What is service recovery?
by Alex on February 2, 2012
I’m glad that service recovery experiences like the one I just had still happen.
A screwed up order, a long wait, a happy customer. THIS is how you do service recovery.
Read the rest of "What is service recovery?"My year in cities 2011
by Alex on December 21, 2011
I’m able to write this post a little earlier than usual as my trip to Istanbul was my last trip of 2011. This is the fourth year I’ve done this summary but I used a new tool to come up with the miles. In the past I’ve used the awesome Great Circle Mapper but this year I stumbled across OpenFlights which is a bit more weapon’s grade. It spits out neat analysis of all the flights you enter, some of which I’ve listed below.
So for 2011 I did 29 flights covering 80,732 miles, down substantially from last year’s 103, 828 miles on 36 flights. But still a heck of a lot of travel. I made a conscious effort to travel less this year so I could spend more time with my wife and son and it seems to have worked.
Read the rest of "My year in cities 2011"Maj Gen A. G. Patterson CB DSO OBE MC – My Grandfather
by Alex on November 11, 2011
My Grandmother sent me this article a few years ago, I typed it up because it’s truly an amazing article. It’s a fellow soldier’s recollections of my Grandfather. My Grandfather was a Major General in the British Army and also a Gurkha. He was fearless and tough as nails and the more I hear about him, the more I wish I was able to get to know him better. This article really highlights his bravery and loyalty.
Read the rest of "Maj Gen A. G. Patterson CB DSO OBE MC – My Grandfather"The 13 things I’ve learned in 13 months as a dad
by Alex on November 7, 2011
I’ve been a dad for just over 13 months now. It’s been a truly wonderful experience so far but never in my life have I had to learn so much so quickly. I started thinking about some of the things I wish I had known at the beginning of this journey. After a few hours of scribbling I came up with the following 13 things I’ve learned as a new dad:
Read the rest of "The 13 things I’ve learned in 13 months as a dad"Epiphany
by Alex on April 27, 2011
I stumbled across something I wrote about 6 years ago and I think it’s still as pertinent as ever. I’m glad to say I heeded my own advice 2 years ago when I went off on my own.
Read the rest of "Epiphany"Cost of Apple products in the US vs UK
by Alex on March 25, 2011
I recently an order together on the UK Apple website and seen the total with tax and shipping when I had a thought. I’m going to the US in June, I wonder if it would be better to get all this stuff there. So I put together the exact same order, same specs, same equipment, etc on the US Apple website. After I got the total, again with local tax and shipping, I compared the two prices.
Read the rest of "Cost of Apple products in the US vs UK"What Wheel of Fortune taught me about branding
by Alex on February 21, 2011
Remember watching Wheel of Fortune (or “Fat People Guessing” as it’s sometimes know) back in the 80s? Of course you do. Well in the final round everyone picked the same letters R, S, T, L, N and E for the vowel. Why? Because more often than not the word or phrase contained those letters. Why? Cos they’re the most frequently appearing letters in the English language. It was a given, everybody did it, if you didn’t there was something wrong with you. From then on you relied on your wits to solve the Ivy League puzzles that Vanna White threw at you.
Read the rest of "What Wheel of Fortune taught me about branding"My year in cities 2010
by Alex on January 7, 2011
On our way home from California last month, somewhere over Greenland, I broke through the 100,000 mile mark for travel in 2010. In keeping with the past (2009, 2008) I’ve put together a “year in travel” review, for posterity if nothing else.
Read the rest of "My year in cities 2010"Speech feedback
by Alex on December 3, 2010
Instead of retweeting twitter mentions during conferences, I’ve decided to catalog, for my own benefit more than anything, Twitter feedback on my speeches. The first thing I do after I get off stage is talk to people, answer questions, share ideas, etc. The second thing is check Twitter. Twitter gives me almost instant feedback on how the crowd reacted to my content, delivery, personality, etc. It helps me refine my content and delivery for future events and often sparks off interesting conversations and debate.
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