Recent research confirms that customer loyalty is more a result of how customers feel about doing business with you, rather than what they think about your products or services in a detached way.

Businesses that provide satisfying service gain their customers’ loyalty in the form of repeat business and referrals – the ‘holy grail’ of customer service. The most successful companies achieve this goal by managing the total customer experience.

The name of this new thinking is Customer Experience Management (CEM). CEM is concerned with planning how you will not only meet, but exceed, both the rational and emotional needs of your customers.

In this workshop (24/03/10) you will gain an understanding of the building-blocks of a satisfying customer experience and create interactions that turn average customers into your campaigners.

Speaker: Allen Baird

To book a place, phone the School of Education (Open Learning) on 028 9097 3539/3323 or email openlearning.education@qub.ac.uk.

Image credit: blogger’s own.

I begin a 1-year training contract on 4th January with Love For Life, an educational project that works with teachers and pupils in their school setting.  The aim is to support and challenge young people in their personal development by employing a model of ‘information giving, attitude and value formation and skill development’.

As Programme Developer, its my job to deliver multimedia presentations in schools and other youth settings, as well as develop materials and conduct research for the project.

The focus of the Love For Life project is relationships and sexual health in a broad sense.  It covers issues like confidence and self-esteem,  emotional management, decision-making and those risk-taking behaviours that some young people wander into without full knowledge of the choices available and the likely consequences.  In many ways, this project meshes nicely with the work I do with Aware Defeat Depression, delivering the Mood Matters programmes throughout schools in Northern Ireland.

Those who read this blog will know of my passion for promoting personal development at school level, particulary among boys.  I feel privileged and excited to be part of this project.  But the question is – how will the kids take it?  Time will tell.  But one thing I do know for certain.  How I wish I could have had teaching like this when I was a young adult!

This exciting 1-day workshop is a joint venture between me (Allen Baird of Sensei Learning and Performance) and Rory O’Connor of The Creativity Hub.

In 2008, I designed and delivered the UK’s first university course teaching Jedi Skills. Held at Queen’s University, where I am a tutor, the 1-day workshop gained coverage in The Guardian Education Supplement, The Times Higher Education Supplement, The Times Online, The Daily Telegraph, The Irish News, The News Letter, and BBC News Online.    Called Feel the Force: How to Train the Jedi Way, we were also featured on international radio and local TV.

Our new event is timed to coincide with the Invasion Belfast II event held at W5 in the Odyssey in October this year.

Rory, creative thinking expert and creator of Rory’s Story Cubes, will join me to offer Northern Ireland’s most exciting/only Jedi training event of 2009.  Rory and I will explain the famous Jedi Mind-Trick by showing how to gain control over and from the minds of others.  Rory will explore the subjects of Energy Psychology and Subtle Energy fields to gain modern insight in the mystical Force.  I will then walk participants through the films to see those psychological skills Luke Skywalker gained in becoming a Jedi, and those Anakin lacked in his fall to the dark side.

Other special features of this workshop include a demonstration by Rory of the latest Jedi training technologies such as the Force Trainer.  Also, local instructors will give a talk and demonstration on Aikido and Iaido.   Aikido is a powerful martial art that emphasizes defence rather than attack, and means ‘the way of harmony with life force’.  Not known much in Ireland, Iaido is the Japanese art of drawing, striking with and sheathing the samurai sword.

As the highlight of the day, each participant will receive their own dueling lightsaber and have a chance to test what they have learned! This lightsabers are combat-durable – not the cheap, breakable one’s you had as a kid. Especially imported from the US, these lightsabers are the closest you can get to wielding the real thing!

Our Jedi Training Facility for the day is the Conference Suite of the Belfast Activity Centre, a personal development charity off the Malone Road in south Belfast. Ample, free car-parking space is available.  It will take place on Saturday 17th October 2009 from 9 am to 5 pm.

Cost for the day is £77.50.  This includes lunch, snacks, and tea/coffee throughout the day. Also included is the cost is a lightsaber, which every participant can take away with them.

Click here to book online and take your first step into a larger world.

If you book before 19th September, you can chose your lightsaber colour from blue, orange, green, red or silver. If you book after this, we will post your lightsaber out to you later.

To avoid disappointment, book early you must!

So Dawn, my wife and business partner, made me get into this thing called Twitter.  I wasn’t happy about it.  I use the Internet (mostly Wikipedia and YouTube), send emails, all the usual suspects.  I even write blogs and employ on-line, interactive websites in my workshops.  What more do you want from me, electronic fiend?

You see, I’m not a Twitter-type person.  I’m a book-worm, not a computer nerd or a gadget geek.  Heck, I’m virtually a Neo-Luddite.  I’ve blogged before about my appreciation for the writings and ideas of Neil Postman, one of the most famous opponents of mindless technological advance.  I’ve got form.

Then I was forced to… well… tweet.  There’s no other word for it.  She made me tweet in public, in front of others.  (My first tweet is displayed above.)

But, oh no, that wasn’t enough for her.  Next she was making me download something called TweetDeck, to make it easier to keep tabs on my nefarious tweeting activities.

At first, I found the process vexing.  I tried to squeeze the essence of each daily activity into a meagre 140 characters.  I did not succeed.  But then, after some further strenuous effort, I found it even more arduous.  I took to quoting quotes or attempting to invent something profound.  I sat in front of my screen, hands through my gently greying hair, desperately trying to think of something, anything, to tweet about.  The pain, the pain…

Then, in a final, fatal act of desperation, I thought I should take a look at the people I was following.  Maybe they could help me think of something to say.  Maybe they might even prove amusing in some nerdish way.  Maybe it would be like having a sort of, you know, a kind of, what you might call – a “conversation”.

Then I made what I can only call ‘A Series of Astounding Discoveries’:

• Discovery One – There are some interesting people out there in Tweetville.
• Discovery Two – I can learn stuff from them.  (As I’ve confessed in my Twitter profile, I’m a ‘knowledge junkie’ among other things, so this discovery was well-nigh impossible to resist.)
• Discovery Three – I can make business contacts.  (This is Sparta?  No.  THIS. IS. NETWORKING!)
• Discovery Four – If you live near them, and if you can find them, then maybe you can meet up and talk business.  (Lattes  are compulsory.)

So far I’ve had the pleasure of meeting up with two fellow tweetees: Stephen Brown from The Adventure Team and and Derek Hall from EO Creative.  Great guys, great prospects.  One dude – Paul Anthony from Webdistortion – was even cool enough to sponsor my team in the forthcoming Belfast Marathon!  What more can I say?

I’ve been transfomed from a Twitter virgin into a…

I’d better stop now.

(No tweeting Monday, I’m running a leg of the Belfast Marathon with the Spartan Speedfreaks.)

I’ve had the pleasure of some correspondence recently with a real celebrity and a real gentleman, Gerald Home.  Gerald was thoughtful enough to leave an encouraging comment under one of my previous blogs and we’ve emailed a bit since then.  Gerald is originally from Northern Ireland, and played a few characters in Return of the Jedi, which is fairly awesome as far as claims to fame go.  Heck, the guy even has his own entry in Wikipedia!  Visit his website here.

What Gerald told me was that there is due to be a sort of Star Wars convention at W5 in the Odyssey this weekend.  Actually, the event is called Knights of the Empire, and is run by a people who like to dress up as Star Wars characters.  It will be attended by Gerald and other actors, such as David Prowse (that’s the guy who played the physical form of Darth Vader, you idiot).  It’s on over Saturday and Sunday; I plan to be there on Saturday morning.

But somehow, despite the write-up by Belfast Media, I don’t think I’ll be signing too many autographs.  See you there?