A blank page is quite scary. Really daunting to say the least. Well….it has been, for me,  lately.

Here is the thing, you want the writing to come out perfectly. To bring hundreds, if not thousands, of readers. But the real intention was never that, for me. It was to track where I was at any stage and continually improve.

In came all the expert blogging advice, SEO and ‘master blogging in a month’ or day. Then the pressure followed.

A friend, who admittedly subscribes to ‘tough love’, always says – “be the one to kill your last great idea”.

It’s great to have hundreds of people read your blog and follow your work. It’s when  you lose of why you do it, that it loses its essence. We all want to, absolutely have to continually redefine ourselves and do the next best thing.

Your last great innovation, is what the masses define with. The hardest thing – is to be the one who exterminates and kills that idea, to replace it with something better. More innovative.

The focus should always be your audience, and that being an audience of one. The one client, who evangelizes to hundreds. Not the hundreds and thousands that soon dissipate into thin air.

Image by: fo. ol on Flickr

I avoid going to the bank as much as possible. Who wants to queue and get average service?

Thereafter – in most instances – be told to go to “your home branch”. At least that was always my perception of banks. Until this past Saturday, that is.

With the excitement of Friday night, I forgot my card at some store after making a payment. As Murphy’s Law would have it, I only realized that after 11am on Saturday. Knowing banks close at 12pm on Saturdays and you cannot get anything out of them without raising your voice. Well….all the purple angry faces on Hello Peter would also have you believe that. I have posted a few about other companies as well.

After 1pm, I arrived at a quiet Nedbank branch in Sandton City, and that alone was too good to be believable. With Murphy’s Law hanging over my shoulders and all. The guy behind the desk advised me to cancel my card using the phone in their branch and request a replacement one.

Expecting the skies to fall, surprisingly their contact center was open, the card was canceled quickly and Victor Mochemi – the teller – gave me a new one.

For the first time, all the perceptions I had of banks were changed. Victor Mochemi raised the bar and made it difficult for his colleagues to give anything less than great service. So, Murphy’s Law no longer applies.

From this experience, I also learnt that the larger Nedbank branches close at 3pm on Saturdays instead of 12pm. On weekdays, they close at 6pm and that would be convenient for normal branches to offer as well. They really improved their service and with linchpins like Victor, they can only get better.

If the world were a perfect place, this would be the bear minimum you expect of banks. But, sadly it isn’t. Most companies tend to get stuck in the clouds and aspire to be many things, except what they should be.

Where were your expectations exceeded recently?

Image by: Mark Bridge on Flickr