Richard Maun

Category: Uncategorized

  • What’s Your Perception?

    Spot three types of the finest improvisation..!
    Spot three types of the finest improvisation..!

    I saw this ‘thing’ on my travels this week and it set me wondering. In the picture you can see a top of the range internet video conferencing facility with double screens and all mounted on wheels for ease of movement.

    Quite an impressive bit of kit if you like that kind of thing.

    And yet….

    In the middle if the picture you’ll notice a large coffee tin that’s being used to raise up the height of the camera, which is a decidedly low tech solution. It’s probably not what the designers had in mind when they first sketched the product…

    ‘Ah this is a wonderful product Sebastian, but could you leave a space in the centre there that’s roughly the diameter of a coffee can…?’

    I bet not.

    However, this picture is really inviting you to think in two ways:

    Firstly, it could be a comment on how people forget to think about how their product or service will be applied. Clearly the camera needs to be mounted so that you can raise or lower it. When you think about your products or services, what are you missing?

    Or…

    Secondly, it could be a celebration of ingenuity. How clever to adapt something in the moment and find a good use for a seemingly unrelated object. Instead of over complicating their product, the designers just did a good job of getting the essentials right. When you think about your products or services, where have you got the basics right… or have you over complicated things?

    It’s all a matter of perception. What’s yours?

  • Twitter Power!

    Make you own customer service department with Twitter!
    Make you own customer service department with Twitter!

    Hello there and I hope Crow looked after you nicely with his blogging over the last two weeks. He makes such a fuss when I ask him to step in for me, complaining that his beak gets sore with all the typing, but I’m sure he loves it really…

    Now I was reminded of the power of Twitter this week when I used it to complain about @DolphinMusic who had supplied me with the wrong guitar cable. They were also two weeks late with the delivery, so I was not terribly happy with their service and duly complained using their email address for Customer ‘Service.’

    Nothing happened.

    I wasn’t serviced.

    So, I decided to tweet them and complain loudly about what I considered to be poor service and – (as Cilla Black would have said) surprise surprise – I had a response within a couple of hours asking for my details and email address.

    On supplying these, the Sales Manager (a nice chap called Andrew) emailed me to apologise and then sent me a new, top quality cable FOC that day….which really was good customer service.

    And the moral of the story?

    If you’re not on Twitter – who is complaining about your service …and you’re not there to hear it?

    Twitter is a force for good and is a great way to reach organisations that could remain faceless and uncaring. I didn’t even know Dolphin Music had a Twitter presence…I just took a chance! And I knew if they were out there, they wouldn’t want to read bad PR in the timeline that I share with 1,500 followers! They didn’t!

    So, next time you need to complain – use Twitter. It works.

    And if Crow ever complains about me – I’m on Twitter @RichardMaun so I’ll see it and can forward it on to customer services. They can send him some ointment for his beak. He’d like that!