Surprise me with your stunning new products. Surprise me with your stunning customer service. Amazon constantly does. Johnson and Johnson doesn’t. But 3M (MMM) does. Microsoft doesn’t. But Google does.
Surprise me with your attentiveness to me as a customer. Canon does. Nikon doesn’t.
This morning I emailed the president of a real estate syndicator with a suggestion. He responded within 10 minutes. He agreed with me and is changing his policy.
I am pounding sand with all the banks I deal with. None listen. They all have the silliest reasons of why simple customer-pleasing things can’t be done.
Picking stocks based on your own personal experience as a customer worked for Peter Lynch. Not so good today. Though it’s working with NKE, AMZN, DNKN, MMM, WEN, and WFM.
I’ve been trying to buy three bottles of wine from a publicly-traded winery I met recently at an investment conference. They were giving samples to everyone — they’re called tastings. Anyway, after several thousand emails, it’s three weeks later. I still don’t have the wine. I’ve lost interest in my whole adventure into being a oenophile (or whatever wine lovers are called.) Please, someone teach them marketing.
In the old days when I ran my own company, we used to hammer on the importance of customers. We relished when a customer would complain. That’s when our “Escalating Customer Satisfaction Plan” would drop in. We’d apologize, change our policy, give a refund and send an apology gift. A week later, we’d send another apology and another gift. Then a week later another apology and another gift. Eventually our customer would scream, “Enough already. I accept your apology.”
Now we had a customer for life.
Life has changed. We got management layers. We got lawyers. Complaining customers are now a nuisance — not an opportunity.
Stocks are presently pricey. There are few that excite at present.
I have a list I’m culling through. But it’s slim pickings.
That’s it for today. My cold won’t go away. And the tennis in Australia is engrossing. Nice to see young kids get so excited when they win a match.
Harry Newton, still culling and mulling.
Shot of Nyquil before bed, always works on a cold.
Harry, I’ve been reading here since the beginning. This is my first post. I love reading your blog every morning. I appreciate the time and effort you take each day. Thank You.
Harry,
I see that some firms are bringing back fluctuating cash-like vehicles with higher yields than bank CDS and floating yields, similar to auction rates securities. I remember you endorsed these auction rates back in the day. Do you still feel they are a viable alternative and do they still carry your recommendation?
I got stuck with a lot of money in auction rate preferreds. It was only due to the diligent and customer-caring work on Deutsche Bank that I was able to get all money out. I don’t know anything about these new issues. But, if they’re anything like auction rate preferreds, I’d be very very very wary.
I meant the customer-caring work of Deutsche Bank…