I try to recycle as much as I can. It’s spring cleaning time here in my office and I found several laser-toner cartridges in a storage cabinet. They were all for printers that I replaced many moons ago. So I called a Cartridge World store in Cleveland, Ohio (Kamm’s Plaza, to be exact) and asked if they would take them.  Katrina, who answered the phone said, sure, they’d take them off my hands.

To make a long story short, after my drop-off today I realized that this Cartridge World location has always given me professional, prompt and friendly service during my visits over the years.

And I’m also reminded that ( no matter how effective a business is at social media and online marketing), particularly for brick-and-mortar retailers dealing face-to-face with customers, success comes down to consistently providing excellent customer service… That’s what customers remember.

Thanks for the reminders, Katrina.

It’s been my pleasure of late to help two Ohio nonprofits get to know their members’ online preferences.  The goal for both highly social groups is to use survey results to know, then serve, their members’ informational and social needs better.

One nonprofit organization is a church in Portage County, near Ravenna; the other a professional association in Cuyahoga County, near Cleveland.  For the church, this is its first online membership survey.  For the professional group, I facilitated surveying its members’ needs for the first time exactly 10 years ago.

Both nonprofits are long overdue for polling their members. Both groups’ leaders are looking forward to their respective survey outcomes. So am I.

Membership surveys are a smart and wonderful way to get to know small-town congregations and big-city professionals better. Survey results sometimes surprise and sometimes confirm… and they’re always beneficial to service organizations.