I love Reading Seth Godin’s blog and look forward to reading it each day. Yesterday’s post was called…

What’s expected vs. what’s amazing

I visited a favorite restaurant last week, a place that, alas, I hadn’t been to in months. The waiter remembered that I don’t like cilantro. Unasked, she brought it up. Incredible. This was uncalled for, unnecessary and totally delightful.

Scott Adams writes about the cyborg tool that is coming momentarily, a device that will remember names, find connections, bring all sorts of external data to us the moment we meet someone. “Oh, Bob, sure, that’s the guy who’s friends with Tracy… and Tim just tweeted about him a few minutes ago.”

The first time someone does this to you in conversation (no matter how subtly), you’re going to be blown away and flabbergasted. The tenth time, it’ll be ordinary, and the 20th, boring.

Hotels used to get a lot of mileage out of remembering what you liked, but it was merely a database trick, not emotional labor on the part of the staff.

Today, if you go to an important meeting and the other people haven’t bothered to Google you and your company, it’s practically an offense. We’re about to spend an hour together and you couldn’t be bothered to look me up? It’s expected, no longer amazing.

 On the other hand, consider Dolores, a clerk with kidney problems at a 7 Eleven, who broke all sorts of coffee sales records because she remembered the name of every customer who came in every morning. Unexpected and amazing.

You can raise the bar or you can wait for others to raise it, but it’s getting raised regardless.

If you like this post, you’ll love the others Seth writes daily on Seth Godin’s blog

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WOW – I cannot believe this has gone through so easily and with so little uproar from society who is already dealing with a crippling recession.  They say it makes it easier for businesses, but I just can’t see it.  Besides the fact that many things we buy will cost more money, we’ll need to pay people to change adjust our bookkeeping system, documents, POS systems.  Easy?  I think not, at least from this business person’s perspective.

Andrew Ballenthin, Founder of The Community Marketing Blog, Speaker and President of Integrated Marketing Consultancy Sol Solutions wrote…

1.  The term social media is preventing many businesses from seeing what the true value of this communication evolution is about. Leave the words behind, think of it as “interactive communication”.

2.  From a marketing perspective this is one of the greatest moments in communication history as mega brands through to entrepreneurs now have a vehicle for building engaging relationships based on two-way communication.

3.  Social media has the potential to humanize a business, and when executed correctly, new customers, additional sales and improved customer retention become possible as a result of following the rules that are govern any quality relationship.

4.  Now and over the next 5 years we will see a transition where mass communication converges with a greater weighting on the quality of the database’s relationship with a business.

5.  There is a timing-risk-reward factor for businesses that start this journey now, especially during an economic downturn, as it will enable them to separate themselves from competition, build loyalty, and continually learn how to fulfill client’s ongoing needs.

Continue reading this article. Visit the Community Marketing Blog.

1. Expand your share of the existing market
2. Find new markets
3. Develop new products

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