I first started noticing this shop because of the number of times they’ve been mentioned on bridal forums. I had expected a positive experience there, since forumers alluded to a wide range of selections, and competitive prices, in various forum threads. Instead, I felt highly uncomfortable in the shop.

From the moment I stepped in, till the moment I left, all I heard were the words “my dear”. The owner herself (Elsie), and her shop assistants, all had this bloody annoying habit of calling every single customer “my dear”.

Please wait, my dear, I’ll try to look for dresses in that color for you.

Sorry to keep you waiting, my dear, here are the dresses. But the dressing room is occupied, so please wait, okay, my dear?

No, my dear, we don’t sell dresses, only rental. And here are our packages, my dear.

My dear, you can go into the dressing room now. Do you need help to zip up, my dear?

I think this dress looks better on you, my dear.

Thanks for coming, my dear! Here’s my name card, my dear. Call me again!

Excuse me, are we like, best friends? I’m not sure what I’ve done to give you that impression, but I’m pretty sure that calling someone “my dear” is something not done on the first meeting.

I’ll answer to almost anything but PUHLEEZE, I beg of you!!!  — Don’t call me “Dear.” The only thing worse than “Dear” is “My Dear.” “My Dear” is like Lee Press-on Nailsscraping along the 405 at 110 MPH.

Blame Margaret Mitchell. When Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, “Frankly, My Dear, I don’t give a damn,”  he was lying. Of course Rhett gave a damn. But like everyone who calls anyone “My Dear,” Rhett was angry. “My Dear” – was code for: “Damn you, Scarlett O’Hara — you gorgeous, headstrong bitch: I can’t control you!”

Bile, hate and vitriol oozes out of “My Dear.” “My Dear” is condescending. It’s passive-aggressive. Nobody is smiling when they say, “My Dear.” When they call you, their “Dear,” they’re annoyed.  “My Dear” is hostile. There is nothing dear about “Dear” and “My” is stifling and possessive with a noxious whiff of faux-superiority.

- Lisa Medway, “Frankly, My Dear — Don’t Call Me My Dear”

The author says that calling someone “my dear” is often condescending and gives the person who uses it an air of faux-superiority. And I agree whole-heartedly. This can be easily rectified if only they had bothered to put in a little bit of effort.

So, my dear Bridal Closet: When you greet customers at the door, do try to introduce yourself like this, instead:

Hi, I’m Elsie / Felicia / whoever. Welcome to Bridal Closet! How may I address you?

Then make the effort to remember the names.

Judging from the amount of exposure you get through bridal forums, I know that you meet a lot of people everyday, but calling them “my dear” does not endear you to them, and neither does it make them feel warm and welcomed at your shop. And if you’ve heard of personalized service, you’ll know that putting in that little bit of effort will go a very long way.

Watch this video on how personalized service can lead to a happy customer who will help you sell your brand:

Do watch the rest of Joseph Michelli’s 8-part series on Customer Experience, if you’re interested to know how you can improve customers’ experience with your company.

Psst. Your website could do with some updating too.

It’s been a while since I watched a locally produced reality show, because many of them simply do not appeal to me, what with the more prominent reality shows in recent years being that of scantily-clad bimbos, and of a seductress getting hunky men to fight over her, etc. It may be good entertainment, but it definitely holds no value if you are looking for real content.

Then came along ‘The Rookie’. This internet-popularized reality show shown online is actually a Nokia campaign aimed at promoting the Nokia E72 executive phone. This handset is definitely a sleek-looking, high performance mobile phone, that will appeal to a range of audience, from business owners, to yuppies, to social-networking fans, to gadget-loving youths! The Nokia E72 comes in 4 classy colours: Zodium black, Metal grey, Topaz brown, and White.

Fashioned in a similar way to Donald Trump’s ‘The Apprentice’,  this show, hosted by Bobby Tonelli, caught my eye because of the set of challenges that the Rookies had to complete. The challenges put to test their business acumen, strategic planning skills, creative talents, interpersonal relationships and team play. The 12 contestants, grouped into Team Alpha and Team Bravo, had to work together to complete the challenges, while also trying to shine as individuals. Perfect setting for organizational politics? YES!

While I’m not saying that  ‘The Rookie’ or Nokia promoted politics within work teams, I thought that this was a pretty good portrayal of what real work life is all about. The contestants, some of whom were undergraduates or even fresh grads (and the show’s viewers alike) were spared no disillusionments, nor were they dished sugar-coated scenarios of what working in an organization might be like.

Many-a-time while watching the show, I found myself agreeing or disagreeing with what contestants did, and thinking about what could’ve been done better, or what I would do instead – now did someone say engaging and intellectual? One thing that I’m surprised with, however, is that none of these contestants were actively participating in online conversations, despite the many who were talking about them on Twitter, using the #rookiesg hashtag. But that’s probably just the social media consultant in me speaking.

With tight budgets, looming deadlines, difficult ‘client’ demands, and clashing ambitions, the contestants each tried to impress the judges, and also garner votes of confidence from the audience, who had chances to interact with the show by predicting the eventual winner of this reality show. Audiences who predicted the right winner would stand to win themselves a set of the drool-worthy Nokia E72, which was also used by all the contestants in their communications during the show.

Now tell me you don’t already feel empowered by just looking at this phone! With the Nokia Messaging instant messaging feature and its business communications solutions, it takes only 3 simple steps to sync up as many as 10 email accounts (it supports Google Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, MS Exchange mail servers and even Lotus Notes!) so that you can always be connected via email. A dream come true for all workaholics who like to travel light without notebooks! Also awesome for social networking lovers like me, cos the Nokia E72 allows you to download apps that support your social needs, such as Skype, Snaptu, Gravity, Facebook, and many many more!

Voted Editor’s Choice for Best Lifestyle Mobile Phone by HWM and HardwareZone.com, and also CNET Asia’s Reader’s Choice, the  Nokia E72 is definitely a strong contestant in the arena of business mobile phones.

Oops, pardon my inner geek for gushing about this phone - ‘The Rookie’ has concluded its final episode, and has crowned the winner at the finale held at Zouk last Saturday. 6 finalists appeared at the finale, with 4 eventual winners crowned and awarded highly-coveted internships at major brands and companies like Nokia, Microsoft, Standard Chartered and Zouk.

Find out who the four are, and follow the drama, the adrenaline highs, the challenges, the business ideas, the politics, and the kanchiong-ness at ‘The Rookie’ . There are also clips from ‘Behind the scenes’ online, at the website, so don’t miss out on what everyone’s been talking about!

[This advertorial entry was written in support of Nokia's The Rookie Campaign, and may contain statements that are of the author's own opinions, which neither reflect that of Nokia and its partner companies for this show, nor that of her own employer or its clients.]

I ordered pizza from Domino’s Singapore yesterday for lunch, and had really great experience every step of the way – from the phone operator who took my order, to the delivery man, to the manager who followed up with me because they forgot to pack one of the items in my order (they had it re-delivered within 30 minutes).

Today, I received a phone call from a customer service person, who wanted me to do a “2-minute survey” on my experience with Domino’s yesterday. Great! I’m happy to oblige, because I had a great experience.

She started off well, informing me of the purpose of her call. Then we delved right into the survey. The first question was something like:

“Which of the following 2 would you consider to be of greatest importance to you when choosing a pizza delivery service?”

1. Delivery within 30-minutes
2. Quality of pizza
3. … *I tuned out* (There were a total of 5 or 6 on her list)

Companies who want to get feedback on users’ experience ought to do it online! Please consider that by the time the tele-surveyor gets to the 3rd or 4th item on the list, your target respondent might have forgotten what the first 2 items were.

Here’s some free (and easy to implement) advice:

When your rider delivers the pizza, pass the customer a brochure that tells them that if they participate in an online a customer service survey (using a code on the receipt), they stand to win a value meal for 3 pax worth $30 (1 winner daily)!

That way, you save on headcount (telephone surveyors), and you get all the data compiled for you automatically. Plus, you get more people visiting your website, and then you can work on your conversion from those visits.

In case you’re wondering how the survey went, I asked her if she had the survey online, cos I can’t focus on the long list she was reading out to me. She apologized, thanked me politely, and we ended the call. Perhaps someone from Domino’s will contact me by email / Twitter to do the survey online instead.

How many times have you meant exactly what you’d written?

How many times have you really rolled on the floor while laughing when you said ‘ROFL’? Did you really laugh out loud when the word ‘LOL’ slipped out on your keyboard?

Probably ZERO to all the above questions.

This is the face of the serial internet surfer or the Social Media Addict.

And these are the faces corresponding to the various expressions we use frequently on the internet:

What’s yours like?

(via @iammyy)

Stop Writing on My Wall. Brilliant ad campaign by Sony Vaio. If it didn’t get your attention, you’re probably not sufficiently addicted to Social Media.

So, are you a Social Media addict? I know I am! But as they say, the first step to recovery is to admit it!

In fact, the aforementioned service, gothere.sg, has had examplary open communication with its users via Twitter. People who have problems with the service or criticize it, receive responses inquiring about the status of the problems, so that there can be further investigations to improve the service.

Likewise, this morning I was pleasantly surprised to receive a comment on my blog, from the founder of Statuzer, a Twitter/SNS client, on the post I wrote last night, in which I did point out the shortcomings of their product. The comment surprised me because:

1. Statuzer responded so quickly – great media monitoring habits?
2. Statuzer’s founder humbly said that he’ll work on improvements, and invited me to contact him should I have any further feedback.

This wasn’t the first time that he’d taken the initiative to contact me – prior to this, he did contact me when I Tweeted that I was having problems with installation of Statuzer (eventually I realized it was AdobeAIR’s problem, and not the Statuzer client that was at fault).

Coming back to the problem at hand, Victor Tan of vic.sg wrote that Tweet.sg never did care about its reputation, as it had no intention of monetizing it. In fact, as Victor pointed out, Tweet.sg has been recommending other similar services to Tweet.sg users who were disatisfied with its service.

While I do agree that people have the option to leave a free service if they are unhappy with the admins, developers, or the service itself, and that not everyone is cut out to be customer-oriented or have a pleasant disposition, in the end the question is really about how successfully we can dissociate a PR disaster from the rest of our life.

As someone who has made errors prior in reputation management, I’d say that it’s completely impossible. Till this day, I still have people sending me hatemail about the Ping.sg saga of a year ago. While I decline to further comment on that issue, I do feel that I’ve learnt a lot in the year past. That ink stain will probably be a permanent mark on my life’s canvas, but a worse situation would be if one never learns.

This desktop app, called Statuzer, is a pretty nifty app that can possibly rival the hugely popular Tweetdeck once it’s got a few of its bugs ironed out.

Tweetdeck users probably won’t have much trouble switching over to Statuzer, because your Statuzer screen, when expanded, can be divided into three, just as Tweetdeck can – Latest Tweets from people you follow, Replies / Mentions, and Direct Messages.

Here are some things I like about Statuzer:

1. Ping.fm integration: Statuzer allows you to update both Twitter and Ping.fm, which opens up the possibility of updating so many other social network sites simultaneously!
   a
   How to do this:
   a. Set up a Ping.fm account,
   b. Set your Ping.fm account to update Twitter and Plurk, by default

   c. Go to ping.fm/key and copy the ‘Desktop/Web key’ that you see on the screen:
   
   d. Go to your Statuzer app > Settings > Prefs > Accounts > Ping.fm user key, and paste the ‘Desktop/Web key’ you just obtained in step c into the “User key” box. Click “OK”.
   
   e. To make sure Statuzer updates your Ping.fm profile, ensure that the is highlighted, as below:
   

   a

2. Twitpic and YouTube preview: If someone posts a YouTube or Twitpic link, you’ll be able to see a decent-sized picture within your Statuzer app, without having to click on anything.
   a
   
3. Check whether a person is following you or not: Click on someone’s profile pic in Statuzer, and you will come to a screen on the app itself, which looks like this:
   a
   
4. Differentiating Replies and Mentions: Under the “Replies/Mentions column”, there are markers to tell you whether a Tweet is a Reply or a Mention.
   a
   a
5. Search Tweets: You can search Tweets of people you follow, your Tweets, and even direct messages, by keying in your search term into the grey box (with blue highlight) at the top of each column. Although it still seems a little buggy, it will work out fine once they’re out of Beta, I’m sure!
   a
   a
6. Option to not play sounds: Tweetdeck doesn’t allow this at the moment. Highly annoying.
   a
7. Statuzer minimizes to Taskbar: Less distracting. ‘Nuff said.

Here are some buggy things about Statuzer:

1. After using the search feature on Statuzer, I can’t seem to revert to the original column. Then again, Tweetdeck’s Search function is also buggy. Once I search for a term, it keeps notifying me of new Tweets that match my search term. And I can’t seem to switch it off!
   a
2. Statuzer doesn’t allow me to have up to 100 updates in each column, which Tweetdeck allows.

I’m sure there are other bugs, but I’ve just begun playing with Statuzer tonight! Despite all the bugs, I’m just glad that I can use it to update Plurk and Twitter simultaneously!

Threaded conversations allow you to keep track of what people are saying in response to your post, and even allows you to conduct polls and surveys, as shown in the picture. We can use Plurk to source for information, or get feedback about certain issues.

It also makes it easier for people to reply to your threads, knowing that their response will never get lost, unlike in what I call the Twitter-mess.

Twitter is great because of the wealth of information it offers, if you follow the right people. You can easily find Tweeters who have the same interests or work in the same field as you do. A lot of people read and share articles relevant to work, thereby making it one of the best social networking service (SNS) for people to share information, and obtain information without having to actively search for it.

Of course, people do Tweet about things not related to work or industries (e.g. for me, social media related things and things that interest me about the PR industry) or simply put, bits and pieces of info that are not useful in any way, but are interesting to read and respond to. For example:

Why it’s important to date in parallel. http://bit.ly/lxt5s

The article, like many others on Twitter, is hilarious. Naturally, people respond, showing their delight, amusement, or agreement with something funny that another Tweeter has posted.

Unfortunately, they respond in manners such as below:

4 hrs after you’ve posted a funny story and it’s not so funny anymore:
I’m sorry, what? What was funny? I don’t remember anymore!

And yonks and 2705 Tweets later, someone replies:
I’d agree too, except I don’t know what you’re agreeing to.

And as always, someone with a delayed laughter mechanism:
I just Tweeted that my pet cat died and I’m really feeling godawful, but that’s okay, just go ahead, continue to laugh at the joke I told 7hrs ago.

I get a lot of such responses, and frankly, my dear, it irks the hell out of me. So here are some lessons that you can take.

Twitter 101: How to reply to a Tweet

Re-using the example above,

Good replies would look like any of the following:

Showing amusement / delight:

That’s so funny! RT @mengwong why it’s important to date in parallel. http://bit.ly/lxt5s

Showing agreement:

I agree, @mengwong! Who could’ve known you could use Physics to explain the Science of Dating, eh?

Showing amusement / delight:

LOL @mengwong! Good article! http://bit.ly/lxt5s

Remember – the whole point of social media is to interact, so don’t kill conversations by giving dead-end answers which leave the person you’re talking to confused, baffled, irritated or frustrated because he/she doesn’t know what you’re referring to!

Link the reply back to the Tweet you are replying to!

And so this concludes today’s lesson for Twitter 101.

So go forth and practise!

I wrote them, asking if they would be allowing users to add in their own social services, like Plurk, in the signatures. At that point in time, they’d pretty much covered everything, in addition to MSN, Google Talk and Skype. But since Plurk is part of my social media portfolio, I really wanted to be able to add that in as well!

After I wrote them, I received an email response within 6 hours, thanking me for the suggestion, and affirming, “Yes! We’ll be including Plurk!”

Wow, I thought. So it was as simple as “Ask, and you shall receive”? I was pretty impressed, but soon forgot all about it, figuring that Firefox would remind me when there’s a new update to an Add-on that I was using.

Fast forward to May 13, I received a surprising email from WiseStamp again:

At this point, the only thought I had was, Wow! I’m not just impressed, but completely blown away! This is a great example (of not just saying, but of doing) of how companies can stay close to their customers, users, and fans.

1. Reply to all comments, emails, etc.
2. Listen to suggestions and feedback
3. Act upon suggestions and feedback
4. Inform users that you have acted upon it
5. Ask for a plug! Ask, and you shall receive!

For more information about the new features of WiseStamp 1.2, please check out their blog!

(Image by Berbux)

I don’t know if there is a god, or if there are gods. I do not rule out the possibility of his/her/their existence, but I’m skeptical mostly. Having grown up in a Buddhist / Taoist environment, and having been exposed to Christianity and Islam (in fact, I was once Christian, although not a very good one), I guess I’ve formed my own ideas about religions.

I’m accepting (not just tolerating) of all religions. And I’m not opposed to the notion of religion, nor the practise of it. I am, however, against meaningless rituals that harm people, and aggressive evangelism.

I believe that religion first came about as a means for rulers of ancient times to control their subjects. It’s plausible. But I digress. Religion encourages people to do good. However, more often than not, what we see is fanticism and obsession with the rites and with evangelising, which easily make its practisers and faith-followers socially unaccepted in secular/non-religious social circles.

Perhaps it’s the way people promote certain religions. I guess it all boils down to presentation and communication skills. A sales trainer once told me, “Don’t sell your product. Make people want to buy it.”

Perhaps evangelism is precisely that – marketing of a faith. And in my books, all religious people fail in that.