CNA Update 1

The day I posted the first CNA story, 22 October 2012, their Marketing Manager, Terry Dale, called me having read the article on the Destiny Man site the week before.

I told her about the blog post, which I had also emailed to the two heads of CNA, Mike Kimmings and Ettienne Brandt, and the CEO of mother company Edcon, Jürgen Schreiber.

Terry and I spoke sincerely and at length about the problems and my solutions, and I delivered three books as examples of the ‘Fully Booked’ process for her and the two heads of CNA to see. I have not heard anything from Mike Kimmings, Ettienne Brandt or Jürgen Schreiber, but I have spoken further to Terry. She kindly sent an email to the book buyer to remind him to consider stocking my books.

Then I received this email from Terry on Wednesday 24 October:

Hi Robin

Have collected your books and literature thanks very much!  Ettienne has received a copy and Mike will receive his after conference this week.  I have chatted with Ettienne concerning your proposed intervention and we’d like to have a meeting with you to further understand opportunities that may exist between us early in the new year.  This period in our fiscal is crunch time as you can appreciate and its all hands on deck with staff focused on Christmas and Back to School and budgets tied up in executing (year end March 2013)!

I will be in touch early next week to schedule that appointment.

Kind regards

Terry Dale Marketing Manager | CNA

I responded on 29 October 2012 as follows:

Hi Terry

Thanks for your email and update, and for handling this matter. Your reasoning behind leaving this until early in the New Year makes a certain sense. However, I feel and suggest the following about it:

First, it diminishes the chances of anything being done by an enormous amount, to the point of looking like a cop-out. I may not be available early next year, as I have numerous other projects that I am working on. There is only now.

Second, if your budgets are ‘tied up’ (which sounds like corporate speak to me), consider that I am doing this with no budget at all, just my ingenuity and sweat equity. This shows what can be done with the right approach. I am more committed to CNA’s service than you are. If you took this seriously, you would find budget, at least enough to initiate action, demonstrate your commitment, and engage me without delay. I have already done a lot of work for you.

Third, you have been presented a golden opportunity on a platter. Your inability to see and take this opportunity here and now is further evidence of the weightiness and inefficiency of your corporate structure.

Fourth, your delaying until next year means that current service levels will prevail over the Christmas and Back-to-School periods, so thousands of customers will have to endure that while you rake in seasonal turnover from us all. For me personally, it means buying my favourite magazine for a few months under the prevailing service conditions until you are (possibly) ready. Um, I don’t think so...

Please also keep in mind that you are not considering me as a service provider. If you try to engineer this to look that way, we are back to square one, so to speak. I have initiated this project owing to lack of delivery on your part. I am leading this project because your leaders are not getting it right. It is not up to them to approve, they are at the core of the problem. They are where the solution needs to start.

If you delay this until the New Year, with the view that you need to decide on it still, you are positioning it as a pre-sales meeting. As such, I would have to try to impress you to get the business, and in so doing, sweeten the project to your liking. This would give it less integrity, which is not acceptable. Alternatively, I can keep being honest, but then you will not like what I say and not buy it. So the delay is not an option.

I launched this ‘Suing for Service’ campaign in a few weeks. We could do the same for a ‘CNA for Service’ campaign by mid November and have over a month to give everyone in South Africa, including CNA staff, a great festive season 2012. Imagine that! No more delays, and no more bad service in the meantime. Just a super success story, in the media, right here and now.

So, this is what I propose.

I will continue in the media showing how excuses prevail over opportunities. I will continue to make consumers aware, to galvanise them to stand for service, while allowing them to see how you are handling it. This is going ahead and your choice is simply whether to look good or look bad. If you work with me to the standards I set, we will collaborate. Anything less will just be the long way round.

Consulting with me is not free until you decide to pay. You need to pay upfront to see me. Each day that passes is another one wasted while thousands more customers leave your stores with a bad taste. Your leaders need to get this going right now and to use the festive season as the ideal opportunity.

Happy staff, thoroughly impressed customers, an in-house and media campaign that crystallises your commitment and responsiveness, and a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Best wishes
Robin

Second Press Release

This second press release went out yesterday:

‘Suing for Service’ campaign gains momentum

This is an update on the ‘Suing for Service’ campaign launched on 10 October 2012, about which I sent you the initial press release.

• Destiny Man magazine (for which I write the leadership column) ran an article called ‘Stand for Service’ on their website and social media
• Destiny magazine ran the ‘Stand for Service’ article on their site and social media
• Entrepreneur Magazine South Africa ran a story about ‘Suing for Service’ on their site and social media, and
• The Star Workplace ran an article in print on 24 October 2012.

All of these, with the original press release, are available on the campaign blog: www.suingforservice.blogspot.com

Also on the blog are descriptions so far of two of the cases, Siemens and CNA. More will follow in the coming weeks.

Thank you for reading. If you would like my help to cover the story, please contact me:

Robin Wheeler

robin@bentrepreneuring.com

083-444-0787

I have compelling cases and penetrating insights to share that make for good media and show that consumers have power. The outcome is a win/win for consumers and service providers.

Summary

Entrepreneur, author and international speaker Robin Wheeler is leading a campaign called ‘Suing for Service’ in which he is confronting corporations publicly and using the law to improve service levels. Using his personal experience as a consumer and his entrepreneurial expertise, Wheeler is taking big business to task in the media and, if necessary, in court to ensure that they fulfil their brand promises.

The campaign is geared to:

1.       Change bad service to good

2.       Stir up and galvanise consumer awareness and action

3.       Tell success stories as proof and examples.

The approach is to compel companies into doing what customers want and what the companies themselves claim to want but never make real effort to bring about.

Visit www.bentrepreneuring.com or the ‘Suing for Service’ site www.suingforservice.blogspot.com.

Siemens Update 1

On the same date that I posted the detailed Siemens story here, 16 October 2012, I posted news of it on the Siemens Facebook page, where I had previously posted my comments.

I also emailed notification to a Mr Fridolin Weindl, Head of External Communications at Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances Group Head Office in Munich. I received a ‘read receipt’ notification on 22 October but nothing since.

I visited my local Dion Wired store, where I bought my replacement Smeg fridge, to keep them posted on the situation. The store manager there told me that they have discontinued stocking Siemens products owing to sustained poor after-sales service.

The Star Workplace : Campaign aims to improve service standards

Thanks to The Star Workplace, who ran this article on 24 October 2012 called:

Campaign aims to improve service standards

CNA

CNA is one of the oldest retail brands in South Africa, which should be wonderful. It's a sad story in recent times, though, having lost its Central News Agency identity and, with that and corporate ownership, direction.

Ten years ago it was bought by massive retail group Edcon - in turn now internationally owned with emphasis on financial return - where it is clearly at the bottom of their list of priorities.

CNA isn't sure what business it is in (magazines, stationery, books, computer supplies, games, music, photographs, toys, ignoring customers?), but it is in every centre around the country, with over 200 stores.

These stores have a responsibility to the South African consumer community. They owe us a pleasant and uplifting experience. Well designed stores as well. It is their duty as a retail brand with such pervasive presence, and as part of the bigger Edcon group.

Conversely, what they are delivering now is mostly a miserable experience for customers, which is more than remiss. It's effectively criminal.

Eastgate's bad attitude

I visit two stores near me regularly. The smaller of the two, at Bedford Centre, does not stock the airfreight version of my favourite international music magazine, so I always buy that at the bigger store in Eastgate Mall. Staff there (and at Bedford Centre) do not offer help and will walk past you even when you are trying to get help.

I don't go to the Eastgate store for the pleasure of it, it's a quick in and out. The aisles are badly designed, cluttered and too narrow, so the place becomes congested as soon as there are a few people in it. The payment point is a long tunnel of -point-of-sale items and then a counter of dour faced cashiers more interested in talking among themselves than even greeting people waiting like cattle to pay.

A few months back, I made my monthly visit and by the time I was at the till, I was feeling irritated by the whole place, as I often do. (Just observe how you feel as you enter then wait in one of those tunnels). The women at the till did not greet me and kept talking to one another. I said that I did not want a packet and did not have a shopper card. The cashier then turned to me and said, "Shopper card?"

I confronted her for not being present, not acknowledging and greeting me, and not listening, to which she went quiet. When I confronted that, she called the next customer.

I called the manager, who wasn't on duty (in all these encounters, he has never once been in the shop). I got a junior supervisor, who empathised with me, saying that she would have wanted to slap the cashier had she been treated that way. She undertook to address the problem, with management and the cashier, and get back to me.

A month later, I was there for my magazine again, having heard nothing but ready to hand over more money. I got the same cashier, who, knowing me from the last encounter (plus a copy of my book I gave the staff there sometime earlier), greeted me by saying, "Shopper card?"

Was this:

• an uncanny co-incidence
• a matter of routine
• a terrified act
• an aggressive act
• a sense of humour
• a cry for help
• simple bitchiness?

It certainly wasn't good service, even if she had forgotten me, as she later claimed to the then on-duty junior supervisor (someone different this time, to whom I was expected to explain everything again).

I stared at her in disbelief. She took my money and called the next customer, who was itching to get out of that queue. When I continued to confronted her, she ignored me while her colleague (to whom she had been talking before I rudely interrupted them) looked me up and down scornfully.

It's interesting how customers are treated as if we are in the wrong when we ask for basic human decency and some respect for our patronage.

I insisted that the junior supervisor on duty and the cashier meet me right where I was standing in the front of the store. Eventually, with much resistance from them and some movement from me, we stood in the middle of the shop, under the security cameras, where the supervisor 'handled the situation' by asking for both sides of the story, like a prefect at school. A ridiculous and childish situation.

The cashier made her case with folded arms, saying she did not recognise me and that when she asked if I had a shopper card, I just stared at her. I explained that she knew me very well, then said loudly, "The problem here is simple, your service sucks!"

A customer walking past added some dramatic synchronicity when he shouted, "Absolutely!"

Taking for granted

Two days later, I called the store because the manager still had not got back to me. He wasn't there then either.

He called me the following day, introduced himself as Vusi, and asked for 'my side of the story'. I told him to do his research first, so that he could report to me and not me to him. I explained that my side of the story would include my professional input, for which there was naturally a fee. He said that he understood but insisted I continue.

A spontaneous hour on the phone with me later (not everyone is as fortunate), he told me that the conversation had been enlightening, and that he wished I would work with Mike Kimmings (the CEO of CNA) to fix the company. (I had mentioned Mike because I know him, having done a talk to his team when he was Operations Director for Edgars, another brand in the Edcon Group)

Before Vusi had to leave the conversation to go to a meeting, he went on to list the four main points he had taken from my suggestions, telling me that he was going to implement them.

He then asked me to please go and see him the next time I was in the store. He would love to meet me, he said.

He didn't mention the cashier ever rectifying the relationship first, or payment for my consultation, or my distress at the in-store experience. He expected even more from me. Based on what? Goodwill?

Getting worse

I did visit Vusi at the store when I was there for my magazine again a few weeks later. He wasn't there (neither was the magazine. I had to extract help to find this out). When I went back a few days later, Vusi wasn't there and the rest of the staff were in a meeting in the office at the back of the store.

The cashier was among them. When she saw me, she turned and walked back into the office. The deputy manager undertook to sort out the problem and get back to me. I told him that he would not and could not, but he dismissed that. I have not heard from him since.

The security staff told me that the cashier wouldn't talk to me because I was angry. She would speak to me, they said, if I was not angry. So I calmed down because they had all the power. The security guard went to speak to the cashier but came back without her. I left.

I have heard nothing from anyone at CNA in the 12 days since. Two people have, in discussions about this Suing for Service campaign, told me about how bad CNA in general and the Eastgate branch in particular are.

Proposed Outcome

For the fee of double the CEO's annual salary (plus VAT and expenses), paid in advance, in close consultation with him entirely on my terms, we will turn the business around in 9 to 12 months.

We will run a brisk and effective transformation process within the business, which will include key staff writing a chapter of a book about their turnaround and success. I will publish the book as an in-house business tool, and use it in a re-branding excercise, repositioning and rejuvenating the brand.

The cashier who precipitated the project, along with other exemplary leaders in their fields in the business, will enjoy their first trip to Thailand as part of the process.

This will happen very publicly, with video and possibly television footage, so that customers around the country can hold the people and brand responsible for service from then on.

Look out for an all new CNA!

Please share below experiences you have had with the brand, or your comments in general, and accounts of how you are standing for service in CNA.

Entrepreneur Magazine South Africa

Entrepreneur Magazine South Africa ran a news item today about the 'Suing for Service' campaign:

Entrepreneur Sues Big Business for Service

Siemens

The Siemens story has been going on for years. We begin here with recent events, in the last month. 

It's specifically Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances (BSH), but I hold the Siemens brand responsible, as it is the name I have on the appliances in my kitchen.

Many emails, phone conversations, meetings and technical visits down the road, in an hour-long phone call with the CEO of BSH South Africa, he told me that he was as high as it would go and that he would not put me in touch with his boss. 

So I wrote on the Siemens Facebook page and (with them deleting the post) I was put back onto someone new in South Africa. Here's his letter:


Good Morning

I hope this email finds you well.

I received your post via Siemens this morning.

As far as I understand the matter, it is your contention that we owe you money for services rendered? I understand that you do not want to go into the matter but I find myself in a bit of a quandary here because the person you were dealing with no longer works at BSH. I am therefore unable to properly avail myself of the situation properly. I hope that you will understand my predicament and help me with the facts. Please could you send me the correspondence relating to said consultation.

Please note that with reference to your comment "if you want to speak to me you pay", I cannot agree to such terms but I can assure you that I am sincere in my efforts to understand the situation and your point of view.

I hope you have a good day.

Kind regards

Murray Carter
Marketing Manager
Export and CP Sales Manager
Regions: SSA

 

I responded with this:



Good day, Murray

My name is Robin, as you can see from my previous correspondence. You may address me as such. I am excellently well, thank you.

If you feel in a quandary, imagine how I feel, dealing with this matter for over two years now, having workmen in and out of my house, dealing with corporate incompetence, and simply not being heard, to mention a few points. The reason I am billing you is because of the quandary you present to me.

I make it my business to get out of quandaries, though, using innovation and uncompromising determination. So a mutually beneficial outcome that makes the world a better place is the only acceptable outcome here.

You are agreeing to the terms one way or another, because we are already in a relationship. Also, I am your customer, and I will ensure that I do not continue to pay for your bad service, as I have done so far. You have been paying, too, so far with 4 Siemens and 1 Gaggenau fridges (all returned faulty), a great deal of time from a number of (seemingly unavailable) people from the South African office, and, of course, growing brand damage on an international scale.

Even my answering this email is on your account. If you (as Siemens) embrace it, we can fix the problem. If you fight it, as your offices here have done, it will escalate and you will pay for all of it. The outcome will be better, acceptable and even exemplary service. An enormous thank you to me is actually in order.

As I said, it is your job to research this. If I have to compile all correspondence and sent it to you, it will be at the fee stipulated of 10 000 Euro per day, plus legal fees. I am sure you understand my situation. I have spent weeks of my professional time dealing with the same kind of expectation from Siemens, with no results. I do not work for you, Murray. I bought your products and then suffered through your service. You are going to correct this until I am satisfied.

So Mr Kai-Henning Florschuetz, CEO of BSH South Africa, with whom I spoke a few weeks ago, seconded from Frankfurt and seemingly a Siemens man for life, has left without a trace? As have Troy Omant, Paula De Freitus, Alister McKay...?

It seems that you are taking a lazy and disrespectful approach to this matter. I request and suggest that you do your job properly before you write to me asking me to do more work while you try to reject my terms. This is what I have been dealing with all along. It is very arrogant of you.

As you will see, I have included my attorney in this correspondence, as I have done throughout. Please try not to waste more of our time.

I have responded here because I understand your situation. The time has come for you to deeply resonate with mine.

All best wishes
Robin

_______________________________________________________
Robin Wheeler
Entrepreneur, international speaker and author : Being yourself for a living
www.bentrepreneuring.com




Murray then wrote:


Good Morning Sir

I hope this mail finds you well.

I will be having a meeting with the relevant parties involved in this case this afternoon. I hope you can be patient for a little while longer as I feel this issue needs a diligent approach.

I will revert to you as soon as possible.

I wish you a good day further.

Regards

MC



Instead of him reverting, I received a lawyer's letter: 2012-10-01-BSH-WHEELER



I wrote the following response:

Letter to Siemens and their lawyers: 2 October 2012 : Robin Wheeler

Dear Louis

Siemens’ service sucks. There is no disputing it. They know it, hence the defensive approach. I found the feedback from various stakeholders (Margaret Hirsch, Dion Wired) consistent with mine. We are going to correct this. For as long as I have Siemens products in my house, we are in a relationship. There is no way out but a dramatic improvement. Siemens will live up to their brand.

As a customer, I claim my full satisfaction. I do this, too, as a self-appointed representative of the broader consumer community. To achieve this, Siemens needs to change significantly. I am going to ensure it happens.

As an entrepreneur and consultant, I will help Siemens achieve my satisfaction as a customer. The company and brand will be exemplary and known for it. Business will boom, plus staff and supplier relations will surpass their wildest hopes.

Siemens has two options, one choice.

The choice is a win/win situation in which:

• Siemens stops being bad at service, wakes up, fulfills their social and business obligations, embraces their full responsibility, succeeds in a visionary way, and impresses the hell out of me
• I make sure this opportunity to solve some of the world’s pressing problems first hand does not go un-seized. This forms part of a broader initiative addressing the same problem with other service providers.

The two options are:

1.       For the fee of the BSH CEO’s annual salary (plus VAT), I will run a transformation process in the business and a rebranding process externally, with his full sponsorship and participation. (This is a starting offer that is good value and will go up if they do not work wholeheartedly to achieve the win/win situation.)

2.       For ten times the BSH CEO’s salary, I will sue Siemens, make a media case about it as part of a broader campaign, and film this for television, give radio and television interviews, and so on. Then, in the best interests of global, consumer and corporate wellbeing and sustainability, Siemens will co-operate and we will do the transformation process mentioned in Option 1 above.

One remarkable outcome, two ways to get there. Whether we take the short or the long route, we will get there.

Option 2, Siemens current choice, is much more expensive, as they are surely seeing after five fridges, staff time, meetings with you, your fees etc., plus my time and patience, of course, which are on the account. (In my hour long phone conversation with the CEO Kai-Henning Flourschetz recently, I told him it was also on his account, and he asked if I meant his phone account. Either he has a dry sense of humour, he is unfit for his position, or he was being obstinate). You do all respect my time, don’t you? It's taken me a day to write this.

You may respond to every point in this document systematically, addressing every issue, unlike your letter, which didn’t address what I had written to Murray Carter and on the Siemens Facebook page. Or you could drop this nonsense, and get on with Option 1. Show some respect, please gentlemen.

Option 1 means optimal investment of funds for the mutual benefit of all involved without delay. I am impartial, though, to which option Siemens chooses, as they are both the same to me.

I was taken by your insistence in your correspondence that I treat this urgently. I wrote on the Siemens Facebook page over a week ago. This problem has been going on for years. I am assuming that this is your sense of humour, which is wonderful, because having fun is a significant part of this transformation process, and of thriving in business today.

If Siemens continues to choose Option 2, I will continue with Option 2 from my side, expanding innovatively and causing all sorts of fun and exciting waves until I feel absolutely satisfied as a customer, and as a representative on my own authority alone of what I see as basic human dignity and simple intelligence. This is all very obvious, not complicated at all. Bad service; ongoing refusal to take responsibility; caring, clever and committed customer; phenomenal outcome. 

Money is payable in full upfront.

BBM Attorneys do not represent me, they are on standby to take action on my instruction. I don’t need them, though, because I am right. Siemens shouldn’t need you either. But if they insist, we can add another legal team to their payroll. I am keeping BBM informed, as I have done since I bought 3 Siemens products around which I had designed and built my kitchen. The one product let me down (the other two have been great, give or take a few irritations outlined in previous emails to Siemens). I am now in the renovation business and not recommending Siemens. And the service continues to suck. Your letter was not a co-operative gesture. It denoted zero insight.

This is what we are going to fix, one way or another. Every time I look at my Siemens appliances, which should be for the next ten years at least, I am going to feel fantastic. They will remind me of great breakthrough success we achieved together. Germany will be very impressed, too.

It was Germany I asked to be put in touch with on Facebook. Instead I got marketing in South Africa, whom I had to brief (one more time), and now you. Not looking co-operative to me at all. This on top of a very bad track record that Siemens admitted to by giving me the Gaggenau fridge in compensation for the previous 4 and the days of my time plus emotional distress. Then the Gaggenau didn’t work properly either, and the attempted repair was a disaster. More of my time and distress. They know they are a mess, that is why they have sent you to represent them. I take it as further supporting evidence for my uncompromising endeavours.

Either I will take this letter (consider it an open one) and whole situation to the press, and to Germany this way, plus directly, or the South African operation will go to them to turn things around.

I will continue to contact whomever I choose at my full discretion. I will take no instructions from you or anyone at any time.

I will co-operate enthusiastically with all intelligent behaviour and continue to initiate it. Sooner or later, one way or another, Siemens will come to exemplify it. I await their enthusiastic and immediate co-operation.

Come to think of it, I have been patient long enough. I am going to the media with this anyway. It is an example of an utterly unacceptable broader apathy. It will be one of the examples of how this global problem is being turned around.

Best wishes
Robin


I received this letter from their lawyers in response: 2012-10-15-BSH-WHEELER


Clearly this attorney is being obstructive and disrespectful, so I will not deal with them any further. I am Siemens' customer, however, and will continue to exercise my consumer rights as such, using all media at my disposal.

Stand For Service : Destiny / Destiny Man

This article ran today on DestinyMan.com and DestinyConnect.com

Stand for Service by Robin Wheeler : Destiny Man
Stand for Service by Robin Wheeler : Destiny Connect

I have a particular problem with bad service. Like everyone else, I am faced with it every day, everywhere I go, but my conundrum is that I speak and consult on improving it for a living. So any complaints turn into professional service.

The benefit of being in a corner like this is that I stop at nothing to claim my worth and get results. Service should be good in the first place. Companies are making big money out of us. So I charge for my professional feedback, and I fight tooth and nail until I am satisfied as a customer.

Of course, the corporate bullies pretend not to understand, and they put their legal departments onto me to try to scare me off. I charge them for that too, and take it as an indication that they are hiding something. I dig deeper and hit harder.

Now I have compiled my personal experiences with unacceptable service providers into a campaign called ‘Suing for Service’, and taken it to the market. My sense is that consumers everywhere have the same difficulties and are ready to take action with the right impetus and sense of possibility.

I am stirring things up and holding everyone in these companies personally responsible, in the media and courts if necessary, for getting things right. If I go into a mall and have bad experiences, those corporations are contributing negatively to my wellbeing. I will not settle for it.

My message is: stand for service. Wherever you are, use your voice. Channel your frustration into shifts and solutions. Engage around it in the press. Never give up.

Suggestions for confronting service

• Take service providers on. Show them what you expect and how to do things right. Then charge the management for your service. Get clever and creative, always focused on the solution not the problem.
• Stay conscious and uncompromising. Watch your emotions so they don’t control you, then channel them into change. Breakthroughs are just on the other side of the veil of appearances.
• Stay conscious. This is the essence of intelligence. Use experiences as spiritual practice. You will grow!
• Strengthen your resolve and arguments. With each bad service experience, sharpen your inner sword. Soon you will be a change agent in full swing.
• Bear in mind that people know what to do, they are not doing it because of the system and their choices. Help them see and shift so that you leave a stirred-up and stimulated environment in your wake.
• Staff may look at you like you are mad, getting ruder and more passive-aggressive than ever. Just remember who is in the right. Be a fool five times before you betray yourself. Make that fifty.
• Stand your ground no matter what. I’ll see you on shop floors, smiling!

Entrepreneur, author and international speaker Robin Wheeler has launched the ‘Suing for Service’ campaign. Visit www.suingforservice.blogspot.com, and look out for news in the media.

Press Release : Entrepreneur sues big business for service

Entrepreneur, author and international speaker Robin Wheeler has launched a campaign called ‘Suing for Service’ in which he is confronting corporations publicly and legally to improve service levels.

Using his personal experience as a consumer, and his entrepreneurial expertise, Wheeler is taking big business to task in the media and, if necessary, in court for millions to ensure that they fulfill their brand promises.

The campaign is geared to stir up consumers’ awareness of their power to affect positive change.

Wheeler’s solution to the apathy and poor service levels is to use the spirit of enterprise to force service providers to improve. He has solid cases against a list of brands with whom he has had prolonged and consistently unacceptable service experiences. He is confronting them at the highest level, using his influence and insight to stand up to prevailing apathy and blatant bullying.

With the support of a top legal team, Wheeler is taking on:

• Standard Bank
• Siemens
• CNA
• Pick ‘n Pay
• MTN
• BlackBerry
• ADT Security

and others. His approach is to cleverly coerce companies into doing what customers want and what the companies themselves claim to want but never make real effort to bring about.

“I will settle for nothing less than being thoroughly impressed,” Wheeler insists. “I do not accept apologies, they are cheap insults when consumer experiences do not improve. The only acceptable outcome is exemplary service. I am making it my job to ensure this win/win for all stakeholders.”

The campaign will extend to the police, the traffic department, and government departments. Wheeler will be speaking in the media, writing articles and books, and making television documentaries showing the problems, the solutions, and the power we have as consumers.

About Robin Wheeler

Wheeler coined the phrase ‘being yourself for a living’ in 1996 and has gone on to personify it, maintaining a strong, independent public voice by writing for the media and giving comment on radio and television.

Under the BEntrepreneurING brand, he leads various business units known for innovative outcomes across industries. These include corporate consulting, publishing and television production.

A fearless campaigner for self-actualisation as a business strategy, for consumer rights and wellbeing, and for the awakening of human consciousness, Wheeler is in the business of shifts. He has turned his attention to empowering the public to address the malaise of our day: poor service from highly profitable corporations and governments.

“Someone has to give consumers a voice. I have vast experience understanding business, pin-pointing problems, articulating vision, spurring people towards action, and keeping things simple. In this initiative, I am working for the broader community and making the offending service providers pay and transform.”

“This has been successful on a small scale and it is time now to take it national, to show the general population what can be done. I hold these companies and their staff personally responsible for customer experiences. We all need to stand for service and a healthier world,” Wheeler says.

“I am fed up and, frankly, so are most people. But they buckle under the seemingly impossible weight of the system. Well, I innovate instead. My intention is to stir up sentiments and direct them to win/win solutions.”

“No matter how educated or articulate you are, you have a voice,” Wheeler says. “Stand your ground. Let’s see to it that we all have an exemplary festive season in 2012.”

For interviews with Robin, contact:

robin@bentrepreneuring.com

083-444-0787

For more information about Robin Wheeler, visit www.bentrepreneuring.com

For information about the ‘Suing for Service’ campaign, to read correspondence with offending service providers, and to contribute, visit www.suingforservice.blogspot.com