The Hump Day Humor-Gram,  December 5, 2007    Issue Number 241
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1. Customer Service With a Smile . . .Is Just the Beginning! 

Do you do customer satisfaction surveys? If so, might I
humbly suggest you change them to customer WOW! surveys? 
Who, after all, wants to merely be satisfied? Satisfying your
customer means you’re simply staying out of the dog house! 
A whopping 68% of customers leave because of “perceived
indifference.”  Successful organizations understand that to wow
your customers or clients you need to exceed expectations,
not just “satisfy” folks. You need to move from a “service” 
mentality to an “experience” mentality. And you need to 
understand that your are in the customer empathy business 
- customers want to know that you understand how they feel. 
(When there’s no eye contact, they feel ignored; when they
can’t find something easily, they feel frustrated.) 

So the question of the day is this: How do your customers feel
after they’ve done business with you? And how can adding more
fun & humor turn your standard service into a truly wow’zer (I’m 
pretty sure that’s a word) experience, where people feel you 
are truly engaged with them and making them feel better than 
before they met you? 
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2. Mike's Fun at Work Tip  

Over a dozen studies on the science of happiness suggests that 
the number one thing that makes people happy is socializing with 
friends; while commuting to work is at the bottom of the old 
happiness barrel. So if you’re a long distance commuter, try 
turning a negative into a positive by car pooling with people 
(preferably you like) and turning it into a fun social event.  
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3. Quote of the Week

“Sometimes a laugh is the only weapon we have.” Roger Rabbit 
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4. It's a Wacky, Wacky, World

I’m sure we can all think of some people in our lives who could 
use a humor boost. Well, perhaps there’s hope. Researchers 
at the University of Cincinnati are trying to create robots with 
a sense of humor. And they are one step closer by developing 
computer software that recognizes some puns! For example, the 
computer recognizes this pun: “A boy tells his mother he is in the 
garden so much because his teacher told him to weed a lot.” 
Apparently that cracks up the computer, and presumably makes the 
computer’s day that much more enjoyable. Whereas a pun such as, 
“It’s tough to be in the computer business when the chips are down” 
caused the computer to shut down completely and refuse to do any 
more work until someone consoled it. Perhaps we need to remind the 
computer of Victor Hugo’s words: “Puns are the guano of 
the winged mind.”  Happy Hump day everyone!  Keep laughing!   
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Copyright Michael Kerr, 2007. mike@mikekerr.com  www.mikekerr.com