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December 29, 2007
Renaissance Institute hosts 27th New Year's weekend
Each year it turns Charleston, South Carolina into a productive combination of Hollywood, Harvard and The Hague. For four days, King and Meeting streets are full of famous faces. You see big name tags highlighting first names. There are four weekends a year--but this is the big traditional one which attracts both big name achievers and confident lesser-knowns with big ideas. Motto: "light not heat". See this by a North Carolina tech publisher-editor who didn't get invited--but perhaps should have been.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
New sane customer service blog
New to us, anyway, and it's thoughtful and interesting: Service Untitled. One category is "angry customers". Lots of practical advice and tips applicable to pure services and product-service mixes. Who are these guys?
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)
December 28, 2007
The Good, The Bad and The Congressman-Needs-The-Press-Release.
China bills in 110th Congress. Trade, IP protection and safe food and toys in about 100 items. As with most legislation, some are duplicative of each other, and some are headed nowhere fast. Via BeSpacific, see the US-China Business Council's bare bones but useful summary: 110th Congress, First Session, "Legislation Related to China" (i.e., 2007 activity).
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:26 PM | Comments (0)
Pakistan opposition leader Bhutto is assassinated.
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP)- Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday by an attacker who shot her after a campaign rally and then blew himself up. Her death stoked new chaos across the nuclear-armed nation, an important U.S. ally in the war on terrorism. [more]
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
Television, clients, real lawyering and real life.
Are clients, jurors, and even lawyers and judges watching a little too much Lawyer TV? Here's a gem we almost missed by practicing lawyer-journalist Craig Williams at his highly regarded May It Please the Court. Also a commercial trial lawyer, Craig spends lots of time in court. See "Boston Legal Syndrome Creeps Into The Courtroom".
Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
December 27, 2007
Blawg Review #140
This week's Blawg Review (#140) is hosted by E-Commerce Law.
Posted by Brooke Powell at 06:40 AM | Comments (0)
Redux: "Ease-of-Use Awards" For Law Firms?
What if the services sector competed for clients on the basis of "ease-of-use"?
Develop and apply ease-of-use concepts to pure services? Our clients' services? Our services?
Sure, and why not?
Consider for a moment just products. Last year, Cincinnati-based The Folgers Coffee Company, a P&G company with extensive operations in New Orleans, was awarded an Ease-of-Use Commendation by the Arthritis Foundation for its AromaSeal™ Canister. If you're a Folgers® drinker, you notice that Folgers® added an easy-to-peel tin freshness seal (no need for a can-opener), a new "snap-tight" lid and even a grip on its plastic red can. The great companies many of us represent do
spend money and expertise on making their goods, equipment and products usable. Think about your car, your luggage, your TV remote (well, strike that one), your watch and even grips on household tools. Think about Apple, Dell and Microsoft. Each year they think through your experience with their products and try to make it better. Continuous improvement models for "things." Folgers® did it for coffee cans. IBM and CISCO have ease-of-use programs for the products they sell.
Develop and apply ease-of-use concepts to pure services? Our clients' services? Our services? Sure, why not? It's probably coming anyway, even while it will be infinitely harder to do for services than for products. WAC? has noted before that even corporate clients that sell goods see themselves as selling solutions and not products. In 2004, services sold alone or as support features to the sale of goods and products accounted for over 65% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the US, 50% of the United Kingdom's GDP and 90% of Hong Kong's. Even products sold by IBM and CISCO, now chiefly service companies, are part of a services-products mix in which the services component is the main event.
Law firms, of course, have always sold services. And we are a small but powerful engine in the growth of the services sector. We strategize with and guide big clients every day. While that's all going on--day in and day out--what is it like for the client to work with you and yours? Are clients experiencing a team--or hearing and seeing isolated acts by talented but soul-less techies? Do you make reports and communications short, easy and to the point? Who gets copied openly so clients don't have to guess about who knows what? Is it fun (yeah, we just said "fun") to work with your firm? How are your logistics for client meetings, travel and lodging? Do you make life easier? Or harder? Are you accessible 24/7? In short, aside from the technical aspects of your service (i.e., the client "is safe"), do your clients "feel safe"?
What if law firms--or any other service provider for that matter--"thought through," applied and constantly improved the delivery of our services and how clients really experience them?
And then competed on it...?
JDH/HHO April 2007
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:33 AM | Comments (0)
Blogging in Cuba is different.
So you've got your blog, your pet ideas, and you write about them. But you think you've got sand? As WAC? understands it, blogs are supposed to be out-front journals, i.e., honest and brave, right? What are you willing to risk to get your ideas out there? Here's a must-see from WSJ.com called "Cuban Revolution" about a Havana-bred woman, 32, who blogs from Cuba about Cuba.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:26 AM | Comments (0)
December 26, 2007
China invading
So how are those Mandarin classes going? AP: "China controlling more of U.S. economy". Excerpt:
China has been making increasingly aggressive investments in some of the world's most prestigious financial companies in recent months — most of them American. Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, Blackstone Group and Britain's Barclays have all negotiated major stakes by Chinese government-controlled investment funds.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
December 24, 2007
Maria Palma: Best customer service posts of 2007
Customers Are Always--2007 Year in Review.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 AM | Comments (1)
December 23, 2007
No sleep 'til Christmas
Been quite a year. The sub-prime mortgage crash rippled through other markets, international approval of America has remained at a steady low for nearly 5 years now, and WAC? met Parker Posey on his way to Europe. Now we're travelling again. Which these days, we think, lawyers should be doing anyway to service clients. So we're shutting down our Palo Alto-based "news division" until the 26th--unless, of course, in the next couple of days, North Korea accidently destroys Japan, Ron Paul picks up 30 points in the polls, Time Magazine declares lawyers, politicians or executive headhunters the most admired humans on earth, or Keith Richards passes from over-eating.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 03:07 PM | Comments (0)