4×4 Things You Didn’t Know About Me

I love this meme and I’ve been waiting for an open invitation, so Cam Beck, thanks!

4 Places I Have Been

• MASP, Milton Academy, MA
• Stuck in Madrid during a railroad workers’ strike
• New Orleans during a hurricane (not that hurricane)
• Iowa Lutheran Hospital, on the best day of my life

4 Jobs I Have Had

• Waitress at Friendly’s Restaurant (1st job: I lasted 1 month)
• Nanny
• Italian chef
• Drama teacher

4 Favorite Foods

• Deep fried chocolate truffles
• Herb cheese stuffed snow peas
• Risotto, any risotto
• My mom’s pumpkin pie
• (& Four Drinks: Pommery Brut champagne; Blue martinis; Long Island Iced Teas; Guinness)

4 Shows I DVR

I don’t DVR, but I do VCR:

• Lots of TCM
• Body Electric
• The New Yankee Workshop
• Anything Ken Burns

What don’t we know about you? Write your own 4×4 and drop a link back here!

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Welcome!

Welcome to members of FoHBoH* who are visiting after reading “Pain Points,” a featured blog article on FoHBoH’s home page. If you enjoyed the article, get email or RSS updates to this blog for free by using the subscription area at left.

*For everybody else: FoHBoH stands for “Front of House/ Back of House,” insider-lingo for the two types of restaurant staff positions. The site is the up-and-coming “Voice of the Global Restaurant Industry.”

If this is your first time to the Maximum Customer Experience Blog, let me give you a quick introduction.

My name is Kelly Erickson. I’m the owner and Creative Director of VisionPoints, The Experience Designers. I write this blog to help your business grow, through tips, strategies, and stories about real-world Experience Design. Whether you are an owner, manager, or other interested party (“stakeholder”), this will help you put Experience Design to work, today.

A few articles to get you started:

The Experience Design 101 series

See your world from an outsider’s Perspective: Dad and the Pickles at Einstein’s

Ready to put a little vroom in your Customer Experience for the New Year? Ten-Point Tune-Up for Interiors

Quick tips to act on right now? 25 Details That Count (More Than You Think)

Whether you’re part of a start-up, a small business, or an established company looking for new direction, I hope you’ll be part of many exciting conversations both here and on FoHBoH. Takeaway a doggie bag full of great ideas for growing your business, and grab your usual table a few times a week. I’d be glad to have you as a regular.

Dessert? Check out my About Page or visit VisionPoints, The Experience Designers to learn more.

And thanks, FoHBoH!

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Welcome!

Hello to all and Happy 2008! If you are reading this because you’ve heard from me lately, thank you. I’ve been doing a lot of reaching out (“pinging” if you’re a Keith Ferrazzi reader) this week and I’m glad to have you along. Subscribe by email or RSS at left, to learn and grow your business with the Maximum Customer Experience Blog!

My name is Kelly Erickson. I’m the owner and Creative Director of VisionPoints, The Experience Designers, specializing in strategic, integrated interior and graphic design for your firm. Our Vision is to create Maximum Customer Experiences for our clients’ companies, and with this blog I hope to extend the invitation to you, the reader: improve your Customer Experience and you will improve your bottom line.

I recommend the Experience Design 101 series as a starting point. Integrated design of all aspects of Customer Experience is what will power your firm’s best year ever in 2008, and this series of posts is designed to give you the basic terms, tips, and examples to really dig in to Experience Design.

At left you can also choose to read past articles in chronological order or by topic, if you’d like to catch up. My aim for the blog is to get good conversations started that increase everyone’s understanding of Experience Design, so comments are welcome.

Thanks for taking a look. I hope you’ll take away lots of great ideas for your business and help create a community here at the MCE Blog.

Read on, write back, and Go Where Your VisionPoints.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Skimming the Surface

I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free.” —Michelangelo Buonarroti

Shame on me for not carving enough.

Last night I wrote a one-page email (6 quick paragraphs) to a Very Important Potential Client. I keep odd hours so I was surprised when I got a response within a half-hour. Lightning-fast lesson—you’ve heard it before and I’m supposed to know it oh-so-well—his answer made it clear that he skimmed the first two paragraphs, and maybe the last paragraph. He guessed at my point, and sent a wonderfully prompt response that did not answer the question. Not at all.

Now what do I do? Write back and say thanks but you don’t get it?

Nope.

I take my lumps and write better emails in the future, and carefully work the issue into our next telephone conference without ever mentioning having tried to resolve things earlier.

We are all busy! Even with plenty at stake people rarely read every word. Get your main point out fast.

I’ve overstayed my welcome.

Writing is… like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.” —Elie Weisel

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson