Welcome to Bathroom Blogfest

Posts from Experienceology

2007-11-04T21:23:00.000-08:00

Bathroom Blogfest is shaping up for 2007
Last year, a small group of female bloggers took on the challenge of bathrooms and their role in the customer experience. We had so much fun that we decided to repeat it this year and invited more women to take part. We currently have 22 bloggers signed up to participate, including the blogger for the National Kitchen and Bath Association (Ed Pell)...

Bathroom Blogfest starts today!
In our country, we take good facilities for granted. But in other countries, public sanitation is still an evolving experience. In Kiev, Ukraine, the world's first toilet museum caught a visitor "using" one of the exhibits...

Bathroom Blogfest visits American Girl Place
It's Day Two of the 2007 Bathroom Blogfest and we're at American Girl Place in Chicago. This amazing retail experience, three floors' worth, is all about girls and their mothers. So it might not be a surprise that...

Bathroom Blogfest: Stall of shame
Today we're going to look at some less successful examples. The first is nothing new, a line for the ladies room at a touristy area in San Diego.

Thoughtful bathrooms
Today I'm sharing some great features I've seen on my travels this last year. This cool sink at O'Hare Airport in Chicago provides easy access for people using wheelchairs while looking (and being) designed in. Would that all universal design was so seamless...

Special touches and attention to detail
What makes a bathroom memorable? I've been thinking about that on my travels this year. Despite the raised eyebrows I get when taking photos in and around public bathrooms, I have found some nice details to share...

Oceanaire Restaurant serves up a swanky bathroom
Yes, the food was great at the Oceanaire Seafood Room. But it was their bathroom that won them the coveted "Best Bathroom Experience Award 2007" from Experienceology. Okay, so it's not coveted yet. But it should be.

The last word
We've done it... another great time in the ladies room. I'd like to thank all the bloggers (24 of us!) and others who picked up the blogfest and gave it their own swirl. It had some odd moments, like when White Cloud toilet tissue added a fake person to our Facebook group...

Posts from Flooring the Consumer

2007-11-04T11:07:00.000-08:00

Bathroom Blogfest 2007 Wrapup

In case you missed any of the posts from Flooring The Consumer, here's what happened, starting with Let the 2007 Bathroom Blogfest Begin....

Day 1:
Taking Bathrooms To The Next Level - Kohler
Taking Bathrooms To The Next Level - II
Taking Bathrooms To The Next Level: Michigan Tile...

Day 2:
Bathroom Brand Manifestations:M&Ms
Bathroom Brand Manifestations: Bass Pro Shops
Bathroom Brand Manifestations: Mickey Mouse
Brand Manifestations In The Bathroom: Advertising

Day 3:
Bathroom Blogfest 2007 - Extreme Solutions
Bathroom Blogfest - More Extreme Solutions

Day 4: Bathroom Blogfest and Measurement

Day 5 [overlapping into Day 6]:
Bathroom Blogfest Brings It Home to Retail
Bringing The Bathroom Blogfest Home - Advice
Bringing the Bathroom Blogfest Truly Home

Posts from Customer Experience Crossroads

2007-11-02T19:25:00.000-07:00

Best of the blogfest, or how to increase your traffic using a crazy topic
You can get a lot of people talking about something with a blogfest. Many of the less well-established blogs on the list saw major traffic boosts as a result of their participation. But the big jump in traffic on the group blog set up by organizer Stephanie Weaver was especially interesting to me. She sent in a note to Blogger, letting them know, and they highlighted the blog. Instant jump to thousands of page views. of course Blogger would not have done this if they didn't think the concept was interesting. So the formula remains the same -- you can get publicity if you have something interesting to say. read more

Extra touches at convention hotel ladiesroom
...when a convention centre goes to some extra effort to add comforting touches, it is noticeable. The Westin Bayshore was practically flawless in this area. See what they did with their bathrooms to keep conference goers happy. read more

Dining upscale casual and how this has improved the ladiesroom
Join us on a visit to Wildcraft in Waterloo, and see how this dining trend has changed the ladiesroom experience. People in our group were encouraging those who 'didn't have to go' to 'go anyway', just so they could see it. Lots of good pix, thank goodness for camera phones! read more

Taking the brand into the bathroom
In a retail space designed to profile a brand, what should the bathrooms look like? This question is addressed on Flooring the Consumer by guest author Marianne Cone. Ms. Cone visited the M&M's World and Hershey's stores in Times Square and discovered... that all the attention on the brand image completely disappears with the bathroom. read more of this round-up article

A family bathroom for a family restaurant
There's a neighborhood in Toronto we call Little India. It's really more Little Pakistan, but whatever. There's an iconic restaurant there called the Lahore Tikka House. It's been under renovation for at least two years, but in the fashion of this culture, they've continued to run the restaurant the whole time, building as resources permit. The staff are delightful, and the food is excellent, plentiful, and inexpensive. read more

Cleaning up the ladiesroom
The bathroom blogfest was cooked up on a let's-get-acquainted phone call between me and San Diego blogger Stephanie Weaver (Experienceology) a little over a year ago. We wanted a blogfest topic that related to customer experience but not in a specialized way … we tagged it ladiesrooms. ... What's the point of this? Well, every human being has to use the bathroom. But most organizations act like the bathroom is just a nuisance. read more

Posts from The Corporate Entrepreneur

2007-11-02T12:51:00.000-07:00

Innovation Where You Least Expect It

Last year Susan Abbott of Customer Experience Crossroads and Stephanie Weaver of Experienceology alerted me to a blogfest they were running to clean up the ladiesrooms of the world. I wrote a post letting folks know about the Bathroom Blogfest and this year I was invited to participate in Bathroom Blogfest 2007 where 23 bloggers signed up for the event--Oct 28 through Nov 2--to coincide with National Kitchen and Bath month.

You might ask yourself what entrepreneurship, innovation, loos, and customer experience all have in common. Sometimes, the most innovative solutions are (dare I say it?) right under your nose.

The LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, based in San Francisco, has a workshop in West Oakland - LightHouse Industries - where a tank-size, high-tech machine spews out 61,000 packets of toilet paper an hour for servicemen and women. The military placed a rush order for millions of the little tissue packets for Iraq.

One of their largest customers, the military isn't their only customer. The business also has contracts with the Federal Emergency Management Administration, pitching in when disasters require backup, as well as a growing list of commercial enterprises.

The workers at the Oakland plant--eight employees partially or completely visually impaired--played a big part in helping people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

ABC news aired a short segment on Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired this past August.

George Clark, Chief Development Officer, and Gayle Uchida, Business Development Manager, look forward to expanding the markets for their TP packets with the new $800,000 machine that both improves workers' safety and increases production output. More customer contracts also mean greater profit for the workshop and financial perks for its employees!

Posts from Library Bytes

2007-10-31T19:22:00.000-07:00

Posts coming soon!

Kitchen and Bath Business

2007-10-31T11:20:00.000-07:00

If you are thinking of going eco-friendly, the bath is a great place to start. Check out our easy tips for going green during National Kitchen and Bath month.