Ever been to a huge supermarket or store where everyone is just happy to be there? I mean it. Staff, customers, managers. People at the checkouts buying hundred of dollars of stuff delighted to be in this store. At this checkout.

I took back our 5 month old DVD recorder today to Culver City. It simply stopped working. No questions asked, they gave me cash. Just like that. I was one of many taking things back. Mainly women with clothes.But any group, anywhere, anytime; when Costco's name comes up; bang, out it comes; "great customer service". It's a mantra of success. The foundation of why Costco are the gold standard for customers.

 

Some companies never get it right. Adelphia are Santa Monica's  local cable company providers. In July, they "upgraded" our service. Maybe 20 channels were dropped ands some prices went up, as Adelphia went fully digital. A few days later service to a big bracket of channels went haywire. The problem lasted around a month. Three times they sent crews out to my house after my complaints. The third lot finally told me they had an area wide problem because of distribution problems traced back to the regional office in the Burbank area. 

I asked for and received a rebate on the bill. It was 60dollars. No where near the 105 dollars a month.we pay. And not close to covering all the time we had the problems. Something, yes.

This evening a nice lady rang to ask if my problems then had been solved. Well,  I had complaints about the bill. Naturally neither she nor her whole Wisconsin call center were authorized to assist me on this. I "had" to call back for that. Why did she call? In any case  as the phone went down, so to did service across the system. Dozens of channels. Black. 

Calling the service number, the system cut callers off, repeatedly. Finally, after a very long wait, an announcement said that many people were affected, the problem was being worked on, nothing could be done,

So less service, more cost, repair guys repeatedly sent on futile missions, a fixable but unfixed problem, a "give me the money at all costs" attitude and a hopeless service culture. The company is rotten.  It's almost like they don't t want customers.

From Tokyo to Wellington, NZ - seems like that could be a major downshift. But it is not. From the hustle and bustle of Tokyo I came into Wellington today and went over to the post production unit owned and run by Peter Jackson. Its called Park Road Post.

And it is amazing. The architecture is pure Marin County. The facility is state of the art. And down the road is "the best cafe in the world" according to Peter Cobbin who is on loan from Abbey Road in the UK to do some 5.1 mixes for a film in post right now. The cafe is the Chocolate Fish and its right on the water overlooking the harbour.

Hight tech movie biz in Wellington. All makes sense to me. Move the creative facilities to the edge where people who are creative will be prompted to be even more so...

I'll be back.

Seems like Bit Torrent is in the money - well at least some money. For those who don't know this is the technology that revolutionizes how P2P functions. They raised $8.75M.

Not sure how they are going to monetize this, but then who would have thought that a free phone service would sell in the billions. These guys could be next....

UPN network had a hit last Thursday with Everyone hates Chris. They won and dumped once high and might NBC back to fourth for the timeslot. Google video has the full half hour show to watch (actually 22 minutes). UPN's website does not. Somewhat puzzling. Why didn't they build brand leverage for UPN's own website rather than Google's? But intelligent too, putting the show on the net. They want more people to sample the show and they want viewers to perhaps start watching. And the hardest thing in TV is to get people to check out new programs. This is the sort of show that's perfect to stream to cellphones. And further evidence of where we will be shortly.

Maxwell Smart is dead. Agent 86 has spoken into his shoephone one last time. Don Adams, 82, died yesterday. Was there a funnier show in the sixties, a better written (Mel Brooks) spoof of spies and their technology? Remember the cone of silence? Agent 99? No show today will ever have the impact of that one half hour of 60's comedy. 3 networks then. 500 channels today. Tomorrow unlimited. That era, represented by news anchormen telling us news once a day, is over. With it, the commonality of culture also gone. (And yet this Observer story indicates that perhaps Smart's influence and thinking is alive and well in Spy HQ's everywhere)

Whirlpool podcasts. The pods are about family issues. So. A conservative manufacturer selling white goods, usually considered a boring big box market segment, has cutting edge communication. Whirlpool's pods present the company as the living embodiment of itself as the heart of the family. Someone's thinking at that company.

Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester, (the technology research and strategy company) writes a blog that's just had its first birthday. Get this. " Rarely a day goes by that a conversation with a client doesn't include a reference to a blog post. And Communication -- the speed and quality of the conversation on this blog -- is better than anything I've experienced at Forrester, short of face to face meetings. So why do I blog? Because it perfectly aligns with my goal of communicating better with Forrester clients"

Tokyo is fascinating. One of the things that struck me when I first came here about 4 years ago was the cars. Japanese automotive companies test market vehicles domestically up the kazoo before launching globally. When I was on my way to buy some sushi on Sunday night I saw a car that looked suspiciously like an old style mini from the rear. On my way back I checked out the front of the car - still pretty mini-like, but different enough. It was a Daihatsu - and I think the model name was "mini". Coming to a street near you next year?

I went back to the Yodabashi Camera Store again yesterday and purchased a digital camcorder. I bought the Sony 5.1 model. It has a microphone array on the top that enables you to record in surround sound. I have heard the result and it really is something. I think this is going to be one of those products that establishes a new way of doing things and is going to be part of the next big change in the way we entertain ourselves.

I have been using skype more and more on this trip. Normally I rent a cell phone when I fly into Narita (6th time this year that I am in Japan at present). This time I didn't. Now that is going to save money. No cell phone and calls to the US and Australia on skype for free. Gotta love that.

I finished the Thomas Fridman book last night, and it is certainly interesting reading The World Is Flat while travelling from country to country in the East - through the places that are truly helping drive this change. Disturbing thing is to see the price of energy leaping up.... and to talk to people who are just not seeing the knife edge that we are all balanced on. When national media is so controlled in so many countries, when the stories that are World Is Flat stories don't make it to the front page because they are perceived to be against national interests, but where those same stories are about massive social change, you have to worry. These are the things that are going to cause the serious tectonic shifts that we are about to face.

I have been listening a lot to podcasts during the time that I have been on the road. One of the things that I love is this whole concept of the Tivo for audio. There is more intelligent commentary available in audio form than in audio/visual to start with. That is because content creation is a snip. Cheap and easy. And you can consume the content while sitting on the Tokyo metro or in a restauant or wherever. Multitasking to generate more business intelligence. This combination of podcasting, blogging and of course RSS is what is going to rock our world. Particularly with a future in which I see substantially more expensive or curtailed travel - whether it be because of cost of oil or the breakout of bird flu. And that will lead to a need for greater communication and more inventive forms of social marketing.

The Wall Street Journal writes about blogs being bought by bigger concerns. Just as free internet sites (hotmail) were eventually snapped up and monetized this is a healthy process. It indicates that although a recent development,  blogs are beginning to flower/develop/mature as a business sector.