I got grumpy with a Customer Service guy on the phone at Trustpower yesterday. I wanted someone to take ownership and they wouldn’t so I got annoyed at him. I wasn’t abusive, just frustrated and CEO type direct. It got me precisely nowhere! A few months back, I decided to move our home phone and broadband to Trustpower, … More Bad systems, lead to bad customer experiences!
Telecom recently sent me a letter. It tells me how good they are for doubling my broadband usage from 20GB to 40GB. They are also putting the price up by $5. Thanks Telecom, you are really nice guys, except for the fact we don’t use 20GB and there is a new plan for 20GB that … More Marketing Spin from Hamilton City Council and Telecom.
Yesterday we headed out to Patetonga to watch our friend’s son race in Motocross (#342 in picture). He is racing smaller bikes in a larger class to give him more competition, as he often nails the competition in his normal class. This made me think about the importance of competition. One of my 5 strengths … More Is it even possible to WIN without competition?
One of the problems with being intellectually inquisitive, is one can tend to over think or even over discuss things that have absolutely no impact on ones life. Take as an example Countdown, the new brand for Woolworths, Foodtown, the old Countdown and Price Chooper. The first time I saw the new brand with the … More 203|365 Intellectually Inquisitive
Agora’s story is being formed one drop, one cup of coffee at a time. Yesterday I sat at Agora drinking a wonderful coffee made by the infamous Simon, and over heard a customer tell her two friends great things about the café, about how we give 50cents from each cup of coffee to charity. … More 181 | 365 Coffee Stories
Back in the New Zealand Rail days, the Railways thought they were in the railway business. They thought they had no competition and they were wrong. They were actually in the transportation business and their competitors were trucking companies. For passengers the competition was bus companies and then airlines. In business, knowing what business … More 174 | 365 – Coal Wagons
Recently I flew on Pacific Blue for the first time. As it was my first flight I had expectations. Big Ones. Cool crew, more seat room, modern planes. It was to be an adventure. On my first flight the crew were dull, boring and lifeless. Their attempts at humour were staged and had as much … More Expectations
'Old marketing is dead10 years ago we were able to advertise a position in a paper and know that people looking for a job would see it. Nowadays you need to advertise in many papers and on multiple websites and you are still not guaranteed a good response. It used to be that you could … More Does advertising really work?
A couple of years ago, Amazon.com announced that they were going to stop their advertising all together. No more magazine adverts or TV. Instead they decided to invest all of their advertising dollars into providing free shipping of books. From what I have read the marketing industry thought it was a foolish decision and predicted … More Wasting your advertising dollars
“Is this Mr Nicol”, asked the telesales person who interrupted my life shortly after I arrived home tonight. I answered “Yep”, which was followed by a very ungenuine “How are you?” I know it was ungenuine because I never actually got the chance to answer before she launched into her sales talk. She talked for … More People Matter
How often do NZ Businesses and sales people deliver a completely different service to the customers expectation. Check out these images. (Hat tip to Mark Q)
It has been said 'The best way to make a small fortune in aviation is to start with a huge one'. I am sure that Mike Pero might have personally learnt this lesson after sinking $10 million into Origin Pacific. The full-blown disintegration of Origin Pacific last week, confirmed New Zealand’s domestic aviation market has … More What Origin Pacific lacked
People Matter ∴ Do Good 