What do David Blaine and Wall Street have in common? They’re both great at creating illusions. Unfortunately, Wall Street believed the illusion it created (the value of subprime mortgages) was real. Companies do the same thing every day, convincing themselves that if they have more customers and higher revenues then everything will keep going up, even if they don’t spend the time understanding customers and providing great service.
No, this is not a post about a drunken night in Vegas that involved a little white chapel. I’ve never been to the city, and as far as I know I’m still enjoying all the “perks” of single life (read: ordering take-out and playing video games every weekend). So imagine my surprise when my car insurance company congratulated me for getting married.
I’ll preface this story by saying that politicians love to hear themselves talk. For those who don’t live in Connecticut, Atty. General Richard Blumenthal certainly falls in that category. He’s gone after student loan lenders, corrupt officials, and now his crusade against injustice has taken him up against AT&T and its near-monopoly on phone service. He recently held a press conference and released a number of statements to the press stating AT&T has “appalling disrespect for consumers and disregard for the law.”
Internet Explorer 8 hasn’t even been released yet, and already Microsoft is facing stiffer competition in the browser market. Tuesday Google offered its web browser, Chrome, for download. Chrome’s release has already been widely publicized, so I’ll shorten reviewing its features and focus on its ultimate impact. Chrome is very similar to Firefox, but it also employs some of the better features from Opera, Safari, and IE as well. It’s a free download, so visit www.google.com/chrome to give it a test run. What’s much more interesting than its entry into the browser market is the possibility that eventually Chrome could challenge Windows as a new operating system.
Continue reading "Google’s Chrome Polished and Ready for Download" »
Electronic Arts is one of the companies that gets it when it comes to customer relationships. The company's senior director of customer support, Boyd Beasley, is one of our 2008 Champions. But EA isn't just doing service right, it understands social media (which it should, given its young videogame-playing customer base). A few weeks ago the company used YouTube to turn what could have been a negative customer story into something positive.
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