Savvy organizations have begun to realize that customer relationships are not domain of an individual, team, or department. If accuracy of invoices, or professionalism of installers or cleanliness of your store or office is lacking, then relationship can suffer no matter how well salesperson or “owner” of relationship performs. Savvy organizations know that they can best enhance relationships with customers by improving customer interactions – or “touchpoints” – across entire enterprise.

Touchpoints are all of communication, human and physical interactions your customers experience during their relationship lifecycle with your organization. Whether an ad, Web site, sales person, store or office, touchpoints are important because customers form their perceptions of your organization and brand based on their cumulative touchpoint experiences.

To help improve customer relationships, there is an innovative new movement called Customer Touchpoint Management, or CTM. CTM reflects an organization’s concerted efforts to improve customer relationships through management or optimization of customer touchpoints. Touchpoint optimization can include filling identified gaps with new touchpoints, modifying under performing touchpoints, or eliminating redundant touchpoints. This process can include optimizing individual touchpoints, or groups of related touchpoints, such as those that make up a process.

I mean it, why are there so many festivals now? Used to, you would hear about an occasional festival here and there, for example, there might be a watermelon festival down in south Georgia somewhere, or there might be a rattlesnake round-up over in Alabama, or whatever. These events came very few and far between, and they were a fairly big deal mostly for that reason.

Contrast that to present - everyone has a festival going on these days. Why just recently I took a look around central Georgia, and it’s amazing how many of them are being held. All I can say is that they must bring money in, because some of them border on almost absurd. You can almost sense that some civic group got together and decided, “Hey, we need to bring in a few bucks for our city or county coffers, so what better way to do it than to put on our first ever Dead Possum Festival!”

Maybe I’m being too harsh, though. Hey, if festivals bring in tourists and money, who am I to complain? We live in a capitalist economy, I’m proud each and every day that we do, so we can vote for whatever we desire with our dollars and cents. It’s a simple, beautiful system. And, in that spirit, I think I’m going to suggest some potential festivals for any interested cities or towns out there, some that should be immediately taken into consideration, and some that I have no doubt would bring in tens of thousands of dollars for whatever community puts them on:

1. “The Sunburned Chest Festival” - What better way to pull a big crowd than to announce a festival with its main event being a contest - a contest between female entrants to see whose chest is most sunburned. Of course, judges would have to make a comparison between contestants’ burned and non-burned skin, and that alone would constitute major draw for this particular festival. And, as y’all might guess, you’d have thousands of male attendees, and sales for items like sunglasses, beer, and disposable cameras would skyrocket.