The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 2
Jun/090
My Idea’s Unhidden Agenda, also known as, Work-For-Attribution, and how I hope it will attract community members and contributors - the Who.
Imagination: Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Leaders create things that didn’t exist before. The do this by giving the tribe a vision of something that could happen, but hasn’t (yet).
You can’t manage without knowledge. You can’t lead without imagination.
idea - who
As written in my Part 1, I needed to find a way build on my lessons learned and try my best to avoid repeating any errs of the past. But even more than needing a way to attract members to my new tribe, I needed to find a way to give them an environment where they could go beyond simple contributions. I needed to find a way for them to build their own opportunities, own quests and maybe even their own tribes.
So a little while back, I came up with the following for my collaborators:
How to make this viral
I was also wondering how to make this a community project where we could create the engine and enable/empower other communities to use/build/extend it for purposes we haven’t yet considered, or, may simply not be in our domain of expertise. In other words, make it “viral”.This is what I’ve come up with so far
The core engine - to be defined later, is the center of our community. If you’ve read Seth Godin’s Tribes then you already know that every community needs a leader. That would be me - Steven Milstein. And while this is not a democracy, that certainly doesn’t mean that I won’t hear & listen to the members of this tribe. Now that may sound harsh but, please hear me out - I’m not finished yet.Since you’re here reading this, then I’m going to guess that you like the idea, or, appeal of leading - maybe even a tribe of your own. It may not be today, but someday in the foreseeable future. If this is not the case, then I deeply encourage you to give this some thought. Because what I’d like to see is each of us exploiting this opportunity to seed own tribes with this core engine.
Unhidden agendas
What I’d like is for each of us to create an entry here with our Unhidden Agenda. Describe what it is you hope to gain by investing your time, energy, maybe money, in this venture? (Don’t tell what you can, or, cannot invest.) You have to be honest & you have to be passionate. Once approved/agreed upon, this Agenda will then represent your social contract to this endeavor. Break your Agenda, break your contract - you’re out.I’m not dead certain about this idea & am certainly open to your feedback. But until then, I think this Unhidden Agenda Model will scale & encourage others to not only participate but contribute. And if we truly believe in outside-in agile/scrum software development & we strive to maintain the integrity of the core engine then each of us should be able to fulfill our agenda.
For example
My (Steven’s) Unhidden Agenda will elaborate on how I’d like to be the product manager/owner of some leading edge social software product. I’ll go on to say how I want to use this endeavor to prove that I can not only be just that but, also have a touch of vision and more importantly, that I deliver. I’d also like to boast about the community/communities I seeded and onboarded to social software.I imagine [Retail IT Guy/Gal] ’s entry will focus on their retail domain of expertise & how they would like to cultivate their own tribe.
For [Software Engineer Guy/Gal], I can see them seizing the opportunity to build the core engine in their own technical fashion and then sharing & expanding its APIs with the technical community of this growing social network.
Next steps
As I said earlier, this is not written in stone but I would like to find a way to make this more than three guys who live in Montreal. If we’re all somewhat comfortable with this approach, then here’s what I see happening next:
1. Work & finalize on our agendas
2. Get to work on building a simple proof-of-concept
3. Start blogging about what we’re doing here & post your Unhidden Agenda
4. Find & contribute to your related communities
5. Seek feedback from others & maybe ask a select few join us in our Community
6. Invite some of those to publicly blog their own Unhidden Agenda in the hopes of gaining admittance to this exclusive community - exclusivity matters. (If you believe Seth Godin.)
While I originally sought a lawyer’s opinion about the Idea’s monetization possibilities, I was immediately told not to proceed without securing my copyright and ownership of “said” Idea. And that’s when I had visions of Groundhog Day. To be very clear. I did not then, nor do I now, have any money. I did not then, nor do I now, have the time, nor the resources to expend on fantasies and illusions of gazillion dollar exit strategies. This is my Reality Check. (By the way, if you click on any of the links that lead to Amazon and actually buy the book, then I get something back - although I quite honestly don’t even know that that is yet, through their Associates program.)
So as of today’s date, this is the best I can offer:
Whatever work you contribute will be considered “work made for hire” and for whatever reason that may not hold up, then the agreement will be considered a “copyright assignment” from you to my company - Milstein & Associates Inc.
Sounds harsh, eh? But, it is what it is. I’ll post this digital back of the napkin version in the Idea’s community site so folks can sign up - at least in the digital sense.
Now in lieu of any payment, what I hope to do - subject to lawyer approval, is offer an Attribution for your contributions. Something like movie credits, or, if you open Adobe Reader, click on the Help, About, Credits button - for starters. Ideally, as stated in the Unhidden Agenda, I would have to provide a mechanism and venue for folks to discover and explore your contributions, maybe even for you to start your own tribe.
My next post will be about the Idea’s Community site and who would be its target audience.
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The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 1
Jun/090
Here are some lessons learned from past experiences and how I hope to do things a little different this time when choosing Who will be members of this tribe.
A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.
…
Tribes need leadership. Sometimes one person leads, sometimes more. People want connection and growth and something new. They want change.
…
You can’t have a tribe without a leader - and you can’t be a leader without a tribe.
idea - who
The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 1. An Idea, Five Ws and one H
Back in Connecting the dots - Part 2, I mentioned my previous dot com experience. Looking back, here’s some of the lessons I learned;
- Having a great idea and the ability to code it is simply not enough. Like it or not, you need others. Others who understand things like marketing, sales, support, service, administration and more. However, you just may not need them all from Day One.
- Too many chiefs (partners): We had too many voices, too many opinions, too many circumstances requiring votes where majority rules and even Super Majority Rules. Oddly enough, most of these issues were valid & necessary - at some point in time. And that’s exactly my point. At some point in time, we would have to discuss these issues at length. But that time never came.
- The “What If This Thing Is Worth A Gazillion Dollars One Day” Scenario: A pre-condition to this scenario is that you have to deliver something that could be worth a gazillion dollars one day. We exerted too much time and energy discussing, fantasizing, negotiating, bickering and haggling over this scenario. We really should have poured that energy and passion into the pre-condition.
- Lawyers and accountants: You need these people. You not only need them, but you need to talk to them pretty much from the start. But talk first. Do your best to net-it-out as much as possible. If you’re lucky, you’ll know someone who’ll say something like:
Drafting an agreement like this and getting all the parties to finalize, could cost you around $10,000 - assuming everyone agrees in principle. But even with that in place, it could be always be argued that … On the other hand, you could just write … on the back of a napkin and get everyone to sign it. Of course that could always be contested too, but at least you’ve got a signed agreement in principle and $10,000 to pay me when you at least have money coming.
And that is the final point. If you don’t have any money coming in then you would not be contesting a dirty old napkin.
So now I needed a way to invite others to help me with my quest. But on top of all my above issues, I had one more whopper. I had no money to pay anyone. Offering equity in nothing would only condemn me to repeating my errs of the past. It would be like Groundhog Day, all over again.
My next post will be about my Unhidden Agenda & how I hope it will attract community members and contributors.
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The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 1. An Idea, Five Ws and one H
Jun/090
The time has come to put down the books, close the blogs and simply focus on doing and not learning. Here’s my Idea’s Five Ws and one H.
What’s Your EQ (Entrepreneurial Quotient)? The intent is to test your knowledge of the subject of entrepreneurship, not to test how good an entrepreneur you are, because, there’s no way to measure that. Therefore, scoring high doesn’t mean you’re the next Steve Jobs, and scoring low doesn’t mean you’re not. This makes the EQ test as reliable as the IQ test, but it can’t hurt to have a good working knowledge of the reality of entrepreneurship.
…
What your score means:
17-22. Your score is high, so you can now focus on doing, not learning.
idea
Arising from my three-part Connecting the dots series, here’s the first entry of my Start-up Chronicles where I’ll journal about decisions made and ones coming up; actions I’m taking and those I’m deferring.
Take a look on the right sidebar under “Pivotal Reading”. I’ve read all I could read - for now. (FYI, my “idea” image was inspired by Back Of The Napkin
In the interest of keeping things short and sweet, I’ll briefly blog about my Idea’s Five Ws (and one H). However, I’ll save the What entry for when there’s actually a piece of executable code for you to try for yourself.
My next post will discuss the Who decision-making part of my Idea.
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How local broadcasters can use Twitter to create a global alert system
Jun/091
If you’ve being following my posts of late, you may notice that this one is not really on topic. It’s just something I thought of while stuck in traffic, on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, thinking about a recent event in Ontario.
Morse Telegraph Key
As a resident, or traveller, I would like to discover and subscribe to local alerts, so I can be informed of emergency news, traffic and weather alerts.
As a news agency, I would like to contribute to a standard global alert system, so I can better reach my potential audience.
Any local resident, or, traveller and news agency.
SMS text message alerts - sent via Twitter, about emergency situations - like Amber Alerts, severe weather conditions - like tornadoes, or, traffic - like accident reports.
Alerts would be published in real-time, however, recipients would subscribe to only relevant feeds.
Any area with internet, or, wireless access.
So people may be better prepared for simple matters like traffic conditions to being aware of Amber Alerts, or, emergency situations.
Local news agencies, are already aggregating this information and therefore would be the natural choice to act as the publisher and should conform to use a standard #hashtag. For example:
#yul Traffic: A40 East. Ramp to A15 South is blocked
#yul Weather: Severe thunder and lightning storms this morning with risk of high winds on bridges
#yul Amber: Child abduction. Girl age 9, blond hair, pink jacket, Honda Civic QC plates
By using the IATA airport codes as #hashtags, local residents, as well as, travellers, can quickly discover publishers - if they so desire.
Depending on the area, discovering the source of the feed may not be so important. However, in cities like Montreal, where we have several news agencies, operating in multiple languages, then knowing the source helps reduce the signal-to-noise ratio. So in the above examples, imagine getting text messages for each alert, from each news agency, in each language. To resolve this situation, subscribers can simply decide to Follow the publisher of their choice.
While many news agencies use the call letters in their Twitter accounts, such as CJADNews, I would suggest creating accounts that would inform subscribers where they can be found. So in the case of CJAD - which is a local English Montreal AM radio station, they should create an account like “YUL_800AM“. That way my search results for #yul would include:
YUL_800AM #yul Weather: Severe thunder and lightning storms this morning with risk of high winds on bridges
would also advertise the publisher can be found at 800 on the AM band of my radio.
Now, I’m not advocating text messaging when you’re driving. So if you’ll be travelling, please plan your Follows ahead of time. You should also check with your wireless carrier for their text message pricing policy.
You can further reduce your signal-to-noise ratio by unfollowing / unsubscribing when you’re out of the area. If you’d like to further explore the wonders of twitter you can start with some of my earlier posts and links.
Please let me know if you’re aware of something similar out there. Certainly, the concept of text messaging alerts is not new, however, I haven’t seen any simple way to discover and subscribe to those feeds - universally.
Also, please feel free to contact me if you’d like any help trying to set this up.
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Connecting the dots - Part 3
May/091
There is no plan… well, maybe a little one.
Garr Reynolds' 'Career Advice '08' - Page 100
This is my third and final post in my Connecting the dots Series. Part 1, provided the three sources of inspiration for the series and Part 2 focused on taking inventory of my own dots.
A few months ago, I had another one of those
Wouldn’t it be great if you could… yada yada yada
moments. And after consulting Anna and the kids, have decided to do my best to bootstrap this yada yada yada into reality - while looking for work of course 
Don’t worry! I’m not going to use this blog to promote the start-up - too much. I’ll create a new blog in its appropriate space when the time is right. This blog is going to return to the grass roots of what blogs were once meant to be.
- blog noun
- : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer ; also : the contents of such a site
Here’s the plan - for now; I’m going to journal my start-up adventures. Decisions I made and ones coming up. Actions I’m taking and those I’m deferring.
So whether you’re among the 90% of Viewers out there, or, among the 10% of Most Fequent Contributors (MFCs), please join me as I chronicle my start-up adventures. But until my next post, I’d love to hear from some of those MFCs out there about their experiences, or, opinions. And for the record, I too was once a Viewer. So Viewers, fill out the Leave a Comment box below and let me know you’re out there following along. It’s actually a lot more fun to leave your mark than just reading all the time.
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Connecting the dots - Part 2
May/090
There is no plan… well, maybe a little one.
Garr Reynolds' 'Career Advice '08' - Page 99
In my previous post, Connecting the dots - Part 1, I provided three sources of inspiration for this three part series.
While I may not share much in common with Steve Jobs - aside from a first name, I do feel I have to stop trying to connect my dots looking forward. I’ve been in the business of software development for over 25 years now. Truth be told, if I had to do it all over again, I would still be in this business - but I’d do things a little different. There’s nothing I love more than creating things. And the only thing more exhilarating that thinking
Wouldn’t it be great if you could… yada yada yada“
is actually bringing it to life.
Back in the dot com days, I was fortunate enough to get asked to join a start-up. We put together an e-learning solution & without going into too much detail, I have yet seen anything better. But as you may have guessed, it was a dot com & it suffered the same fate as many. I held on for three years, despite only being paid for one & picking up the odd contract here & there. Others, for their own reasons, clung on to hope even longer. For myself, with a wife (Anna), two kids (Sara & Alex) and many of the other things that come along with them, it was the hardest lesson I ever learned. It was also the best time of my life. From early morning conference calls to one’s that stretched into Sara’s soccer games, or, Alex’ bottle, to working through the night feeling quilty while Anna was alone watching TV, or asleep in bed. We were at it 24×7 and would gladly have worked more if we could have only found a way.
What started from a 10-minute phone call, went to whiteboard, proof-of-concept, alpha, beta and live. For the first time in my development life, I actually understood and contributed to the value of marketing, sales, service & support. It was the best & the worst all neatly bound together. But my dot (com) s were not going to connect as dreamed.
Within a few months, I was fortunate to get a much appreciated job with IBM Canada’s Montreal Rational Software Lab. And while it was a great experience, I never really felt my dots would all of a sudden start aligning. And so, as Seth Godin might say, it was a good Dip-dot, but a dot nonetheless.
And so, here I am. If you’ve seen any of my last few posts, then you may know I’ve been trying to build a case for the shared services of a Community Product Manager. To be quite honest, it’s been a tough sale. Not so much because the concept lacks merit, but more so because it’s difficult to only talk about delivering value. Today, you have to deliver value first and then build on that in order to get the business. Unfortunately, the cost of delivering first and selling later - in this particular case, is just too high for me. So I’m going to consider this a little Dip-dot and simply move on.
My next and final post in this three-part series will lay the foundation for my next dot. In the meantime, it’d be nice if any of you could share some of your own dot-stories here.
Connecting the dots - Part 1
May/095
There is no plan… well, maybe a little one.
Garr Reynolds' 'Career Advice '08' - Page 98
When reading Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
Now with your head hopefully in the right place and your tummy full, let’s circle back to Garr Reynolds’ ‘Career Advice ‘08′ presentation. Here lies an even greater find - Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech 2005. This is a must watch video. It’s by no means the classic image I have of Steve Jobs - an absolutely marvelous presenter, effortlessly parading around the stage preaching another Apple keynote speech to his minions. It’s actually quite the contrary. This is the first time I’ve seen him standing behind a podium, seldom looking up from his written speech, almost nervously revealing personal stories of his life. So refill your feedback & take the 14 minutes to watch this!
My next post in this series will be about taking inventory of my own dots. In the meantime, feel free to you go off and ponder yours for now.
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Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life - Part 3
Apr/095
My outside your firewall, shared listening and engaging Community Product Manager service offering for social software vendors/providers.
Sharing does have its advantages
According to wikipedia
Shared Services refers to the provision of a service by one part of an organization or group where that service had previously been found in more than one part of the organization or group. Thus the funding and resourcing of the service is shared and the providing department effectively becomes an internal service provider. The key is the idea of ’sharing’ within an organization or group.
As the title suggests, this is the third and final part of my Lessons Learned series and where I’ll propose the business model I’ve come up with. Here’s my previous related posts:
- How to infuse Social Content 2.0 into your social software lifecycle
- Trial offer to test the Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life
- Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life - Part 1
- Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life - Part 2
- I will assume the overhead costs associated with:
- Monitoring the social software market. Using Radian6, I would create a Topic Profile including keywords for social software vendors / providers like Socialtext, Atlassian, Blogtronix, MindTouch, Cynapse, Liferay, Vignette…
- Filtering out and tagging relevant buzz about product features and directions across the market
- Offering free service exporting tagged content and publishing on blog
- Offer monthly fee-based services where I would:
- Net out tagged content with respect to product features and publish on permission-based site (Say for example there’s a few posts about “permissions”. I would then write a 1-liner describing the “permission feature” and link to the original supporting content published Step 1.3)
- Offer hourly, or, tiered fee-based services where I would:
- Collaborate with respective social software vendors’ / providers’ (Customers’) Product Managers to determine which features described in Step 2.1 should be elaborated
- Engage with original content authors and elaborate on product features selected in Step 3.1
- Privately share results of Step 3.2 with respective Customer Product Managers
- Collaborate with respective Customer Product Managers to determine which features described in Step 3.3 require further assistance / services
Other variations
I could resell Radian6 Seat licenses - governed by certain permission restrictions and share my Topic Profiles for those:
- Customers whose only pain is the cost of Radian6 (who can then determine later on if they want Steps 2 and/or 3)
- Potential colleagues who would collaborate on Steps 1, 2 & 3
What do think? If you’re a social software vendor/provider, is this a service that may be of interest to you? Do you currently have a Product Manager? If so, is your Product Manager able to keep up with the social content? Do you see the any value in consolidating the redundancy? Do you see where it really is just a matter of per·spec·tive? Where …
one piece of content can yield dividends for many investors
I’d love to hear from you folks in the field & prove there is a way we all could succeed at doing more with less.
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How To Use Twitter To Reduce Wait Times, Anxiety and More
Apr/095
My kids’ doctor is great, but we can wait over two hours to see him. Here’s my suggestion to him and anyone enduring mind-numbing wait times
Click here to skip to my answer.
Hospital waiting room (CP file photo)*
Relatively speaking, up here in the Great White North - Canada, we have little to complain about our socialized medical system. Of course, it could always be better but please note my emphasis on the word “Relatively“. So this post is not a bitch-fest, but really about accepting things for the way they are today and trying to offer a tiny, practically free way of making some peoples’ lives a little bit better.
We’re lucky! Whenever either of our kids - Sara, or, Alex get sick, or, need a routine check-up we take them to their pediatrician - Dr. DaCosta, who works out of a clinic less than five minutes from home. We have two options: We can book an appointment with our doctor, or, go to the walk-in clinic any morning from 8 AM to 9 AM. Either way, all the doctors have access to our kids charts so everyone is in the loop.
Naturally, we book routine check-ups with Dr. DaCosta. But depending on the severity when one of them gets sick, or, hurt, we weigh the delay getting an appointment with Dr. DaCosta, or, going to the walk-in clinic. Since Dr. DaCosta also works out of the amazing Montreal Children’s Hospital, that delay could sometimes be a week.
If you have kids you know the “look”. It’s the look when they’re just not themselves. It’s the look when you acknowledge they’re not bouncing off the walls laughing but possibly lethargic. It’s the look when you realize the Tempra isn’t working and it’s two days now. It’s the look when you start to feel useless. It’s the look when you look to your partner in life for answers. It’s the look when your partner in life looks back at you because she already read the sentence before the last. It’s the look when you want to see their doctor.
Dr. DaCosta is a great guy! He spends as much time as we need with him. He never rushes us. He writes things down on paper for us to make sure we understand & remember what to do. These are amazing attributes in a pediatrician! There’s nobody I’d rather wait to see than Dr. Costa when my kids are sick - especially when they have the look.
Now, I can understand when you show up at the clinic, or, hospital, the wait time is going be long. I can understand that when you show up for a scheduled appointment, there’s going to be a wait-time - especially with a pediatrician like ours. But that wait-time is regularly over two hours. And for all of you parents out there, you know what that two hours is like. You’re not only are you dealing with your sick kid. You may also be dealing with a healthy sibling whom you had no choice but to haul along for the ride. You may also be dealing with an anxious partner feeling guilty because they just couldn’t help out. Most likely, you may also be dealing with an over-crowded waiting room full of folks just like you & yours. Most likely, you may start to wonder what other diseases your kids are going to pick up now and if it’s worse than what they already have. And then of course, you’ve got other issues going on in your life like work, or, obligations that are just not going to be met.
The truth is, at least in my little corner of the world, I actually don’t mind seeing the doctor two hours later. But I do mind waiting two hours and especially under those circumstances mentioned above. So here’s my step-by-step suggestion for the waiting rooms of doctor’s, hospital’s, clinic’s, or, any place with long waits:
Setup
- Get a Twitter account.
- If you need a little background, check out My Five Ws of Twitter in less than 10 minutes (video included)
- If you want to see the power of Twitter, watch Monittering Twitter - The Obama Inauguration Experiment
- YIf you want click-by-click instructions,check out Amanda Kondolojy’s How to Create a Twitter Account
- Ask patients if they have a Twitter account. If they don’t then suggest to them they read this post while they’re waiting .
- If they do, ask them if they would like to be notified of delays and give them your Twitter account so they can Follow you. If they don’t, they will one day soon.
Procedure
- Pick a time interval, like 30 minutes
- Simply tweet your delay. For example: “We are currently experiencing a 2 hour delay.”
- You cold even allow those with scheduled appointments to Reply, or, Direct message you back with cancellations. For example: “We are currently experiencing a 2 hour delay. Please reply if you are not longer able to make your appointment.” By the way, our clinic charges $30 CAD for not cancelling an appointment 60 minutes in advance. Under these conditions, maybe they should waive that charge in the name of customer service.
- Reassess the situation and if need be go to step 2
- Wait for step 1
Benefits
- Your patients can stay in the comfort of their own home until it really is time to show up for their appointment
- Your patients can keep their germs at home
- You can keep your germs - like the ones on those waiting room toys, away from your patients
- Your patients’ family members are less inconvenienced
- Your patients & their family are less stressed out
- Your waiting room is less crowded
- Your patients still see their doctor and receive proper treatment
- Your staff and doctors will be less stressed out
- Your staff and doctors may even be afforded the time to provide better care and custoemer service
Connection issues?
If your office has an Internet connection then all you need is a browser. If your office and/or patients don’t have an Internet connection then there’s always Twitter’s mobile phone text messaging option, as described in the click-by-click instructions above. Depending on your mobile providers’ packages there may, or, may not be a charge. For those of us in Canada, Bell Mobility is our only text messaging option. Finally, you can take a look at Al Sacco’s review of Best (Free) Mobile Twitter Apps for BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile.
Chances are pretty good that someone working in your office is already using Twitter. So setting up an account and tweeting is second nature for them. Just ask. And believe me, I know the people working in your office are swamped. But maybe they wouldn’t be so swamped if you didn’t have patients at reception lined up out the door.
Do you know of anyone using twitter like this? Are you going to give it a try? If so, then please come back and share your experiences we can all benefit.
* Photo credit: Hospital waiting room (CP file photo)
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A Nordstrom “Nordie” Story
Mar/091
An unexpected customer service story right out of the pages of Chip & Dan Heath’s “Made to Stick”.
A Nordie Story
A little off topic for me but …
For the most part, I focus my posts on social software. But while doing so, I’m also working on a start-up project and spend time with books that I often refer to in my writings. Chip and Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is one of them. As described in the book, one of the principles in getting someones attention, is to use stories about something unexpected.
Setting the scene
A few weeks ago, while on vacation, my family & I were walking through a mall in Hallandale, Florida. As we approached the Nordstrom department store, I started recounting some of the Nordie stories illustrated in the book, like;
The Nordie who ironed a new shirt for a customer who needed it for a meeting that afternoon;
The Nordie who cheerfully gift wrapped products a customer bought at Macy’s;
The Nordie who refunded money for a set of tire chains - although Nordstrom doesn’t sell tire chains.
My wife - Anna, thought the first one believable, the second just a mistake and the third simply ridiculous. But as fate would have it, Anna needed a dress for an upcoming wedding and despite my being the poster child for “I hate shopping”, I suggested we try Nordstrom simply because of the book.
The scene
Right, or, wrong, this is how I shop with Anna & the kids - Sara (11) and Alex (7): I let Anna walk up front while the kids and I hang a few steps behind. Being the Poster Child, I often backseat drive and offer which direction we should be going - call it payback However, this time I got us into a small enclosed area of with some brand name over top which I never heard but had Anna chuckling to herself. You must know that chuckle. The one you get when you refuse to stop for driving directions and you end up on dead end street. Within less than a minute, Anna held up a white T-shirt with a movie poster on it for $395 US dollars. I then bowed my head, held my kids close by and quickly and quietly, followed Anna into a friendlier neighbourhood.
The score
Thankfully, we found our way into a area that was more appropriate for our budget. And with the quick help of a salesperson - Bethany, Anna tried on a few dresses & settled on the first one - which by the way was around $150 US dollars. There was only one slight glitch; both Anna & Bethany thought a “shrug” would go nicely but there wasn’t anything suitable in the store.
So Bethany offered to hold onto the dress for a few days while Anna (read “we”) scoured the mall (read “malls”) for the shrug. However, feeling a little smug about scoring the dress in Nordstrom’s and fearing that a pattern may be emerging, I encouraged Anna that it would be a lot easier, to find the shrug if she had the dress with her. Besides, in the worst case, if Nordstrom could take back tire chains they can certainly take back the dress. Since the customer is always right , Bethany offered Anna a few places to check and sure enough, we scored the shrug too.
The unexpected
A week after returning home to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Anna received that Thank You card above. Needless to say, the both of us were impressed. Its not like we’ll be back in area next weekend and decide to stop by Nordstrom’s. its also not as if Anna bought the $395 white T-shirt with the movie poster on it. But it was an unexpected and very pleasant surprise. One worth retelling and one worth visiting Nordstrom’s the next time we’re in the neighbourhood.
Thank You Bethany!
Thoughts?
Given the current economic climate, I would imagine more and more retailers would be following Nordstom’s lead. Do you have any unexpected customer service stories you’d like to share?
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