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My name is Andy and I work for Tesco

Walking to the station this morning en route to an ITSPA meeting in Town I noticed a young suit staring into his phone.

As I got closer I saw that his name was Andy and that he worked for Tesco. His name was displayed on a badge on his lapel. I’m not sure what font size Tesco use but it did the job. I could see it clearly without having to stop and peer.

Don’t ask me why this stuck in my mind, other than the fact that I made a note of his name using my voice recorder. I do that sort of thing.

Continuing with the thread, I used to attend dinners thrown by Dell. A guest speaker entertained and we would have an after dinner debate on the theme of the evening. They were good dinners fair play to Dell.

My only gripe was the size of the font on the name badges. It was far too small to be able to easily read the name, especially considering these dinners were held in private dining rooms dimly lit for atmospheric effect. Clearly labelled badges are important if you are in a room full of strangers with lots of wine flowing. How do they expect me to remember names after all that wine. After one of the dinners I completed the assessment form and said all was good except for the badges.

At the next Dell dinner the badges were the same. No change in font size. Far too small to read. I’m sure it was the usual excellent evening but at the end of it I refused point blank to provide feedback. What was the point? They obviously didn’t read the feedback. Either that or they didn’t consider my feedback worth responding to.

Taking feedback to the extreme one of the readers of this blog was at a trade show in London looking to buy a server. He hung around the HP stand waiting to be sold a box. No sales pitch came forth and in due course, after having his badge scanned and informing HP of his enquiry, left serverless and bought one off IBM just down the aisle.

A few weeks later he received a phone call from a HP sales person following up on the exhibition lead. He related his story, told them they were too late and considered the matter closed.

Wind the clock forward another few weeks and HP were back in touch again. The PA of the VP running the HP server division wanted to know if he would have lunch with the VP to provide feedback of his experience at their trade show booth. Sure said my friend. Anytime.

Only problem is the lunch was to be at HP’s Corporate HQ in California!!! They flew him out a couple of days early and he had lunch with said VP in their company canteen. The whole thing lasted 90 minutes and then they flew him home. I’m sure he had a good time.

One wonders what effect his feedback may have had. I’m also sorry the VP must remain nameless. That’s because I can’t remember his name – nothing to do with the  font size of his badge.

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Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

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