In this high-tech, hustle-and-bustle day and age, a phone call to businesses in many walks of life likely will include dealing with some form of nonhuman interaction.
Bill Bootz, owner of Houston-based industrial PVF master distributor Team Alloys, didn’t know much about the business when he first started as an outside salesman back in the 1980s. “My first sales call to SMS of Texas was on Sept. 18, 1989,” he recalls in vivid detail. “They told me my price was higher than domestic. I said, ‘What’s domestic?’ I knew absolutely nothing about the business — completely zero.”
I trust everybody had a fun and safe holiday season. I know some folks north of the border certainly enjoyed theirs thanks to some outstanding customer service. Canadian airline WestJet had a virtual Santa ask passengers at airports in Toronto and Hamilton what they wanted for Christmas. Once those planes took off, WestJet employees went on a shopping spree and delivered the specific presents to those same passengers when they arrived at baggage claim in Calgary.
I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I’m writing this article on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean at the tail-end of a 30-day cruise through the Mediterranean Sea, across the Atlantic, through the Caribbean and ending in Miami.