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Make no mistake that I am an over the top advocate for the customer within the enterprise. I developed these skills and attitude during the early nineties where I read every book on Customer Service and studied the success of great companies like Disney and Nordstrom's. I knew that this knowledge and mentality would play well inside the corporation. We repeatedly got comments like "you guys are a breath of fresh air" and "you can't be from IT?". So it shouldn't come as a surprise that I a ...

One evening while on vacation we stopped by a small restaurant where we were greeted by the owner. After a couple of minutes, he actually guided us to our table and served us our drinks. I also witnessed him delivering the plates, cleaning tables, and filling glasses. Here was a man willing to do anything to help his business; he had passion. In another example, I went to buy my 3-day fishing license and the owner came out and told me which bait was working the best and how far out folks ...

This is the second part of a collection of ideas that we can implement taken from small businesses patronized during our beach vacation. While sitting on the beach watching the kids ride their boogie boards, the traditional single-engine airplane flew over with the trailing banner stating "Bathing Suits : Buy One, Get One Free at Alvin's Island". My in-laws made a trip to the store but didn't find any bathing suits they liked but did buy a few t-shirts. It struck me that small to medium bu ...

Last week, we took our annual trip to the beach where we usually end up patronizing small businesses. Small towns, especially beach towns, promote small business to drive the local economy. This trip I took special notice of some of the elements that make these businesses so special and then asked myself, could these apply to an Enterprise 2.0 implementation. Over the next few days or weeks, I want to summarize these observations and how we have handled these for our implementation.