Tagged with Passing Thoughts …

Dec 11 2009
1 Comment
Business, Management, Marketing, Passing Thoughts, Technology

Designing Customer Experiences

These days I have been working with a client to help design their executive education center for their leadership cadre. They want to provide trainees a world-class learning experience, not only in terms of quality of education, but also hospitality. They don’t even call them “trainees”, but call them “customers”. So, it’s like they want to create the Ritz Carlton of executive education.

I am yet to fully immerse myself in the project, but am working with a simple construct in my mind. Many times, when companies are looking at customer experience programs, they end up automating processes & setting policies which definitely ease internal operations, but may not directly translate into positive experiences for customers. That’s internal focus. My simple thought is that the process has to be reversed, with focusing first on what the customer experience should look like, how would positive interactions / touch-points look like and then think about what systems / processes are needed to get to the desired state.

So, a fancy CRM will not do the trick for you, if it has not been designed & implemented with the customer in mind.

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Oct 10 2009
4 Comments
Business, Employee Engagement, Human Resources, Management

Giving Good Recognition

Most of the times, when I discuss with employees the issue of Recognition, I get typical answers – “Yeah, we have a “star of the year” award” or even better “annual Chairman’s award.” I have never some across a situation where the first instant response points towards recognition flowing from the manager. That makes me question the overall efficacy of the way managers recognize their people and energize them further.

So, people…head over straight to the Incentive Intelligence blog to get started with some basics of individual recognition. The post encourages you to use the SAIL method of recognition:

  • Situation: the problem or opportunity
  • Action: what was done in specific terms
  • Impact:  the result of the action
  • Link:  to department/organizational goals and objectives

Start relying less and less on the “annual” or “quarterly” recognition schemes. And recognize and engage your people by treating them as people, by individualizing.

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Mar 05 2009
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Blogging, Passing Thoughts, Social Media

Thank You Readers!

This blog has been getting more and more eyeballs and February 2009 was the best ever month for my blog. I thought I should take a moment here and thank all the readers for following my blog and interacting on my thoughts. Really, thanks a lot.

In case you are already not doing so, the easiest way to keep my with my blog is to subscribe to its RSS feed in your feed-reader of choice.

My blog’s RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/abhishekmittal/blog

You can also click here and subscribe to this blog via email. This is a Google service and will not spam you. It will simply send out my latest blog posts to you via email.

Also, for those of you who don’t know, my personal blog is located at http://abhishekmittal.tumblr.com. I think about my personal blog as a “living room” where you keep getting stuff to make it look pretty!

And, finally, you can visit my FriendFeed page to get a glimpse of my activities across the web and connect with me on other web platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr etc.

Thanks again! Keep reading.



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Feb 04 2009
2 Comments
Mobiles, Passing Thoughts, Technology

Gmail Tasks – Should It Be Tied to Google Calendar?

UPDATE: Here it is! Google is listening and they have now tied up Tasks with Calendar.

By now, many of us know that Gmail Tasks is now available on the iPhone and G1. An interesting competitive analysis was done of the most commonly used “to-do” tool – Paper.

Paper has a number of popular features:

  • Easy editing. Cross out with pen and write something new.
  • Works offline. You can read paper even when your PC is not connected to the internet.
  • Mobile. Fold paper and stick in pocket.
  • Instant boot up. Just pull paper out of pocket — don’t have to wait for it to load.

However, paper does have some limitations:

  • Limited availability. You don’t always have a pad of paper with you to write new things.
  • Not ubiquitous. If you leave a piece of paper in one pair of jeans, you can’t access it from the other jeans you’re currently wearing.
  • Difficult to organize. Eventually turns into a giant mess on your desk.

I am a big fan of mobile productivity and couldn’t agree more with this. And, the most compelling reason is that the phone makes all your data (emails, to-do’s, calendar, notes) portable and available on demand, on the go.

However, I would love to see more inter-operability between Tasks and Google’s other productivity apps, in particular Google Calendar. Tying up Tasks with Calendar will make for a more comprehensive productivity application, with ability to easily add emails as tasks and even get reminders through SMS. That should give users a more complete scheduling and GTD (Getting Things Done) application. The icing on the cake would be if Google voice-enables Tasks, giving users the ability to add Tasks and Reminders using voice. Just like ReQall (which is my current favorite reminder app).

UPDATE: Google Blogoscoped is reporting that a user has spotted the “Tasks” feature in his Google Calendar. Looks like someone is listening!



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Feb 03 2009
1 Comment
Business, Economics, Management, Passing Thoughts

Don’t Forget to Incentivize!

The Strait Times carries a piece of news today titled “$100 m boost for service”. It says:

A $100 million push to bring Singapore service to the next level has been launched.

The money will go towards funding training and other programmes for staff and supervisors in the retail, food and beverage, health and transport sectors.

It will also be used to pay for research on service, and to monitor customer satisfaction levels.

Also part of the plan: Promoting, publicising and recognising good service.

While this is a well-intended initiative, I hope there is sufficient focus on “incentivization” of good service. As I noted in my earlier post on the “built-in” service charges in Singapore restaurants, the practice doesn’t adequately encourage great customer service, because the “incentive” is guranteed. So, in my humble opinion, a more balanced approach which focuses both on behavioral changes and up-skilling, alongwith dangling a ‘carrot’ would be more useful.


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