The Lewis Show

That initial thought of 'customer service' today makes us cringe. Our next thoughts immediately recount dreadful experiences that involved tears, yelling, and even cursing. That's happened to all of us and things only sometimes seem to be getting worse. Our minds rarely race to that great service experience despite how rare or recent they seem to be. So what's the trick in this new technical service age? I want to take a few posts to go over different scenarios and how we can all do our part to make customer service what it's truly supposed to be....a tolerable experience at best. Companies in this day and age see customer service as a cash cow. It's a part of the budget that just eats away at resources, while barely producing new business or sales. As a result, the customer is often left with long hold times, service reps based overseas, or annoying voice mail systems. These companies are pushed daily to find ways to cut costs by reducing paper, assigni...

I'm going to spend the next few posts focusing on Customer Service. I'll be taking this from the perspective of the customer service rep though, not from the customers. I think this perspective can help some find out easy ways to avoid aggrivation and get results whenever we need to contact a company. In the meantime, it's just a lazy beginning to Autumn. There's a kitten in our flowers. He's giving a demonstration in lazy. Go back to sleep, Dexter.

The path to the beach. We spent two early afternoons there, just relaxing.   Wes said he wanted a 'six pack'. We slightly misunderstood.   We agreed that we would be that old couple one day with the RV.    It was us vs the dinosaur at a game of Putt Putt. The dino won..   Time was the biggest winner. There was not enough time on earth to enjoy a few days away.

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...are getting big. Someone slow down this train before I'm attending their High School graduation!

My school year always began the day after Labor Day and apparently for millions of kids, that trend continues to this day. This year however starts in controversy. Tomorrow morning all public school children at the beginning of the school day will watch a 30 minute video from our President advising them to work hard and pay attention. It's also sad I had to find the text of the speech on Fox News' web site. If it's on the other news sites, it's was very hard for me to find. Now all this always sounds great on paper, but with everything, politics has to rear it's ugly head. Let me be clear: I do not have a problem myself with the President speaking to these children, I think it's fantastic. The issue to me isn't his speech, but the lack of educating being done by public school teachers. I can also see concerns from conservatives that this is as seed planting to show the President as the ultimate good guy which makes working in the opposition to be more ...

Mashable always does a much better job than I do of posting on social networking. In relation to my last post, this shows the power of using Posterous. HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Posterous : " by Jennifer Van Grove There’s something interesting happening in the space between Twitter and a full blown blog. We’re seeing more and more of our social friends turn to sites like Posterous for 140 character plus musings, or simple and fast photo and video sharing. Whether you need a little more space to create a lifestream that serves as a compliment to your Twitter presence, or you’re looking to totally replace your existing personal or group blog, Posterous makes the transition and posting process dead simple. The Posterous possibilities are endless, and the best part is it that takes very little effort to maintain your site and attract a subscriber base. We’ll show you how to get started with Posterous and play with some of the more buried features that make it truly remark...

I hear this quite a bit, "Gosh, Mike, you have pretty much joined everything, haven't you?" Of course these people are referring to social networks, micro blogs, you get the idea. The answer to that is always, "Can't help it.". I'm always trying to find that right formula for posting in a  new web environment. I think a lot of people are. So out of all those hundreds of services, what am I using, and what has found the trash heap (for now)? As I discussed earlier, the blog is home. It will always be home. I learned that pouring myself into these start ups typically leave me with my data scattered and confusing to access. From home, I regularly update Twitter, read and share articles via Google Reader, and then feed them through my main Tumblr blog which has been optimized for mobile use. I also have a Posterous account and my own picture posting Tumblr page. When I Digg something, it relays back to the mobile site, but there's a handy link to it i...

Speaking for a lot of my friends, we all love to hate Walmart and yet somehow find the entire institution to be utterly fascinating. We don't like the crowds, but a lot of us go to see those crowds in their trailer park glory. If we're really honest, we don't go for the great deals we go to be entertained. People of Walmart is an exposé into the quirky, unusual people, rides, and products that you see in and around our favorite discount department store chain. That also makes it my pick of the week. So consider yourself warned the next time you need to head out for some groceries, a set of tires, a new XBox 360 game, and some hand lotion, because someone may be submitting your unshaven, frizzy bicycle shorts wearing picture to their site... And we would all be entertained.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. That balance of nerd and metalhead would have to meet somewhere. And that somewhere is...Nintendo? Here's an 8 bit version of Slayer - Angel of Death. It's too enjoyable for words. Also be sure to check out the 8bitsbrother's channel on YouTube. You'll also find yourself strangely fascinated.