On Our Bikes

Customer service Aunt Sallys

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Jon Stow

Image via Wikipedia

Dealing with problems

It has to be said that quite a few posts here are about customer service, good or bad. I guess we tend not to talk too much about indifferent service. Only a few days ago I mentioned a certain hotel which I think could have done better. Obviously I know the name of the hotel and you don’t. That is because I have chosen not to tell you.

If we have a dispute with a provider about anything because we don’t think they delivered, it is better to take it up with them and to deal with it privately. Heaven knows, I have felt on occasion that I haven’t had value for money and I have spent thousands on business opportunities that subsequently I became unhappy about.

When this has sort of thing happens, we do have to take responsibility for our own actions. Did we do our research properly? Did we ask others who had paid out for the same thing what they got for their money? Have we really been misled or are we to blame for wasting our cash?

Should we go public?

It can be rather unpleasant to take into the public domain a private dispute with a provider who is alleged to have failed to deliver. There becomes a serious dilemma for the provider, who is usually bound by confidentiality or decent ethics to feel unable to respond in a public over what is essentially a private matter. It gets to be rather unfair even if we might think we have the high moral ground. There is a risk of ceding the moral ground by attacking the defenceless even if they are guilty.

Imagine if you were being attacked. You might think you had done nothing wrong. On the other hand something might have gone wrong. It does, sometimes, for the best of us. We might think we could resolve a complaint quickly. We try to. It’s harder to think properly about a problem, let alone resolve it happily when flak is flying all around us. Imagine being an Aunt Sally.

If we make a dispute public, it causes a disproportionate amount of unpleasantness. It is bad enough for large corporations if they are praised, because the detractors will be along and unhappy people make a lot more noise than happy people.

Last year, one of my favourite bloggers, Jim Connolly, praised Dell and said what good service he had had from them. I recall I commented that I had also. Since the initial posting and a lot of favourable comments, pretty much all the comments have been negative. That is because happy people get on with their lives and unhappy people congregate to complain. It is not a pretty sight.

Quiet discretion first

I think that if we have a problem with a supplier we should try to resolve it with them. Failing that we should take legal advice. We should not wash our dirty linen in public because it damages our own reputation as well as the supplier’s (or makes them look better), and others will sling dirt as well.

Look at both sides and talk nicely. Consider whether we bought sensibly in the first place. Try to resolve the matter quietly. Learn from the experience about ourselves as well as how we should deal with others.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Posted in Customer relations, Customer service, Sales | Tagged Aunt Sally, Customer service, going public, listening | Leave a comment

Short-sighted customer fleecing

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Jon Stow

Image via Wikipedia

I went to a meeting at a hotel the other day, which is one where my colleagues and I quite often hire a room. On this occasion we didn’t hire a room but met in the lounge. I didn’t actually pay for anything as a friend was kind enough to treat me. As a group, we probably spent quite a lot, but on this occasion I didn’t have a bill to show for my visit.

As I quite literally did not have a bill to show the receptionist on the way out, I ended up being charged £3 for my parking for a couple of hours. Now, I appreciate that the hotel does not want commuters travelling to London from the local station using their car park, but as I was known to the hotel and had said hello to the receptionist when I came in, she knew I was only there for a short meeting. Apparently if we had hired a room (we asked but there were none available) there would have been no parking charge.

The problem is that “rules are rules”, but I would have thought that a little common sense in policy would impart more goodwill and encourage people to use the hotel, the bar and the restaurant as a rendezvous for business meetings, and therefore spend their money. It would have been sensible to make the parking charge policy clear. It’s not the £3 I am bothered about as much as the thought that being someone’s guest could actually cost money, and therefore discourage those of us with ruffled feathers from coming back.

Most of us know that a little generosity or show of hospitality almost always brings more business. Give a little for free and thou shalt receive. Big corporates and especially those in the hospitality sector ought to know that, and while having rules is OK, allowing staff to use their discretion and common sense would not do any harm. It might bring great benefit. What do you think?

Posted in Customer relations, Customer service, management | Tagged Customer service, marketing, sales | Leave a comment

Panorama of sad tales

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Jon Stow

Fifties blues

Jobcentre at Galashiels, by Walter Baxter

Last night’s edition of Panorama on BBC1 in the UK was about the lack of job prospects for the over-fifties. There is no getting away from it. If you have reached a certain age you will be subject to age discrimination in recruitment either directly from employers or from the recruitment agencies representing them. I was talking about this only the other day.

The programme did well to highlight the difficulties, including the direct discrimination based on age, the greater difficulty in getting a job after having been out of work for a month or so. The longer someone is jobless, the more difficult it is even to get an interview. If one were forthcoming it would very likely be with someone much younger who might be uncomfortable even interviewing the older person, let alone giving them a job.

Patronizing

Panorama had the four people featured in the programme interviewed by Lord Digby Jones. He is of course a successful businessman and no doubt a fine fellow, but I thought he was pretty unsympathetic, making some uncomfortable suggestions. He suggested that two of the men should consider moving across the country to find a job. That would be pretty difficult for someone with deep rooted in his local community and with his wife at least still holding down a job as one was. A suggestion of taking voluntary work might be useful in showing that someone was prepared to keep busy while looking for a job, but it doesn’t pay the bills.

Lord Jones then suggested that the men should re-skill and go into business, perhaps as a plumber or a brickie or a carpenter. Obviously Digby doesn’t know anyone in the construction industry. If he did he would know that hardly anything is going on and there is not enough work even for the already skilled and experienced. Even if a newbie fifty-something plumber worked on his own it would be a big step to take his skills out and start his own business. It is the sort of occupation where it would be best to get a start working for someone else to learn the practical ropes, which would involve the employment hurdle again. It was just unrealistic and I have to say rather condescending.

Start-ups

The female victim was trying to start her own business, but had low self-esteem resulting from loss of status. If you have been “someone” in a certain sector, it is hard to come to terms with not being “anyone”.

Of course as we know here, it is great to start our own businesses, but it is not for everyone. It is very hard, and many simply do not have the life skills to do it. My view is that we need to do something allied to what we know in our start-ups, but not to be too choosy. As a friend said this morning, we should not be afraid of having bolt-on businesses. That is why I have at least three businesses and come to think of it, help out with a fourth which is not mine. They had roots in the difficult early days, and have grown and taken on lives of their own.

What the out-of -work population needs is not patronizing suggestions, but helpful information. The poorly skilled need special assistance and those with some skill need help from some organization other than the JobCentre, which is useless for skilled people.

I hope StartUp Britain will help in showing the way, and give people ideas to help themselves, but starting a new business takes planning and ideally mentoring (there’s always me for that), but let’s not pretend it’s easy. It’s hard work and not for everyone, which is why those of us who have made a success of such adversity should help those who cannot help themselves to find work.

It’s tough out there for the lonely older unemployed. How do you feel about it?

The edition of Panorama, “Finished at Fifty?” is here for the next few weeks, at least for UK viewers.

Posted in Business planning, Start-up | Tagged age discrimination, Ageism, over-50s, over-fifties, small business, Start-up, Unemployment | Leave a comment

Booing from the sidelines

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Jon Stow

Criticism

New business

I was rather disappointed last week at the reaction in much of the press and from politicians who should know better to the launch of StartUp Britain. I am sure they do not mind my quoting their “About Us”:

“StartUp Britain is a new campaign by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, launched on 28th March 2011. Designed to celebrate, inspire and accelerate enterprise in the UK, it has the full backing of the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and HM Government.

This is a response from the private sector to the Government’s call for an ‘enterprise-led’ recovery. We believe that many of the important functions and services necessary to foster and champion new enterprise can be open-sourced, instead of provided by government directly. We aim to do this by creating a living market-place online for the wide range of enterprise support that is already available.

As a private sector organisation we aim to shoulder some of this responsibility for enterprise promotion with the government, re-modelling existing cost centres, and reducing the cost to the taxpayer.”

I suppose the Prime Minister’s launch of StartUp Britain got up the noses of his opponents, but surely support by Richard Branson as well as the involvement of many admirable business people (go and have a look) should show that this is a really serious campaign with great potential which we should hope will be fulfilled.

New resources

There are a lot of resources on the StartUp Britain website. There is a pooling of useful resources and reading and some major companies have special offers available. The initiative differs from StartUp America (also a good idea) because that is White House driven. StartUp Britain is supported by the Government but not publicly funded. However successful or otherwise, there really is no downside to StartUp Britain, so surely it should be embraced by:

people already in business
those who would like to start out in business
those who will find no choice but to start out in business due to ageism and other discrimination.

Not everyone has the nous or capability to work for themselves but by supporting StartUp Britain the business community and the country has more opportunity to help those who would be always prefer to be employed. At “On our bikes” we got on and started our businesses with no help from anyone at a time when there had been a previous dip in the market. It can be done with good planning and guidance. New entrepreneurs need to understand that it is always good to seek help and advice along the way, and learn to listen to the market. In other words to understand what people want in terms of goods and services.

Sentiment

I am not a life coach. I am not someone who tells you uplifting feel-better things to inspire you. I know and you know that success in business is largely in our own hands. However, success in business is about belief. It is about market sentiment. The more positive people feel about the business environment and the economy in general, the better it actually is.

Of course there is an issue of what people can afford and external pressures on the greater economy from abroad. In the end, business and our lives are as good as we believe they are. If we believe we are on the up, we ARE on the up and we take others with us. That’s not coach stuff (I love coaches and count several as my friends). Positive market sentiment makes for a positive market.

Let us not have the naysayers and those who wish to receive but have nothing to give get us down. Let’s get on our bikes and pedal hard (or even peddle our wares) for a great future is in our gift.

What do you think?

Posted in Business planning, Sales, Social, Start-up | Tagged Business and Economy, sentiment, Start-up, support | Leave a comment

Ageism, realism and working life in the twenty-first century

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Jon Stow

My starting point

Lake District work opportunities

As many of you may know, when I lost my job nine years ago I came to realise that at the age I was, I was not allowed to have another employment. I was too old, by which I mean I was somewhat over forty. It took a while for me to understand that was the problem. For a while I laboured under the illusion that there were not many jobs about and that was why the recruitment agencies had trouble finding me interviews. Ageism is a bitter pill to swallow, as many people who have just come out of employment will be finding out.

My solution

Realistically, the only way I could earn a living was to start my own business. That is why I call myself an “accidental entrepreneur”. I have actually set up several businesses because I had to get money coming into the household. I had a specialist field from my employment days, but I also had to do whatever it took to try and achieve some inflow of money.

Over the years since and especially at the beginning I had various short term contracts and also took subcontracted work from another firm. Effectively the services I provided have helped businesses to avoid taking on an employee. I had no security in doing what I did.

Two of the firms I helped just told me they didn’t need me any more, one with no notice at all; I had no expectations of a continuing presence with them so I had to shrug my shoulders and move on to the next assignment, and of course I had been steadily building up my own business and individual clients. My business is both B2B and B2C, to use the jargon. It is a long while since I had to depend on just one or two clients for an income stream. Nowadays I subcontract quite a lot myself. It is an efficient way of doing things.

The ageist job market

Not much has changed since I left employment for the last time. If anything, the work market for older people is much worse. There is legal protection against age discrimination within an employment but once a reason for redundancy is identified or contrived there is little an employee can do.

Age discrimination in the job market is hard to prove. One can be annoyed by an ad such as the technical writing opportunity for a “newly qualified” person I saw yesterday. Newly qualified? We know what they mean.

Older people want to work. They are just not allowed to be employed, as Julian Knight reminded us the other day when writing in the Independent. Apparently there are those who think that older workers are just standing in the way of the young. I agree with the hypothesis that a younger manager would rarely think to take on a person twenty or thirty years older because

the person will be too slow
the person will be off sick a lot
the person will show up the manager by knowing more and being better than he or she is

We know that most “old-hands” would take fewer sickies, be as quick as anyone and know better than to embarrass the manager, but these prejudices remain.

The work market of the future

I don’t claim to have second sight, but since I started my businesses I have ploughed the furrow which many others have to do or will in the future. Realistically, the bureaucratic burdens on employers and their prejudices over age will need them to be more interested in taking people on short-term ad hoc contracts where there is no long term commitment on either side. The current employment laws both on the HR side and in relation to tax do not match up yet, but Seth Godin said recently “In the post-industrial revolution, the very nature of a job is outmoded.” I agree with that.

I think that employment rights are going to have to be watered down to relieve the employment law red tape mess that businesses have to suffer. In the future, there will be no such thing as a job in the old sense, and there isn’t even now for many over-forties, which is why so many of us are already out there in the brave new twenty-first century. There will be more mobility, which surely is a good thing?

How do you feel about this?

Posted in productivity, Start-up | Tagged Ageism, Employment, future, Julian Knight, Market, Seth Godin, Work | Leave a comment

Did you miss the boat?

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Jon Stow

Don’t rue your luck

Nr. St. Brelade, Jersey

Recently I have witnessed people publicly regretting that they did not manage to create a worldwide on-line network before Facebook appeared. Why didn’t their big idea grow the way Facebook did? The fact is that hard though they worked, and entrepreneurial though they were, Messrs Zuckerberg and co were very lucky in simply being in the right place at the right time. The right time was neither before they planted the seeds or afterwards, but exactly at the time they happened to start. That’s life.

Others may think “should we have sought venture capital rather than going alone? Should we have asked for support from this media person or that?” It doesn’t matter. The time has gone. We need to deal with the present.

We all make “mistakes” in our working lives. Sometimes we can benefit from them and learn. Just over ten years ago I left a comfortable but boring job with a large accountancy firm to go for what looked like a more interesting opportunity with a niche consultancy. I was warned against it by my then boss. “You will regret it” I was told. “They don’t treat their staff with respect.”

Being fired

Of course I didn’t pay attention. I took the new job. Thirteen months later I was given fifteen minutes to clear my desk when I had been under the impression that I was giving a presentation on the firm’s latest ideas to an invited audience in Jersey the following week. I had been puzzled that my flight and hotel accommodation had not been confirmed.

No regrets

My departure from that firm cast me into the world of self-employment. Do I regret joining that consultancy? No, it was the right decision at the time. I enjoyed the work hugely in that thirteen months. It boosted my confidence. I realised that I was very good at what I did, which I had begun to doubt having been starved of quality work at my previous employer.

We cannot dwell on what might have been. As independent business people the future is more in our hands. We may think sometimes “suppose I had accepted this offer or gone for that contract”. Such thoughts are a distraction and no more useful than wondering about how our lives might have been had we stayed with a past girlfriend or boyfriend.

Our past experience is how we learn to plan the future of our business. We just keep getting back in the saddle, and as business owners, at least the horse belongs to us.

Don’t look back. Does this ring a bell with you?

Posted in Business planning, Social media | Tagged business plan, Facebook, luck, Mark Zuckerberg, planning, regret, Social network, Venture capital | Leave a comment

The Daily Culture Shock

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Jon Stow

A great chippy

If we use social media in our marketing, we can easily get distracted by the latest fashion or the latest scare story. It can all get very confusing.

You know what I think of Klout and its ilk. I think Klout is a fun toy, but as a measure of how much noise we make it is hardly useful in measuring our on-line influence. The measure of that will be in how much engagement we have from our friends, followers, call them what you will, and ultimately in a business setting, how much pay-back we get from giving as much as we can. That sounds a bit mercenary, and I have some lovely friends I have met through various websites and platforms, but most of the time I commit is related to my need to market. OK, I admit to enjoying new friendships and straying from business matters.

Still, we cannot keep worrying about every new story such as whether Facebook will achieve world domination. Have you heard that one? Could we be totally reliant on Facebook for every human interaction, financial, business, social or in every other way? That is quite amusing in reminding me of the short story by E M Forster, written over a century ago, “The Machine Stops”. Would the world end if Facebook collapsed after taking us all over? You can download the story here.

The world changes and I have no idea what the on-line world will be in five years time or even twelve months from now and nor does anyone else.

In the Sixties, Woolworths was a successful business where one could by anything cheaply and the only fast food was from the fish and chip shop. The food was wrapped in newspaper and it was the only chance I had to see the Daily Mirror, which was frowned on by my parents. It was a greasy read though. My parents did not approve of the Beano and the Dandy either so you see what a strict upbringing I had.

Back then, going to an Italian restaurant would have been the height of chic (mixing two countries there) and there were simply no other cuisines available.

We had absolutely no idea what the next best thing was going to be, and we were swept along by events such as the Vietnam War and the pop culture and in my case the modern rock and folk culture.

We are still swept along. Back when I was growing up we didn’t worry about every new fashion or embracing every sort of movie or music. We chose what we wanted. That is what life is like.

Not worrying about certain on-line tools is not going to be fatal to our businesses. If something has legs for us, test it and see, but don’t dive in just because everyone else has. You might be wasting your time. See how they get on if you are not sure. If you fancy it, have a go. It is OK to be an early adopter. I had a ZX81. It was brilliant. I taught myself Basic and then DOS. Yes, I have a geek streak. However, you don’t have to adopt any and everything.

I believe that striving to have a high score on some index can be compulsive, like gambling or gaming. As a licensed radio amateur (ham) I have chased high scores for contacts and distance so I know what it can be like – a serious distraction from what we should be doing.

Of course what we should be doing is marketing our business and having fun doing it, and not striving to keep up with the Joneses. Follow your own instinct, not that of the chattering classes. Don’t you agree?

Posted in marketing, Social media | Tagged Facebook, fashion, marketing, network, networking, Social media, trend | Leave a comment

Are you a leader and giver or a follower and taker?

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Jon Stow

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - FEBRUARY 14: Prime M...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Like many people who may read this, I am a great believer in face to face networking, by which I mean actually getting out to meet people. I run a business breakfast group, and I have been involved in running other groups too. It is great fun to be involved in organizing events, and in working with other people to do this. I have found that I learn a great deal about them, and no doubt they learn a lot about me. That is partly how to build trust in a network; by shouldering some of the responsibility for actually running it.

Not everybody is like that. There are people who turn up to the meetings but they don’t take an active role. They are followers. They do not volunteer for office. They do not speak up in discussions. We don’t know what they think. They don’t encourage others to come. We don’t get support from them and that makes it harder to give to them, because we don’t know what they want.

Many organizations run by members do at times have difficult choices to make, and sometimes that choice is whether or not there is still a need to exist. Without enthusiastic members with vision, many groups can wither and die. I have seen it with local business groups and even those related to old-established international ones who do charitable work. Without strong and vibrant support from a small number of people in running things, even very worthy associations will disappear as passive members take what there is, but don’t participate.

Recently I have witnessed someone perceiving a problem and seizing the initiative in just such a situation. Because he has stepped forward, others have taken up the cause and are putting forward not only their support, but their constructive ideas. The passive will remain passive and still take, but there should still be something they can take from.

Leadership is about doing and about encouraging (not telling) others to do. Giving time and knowledge is often more valuable than money, and most of us have some time to volunteer. It is about taking control of our own lives. I guess that is what David Cameron is talking about with his Big Society, derided by the passive moaners, of course. It is certainly true that the best gifts are of our time, because that is how we can most help others. That involves leading by example.

What do you think?

Posted in Business planning, networking | Tagged Big Society, initiative, leadership, network, networking, Philanthropy, trust, volunteer | 2 Comments

On Our Bikes

Customer service Aunt Sallys

Short-sighted customer fleecing

Panorama of sad tales

Ageism, realism and working life in the twenty-first century

Are you a leader and giver or a follower and taker?

Don’t miss a post. Have On our bikes delivered by email!

Recent Posts

Circle Jon Stow on Google+

Jon Stow Consulting Tax Blog

Jon Stow’s Ezine Articles

Blogroll

Archives

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Don’t miss a post. Have On our bikes delivered by email!

Recent Posts

Circle Jon Stow on Google+

Blogroll

Archives