Getting the keynote right at a conference is probably one of the biggest challenges for any event planner. Very happy to say that we (well, really the world’s best Marketing team) nailed it again after much brainstorming on what universally is relevant / important for any merchant independent of size, category or goals.

Davis Ridley, retired Sr. VP of Customer Services at Southwest Airlines, talked to the 400+ Catalyst attendees about Customer Service from the Inside Out. Very experienced and passionate speaker — just a handful of slides, photos, and letters from customers to Southwest to bring a personal side to the message (my favorite was a complaint letter from a passenger about a gate agent to which Southwest replied “please take your business somewhere else” and copied the employee).

Big takeaway? Never say “human capital”. Employees are people and the most important part of any business, not the customer. Hire for attitude and train skills. And then let those passionate and empowered people take care of your customers. The right people don’t need an employee manual to send a lost item back to a passenger and include a gift or be a friend when you find a distressed customer in the airport.

Never take yourself too serious. Have fun.

Last, but not least, be nice to everyone at Southwest, even the receptionists — they have the power to veto any applicant …

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Our annual conference for retailers large and small, ChannelAdvisor Catalyst, kicks off today and the excitement at ChannelAdvisor is palpable.  For us Catalyst represents two very important things.

First, the definition of catalyst is: “A substance that speeds up a chemical or biochemical reaction that would have occurred anyway (without help), but at a much slower rate.”   At ChannelAdvisor we see the world of ecommerce changing rapidly towards multiple ecommerce channels (Search/CSE/Marketplaces) and view ChannelAdvisor’s role as accelerating this change for our customers so they can successfully navigate those changes.  The Catalyst conference is our chance to discuss with our customers, partners and other industry folks what we think the major trends in ecommerce are and what we’re doing about them.

Second, when Aris and I founded CA, we wanted to create a company that deeply PARTNERED with our customers, not the typical “please buy our software and don’t call us” kind of relationship.  We believe ChannelAdvisor’s inherent customercentricitity has made ChannelAdvisor a unique company to work with and a unique company to work FOR (shameless plug, we’re hiring for lots of positions right now).

With customers at the heart of our DNA you can imagine that the opportunity to sit down, meet with, break bread and drink (everyone watch out for Todd Rath on this one and some of our friends from the UK!) with over 400 of our customers, partners and friends makes us pretty dang excited.

Today is the annual golf tournament (I don’t golf but hear that things are off to a great start thanks to the awesome weather here this am and the Pinehurst courses are beautiful and in great shape.).  Then tonight we kick things off with a keynote from Davis Ridley.  Davis ran customer service for Southwest airlines.  In ecommerce, customer service is one of the best ways to distinguish yourself from competitors.  In the airline industry, SouthWest consistently beats every other airline in all aspects of customer service so we thought someone that could achieve what Davis has in one of THE toughest customer service industries would be a great way to start the conference.

Tomorrow’s agenda is here. I won’t be able to blog at the conference, but Max Leisten (aka the Crazy German) is going to be carrying the live-blogging duties forward so even if you weren’t able to attend this year we’ll be keeping you abreast of developments as they happen.

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eBay’s new Sr. VP of eBay Auctions Philipp Justus announced today a $0.20 Listing Fee promotion for Auction-style listings tomorrow, March 14th. You can find more details on eBay’s information page.

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Very interesting discovery by an eBay seller and reported on AuctionBytes on a new eBay “feature” to include a LOT of brand terms and keywords on certain pages to increase search relevancy.

Here’s an example for eBay Television listings. If that no longer works, do a few searches for brand terms and you’ll find a new box at the bottom of the page.

This is bound to generate some phone calls between Google and eBay.

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In “things that make you go ugh” news I ran across this interesting opinion on Google’s continuous Google Checkout promotions to drive adoption:

Is $58 million a drop in the bucket for megabucks Google? Maybe, but its not the way I’d want my company to do business. Google is pushing Checkout by buying its way into the market, not on any perceived merits of its product. If your product can’t at least perform reasonably well without you dropping $58 million to get it there, maybe it doesn’t deserve to exist at all.

I had to read it twice, too. Asides the fact that sales promotions are probably as old as the oldest profession itself, I would not run a business without aggressive promotions unless you’re the clear, undisputed leader (or have a monopoly).

And on the subject of Google’s $58 million marketing expense the author probably overlooked PayPal’s on-going $100 million promotion which by the way is offering a better deal then Google Checkout right now with $15 off of $30.

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