It’s a no-brainer, don’t you think? That a company should try just a little harder to make their customers feel special? And I don’t mean “flowers and candy” special, just a little something thoughtful. The kind of every day little things partners do for each other (if they have a successful partnership). As you may have noticed, the CRC website was hacked earlier this week. We had it back up and running within a couple of hours.

A colleague of mine recently had a problem with her new Toshiba laptop. Actually, she had many problems lasting many months that resulted in the replacement of most of the components of the laptop before it would work properly. During her initial phone consultation with Toshiba's help desk, she was told to restore the operating system. Now, I don't know if you've ever had to do this, but it basically involves wiping out your entire hard drive, re-installing Windows, and re-installing all of your OTHER software as well. It can take the better part of a day to return your computer to its original state.

Just the other day at the Baltimore Business Journal's Best Places to Work Luncheon, I ran into a colleague who had recently moved. He had a horror story about Verizon. Just like many other people I have spoken to, and consistent with my own experience, Verizon delayed the connection of his new service, left him without service, and forced him to make literally more than a dozen calls to their customer service center.

A recent Fast Company blog talked about Wal-Mart's practices, which often force other smaller companies out of business. Wal-Mart has a bad reputation for how it treats its vendors and its unfriendly behavior toward employees.

The other day I had the illuminating experience of dealing with two car rental companies in the same day. I had booked a Zipcar for a trip to Richmond to meet with a client. I needed a reliable car service that I could catch from the train station in Washington, D.C. and the Zipcar system is really an amazing one.