Archive for the year 2014
Chevreul’s Pendulum
Posted on March 2, 2014 by Ching under Videos.
Brian has always been a bit of a nonbeliever in The Secret
While at the Customer Experience and Touch Point Mapping meeting last week, we were introduced to Chevreul’s Pendulum. I never could prove The Secret
This is a photo of him giving it a try. If you’ve never tried this before, let me know. It’s amazing. If you are unfamiliar with The Secret
No Comments
Customer Experience Revolution
Posted on March 1, 2014 by Ching under Projects, Videos.
There’s a customer experience revolution taking place at work and it’s very exciting. I spent a couple of days in Topeka with thirty some of the most brilliant people who are committed to enhancing customer experience across all touch points throughout our organization. Real changes are taking place. It’s a long time coming and I’m really honored to be part of history in the making.
Roy Barnes facilitated our two-day customer experience touch point mapping exercise. I remember hearing him talk about customer experience for the first time at the AGA EEI Conference in Fort Worth a couple of years ago. His talk was captivating. He basically put into words what I’ve felt we were missing. As I sat in the audience mesmerized by the ideas presented, I remember thinking “I wish this guy would talk to the people I work with.”
As luck would have it, Amy was tasked with organizing our group training that year and she hired Roy Barnes to present on customer experience. Fast forward to now and Roy has talked to dozens of people at my work and we’re now in the process of mapping our touch points and creating a consistent customer experience that lives up to our customer experience intent statement throughout our organization. I am beyond excited to be part of this endeavor.
It makes me think of when we met with the Starwood execs and showed them our call center almost two years ago. At the time they were still trying to decide between a handful of cities for their next call center location. It meant a lot for the Wichita community because it meant hundreds of jobs. Today they’re not just established in Wichita, they employ over four hundred people including my sister and brother-in-law. I am moved at the thought that I was part of that.
I hope to look back years from now and say, “I was part of that transformation.” I was there the day that we made that step to change the way we do business. The say we declared our intent.
Anyway, for those of you who aren’t sure what this customer experience mumbo jumbo is that I’m talking about, here’s a video that pretty much sums up why this is important. This video by NICE Systems sums up what’s going on in the customer experience realm right now. This is basically a small part of what we’re talking about.
Our objective is to map all of our customer touch points and put a strategy in place to ensure that we deliver an experience that lives up to our customer intent statement across the board, in every customer interaction and every touch point. It’s a tall order but we’re going to make it happen. And, I’m going to be part of this revolution.
No Comments
Gina Ann’s 30th Birthday Bash
Posted on February 23, 2014 by Ching under Events.
Here are some photos from Gina Ann’s 80s themed birthday party. Click the left and right arrows to browse the photos.
She sure knows how to throw a party!
No Comments
Team Building Day
Posted on February 23, 2014 by Ching under Leadership.
To celebrate our team’s 2013 results, we decided to have a team building day. Amy organized a fun day that started out with a few hours of volunteer work at the Kansas Food Bank and concluded with lunch and bowling at The Alley.
We worked on a couple of different tasks at the Kansas Food Bank. Our first task was to box up some food items. They set up an assembly line for us and we each had our stations. Each box started out empty and ended up filled with all sorts of stuff — pasta, cornbread mix, mashed potatoes, canned goods, jelly, pasta, oatmeal, etc.
This is an example of one of the completed boxes. Josh and Chad were at the end of the line taping each box shut. It worked out really well and we ran out of one of the items before long and had to stop after that.
We got a short break after that before starting our next activity — packaging and boxing up cereal — so we all ended up trotting over the the Donut Whole. Several of my coworkers hadn’t been there before.
After our break we returned to complete our next volunteer activity. This group photo was taken after we finished.
Our next stop was The Alley for lunch and bowling.
I bowled pretty decently but not well enough to beat Amy. She was the one to beat on Friday. Isaac was a good sport and didn’t pout about it.
Hashtag, we had a really fantastic day of team building.
No Comments
Cravings Gluten Free Bakery
Posted on February 22, 2014 by Ching under Food and Drink, Things to Do.
When I joined Adventurous Babes Society last year, I had no idea it would actually lead to adventures and meeting cool women. Mostly I joined because I wanted to get one of the cool purple t-shirts (they are very high quality, by the way) and that’s the only way to get one. Actually, my friend Ethel told me about it and I’m impressionable and impulsive and will join anything that sounds like a good idea so I did.
It’s a lot like what happened with Zumba. I became a ZIN member to get discounts on Zumba gear. LOL.
Anyway, I’d been sitting on my membership for months now and hadn’t actually participated on an adventure until recently. Normally, I’m not able to attend events because I’m either at work or working out or teaching Zumba. The other day I happened to see that one of the other ABS members couldn’t make one of the adventures so she was giving up her ticket. It worked out perfect because I was on a brief break from working out because I fell ill (quite suddenly) on Wednesday. And as suddenly as it had come, it was gone. Literally, I had 100 degree fever one day and was back to 97.6 temp within 24 hours. I didn’t want to miss any work though, so I suspect that I just willed myself well. Mind over matter, so to speak.
I wasn’t taking any chances, though. My plan was to lay off working out Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday so I could be well enough to teach my Zumba classes on Saturday. The doctor, who just happened to be checking my ankle on Thursday afternoon, agreed it was a good plan.
I spent a lot of time waiting around in the examination room so that’s when I found out that there was a seat available at the Death by Chocolate preview adventure. Death by Chocolate is an annual fundraising event at the Exploration Place. As with most adventures, I wanted to do this one but I didn’t sign up because I would normally be at Zumba on Thursday night. As luck would have it, the stars aligned. I was off workouts and a seat happened to become available. I found myself at my very first ABS adventure, just like that. This was a great one to start off with too because it didn’t require any physical activity. LOL.
All we had to do was sample these delicious gluten free confections by Cravings Gluten Free Bakery and provide feedback in preparation for their participation in Death by Chocolate. Such hard work, I know!
Everything you see in the photo above was gluten free. That’s not the amazing part. The amazing part is that everything was delicious! I usually don’t have high expectations for gluten free foods, but you couldn’t tell these creations were gluten free at all. In fact, it was hard for me to pick a favorite because everything tasted great. When we went around to tell the group what we liked best, I picked one of the cake balls with pop rocks because all of the items equally tasted good to me and I’d never had pop rocks before. I was so amused by the sounds they made as I was eating them. Oh, and I picked the white cake balls instead of the dark ones because they made louder popping sounds as I was eating them. I didn’t want to tell everyone that I’d never had pop rocks before, though. I didn’t want them to think I was silly. Everyone has tried pop rocks before. Well, everyone except me it seemed. Until last night, of course.
Anyway, I had a wonderful time tasting some delicious gluten free goodies and meeting some truly amazing women. I can’t believe I waited so long to join an adventure. I’m thinking now that I really need to make time and squeeze more adventures into my busy schedule. My next one is the Let’s Dance adventure on March 9. I am so looking forward to attending!
In the meantime, Death by Chocolate is on March 8. Best of luck to the Cravings team. I hope you guys win!
—
For more information about the Adventurous Babes Society and to join, simply visit their web site. Use Ching Brubaker as a referral and I get a free baseball cap after three new members! You don’t know what you’re missing out on!
No Comments
