Russell Bell PHOTO/FILE
The longer days and earlier rising sun means that sleep is at a premium in my world.
I remember some time ago being awoken at 5.59am on Sunday morning by loud music. A quite inappropriate time I thought, so I phoned up the Council hotline and spoke to a most helpful young man who, rightly, told me that I needed an address to enable him to send out a squad to have the volume reduced.
My protestations encouraging the Council Noise Control Officers to unleash hell were not enough.
Speaking of hell, I am certain that, in that form of eternity, bagpipes are the music of choice (my skin crawls even as I type the word) but "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel (which rattled me out of my slumbers with more effect than last week's earthquake) is surely purgatory's entree to an afterlife of "wailing and gnashing of teeth".
The very polite and effective performance of the nice man on the after-hours hotline highlighted something that is very important.
If you are meeting the needs of clients and/or solving problems for them, you need to identify and deal with the exact point of their need or pain. And, at times, you might need to do this without all the information you need to make an educated and accurate response.
Hence it is really important to be an excellent listener or, at the very least, engage with your customers.
Two businesses this week showed me opposite ends of this spectrum.
On Friday I determined to buy Junior Bell his Christmas present - it was an impulse decision and, as I have the same eye for what's cool for kids as all three blind mice combined, I really needed a professional to help.
The staff at the toy store knew exactly what a seven-year-old wants and, after some excellent questions from the assistant and establishing that the 'toy of the moment' was in stock, the transaction was complete.
But it didn't end there - the value I received increased and was topped off by the suggestion that they could wrap it for Christmas. I was an off-the-street customer and I had never seen any of their marketing and effectively chose them at random ... but now they have a loyal advocate.
The other business has furnished me with a new mobile phone.
The service was a bit disappointing because they neglected to inform me that "synching" my phone would mean any activity would be lost.
So the time spent at the YMCA's excellent open day (recorded in photos) was lost. My boy's delight in having photos taken with Darth Vader and Jango Fett will now diminish significantly when I tell him those photos are lost.
In this case, a small piece of information - back up everything before synching - would save me the angst ahead. And Apple, how about adding a pop up to iTunes?
I suspect two things: That Apple don't read my articles, and that Junior Bell will likely get his present early.
Russell Bell's Zenith Solutions is a specialist Wanganui business advice and consultancy practice - 021 2442421.