davekuchenbecker.com

Welcome to 2010.  As we start a new year, it seems like every blogger in the world is obligated to write a post about making resolutions or goals for the new year.  This has always been a weak area of mine, so I’ve read a lot of posts – and a few ideas really have stuck with me.  So, I decided to blog about it!

 Two great ideas came from Chris Brogan.  One of his ideas was the goalbox.  Beyond giving a visual indication of your progress, to me it pointed out that my past goals never were concrete enough to accomplish.  This year, all my goals have tasks associated with them.  If I really hit the gym 10 time a month, my goal box will be green and my goal of getting in better shape will happen.

 The second idea I liked from Chris was thinking of three words to guide your goals.  Thinking this way really helped me stay focused on what I wanted to accomplish.  My three words for the year are health, organize, and focus. 

 Thanks for reading.  I look forward to a successful 2010, for both of us.

Last Sunday my wife pointed out to me that she wasn’t able to make a call with her cell phone.  About 2 years ago we switched away from having a landline, so we 100% rely on our cell phones.  Since I couldn’t call for information, I decided to check out the customer service section of the Verizon website.  After a lot of clicking around, I still had no idea about what was going on with the cell phone.

Since I had nothing else to do, I logged into Twitter to see what was going on in that world and found a stream of conversation regarding Verizon.  It appears that the Verizon network went down through Wisconsin and Michigan (at least) and people who were able to get through to customer service had all the answers I needed.  And not one person I communicated with on Twitter actually worked for Verizon – they were just regular people talking about what was going on in their lives.  This is a new use for Twitter for me.

As a side note, in one tweet I mentioned that since I had no phone I was tweeting for help (meaning customer service help from Verizon).  One person interpreted that I might need serious help, and offered to call 911 for me!  That’s more compassion than I’ve ever gotten from Verizon customer service!!!

I had a very cool experience tonight – one I never thought I’d enjoy.  We got some tickets for Sesame Street Live and took my son.  He’s 31 months old and a big fan of Elmo.  What a cool experience when he got all giddy when the characters hit the stage.  I’m sure he won’t remember this when he’s older, but I will.

A while back I wrote about a customer service experience withwww.allaccess.com where I was pleasantly surprised with something they did.  Today, I have a different story about Delta airlines.  For those who know me, they know I’m a pretty easy going guy…so please don’t take this as a rant type post – I decided to write about my experience after reading a blog post by Seth Godin that made me immediately think about my experience.

While travelling in January 2008 I was bumped from a flight and received a $200 voucher for a future flight from Delta.  If you look at the voucher, you’ll notice that there is no expiration date or other details on the use of this voucher.  I tried to use the voucher for some travel this fall, and was told that it was only good for one year from the issue date and was no longer valid.  The booking agent suggested I try contacting customer service to see if there was anything they could do.

After numerous communications with customer service – where they consistently assured me that my satisfaction is their top priority – I still had a voucher that was no good and nobody could tell me where to find the terms and conditions that determine how the voucher can be used.  So, what did we accomplish?  Well, I ended up being a frustrated customer…and I’m pretty sure some of the customer service reps I spoke with didn’t have the best day either (sorry about that!).  All over an issue that could have been avoided by printing the expiration date on the voucher.

Seth’s comment about stores with so many rules it’s like they don’t want to sell me anything in the first place is what made me think of this.  The customer service people were friendly and repeatedly told me they would do everything they could to make me satisfied – and I’m sure they did within the rules and regulations their company has in place.  Unfortunately, what I would have made me happy was outside their control.  It’s another example of a company where the policies and procedures in place don’t lend themselves to productive employees and happy customers.

OK, rant over!   Thanks for reading!

Well, my son said his first full sentence the other day.  My wife had given him some juice, which the kid drank down like hadn’t had anything to drink in a month, then wanted more.  My wife said he had enough and offered him some water.  Well, Jake didn’t like that, so he threw a tantrum and started crying.

A short while later, while my son has huge tears streaming down his face, my wife says to him “Jake, what big tears you have – you are okay.”  His response, and his first full sentence we could understand, “Mama…how I okay when I crying?”

That little stinker is smarter than I give him credit for!

This morning I logged onto a website that I typically go to for news regarding the broadcast industry (a hobby of mine). The site had been re-done over the weekend and had a totally new look.  I checked the news headlines like normal, and continued to look around the website.  A few clicks later I found a “make a suggestion” link.  I’ve always wanted the site to support an RSS feed, so I thought I would send that as a suggestion.

Within a few minutes of sending the email, I received the standard automated response and didn’t think anything of it. What surprised me was in about 20 minutes, I received a personal email answering my question directly and thanking me for the suggestion.  Wow!  What a pleasant surprise for once when it comes to customer service.  Good job AllAccess.com!

I don’t know if anybody else has experienced this.  I tweeted about my first blog post and about 200 people clicked on the link and about a dozen actually commented on something.  Lucky for me, all the comments were positive!

After thought about this, it dawned on me how powerful that is.  I’ve never sent that many people a message before, with maybe the exception of a “donut announcement” to everybody via an email.  Telling people “It’s my birthday – come and get it in the break room” is far from a well thought out email.  Now, I’m trying to actually type about things that matter a little more.  I suddenly found that a little scary (exciting too).

Has anybody else experienced this feeling?

Welcome to my first blog post. I’m still not sure what I’m going to be putting out here, but since I’ve setup the blog, ideas have started t flow about what to write about. This will be an adventure for sure – and I hope you’re willing to come along for the ride.

For those of you who don’t know me, my background is in Engineering. One things about many engineers – many of them aren’t the most outgoing people! As I’ve looked towards business opportunities outside of Engineering, it is pretty obvious that even though Engineers are usually making fun of sales people – sales are what make businesses work. If any business is to succeed, there will be sales type functions that have to be done.

I’ve been reading “How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling” by Frank Bettger to improve my own sales abilities. Chapter 8 was interesting to me – it listed 11 things that helped Frank get a large sale of life insurance many years ago (the book was written in1947 – so some of the examples are a little dated – no Twitter recommendations in this book). In any case, I’d like to share Bettger’s ideas – and how I’m working on them or have experienced them myself.

The first idea is to make appointments. Even outside of sales, I’ve found this to be useful whenever you want to talk to anybody in an organization. Making their time seem more important than your own will be noticed.

The second idea is be prepared. This is one area I’m working hard on to be better with. Looking back over interactions I’ve had over the last 6-12 months, the times I’ve been totally prepared obviously went better than most of the rest. Once in a while “winging it” works, but why chance it? It usually doesn’t take much time to get ready – and the results are better. Just today I had to give a project update. I did it off the top of my head because the project manager was available. Guess what, by not having a clear message, I ended up having to explain things many times over – when I know had I organized my thoughts a bit, it would have been a simple explanation.  Had I made the appointment and been prepared, the entire situation would have been smoother.

The third issue, and final one I’ll cover now is to keep the focus on the key issue. It is so simple to waiver from the point – especially for a person with a technical background. I can speak for Engineers for sure – we are trained to learn everything about a problem and solve it. So many times you get bogged down in the details – and when you have to sell your idea to someone else you get right into the depth of it. This also happens with my wife! She doesn’t care about every aspect of our cell phone plan, but I do. Ah, makes for some great conversations!

Well, there are 8 more to go – I’ll probably write about them over the next week or so. I’d love to know what you think of the post – drop a line on twitter (twitter.com/davekuch). I get so many DM’s that I can’t keep on top of them – so please do an @reply. Plus, the blog will take on some new looks and features as we go. This is a work in progress.