As I write this, Hurricane Irene is churning its way up the East Coast. It’s hard to know whether it’s going to be a “historic storm” or just a big mess. Either way, it raises some questions about how you would…
Thank you for reading this post – really! When I started at Gist I had been on the job for only a few weeks when I answered a question from Brad Feld, one of our key investors. It must have…
If you were starting a business today, would you avoid talking to your customers? Yet that’s exactly what many businesses are doing today by choosing not to engage on Twitter or Facebook. Social media is a valuable channel that can…
Quora is a great place to post questions to knowledgeable folks and to answer questions that are interesting to you. So when I wrote an answer to Twitter: Is Twitter an effective customer service tool? (by the way—it’s awesome for…
What kid (or adult) doesn’t want to drive this? There’s something about red cars (or red convertibles) or Porsches that takes my breath away. Specifically, I think it’s the promise of being able to drive fast with the wind blowing…
Startups Require True Fans – Thanks! I’ve been part of an Internet startup for the past 18 months – and one of my ideas was to build the Customer Experience by finding our 1000 True Fans (thank you Kevin Kelly…
How do you scale Customer Service? Ultimately, you have to embrace the idea of Commander’s Intent (e.g. ). This means something like the following: Define the objective broadly, e.g. “Provide Amazing Customer Service.” Establish a command hierarchy and roles and…
A road trip to Ontario, and new peeps A couple of weeks ago, I went to go visit Waterloo, Ontario – I was there to take my first visit to Research In Motion as an employee and to go visit some…
How much of your swag dollar is wasted? You don’t know. If you had a way to compel people to do things for your brand that you would otherwise have to pay hundreds of dollars per person to ask them…
