Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You’re only a stranger once.

I Asked for Hot Fudge and Cool Whip but I Got Skittles

Filed Under Customer Think, Marketing, Successful Blog | 10 Comments

The Gesture Was Lovely

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It was a mission. The task was simple.
On the way home from dinner, he said “I need to go to the store.”

We hired a taxi to place him at his destination.

On the way out of the car he asked, “What for you?”
I said, “hot fudge and cool whip.” I was thinking hot fudge with the butter pecan ice cream we had for a late night sundae. I was thinking Cool Whip for an early morning “blogger’s latte.”

Didn’t get the hot fudge or the Cool Whip.

What he brought home was Skittles.
I like Skittles, but Skittles — they are his favorite!

The gift was lovely, but … he got me what he liked, rather than what I asked for. It was nice thought and I said, “thank you.”

Still uou can’t make a blogger’s latte with Skittles, no matter how much anyone loves that candy …

Ever been there? How do you respond when someone — maybe a favorite company — gives you what THEY want.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Are You Mission Critical?

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A Position of Power or a Call to Service?

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I know a man who describes his ideal job in a simple nine words.

Whatever I do, I want to be mission critical.

When he first said that, I thought he was describing a position of power and adrenalin. Now I see it more as call to service and collaboration.

Are You Mission Critical?

The difference between a truly strategic mission and a shaky vision is the practical and human understanding that we can’t go it alone. Strategy only works when it serves the people who help us grow.

The people we serve have their own missions.

Great service wraps our mission around the mission of the people we serve.

What people do or how they do it is less important than the mission that drives them. If we understand their mission, we can be the catalyst that gets them to realize that goal. That is the definition of mission critical.

How do you wrap your mission around the mission of the people you serve?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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To FAIL Is Human, to Respond Is …

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Who Always Gets a Perfect Score?

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So we put our heads and our hearts together into what we do.

In this environment, we think fast. We move fast. We execute with the information that’s available. Sometimes we make the wrong choice. Sometimes the other guy gets there first. Sometimes what we built doesn’t work the way we thought it would.

We could put up a sign to let folks know that working on it.

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But when the sign goes up often enough to become an icon, when people make new versions that involve Home Simpson and tattoos, then we’re an exponential FAIL. We all know about Twitter FAIL FAIL FAIL. But we’re not Twitter and we don’t have millions of new accounts signing on everyday.

One little fail can knock down a whole lot of good that we’ve built up.

What’s critical is our response.

When people point out a FAIL, stand beside them. Look where they are pointing.
It’s so much more productive than standing in front of them and feeling pointed at.

Always remember there’s a person on the other end of the issue.

To FAIL is human, to respond is more than service. That’s when humanity and character show through. Relationships built in a FAIL situation, often become FAIL SAFE in the end.

When has a FAIL served you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Accidents Happen … The Extreme Customer Service of the IT Man

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The Wisdom of the LAN Specialist

We all have winning days that the world goes exaclty as it should. Business is fun and customers are a pleasure. Then there are others. On those days when it seems that nothing knows its proper order, life might be easier if we remember what this IT Man said.

Readers, clients, customers, family, friends, even the guy selling papers on the corner, it makes it easier if we show them the extreme customer service of the IT Man.

Do you believe in the wisdom of the IT Man?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Got a Halo or Horns? First Minutes Last

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Showing Up for the First Test


When I was in college, I was struck with massive migraine on the day of an important class final. As I picked up my pen, the words on the page moved before my eyes as I tried to write. I brought this to the attention of the professor, who moved me into his office for the “lovely” experience.

I have to say I must have done dismally — at least not stellar — on that written exam. But I still Aced the class.

The most important test in that class was the first one, not the final. That was when the professor decided whether I was intelligent, whether I was a serious student, invested in learning. That first test left an indelible impression about who I am.

From that day forward, I always studied hardest for the first test in every class.

Halo or Horns

It’s called the “halo effect.” It’s a cognitive bias we all have toward what we decide from the start. Interviewers and clients, customers, … all of us … decide almost immediately from an initial trait or perception whether something is “good” or “bad.”
Research abounds on the topic … Wikipedia describes it well.

Physically attractive people are perceived to have an array of attractive qualities.

A bracelet in a Tiffany catalogue is perceived as more valuable than one in craft shop.

We make those assumptions in seconds on as little as a single trait generalized over an entire subject area. It makes sense in sorting the world on a global scale, but is error ridden in the specific instance.

The problem is that one we decide, we support our instant diagnosis by interpretting information in favor of our bias. We even work toward proving the premise. We’ll give the attractive person benefit for great qualities we’ve never seen or experienced. We’ll ask the “less impressive” interview candidate harder questions and be more critical of the answers. We’ll underscore the reasons that a craft jeweler can’t produce Tiffany quality.

If we love you, your faux pas was an accident. If we don’t, it was surely evil intent.

According to the research, even when we know that we’re biased by our first impressions and perceptions, we still can’t stop our halo effect response. It shows up in

And Byron Kalies of training zone made a pointed out a fundamental flaw in this characteristic of human perception. .

It seems sensible and strikes a chord with us because we’ve all done it. We’ve all made an instant decision and found out it was true in the face of all the evidence. However, I wonder how often we’ve made an instant decision and found it to be wrong? I guess we don’t remember those occasions. There’s a phrase for this in psychological jargon - ‘bottom drawer evidence’. This concerns the mass of evidence gathered that doesn’t fit the theory and is conveniently hidden in the bottom drawer.

It takes serious energy and time to reverse thinking like that. Makes more sense to get the first minutes right. Invest, relate, and establish credibility that lasts.

Halo or horns. No person or product is all good or all bad. Yet the product lesson is clear. The “halo effect” makes fiercely loyal fans who evangelize and argue for the validity of their perceptions.

Got a good example of the halo effect in your life?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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