I'm on the road again....doo dooo dooo dooo do. (Hear Canned Heat singing, what else,"On the Road Again" right here). I'm speaking once again at the Power Breakfast at Gartner Group's CRM Conference, which is in Chicago and titled "CRM 2.0" or something close to that. I'll be speaking at the Power Breakfast on Wednesday morning, as I did last year. I may be the only outside speaker to be re-invited to speak at the conference two years in a row. Reason was that Gartner ranks its speakers based on evaluations and I came in second last year.
I remember when they told me they rank the speakers and that I came in #2, my first New Yorker-always response was "who beat me?" Turned out it was Ed Thompson, one of their analysts (from Europe) and a guy I had been on a platform with before. No shame there, but I'm going for the World Series victory this year. My team has another year's experience under its belt this time.
Actually, I don't care, because a. I don't and b. I'm speaking on "CRM Redux - NOT: New Business Models for The 21st Century or something close to that title. I won't go through the presentation with you. You've heard some of it on these pages before; some not at all and after Gartner, I'll reveal the "not:" part on these pages if I remember to or someone reminds me. (I'm such a tease). I just love working with this stuff and putting it out on the table. Its so exciting to me to see people act and react to ideas that can actually shape the way things work. How cool is that? I mean, how awesome is it to be a person interacting with another person around ideas that are both shapebenders and a helluva lot of fun? THAT'S what I love about speaking and writing frankly. And the ideas.
From Gartner, I'm flying to NY to speak at a Unisys sponsored get together with 25 or so top executives (c-level and VP sorts) from Citigroup who are coming in from all over the world to hear me chatter on about CRM and Financial Services - essentially a revamped version of what I spoke to the Association of Banks in Singapore about at their National Library conference room in January of this year. THAT was an amazing trip. Again, if you want to read about my Singapore trip, here's the entry link. This one should be interesting because while the financial services sector has been very advanced when it comes to CRM technology and implementing it and managing customer data, even when, like CitiGroup, they have 200 million customers, they have notably failed as an industry to gain the trust, respect and support of the households they serve (I use the term "households" deliberately), much less created advocates for themselves. Some of them can be quite stodgy and unwilling to think out of the box, though they want technology that comes from the box and will adopt it easily enough. But the rates of mistrust are staggering, depending on who and what survey that you believe. I'm not going to detail it until Friday or the weekend after I'm done at the Citigroup meeting. Not so incidentally, Unisys, a company I've enjoyed working with on multiple speaking and writing engagements, is holding the event at the 4-star rated Le Bernardin restaurant in NY. What better life is there to live when you speak, get a fee for it and get to eat at a restaurant like that. I'll give you the full report on it - my restaurant review - when I return. My CEL - comparative expectation level - is in the range of astronomic gastronomic delight.
The Chicago Hilton and Towers
About two months ago, my wife and I spent three days at the Yankees-Phillies series being played at Citizens Park and we stayed at the Airport Hilton there. It was a terrible experience, not because of a bad person, but because of a series of miserable policies, laziness, miscues on their part, and a bit of dirt in the room. But I didn't write about it because I didn't see the reason at the time. However, just to give you an example, I had a package that urgently needed delivery by 9:00am in the morning to the hotel and the company getting it to me moved heaven and hell to do it. But at 3:00pm I still didn't have it. I called the company, found out that someone at the Hilton had signed for it at 8:00am or so and never sent it up to me or even let me know it was there. In fact, it wasn't even at the front desk; it was in a back storage room. If I hadn't inquired, they might never have thought to get it to me. That was typical of the weekend at the Airport Hilton in Philadelphia - a hotel I hope none of you has the terrible luck or poor choice to stay in.
Until now I've been silent about the experience there, hoping that it was just a misfortune
But now, for the Gartner conference, I'm now staying at the Chicago Hilton and Towers in downtown Chicago on S. Michigan Ave. and once again, another Hilton misfire. Not because they did anything to me personally, they haven't. The staff has been lovely. But when push comes to shove, there must be a group of bubble people running the company, because for a hotel that is responsible for "hospitality" in the title of its industry, they pull the envelope - and then rip it to shreds out of sheer customer thoughtlessness.
Think of the following policies/actions. I checked in. A nice person at the front desk asked me one question. "How are you going to pay for this?"
Okay. Not a promising start but liveable...
Then I find out the use of the gym is a self-described "nominal fee" of $13.00 per day.
Okay.
Then I find that the water in the room which is a $1.29 bottle of water is $6.00.
Okay.
I could tolerate all these bad practices/policies since they are within the realm of one or two other chains too - but not the Mandarin Oriental - but then the kicker and this came with my two room keys little cardboard container:
Need a Late Checkout? For EXTENDED Check-out. Special arrangements for later check-out can be made by calling the front desk, extension xxxx, on your scheduled day of departure.
Check-out time is 11:00am.
Extended Check-out Time Charges:
11:00am - 2pm: $25.00
2:00pm - 4pm: $45.00
after 4 pm: full day rate.
They have to be joking right? I spoke with a prominent C-level person in the CRM world about this about an hour ago and they said at the Starwood chain, you have late checkout for their gold card holders at 4:00pm as a rule - with no charge.
You saw my stuff on the Mandarin Oriental.
Well, let's put it this way. Don't stay at Hiltons if you can. The only thing free there is the bubblewrap that's wrapped around the eyes and ears and brains of the Hilton management.
But the conference is really interesting.
More on that either later or tomorrow.
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