This holiday, create a ripple of happiness triggered by your single act of kindness. Update your status to share what you’re doing to spread joy. Then inspire others to join you by asking “You in?” The more people you tell, the larger your ripple.

We’ll use our network to share your good deeds with others. We’ll also be doing our own acts of kindness inspired by your updates. So whether you pay for someone’s groceries or drop off a coat for the homeless, your actions will encourage others around the world to join in. How big will your ripple of happiness be?

The public is never wrong. When people don’t respond to what you do, they’re telling you something loud and clear. You’re just not listening.

~ Fifty Cent

His fearless approach to feedback is not just for pop artists.  Every business should look at the way Fifty has embraced informal channels of criticism and feedback.

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

WASHINGTON – In this week’s address, President Barack Obama spoke of how important small businesses are to the economy and described the steps his administration is taking to support them.  Health insurance reform will allow small business to purchase insurance for their employees through exchanges, which will increase the quality of coverage while lowering the costs, and reform will provide tax credits to those businesses.  To free up credit, the President called on Congress to increase the size of various SBA loans, and he announced that the administration will be making more credit available to the small local and community banks that many small businesses depend on.

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
October 24, 2009
Washington, DC

All across America, even today, on a Saturday, millions of Americans are hard at work.  They’re running the mom and pop stores and neighborhood restaurants we know and love.  They’re building tiny startups with big ideas that could revolutionize an industry, maybe even transform our economy.  They are the more than half of all Americans who work at a small business, or own a small business.  And they embody the spirit of possibility, the relentless work ethic, and the hope for something better that is at the heart of the American Dream.

They also represent a segment of our economy that has been hard hit by this recession.  Over the past couple of years, small businesses have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs.  Many have struggled to get the loans they need to finance their inventories and make payroll.  Many entrepreneurs can’t get financing to start a small business in the first place.  And many more are discouraged from even trying because of the crushing costs of health care – costs that have forced too many small businesses to cut benefits, shed jobs, or shut their doors for good.

Small businesses have always been the engine of our economy – creating 65 percent of all new jobs over the past decade and a half – and they must be at the forefront of our recovery.  That’s why the Recovery Act was designed to help small businesses expand and create jobs.  It’s provided $5 billion worth of tax relief, as well as temporarily reducing or eliminating fees on SBA loans and guaranteeing some of these loans up to 90 percent, which has supported nearly $13 billion in new lending to more than 33,000 businesses.

In addition, our health reform plan will allow small businesses to buy insurance for their employees through an insurance exchange, which may offer better coverage at lower costs – and we’ll provide tax credits for those that choose to do so.

And this past week, I called on Congress to increase the maximum size of various SBA loans, so that more small business owners can set up shop and grow their operations.  I also announced that we’ll be taking additional steps through our Financial Stability plan to make more credit available to the small local and community banks that so many small businesses depend on – the banks who know their borrowers, who gave them their first loan and watched them grow.

The goal here is to get credit where it’s needed most – to businesses that support families, sustain communities, and create the jobs that power our economy.  That’s why we enacted the Financial Stability Plan in the first place, back when many of our largest banks were on the verge of collapse; our credit markets were frozen; and it was nearly impossible for ordinary people to get loans to buy a car or home or pay for college.  The idea was to jumpstart lending and keep our economy from spiraling into a depression.  Fortunately, it worked.  Thanks to the American taxpayers, we’ve now achieved the stability we need to get our economy moving forward again.

But while credit may be more available for large businesses, too many small business owners are still struggling to get the credit they need.  These are the very taxpayers who stood by America’s banks in a crisis – and now it’s time for our banks to stand by creditworthy small businesses, and make the loans they need to open their doors, grow their operations, and create new jobs.  It’s time for those banks to fulfill their responsibility to help ensure a wider recovery, a more secure system, and more broadly shared prosperity.  And we’re going to take every appropriate step to encourage them to meet those responsibilities.  Because if it’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that here in America, we rise and fall together.  Our economy as a whole can’t move ahead if small businesses and the middle class continue to fall behind.

This country was built by dreamers.  They’re the workers who took a chance on their desire to be their own boss.  The part-time inventors who became the fulltime entrepreneurs.  The men and women who have helped build the American middle class, keeping alive that most American of ideals – that all things are possible for all people, and we’re limited only by the size of our dreams and our willingness to work for them.  We need to do everything we can to ensure that they can keep taking those risks, acting on those dreams, and building the enterprises that fuel our economy and make us who we are.

Thanks.

The Streisand Effect is an Internet phenomenon where an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information backfires, causing the information to be widely publicized.

Mike Masnick originally coined the term Streisand effect in reference to a 2003 incident where Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for US$50 million in an attempt to have the aerial photo of her house removed from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs, citing privacy concerns. Adelman stated that he was photographing beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project. As a result of the case, public knowledge of the picture increased substantially and it became popular on the Internet, with more than 420,000 people visiting the site over the next month.

Source: Wikipedia

When customers use Facebook, Twitter or any other social media service available to share opinions with a network of friends or followers, it forces a business to the table to address the issue.  The importance of having a documented social media strategy and proactively managing customer service online is important in determining not only how to respond to consumer comments, but also when NOT to respond to customers.

A customer may post an issue that is untrue but believable, true but unbelievable or just untrue and unbelievable but potentially entertaining nonetheless. Are there times a business is better off not responding, to avoid The Streisand Effect, with the hope that an issue will run its course without a viral discussion that does exponentially more damage than the original customer problem?

Consider the situation with Horizon Media.  We can be sure that they would have been better off with a simple Twitter response expressing concern for their tenant, but emphasizing they do not like mold.   However, would they have better off not responding at all as any response could potentially release the Streisand Effect and the type of press that goes with it?

Horizon Realty might be the most loveable, fair, decent and true company in the world. Right now, their name recognition has about as much appeal as Saddam Hussein. With mold.

Whether fair or not, Horizon has made a worldwide name for itself virtually instantly, connecting its brand with callous disregard for its tenants, or worse.

(Yes, there is such a thing as bad publicity. This is what it looks like.)

Rate the service for any business at anytime

Put the Rate My Service contact details in your phone:
-  1-888-898-HOOT (4668)  toll free voice
-  1-858-598-HOOT (4668) mobile text
-  hoot@hootratings.com

By calling 1-888-898-4668 (1-888-898-HOOT), texting 1-858-598-4668 (1-858-598-HOOT), or emailing hoot@hootratings.com a person can “Rate My Service” for any business at any time. Any store, restaurant, hotel, doctor, movie theater, gas station, bank or any other place where you may find yourself receiving an excellent or disappointing service experience, we can take your feedback.  Just leave a comment, along with the business name and location, and Hoot Ratings will contact the business owner and let them know that we received feedback on her or his business. Everyone’s identity and feedback always remains confidential.

We have kept it simple, so that if we all give a hoot, we really can improve our customer service experiences, our daily interactions and our lives in general.

The New York Times ran an article in their Small Business Section this week Why Customer Service Is So Bad stating that smart companies are refocusing on customer service because they can see the value in it.

New York Times Small Business

It makes three points as to why customer service levels are not what they should be:

Because of the high cost of health insurance, many companies have opted to hire a lot of part-time staff, which allows them to avoid having to offer benefits. This creates a problem: It is difficult enough to train full-time people. Having them there part-time and having a huge turnover makes it all the more difficult.

Pricing has gone mad…stores have “crazy once in a lifetime sales” every two weeks. When you have manic pricing, up one day, down the next, it wreaks havoc on customer service.

People running the stores today come from all different backgrounds. Many of them did not work their way up from the sales floor or have generations of family history and training to prepare them for the job.

Any business dealing with the public needs to focus on providing great service to the customer every time they walk into their establishment. It is critical that a business use all the tools at their disposal to not only gather feedback, but also use that feedback to make improvements in the business.

Hoot Ratings Rate My Service

Our signature offering called Rate My Service is free for businesses, allows for the simple collection of customer feedback and is 100% confidential. Hoot Ratings will not claim to solve all the issues related to poor customer service, but through implementing our simple Rate My Service program and openly soliciting customer feedback, businesses can increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention while motivating employees to provide every customer with great service.

Dogs love Hootie

We appreciate everyone flashing the Hoot Ratings brand. We are creating some programs to reward our best Hooties (those of you using the Rate My Service number 1-888-898-HOOT (4668)) with some free gear. Stay tuned for the promotion.

Please let us know if there is anything in particular you would like to see added to the store and we will make it happen.  We have shirts and stuff with all the hootie characters below.

Tiny Hooties