Category: Reality Bytes

BW Customer Service Champs

Business Week has recently released its annual list of customer service champions.

Some of my notes & observations –
  • The list is dominated by car manufacturers & hotels.
  • When anyone mentions car rentals – Hertz is the first name that comes to most people’s minds. But Enterprise seems to be ahead in quite a few lists – including this one.
  • Some adopted tips & tricks – 24 hour service chat on the web; freebies – especially car servicing; happy employees leading to superior service; focus on customer’s overall experience; involvement of the top execs; etc.

Even Goliath embraces customer centricity

In this CNET article, Tom Krazit explains how Intel is turning a new page (a page out of its competitors strategy book) & becoming more customer centric. Even the behemoth recognizes the need to be customer centric.

You would think Intel with its market share & clout can push its way through. Pushing did work for a while, but then things changed – competitively & in their customers’ markets. Intel is now going out of its way to understand how it can help its customers win by differentiating themselves.

It becomes interesting when you realize that the PC manufacturers are all trying to differentiate themselves using the same chip maker – Intel. What a position to be in – partneirng with all players in the PC market & helping them all compete against one another – whichever PC maker wins, Intel always wins.

Thoughts for the New Year

The new year brings with it enough articles & blog posts on the topic. One article, One more chance – Mahesh Dattani – The Week caught my fancy.

Some anecdotes from this article –

  • The human species could be extinct one day and the universe will not even tremble! And we think we really matter.
  • It’s a new year! One more chance to get it right! – Oprah Winfrey
  • How we spend our days, is of course, how we spend our lives.
  • Future comes to us at a speed of sixty minutes an hour. But what about the past? Does it really leave us at the same speed with which the future came?
  • Time is relative. We may have the same amount of time as did yesterday, but the more we let go (of yesterday) the more we can cherish what we truly have (today).
  • To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. – Emily Dickenson

What is Integrity?

When a colleague of mine mentioned today that he is focusing on being “a person of integrity”, I Googled to find what integrity actually meant.

Merriam-Webster gives – “firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values “

Though I went through a lot of material, the definition that caught my imaginiation & which I thought best described the term was –

Integrity is doing the right thing, even if nobody is watching

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