Fast Company is running a great slide show on the top 10 creative minds of 2006.  In reviewing the list, we spotted David McQuillen who heads up Credit Suisse's customer experience initiatives, and were linked to this article that offers some tremendous insight into how one company is working towards enhancing the experience of its customers.

The article starts off with this example, "Mothers in the small Swiss village of Bulach may have been wary of the man with a goatee staring at them as they struggled to navigate an ATM, grocery bag in one hand, fractious child in the other. But the man didn't care what their PIN numbers were or how much money they had in their accounts. He wanted to know, Why didn't they just put the bag down?" 

"The answer: The bags were paper, and when the ground is wet--it rains a lot in Switzerland--putting them down means getting the contents soggy. Now, thanks to the man with the goatee, Stephan Kubler, the moms using the ATM at the Credit Suisse branch in Bulach can keep their groceries dry, by resting them on an inch-high grille."

Now, could you imagine if companies showed that level of dedication to their online customers?   We could (and should) start seeing more of that in 2007, and that would make for a Happy New Year for both businesses and consumers.