Oh, Behave…

Posted by random olio

Can you change my feelings and sway me? Seth Godin says: “The only purpose of ‘customer service’…is to change feelings.” I believe him, well almost. I think it should be a part of customer service. We each have a right to be treated as humans, connect with individuals, and enjoy our customer experience. Yet, so often, our experience has little to no human contact, no personal connection, and feels robotic. Where did I find this quote from Godin? I came across this blog post from back in October while thinking about the idea of “service.” The full quote says:

“The only purpose of ‘customer service’…is to change feelings. Not the facts, but the way your customer feels. The facts might be the price, or a return, or how long someone had to wait for service. Sometimes changing the facts is a shortcut to changing feelings, but not always, and changing the facts alone is not always sufficient anyway.”

Imagine if every individual that worked in some type of service environment made it their mission to impact, change the mind of, or shift the thought of at least one customer a day. In the grand scheme of things that would not be that hard, and maybe that is already happening in every company in the world. But, what if those interactions were shared, and we saw the ripple effect? What if we did know of the impact we had each day, or that we changed how an individual felt? Would we do more to ensure that our behavior happened more often? If we had positive reinforcement of our behavior would that start a domino effect?

There are businesses out there that are changing the nature of customer service. Their impact could mean we eventually have a better customer experience, but I shudder as I think about the impact of technology on service. On the one side you might have a more efficient, yet robotic process, allowing the customer to track down their own answer. In many cases, this works. When a customer does not find their own answer, then it is often a dead-end. When the situation needs a personal touch, a ruffled edge smoothed, or when the issue needs live problem solving that only a human can answer, where is that service? Many companies would say it is too costly to provide that kind of service, yet what does that say about the true value of their customer?

What would it truly take to bring back the human interaction and accountability of service? Is customer service heading in the direction of Wall-E?

Less money in your paycheck?

Posted by random olio

Unless you make buttloads of cash, you might have been scratching your head and wondering why your paycheck was considerably smaller this week. I am not complaining, as it is what it is. Politics aside we could be in a worse situation where we are out of even more money. Let’s face it, our country is in major debt and that is not going away anytime soon.

In case you do not know the specifics, the Social Security payroll tax rate is currently 12.4%. Employers pay 6.2%, and for the past two years employees have paid a reduced rate of 4.2%. With the recent fiscal cliff changes, that reduction will now go back to the normal 6.2% which means that employees will now pay 2% more Social Security tax (as we did in 2010). This is also true for those who are self-employed (if you make more than $433). According to Kiplinger: “Originally a one-year break, the holiday was extended at the last minute to cover 2012. Extending it again to cover 2013 would have cost about $100 billion…”

As an example: if you make $50,000 a year, you will now take home $1000 less a year, or about $38 a paycheck (about $80 less a month). If you are a dual income family, the amount is much higher of what will be lost in your take home pay.

A question: If I am paying more tax now in 2013, does that mean I will have a higher refund in 2014 due to paying more taxes now? The answer: Yes. Depending on your allowances. Since I am not the expert, here is Kiplinger’s answer: “By eliminating overwithholding of income tax, the average taxpayer who normally gets a refund can both defeat the paycheck-shrinking impact of higher payroll taxes and add a couple thousand dollars to 2013 take-home pay. (Yes, you’ll be giving up a fat refund in 2014, but wouldn’t you rather get your money when you earn it?)” Complete answer, full article, and their calculators.

What I find odd is that the Social Security website has not been updated with the 2013 rates and details. Kind of sad considering my company was able to make changes in their system to ensure that the Federal government received the extra 2% out of the first paychecks of the 2013 calendar year. Yet, the government still has not updated their website about the changes. Seriously?

Another interesting fact I found: “…many workers do not know that any annual wages above $106,800 are not taxed by Social Security. In other words, a worker who makes twice the Social Security wage cap – $213,600 per year – pays Social Security tax on only half of his or her earnings, and one who makes just over a million dollars per year pays the tax on only about a tenth.”

In case you are wondering: These are the 13 tax changes going into effect in 2013.

Clean sheets and feather pillows…

Posted by random olio

What does home mean to you? I was recently inspired by a blog post on Home by DesignSponge. It made me start to think about the different homes, dorm rooms, apartments, and condos I have lived in throughout my life. What made them home to me? My response: lots of things.

Growing up I do not remember specific things that made me feel at home. I guess I never had futuristic thinking or knowledge to know that after the age of twelve, I would never have a room to come home to that was my own. Once I learned that, I began to make each current “home” as comfortable to me as possible. In college that meant that my bed was the best place in my dorm room. I saved up from babysitting so I could purchase a feather bed, a feather comforter, amazing sheets, and, you might have guessed it, feather pillows. It was my home.

Gradually over the years, my bed was still very important, and I maintained the high quality sheets and of course, feathers, but as the size of my home evolved from a dorm room to an apartment, to a condo, to a house, so did my expanded of sense of home. Now, my sense of home is still very rooted in my actual house. My bed, the art, how it is organized, how clean it is, etc. all ground me and make me feel comfortable and at home.

Just like the saying goes: “Home is where the heart is.” That is true, and so in true form, Chris is my home. When we are together in someone else’s home, in a hotel, whenever or wherever we are together, I feel at home. One of my favorite things to do is to continue to make our house our home…together.

One last thing. I want to create a print and frame it that says: “You are responsible for the energy you bring into this home.” This is something that I have thought about over and over again in the past year. What energy am I bringing into other people’s homes and vice versa. What if we always thought of that before we enter any home, workplace, or commercial establishment?

We are only responsible for ourselves.

We are data whores…

Posted by random olio

I am not yet a data whore, but will I be soon? I just found this article from Fast Company that made my day. Since the article is about floppy disks and data storage, you might think: “Seriously, Tami?” but have patience with me. Chris and I found a few diskettes from college and a few zip drives from the first few years of our working careers. He would rather throw them away, but I have been looking for a while to find a way to retrieve the data on these disks.

We have looked all over town to see if there is a place, like a Kinkos, where you can go in and use their disk and zip drives that will read both Mac and PC disks. Nil, Nothing, Zippo, Nada. We thought about buying a drive on eBay or Craigslist and then trying to resell after we got the data off the disks, but thought that most likely our Macs will not even connect to the drives themselves. What do folks do when they clean out a closet or garage and find disks they can no longer retrieve the data on? Do they just keep in a box for their children, like old relics? Is it like keeping your Barbies or GI Joes for your kids?

I am partly sentimental. A few years ago, our laptop died and we found out only Chris’ profile had been backed up. I lost quite a few emails from my business and all the emails from the days when Chris and I were dating. That is why there is a small (okay more than small) part of me that is curious if I saved any other writing or emails on those diskettes that would reveal a part of my past I had forgotten. It might be just boring papers about books I hated to read, or projects from my first job that I might cringe when I see my right out of college work. Yet, still I am curious.

I think I might be nostalgic enough to send my stack away to floppydisk.com (see above article) to see what they can do for me. They probably have a wall of laughs where they print out all the random lost files of dead diskettes and zip disks (or soon to be once the last breath is taken from them). They state that they charge you whether they are able to pull content off each disk. It is definitely worth it as I can only imagine how slow the computer is that they must use to open these disks.

I can still see that bar going back and forth across the screen as the computer read your disk, while making odd noises, that sometimes met the threat of doom. Yes, those of you that are old enough to remember, randomly and usually when you needed it most, the computer would decide whether it wanted to read your disk that day and open your files. Or, when you finally finished the file with seconds to go and hit save on your hundred page file, it would take the computer minutes to hours to save and close your file. You could not eject or remove that disk and run like hell because you were late. The threat: if you pulled the disk out too soon, you may never see that file again.

Do not even get me started about what data might need to be saved from a Facebook profile, Twitter feed, or a blog. I am sure downloading and accessing that information is a feat in and of itself. I have pretended that my content lives in its own cell in a data center with no visitation rights.

Brand “YOU”

Posted by random olio

A recent article from Fast Company inspired me to think through my brand: Brand Tami. Not just for 2013, but beyond. The following excerpt from the article is what specifically stood out to me and will give you a bit of context to what I am referring to:

“Be yourself and be courageous. You don’t have to follow the crowd. Take courageous steps to define the brand of you in 2013, reminding yourself of who you are, what makes you tick, and why you get out of bed every day. Don’t feel compelled to follow the crowd. Be courageous and proud of being yourself.”

Have you ever thought about that? Brand You? Reid Huffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, has a great book out called: “The Start-Up of You.” He discusses at length how to plan out your future as though YOU, your life, job, and future were a start-up company. It is definitely a book I would recommend reading if you are thinking about your future and next steps.

Over the holidays I was thinking about Brand Tami and decided the first place to start was to update my: “About” page for random olio. That was my first step. If you have read it before, you will see a bit of my past version, with more specifics this time. Since I have this blog, I can cultivate my Brand on my About page, but also through my writing, photos, and content. I also continue to share my Brand in how I interact and treat others, and what I stand for, and what I will not stand for. I want to continue to think about how I am going to cultivate Brand Tami as the months fly by in 2013 and beyond.

You might find that you create a bit of Brand YOU by what you post on Facebook, or what you share on Twitter. What does your Brand YOU look like? Does it have a smell? Texture? Does it glow? Is there a word that defines you that you can speak to that sheds light to others of what you are about? An image? The fun part about Brand YOU is that it is a constantly evolving Brand and you get to update it, edit it, and brush it off any time you wish.