"Delighted to help you Mr. Nordyke"

My family and I stayed at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane this weekend. It is an amazing hotel. They have two locations- one that is around 100 years old, and a new sister property a couple blocks over that is 5 or so years old. We stayed in the newer "Tower".

So many things were excellent about the experience. One thing in particular stands out to me after leaving- their phone etiquette.

I really haven't given this much thought previously. My knee jerk reaction to over-the-phone wordtracks such as "how can I provide you remarkable service today?" or "Great morning, this is the _________ office, how can I help you?" has been to throw up a little bit in my mouth. Often, the wordtrack comes from a tired individual that is obviously regurgitating a mandated script or phrase.

However, this weekend, I heard it done well. And it was charming. Every time. It made me feel special and thats a feeling I want to replicate for my clients.

Here's a couple of the lines I remember most:

Me: "Can you transfer me to the Concierge please?"
Nice sounding energetic woman: "I'd be delighted to transfer you. Just a moment please. Have a wonderful evening."

Delighted. I love that. And she/he said it every time. It never lost its charm.

Here's another:
Me: (Dials zero and calls front desk)
Operator: "Front desk this is Susan, how can I serve the Nordyke suite this evening?"

A personal greeting is never old, despite the fact we all know it's powered by simple caller id. Of course both of these lines hinge on the delivery/tone, and the Davenport staff had it down pat.

Could your business benefit from adding a little charm and customer pampering with your phone interactions? I think mine can- I'll be brainstorming with the team this week.

If you use a simple phone script/phrase with your clients that delights them, please share via a comment below.

An Itinerary Written in Pencil



There's 6'7" Todd on the right.

Recently I was asked to come speak on social media and grassroots-style marketing to a group of insurance agents in Spokane, Washington. Cara and I decided to turn it into a working vacation-I'd speak Friday morning from 9-1030 and then we'd use the rest of the weekend for some family time.

After the meeting we headed down to Riverfront Park and let the kids play in the fountain there. We grabbed a park bench and kicked back to watch the kids. A bit later a tall white guy with a long pony tail and large backpack sat down on the bench next to us. He was clean and dressed like he shopped exclusively at REI. After a few minutes I asked, "So, you trekking across the US on foot?"

Turns out he's a professional photographer, named Todd Erickson, that had thumbed rides all the way from Snoqualmie Pass where he lives. He had three photo shoots lined up and was just relaxing a bit in the park before his first appointment. Turns out in that expedition pack of his he had three lights and a bunch of other camera gear.

This trip wasn't a random experience for him. He's managed to get to age 41 without ever owning a car. He hand built his home in the pass over several years and functions entirely off the grid, relying on his iPhone for all Internet and phone communications. During the winter, he often has to ski 3 or 4 miles just to get to a road where he can put his thumb out to get further. Oh, and when he gets back from this working weekend, he's putting in a hydro electric system on a waterfall that's near his home. Quite the interesting guy. And because his home is paid off and he has no debt, sometimes he'll charge $1000 for a portrait shoot, and other times he'll do them for free if he likes the subject.

Before we parted ways, Todd suggested if we have time the next day, give him a call and we could shoot some family pictures in between his scheduled shoots. We got his card and planned on taking him up on it.

Later in the evening we exchanged some text messages to plan a shoot for the next day. The charge would be $100 and include all our edited images. Pretty reasonable we figured.

The next day we met him in the park and had a rad time. The guy is a genius with kids- they had a great time and we came away with some fun family shots too. He made the whole experience so relaxing and fun. I actually think we may try to connect with Todd again in the future.

Crazy to think such a cool experience happened without any planning at all. When have you scrapped your agenda to make a memory on a vacation?



On the Defense

I'm defensive. Of course no one likes to admit that. My wife Cara and I have been talking a lot about this over the last 6 months or so, and after much self-reflection, I'm coming to realize just how ingrained it is in my gut-level responses.

Here's an example: we just came back from a 10 day road trip to Palm Springs, a family favorite haunt each summer. We had some food left over from the trip and I packed it in the cooler and placed it in the back of the swagger wagon.

At one of our stops, Cara asked where the food was, and then once I informed her it was in the far back, she asked "why didn't you put it in the empty captain's chair up closer?"

At a later stop, I rearranged things and did just that. Then a couple hours later we made another pee stop. Now with the cooler on the seat, the kids had trouble getting out of the van, to which Cara commented, "now the kids can't get out of the van without climbing over stuff."

Without skipping a beat, I responded "Babe, need I remind you that you were the one that asked me to move it there at our last stop?"

Yikes. Seems awful juvenile when you recount the situation out loud.

It's not just me. (Ha. Notice the defensive posture? Caught this after I'd already published the post) The more I reflect on this response in myself, the more I notice it in my dealings with others.

We love the idea of handling criticism well and talk affectionately about how valuable it is. Why then is our knee jerk reaction to defend and point the attention away from ourselves? Even in situations like the one above, we can't help but reassign blame.

There is something innate in us that seeks validation- to know that "I'm okay", so criticism or accusation results in an almost involuntary response of finger-pointing, explaining, dismissing or even anger. We cannot stand the feeling of being considered foolish or inadequate and the safest way to avoid that feeling is to strike back. Even "little stuff" can spark this response.

The more I dig in to this, the more aware I'm becoming of this in the moment. I'm finding if I'm conscious of it, I can sometimes catch myself before I react- whether it's with an employee, colleague or my wife Cara, half the battle is taking the time for the self-reflection.

Have any of you noticed this going on in your own heart? Have you had success in changing this gut-response? If so, how's it benefited your relationships or your leadership in your business or community?

The Death of a Salesman

I hate salespeople.

If you are one, that probably caused some sort of visceral response. I don't really hate sales people, I am one, but I've been known to say that on more than one occasion.

I don't like feeling conspired against and I'm pretty sure you don't either. Unfortunately, that is the basis of most sales training that is out there. Courses on creating interest, answering objections before they come up, how to use a "trial close" to test their level of interest, and of course, the old boiler room mantra "Remember your ABC's- Always be Closing"- ya, I love that one the best. It's no surprise most of us hate sales people.

I'm right in the middle of Guy Kawasaki's new book "Enchantment". In the first chapter, Guy talks about the importance of disclosing your motivation and how it sets people at ease. I've found this to be true over and over again.

Occasionally when I have a newer client in my office for a review, they'll joke at the beginning "So, what do you want to sell us?" I could falsely tell them I'm not trying to sell them anything, that they are only here for a cursory review of their coverages, or I can simply be honest. "My goal is to sell you everything you need and nothing more" is the response I've more or less settled on. This of course means that some appointments, we end up canceling coverage that is no longer needed, or lowering coverage to a more appropriate level. Imagine that, leaving an insurance agent's office actually spending less money?!

I think we're moving into an era of transparency, and I'm excited about it. People are so bowled over by the glut of sales pitches they get throughout the day, I think folks are finding frankness and candor a refreshing change, and one they are drawn to.

Are we witnessing the death of the Salesman?

Lemon Bars and "Business Prototyping"

Had a team member quit rather unexpectedly Friday morning-moving back to Portland. It came like a gut punch, but after a weekend of reflection, it's an awesome time to circle the wagons and draw in the dirt. I'm taking this opportunity to rethink everything we're doing. I'm taking myself through a process I'm calling "business prototyping"- rethinking my agency from the consumer's perspective. I buy things too you know. What would I want/expect from an insurance agent/agency?

What is the most ideal way to set things up? What does that service experience look like and feel like?  How many people(employees) do I need to create that experience? What is the perfect way for a local insurance agency to operate, market themselves and engage with customers? What kind of sales process is both helpful to clients, and feels thoughtful and value-added? After the prototype is on paper, then we'll apply budget constraints, regulations, and any other absolutes, but I plan on camping here in the prototype phase for the next few days. No need to immediately recruit to feed our original model. Maybe a great chance to shift gears.

Over thinking it? I don't think so. We've been fortunate to have a lot of success up to this point without this kind of brainstorming and reflection. That's mostly due to our earnest and values though. I'm learning that that's not enough based on what we're trying to do and be for our clients.

I'm making an awesome batch of lemon bars out of the lemons from Friday morning.

Insurance ≠ Cool and other marketing problems

Today I had a conversation with a friend of mine that reminded me of a long term problem I've been contending with as the owner of an insurance agency- No one cares about insurance. Oh, sure, a few of you will say you do. The reality is though, with evermore interesting things to read and watch, insurance has fallen lower and lower on the list of preferred subject matter.

This is somewhat of a marketing and advertising challenge for me. Especially with regard to new media. What exactly do you put on a Facebook fan page for an insurance agency? If people don't care about insurance, why would they want to "Like" an agency fan page?

Despite my best attempts at generating interest, I don't anticipate insurance is ever going to be a hot topic on the social networks. So with that in mind, what do we do to engage clients? One approach we've taken is case studies. Shining a spotlight on real life families and their financial situations. We've removed all sales-e-ness, and I just report on the situations we come across in our office. It allows people to observe these financial topics as spectators. They then get to respond in two ways- "glad I've got that covered- wouldn't want that guy's life" or "hmmm. Probably should look into that myself".

Another approach we've taken is simply to get off the topic altogether. For us, one competitive advantage we have is how we make people feel. So we put photos of community events we do, photos of clients, we link to clients' websites and talk about stuff we're sponsoring in our community.

I rarely get a new client or a call from an existing client off our of "insurance" postings. However, common feedback from new clients is, "if we've got to pay for insurance, we'd prefer to pay you and have our stuff with you."

My advice if you've got a "non-sexy" product or service, focus more on the relationship and less on the product. I'll mod a phrase form Teddy Roosevelt- "They don't care much about your product, until they know how much you care."

Data-mining the Solution for Newspapers?

My friend John Bergquist shot me this link and it got the wheels turning. Please add your thoughts and comments at the end:

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2011/04/who-needs-newspapers-one-couples-answer.html

I read this kind of article and see so much opportunity to offer product or service solutions to these "this is the way we've always done it" companies. All it takes is one executive that wants to be a hero for "saving the company" and all of a sudden there's budget for some wild and crazy solutions (That just might actually work).

We've seen this in the social media space- there's local consultants all over the country making a living on business owners that have finally relented and said "we probably oughta start doing this social media thing"...and then they throw money at it. The newspapers are clearly feeling the need to do "something"- that screams opportunity for those that think they have a solution, no?

When I mull over the newspapers problem, it seems to all come down to data...they have a hard time delivering value, because every reader is looking for a different reading experience so they flee to a variety of sources to sort of Jerry-rig their news consumption. What if there was a way the papers could start gathering and leveraging reader data, similar to how Facebook has...

From what I can tell, the user experience on newspaper sites is pretty static, you can search through different topics and sections, but ultimately, the user has to kind of bounce around and find what's interesting to them. 

Is it possible for these sites to start tracking UI data, like cursor behavior, time on page, topic choice, time per article, etc and also aggregating that data with ad clicking behavior...Maybe this is already happening, but it doesn't seem that sites have adopted ad programming that is customized to the reader behavior/preferences...

For example, if over the course of 10 days to 2 weeks, I've spent a majority of my time reading about national politics, gardening and photography, it seems like with just that data, you could compare that to other demographic data  and research to make some assumptions about the reader and other interests/needs they might have. With that info, you can not only play the "curator" role as far as the reading experience they get when they log in, but also more perfectly match them with advertisers. Currently what I see on my local paper and other sites, is just syndicated ads popping up based on keywords in the articles, nothing based on the fact that for the last 4 months on mondays, I've logged in to view the "business section" and "movers and shakers" only. 

Is this space too heavy with ultra high-end algorithm magic, or can techie newcomers with database savvy start to offer these solutions?

Look at the insurance agent getting all geeked out again...

The Perfect Poached Egg

The following vid is a bit long, and poor videography. However, I think you'll enjoy the experience vicariously. When was the last time a chef agreed to give you a cooking lesson after your meal? Great example for the rest of us business leaders moving into this ubiquitous social-sharing age...

"What brought you to the show today?" and other missed opportunities

Cara and I took the kids to a home and garden- type expo thing today at the State Fairgrounds. We've always got some project either on our minds or in the works at our house. Right now we're in the doldrums of a landscaping project and thought we might get some good inspiration at the show.

I would guess there was maybe 100 vendors at the event. Everything from trex decking folks and gutter companies to cookware and household cleaner hawkers.  I have no idea how much they paid to be there, but the man hours alone to get the booths set up and occupied isn't cheap.

As I was walking into the show, I was very curious from a marketers perspective. The nice thing about a "home and garden" show, is you know that just about everyone who attends is a potential prospect. When you have a booth at the State Fair, that isn't necessarily the case- there's a lot of people just wandering and killing time. But at this kind of more niche event, people show up for a reason, right? In fact, people even paid $4 at the door to get in.

As a marketer, if you're one that sells something in this space, this type of show seems like a great opportunity to meet people, start a relationship, build value, maybe even book some appointments to bid some work or go over a product catalog.

Unfortunately, the usual rules applied at this show, much like others I've attended or been a participant in. Here they are based on observation:

1. Be sure to keep your smart phone on you and reply to text and phone calls immediately.
2. Taking a lunch break away from the exhibition floor is a no-no- better to eat your food in front of passersby at your booth.
3.Don't stand up- sitting is less threatening to people that are "just looking".
4.Don't try to sell anything. You are just here for "top of mind awareness" purposes.

Alright, so you get my sarcasm. Why pay for a booth if you're not going to try and engage people. Especially when you know they are there for a purpose. 


As we were leaving the show, it occurred to me, no one asked "what brought you to the show today?". A perfect conversation starter if I do say so myself. Sure, it might not be the Purple Power cleaner you're selling, but if you're the landscape architect, you just might get a response that leads to a new client conversation.

Earnest Get's You Halfway

This month it will be 3 years since I started my insurance agency. It was about this time then, that I was recruiting my staff, negotiating the lease, and getting the place painted.

It's fun to reflect on how far we've come. We've had a bit of turnover as we've figured things out. Ervin is my last man standing from back then. I initially hired him as my executive assistant and he is now one of my licensed insurance specialists. I remember asking him in his interview if he'd be offended by a request to pick up my dry cleaning or change the burnt out headlight on my car. Ha.  He's come a long way.

I've had a lot of good breaks and been given many benefit's of the doubt over the last three years, but I'd attribute a fair amount of our success up to this point to earnestness. What is earnestness?

I like TheFreeDictionary.com's definition: the trait of sincere and steadfast fixity of purpose; "a man of energy and commitment"

I appreciate earnestness as a businessman and look for it when I recruit. To me, it’s a combination of a “whatever it takes” mentality with a high regard for relationship and “doing the right thing”. This “trait” will carry a person a long way. But on it’s own, has it’s limits.

We ran full speed our first year, and relaxed only slightly the second. This last year has been a strong one, but also full of reflection and change. It’s become painfully clear, that for our business to go to the proverbial next level, I have to get beyond earnestness, and develop systems, disciplines, and culture in our business.

I’m going to review 3 things I’m currently implementing in our business. I’ll reveal one in this post and the other two in a followup. Please leave your feedback, comments and ideas.

#1 Clearly defining 4 “results” goals and attaching to them 4 “activity” goals

• What are we trying to accomplish, specifically, and what specifically do we need to be doing daily to get there?
• This is making “holding people accountable” much more natural
• It’s also giving our team much more clarity of focus

In past years, I’ve been all over the map. I’d get back from a customer service conference, and I’d create some new service initiative for us to focus on. Then I’d come back from another long term care insurance class and we’d be all gung ho about that. This year, we’re focusing on 4 mission critical objectives for our business. Every team meeting we’re reviewing those goals, and comparing our week to week results against them.

Amazingly, and it seems almost elementary when you reflect on it, we’ve been failing to make the connection between our “activity goals” and our results for the week. We get to the end of a busy week that either did or did not get the results we wanted, and somehow we weren’t focusing  a sharp eye on how our activities might have been the culprit.

We instead devolved into pointing at what “fell through” or what “didn’t materialize” or which clients we couldn’t get a hold of to wrap things up or how “busy” we were with things. The real problem in many cases, was our four mission critical activities lagged, and thus so did our results. So this Friday we begin making that connection, and adjusting our activities to get the results we need and want.

Seems simple, but in the fast and furious life of an earnest young business, these principles get overlooked and instead, we just “work harder next week”.

Next post I'll be talking about "Creating Opportunities to Model Culture". By the way, I just added a "subscribe via email" widget to the upper right hand corner of my blog. A lot of people like to follow blogs that way. Basically put in your email and any time I post it pops right into your email immediately.

Cheers, Chris

A Culture of Criticism

Lately, I've found myself giving and asking for criticism. A lot. I am so hungry to know what people think about their experience with my business. It's not enough to hear "you guys are great" or "I like Ervin".

What is it that is not being said- that's what I really need to hear. I really want to know how I can get better, but unless I hear it from you, I risk spending time, effort and money fixing or improving things that are currently unnoticed, or unimportant to my actual clients and future clients.

What is that one piece of feedback, that you're almost embarrassed to give me, because you think it might come across as nit-picky or petty? I want to hear that.

Or how bout that "feeling" that you got when I shifted gears and started talking about that sales promotion. You were confident I had good intentions, but it felt salesy and awkward. Ya, I want to know about that too. 

Or maybe you heard someone else talking about my business and knew that if you were me, you'd love to know what they were saying. You're right, I'd really like to know. 

I wrote recently about holding a "post-mortem" for small businesses. A chance to learn from eachother's failures. A bunch of the feedback I got on that pointed toward's people's desire to see struggling businesses get help before they went under. I feel that. 

I want to be apart of, and perpetuate a culture of criticism amongst business owners. The business owners I like the most, ought to be the ones I share criticism with most freely. I want them to "survive and thrive." Frankly even if I don't like a certain business or product, if they adopt this cultural perspective, I want them to succeed too. 

Of course, encouragement, affirmation and general positivity is also beneficial to all, but rarely does growth and positive change come from it. 

I was so pumped this evening to get a response from a business owner I recently bought something from, after sending them some feedback. They appreciated it! The best part though- they included in their response some criticism for my business (they are also a new customer) and it was spot on. Great, actionable feedback. Something I just hadn't been paying attention to. Love it. 

The Bible refers to this as "iron sharpening iron". I like that. Sparks fly. Sharp knives cut better.

If you're a business owner, or frankly anyone who has any kind of "ownership" role, please consider joining me in this fresh new culture of criticism. 

Apple Romance

The iPad 2 was announced today, and once again, I am smitten. So funny to read all the blogs though and see the Apple "haters" talking about how lame an announcement it was and how much better the Motorola Xoom is. Of course they are in the small minority and this iPad will sell even better than the wildly successful 1st iPad.

Those haters think we're all a bunch of fashionable lemmings, but I think it's something much more powerful than that. I think it's possible that Steve Jobs is one of the greatest marketers of all time.

Here's the thing- no matter how incredible the marketing, a crappy product won't succeed. Conversely, an awesome product poorly marketed is doomed to failure as well. Jobs understands marketing and has mastered both sides of the equation.

As consumers we want something that works. Every time. If it does what we bought it for every time, we are happy. If it does what we bought it for every time and it does a bunch of other cool stuff, then we are really happy. If it just plain works, does cool stuff AND is sexier than every other thing of it's type, then we're in love. And that's the Apple that Job's created. Some people just don't understand love and how it motivates people. Thus the haters.

Job's marketing genius has been rewarded with the adoration of marketers everywhere, thus resulting in some of the most wide-spread, free press adulation any company or product has ever seen before. People love to back a winner, especially when the winner is reliable, cool and sexy.

Can other computer companies pull off reliable? Sure. I can think of a few that do. Can other's pull off cool? Absolutely. Reliable, cool, and sexy? Not yet, and the outlook isn't good.

As a business owner, entrepreneur and marketer, there's a lot I can learn from Jobs. It might be a while before I figure out a way to make insurance sexy, but I'm nevertheless inspired.

A miserable and glorious trip- learning from the mountain.

I just got back from a snowshoeing trip in the Oregon cascades. I left warm, slightly out of shape, pale-faced, and a bit burnt out. I returned with a few lessons learned and some fresh resolve. 

This was our second annual trip. Last year a friend at church mentioned the trip and I quickly invited myself. We hiked in about 6 miles from the Cascades Highway, and camped at the southwest base of Broken Top mountain. I was hooked. Funny thing is, it was probably one of the most physically taxing things I've ever done, but somehow after the whole ordeal, that part was quickly forgotten. 

This year I blew a ton of dough on good gear. I was freezing last year for much of the trip and this time around I was determined to have two things- warm gear and a cool knife. The cool knife part is purely machismo, but the warm gear part I was convinced would make the trip more pleasurable. Both were clearly important though. So I acquired a Fallkniven F1 with some birthday money, an insulated jacket, and some merino wool underlayers. I was set. 

Much like our '10 trip, about 40 yards into towing my gear pulk down the common corridor at Bachelor, I thought, "this is going to be a terrible slog"-my thighs were burning within minutes and my boots were already causing a bad pressure point on the top of my foot. However, my chagrin was overcome by my pride- I had to "man up", I was with a manly group. We were comprised of an Army ranger/sniper, an avalanche certified outdoorsman, an ER doctor, a wildlife biologist and a couple of chaplains. I had to limit my whining and moaning. Limit is the operative word. 

Halfway to camp, I was hearing the words of family and friends, "now why are you doing this again? Why would you want to hang out in the snow and cold without a toilet for days?" I actually didn't have an answer at that point, I couldn't remember the good stuff. I knew however, that I couldn't quit. The epic embarrassment of turning back just wasn't an option. Even asking the other guys to stop and rest on my account wasn't something my ego could handle. 

As we neared the end of our slog, the guys breaking trail (there was 3+ feet of powder past the wilderness boundary) decided to pursue a new camp destination. They headed right off trail uphill to the top of the ridge. A good 100 yards uphill. Man did I ever complain. What the heck were they thinking? Last year's camp was perfectly fine, and only a quarter mile down the trail. I was carefully choosing the words of my rebuke as we trudged up the slow. Low and behold, we broke out onto the ridge and I was met with a beautiful snow field offering views of Broken Top and Bachelor. I held my tongue and just soaked up the beautiful landscape. The last 6 miles were quickly forgotten.

Later that first night, I lay in bed shivering in my 10 degree sleeping bag. It had been snowing all day and all evening, and now the wind was blowing. I finally made it to sleep, but awoke in the middle of the night shivering wildly. My breathing was fast and shallow and I couldn't control the shaking- I was panicking, thinking I was becoming hypothermic. I nudged my tent mate, the ER doc and told him what was going on. My other friend next to us must have heard me and called out "Go take a leak!"

It turns out that when it's very cold outside, it's really important to go to bed with an empty bladder. Your body kicks into overdrive to regulate the pee temperature apparently and that's what I was experiencing. Sure enough, shook my way out of the tent and into the powder, relieved myself, and quickly felt fine, albeit cold. 

The next day was almost equally uncomfortable. I couldn't get warm. Here I'd spent hundreds of dollars on wool, fleece, a windproof shell and an insulating jacket and I couldn't get warm. By the evening, I had 6 layers of clothing on top. Lesson number two- tight layers don't make you warm. They also make it almost impossible to move- I could barely bend my arms. Your body really wants a snug baselayer and then some warm air circulating between that baselayer and a loose heavy insulating layer. I had the right equipment, but was using it the wrong way. (perhaps another blog topic altogether)

Day three was the best- cold sunshine and a great time with the guys. I'd learned a lot and was finally feeling good, able to really take in the scenery before our trip back. 

Now overall, thats a fairly grim report. Why in the world do I go on these trips and rave about them afterwards? Snow camping pushes my limits and exposes my weaknesses like little else in my life and there's a singular reason for this- I can't turn back. In most every area of my life, when pressed on all sides, I've still got a pre-negotiated escape route planned. I can back off the gas, take a different turn, or return to a trusty excuse I've used and re-used. On the mountain, the only way to quit is activating that distress beacon- and that means death/injury or epic embarrassment. So you press through. 

I love that. There is something really liberating about pushing yourself past the envelope, making yourself uncomfortable, even scared. This past weekend left me reconsidering my goals, business investments and vision. Am I too soft? Taking too little risk? Am I routinely forcing myself into difficult challenges and pushing my limits?

It's becoming clear to me that fearlessness and courage are muscles that require exercise. For me, snow camping is one workout that gets the job done. A long time mentor of mine made this statement about 10 years ago, and I've frequently reflected on it since- "When faced with two paths, always take the harder."

What are some other ways you develop fearlessness and courage in your life?

You can't obsess about your customer AND your competition

There's a firestorm of conversations, media coverage and facebook activity around the topic of foodcarts in Corvallis. The people that have foodcarts are obviously for them. However, perhaps not so obviously, a few restaurant owners are bent out of shape over it. Some scuttlebutt about boycotts has even been floating around.

Here's the story: A lot of Corvallis folks, myself included, love visiting Portland for the uber-selection of locally made food, music venues and interesting boutiques. One great fixture up there are the "pods" of food carts and stands selling every possible ethnic food you could imagine for $5-$10.

Well, some of these Corvallis folks got a bee in their bonnet and decided Corvallis should have a similar experience available to people. A local Creperie decided to lead the charge by forming the Corvallis Food Cart Alliance and working to get the city code changed. Currently the code allows carts and stands to operate a maximum of 45 days per year.

Well this has sparked quite the response from a couple local businesses. One downtown restaurant owner recently stated his opinion to a reporter at our local newspaper:

“I, among many others, have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in improving our downtown locations. To see a taco truck roll up out of nowhere and plant itself next to my business or anyone else’s for that matter is disgraceful to all our efforts.Not only do I oppose this proposal but I will propose that we reduce the amount of days that these mobile units are allowed to operate in our downtown location." - Brandon Dale, owner of Broken Yolk Cafe

Alright, so now for the insurance guy’s opinion. I think it’s unfortunate this has dragged on as long as it has. Let the people of Corvallis vote with their dollars. The regulations are already in place to ensure food safety. Food carts would be under the same scrutiny as a bricks and mortar business from a regulatory standpoint.

The real issue here is business owners focusing more on competition than they are on their customer.

As the owner of an insurance agency, I have all kinds of competition. Frankly, I face a similar competitive situation that Brandon is so up in arms over. Anyone can go study and get their insurance licenses and start selling insurance out of their living room. They can pay $250, get a chamber membership, start networking and be an insurance agent. One can start an insurance business for under a thousand bucks.

A vastly different approach than mine-I’ve got big dollars invested in the service model we offer to clients. I think it was worth it, but ultimately our clients and future clients will decide. Do they value the service infrastructure we’ve invested in, the staff I employ and the things we do in the community, or is it just window dressing, and the guy who’s 8% cheaper, working from home will do just dandily?

Some of those insurance folks grow to be quite successful, and I think that’s great- the strong and customer-focused survive. They deserve to be in business, so long as they remain true to what got them there.

I don’t have the time to focus on my competition. I am busy enough striving to walk out the marketing messages that we espouse on our social media channels and advertising. Its easy to say you’re about great customer experience, it’s an entirely different thing to live it and breath it. In the end, people decide if we’ve pulled it off. If not, they go elsewhere and we die.

I say let the food cart operators have their shot. If a restaurant can’t handle the competitive forces, they should close up shop, regardless of how much money they’ve put into it. My “efforts” and investment don’t grant me the right to stay in business. Customers get to make that call.

To advertise or not to advertise, that is the question...

My takeaway from Super Bowl 2011- I can't remember a damn thing. The Packers won, right? So much for the tens of millions of dollars spent on ads.

This is really making me do a double-take. I'm in the process right now of solidifying my advertising campaigns in two hyper-local, targeted publications. I like their staffs, the publications are spiffy and niched, but does friendly and earnest staff, along with a half page color ad help grow my business?

We grew at a nice clip last year, while advertising in local pubs and on the radio- was it the advertising that made us grow? I am not sure. And therein lies my problem. I personally buy based on relationship and product/service experience, either my own, or a peers. Perhaps I am an anomaly though. Maybe others are compelled by advertising.

I can't afford to hire Weiden and Kennedy to mastermind my ads, but even if I could, would it matter? Did any of the ads you saw during the game, matter to you? Did they/Will they change your relationship with the company?

The strategy that keeps coming back to me over and over again is the Zappos schtick. Throw all your money into customer experience, be patient and earnest, and long term success will be yours.

Is that a naive strategy for a local insurance agency? Do you think the snappiest of today's ads were effective in changing buyer behavior?

Alright Fatty, This Ain't No Copy Shop

"Listen Fatty, I'm not a copy shop, I'm a banker, and if I make copies for you, I'm going to have a line out the door of people opening bank accounts and credit cards, just to get free copies out of it. Oh, and by the way, the 24 hr fitness is out the door, 4 blocks to the left on the right hand side of the street. Look into it. "

Yesterday, one of my facebook friends posted a comment, that frankly, I couldn't help but comment on. He's a banker, a marketer, an entrepreneur, a hustler and I like him. He grew up in Corvallis and now lives and works in Portland. He's been a banker for almost 10 years now. Here's the post and the subsequent comments:

First of all, as an owner of an insurance agency, I feel I am qualified to comment here. We deal in a high volume of transactions every day, with a wide variety of clients- not unlike the business John engages in as a banker. (on top of that, I'm also a banker and licensed mortgage loan originator). 

First of all, none of us are in the banking business anymore. There's no such thing as the insurance business, the printing business, or the personal training business. All that is left is the people business. Truly, everything is becoming a commodity from someones vantage point. At some point, you'll be able to buy virtually any thing or service online. Will that be the end of the local merchant or service provider? For many of them, yes.

The one thing that doesn't translate well online and over the phone is human touch, eye contact, attitude, genuine interest and caring. This is a competitive advantage "in-person" service and sales firms will have for many years to come. 

Unfortunately, John is not alone in his gut-level reaction to the fat copy. In general, business is still short-sighted in it's view of customer interactions, thinking more about convenience, profit and policy in the moment, versus the long term impact on customer relationship, and the value of that customer for life.

The fat customer's request and John's response are actually addressed well in Ken Blanchard's book, Raving Fans, an awesome primer on revolutionary customer service. The book was written back in 1993- It was prophetic then, but now critically necessary. 

In Raving Fan's, a the main character in the story visits a next generation department store. One of the things he notices during their tour is how there is no supervision of the dressing rooms- customers were allowed to freely take as many clothes as they'd like to try on, and from what he could tell, there were no security cameras in the store. 

When he asked the manager about this, the manager responded, "We lose some product to shoplifting every year. We catch some of them, but many get away with it. However, why would we incovenience and show distrust to the overwhelming majority of our treasured customers, because a handful of bad apples take advantage of us?"

Is John really at risk of becoming a full-time free copier? Is that client likely going to post on their facebook later "Hey, if you're lazy, go open a bank account with John at XYZ bank and you can get free copies instead of paying 15 cents at Office Max". Will they immediately leave the bank and call all their fat lazy friends to tell them about the free copies they got while at the bank. And so what if they did? 

This short-sighted, "We don't do that" old school attitude manifests itself in a number of ways, often subtle. The most typical I run into is this- 

I've gone into a couple local stores, looking for this or that, can't find it, so I ask an employee. "Do you guys have this that or the other?". "No, sorry, we don't carry that." "Do you know where else I could get it around Corvallis?" "No, sorry."

Contrast that with the time I "needed" a pair of dress shoes for a business trip. I looked locally for what I wanted, couldn't find it, and then went to Zappos.com. They didn't have my size, but here's what the Zappos partner did without even flinching- "We will be getting those sizes in within the week, when do you need them Chris?" "I really need them day after tomorrow for a trip I'm going on." "Okay, well hang on one second..." About a minute passed and she came back on. "Are you in front of the computer? Go to Endless.com and type this in (...). They have the exact shoe you're looking for and it looks like it's even a couple bucks less, and they have overnight shipping available. Did you find it?" 

She finished by saying" Hey Chris, I'm really sorry we didn't have what you were looking for this time. Please give us or call next time you need something. We'd love to help. Have a great business trip and enjoy those shoes!"

The CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, in his book Delivering Happiness, talks about how on pleasure trip he was hanging out with some friends in a hotel room after a bar crawl, and someone said, anyone know of a good place to get pizza? Tony joked (perhaps a little inebriated) Call zappos! One of his friends did, and without any prompting, the Zappos partner did some googling, looked at some reviews, found a delivery joint near their hotel and gave them the phone number for them. 

Outlandish, goofy story? Sure. A little weird for a CEO of a $500M company to tell someone to goof on his employee? Kinda. An indication of Zappos' intrinsic, gut level, over the top service culture? Definitely. 

Anyone else have a different take on the Fat Copy Requestor? I'd love to hear it. 

Merchant Post-Mortem

A business having to close it's doors due to failure(not enough sales and profit), illness or ownership issues bums me out. Most of the time.

(There are always a number of businesses in any town that miraculously thrive despite terrible customer experience or sub-standard product. Sometimes businesses get lucky and choose just the right high demand product and/or pick the perfect location. To that business I say: Enjoy it while it lasts. The world is changing and I hope you either change or go away.)

But I digress. There is potentially a silver lining to every business failure- A great opportunity for surrounding businesses to learn from it.

How often do we learn of a closing business, bemoan their passing via a few fleeting conversations or facebook posts, and then slowly (or almost immediately) move on without a thought about what lead to their demise?

 I think as a community we can adopt a new ritual- A Merchant Post Mortem.   Following the death of a business, we give it a couple weeks for mourning. Then we, a group of earnest merchants, business owners and service providers, meet to reflect on what happened and what could have been done.

It would be particularly great and a show of great courage for the business owner of said business to attend, but I'm not banking on it. In light of that, we'd be left to doing a lot of supposing, hypothesizing, and ideating- all of which would drum up a lot of creative energy. "What if they had done this, instead of that", or "You know, this reminds me of a problem we dealt with a few years ago...." or " what if they'd spent more money on this..." etc etc etc.

Maybe 4 people would show up to a post mortem one month, and 20 at another. Regardless, I think the discussion could be stimulating at a minimum, and potentially an awesome way to build more community, and generate more idea exchange and creative energy in our community.

I'm afraid we take the death of a business far too lightly (those of us that didn't own it). There's potentially a lot to learn from it. And for some, it may be a great opportunity to recognize that the very thing that killed the business, is a weakness or stumbling block that exists in their own.

What do all of you think. Too morbid to make a ritual out of it? Shoot, we should have started something like this years ago? I'd love your thoughts. I think it might be a smart thing for my local community. Post-mortem over local beers...

Quid Pro Quo and Yelp

A friend of mine noticed someone complaining about the practice of businesses offering a discount or free gift to their customers if they would write a review on a site like Yelp. They thought this took away from the legitimacy of the business and the review site.

When we (Chris Nordyke State Farm) were first getting our Yelp profile set up, I announced a promotion where I would give away a free copy of a couple of my favorite business books to the first few people that gave us a review. After the fact I felt conflicted about it. However, I do not neccessarily think the practice is flawed for all businesses.

If a business offers a half off coupon, free cupcake or manicure, or a free appetizer when someone leaves a Yelp review, isn't the subsequent review an endorsement unto itself? Obviously the person liked the product or service- they were motivated to leave a review so they could engage more with the subject business or their product! I think this is a pleasant form of quid pro quo at work. Nothing wrong with people scratching eachother's backs.

Free stuff is fun. I often wish I had a product I could discount or giveaway for promotions, but alas, that's not the way insurance works. 

For sure, the BEST review is the unsolicited one. However, it's important to remember the adoption curve that even Yelp is still working on. Not everyone knows about Yelp or is comfortable with the platform yet- if your customers were all familiar with it, a number of them would probably be inclined to write a review. Some still need the extra motivation to check it out- and frankly the ones who are only motivated by the incentive, will likely have their review screened anyway.

A Matter of Forks and Spoons

For the last 4 or 5 years, I've been frequenting a local coffee shop. I love their quiches and egg scrambles. They've also got pretty good coffees. I've also been frustrated by a small detail in their service delivery. Scratch that- two small details in their service delivery.

First, for those 4 or 5 years of patronage, they've never once delivered a fork and napkin with my breakfast food. Let me elaborate a bit. When you arrive, you order your coffee and food. Inevitably your coffee is done before the food, so you go sit down and begin text messaging, reading a book, or working on your laptop. 5 minutes or so later, the food arrives, sans fork to eat it with. The frustrating point, is that they had to walk right past the container of forks and napkins to give me my plate of food. Frustrating and annoying. Thank goodness for them they have a prime piece of real estate.

I won't go into the second service detail, as it would give away the location. I'll pursue that via a comment card instead of via the blog. The point is, as small businesses, we've got to be aware of the details, and address them. We don't want our clients frustrated. There are too many choices for them. Goal number one should be to make it as easy as possible for our client to spend money with us, and enjoy it!

Here's a great post on the same topic that my friend Tim, of blog Deliver Bliss, wrote regarding a familiar retailer:

Customer Service Fail

Your thoughts?

Do as I say, Not as I do.

My wife is a great source of conscience for me. The other night she gave me an epiphany and I thought it was worth sharing.

I'm a huge fan of netflix. Especially on my iPad. The fact that I can be lounging in bed, get up to go to the bathroom, and then return to bed, all while watching a documentary on obesity in America, is nothing short of cool. So I've gotten into docs and tv shows. The latter I tend to consume by full seasons at an unhealthy pace.

My most recent is Friday Night Lights. It's a highschool football drama along the lines of Remember the Titans. Inspiring, full of conflict, good looking people and some great, hardhitting football action. On NPR recently a tv critic listed FNL as the #1 Family Drama for 2010. I thought, oh, that's cool. I'll have to give it a looksee.

Here's the thing. After watching the pilot and the first handful of episodes, the show is all the cool things I mention above, but it's also sexually charged, full of high school kids drinking and "hooking up", even mentions of a threesome (girl seeking advice from her guidance counselor). #1 Family Drama? Candidly, I really liked the show. It hooked me in, and I was a fan. My wife Cara would watch, somewhat begrudgingly with me while she knitted away on a project or flipped through an Anthropologie catalog.

On Sunday, I fired up the Netflix app, and the next episode up was titled "I Think We Should Have Sex". The title referenced an ongoing relationship between the clean-cut boyscout starting quarterback and the coach's 15 year old daughter. We watched the first 12 or 15 minutes every once in a while one of us remarking "man, can you believe they call this family friendly?" or "jeez, I can't imagine what shows will be like when Lily is 15. What are we gonna do?" Finally Cara remarked, "If you don't want our daughter being exposed to this, why bring it into our home? Why are we exposing ourselves to it?" Man. Cut to the core.

Some of you may be thinking, "what is the big deal? You're an adult." Or maybe still others of you are thinking, "what a prude- the heightened openness about sexuality on tv is a really positive thing".

Here's what I think- I don't think it's a positive thing. FNL is obviously no different than much of the content on tv now, all of it is "normalizing" sexual exploration and alcohol experimentation amongst teenagers, long before they are emotionally, physically, or financially ready to deal with the consequences. As a parent now, it's got me worried. Times have changed, even since I was in highschool with regard to media.

Thanks to my wife for pointing out my inconsistency. My best plan moving forward- if I wouldn't want my kids to see it, I'm not watching it either.

If you agree, or think that's naive, I'd love to hear your perspective.

Fatal Last Words- Reflections of a Fellow Business Owner

Recently a couple local businesses have announced they are closing. One of them was not a big surprise, but the other caught me off guard. I'm a client of both.

One has been a struggling sit-down coffee shop in a new era of high-profit drive-thrus, and the other a fantastic little downtown boutique with great merchandising, good selection, and owners with great personality and style.

This morning, over breakfast with my dad, the topic came up and it was interesting to get his perspective. He's a teacher of 30 some years and an avid consumer like me. We talked about a few of the local businesses that he and I no longer shop at, and why. What came up over and over was we could get better service, better price, and quicker solutions online or at a mall or chain store up the freeway. That's a bummer for those local businesses. Now, the sadder thing, is if you told that to those local businesses, they would simply throw their hands up in the air and say " we just can't compete with Amazon and the box stores..." Fatal last words.

Both of these places provided good service. The coffee shop, in my opinion had the best barista's in town. The boutique had two fun gals who were professional and courteous. Both prices competitive.

The trouble is, that's just not enough these days. Consumer's require a relationship, a sense of caring, a shared world view, common values, experience passionate self-expression etc or they will simply go to the store with better service, lower prices or more convenience. The local business owner has to engage with their customer in a much different way than they used to.

No matter how great you think you are local-business-owner at customer service, I guarantee you there is a Nordstrom or REI, or Zappos that is better. Better consistently. However, you have something they don't. You can adapt and move quickly to meet customer needs, you have a personal connection to your clients and your community that Zappos can't replicate. Advantage still goes to the small business owner.

So we're talking about all this and my dad relents, "you know, change is hard to make all at once. A lot of these business owners are older and all this stuff is new and different and comes with a steep learning curve..."

True. However, if you go to the doctor with an ailment, and he tells you if you don't do X you will die in 6 months- you're going to respond. The problem with our community's current condition, is that "everyone" in the local business community is "poo pooing" the new social trends, downplaying the critical and deadly shift that's happening in the marketplace. I would guess if we interviewed business owners who met demise in the last couple years, they'd point at all kinds of external factors including the economy, still not seeing it was a lack of customer engagement that killed their business.

As a fellow small business owner that is subject to the same competitive marketplace, learning how to connect with my clients in a meaningful way is my number one objective. 10 years ago an insurance agency's number one goal was- sell X amount of policies per month by making X number of calls every evening while people are sitting down to dinner and spend X percentage of your sales on newspaper ads. There was a formula for success, and if you followed it, you'd do well. Today, you still need to talk to a lot of people, advertise, and so forth, but something more and different is also required.

We're far from great engagement in our business- but you can bet we're noticing the warning signs around us and getting more serious.

We're in a different world now. A bit scary, but in a beautiful sort of way.

2011 Roadmap/MindMap

Analysis paralysis gets me every time I try to put together a business plan. By nature I'm not a hard core planner, yet I know the value of having a roadmap, even if it's drawn on a napkin. Somehow though, I get to the end of each year, we're pushing hard to hit goals, and then it's January and we've done no reflection or forward planning. Instead "planning" is thinking-fast-on my-feet as the year rushes by.

Fortunately, I've got a small lead on the new year, and I intend on mapping out a plan. Trouble is, where do you begin? There are so many dang things we could change next year to improve on 2010, but I know I'm not a planner by default, so if I get too complicated, the plan will be abandoned before long.

I'm going back to basics this year, and I'm using a mind map as my starting document. Maybe that's all I'll use to refer back to. We'll see. I've read all the books, talked to many successful entrepreneurs, and you know what, if I think about it too much, I'll just never get down to it. Too many possible approaches.

So what is in the middle of my mind map? The three things I never stop thinking about year in, year out. These are the key attributes of my life goals and vision. What am I made for, what do I desire at my core.

Then, I'll branch out from there and look at 5 accomplishments that will get me closer to those things. What can I do this year that will carry my life and business further in the direction I want, and need, to go?

Finally, what are the 10 or 12 activities or changes I need to make to my daily/weekly/monthly living and insurance-agenting, to achieve those 5 accomplishments?

There's my mind map. Now of course, I'll probably have to come up with some collateral, some examples, explanations, metrics and some accountability/tracking methods so my team and I both have a visual on how we're doing. But that's where I'm starting.

Have you come up with a plan for next year? Have you got a better way of approaching this process? I'd love to hear about it.

Nothing, Never, Can't and other Fighting Words.

I was party to a couple of tough conversations this last week, and was reminded of just how toxic bad attitudes can be. Our brain quickly goes into justification mode. "man, if so and so hadn't thrown all this stuff on me at the last minute", or " if so and so had just done their job right the first time". We then start the dark decent into absoluteism- "You never (!) show up to meetings on time", "I can't take care of that if I haven't been given good information", or "I I can't believe it, you've gotten nothing done!"

After hearing several of these fighting words, I finally stopped the other person and reviewed their statements with them. Really, never? Can't? Nothing? After taking a moment to think and respond, the frustration and anger started to dissipate. Finally, we were left with some constructive talking points, and the conversations ended well.

If I hadn't taken the time and initiative to disarm those choice words, the conversations likely would have spun out of control, leaving everyone frustrated and worser off.

Take a moment and consider an appropriate context for words like nothing, never, can't, won't, etc. They really aren't that useful, are they?

(couldn't have found a better image- courtesy of Diet.com :)

Following the Alien Abduction

Okay, fact is, none of us likes to think about dying. So for the sake of discussing something critically important to your family, rather than talk about a more likely scenario like a car accident or another tragedy, we'll consider the event you are taken away in a UFO. A bit easier to chat about?

I'm in the insurance business. I talk with people every day about preparing for the unexpected. I give people advice everyday, including having an appropriate amount of life insurance and having a last will and testament. I have a confession to make: I still don't have a will myself.

For almost 4 years now Cara and I have been talking about this, yet continued to put it off. One decision that needs to be made, is who will take care of the kids if something happens to both of us (alien abduction)? We've finally settled on a couple of friends of ours. However, there still remains a number of huge considerations. As I work through these myself, I hope this is helpful for you:

For my wife and I's 8 year marriage, I've primarily been the money guy, paying bills, managing our income and savings, insurance, etc. It has nothing to do with Cara's ability to handle this stuff, it's simply been a matter of convenience- I naturally gravitate toward it with my business, so that's how we've taken care of things. If I die, without some significant planning, there's going to be a bit of chaos in store for Cara.

Here's my list:

1) What does Cara do about my business?

How do my employees get paid?

Is Cara a signer on my business line of credit?

Authorized user on my business credit card?

What does she do with the business long term?

2) Bill Payment

Does she have our password to Chase.com?

Is she familiar with all my payee Nicknames?

Does she know that our Home Equity Line is variable and she needs to adjust the automatic bill-pay occasionally?

3) Life Insurance Proceeds

Should she pay off the house or invest it?

How long before she needs to return to work?

Does she know how to contribute to the kids college savings plans?

Where should she put the money- I've been the investor up to this point?

These are just a handful of the questions she'll be faced with almost immediately in addition to the grief and pain of loss, and being a mother to our kids.

I want to minimize that. This morning, I met with a trusted friend and fellow business owner, and began a discussion about him being my proxy and trusted contact for my wife in the event of my death. We talked about me having that same role with his family. It requires an enormous amount of trust.

Here's what I'm considering doing: (I'll be consulting an attorney friend of mine before implementing this plan and I'd urge you to do the same.)

1) Make this person a signer on my bank accounts and authorized user of my credit cards- If something happens, I want this person to instantly be able to step in and help take finances off my wife's plate. Initially. I don't want her to have to stress about "figuring everything out" right away.

2) Disclose all my passwords to banking and investment sites, email, flickr, social media, etc.

3) Give access to my business affairs and meet annually specifically to update this data- balance sheet, cash flow, payroll, accounts, available credit, etc.

4) Provide a summary of all our insurance and financial affairs. Everything.

5) Develop a summary of my principles and values to guide and provide clarity for all other situations that might arise.

At this point, some of you are probably thinking I'm crazy. Maybe you're one of those people that has decided you can't trust anyone. That's not me. I've carefully vetted this person over years and am confident if we make this agreement, my wife and kids will be watched over and cared for just like his own wife and kids.

This will take a fair amount of time, but I love the fact that if something happens to me, I've already planned for a best case scenario for my loved ones. A really hard situation will inevitably be a little bit easier with some forethought.

Already in my career I've had several death claims. Take my word for it, one of the most loving and practical things you can do for your family is have life insurance, a plan, and an advocate identified to help guide your survivors through the long transition.

If you're abducted by aliens, do you have a plan?

Rad Stuff #2 Jawbone

I'm one of those guys that doesn't need much of an excuse to buy gadgets, and bluetooth headsets are no exception. I've had no less than 4 of them now. I started with a Motorola (crap), moved to the Plantronics Voyager (awesome but ugly), then switched to the BlueAnt V1 (great looking but unreliable) and now have finished my search for a great device.
I had completely stopped using headsets until finally a couple clients of mine started giving me a hard time about talking on the celly while driving, so I figured I better get wireless again. All of my online review searches led straight to Jawbone, and specifically the Icon. The reports were glowing, so I worked my Amazon Prime account and picked one up.
Verdict after two weeks- in-ear sound quality, far superior to any other headset I've used. People I called and chatted with didn't appear to even notice I was on a headset, and when asked, said they thought I was in the office talking on the cell phone. (I was actually in my noisy compact car on the headset). Battery power is not quite on par with the Voyager, but plenty good to get through a full business day of taking and making calls.
It wears quite comfortably, in fact I got to where I was accidentally leaving it on and walking into appointments with clients. (One client joked, "oh, so now you're 1 part cyborg, 3 parts a$$hole!") I've become one of "those people" that look all self-important, walking oddly in circles, talking loudly in building lobbies. What can I say, it's handy, works well, and has me driving more safely.
One last note- I've had a couple software type bugs with it, and I can attest that the Jawbone phone support is literally one of the best I've encountered EVER. Knowledgeable, enthusiastic, quick and they document every note in a file attached to your phone number. They really know their stuff and never gave the impression they were "on script". I was able to quickly ramble with them about other imminent jawbone products (the JamBox!!) and get their personal take on it. It was a lot of fun, and they got my earpiece up and running again. Problem solved, and completely painless at that.
Great customer service is both a talent and a well-developed skill. They've nailed both.
The two calls I had with them were so good in fact, I'm trying to find an excuse to call them on speakerphone at my next staff meeting. They're that good, I want my staff to hear it! Imagine that, customer service so good, you look forward to having an issue. No way, right?!