Andy Hanselman

Customers who smile get better service! Well, that’s definitely the case if you go to a brand new vending machine that gives you a free ice cream when you smile at it!  This innovative use of facial recognition technology from customer experience company SapientNitro and ice cream makers Unilever is our latest example of 3D Thinking (Number #10 in our search for 100 Examples Of 3D Thinking)

Here’s a great way to create customer delight for pizza lovers – It’s the latest 3D example in our search for 100 Examples Of 3D Thinking and combines solving a common customer ’problem’ with the use of technology to become ‘easy to buy from’! The result? It’s the emergency panic fridge magnet that when pressed automatically orders your favourite pizza to be delivered from your local pizza restaurant!!!!

The VIP Pizza Magnet is an innovation from the Red Tomato Pizza company in Dubai! It’s easy to set up – You simply link it to Bluetooth and enter your favourite pizza recipe on the website, along with your address and details, and every time you press the button, a fresh pizza gets delivered to your door!

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Nearly 40% of workers have stayed back at the office to impress their boss! Over a quarter (26%) say they consistently work longer days than are actually needed to do their job effectively. That’s according to a new report by officebroker.com.

In other words, lots of people are simply putting the hours in because they think it’s what they should be doing! (The reality is that many aren’t doing much in those ‘extra’ hours!)

Apparently employees were found to be most likely to stay longer at work when a pay review was imminent, a new boss had been appointed or redundancies had been announced. It’s not particularly surprising, but it does reinforce the ‘myth’ in many organisations that ‘working long hours’ is the key, and lots of them seem to reinforce and even ‘reward’ this!

I believe that forward thinking...

I got an email through today from a company promoting their CRM software solution. It extols the virtues of Customer Relationship Management and explains that CRM is……. a business philosophy involving identifying, understanding and better providing for your customers, while building a relationship with each customer to improve customer satisfaction and maximise profits. It’s about understanding, anticipating and responding to customers’ needs.

It goes on to say that ….. to manage the relationship with the customer a business needs to collect the right information about its customers and organise that information for proper analysis and action. It needs to keep that information up-to-date, make it accessible to employees, and provide the knowhow for employees to convert that data into products better matched to customers’ needs.

Apparently their product will do exactly that, which all sounds great and very much worth...