{"id":24274,"date":"2014-01-23T09:21:34","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T14:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=24274"},"modified":"2014-01-23T13:09:33","modified_gmt":"2014-01-23T18:09:33","slug":"surprise-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=24274","title":{"rendered":"Surprise me."},"content":{"rendered":"

Surprise me with your stunning new products. Surprise me with your stunning customer service. Amazon constantly does.\u00a0 Johnson and Johnson doesn’t. But 3M (MMM) does. Microsoft doesn’t. But Google does.<\/p>\n

Surprise me with your attentiveness to me as a customer. Canon does. Nikon doesn’t.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong>” 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<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Now we had a customer for life.<\/p>\n

Life has changed. We got management layers. We got lawyers. Complaining customers are now a nuisance — not an opportunity.<\/p>\n

Stocks are presently pricey. There are few that excite at present.<\/p>\n

I have a list I’m culling through. But it’s slim pickings.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"HarryNewton\"<\/a>
\nHarry Newton, still culling and mulling.<\/p>\n