Take a little time…a little time to get to know me.

I feel a song coming on. Or not. Either way, really. I was speaking to a group of franchisors the other day. (For those of you who don’t know the term, a franchisor (person or group/company) sits at the head of a franchise. They are the people everyone else buys their franchise from. They own [...]

Paying attention to customer service starts with paying attention…

OK. I admit I’m not a food critic. I’m not a chef and I’m not in any way qualified to write restaurant reviews. I’ll put my hand up right away and admit all of that. Setting those facts aside, this may be a slightly odd post – half restaurant review, half customer service advice. You [...]

If the ship is already sinking, you probably can’t get it fixed…

As someone who has owned and run a business for the past six(ish) years, there is nothing that makes me sadder than to see a business close its doors. No matter whose fault it is, how stupid the decisions were, or how incompetent people have been, it still makes me feel a bit sick to [...]

Just because your mother thinks you’re handsome doesn’t make it true…

There are times (I can say with only a small hint of sarcasm) where my mouth gets me into trouble. I’ll pause now for you all to stop laughing. Anyway the point is  I’ve decided to self-censor the title of this post a bit. It’s normally a little more crude, and I have a habit [...]

Junk mail, email spam, fax spam, telesales and now: social media spam!

Hurrah! Or alternatively, if you’re anything like me, sigh… This won’t be particularly shocking to most of you. For those of us who work in the field (well, marketing in general) it’s even less so. I think we’ve finally reached the point where spam is starting to outweigh the good in some of our favourite [...]

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

I have to admit – normally when I hear that phrase it’s in some sort of ‘b’ movie and it’s being uttered by a concerned parent or grandparent to their, somewhat wayward, daughter. But that’s not the story for today. No, today it’s a perfect summary of one of my pet peeves – doing speculative [...]

Treat ‘em mean and keep ‘em keen

This may be a bit of a schizophrenic post, as I’m trying to reconcile competing emotions and ideas into one (oh so subtly named) article. You can probably guess, but the underlying message/topic today is about customer service and communication. I like Apple. A lot. I have a 100% Apple office, and I’m what I [...]