Archive for the ‘Customer Focus’ Category


Do hoaxes and fear tactics have a place in social media?

We follow game communities and social media closely – it’s our area of greatest passion and expertise. So when GOG.com (aka Good Old Games) hinted that they were closing their virtual doors, we – along with many others we follow who have bought classic PC games from them – lamented the apparent loss. But it […]

Community manager and social media lessons from PAX Prime 2010

As a content creator/consultant who works in social media and is trying to get back into gaming community work, I attended two panels at Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) Prime 2010 with great interest. The lessons shared from these panels transcend the gaming industry, which is leading the charge in both of these spaces – but other […]

Top 5 Ways to Improve Your PowerPoint Presentation

The words “PowerPoint” and “presentation” have become almost synonymous in the business world. The software is packed with mini-tools designed to grab the audience’s attention and drive home your message. Used correctly, these tools can be a powerful message enhancer. Go overboard, and it’s just a mess. Here are the top five ways to improve […]

Prescription for customer experience:
Have patience with your patients

Customer experience is a critical factor in customer retention and/or earning repeat business. Restaurants, stores, and other service-oriented businesses understand this basic tenet – or become a statistic within a year or so of opening. Yet professionals who should provide the best customer service are often the worst offenders: doctors. There are really only three […]

Stupid Marketing Tricks: TNT’s fake mix tape doesn’t ‘Say Anything’ interesting

Cable network TNT sent its marketing team in the wayback machine this week to send out a “sneak peek” at a new show, Men of a Certain Age. Which, based on the cast (Scott Bakula, Andre Braugher and Ray Romano) is somewhere in the late 40s to early 50s. Presumably, these men of a certain […]

Does Neil Patrick Harris use The Lunchbox Method?

On a flight this weekend, I finally got to catch up on some magazines. In the Sept. 21 New York cover story, Neil Patrick Harris admits to a different method of acting that, quite frankly, reminded me of my own customer experience exercises that I’ve dubbed “The Lunchbox Method.” Most actors try to get inside […]

Get inside your customer’s head: It’s just like packing a lunch!

For some reason, relating the work I do to the customer’s experience of it comes naturally to me. I think it’s because I’m empathetic, which in high school made me pathetic but now, as an adult, it’s a job skill! I just instinctively look at a particular deliverable (be it a site, article or tool) and […]

Work Samples – Writing killer home page headlines

I spent several years refining the art and science of the home page headline at Microsoft.com. Some of these approaches may seem commonplace today, but they were quite original at the time they were published. These are just a few of the many thousands of headlines that I wrote:   The key to good headline writing is […]

Car talk: How to lose (or gain) a customer in 10 minutes or less

This is a tale about customer loyalty, and just how easy it is for one person to screw it up. Car salesmen have a reputation for being slightly below pond scum on the evolutionary scale. I know this to be true, having encountered many sub-evolutionary beings while car shopping in Texas. The bar has been […]

I’m tweeting this: Twitter is this year’s hot marketing tool at San Diego Comicon

Based on media coverage alone, Twitter would appear to be mainstreaming to the tune of a MySpace or Facebook. In reality, the Twitterati remains a small but vocal segment of the Internet, identify trends and riding them for brief cycles. This week represents the motherload of all Twitter cycles, as the Twitterati descend upon San […]