Archives for November 2011

Starting another new blog, this time on Customer Experience

November 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

After decades of being customer-focused as a developer, product manager, and CTO, I took this up to the next level in my business in 2011. I focused on the “failure to thrive” problem that our customers had, and learned a great deal about them and their views. However, I can’t use the media from interviews: I have to start fresh with my own ideas.

This is my first blog entry on this topic. The goal of this blog will be to describe what I view as the customer service problem, whether solved by CRM, social media, or personal contact. Since I’m outside my multinational company home, I may stray into consumer and retail experience as well.
The other side of the blog is that I also am a customer who has experiences with companies large and small. I’ll point out the notable experiences that I have had, whether exceptionally good or bad.
Filed Under: Customer Experience

A new category on grammar

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I began this stream early in 2012 with my badhyphen blog, hosted by Blogger. I have now moved to my own consolidated WordPress-based site and blog. Even though badhyphen was a great name for a blog, it does not have the intuitive description that categories require: it is now just the “grammar” category  All of the content from that blog is now carried over to this new site, with the original dates. 

I’ve been working in the corporate world for over 35 years and have witnessed the steady decline of grammar in the workplace during that time. One could blame this on the internationalization of business and the fact that many people learned English as a second language. This is incorrect in my experience: many people in India have better English grammar and a wider vocabulary than native English-speakers in the United States.

People at Adobe knew me as very critical on grammar, as I believe that poor grammar and spelling reflects a negative perception of one’s intelligence and product quality. But I also believe that grammar and spelling are easy to fix if one is willing to learn and to subject your content to review and a proofreader, and possibly even an editor. I ran a short wiki page inside Adobe with my favorite spelling issues, especially misplaced hyphens. I’m now taking issues that I see in public content (corporate response emails, web pages, or presentations) and pointing them out so that we all can learn.

I will not use personal emails or social media, as that betrays a fundamental trust; they are also not channels where people give scrutiny to their content. Wikis are fair game, although I will always comment on the wiki itself or change it if I can.

I hope that you enjoy these and we all can learn from these examples. And DO point out when I make errors: I know I am not perfect and have much to learn. My son, a journalist, points out my errors frquently and I am always grateful.

P.S. The title of the blog should be said the same way that you would scold a dog when you say “bad dog.”

Filed Under: Grammar