on helping clients escalate their customer experience. With a rich background in customer collaboration, online communities, and fan groups, and Web development, community management, and product development, Jake helps organizations understand how to act like groups of people, rather than soulless money making machines.
