I was lucky enough to meet Biz Stone of Twitter last week in Sundance. He made a comment about Twitter's achievements that tie somewhat to today's earthquake in Japan, the NZ earthquakes and the floods in Australia.
He described Twitter as not a triumph of technology but a triumph of humanity.
(From USA Today via Kevin Coupe)
There was an interesting story in USA Today the other day,
passed on to me by an MorningNewsBeat user, that I thought illustrated
some of the central challenges of modern retailing.
The story
was all about Sarah Gilbert, a 35-year-old, environment-minded
freelance writer and mother of three in Portland, Oregon, who mostly
eschews the use of a car in favor of a custom-made stretch bicycle that
fits all of her kids.
She recently stopped at her local
Burgerville – an environment-minded company, as it happens – and
attempted to go through the drive-through on her bicycle. And was
refused service, by employees who said you can't go through the
drive-through unless you are behind the wheel of a car.
That was
a bad move, because the action was inconsistent with the company’s
broader message and philosophy. It was made worse by the fact that
Sarah Gilbert is an active blogger and contributor to Twitter…and she
made her annoyance known almost immediately.
Within 24 hours,
Burgerville apologized, said that it would develop a new
bicycle-friendly drive-through program, and even asked Gilbert to help
come up with recommendations.
There are all sorts of lessons in this incident.
One
is the importance of knowing your customers. As it happens, in
Portland, Oregon – which is Burgerville’s home market – 4.2 percent of
workers commute to work via bike, vs. 0.47 nationally. That’s probably
something that Burgerville should have factored into its thinking.
Second,
the importance of social networking. Sarah Gilbert got change because
she made noise…and in 2009, it isn’t hard to do so. Blogs and social
networking tools like Twitter are a megaphone that can't be ignored. To
some extent, their influence has to be factored into every decision a
company makes.
Third, there is the importance of a well-timed
apology. Burgerville didn’t delay, didn’t dither…the CEO knew it made a
mistake, and moved fast to resolve the problem. Other companies should
learn the lesson.
I love this story. I love it because it is
great when one customer can make a difference. I love it when a company
that I have often expressed admiration for, Burgerville, ultimately
does the right thing and does not disappoint. And I love it because
once again, it reminds me of why I love the Pacific Northwest, which is
my definition of God’s country.
Yesterday, I noticed a tweet from someone who like the look of our new gCloth inserts. She posed the question on twitter to diapers.com (a great customer of ours)- would they be carrying it? Diapers.com replied by twitter that they'd follow up with gDiapers. Seeing this string, I sent a tweet to both of them explaining we were trialing it on our own site first and if it was a success, we would most definitley be calling them.
Who needs email?
Weird…my last post read more like a Tweet. Seems others are facing a similar crisis…
Thanks to my new Twitter mate gaeyia. This thing rocks.
Listed here…
the early years 