Everything SKO...

Now that's service

Kudos to Canadian Tire.

If you don't know anything about Canada, Canadian Tire is a national institution. They've been around since September 15th, 1922 so they're a pretty "old" institution. Every time you make a purchase at one of their stores they give you your change plus some Canadian Tire Money.

A common piece of Canadian folklore is that if every Canadian who has Canadian Tire money (that would be all 30+ million of us) turned up at their stores and cashed our Canadian Tire Money we would bankrupt the company ;-)

Anyway, this isn't what I'm here to talk about. For an "old" company they certainly "get it" and are changing with the times. Here's a recent experience I had with them. One of my cars had a flat tire (tyre) so I headed off down to their new store in Vancouver on Cambie Street.

What a refreshing experience. No greasy, intimidating mechanics joint this. Really friendly staff, computerized systems, standardized and clear pricing and it gets better. They've got a waiting area you can sit in, leather seats, lovely decor, BBC World Service news on the 42" flat panel TV, free coffee and free open Wi-Fi.

And it gets even better... They couldn't do it for me right then so they took it and said they would call me. That's exactly what they did the next morning. And it gets better. Then they call me a week later to make sure everything was OK with the service they sold me.

All of this focused on one key issue. Great service that respects the customers' time.

So kudos to Canadian Tire. I'll be going back.

Hallelujah!

This is more an "inside story" than anything else so it won't be relevant to a lot of people but Halle-bloody-lujah!

How true is this?

Here's a little story from Ewan MacLeod over at SMS Text News and how true this story is.

I know the very same thing has happened to me. But I have a even better one. When I first moved to Canada I went into a Telus Mobility Store (along with Bell, Telus operates a CDMA network) and asked about a RIM model. I commented that it was a shame that, at that particular time, it wasn't available on the GSM network.

Incredulously the salesperson told me that GSM was a declining network technology and that I could use my CDMA RIM wherever I went so I wouldn't need a GSM device. He might have been completely daft or maybe he was just trying to make his quota for the month.

Canada is a strange place for mobile services as Jeff over at Eqo has pointed out.

Bloody Excellent!

I found this via Andy Abramson's blog. I'm not a big fan of Andy but to give him his due, his knowledge in this space is extensive.

Anyway the subject at hand is Gaboogie. A truly excellent Web 2.0 flavoured conference calling application. When I was at Jajah one of the applications I liked most was scheduled calling. The team put this together with conference calling but quite frankly I don't think we/they ever pulled it off.

Gaboogie, on the other hand, really has pulled it off. A great example of focusing on a specific problem and delivering a beautiful application.

I see that Erik Lagerway is one of the founder's. This bodes well. Erik knows all things SIP. He was the founder of Xten. They were upstairs from us in Vancouver when I founded FatPort. It's funny I've had a lot of coincidences this weekend. More on that later.

Another nice feature is that they are a local Vancouver company. Get over there and give it a go. Good luck to them.

Technorati Tags:
JAJAH, Mobile, Vancouver, VoIP

A perfect mobile application

Everyone is always talking about the lack of mobile applications that people actually want to use, or that are actually functional or relevant. Well here's one from Vancouver, my adopted home. It's provided by the folks at Verrus and they have teamed up with the City Of Vancouver.

It's street parking and payment by mobile phone. I love this application because I never have any coins and it's always a pain to get back to the meter if your meeting runs late.

Here's what the service looks like on Vancouver streets.

All you do is register your mobile phone number, your car registration number and your credit card number. Then when you park you call the number listed on the street meters, tell the system how long you want to park for and off you go. Even better, when your time is about to expire the system sends you a text message and you can top-up the meter from anywhere.

I was reminded how absolutely brilliant this is the other day when I was sitting having my hair cut and I got a text message. Right from the chair I could top-up and chill.

You can also download your parking records to use as an expense item. In doing so getting ahead of Mr. Taxman and Mr. Meter Man. An almost unheard of double, super bonus.

Technorati Tags:
Mobile, Vancouver, Parking, SMS

Views of home

I travel an awful lot and sometimes sitting in hotels rooms early in the morning I wonder what the hell I'm doing... and then I realise! I'm doing all this so I can pay my bloody mortgage because I've chosen to live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and it's expensive. This is where I live: The Vancouver KatKam I live about 3-4 km from the foot of the bridge in roughly a straight line.