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Being Green

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You may already know that if tap water cost the same as bottled water on a per gallon basis, a bath would cost $192. And that it takes 1.5 million barrels of oil per year to produce the bottled water consumed in the United States. That’s like filling every one of those bottles ¼ full of oil.

But until I started helping CamelBak Products with blogger outreach for its Sustainable Hydration Project, I didn’t, even though my family tries to be environmentally responsible. And I’m pretty sure my family isn’t unusual. We know there is an environmental cost, so we take care to recycle our soda cans and water bottles, but most of us just aren’t aware how much that bottled water is costing us financially as well as environmentally.

Now, it isn’t always easy being green, but in the case of drinking water, at least in the US, it really is. Tap water in most places in this country tastes just fine. Otherwise companies couldn’t filter it a little bit, put it in a disposable bottle and sell it at a huge mark-up. To compound the crime, most of those disposable plastic bottles aren’t recycled. To the tune of 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. Bottled water just doesn’t make sense. Environmentally or financially.

What can we do to reduce the cost, for ourselves and for our planet? There’s one simple thing that almost every one of us can do without much difficulty.

Instead of expensive bottled water, switch to tap water.  At home, on the road and in restaurants. My family has. We’re even bringing our reusable bottles with us on vacation. Still not going to be much use for airplane trips but just about everywhere else, we should be able to get clean, cool tap water.

And it will be even easier early next year when CamelBak installs hydration stations in more than 50 top outdoor and bike retailers where we’ll be able to refill our bottles for free.

See, sometimes it is easy being green.

Disclaimer: as noted in the post, I did some blogger outreach this month for the Sustainable Hydration Project. Also: I love the CamelBak bottles.

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Wrapping up loose threads — things remembered and wal-gate

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My posts on the Wal-Gate fiasco and the gift chain Things Remembered have both gotten a fair number of comments, so before I move on to my next topic, I wanted to wrap up the loose ends on both of these threads.

First, Things Remembered. A number of commenters wrote about their great experiences at the chain and thought I was perhaps too harsh, expected too much. Perhaps, but that is one of my points. Sometimes you do only get one chance with a potential customer. We should always strive to make every customer service moment a great moment. The day I was there, there was one clerk to wait on about four potential customers. He clearly didn’t want to be bothered with my oddball request. For all I really know, they DID have something that might have worked just fine, but he didn’t want to bother. It was too hard. Much easier to sell an engraved pen.

The other point, and you are welcome to disagree with me, is that companies should strive to deliver extraordinary customer service. That means meeting the customer’s needs, and helping them out even when the customer might end up buying from someone else on that day. It is all about recognizing the lifetime value of that customer, and recognizing those moments when extraordinary service is possible. Things Remembered has an opportunity to deliver extraordinary service by referring customers with oddball requests to other vendors. It won’t happen very often, but when it does, it will be a defining moment for the customer, as it was for me. Can a company be successful without delivering extraordinary service? Sure, but why settle?

To the company’s credit, a vp from Things Remembered did leave a comment on the original post. Will I shop there?  I am more likely to now, knowing that at least they are paying attention.

Final thoughts on the specific incidents in Wal-Gate: late Friday, both Richard Edelman’s and Steve Rubel’s blogs had news of the agency’s initiatives to fix the ethical problems surfaced during the whole nasty episode. They’re going to do an audit around the world to make sure they are applying best practices, everyone at the agency is going to have to attend an ethics in social media class, and the me2revolution team is going to be available in some fashion 24/7 to consult anyone in the agency on social media projects.

Umm. Why weren’t they doing these things already? And will it really be enough to change the agency culture? While it doesn’t seem like enough, I’ll reserve judgment on what they’ve said until we see what they do next. And I don’t mean whether they do the "Edelman University" or what great external experts they get to speak.

Let’s hope the next time we hear about a social media project driven by Edelman, we hear about a project that met everyone’s expectations: the client, the customers, the community and the agency’s PR colleagues and peers. For Edelman’s sake.

Because I do think they are now out of chances. They have got to get it right or get out.

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Pets, links and updates, September 22, 2006

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My friend Yvonne DiVita has started a new blog devoted to pets called Scratchings and Sniffings. The blog is sponsored by Purina. Early days yet, but it seems to have struck a chord with pet lovers if the comments are any indication. Check it out!

Speaking of pets, don’t forget to check out the Gourmet Station Get out of the doghouse contest. 

Happy Belated Birthday to Mike Driehorst of Mike’s Points.  Mike asked for links for his birthday, which was Monday. Enjoy!

Updates on ongoing sagas

  • Farscape still rocks.
  • Good Technology still hasn’t bothered to reply to me or do something to alleviate the problem. And yes, we had our weekly Verizon user call for support. Do I wish these folks could make the connection that GetGood Strategic Marketing is NOT related to Good Technology? Absolutely. Do I understand how they get from a problem with a download link http://get.good.com to http://www.getgood.com? Absolutely. We are conditioned to add the www. So, to repeat: if you have a mobile phone and are having problems with the "get.good  file," calling GetGood Strategic Marketing will not help. You need to contact Good Technology at www.good.com. Please.
  • Web site and blog redesign progresses. More in October.

And to start your weekend off right, do not miss this (first seen on Media Orchard and Just Shelley).

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Forget Things Remembered

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The store, that is.

You know, the ubiquitous customized gifts store found in just about every US mall. Why? Because it seems if they don’t sell it, they won’t help you find someone who does. Apparently, they just want you to buy the engraved gifts they sell….

Customer service at its very worst.

I went to the local store today to get some engraved plates for a trophy we are donating to our local Scottie club. I even lugged the trophy with me so we could pick the best alternative. The trophy base is an odd shape, so we needed a larger size than the store carries.

Well, they don’t do custom or larger plates AT ALL. When I asked where I could perhaps get something that would work, the clueless clerk said, maybe a trophy store. I asked if he knew of any local ones. "Oh no, we don’t know what the competition sells. Couldn’t tell you."

I certainly hope this was just a case of a stupid teenager on a Saturday afternoon. If instead, it is the company’s corporate policy to NOT help out potential customers when they don’t have the goods — ie it isn’t a competitive situation — then all I can say is, clueless. How hard would it be to have a list of local trophy stores that can handle the occasional oddball request? Not hard at all, I’d say.

They might even get an additional sale out of it. I was actually considering getting some small token to go along with the trophy that the yearly winner could keep. The trophy itself is a challenge trophy that must be won by the same person three times for permanent possession. I thought a small engraved ornament or something that the person could keep would be a nice keepsake.

I may or may not do that, but one thing I know for sure, if I do, I will not be purchasing it at Things Remembered. In fact, I doubt I’ll ever shop there again.

It may take me a bit longer and may not be as convenient, but if I need something engraved, I’m sure I can find somewhere else. 

Count on it.

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one hand, other hand: why companies need CRM

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July 7, 3:10pm EDT: Inbound telephone call from what must have been a monster.com call center or telemarketing vendor since the area code shown on caller ID was Broward County, Florida, not global HQ in NY nor the local (Maynard Mass.) office. Caller wondered about my business recruiting needs, was getting ready to do the pitch for monster.  Fair enough. Everybody has to make a living.

Except:

I currently have an ad running on monster.com for a marketing/pr assistant. Which my caller did not know. Hmmm…..

Now to be fair, we do have two businesses operating from our lovely Hudson headquarters, GetGood Strategic Marketing and my husband’s computer consulting business, Active Oak LLC. We share the phone number, which was of course in the ad listing 🙂

The monster.com telemarketer had to dial my number somehow, but even if it was a call list generated using a random number generator versus a directory, there is really no excuse, in my mind, for failing to check the numbers against the monster client list. Especially current advertisers 🙂

All that said, I am extremely happy with the responses to my ad, and am willing to forgive monster this slight lapse in business acumen. But…. were it a service that I was less happy with, and I got an equally clueless telemarketing call, I would be far less likely to let it go.

Lesson: if you are doing outbound prospecting or even customer service calling, you should be using an enterprisewide CRM. There is no excuse for a telemarketer not knowing someone they are calling is already a customer.

My .02

YMMV

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