2014

Archive for the year 2014

Kids Bowl Free All Summer Long

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Ching under Things to Do.

I just found out about this amazing program. I want to sign all my nephews up for it!

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Flip and Ching Join a Bowling League

Posted on May 21, 2014 by Ching under Family, Hobbies.

After over a decade of marriage Brian and I finally joined our first bowling league. It’s a mixed league at Derby Bowl on Sunday nights. We are on a team with mom and dad. We named our team ALOBAKER because it’s a combination of our last names. Not very creative, but it works. LOL.

Our first league night was last Sunday. We had to be there early for a league meeting, to make some decisions about what to do about the holiday weekend, prize pool, etc. We also had to pay our sanction fees. The guy in charge of the league gave us the option of paying $21 to be sanctioned for a full year or $10 for just the summer league, which is an option if you’re not interested in being eligible for awards.

Brian asked what option I wanted. He was leaning more towards just paying the $10 because he didn’t foresee joining another league after this one ends. I was like, “Hello? Do you know who you’re talking to?” I want to get awards!

We both opted to pay the full sanction fee. Dad hadn’t bowled in a league in several years so he had to pay the sanction fee as well. Mom was already a sanctioned member.

Since the three of us were new league bowlers we had to set our averages. I wanted to set a low one so I could get a higher handicap. I think that was the plan for all of us. It was not to be, though. Dad bowled amazing. I bowled pretty well too despite all my efforts to sandbag. Mom says the more you try to sandbag, the more relaxed you are and you actually end up bowling better.

Let me explain the whole bowling handicap concept. The idea is to add points/pins to the score to make the game more competitive for less experienced and expert bowlers alike. Without the handicap the better bowlers will always win and it wouldn’t be as much fun playing. Handicaps equalize the playing field so as long as you bowl your average game or better then you have a fair shot at winning.

The handicap is based on a percentage of the difference between a bowler’s average score and the basis score. For our league we agreed upon a bowling handicap of 90% of 210. Since I bowled an average of 150 over three games last Sunday, my handicap is 54.

Here’s the calculation:
210 – 150 = 60
60 X .90 = 54

This means that when we bowl next week I get to add 54 points to my total for each game. This is why I wanted to set a low average. I was actually going for 130 which would have given me a handicap of 72. Knowing that I’m fully capable of consistently bowling an average of 150, that would have given me a 20 pin advantage. Now imagine if Brian and dad sandbagged also. We’d win every week!

Alas, I set my normal average. I tried to sandbag, but it didn’t work. Mom blames it on the law of averages — the belief that outcomes of a random event will tend to even out. For instance, she bowled 192 on her first game and 200 on her second game. Guess what she scored on the final game. She bowled a 109. It is a terrible game by mom’s standards but she explains it away as the law of averages at work. Mom’s average is around 170. The average of her three games that night is 167, not far from her typical performance. So she predicted that she would bowl a lower scoring third game because the law of averages assumes that it has to balance out.

I believe in the law of averages over the long term, but I avoid thinking about it or using it to explain events because I think it then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If you bowl two great games as mom did and you believe that the third game will be crappy (because of the law of averages) then that’s exactly what will happen. Why? Because energy follows thought. I think mom was fully capable of bowling a 600 series that night. She’s done it before so it wouldn’t be such a fluke. She just had to believe that she could do it rather than thinking that the third game was the balancing event according to the law of averages. As for me, I intend to bowl better than my average every week from here on out. I want to win some awards, darn it!

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Rock Band Party at Hideki’s

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Ching under Games.

Our friend Hideki throws the best Rock Band parties!

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Happy Birthday, Eli!

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Ching under Family.

We celebrated our nephew Eli’s 8th birthday on Saturday.

This is his older brother, Logan. He is taller than his mom Jenni and me. He’ll be taller than his stepmom and his dad before long. They grow so fast!

Our nephews’ dad Matt and their mom Jen.

Matt with Brian. I love this picture because they’re under a sign that says “Mom’s Day Out.” LOL. I love our little family.

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The Effortless Experience

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Ching under Reviews, Videos.

Here’s my key take away from the 2014 ICMI Contact Center Expo & Conference.

Matthew Dixon was one of our keynote speakers at the ICMI Contact Center Expo & Conference. The video above is nearly identical to his keynote speech witout the Bill Rancic jokes. The speech covers the key ideas of their book, The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty.

It is by far the best book I’ve read this year. Seriously. It articulates a lot of the things that I’ve been feeling but haven’t been able to articulate. I always tell my friend Darcy that I have all of these opinions and gut feelings but have no way to prove them. I’ll usually make some kind of statement or claim. Sometimes Darcy agrees or disagrees but, since she’s the keeper of our call center statistics, she’s the one who actually crunches the data to either prove or disprove my claim. Besides that, Darcy is really good at running reports and gathering information. But I digress… The authors and their colleagues have actually done the research and their research proves what we have all probably known for a long time: a strategy of delight doesn’t pay, customer satisfaction is not a predictor of loyalty, customer service interactions tend to drive disloyalty (no matter what you do), and the key to mitigating customer disloyalty is by reducing customer effort.

Customer service providers just need to accept that customers don’t want to have to deal with us. They want to take care of their business as quickly and as effortless as possible and be on their merry way.

The book talks about the concept of next issue avoidance, which is something that I’ve been working on for a few years now. Ever since we started collecting data on our repeat calls, this has been a topic of interest for me. I’m so glad that here’s a school of thought now that focuses on next issue avoidance because it’s actually easier for me to wrap my head around that than first contact resolution.

For years I’ve been trying to get at first contact resolution and can’t quite seem to get a metric that makes sense so I started attacking it from the repeat calls perspective. After reading this book I feel somewhat validated. LOL.

Anyway, if you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it. It’s an easy read. I read most of it on the flight home from San Diego. The examples provided are timely and relevant, and it’s just an enjoyable read over all. Kudos to the authors and their colleagues who helped with the research and contributed to the book. I haven’t been this excited about learning something new in a long time. Thank you.