That Cracker Jack® Prize

Well now, how is this for a sweet taste of Sherlock Ho‘okipa (hospitality); I get to guest post on Passion for the Good Customer Experience! Aloha everyone! Steve could not have picked a better month to welcome me here in his very generous way, for as the author of Managing with Aloha, I share an aloha-connected value of the month with my community of readers and practitioners, and for the month of July – you guessed it – our value is none other than Ho‘okipa, the Hawaiian value of hospitality. One of the things I do to keep in my value theme’s mindset is to read books that have similar messages. The book I am reading right now is The Starbucks Experience, written by Dr. Joseph A. Michelli, and in it, he talks about the 5 principles he feels have enabled Starbucks to turn an “ordinary idea into an extraordinary experience,” thereby helping them to turn a cup of coffee into a worldwide business phenomenon. These are the 5 Principles; Make it your own Everything matters Surprise and delight Embrace resistance Leave your mark The one I want to talk to you about today is the third one. Dr. Michelli opens that particular chapter this way: “The idea behind the Surprise and Delight principle isn’t a new one. In fact, one of the most famous commercial examples is more than a hundred years old. In the late 1800s at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago’s first World’s Fair, the Rueckheim brothers delighted young and old with their unique confection consisting of popcorn, peanuts, and molasses. While Cracker Jack® was a consistently popular treat, its appeal increased dramatically in 1912, when a surprise could be found in every package.” So I was thinking … Steve has no internet access while he is away on vacation in the deep dark woods of Pennsylvania; what say we become the Cracker Jack® Prize he’ll find when he returns? Steve Sherlock, your host and Mea Ho‘okipa here, is one of the most generous bloggers I know when it comes to writing for us prolifically to share his knowledge, and in supporting other bloggers with his helpful comments. His voice seems to always be there to comfort and encourage us on those days we start to think no one is reading; it is absolutely uncanny how he seems to know we need him. To a blogger, the absolute best Cracker Jack® Prize that surprises and delights is when a longtime lurking reader finally decides they are comfortable enough to give you their first comment, daring to expose themselves in the very public scrutiny of the blogging community. That is what I am asking you to do. In the spirit of your aloha for Steve, and with the ho‘okipa so critically necessary in keeping any good customer experience alive and well, leave a comment here for Steve between now and when he returns on July 7th. Be his Cracker Jack® Prize. Even if you have commented for Steve before on another of his blogs, he may not know you read this one, so leave a few words. Remember, the Cracker Jack® Prize never got eaten! I’ll post a time or two more about Ho‘okipa before Steve returns, and I hope you’ll keep reading! (hopefully I’ll figure out how to fix these screwy font sizes by then too…) ~ Rosa Say, author of Managing with Aloha Postscript: If you are interested, this was my posting on July 1st at www.managingwithaloha.com about the value of hospitality: Ho‘okipa, the Hospitality of Complete Giving