Always give a receipt or ask if the customer wants one. I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked off from a place without the receipt in hand because I’d really rather not have to think about things like asking for receipts. It’s annoying and I really notice it when businesses offer the receipt. I finally understand why some go as far as to say they will give you something free if they forget.

This particularly irks me because usually if it’s a business expense (the only time I REALLY care about receipts), I’ll first try my American Express card. If they don’t take it, I’ll often switch to cash rather than another card since it’s just about as easy for me to track the expense — so long as I get a receipt. I figure I’m doing the merchant a favor in this case by saving them on the credit card fees, but so few merchants give receipts when you pay with cash and they don’t seem to care much when I do them this favor. Then again, most of the cashiers with whom I interface probably don’t care too much about their boss’s credit card fees. But they should.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General

I recently ended a sour relationship with a contractor (the one who renovated our new office space). One of the things that struck me about this was that the constant retreat whenever something went wrong or was done poorly to the 30 years of experience the owner had running this company and doing this type of work for “hundreds of happy customers.” As hard as it was for me to see the truth in that after my experience, I do like to give people the benefit of the doubt. I will post the truth of my case and if an opposing truth is out there, then the public record will help people make future decisions about the quality of these experiences.

But I really get stuck on this notion that experience somehow prevents a person or company from making a mistake, or worse yet automatically forgives that mistake without requiring them to take additional action. I often see experience and success lead to complacency and overconfidence rather than increased customer service.

So one thing I’d like to see out of consumer word of mouth power is a greater sense of responsibility from companies that believe they have earned the trust and respect of customers from doing it right for years or decades. All that experience means absolutely nothing if you don’t provide me with the same experience your other customers supposedly had.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Social Media

I’m still not completely sold on the value or purpose of Twitter, but I’m getting into it more now that I’ve taken it mobile, which seems a requirement. The more I use it the more I like it, but I need more people on it — to follow and to follow me (aswindler). It’s such a conversational medium that it seems the more the merrier.

As with many new forms of social media, I would classify much of what I see and, for that matter, produce as Internet pollution. But I can see potential in this one. With enough people all tied in together, you could have group “chats” just be replying to various things that were said in your network. Or broadcast something new. But do it all through a single web form field.

I see some people using it to broadcast links that are interesting without all the effort of a blog write-up, or to recommend some great restaurant or event they are attending.

I must wonder though, what is the cost of twittering away our important messages in an open broadcast format rather than sharing them with those we love? Once you get some things out of your system, you don’t need to share them again. So we trade public record for intimate exchange. It wouldn’t be the first time, but I don’t see Twitter traffic taking the place of much face to face interaction.

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Andy Swindler Categories: General, Social Media, Technology, Web

Just finished reading Andy Sernovitz’s Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking. Great read, I’m going to suggest that many of my clients read this. Actually anyone in any organization that relies on people (hmm, that’s about all of them) would benefit from some or all of what Andy describes and dissects.

In a supreme word of mouth marketing proof of concept, Andy gave me the signed copy after I responded to a blog post talking about how much to give away to people for free before they become clients. His response was, “Give it away big time… Demonstration: I’ll send a free book to the next 5 people who ask for one.” Best offer I’ve gotten in a long time, and here I am talking about it. Here’s a brief review:

This book provides a context, actionable framework, and toolkit to support many of the marketing ideas and instincts I’ve had for years but not found a reliable outlet through which to explore. It could perhaps be shortened (not that it’s particularly long), as there are many repeated concepts — sometimes in adjoining sentences. Then again, I believe this is exactly Andy’s point. We over think so much of this stuff that he has to hit you over the head a few times to drive home the notion that the best marketing is often the simplest and most intuitive. Bottom line: play to the strengths of your organization by creatively getting people to talk positively about you. Once you’ve gestated the conversation, capitalize on it and start another one. What should be obvious often is not, but there is a three-letter word that ties it all together: fun.

While I applaud Andy’s decision to lose the hyphenation in word of mouth marketing, the grammar nut in me gets stuck on treating Web site as a single word and not capitalizing Internet. Details like this don’t change the quality of the material but they distract me from it. Then again this is marketing, where liberties are welcome. And these are somewhat newer tech terms that perhaps deserve to be deformalized.

My only nag is that Apple kicked off the revolutionary colored computer word of mouth marketing campaign with a Bondi Blue iMac, not pink or purple (page 12).

So go get it already!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

Great story about president Sidney Torres IV of SDT, an innovative waste and debris management company based out of New Orleans. Imagine that, a company besting all expectations in an embedded market by treating people well and building a company that becomes part of the conversation. Can you smell the eucalyptus-scented streets yet?

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Green, Marketing, Social Media

Astek’s Chief Operating Officer and Wearer of Clothes, Katie, is throwing a big clotheswapping event this Saturday, March 29, called Swap-O-Rama-Rama Chicago to raise money for three great non-profits. Check out Katie’s interview in Gaper’s Block.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Green, Social Media

Soon I think we’ll see some more options in the iPhone realm. Apple has been so caught up in getting the thing out the door, making sure it’s a stable platform, and opening it up for development that they haven’t released any substantial upgrades (just a memory boost).

But there is clearly a market for a “high-end” version of the iPhone. I’m sure many people would be willing to spend something closer to the 4-figure range to get a 3G network, removable battery, more memory, (the list goes on). But most importantly it would be visually different enough to let the world know that you weren’t just carrying a normal iPhone.

Apple’s success is based on delivering high-style products at reasonable prices. They might not always seem reasonable compared to the competition, but if you really weigh the features and longevity (not to mention good ole ease-of-use and peace-of-mind) Apple products typically come out on top.

I remember years ago they released a 20th Anniversary Mac. At the time it included revolutionary features like a built-in LCD screen. It was ultimately a repackaged version of the computer I took to college, but it cost much more.

They didn’t have much trouble selling them. And they won’t have much trouble selling the ultra high-end iPhone either. Let me know your thoughts on what such a device should be like.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, Technology

My Seattle trip has kept me too busy to write, but I’m back in the swing now.

A friend just turned me onto this World of Warcraft forum thread in which a guy explains how his excitement in learning that his boss also played World of Warcraft quickly turned to disappointed when he discovered his boss played for the other team (Alliance versus Horde in the game). The guy was up for a promotion, but once his boss learned they were on opposing teams he became evasive at work and it seemed the promotion was in jeopardy.

This speaks to a facet of the social media conversation that we haven’t fully figured out. If the idea is to be friends with everyone or at least have a conversation with everyone (be social), then how do we apply this to relationships that depend on a certain level of formality (e.g., a boss and subordinate or teacher and student)? Personally I embrace the notion of “friending” people in these environments, but I’m fortunate enough to be able to write some of my own rules, and the stakes are perhaps lower for me — not to mention the fact that I can turn anything into an social experiment. There is certainly nothing wrong with preferring to maintain formality out of habit or necessity. I tend to see more advantage in having an expansive network of peers than danger.

Another friend of mine is a teaching fellow at Harvard. It didn’t take long for him to decide to make his Facebook profile private so that only he could seek out friends, rather than be found through a search. He felt a strong need to draw a line to maintain the authority he had earned through teaching undergraduate students in his classes.

Attitudes tend to vary a bit between mediums. Facebook has always been a bit more serious to me than MySpace. Warcraft is a game. Second Life is a virtual immersive environment that arguably is the most natural place to form digitally augmented friendships that depend on a high level of interactivity and time. That’s the one thing that remains constant. Maintaining a friendship in any environment and by any definition still requires time and attention, and I suppose it always will — especially as it becomes harder to trick anyone into believing that your surrogate (someone else you have representing you — think ghost writer) is actually you.

Are we supposed to be friends with our employees or students? I say why not? And this leads me to support the idea of “friending” just about anyone on Facebook (except that other Andy Swindler out there who I don’t really know). As the world becomes flatter, so do business structures, where people take lead and ownership on different things and shared projects on different days. It must be harder to take for someone who’s spent 30 years working up through the ranks of a business suddenly to give up the earned authority and embrace a flattened structure. But being friends with coworkers at any level is nothing new. Historically it’s probably been relegated to going out for beers after work, and that’s perhaps the difference. Facebook and sites like it begin to tear down some of those walls within the office or school environment, which makes it harder to draw lines when considering professional issues at those institutions.

Read through some of the posts on that forum. They are enlightening.

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Andy Swindler Categories: General, Social Media, Web

I believe that this site was created with good intentions. Social media at its best, right? Just like we do for companies — rating them good, bad, or somewhere in the middle. This one is for women to talk about guys they’ve dated. The problem is the negative spin they put on it:

“If a guy you went out with was a cad, rude, immature or even something more serious – share this knowledge with other women, post a quick or long review on him here. It’s anonymous and free. Consider it a sort of public service for the dating woman!”

Clearly this was created by someone who wanted to create a venue for her scornful thoughts, but why not encourage women to rate positive dating experiences through the same forum? Is it somehow less relevant? Are the good ones swept up so quickly that it’s not worth sharing? Or is it expected that a personal relationship can only end poorly?

Some things really do need to be resolved out of the public eye, and this might be one of them. If a guy is less than criminal, I’m not sure I see the value in putting this kind of information out there. It’s inherently emotionally charged and bias, offering limited commenting from the guy in his defense. If he did manage to find the review and cared enough to post, I imagine he would be burned at the stake by the site regulars. To the extent that this site exists to commiserate and share experiences that can be laughed about in retrospect, I commend it. But that seems to be the minority of the posts.

I also find it odd that there are no last names submitted. Not only does the make the information fairly hard to match up to a real person, it is highly prone to error. That is to say, it would be pretty easy to ascribe what’s written here to the wrong guy a woman meets at a bar. “Gerry you say? Oh, I’ve heard of you…”

Where do we draw the line? Why not apply what works for consumers and corporations to personal relationships? It’s all pretty innocent, in the end, and may just provide a useful tool to relieve some of the inevitable hard feelings one has after a break-up.

Will the channels one day become so flooded that all the benefit is removed? Imagine if SPAM had managed to make email unusable. This may still happen. But if the legitimate forums for consumer feedback become overridden with tripe, I fear the gains seen in recent years will be undone.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Social Media

This is one of those exciting scary things. A prototype of a device that can recognize words and phrases from the vocalization through the larynx when you speak, even if you don’t give them air. When inevitably improved, this will allow people to speak silently over cell phones and even to each other in the same room through ear pieces.

In this example, a man controls a wheel chair “with his mind.”

More exciting still is the example cited of silently performing a Google search while walking down the street to find an ATM or restaurant. I like that it’s not actually reading thoughts. That would be the scary part. This draws a sensible line with not having to worry about people reading or hearing things you don’t want them to. Choosing whether or not to vocalize is as easy as deciding to speak or not. Then again, some people certainly do have a hard enough time with that.

In the world of cell phone ubiquity and everyone on the street plugged into themselves through their iPhones, will this just take us one step farther from the face to face interaction that still bests any communication tool?

I’m left to wonder if this will increase or eliminate the know-it-alls in our world. Think about it. Anyone anywhere would be able to subvocalize a Wikipedia search and have access to any information on the Internet. I think at first this will increase people’s tendency to spout off useless facts to show off their “knowledge,” then we’ll see a dramatic decline as people adopt or abandon the technology. It’s an extreme form of people who currently use laptops and iPhones for this purpose. If the iPhone finally brings the Internet to your pocket, Steve has nothing on surfing the Net within your head. It reminds me a little of the Ender’s Game series.

Thanks for the link, Jake.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, General, Social Media, Technology, Web