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The question is, “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer: “One bite at a time.”

I’ve been thinking about elephants a lot since the first of the year. Most of the country has been in a bit of a tailspin. Snow storms and gloomy winter weather hasn’t helped much to lift the spirits of Americans who are sick to death of talk of terrorists and wars, poor customer service, shoddy work and unemployment.

Even so, today I was really taken aback by at how rude everyone has become. The challenges facing all of us at the moment are huge.

Three cars honked me out of their way within the two city blocks between my home and the local supermarket. I guess they were in a hurry to go somewhere. A fellow shopper commented “This just isn’t your day, is it?” after observing two ladies in a terrible hurry pushing in front of me.

Oh, yes, we’re all in a hurry. We’re frustrated and tired of winter and more than a little bit cranky. We’re concerned about how we’re going to continue to manage to keep up with inflation. Since the first of the year I’ve seen gas prices jump from $1.98 to $2.49 a gallon within two months. Chicken, a meat that my daughter describes as “poor man’s meat”, is now $5 a pound at the local supermarket. And this in an economy where anyone over 45 is considered a dynasaur.

Yesterday, I had an interesting, if somewhat heated, discussion with a fellow Board member about how I shouldn’t be so concerned about handling responsibilities of managing our condo - never mind that people’s parking spaces are blocked with snow and leaky toilets have caused the building’s water bills to double. Another friend told me that I’m unreasonable to think that people should understand old-fashioned concepts like reciprocity or working together for the common good or helping someone in need. At the same time a peer - a small business professional who makes his living doing programming, database management and network services over the Internet - shared his frustration about his Internet service provider’s shoddy service that’s been so bad for three weeks that he’s very close to losing several customers.

This all starts to look like an elephant to me…

What are we to do?

I don’t know about others, I do know how I’m going to eat this monster….one bite at a time.

I am only one, but I am one. I can’t do everything, but I can do something. I can’t do much about the state of the world, but I can make a difference today in my immediate neighborhood.

How about you?

If you want to know what customer service is all about - ask an entrepreneur! If you want to know what business is all about - ask an entrepreneur!

Why? Because entrepreneurs live and die based on their business practices. We share information among ourselves and learn from watching what works and what doesn’t! We’re not always perfect but we do know that businesses who focus on delivering the best possible service to their customers and who accept responsibility when there’s problems are the ones who will ultimately thrive.

Some time ago, my daughter had a problem with an airline — she got stuck in a snow storm and was stranded in Albuquerque for two days. The airline eventually - after a great deal of effort on our part to find anyone who would listen - responded with an apology that essentially said: stuff happens, we were working with a difficult situation beyond our control and, gee whiz, let us compensate you by giving you a voucher that you can use on your next flight with our company. 

That was indeed better than most of the companies out here today who, when problems arise and they fail to deliver the service their customers purchased, say something more like: gosh amighty, we couldn’t help it and if you don’t like what happened, it’s really too bad. And it’s much better than the companies that deny that they have any responsibility - some even placing blame right back on their customers.

Savvy entrepreneurs can learn a lot from these examples - what to do, what not to do. They can learn what it means to be in a business that serves its clients, the importance of taking responsibility and how to communicate with their customers.

But today we see an example of the kind of company and customer service that shines head and shoulders  above the norm.

Last week, as we all know, there was another major snow storm. Its impact affected countless travelers and communication systems in the Northeast US and far beyond…even the Internet in Chicago and beyond was dramatically affected by that and similar snow storms. There was a lot of finger pointing and hands thrown up in dismay at how we can’t compete with Mother Nature.

But one company took a pro-active approach. They wrote a letter — can you believe this — to apologize to their “valued customers” for the “anxiety, frustration and inconvenience”! And, they demonstrated their commitment to pro-actively work to avoid similar problems in the future.

JetBlue is a relatively new airline company. Its founder and CEO David Neeleman, knows exactly what it takes to run a business and to win the confidence of his current and future customers. His vision is to put humanity back into airline travel. When disaster stuck, he proved his commitment to that vision. Mr. Neeleman wrote a personal letter of apology to his valued customers and published it together with a Customer Bill of Rights on the company website. He personally re-affirmed on video specific steps JetBlue is taking right now to avoid such disruptions ever happening again. Rather than just look the other way and go on with business as usual Mr. Neeleman chose to take affirmative action to validate his commitment to JetBlue customers. He didn’t hide behind some glitzy pr campaign. He chose to stand before the entire world in video to apologize (for what we all know was a disaster beyond their control), reaffirm his commitment to bring humanity back to air travel and lined out what JetBlue is doing to deliver on that promise.

I applaud Mr. Neeleman and JetBlue. I’m not a world traveler but they’ve won me as a customer. Any time I need to travel, I will seek them out first as my airline of choice. Will he and his company have problems in the future? Most likely. Life - even for companies - is messy. But Mr. Neeleman and JetBlue demonstrated that they are the kind of company that we’ve been looking for.

If you’d like to see how a first rate company deals with challenges, check out  http://jetblue.com/about/ourcompany/apology/index.html and http://www.jetblue.com/about/ourcompany/promise/index.html 

You may even learn something about how to deliver quality customer service. But, don’t think that this is an approach you can copy and cookie cutter. If you’re going to really learn from this example, study the commitment…and practice it every business day.  

I love technology!

Remember the days when we didn’t have computers? It really wasn’t all that long ago when typing a report was a major production. We were very careful about typing back then. The closer to the bottom of the page we got, the more careful we were. Heaven knows, we didn’t want to have to start all over again because we make a mistake at the bottom of the page. There’s no telling how many trees were sacrificed at the hands of unskilled fingers.

Technology is our friend. It’s a mixed blessing at the same time. I really do wish that technology didn’t insist on doing ALL my thinking for me. I don’t want word processors that change words before I’ve finished typing them and insert lines that I can’t get rid of. It’s true that I do make mistakes. I write incomplete sentences and misspell words from time to time. But I really would like to be allowed to think for myself.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’m insulted by the programs that promise to write my headlines and automatically write entire articles for me. I really can figure out what I want to say in my own good time. And, I really would like to learn how to use the programs I have before I’m forced to buy new ones.

Perhaps I’m a bit of an organization freak but I really do get very angry when I discover strange files on my computer that I KNOW I didn’t put there, when I haven’t got a clue what one of them is supposed to do, and when I can’t find files in a hurry because some programmer somewhere decided it should be buried in some mysterious hidden directory.

Perhaps, it’s just a peculiarity that sets some of us apart. We love technology. But we do long for simplicity and the ability to control our own environment. We prefer telephones that don’t have to be programmed before we can use them to talk with family and friends; we really don’t need phones that take pictures…. a simple camera would do very nicely, thank you very much.

We see progress and innovation as very good indeed. After all, progress and innovation have given us pleasures we never even dreamed possible, like car seats that warm our behinders even before the engine has had time to warm up. But, while many of us are thrilled by all the new play toys on the market, we’re not likely to buy into all of them just because they’re available or just because marketers think we need them.

Some of us still believe that less is more.