Lots of Kinks with FedEx Kinko’s

December 20, 2007

RobotI must say that I would normally never single out an organization for customer service issues, but I can’t contain myself any longer. We have all had problems with getting our stuff printed correctly from time to time, but I think I’ve just had it! I got use to the fact that they can’t find your order when you go in to pick it up and that they don’t particularly want to help you when you stand at the counter. But we recently had a location in Arizona, butcher our workbooks and then blame it on us, after we went through their online system. And this was after we talked to an employee that said she personally supervised the order and agreed on what was supposed to happen. We checked, and double checked and received verification of the specifics of the order. How complex was our request? 70 units at 5 page’s each, the first in color and the rest in black & white, stapled in the left-hand corner.

What did we get? Everything in black & white and unstapled, literally a box of paper.  Now, I understand that people make mistakes (and apparently smoke pot) but the story gets weirder. When we complained, the young lady (who clearly did not care if I lived or died from the minute she picked up the phone) said, “we can only do what the system tells us.” And then she hung up on me. So, the term that comes to mind is evil young cranky robot (not to let any old cranky robots off the hook). But the story then reaches the ultimate level of psychotic service. I called the customer service 800 number and told them my story, they said someone would call me back in 48 hours (now that’s service) and ask a few more questions. About 55 hours later, I picked up a voicemail from a man that said he was the manager of the location (The young woman said she was the only manager over then store.) and said he apologized for the problem and wanted me to call him and he would make it right. I called (ten minutes after the call came in) and asked for the manager by name. The person who answered (who was clearly the man who called) said that there was no male manager. I confronted him and said “Look, it was you. You just left me a message and I’m calling you back.” He was very nervous (like someone had a gun to his head) and denied that he was the manager and that he had called me. OK, we know service is not having a good decade, but this is really nutty. I can only imagine what is going on at that Kinko’s location. I have heard of bad customer service but I think we should send in the police. If you see a news break that says “Kinko’s manager held hostage by bitchy robot employees” remember you saw this blog first.

 Customer Service Training Programs , keynote speaker on customer service


Hollywood’s Most Influential Infants?

December 16, 2007

Have we lost our minds? This is news? We have decided that the infant children of famous people are influential? The ugly truth: If you ask people about Shiloh, they will not mention the famous Civil War battle, they will instantly think of the offspring (not be confused with multiple adopted children) of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (Brangelina). Let’s be very clear, infants are not influential! The media is influential, and “we the people” are priority challenged. If I was the leader of an evil foreign power and saw news coverage of influential celebrity babies, I would be thinking “Attack America now”! Influence is based on communication and positioning; if we believe that you can have that at 3 months old, we are the most easily influenced culture in history. Some may argue that the future of our nation is indeed in the hands if spoiled babies. I think our youth will grow up and be ok; as long as we don’t decide they are influentially news worthy while they are still in diapers.


Whatever Happened to Originality?

December 16, 2007

Have you noticed that everything seems to look like something from the past these days? I recently saw a ford mustang with retro styling from the 60’s, being driven by a young woman with hair from the 80’s, blasting music that was a bad remake of a great song from the 70’s. When did we start running out of ideas? I know we like to say that there is nothing new under the sun but it seems like new ideas and concepts are a bit rarer these days. What about Rap songs that are using older hit songs as the basis of their impact? I don’t know about you, but it makes me want to hear the original song. I watch a movie (made in the last ten years) or a new network TV show (there is some original programming on HBO and Showtime) and I can predict in the first 10 minutes how the movie will end and in some cases I can spout off the actual dialog seconds before it comes of the characters mouth. My 11yr old thinks I’m psychic (which is great because in two years at the age of 13 she’ll just hate me)! Could it be that in a world that is so busy, we don’t have time to be unique? Maybe we are so desperate for approval that we just look at what people have liked in the past and create more of that? We are all guilty of doing what works to be successful (unless you are very original and unsuccessful and in that case, this post, strangely enough, is a pat on the back for your loser status). But I thought we were supposed to get ideas from the past not just copy what’s been done before. From my experience, and the history of business (that includes show business) the way to start a creative process is to get a group of people together and get them to agree on what has not been done before (as best you can) and apply that concept to what you are trying to achieve. So the lack of uniqueness will come from the goal you seek and not the concept itself.

Originality does not have to be the brain storm of genius, but it does take some thinking. When did we stop thinking?

The bottom line: Someone else has written a similar post about originality or this will be copied and end up in USA today as the original concept of another writer.


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