hyperempowered

Don't Underestimate The Importance of "Nice"

So just how important is friendly service and pleasant employees?

For Southwest Airlines, it's the difference between being number one and being number two. 

AP is reporting that Southwest is on track to overtake American Airlines as the top U.S. airline for total passenger traffic this year, a coveted spot American has held for the last five years.

Southwest is set to best American's combined domestic and international traffic, as they've carried over 40 million passengers entirely on domestic routes in the first five months of the year where American carried 40 million passengers during the same period in both domestic and international travel.

(photo from Flickr by Paul Goyette)

Dell Computer's Ideastorm

Who would have thought that Dell Computers, a company that for years has been taking a beating for not listening to their customers, turns around and demonstrates that not only are they now listening, but they're acting on what they're hearing. 

The Wikinomics blog reports that Dell Computer's Ideastorm website uses a Digg style voting system to let people contribute, comment, and vote on user submitted ideas on how Dell should improve their computers as well as their customer support.  The most commented upon suggestion, with nearly 120,000 people supporting it, is that Dell should put out a laptop that comes with the Linux operating system pre-installed.

So what is Dell doing?  In the next couple of weeks, they’re releasing a laptop that comes with pre-installed Linux. 

Ideastorm is a great idea and with it Dell is now showing a leadership role in "listening" to it's customers on the web.

The bottom line - Every company should launch an Ideastorm type website.