Dear Henry Ford

Thanks for having us over for fireworks the other night. I have to say that Greenfield Village is quite pleasant and you must have been proud of it.

I have to think that you, the patron saint of Organizational Efficiency would have done a 360 in the grave at the exit plan.  5000 people trying to get through a 6 foot opening in the dark while stumbling over railroad tracks was just a bit dangerous, not to mention inefficient.

You were not the patron saint of customer satisfaction though so maybe it is understandable, in an ironic way.

Dear Jimmy Johns

I walked into your place in Chattanooga about a month ago. I was looking for a cool, quiet place to get out of the noise of 1000 motorcyclists gathering on the street directly in front of your place. This was at about 7:30 on a Friday night I guess.

Your enlightened managers chose at that moment to move the furniture away from the wall to do cleaning. The entire crew was dragging furniture across the store floor and it was actually noisier than the motorcycles.

The irony is, with this huge crowd out front, you should have been doing everything you could to get people INTO the store. Instead, you were indifferent to customers and internally focused in the face of a potential huge opportunity with a hungry crowd outside.

Good luck keeping the doors open.

Jim

Dear Peoria

I tried to like you. We have a lot in common. River,  industrial, the Drake/Bradley thing, and someone over there is trying to make some kind of alcohol, and it smelled pleasant and yeasty.

At Drake, they taught us that the public spaces in a place tell you a lot about the community. In your case, the public spaces are screaming "Zombie Apocalypse Stay Away. This is our bunker and we are not letting you in".

Here are some photos. Your arena, your new ballpark and the corporate HQ of your biggest employer are all sending exactly the same message. The lone building that was not bricked up or walled over or set up like a fortress was your little old train station, and that was the lone place I saw where there was a pleasant gathering of people. This was all in the most-public-facing one mile area of your town.

It seems like you should be more hopeful.

Later
Jim

Open Letter to Enterprise Rent a Car

Dear Enterprise:

I have to love your business decision to not put a spare tire in your cars anymore. I suppose it shows confidence in the tire industry which shows the progress it has made in the last few decades.

And your further business decision to charge extra for "road rescue" service means that if your car does have a flat tire you make your customers have your cars towed to your place to get them fixed at their expense.

I suppose the calculation you make is that for the time being the number of customers you tick off and will never rent from you again is smaller than the amount you make and save in by not having good customer service.

I guess your risk management people used to work for one of the cellphone companies.

Open Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Home Services

So if I am to get this straight:

Despite me paying about $20K in rent over the next year, and you getting 10% of it (about $2000) whatever you were doing on Monday afternoon was more important than meeting with a potential client.

Well, Sissy, Berkshire Hathaway Home Services will hear of this.

Jim

Honda Recalls 143,000 Vehicles In Japan, Image On the Rocks?

Honda Motor Co. recalled about 143,000 vehicles in Japan after air bags made by Daicel Corp. — a rival of troubled Takata Corp. — failed to deploy in an accident, Bloomberg reported Thursday. The recall followed confirmation Wednesday of a death in the U.S., the tenth involving a ruptured Takata air-bag inflator in the country.

 Link to Story

So many questions.This is the "real" version of something that happens in my you tube story (the iso9001:2015 transition playlist). What do you wager that the root cause is the same? 

Check my YouTube channel www.YouTube.com/getisohelp and click the Transition playlist (the fun starts at about part 15)

Dear AT and T

The crew you had laying the new fiber optic cable today cut through the old one.

Of the 10 or so on the crew none could speak English.

They tried to fix the old fiber optic cable by peeling back the cover, twisting the strands together and taping it.

You have the worst customer service in America but you don't care because we just buy your products anyway.

At some point this will all catch up with you.