The Cake That Took Six Months to Bake

Image by Vidiot

It all started with a baker’s dozen, 13 articles on Experience Design. Nearly six months later, the Maximum Customer Experience Blog blows out the 100th candle, and slowly but surely gathers a loyal band of readers, from business owners, to entrepreneurs, to writers, designers, and friends, and the category we all fall into: Customers, discussing Experience together.

I took my time with it, and I hope that’s worked for you. Thanks, dear reader, for taking a few minutes from your busy day to read, comment, and share the MCE Blog. Without you, it’s just a journal.

It’s My Party, So…

A round-up at a blog birthday is about as traditional as thanking your Mom and Dad at the Oscars, and I love a good tradition. Without further ado:

Top 7 Most Viewed Posts

1. Tip of the Week: Be Transparent, or, (One More Reason) Why I Heart Jeff Bezos

2. What’s Hot Now: 39 Inspirations With Sticking Power

3. 7 Secrets of McDonald’s Customer Experience

4. Leonardo DiCaprio Sent Me a Letter Today

5. Repeat After Me: I Do Not Need a Logo

6. Why TypePad Doesn’t Want Your Comments

7. Experience Design 101 (This is the one that started it all, folks, so if you feel like starting from the beginning, enjoy.)

Top 7 Search Terms

1. McDonald’s 90 second guarantee (*sigh* Not what one hopes to be known for)

2. Customer pain points

3. Kelly Erickson (People find me that way? They must be trying pretty hard)

4. Restaurant

5. McDonald’s secrets (I’m sensing a theme here)

6. Target Experience Design

7. Internal stakeholders

7 Strangest Search Terms, aka, The Long Tail at work

1. “i like to look at things upside down” (You, too?)

2. .typepad martinis (I’m sure this had to be a disappointment)

3. babes (Thank you)

4. cheese customer experience blog (Cheesy, sometimes…)

5. Manage Customer Experience Kelly (Yup)

6. Kelly Erickson Dallas (Nope)

7. Kelly Erickson sugar (Wrong again)

Kelly’s 7 Favorite Posts

1. When Is Experience: New York All You’d Expect From Paris?

2. Plain-English: “Pain Points” in Experience Design

3. Inspiration Points: Unapproachably Great

4. Lyndon’s Window

5. Tip of the Week: What Would a Kid Say?

6. Key Concepts in Experience Design

7. The Web Is a Great Big Yellow Pages and Five Other Tech Truths Your Customers Won’t Tell You

7 Things Your Small Business Needs for Maximum Customer Experience

1. Vision

2. Direction

3. Strategic research

4. Emphasis on the Details

5. Friends & Family

6. Propheteers

7. Innovation

& Integrated Experience Design!

Keep coming back, folks. As Lou Reed sings, it’s the Beginning of a Great Adventure. Glad you’re here.

And thanks, Mom and Dad.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

The Biggest P.S. in Blogging History:

7  13  All the Bloggers Who Rock This Customer’s Experience Every Time

(and a link to the one article you must not miss from each)

Amy, Write From Home

Brett, 6 Weeks

Brian, Copyblogger (without whom you might not be reading this)

Caroline, Caroline Middlebrook

Charlie, Trust Matters

Crystal, Big Bright Bulb

Darren, ProBlogger

David, Change Order

Harry, Men With Pens

Jacob, Just Creative Design

James, Men With Pens

Mark, Unconventional Thinking Blog

Mike, Simplenomics

Naomi, IttyBiz

Paul, Idea Sandbox

Scott, HELLO, My Name Is BLOG

Seth, Seth Godin’s Blog

Tim, Planning Startups Stories

For inspiring me, for challenging me, for your breathtaking insights, and most of all, for your humor. Thank you guys.

Looking for just the right thing for MCE’s birthday? Comment today, comment often, and subscribe to the Maximum Customer Experience Blog. The gift of your comments is precious to me.

You Have to Know Where You’re Going to Drive There

Allow me to give brief Driving Directions today: just turn right at Big Bright Bulb, “Ideas and Advice for the Smallest Businesses With the Smallest Budgets,” where I’m delighted to be discussing your Vision with a cool crowd. (Yes, yours! You’d better go!)

You know I’m obsessed with your success, both here at the MCE Blog and at VisionPoints. I had a great time guest-posting about one of the most essential aspects of your small venture for Crystal at Big Bright bulb.

I really connect with the message at Bx3—that there are more resources available right now than ever before for the smallest businesses, who have the agility to be able to run with new ideas before the Big Boys have even made it through exploratory committees. She wants to be a hub for microbusiness tips and tools, and she’s on her way. Crystal realized that one way to make my comments shorter was to ask if I’d like to write a guest post, and I jumped at the chance.

As Crystal says, “Whether you agree heartily, disagree with vigor, or are kinda meh about it, leave a comment so we can all know how you feel.”

See you there!

Thanks, Crystal.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Hot Trends in Customer Experience

Colors, Themes, and Bandwagons to Jump On and Get Inspired By

Having railed recently against the don’ts of dated design concepts, I couldn’t leave you all hanging. Herewith, the ideas that are shaping business right now. With a pencil and your Moleskine, take this list and brainstorm: How does Project Runway relate to what you do? Can the unbelievable viral phenomenon of Free Rice or Webkinz take your business to the next level? What are hot librarians doing to revitalize a staid non-profit model—is it a Meatball Sundae or a real reinvention?

How can you make these trends timeless, and make them your own?

In no particular order:

Trust (Short-termism at Trust Matters, How to Make Your Tuesday Super at Chaos Scenario, Bad Customer Service at Men With Pens)

Customer Engagement (hint: work on the human aspects of Customer Experience first!)

Project Runway (you get it or you don’t)

Turner Classic Movies (esp. TCM Underground Fridays, their web design, and graphics)

TED

Free Rice

Dennis Hopper for Ameriprise

Dunkin’ Donuts

Zappos

kuler

Keith Ferrazzi

the 1940s

blush

linen

peacock (this just in: very slick use of peacock at the redesigned Chris Brogan)

silver

pewter

lemongrass

tomato

cordovan

paper bags

Human Sigma

table tennis (Olympic trials in Philadelphia)

librarians (check out Library Crunch and David Lee King

space travel

active retirees

dark chocolate

Webkinz (much to my chagrin)

Tata Motors’ Nano car

Canadian bloggers (Buzz Canuck, [one of the] Men With Pens, and IttyBiz, for starters)

giving back (pros from Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, more pros from Fast Company, and cons from Thomas Sowell.)

tech backlash

sharing your PowerPoints with the world

List of Banished Words

Make My Logo Bigger Cream

Moleskine notebooks (Paul at Idea Sandbox has them systematized)

We Feel Fine

Hugh McLeod

and finally, for everything I missed, The Essentialist

Let’s hear from you: What fresh breezes are helping you build your business right now?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Got Your Eyes on the Prize?

I read Seth Godin’s blog daily, not for the twenty posts that breeze right by me, lovely but inessential, but because every 21st post is so simple, so wise, so within me already, that I feel like I’ve spent an hour in meditation.

This is just such a post. Beautiful.

Enjoy.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

The Unabridged Contents of my Nightstand

In no particular order…

Designing Identity, Marc English

Fantastic Folders and Exceptional Envelopes, Patricia Belyea and Jenny Sullivan

three issues of Interior Design magazine

two boxes of tissues

one empty caffeine-free Diet Coke can

The Delaware Business Ledger, January 2008

Service Included, Phoebe Damrosch*

1,000 Restaurant, Bar, & Cafe Graphics, Luke Herriott

Remarkable Restaurants, Francisco Asensio Cerver

Architectural Digest, November 2007

two issues of Fortune magazine

one black Slick Writer, fine point

two pads of small sticky notes

three rolls of 35mm film

Black and White and Two Color Design, Lesa Sawahata

1776, David McCullough

The Great Bridge, David McCullough

four issues of Dynamic Graphics

How magazine, February 2008

one lamp, one alarm clock, a bookmark my daughter gave me

8–10 pieces of scrap paper, two with middle-of-the-night blog ideas scrawled on them

a black Uniball Vision pen, micro point (Vision… what else?)

Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi**

Great Design Using Non-Traditional Materials, Sheree Clark and Wendy Lyons

a huge (2”) folder full of half-written blog articles and snippets of titles and ideas for future posts

one pair of Levi’s

Whoa.

Yah, yah. How does it all fit? It’s a huge three tier medical stand of some sort. (Shh! Medical-inspired is so 90s.)

I think you might just find a few good ideas for your own Experience Design learning sitting on my stand, or at least get an appreciation for all the stuff I stuff into my head in order to let the overflow of ideas pour onto these pages…

According to one source, 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school (http://www.bookpublishing.com via http://BookStatistics.com). Get inspired, and don’t let this happen to you!

What’s on your nightstand? Write your unabridged contents below so we can be inspired by your nighttime reading!

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

*I read Service Included last weekend in one sitting. I literally couldn’t put it down. It’s a memoir of the highest heights to which Experience Design can aspire, and the inevitable human reality behind even the finest facade. Gripping, catty, behind-the-scenes look at the theatre that a great restaurant can be. Think laterally, and you’ll find that Ms. Damrosch is giving tips you can use no matter what industry you’re in. Don’t miss the story of the man who raved about dessert.

**I’d like to shelve Keith Ferrazzi’s fabulous book, but almost every day since I bought and devoured it last summer I think, “let me just read that one part again,” or, “what was it he said about X?” I can’t put it on the big shelves, so far away in the living room, because I’m still coming back for his fresh perspective on the intermingling of business and relationships in this brave new Experience economy, over and over again. You will, too. If there’s one book on my stand that you ought to own, it’s this one.

Dying to Know What the PODB Is?

Loyal readers, please click on over to Capable Blog, “the semi-unofficial side project, hobby, labour of love etc etc of Capable People founder Shaun Sayers,” devoted to musings on Quality Improvement, dissecting said procedures, and discussing results.

When Shaun emailed that he saw Experience Design as one of “the new battlegrounds for business,” I thought, “this guy really knows how to flatter an author grasp one of the fundamentals of the New Economy,” so of course I was glad to oblige with a guest post. TQM and I are old friends. If you think ISO is something from a personal ad, Shaun can help you out with that, real gently. Plus his dogs are beautiful.

It was neat going through Shaun’s work to see the refinements that have taken place in QC since the long ago when I was a Deming devotee, and writing about going beyond Quality Control to create value in the Customer Experience.

I might have rattled the cage a little bit. Let me know what you think!

; )

Thanks, Shaun.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

It Could Be Worse…

Watch Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.

(Order at amazon if you can’t get him on television where you are.)

The first time you watch, you will feel for the poor restaurant owners.

The second time you watch, you’ll realize he’s bloody brilliant, and trying desperately to help people who only half think they want help.

The third time you watch, you’ll discover he’s talking to you. Whatever your business may be, Gordon Ramsay is giving advice you can take.

Warning: Much foul language, of the most foul kind. Do not watch with your kids. Do not use this as an excuse not to watch.

You can always work with VisionPoints, to get your own nightmares cured. Sorry, we don’t swear like Gordon Ramsay, not even for pay.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

But And How Do You Know It’s the Best?

It has taken me some time to realize how earth-shattering this tip from master connector Keith Ferrazzi was. Use it and it will change your writing, too:

(Paraphrasing) Don’t use “but” in your writing any more. Use “and.”

The simplest, best writing tweak ever. Working on a website, I stopped in mid-sentence a moment ago, backed up, and made that tiny edit. The sentence was transformed. Brilliant.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

P.S. Since reading and being changed by it, I’ve lost my bookmark to this blog entry (which means, horrors! I can’t completely guarantee it was Keith’s tip). If anyone has the url, please email me and I’ll update the post. Thanks.

Scott Who? HELLO…

From Scott Ginsberg, of HELLO, my name is Scott fame, comes a post I couldn’t resist writing about myself.

This is a great blog article you do not want to miss. Out of Scott’s 101 Ways to Create a Powerful Web Presence, I’ll bet you can find at least 20 to work on in the new year—I know I did! (And check out my response, Top 10 Ways for Smaller Firms to Create a Powerful Web Presence (in the comments section), while you’re there.)

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson