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Be So Good They Can’t AI You

By Jennifer Carsen

Steve Martin once said, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” Cal Newport subsequently borrowed this phrase – minus the “be” – for the title of his terrific 2012 book.

It’s wise advice, and especially apt now. AI is increasingly good at a lot of things. It is not, however, astoundingly fantastic at a lot of things. It can’t be, given that anyone running the same prompt will come up with substantially the same output you get. And even the best LLM can never come up with something wholly, brilliantly new; that’s just not how they work.

The best job security I know in these increasingly uncertain times is to be great – legitimately, uniquely great – at what you do. If you are able to pull that off, and if what you do provides genuine value, you will always be able to stay afloat in even the most turbulent of technological seas.

I’m not saying this is easy, not by a longshot. It’s hard to take a clear-eyed, honest look at the value you bring, where you fall short, and what it will take to get better (similar to stepping on the scale after a weeklong food-and-drink bender on the Feast of the Seas cruise ship). It’s even harder to actually do the work to get there – especially if you’re cowering in fear and wondering when Hal is coming for your job.

It’s difficult, sobering work, but it’s worthwhile work. Your unique genius can never be stolen by a machine, not even a really sophisticated one. So it’s worth the time to hone your gifts to a level that is un-ignorable and irreplaceable.

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Filed Under: ChatGPT & Other AI, Setting Yourself Apart

Great Customer Service: Easier Than You Might Think

By Jennifer Carsen

My summer job during high school and college was working in the ticket office for a sightseeing boat, the m/s Mount Washington, that cruises around New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee.*

We got, as you might expect, some interesting questions from the happy vacationers we saw every day:

  • “When does the boat get to the top of the mountain?” (um, you know it’s a boat, right?)
  • “When do we pass by the Kennedy Compound? (Hyannis Port is on the ocean, not a lake, and in another state – Massachusetts – to boot.)
  • “Where’s the scenery?” (Someone must have told him there would be scenery; I think he may have been expecting the painted backdrops you see in plays. “Sir,” I replied grandly, spreading my arms wide to encompass the lake, the boardwalk, and the arcade across the street, “it’s all around us.”)

My favorite customer service experience involved a handwritten letter to the ticket office. The letter was from a lifelong Mount Washington devotee who had honeymooned at the lake some 30 years earlier. During that trip, he and his new bride had purchased matching “Mount Washington” mugs at the dockside gift shop.

Tragically, Mildred had recently dropped her mug on the kitchen floor, where it had shattered into a million little pieces. Harold had enclosed a Polaroid of the surviving mug (dark blue, ceramic, unassuming). Might we be able to send him a replacement for its fallen mate? He’d be willing to pay any price.

Somehow, the plight of the missing mug got delegated to me. I wasn’t sure of the best way to get payment from Harold. He’d provided only a mailing address and no phone number (this was back in the pre-email, pre-internet, pre-PayPal world) – and of course the mug in question had long since fallen out of production.

I decided the easiest course of action was to buy two new matching mugs for Harold (using my employee discount at the gift shop) and simply send them to him on my dime “compliments of the Mount Washington staff.” Harold and Mildred quickly responded via return mail and could not have been more pleased; you would have thought I’d sent them the crown jewels.

The experience taught me that sometimes the “official” thing to do (my boss wanted me to chase down Harold’s credit card number and get a firm estimate of both mug costs and shipping costs before sending Harold a written invoice) isn’t the right thing to do when it comes to making your customers happy.

Empower your people, within reasonable limits, to do just that. Your employees will feel engaged and trusted. Your customers will be delighted. And your company will become known as one that cares and overdelivers. Win-win-win.

Going the extra mile often requires minimal cost and effort but means a great deal to someone else. Besides, it just plain feels good. All these years later, Harold has surely forgotten the circumstances surrounding his “new” matched set of Mount Washington mugs. But I haven’t. And I still smile when I think of him and Mildred sitting down to coffee each morning.

*Yes, Lake Winnipesaukee is a real lake. And no, the 1991 Bill Murray movie “What About Bob?” was not filmed anywhere near it.

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Filed Under: Best Practices, Customer Relations, Employee Engagement, Setting Yourself Apart

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Jennifer Carsen
890 Woodbury Ave.
Portsmouth, NH  03801

jennifer@hrcontentwriter.com
(603) 340-1854

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