Great customer service

I was at Macy's today looking for watches. The lady assisting me did not ask a whole bunch of questions to figure out my taste or style. Rather, she gave me simple feedback, asked other customers to wait and gave me ample time to decide. I appreciated her attention towards me. I spent a good amount of time looking at two different watches. She could tell I wasn't completely comfortable with either one. "If you're gonna be spending 100 dollars, you should really like it," she said. "I'm like that too - I don't purchase an item that I'm not fully comfortable with. If I'm gonna invest a lot of money, I need to really enjoy it - especially if I'm gonna be wearing it everyday...you should wait until other watches come out. Valentine's Day is coming up you know, so a lot of watches will be coming out".

Her customer service was solid. She guided me in a way that made me pause and think before I made a 100 dollar investment. She wasn't there to sell me the product - she was there to make sure I was sold out for it. There was a personal touch and a genuine desire to see that I was a customer that was happy with my decision.

I'm a firm believer in good customer service. No one knows this about me, but I'm always making mental notes of employee behavior and customer service delivery at malls and at stores. Should you believe in the product more than you believe in the customer? I think quality customer service is exactly the words that make it up - serving the customer. It comes down to true service. It's a holy principle that has power to transform in businesses, malls and stores.

UMich video.

UMich made a video that has a brief clip of me from freshman year. I can't believe that was 10 years ago. First thought: I was so skinny back then. Second thought: They used me as an asian person. Anyhow, it's weird seeing myself in a video. Check it out here:

http://ummedia10.rs.itd.umich.edu/flash/mmd/mmd.html?dep=mmd&file=MSC_winter09.flv


I can't believe Prof. Williams is leaving! He was an awesome teacher.

It's 3:03AM

Lord, teach me to rest.

crippled creativity

Reader: you have no idea, but it took me ten minutes to write this first sentence. Type one word, delete... type a whole sentence, delete... repeat. What is this anxiety that builds up when I'm about to create something? The verbalization of a thought, the creation of something frightens me for some odd reason. Perhaps it's the fear of creating something less than perfect. A fear that my creation might be a quiet reflection of my own imperfections. Fear of failure. I've spent many nights spent revising,fine tuning video projects. But rarely satisfied.

In my professional life, I face another blank slate. As director, I have freedom to put policies into place and design a program. You are the director, says my boss. Fear of failure. I have so many ideas, so many thoughts, so many dreams... but my insecurites are squelching my passion. This gnawing fear kept me staring into blank pages, blank video project timelines.

Once I created, I'd start hacking away at my creation with revisions after revisions after revisions. Never satisfied. Fear of failure. Insecure.