The past 2 weeks I had very positive but unexpected experiences with two big international companies: Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) and Hilton.

Scandinavian Airlines

Although I was in not impacted in any way by this, SAS sent me an e-mail about an accident that happened with one of their aircraft at Copenhagen airport the day before. I wouldn't even have known this, if they didn't send me this e-mail.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, the company reacted correctly to the incident by sending that e-mail to their customers. It makes me feel that they value me as customer:

• I'm important enough to them that they want to reassure me that they did everything possible to make sure a similar accident will not happen again. Hey, they don't want to loose me as a customer.
• SAS knows that I'm Belgian. So I got a message from the Belgian SAS office, signed by their Belgian general manager, informing me about changes in their schedule for flights between Brussels and Copenhagen. A Scandinavian "global" company that acts locally.
• Paul Kristensen, who appears to be the general manager for Belgium and Luxembourg, put his own e-mail address in the accompanying letter. So that "in case I have any questions and/or remarks, I would be able to send him an e-mail". They could easily have used an e-mail address like feedback@sas.dk in that letter; instead I can now send my comment to a real person. A personal approach.

Since my first flight with them a few years ago, I really liked the SAS approach. And they keep impressing me. Well, even when I'm not flying for business purposes (in other words I'm paying for the flight myself), I'm willing to spend some extra Euros to get their service!

Hilton

I have not stayed many times at Hilton hotels, and the last time was more than a year ago. This time, for TechEd Developers, I booked a room at Hilton Diagonal Mar that's located beside the conference venue. At check-in, I also signed up for their Hilton HHonors program since the reception desk clerk insisted about some of the "advantages". Personally, I expected to get just another card to would sit in my wallet for a long time without any purpose and get a lot of spam e-mail on Hilton offers. I can't judge about those two yet, since I just joined that program.

The first surprise was when I entered my room on the first evening I was in the hotel. A letter posted under my door. On a few past occasions, this hasn't always been good news. But it was something that I didn't expect at all: they sent me a confirmation letter for my Hilton HHonors membership, explaining the details of the program once more and asking about my preferences. Wow, that was fast.

The second surprise was when I checked out. They actually sent me an e-mail to thank me for their stay. Simple and clean. Nothing more, nothing less. No advertising included in that e-mail. Some might think that was a missed opportunity for them, but I liked that approach. And also here, Hilton Diagonal Mar's front office manager, mr. Cedric Nubul, included his personal e-mail address in the e-mail.

I prefer buying/using services from companies that give me a feeling that they care about me. Yes, I know that their is a big marketing engine behind those unexpected experiences of SAS and Hilton. But it would have been far easier for those companies to do nothing, and I wouldn't probably have noticed it. But the fact that these companies gave me that personal treatment, that surprised and impressed me.

Together with a few other developer audience marketing managers, I had the opportunity to spend quality time last week with key stakeholders of Microsoft's audience strategy towards software developers at our headquarters in Redmond. We didn't discuss our products and features in those products, that's for other people. As it was an audience marketing summit we focused on how - in the short and long term - we can improve the experience developers have with Microsoft. We had great discussions on our relationship marketing strategy, our work with the community, market intelligence and customer insights, and a lot more...

For a part of the summit we worked in different smaller teams. I had the honor of being part of the team that also consisted of:

• Our team lead: Eileen Rumwell, Developer Audience Marketing Manager at Microsoft Corp
• Wendy Rogers, Developer Audience Marketing Manager at Microsoft Canada
• Frank Fischer, Developer Evangelism Manager at Microsoft Germany
• Maxine Cook, Marketing Manager at Microsoft UK
• Woody Pewitt, Developer Evangelist at Microsoft USA (Southern California area)
• George Kamarinos, Developer Audience & Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft Central & Eastern Europe HQ
• Dave Morehouse, Product Manager in the Community team at Microsoft Corp
• Korby Parnell, Product Manager in the Community team at Microsoft Corp

Out of the 9 people in our little team, it positively surprised me that 5 people have their own blog. And Frank writes a lot of technical content for the MSDN Germany site, so he has web presence too. Other people that were at the summit and have a blog include:

• Frank Arrigo, Developer Evangelism Manager at Microsoft Australia
• Amy Sorokas, Developer Community Marketing Manager at Microsoft Corp
• Clare Dillon, Developer Audience Marketing Manager at Microsoft Ireland

At the end of the summit we had 4 hours to present the results of our work to several Microsoft executives, which was absolutely an inspiring experience. Although such summits take up quite a lot of regular working time, I always find them very inspiring as you have a chance to think about and discuss several topics with other people in a related job. Something that is not easy to do over conference calls. Also the fact that you really disconnect from the daily challenges allows one to think more "out of the box". That really energizes me again.

And now it's time to catch up with e-mails and get some rest. Next trip is to the Luxembourg subsidiary for the MSDN Event next Tuesday.