Western Montana InBusiness Monthly – July 2009 – This summer region is ‘greener’ than ever

Finally.

I long ago gave up abiding by the calendar’s proscribed start of summer in western Montana and adopted by own. All those fits and starts in June guaranteed a few too many soggy sleeping bags.

My "official" first day of summer: July 5.

I know, I know. What about the big Fourth of July holiday weekend?

Weather wise, I’ve spent a few Fourths at the lake that felt a bit wintry. Fun? Yes. Relaxing? Absolutely. Warm and dry? Not with certainty.

So welcome, western Montana, to summer! To the big-time tourist season. To roadside fruit stands on Flathead Lake. To long, long, long days of sunshine and the occasional evening thunderstorm. To camping and fishing and hiking and biking and fun.

And welcome to the July edition of Western Montana InBusiness. Reporter Michael Jamison gets things started out in just the right summertime place: Glacier National Park, where the rangers are reaching out to western Montana businesses, hoping they’ll celebrate the park’s centennial by adopting more earth-friendly ways of living and doing business here in the northern Rockies.

It’s a noble program, with potential to both protect our region’s natural amenities and to entice customers to all sorts of business establishments that pledge to "go green." Sounds like a pretty good way to celebrate the 100th birthday of one of our nation’s most incredible national parks.

And speaking of bringing new customers through the door, Missoulian business reporter Betsy Cohen has a pair of stories in this month’s magazine that will help you keep those customers coming back for more – even if they have a complaint.

Cohen has a fascinating Q&A with Nader Shooshtari, a marketing professor at the University of Montana School of Business Administration and an expert on customer feedback. Shooshtari has spent a good bit of time talking with Missoula businesses about how they handle customer complaints, and has lots of real-life suggestions for improvement.

At Missoula’s http://www.Grupthink.com, Cohen discovered a decidedly new-age means of customer feedback that uses the Internet to collect all manner of suggestions from a company’s customers – and from its employees. Grupthink even used the tool on its own relatively small staff, and saved $10,000 on desk chairs it didn’t need to buy. Turns out, nobody wanted a new chair!

And as part of the new look of InBusiness we pioneered a few months back, graphics editor Ken Barnedt has several pages that take a statistical look at business: the travel industry, at a glance; the economic development work of the Missoula Community Development Corp.; and the economic potential of clean energy, in Montana and nationwide.

And we’ve got a full complement of columns by local business leaders, photographs from several business functions in recent months, and a pair of business profiles by reporter Vince Devlin: a visit to Arlee’s Buckeye Hardwood and a jaunt along Flathead Lake to talk with the orchardists who market cherries along the highway each July and August.

All in all, we’ve got summertime in western Montana. Finally.

Reach editor Sherry Devlin at (406) 523-5250 or by e-mail at [email protected].

Full Newsletter: http://www.mtinbusiness.com/inbiz-0907/