Successful Blog

Change the World: Are You Coming?

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No Explosives Needed

On the road to our dream destination,

Starbucker

we’re bound to find a few detours and breathing blockades

Bulldog-in-your-face

who seem dead-set on bringing us down.

white-arrow-pointing-down

It’s good to know that when someone knocks us over

beached-sunflower

or tries to set a match to our plans,

one burning match

that we can pick ourselves up and kick a little water to put out the flame.

splash Kick that flame

Because the sky and the water belong to everyone

heart on the water

and the sun doesn’t belong just to me

sun 1

So, are you coming along for the ride of your life?

dog in the wind

We’re getting out our crayons.

crayons

We’ve got all of the creativity we need.

Geek Cigar Lady

We know what beautiful looks like — what to make and what to keep.

dancers — waterfall

We’re going to change the world.

Earth from space

Wait and see.

Liz's Signature

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If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

SOB Business Cafe 09-28-07

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

Inkthinker is about developing the qualities that make your blog . . . um . . . suck.

Beth’s Blog is about quality and the bounce rate.

Brain Based Biz is about the quality of our work life.

Debbie Millman is about the quality she discovered at Brand Autopsy.

Confident Writing is about finding out the quality of our writing voice.

Performancing is all about building a quality blog.

Related ala carte selections include

Reality Wired is about the quality of a beer-drinking life-style.

The Specials this Week are

Creative Think has been hot about quality for a year now! Happy Birthday, Roger!

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

QA QnA: Tom Vander Well Is Magic

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relationships button

Yesterday, I had coffee with Tom Vander Well of QA QnA. We sat right across the street from Sears Tower. He was the bigger deal. I was so looking forward to meeting him. Not many folks in the Customer Service Industry have figured out the power of blogging. Tom is one in a fine group that knows the business.

Tom company’s C. Wenger Group does data-based assessment of how the customer feedback loop works. The special magic is that his company sees the people and hears the words behind the numbers that they collect. That’s why they have some of the most impressive clientele in the Midwest — names that are on that Fortune list.

No matter what your work is, it really is customer service. You should be reading Tom Vander Well’s blog.

Tom Vander Well

Proof of his real customer-centered, relationship focus, though, lies in the gracious company Tom was. In my excitement at a long-awaited chance to meet-up, I rattled on like a box of birds about business and blogs. [blush]

Thank you, Tom! Please know the longer you know me, the quieter I get. Really.

Despite the picture he took, don’t get the wrong impression about what he says I lost at Panera. I had to tell him something that the folks back in Des Moines didn’t know yet.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

I Asked a Telemarketer for Her Number — I Actually Wanted It!

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Leave a Message at the Tone

Customer Think Logo

My son is a recent college graduate.

Since his last year of school started, our phone has been inundated with calls from Student Loan Consolidation Services. They’re calling, asking for my son. Their objective is his business. His name is on some list of the class of 2007. They want to refinance what they assume to be my son’s school loans.

To say these calls are an irritant is to say that major dental surgery is not fun. It’s a relentless one-a-at-time water torture — daily ringing, the same hour, the same number. No message is left on the machine. Eventually we have to answer each one to make it stop.

The call routine is almost word-for-word predictable. The waste of time is pitiful. A bored caller goes through a call script, and we go through our own to get off the call list — the list we shouldn’t be on to start with.

Then this week, Maria called.

When I said, “Who’s calling?”

She said, “Are you his mother?” It was authentic and transparent. Imagine that. She wanted to know about the person — me — answering the phone.

Before she got much further, I had to ask her name, thank her, tell her how nice that was.

We had a great conversation. She asked my son’s situation. She told me two things she liked about what she had to offer and why she believed in it. We both knew it wasn’t my decision.

Then, I did something I’ve never done before. I asked a telemarketer if I could have her number. I took it down and gave it to my son. One day later, I explained to him why he should call her.

Maria, the caller from National Student Loan Division, deserves this mention. She made me a person, when her whole industry had made me a target.

Thank you, Maria.

Yeah, I’m thinking it’s sad that I find this remarkable.

I’m also thinking that maybe if we tell everyone . . . Maria might be the first and the only.

[Please know that this is not an endorsement of the company or a recommendation of their financing. I have not done the research. This is as statement of an outstanding example of customer relationships.]

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related:
See the Customer Think Series on the Successful Series page.

Hire a Hero

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relationships button

Anita Bruzzese let me know today about something that took my attention immediately. People who invested their lives on our behalf are home and without jobs. Here’ some of what Anita has to say on her blog.

I recently spent nearly an hour talking to Caulfield, an articulate, passionate and committed guy who gave me a real earful about the pitiful state of affairs regarding employment for our veterans. Despite having served with honor and serving in some of the most dangerous parts of the world, these vets have a tougher time than other job seekers looking for work – those age 20-24 often have an unemployment rate two to three times higher than non-veterans of the same age group.

Pleast read more of Anita’s story on vets without civilian jobs. Then visit Hire a Hero and pass on the information to folks who can help.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

3 Ways the Blogosphere Made Me a Better Business Person and Human Being

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one2one blog post logo

It’s the People

On my blog I finally took the time to think through what I believe. On my blog, people asked what I meant by what I said. On my blog that I dared to think and to dream — out loud and with commitment.

On my blog, my head and heart connected to the people I met.

The relationships I’ve made as a blogger have made me better as a marketer, a better writer, and a better human being. Here’s how and why.
I’m a better marketer.

    As a blogger, I live with my readers. Every morning, I meet the folks who read my blog. I know by their response, or the lack of it, whether I’ve hit the mark. How could I be more intimate with my “customers”? As a publisher, I used to think I knew a thing about readers. I didn’t know anything compared to what I know now. Now I know what they are thinking. They tell me.

I’m a better writer.

    As a blogger, I came down off the podium. I learned not to tie everything up with a bow. I quit lecturing and started listening. That’s when the real thinking and idea swapping started happening. Real people read what I wrote and added their own thoughts. When they did, I learned to write with my own voice, no self-consciousness. My relationship with words became my relationship with the people who read them.

I’m a better person.

    As a blogger, it became about the conversation. How could listening to folks talking back and learning to talk in my real voice not lead to an improvement? Suddenly, it wasn’t about me. Suddenly, everyone was an opportunity to get to know one more incredible person who offered something to learn. The more I bring to the folks who come to read, the more they give me. My readers make me smarter, better every day.

How has my blog changed how I think of relationships? It’s only made them more dear, more important, and more cellular to every letter, every link, every learning that is in this text.

I can’t imagine looking at any part of my blogging career without seeing the people who in a word, have made me who I am.

The people of blogging have made me a better person.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

One2One is a cross-blog conversation. Find the answer at dawud miracle on Monday. You can see the entire One-2-One Conversation series on the Successful Series page.
In Case You Missed It: Writing 06-13-07