Real customer care

July 29, 2010 — andrewnim

I was cleaning our windows the other day and decided to do the garage door as well. It is one of those chain driven up and over doors, with the radio control. It is a white door and there is now a line of little pits and discoloration which has been caused by dirt and oil from the chain.

Which tells me this is a design issue and that all white doors must surely have this issue. But maybe not. Maybe the installer used the wrong chain lubricant. Or left something off.

The installer was a sub contractor and has moved away. So cant check with him. I could check with the manufacturers but the label is pretty worn away. It was while looking at this that it occurred to me.

While this door was being made it would have undergone some form of QA check. Make sure the paint was right, no dents etc. Hopefully the next check would be that the installer received some training. But then what. Act on a complaint? hope to luck?
Basically the QA system falls over when the door leaves the factory. Bear in mind this is a $2 or $3000 door.
This manufacturer has left its reputation, it’s brand, in the hands of a third party. And done nothing to follow up. That I am aware of.

I received no card to send off for my Guarantee as with electrical goods. Nor any letter or call to ask if I was happy with my door. Maybe they assume you only buy one garage door in your lifetime?

What could they do to take control and protect their brand? For a start they could ensure that installers are registered with them. They could then get the installers to send back details of the addresses where they instal the doors, with some details of the end user (or the end user could send it in).

They could then follow up after a month to check that everything was okay, do the owners need a spare key fob, would they like the door serviced next year?

This is not hard yards, but it is care of the end customer. The people who actually pay the bill and who recommend or rubbish your product.

Basically should I ever buy a second garage door (this is my second) I will not automatically source it from the same company. Which may through a lack of simple customer care, be a lost repeat order.

The moral of this tale? Follow up care of customers is true customer care. It shows that actually you do care.

Posted in CRM, Doing Business, Marketing. Leave a Comment »

Old-school Collaboration Tools That Rock

May 16, 2010 — andrewnim

For many of us who live and work on the web, playing with the latest and greatest new tools just comes with the territory. I find this constant tool jumping fun and exhilarating; however, not everyone that we need to work with wants to have to learn a new tool in order to collaborate with us online. Sometimes simple “old school” tools, like IRC and mailing lists, can work just as well as, if not better than, the new tools. If nothing else, people are comfortable with tools that they know and have used many times before.

My full-time corporate gig is as a community manager for an open-source developer community. The community mainly comprises no-nonsense, no-frills people who love some old school tools. The fancy graphical environments in the latest and greatest collaboration web apps just get in the way of power user developers who know every trick in the book to get the most out of tools like IRC and mailing lists. Keep in mind that open source communities tend to have people — from corporate developers to passionate enthusiasts — collaborating across the globe in every time zone to develop software that we use every day. They know a thing or two about collaboration, and they use the tools that work. I had stepped away from hardcore developer communities for a couple of years when I was consulting, and in coming back to these established tools, I’m rediscovering why they are so useful for collaboration.

IRC / Group Chat

The best thing about IRC or Group Chat is that you can set up a place for your team or your project where people can drop in and out to ask questions or just have conversations with other people working on similar projects. It’s kind of like the water cooler, if you want to get even more old school, where people gather to talk about both work and social topics. Because it’s real-time chat, you can get quick feedback even when you don’t know exactly who to talk to because you are reaching out to a group of people with similar interests or similar jobs.

Lately, we’ve also been holding quite a few scheduled meetings in IRC, and it is a great way to get a lot accomplished very quickly. By scheduling it, you make sure that you have the right people available and anyone can participate as long as they can get some type of internet connection. We also make the logs available, and we use MeetBot to capture minutes of the meeting. This allows people to miss the meeting, but still see a full, unfiltered record of the meeting in the logs along with a summary of the meeting from MeetBot if they just want the highlights.

Mailing Lists

By mailing lists I mean both traditional mailing lists, like LISTSERV, or more recent additions like Google Groups. The fact that I love mailing lists is a bit odd, since I hate email. Part of what I love about mailing lists is the control that you have over how you receive the information. Most lists allow you to get every email immediately, or in a daily digest depending on how you prefer to interact with the list, and many of them allow you to turn the email off entirely when you go out on vacation. That way, your email doesn’t pile up, but you can skim through the online archives when you get back to catch up on the big news. Regular email just doesn’t have that flexibility.

The reality is that everyone uses email, and mailing lists are a great way to collaborate with a group of people without accidentally leaving anyone out of the loop. It’s too easy to forget to copy every person on the team when communicating with a group of people. The online archives are also a great way for new members to learn about the project and get a sense for the history of the group, and it gives you a place where you can always look back at the conversations when you forget some important detail.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the new tools, too. I get a tremendous amount of value out of tools like Twitter and the newer collaboration suites that have social networking and plenty of bells and whistles built-in. However, sometimes you just need something quick and cheap that just works. Just because a technology is old doesn’t mean it can’t rock.

What are your favorite “old school” collaboration tools?

via webworkerdaily.com

I have talked about finding the best fit, technology wise many times on Point Concept and agree with Dawn’s comments here.

Posted via web from Point Concept

Posted in Collaboration, Doing Business, Knwoledge, Uncategorized. Leave a Comment »

Creative process for non creatives

April 28, 2010 — andrewnim

In a recent post on All Biz Answers Eric Brantner poses four reasons why small business owners may fail at blogging. I can attest that some of what he says was or is true for me. At least point 1 and possibly point 3. Time is an issue for the small business owner whether a freelancer or someone with a small number of staff. At least until you reach the size to employ people to do separate tasks. As a small business owner we wear many hats at once, marketing, sales, accounts, and support to name but a few. So how do we rationalise which one gets the priority? A little bit of business process.

  • Whats the objective of your business? To make money? I expect so, which means sales.
  • To get sales you need to do marketing, attract the customer.
  • Accounts is the tidy up, without the first two there is very little to do.
  • Support is actually part of good marketing, see it as such and use it as such. Every support call is an opportunity to get it right and increase the love.

Break it down

Marketing:  always the priority but it does not need to consume your time.

Sales: should consume your time but not stop you marketing. You want new and repeat sales right?

Accounts: find half to an hour a day to do the admin, but stay on top.

Support: its part of marketing see it as such not as a cost. It helps the repeat sales.

Marketing is mostly a creative activity, its about ideas and communicating them. Often these ideas are inspired by the sales and support activities. And often they amble around in your brain working themselves out in your subconscious. Then ping they pop up fully formed. And get forgotten because you are busy doing the sales or accounts. So in order to grab those moments of creativity lets take a note from writers.

This is going to be hard as it means forming a new habit (maybe). What is your morning ritual? Could you change it to have some quiet time to think about the last day and the new day?  Sit and just note down what ever comes to the surface. Then use your blog as the sounding board. Discuss the issue and the possible resolutions. When it is written re read it to proof. Then decide if you will post that or will you keep it as private.

One thing people forget about blogging, it is a journal, be honest, you do not have to share everything. But by using your company blog as a journal you use it as a creative tool to solve problems and to create your marketing and support to your clients. Thats a lot easier that making time for marketing and making time for blogging. Its also a lot more refreshing for your readers than just reading your sales copy. And because you are not (you may be) good at sales copy and know it you keep putting the blog off. After all you dont have anything to write about!

When actually you do and the real you may just be far more entertaining than you realise.

If you enjoyed this post, great, if not, okay. But I enjoyed writing it and I got something out of it, I just hope you do too.

Take it easy, watch the sun come up sometimes and take time to sit and think. Advice I need to listen to more.

Posted in Doing Business, Ideas, Marketing. Leave a Comment »

The winding workflow

April 19, 2010 — andrewnim

I have been thinking a lot about distraction and workflow of late. You may have noticed, its got me posting again. If you visit any freelance web site there are pages and pages donated to the ever sought after perfect workflow. The ultimate task management system. Its a bit of a holy grail for some. Others seem to get it early and keep it. My wonderful hard put upon wife has one called “write it down” she puts her tasks on a piece of paper and crosses them off. eventually a new piece is started and anything outstanding carries across. It is simple and it works for her. It does not work for me, because I need my work items in my work space which is firmly on the email/ messaging side. Paper just becomes disconnected.

I have spoken before about allowing people a great deal of flexibility to use systems which work for them and allow them to collaborate fully with the team. Its not easy to achieve and because of that all too many organisations dont seek to do so, imposing a system which suites the top and then blaming everyone down the chain for somehow failing to achieve.

When I served in the British Army I was lucky enough to be in a unit which valued individuality yes it did. I was once told by a senior officer that in respect of equipment we could wear what we wanted as long as we could do the job. He understood that a lot of the kit the army gave us was actually sub standard and made it hard for us to do the job. He knew there was better equipment and methods available and that given the chance we would grab them. We did. Our performance was better because we where comfortable and dry.

So if the army can allow its soldiers leeway to create their working conditions and their work flow as long as they can do the job, why cant a business?

Some would say its about control, like the CEO who micro manages or the Manager who is scared a subordinate may do a better job. I say its worse, its  a lack of value.  When you restrict your employees and do not allow them to take ownership you show how little you value them. When you do not value them you cannot then complain that they are disengaged from the job at hand.

If you value them, you trust them and that means you know that they have different ways of doing things but that it will get done. In time they will work out how to ensure they work together as a team. That may take some nudging and guidance, which is what managing is really about, not bossing.

So you can have a winding work flow where they try to get around your system or a smooth one where you work with theirs and direct them to achieve your outcome.

Posted in Collaboration, Doing Business, people. Leave a Comment »

What I want….

April 17, 2010 — andrewnim

Is not always what I need.

I read an article in our local press today which stated that 500 business’ in the Tauranga area have reordered the Ipad from a local Apple retailer. It did not state what type of business’ wanted them or what for. And thats what intrigues me. The ipad is untested and unproven in business. It may well be a great too and a wonderful boon to some types of business. I can envisage great things for web workers and many creatives.  I have had a good look and so far can find no hugely compelling reason for me to switch from a mac book to an Ipad. Which apart from the slate capability has less power, memory and storage than the mac book.

So what is it each of these 500 wish to achieve?  To be honest I doubt they know. They just want one and want to be one of the first to have one. Want not need.

Will the Ipad revolutionize their business? Wil it provide more apps than their Iphone? Will it actually provide an ROI?  For some yes, eventually. But for many it will be a toy and a toy which they will get annoyed with when they realize it does not play flash and that the web according to the Ipad is a bit like swiss cheese; as Steve Rubel playfully put it here in one of his posts about using his Ipad.

Dont get me wrong I want an Ipad too, it would be fun, or the rumoured Google backed Android slate. But do I NEED one right now?

No, I dont need one so I wont be pre ordering one. And I will only buy one when it can be justified as improving my workflow and my income.

Posted in Doing Business, systems. Leave a Comment »

End of year stock take

December 17, 2009 — andrewnim

There are plenty of sources which are busy providing end of year advice and check lists for things you need to do over the next few weeks in preparation for the new year. I have one much simpler piece of advice.

Relax enjoy the year end.

What? shock horror, did he say that?

Yes I did, now is a time to concentrate on family, customers, and staff. Now is a time to end the year on a good note. It is not the time to try and plan strategic goals and sales targets for next year. That should have been done last month, or better yet in the new year when those plans are a reality. If you try to do it now,  you are increasing your work load and will not truly be concentrating. You will make plans which have detail missing. Now is a good time to gather the reports you will need in January. You will make plans and then go off to enjoy Christmas, when you come back the plans will have faded and not seem quit so vital. This means that when you start the new year you will fall back into the pattern of dealing with the immediacy of the moment. Not actually working to your plan.

So wrap up what need to be done, spend time talking to clients and customers. Spend time with your staff. But most importantly take a break and spend time with friends and family.

You will find your self refreshed and full of ideas for new opportunities. Now is the time to sit down with you people and do some serious planning. Planning which will kick off the spirit of the year, planning which will be much more effective because you are concentrating on it. Set your goal of where you want to be next Christmas. Stick it up where every one can see it and create the plan to remind people and your self of the priorities. Plan in ways to avoid getting pulled into ruts and directions which don’t fit the plan. Review in an honest manner what were the good and bad points of the past year. What worked, what did not.

Break the planning into sessions over a day.

First: review, general discussion,

Second: lay down the outcomes for the planning, lead the discussion,

Third: make the plan,

Fourth, review, tidy and put it on the wall.

For the rest of the year, spend time once a week to review the plan and make sure you are keeping to it. But don’t be scared to change it if the situation needs it. But do be sure to understand and explain why you are making the change. Be sure it is a strategic change and not just a side alley.

So now that we have that all figured out,

Merry Christmas to all.

Posted in Collaboration, Doing Business, Ideas. Leave a Comment »

Seth Speaks about engaging innovators

December 2, 2009 — andrewnim

Interesting and useful list from Seth Godin

It is a great list below are a few items which jumped out at me,

  • Simplify the problem relentlessly, and be prepared to accept an elegant solution that satisfies the simplest problem you can describe.Hire the right person. Don’t ask a mason to paint your house.
  • Part of your job is to find someone who is already in the sweet spot you’re looking for, or someone who is eager and able to get there.
  • Pay as much as you need to solve the problem, which might be more than you want to. If you pay less than that, you’ll end up wasting all your money. Why would a great innovator work cheap?
  • Cede all issues of irrelevant personal taste to the innovator. I don’t care if you hate the curves on the new logo. Just because you write the check doesn’t mean your personal aesthetic sense is relevant.

That last one is great, don’t tell the person you hire how to do the job you hired them for.

But you should read the full list over at Seth’s

Posted in Collaboration, Doing Business, people. Leave a Comment »

The emperors new content

November 30, 2009 — andrewnim

I attended a launch party for a new search application the other day. Pingar is an enterprise search platform or should I say research platform. I was totally wowed by the method they have used to produce the results. Pingar is aimed at the enterprise and specifically Sharepoint users at present and it is here that one of its unique strengths lays. Pingar does not produce a list of a zillion links for you to follow. It goes inside the resulting documents and extracts the relevant information. Which it compiles into a human readable report. So say the Chairman of a large corporation does a search on financial reports by sector. He has an overall view of how his company is doing. He can share this with his directors and it can be seen by the sales managers. However, and this is the neat bit for the enterprise, the sales managers can only see those parts of the results for which they have clearance. Pingar connects to the company permissions system and applies its restrictions.

At the party someone stated “journalists may be redundant”. My reply was that as gatherer’s on information they are, but as analysts of information, they are in more demand than ever. It is okay having all this data but, someone needs to make sense of it.

This took me back to a subject which has been on my mind of late. The nature of the content on the web. Can it be trusted and how can business know the validity of the facts on which it is basing its decisions? You see there is a method to research which academics, journalists and “researchers” should use. They should record and verify the sources of the facts they are placing in their content. There is a huge swathe of content (like this statement) which has no factual backing and no references against which it can be checked. I cannot give you a reference or source here because I can find no study on the issue. Its based on observation and may be flawed. But I don’t think so.

Take for example slideshare.com. They provide a great resource, an easy to use method for sharing power points. You go to a conference and the presenter can make his power point freely accessible to all to re watch later. But how many of those power points contain references. I looked at 20 the other day on a particular sensitive subject and only one had any form of reference. Yet people are using these as sources. But they may be the emperors new content. Without substance, without research or references to research, to back them up. Or notice that they are opinion. They may well be created using sources which where created using sources which had no factual basis at all. Yet it is regurgitated and used by the misinformed or the under-pressure  and may well be presented as facts upon which business and political decisions are made.

There is an old adage, “if it is in the paper it must be true”. It seems that this has now become “if its on the web……”

This is one of the things I really likes about Pingar, it produced a report based on the search request using contextual matching. But it also then gave all its sources and with the click of a link would pull the data in to supply me with the deeper perspective as needed. Being built from an academic research perspective, it needs to prove the veracity of the data it is supplying. I am not totally sure how this will work in the web as opposed to an intranet. But then maybe this is actually the tool for the deep web. Finding the real source rather than the conversations about it. Or it may cause a change in the way results are supported with others providing better meta data to support the authenticity of what they are supplying.

That can only be a good thing.

Posted in Collaboration, Doing Business, Knwoledge. 3 Comments »

Communicate before starting

August 7, 2009 — andrewnim

I was recently helping a client who has an issue with their web developer. As usual a big chunk of the issue was caused by poor communication, which in turn was caused by shortage of time.  But this problem cuts both ways. The client did not take the time to fully think out what they wanted and get help to define this and the developer did not take time to fully understand what was needed and what was expected. This was compounded by no ongoing dialogue, no project tool and no updates supplied to the client or asked for. Then suddenly the deadline was close and the site was only partly done and did not look as the client expected. Now both parties have a problem. For the developer, they may loose the commission and receive bad press, or go over their budget fixing things. For the customer, the whole project has created stress and they are now faced with paying a second time to get what they wanted done.

All of this could be avoided by actually setting aside some time to sit down and get some agreement on expectations. This works for any project: draw up the process; explore the issues; draw some wireframes and create some lists. Set some milestones. But most importantly get to understand each other and what you need to provide. This is all basic stuff really and there are books galore written about it, but nearly always from the perceptive of the project manager. The trouble here is that small business owners are so busy project managing their business and don’t or wont take on the new project. They expect the developer/ supplier to do that. Only often they are a small business too and concentrated on doing what they do. They also have their way of doing it and often “know” best.

If both side have a check list before they sit down they can then easily see on which parts they agree, and then on which parts they need to spend time discussing. And that is were you need to spend your time, because these are the points which will eventually cause a falling out.

So if you are hiring, either get someone to help scope the project and spend time putting it together for you, or spend that time yourself and find examples and ask questions.

If you are the prospective developer, remember your client may not understand what you do and take time to explain it to them. Have a method and check list to reach an agreement. Then provide  a fairly detailed scope. Get this signed off and then ensure you spend 20 minutes a week updating the client. It will save you time in the long run.

I really am not saying anything new here, but it needs to be said again and again. It’s been talked about by plenty of people and will continue to be. In fact while I was writing this someone else was posting this check list for a Drupal Design Brief. I suggest you grab it and keep it, then use it both as a supplier and as a client.

Posted in Collaboration, Doing Business. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

Training, Training and Training

July 19, 2009 — andrewnim

I am a technology fan. I love technology. One of my favorite TV programmes as a kid was the  BBC’s Tomorrows World which showcase new tech every week. I enjoy trying new things and finding out what works but strangely I am not addicted to gadgets! I like to try things out and see if they will make a difference, not just get it because it’s the hottest new  item. Maybe this is because for me there has to be a point to the technology, it has to answer a need, or create it. The point’s always the same: does it make my life easier? does it make my work easier?  The new thing may be a great idea, but if it’s  badly implemented it is going to increase my work not decrease it and chances are no amount of training is going to change that.

But if it has been well thought out and implemented the new tech- say a web based accounting package for monitoring your bank account, some training is going to mean you are able to get the maximum use very quickly. My advice to anyone developing an application of this nature is spend at least 25% of the development time ensuring your user -experience is geared towards training simplification and that your training material supports it.

My advice to the user, whether an individual or a company installing a new system, spend at least 25% of the first month of use in training. Many companies often  spend thousands on a software package and not a cent on training, then wonder why they are not attaining the desired ROI. Outlook is a great example of the failure of companies to ensure optimum use of a man tool of the company.

Here is a scenario which is played out in hundreds of companies all over the world: It’s Monday morning and the new employee arrives, straight out of college and eager. They get a desk, they get a computer, they get a login and email via Outlook. They may get asked if they have used it before and about five minutes help logging in and they are off. Well not quite, what’s missing here is that they may know how to use outlook to some degree but do they know how to use it the way the company does? So, now the company has someone who is learning as they go and making mistakes which need correcting by another member of staff who is then taken from their work.

Now think about implementing a company- wide CRM or accouting package and not providing any training, just letting the staff teach themselves. Just how inefficient would that be? Sounds like madness when you see it written down here like this doesn’t it? Yet it happens.  Dont let it happen to you, use good change management techniques. Ensure you understand what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how you are going to do it. Make new technology work for you and remember that your new technology is only going to work as well as the people who are using it.

Posted in Doing Business, people, systems. 2 Comments »
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