JustinWise.net

I’m a Gary Vaynerchuck fan.

If nothing else, his insistence on bringing all of who you are to what you do is commendable. He’s also, I believe, a Renaissance Man for the customer service revolution that’s taking place in the North American business world.

“CARE!“, as he so eloquently put it once in a tweet.

Below is a quick video he did for Seth Godin‘s new movement called “Linchpins“. Godin asks the question, “Are you indispensable?”

Unfortunately, many of us aren’t. We’re cogs in the wheel. Godin wants to change that–and he’s doing a pretty good job of it according to early reviews of the book.

So view the vid and ask yourself, “Where’s my sweet spot? What can I do better than anyone else on the planet?” Then go do it.

In a somewhat unsurprising study, it was revealed that teens find blogs to be boring. I can’t say that I’m shocked!

Teens prefer the hyper-paced platform of social networks like MySpace which, despite its apparent pox-like status amongst the adult world, still remains the platform of choice for teens.

Blogging is slowly becoming the domain of adults, as a recent Pew study shows more teens abandoning the medium for social networks.

The study, conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, showed a decline in the number of teens who say they blog, from 28 percent in 2006 to 18 percent in 2009, when the study was conducted. Just 52 percent comment on their friends’ blogs, versus 76 percent three years ago.

By contrast, the survey found that about 10 percent of adults maintain a blog, a figure that has remained unchanged.

What does this mean for the future of blogging? My thoughts go like this: blogging may be popular with adults now, but what happens when these teens turn into young adults turn into taxpayers?

Will tomorrow’s teens ditch MySpace in favor of “my opinion”?

“You leave with the girl you brought to the dance,” as the saying goes. My point? Teens-turned-adults may not “adopt” the adult platform of blogging and may stick with the various social networks that have become second nature to them.

From an interview with Kayak.com’s co-founder, Paul English. He’s talking about having real people in your company answer real problems from customers. I think his philosophy is brilliant: If you put the complaints in the face of the people who can make the complaints go away, things get fixed quicker.

Customers are a big source of my e-mails. Anytime anyone contacts us with a question, whether it’s by e-mail or telephone, they get a personal reply. The engineers and I handle customer support. When I tell people that, they look at me like I’m smoking crack. They say, “Why would you pay an engineer $150,000 to answer phones when you could pay someone in Arizona $8 an hour?” If you make the engineers answer e-mails and phone calls from the customers, the second or third time they get the same question, they’ll actually stop what they’re doing and fix the code. Then we don’t have those questions anymore.

From Seth Godin to Gary Vaynerchuck to Paul English, it seems as though customer satisfaction is the new trend.

“Amen to that”, I say! What companies have treated you well recently? Not so well?

This is my brother-in-law at the close of last night’s FSU/Miami game.

Clearly this is a case study to show the dangers of rooting for any team from Miami.

Below is the video entitled “Beyonce Clown”:

Now here’s my wife, watching the video “Beyonce Clown”:

And finally, here’s my wife and some of our friends watching this glorious piece of social media goodness: