I love Oriental Trading.  I’ve used them in business when planning a corporate training session.  I’ve used them for prizes at the World Friendship Carnival, a Girl Scout fund raiser.  I’ve used them for birthday gift bag prizes and sometimes it is just fun to visit the site when you are looking for a distraction.  [...]

Susan Oakes of M4B Marketing asked nine business owners their thoughts on customer loyalty in her post Top Tips to Keep Your Customers Loyal. Each participant had a different take on the theme and yet all were very similar.  The main theme: Treat your customers as people – treat them as you’d like to be treated.  [...]

Yesterday’s post about my experience at Wal-Mart led Justin Flitter (writer of a great help desk customer service blog) to have this comment, in part: “What would happen if Walmart just told their staff, “go out there today and have some fun, we’re not measuring anything.” It reminded me of my early years with Pearle [...]

Have you shopped Wal-Mart?  When you check out, the credit card machine asks one of a series of random questions.  “Was the store clean today?”  “Was your cashier friendly?” I’ve shopped there enough to be aware of the question.  I am assuming the answer ties to the person at the register and with today’s automation, [...]

People buy from those they like and trust and the only way to build that trust is to learn about your customers as people not just cash in the register. This became clear to me during a recent trip to Venice, Italy in which I visited a shop, Arte Venexiana, near the Rialto Bridge. I was looking [...]

Ellen, our guide, recommended two restaurants near the Grand Hotel where we were staying.  We selected the Golden View Open Bar located on the River Arno, near the Ponte Vecchio bridge.  We were seated at a window table and pulled out our cameras to take pictures of each other and the view.  Sasha, our waiter, came [...]