Service Quality Monitoring, E.T., and Cary Grant

Listening to a presentation on Service Quality Monitoring (SQM), also known as Opt-In Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP), the phrase "phone-home technology" caught my attention. It reminded me of the old AT&T commercials reminding people to call their mother on Mother's Day.

Collecting information that can help us learn more about how our products are used in the real world is a great tool for product improvement. But, phone home? It seems like such a warm, homey phrase, not something I'd associate with us. Looking it up, one explanation mentioned that the phrase was probably based on the line from the movie E.T. .

Time for a confession. I am a member of that extremely tiny minority in the U.S. who has never seen E.T. I can't recall why I didn't see it in 1982, and I haven't gotten around to it since. But the reference said that ""E.T. phone home," was listed as #15 on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes, a list of top movie quotes."

I recognized most of the quotes in the list, although there were a handful that I'd never heard of. Now I have to come up with my own list: favorite movie quotes that should have been in the AFI's list but weren't.

Hmm, I'll probably start it off with "These are not the droids you're looking for." No, maybe "I hate snakes, Jock!" Or perhaps, "You remind me of a man..."

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 30, 2006
  From a meeting this afternoon: "There can be only one." Of course!