Last week in the United States, we celebrated National Customer Service Week.  While many of you have probably never heard of this, it is meant to recognize a commitment to service and customer loyalty while recognizing the importance of customer service throughout any organization.

Coincidentally, last week Blackboard announced the launch of our annual client satisfaction survey.  We view this annual survey as our most important tool for gathering feedback from our clients.  Your feedback gives us crucial information related to our performance over the past year and compares that performance to previous years.  More importantly, the survey gives our clients a say in the future plans for our business.

I hope that you can take the time to fill this survey out when you receive it by email.  If you have filled it out already, thank you for participating.  If you haven’t yet, a reminder message will be sent to you this week.  While we hope all our clients view their relationship with us positively, we realize there is always room for improvement.  I hope you will take a few minutes now and share your candid views about your experience working with Blackboard.

The survey will be available until Friday, October 24.

I am always looking for someone else that has a similar problem or situation as me.  For example, in the last month:

• The seatbelt warning light and beeping would not go off in my new car, even after I put my seatbelt on.  Searching some list_servs, I found someone with a similar problem, who shared instructions to solve the problem without having to return to the car dealership or re-wiring the entire electrical component of my car.
• I wanted to learn how to make pumpkin soup and found thousands of recipes online.
• When looking for the perfect hotel for my upcoming honeymoon, I naturally used TripAdvisor to see ratings and read reviews of different hotels.

There are many creative ways Blackboard clients have found peers who are experiencing similar situations to theirs, but none of these connections have been made through any formal, easy process.  At your last user group meeting, I hope you exchanged business cards with everyone.  And maybe you’ve joined the ASU list_serv to find information and ask or answer questions.

Well, I now am pleased to be able to let you know Blackboard has created a better way for users at different institutions to find one another.  We have a new feature for you on Behind the Blackboard called CommunityLINK.

On CommunityLINK you can create and manage a profile that will be shared with Blackboard and, if you would like, other members of the Blackboard client community.  Find and connect with peers based on common attributes, or search for other Blackboard users who may be doing things that you are considering or beginning to implement.  I strongly encourage you to use CommunityLINK to create your own profile to start searching for other users.

By the way, that pumpkin soup recipe I used?  Right here.

I went to my first NASCAR race this month in Richmond, Virginia.  I will be honest and say that my expectations were low.  Before going, I just kept wondering, you stand at the track watching really loud cars drive around and around and around, so: “Where’s the real excitement?”

Wow, were my expectations blown out the tailpipe!

First, the feeling of adrenaline in the crowd at the track thrilled me.  Then there was the excitement of the race itself, with car crashes, position changes amongst the leaders, more crashes and more lead changes.

My NASCAR evening was one of the most exciting times I’ve ever had at a sporting event.  Now I am officially a NASCAR fan.

So, of course, the point of this post is to demonstrate that you never know what will happen when you try new things.  This is the attitude I’m taking to a “Customer Care” conference I’ll be attending next month for our Client Success initiative.  Customer care is what we do, but I can always learn more.  And my work at a conference like this is to take every opportunity to discover new ideas about how other organizations are facing the challenge of communicating with, and providing the best service to, their clients.

For clients there are many ways to become more involved with us at Blackboard, such as joining a user group, participating in the Blackboard Idea Exchange, or reading and posting to one of the client-driven listservs.

And, during BbWorld ‘08 in Las Vegas this July, I encourage you to take every opportunity: try out a session you normally wouldn’t attend, grab a Blackboard employee and ask her or him that question you’ve been dying to get an answer to, or – like a NASCAR driver – just take another lap around the buffet table for that third serving or piece of dessert.

This month Blackboard hired a new vice president of Client Support.  His name is Tony Mandaro, and prior to Blackboard he worked for a software company managing operations for 12 years.  Tony’s experience is just what Blackboard needs.  He served in the United States Navy, received his BS and a Masters in Education from the University of Connecticut, and taught high school in Virginia for seven years!

While interviewing for his new position, Tony asked me some of the typical questions you would expect any interviewee to ask: What is the staff like?  How do you measure success?  What are the key operational challenges I will encounter, walking in the door?  What do Blackboard users perceive as their biggest challenges?  Where do I get a good cup of coffee around here?

Besides the coffee question, most of the answers were not short.  Tony and I had a long discussion about the challenges we’ve encountered while the company and the size of our client base have grown, the benefits of our solutions and how we can exceed our clients’ expectations of us.  One of Tony’s questions in particular did catch me off guard.  Tony asked, "What is the one most important thing Blackboard can do to help clients view Client Support in a positive way?

Recently I completed an around-the-world trip for Blackboard to visit our offices in Amsterdam and Sydney. One of the many flights I took to accomplish this journey was a flight from Budapest to Bangkok on Malev Hungarian Airlines.

It was an old plane that clearly needed some interior upgrades. The in-flight movie was Tootsie . . . in Hungarian. You can’t make this kind of stuff up. Not exactly a recent release. That experience got me thinking about staying current with the times.

My family typically makes fun of me because I hang out periodically on Second Life, use Twitter, or am daily checking my Facebook profile to see what people wrote on my wall. More than anything I do this to stay up to date with the latest technology trends.

I make these twice-annual trips to Europe and Asia for exactly that reason. I need to stay on top of what is happening in those locations in terms of staffing, operational effectiveness and any specific client issues we may be facing in those regions. Spending several days in our offices located in Amsterdam and Sydney enables me to help bring the team there up to speed on our latest products, processes and overall strategy. Visiting in-person also enables me to speak face-to-face with team members there about the overall direction of our company and Client Success initiative.

I recently spoke to a colleague at a U.S. higher ed institution, in the state of California. He and I discussed my trip, and he mentioned that one way he stays current with his faculty is by sending his instructional designers physically out to the different programs at his university to engage with faculty members. He explained to me how twice each week the Instructional Design office is actually closed, and those team members visit the different schools at the university to work one-on-one with staff members. What a great way to stay current with faculty needs . . . just showing up at their door a couple of times a week and talking with them.

When my Malev flight landed in Bangkok, the pilot thanked us passengers for flying with Malev and mentioned the airline had been awarded the designation "Best Airline in Eastern Europe" for the second year in a row. I wondered what the other airlines had as their in-flight movies.