My CEO Life

The story of Canadian Dave Carroll and United airlines is quite amazing. Dave is a country singer and he and his band were on a trip with United from Halifax to Nebraska that had a layover in Chicago. During this layover the baggage handlers at Chicago’s O’Hare managed to destroy his guitar.

Now you would have thought that United would pay for his guitar to be replaced. They didn’t come to the party claiming the Dave Carroll didn’t make a claim with 24 hours. Dave was given the complete run around with United refusing to take any responsibility for the damage.

So what did Dave do, he wrote a song about his experience and that song hit You Tube on Monday last week and has already had over 2.3 million views. Check it out … oh and it is called … United Breaks Guitars.

So what do we learn from this?

Well firstly, United must have some very questionable baggage handling techniques. If you are to going to fly United, I would try to take carry-on luggage or better still, fly another airline.

Secondly, United’s customer service approach seems to be designed to say “no” – no matter how legitimate your complaint is.

Thirdly, the $3k to replace the guitar is cheap compared to the brand damage that this whole episode is causing United. And there is nothing they can do about it now. The cat is out of the bag and will run its own course. In today’s social media world, you never know how poor customer service is going to come back and bite you.

Finally, Dave Carroll and his band have made this an opportunity to further their careers. 2.3 million people is a great audience. Hopefully they will release an album soon to take advantage of their new found fame.

Oh … and if you thought United had got off relatively light? Dave and his band have 2 more songs in the works.

In today’s tough economic market more and more people are losing their jobs and struggling to find new ones. A by-product of this new world is that more and more people are becoming entrepreneurs and starting a wide range of new businesses. Now if you don’t have a job and want to be an entrepreneur you can work from home, rent an office or join the new trend of using coffee shops and cafes as your office – the coffice!

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I recently wrote an article on one of the other blogs that I run in which I gave my view on a market and how the players are performing in that market.  Now the article was meant as a wakeup call for one of those players who I thought had become a little lazy however they took it as a slight against them.

This got me thinking about how you should give feedback and what could happen if you happen to take it as it is meant.

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Everywhere you turn people are talking about twitter and the tweets that are flying around the internet. It is clear that people are signing up to twitter in their thousands and some people believe it can be used as a business tool – just check out the new book by Joel Comm and Ken Burge called Twitter Power – How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time.

However the question still remains is twitter a nice social media fad or can it be used as a serious business tool?

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The team at Classified Ad Ventures is proud to announce that we have just launched Jobs Portal Watch – a sister site to Property Portal Watch.

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The last three months have seen the Classified Ad Ventures business go from strength to strength.  We now have a clear mission for mission for the business, a strong team in place and most importantly operations underway.  Here is an update on the business.

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A topic that is often talked about in management magazines and books is communication.  It seems that an enormous amount is written on the topic yet management time and time again get it wrong.  I was chatting with a friend today about his work place and he commented that people are anxious and communications are not flowing.

This got me thinking – what are the do’s and dont’s of great communication from management to the employees.
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Have you ever had the situation where someone who reports to you resigns and you try to talk them out of it?  I certainly have and i have also tried to talk them out of it … often successfully.  However, is this the right strategy or should you just accept the resignation and move on?
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In today’s tough economic environment, everyone is hurting – busineses, employees, their suppliers and of course the customers.  In these tough times, it is important the all parts of the business tighten their belts and the business is seen externally to tighten its belt.

If the company does not do this, it runs the risk of disenfranchising their employees and their customers.
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The team at Classified Ad Ventures is working with companies around the world to help them refine their business models and to accelerate their growth.   One observation we have is that management and owners are often overly enthusiastic about of their revenue growth, expense requirements and ultimately market cap.  Why is this happening and what should these operators think about it?
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