Archives for Great Customer Experiences

TransBrands – The future of business – lessons from Pandora and the blue Na'vi

My friend Carol had to go back and see the Imax version of Avatar in 3D a second time last Saturday. Carol, Glenn and I had gone to the morning show and it was awesome.  I think it represents the future of entertainment.  It is a true TransBrand. A what? Turn the clock back one hundred years.  Farmer John used to take his eggs and milk into town.  His neighbors brought their produce and they traded with each other or exchanged dollars. Then the world got sophisticated.  It certainly got bigger as the cities grew.  No longer did the luxury
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Stupid is as Wal-Mart does

Don’t get me wrong.  I think Wal-Mart provides a great service for America. Today I needed to pick up some prescriptions at my local Wal-Mart.  When I called to inquire on availability they informed me that the price was higher than I had been buying down the street at a K-Mart store. “Why don’t you match the price” I asked? “Because it is farther than 5 miles away.” “But if you don’t, I will just go back to K-Mart.” “Sorry” they said. So called the Wal-Mart that is a couple of miles further away but just down the street from
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When a Bad Sandwich Gets It Good and A Good Cola Gets a Bad Rap

Who thinks this stuff up? Pittsburgh with a friend and he, the native, explains that you don’t go to Steel Town without having a sandwich at Primanti Brothers.  It seems that years ago the drivers from the produce businesses that line the river would race over to Primanti to get a sandwich.  One rather hurried and harried driver was asked if he would wait for his grilled potatoes while they got a container to put them in.  Behind schedule our intrepid truck driver instructed the restaurant to “just put them on top” of his meat and put the bun on
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Shrimp, Blenders and Southwest Airlines – When smaller is better.

He was my mentor and teacher in developing the artistry of “the  boil”.  I blame Jim Dixon. He taught me.     I had a day job of marketing $200 million dollars of personal computers a year.  But at night I would dawn a white apron and become. . . .Wait for it. . . . Shrimp Boil Chef You take a pot the size of a large microwave; add olive oil, salt, garlic, cayenne pepper, whole lemons, whole onions and lots of Cajon spices.  Bring that all to a boil and add red potatoes, corn on the cob and finally
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Insider Trading with Warren Buffett: The embarrassing truth from a non-believer

Who the heck is Jim Kilts?   My oldest brother is friends with Jim Kilts.  Mr. Kilts was the Chairman of the Board of Gillette before it got sold to Procter and Gamble.  It was at Gillette that Kilts developed a relationship with Warren Buffett and where they came to know each other’s strengths.   When Buffett resigned from the board of Coca Cola he recommended Kilts to take his place because “he is one of the great businessmen in America.”  Turn the clock ahead and Gillette gets sold to P&G and Kilts is “in between jobs.”   It was during this time
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Lessons at the door of a hotel: The Do’s and Don’ts of Marketing Your Business

It was 3:00 in the morning at a Marriott hotel in north Dallas.  You know how you awake to that feeling that something is just not quite right.  I heard a loud argument through the wall to the next room, looked at the fire red clock display and thought, “Are you kidding me, who has the energy to be awake and arguing at this hour?” There came the slamming door in the hallway.  A few minutes of quiet where interrupted by banging on MY door with the accompanied female yells of “LET ME IN!”  I hurried to the door and
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What does YOUR name stand for? >=

I was giving a workshop and someone raised their hand and asked, “Kordell, where do we buy a copy of that material?”  I responded with a little too much flippancy, “just call 1-800-Kordell and I will get it for you.”  After the session one of the workshop participants approached me and asked the question, “So Kordell, what are the numbers in your 800 number?”  “Oh no, no.  I don’t have that number.  What I was trying to say is that you can just call me and I will get you the material.”   I thought, boy you better be careful, you
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Four out of Three People Have Problems with Fractions – How to Really Grow Your Business

Since 37.843% of all statistics are made up, how do you know what you should be measuring? (grin) This is a rant on numbers.  Not just any number but one particular item and how it impacts your world. These are the days of eliminating the number of commas in your world.  What?  Commas.  You know those nifty little period symbols with a tail.  They, the coma, will allow you, and anyone else, to write sentences, and those, with independent clauses (OK . . . so I only got 6 commas in this sentence.) I have a problem with commas when
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Don't Drink the Woolite

Don’t ask.  I can’t tell.  Her name will stay anonymous. She was on cruise control as she readied herself for the daily grind.  With an aspirin sized headache she looked around for liquid to help down a couple of Tylenol.  She spied the small glass of liquid, threw back the pills and washed them down handily with the glass of “water”. That was when she remembered that she had filled that glass with Woolite a few days before.  This handy dandy cleaning solution – that will do wonders for “your sweaters and unmentionables” – had done a wonder in disguising
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Pearls and NOT shooting yourself in the Foot

Wanna raise? There is an online retailer called The Pearl Outlet.  Now who buys pearls?  Especially on line?  Well that is something that they wanted to know.  If they did a marketing campaign that said, “Say you are sorry with pearls” would that work?  So they commissioned a study of 8,000 customers and a real surprise popped up.  Those customers who were willing to say they were sorry earned more money.  In fact they earned twice as much as those who rarely, or never apologized.  It turns out that those who earned $100,000 a year or more were twice as
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