Easter vacation is just around the corner. I'm heading up to Lillehammer, the olympic host of 1994. Emma is flying in on thursday and we're driving up in the evening.

Last week Norwegian.no was rated the best airline website in Europe. The independant review was done by the respected consumer magazine www.dinside.no (roughly translated to"your side/page"). We beat Ryanair, SAS, Sterling, FlyNordic and many more.. The only differentiatiors was our "Low fare calender", which shows all the prices to one destination in a calender format. It's not unique, but it appeals to customers that are price aware.

Other job news; I am speaking at another conference http://www.estrategi.no/konferanse . Estrategi is one of the leading publications when it comes to strategy and the web..

One strategic dilemma that Norwegian has these days is whether to select a focused product promotion strategy or a wide approach. By this I mean;

Focused product promotion is to focus on the core business of selling more airline tickets to our customers. We can still promote 3 party products, but our focus is on selling airline tickets.

Wide approach is becoming more of a travel agency. Doing everything yourself.

It's an interesting dilemma that reminds me of the Amazon.com vs. eToys dilemma. This dilemma ended up with Etoys going out of business, while Amazon.com created a joint venture with Toys 'R Us.

I think the correct approach is to look for strategic partnerships where each party keeps a focus on their own core competency. If you look at Amazon.com today, the entire Toys section is branded with Toys 'R Us. I believe this has proved over time to be the winning strategy. Strategic partnerships where you benefit from the "start-up spirit" and new technology of Amazon.com while the large brandname Toys 'R us brings the experience from the toy industry and the infrastructure.

The good thing about blogging is that you don't have to worry that much about grammer and sentences making sense;)

Another winter day in Norway. I was just invited to yet another wedding. This time in the USA.

Tomorrow is friday. The weeks pass by quickly. I'm heading off to Stockholm tomorrow. Spending the weekend. Might look for some apartments.. Nothing new. Had coffee with an old friend yesterday. We discussed all kinds of stuff. Very interesting..

I had an interesting experience with an intense customer today. The customer hand-delivered a complaint about a bug in the Norwegian booking engine. The complaint was sent to our customer relations department. They contacted me to discuss the issue. We sent a response, but the customer was not satisfied with the response. Since I was on vacation in Australia, it took quite a bit of time to respond to the customer. When I came I responded to the customer once again. He responded again and we had a discussion going. I went to Linkedin and searched for the customer's name. It turned out that he knew one of my connections. He also had knowledge about a topic where my skills are very limited. I used a random customer response in combination with a personal contact CRM connection to make a connection. I think it's interesting....... A lot of the people that use Linked in are so-called "sneezers", people that spread the word. Customers that complain really care. They spend their valuable time to complain about something... They're similar to the people that call the 1-800 number that's printed on bars of soap.. The type of people that call this number are really valuable customers..

One of the most frustrating things in professional life is working with people that don't care. Another frustrating is working with incompetent people that are not interested in learning!

Warren Buffet seeks to invest in companies where the employees have "ownership". By this he means that he looks for companies where employees are careful with the companies money. They don't spend money easily and they have a loyalty-feeling to the companies stockholders.

Last year a friend of mine told me that successful businesspeople often make presentations. I like to think of myself as successful. Even though I hate presenting in front of a crowd, I say "yes" to speaking engagements because I have a strong desire to be a successful business person... Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Anyway, in June I'll be presenting at a conference along with a lot of famous people! Not bad...

I'll also be presenting at a conference in Oslo in June. Read more about that here

The cool thing about speaking engagements is that I force myself to learn new stuff. Here are a few interesting sites:

http://www.womma.org/ - Word of Mouth Marketing Association.
http://www.bzzagent.com/ - A very interesting idea.