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Do you love the ingenious? Well, here’s something ingenious that will appeal to your green soul and your inner child, the Optibike. Craig Weakley, the rider, takes the electric assist bicycle up Pike’s Peak, climbing 7,200 feet over 19 miles in about 90 minutes. This is a reality test that smashes preconceptions about the geek factor of powered bicycles.

Yet, Optibike’s website buries this video and others in a plan of tell over show. The multimedia capabilities of the web make showing easier. Showing is always more powerful than telling. Here, when you’ve got it, flaunt it.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

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Are you intuitively defensive about salespeople?

You know the hard hand shake, touch on the elbow, strong look in the eyes, 30-second pitch regardless of social circumstances salesperson.

Google has some 360,000 citations about “elevator speech,” mostly of the “craft an effective elevator speech kind.”

Ben McConnell talks at SWOM about the feeling of being trapped by people who don’t know when not to sell. Tara Tollefson writes about the unwanted results of a too hard-pressed elevator speech:

“People can smell desperation and inauthenticity. They know when you’re trying to meet a sales quota instead of trying to help them. It makes people wonder if you even believe in your own product or business”

McConnell describes the difference between meeting and selling. Turn on the latter inappropriately or too soon and any chance of a relationship fades quickly.

I call it “elevator speech terrorism.”

Jack

Where do you go that you expect and accept poor service?

Rex Weaver raised the question at SWOM (Society for Word of Mouth):

“What product or service have you used that customer service didn’t matter?”

The responses were wide ranging from pay telephones (remember them?) to tax authorities. What is it about public services missing the point about service? Weaver asks whether the price should determine the service. Should you expect service at a fast food restaurant? Does scarcity make us subjugate ourselves to poor service?

Frankly, I’m not fond of self-service groceries. I don’t like hunting for the icon for the Braeburn apples that are on sale versus the Galas that are full price. At the other extreme, Sunset Foods is, to my experience, the ultimate pampering grocer. You’re greeted at the checkout. Your items are unloaded to the checkout counter for you. Everything is tidily bagged (you do use reusable bags, right?) Then, you are offered help to your car. Sunset Foods is two towns away so I don’t get there often but I really like it.

When service is discourteous, I tend to compensate my own behavior with exaggerated politeness. My only faint hope is that the service person somehow struggles beyond the complex “WTF!” thought that occupies so much of his or her mind.

As consumers, we expect little but basic courtesy and service from so many areas (and not even that much from some). It’s why those that consistently exceed expectations gain loyal customers and positive word-of-mouth.

If everyone were at least polite then it would be more difficult achieving differentiation based on service quality.

What about you? Where to you expect and accept poor service? What do you do when you are dissatisfied?

How do you sign off an email? Casually? Formally? Flippantly? Liz Danzico reminds us that first impressions aren’t as important as the last impression you leave.

“Last impressions — whether they’re with customer service, an online shopping experience, or a blind date — are the ones we remember. They’re the ones that keep us coming back.”

Even to your last words in an email. Danzico breaks down closing lines in a quadrant from the familiar to the unfamiliar from the natural to the self-conscious. Are you leaving the right last impression?