One of the great things about working with smart young people is that they alert you to cool new things. Like when Sarah and Will introduced me to Pandora.

I talk to a lot of business owners who are quick to boast about what “great service” they provide. They invariably think that “service” distinguishes them from everyone else who does the exact same thing. Pandora is an amazing web application that plays music based on what you like. You put in a song, or an artist, you like and it streams high-quality music based on the characteristics of the music. As you’re listening you can click the thumbs-up button to tell Pandora that you like the song they chose. If you click thumbs-down it skips the song. The program uses artificial intelligence to learn what you like. It’s easy to use and it works really well. It’s open 24/7. And it’s free. If you don’t want ads on it then you can pay a reasonable fee to get it clean. This is what young people consider great service. Nobody ever calls them. They don’t have a “relationship” with anyone. Nobody knows them by name or what they take in their coffee. “Great service” is getting something exceptional for a price that’s reasonable with as few barriers as possible.

We shouldn’t always think about service in terms of human interaction. Sometimes removing people increases the quality of service. But not always. This afternoon I stopped at a The Turtle Bread Company, a trendy bakery in Minneapolis, for a cookie and a cup of coffee. The cookies and the coffee were self-serve but I had to pay at the counter. So I got a cookie and then I had to wait in line to pay. After I paid I had to serve the coffee myself. (And it ran out halfway through filling my cup.) So psychologically I felt like I'd done all the work but they took my money. It would have been a more rewarding emotional experience if they poured the coffee, gave me a cookie, and then let me self-pay.


Jeff