They Banned Betting On Mistakes

Embarrassed by mistakes that riddled its past membership directories, the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce hired a telemarketing firm to track down 900 business owners to double-check their listings in the 92-page manual.

The chamber staff also proofread all 2,100 listings five times to clean up misspelled names and wrong telephone numbers, says Marketing Director Stacy Baker.

The 1995 directory was shipped last week to members, who use it to locate suppliers and customers.

Directory errors were so common in the past that chamber employees held an office pool to guess how many mistakes would be made. But chamber President Rich Hadley stopped the pool, urging staff to shoot for zero errors.

Baker says a directory of this size is bound to have some mistakes, but thus far only three people have called in errors.

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