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Monday, June 30th, 2008
Don’t use 4by6.com: How not to handle customer support
in: Communicate
A bit of a rant here. But it’s a great example of how not to do customer service. The bottom line: Don’t tell your customer something like, “my horoscope tells me to move on,” in a format that can be quoted publicly. The Internet means that a frustrated customer can be very vocal. Sites like Yelp yield gems like “The main reason for my 2 star review is not the quality, rather the customer service (or lack thereof).” Companies need to weigh the cost of that negative press, particularly when the product is being bought on reputation. Here’s the full history, with some juicy mail thread embarrassment at right. I had a run-in with 4by6.com recently, which, frankly, surprised me since someone had told me they liked them. I ordered some cards for delivery in Las Vegas, and went through their extensive process for validating layout. I then contacted them to confirm that my Canadian payment information would work. The cards never showed (and this is back in January.) I contacted them several times by email and got no answer. Then, one day in April (two months later), I got a mail from them saying the shipment was returned by Fedex. The mail exchange that followed astonished me. Ultimately, 4by6.com said that they didn’t know why the order wasn’t delivered, or why they hadn’t responded to my mails, and told me to forget about it. I’ve heard complaints about 4by6.com’s customer service from a number of online forums. Hopefully the Internet’s ability to self-regulate and communicate problems will weed out companies that adopt this kind of customer disservice. Meanwhile, I’ll use Moo.com, Henley Printing, Ondemand Printing, JMF Printing, or one of the many other alternatives.
There’s an old saying that it’s a good idea to fire your worst customers, or better yet, refer them to your competition. This is generally true if those customers are costing more than they bring in. But when you clearly fail to deliver the agreed-upon service, it’s a better idea to resolve it than to renege.
View CommentsThursday, June 19th, 2008
The penny machine
in: Communicate, Funding
An entrepreneur walks into the maple-paneled boardroom, glances around the table at the well-groomed investors gathered there, and reaches into a large leather bag. He pulls out a strange machine, roughly two feet high by one foot wide, sets it carefully on the table, and plugs it in. The room is expectantly quiet. “Does anyone have a penny on them?” asks the entrepreneur. The general partner raises an eyebrow as one of the junior staff hands over a faded copper piece. “Now watch.” The entrepreneur inserts the coin into the top of the machine, and pulls a small lever. There is a low-pitched whirring, a pause, and then a shiny new nickel tumbles into the small shelf at the bottom of the machine. The only sound in the room is the ventilation system, cooling the warm Palo Alto air. “That’s a neat trick,” says the silver-haired general partner, straightening up in his seat and grinding his brown Mephistos into the new rug beneath him. “Do it again.”
Saturday, June 14th, 2008
The purpose of your first slide
in: Communicate, Funding, Standing out
I was talking with the CEO of a startup last week and we were going over funding slides. There’s always an overview slide up front. According to common wisdom, this is supposed to “tell them what you’re going to tell them.” But I have a slightly different take on it. Sure, you have to say what industry you’re in, how much you’ll make, how you’ll make it, and why you’re the one to make it happen. And do all that in a couple of sentences. But your first slide has a different, more important purpose. The purpose of the first slide is to change their mindset from “I have to sit through this” to “I get to sit through this.”
Monday, June 9th, 2008
Not following through on an idea
A lot of startups have great ideas. But unless they follow through with them to the end, they can backfire. Like mugs, for example. I was at a Starbucks in the Bay Area recently and someone brought in their own mug to avoid using paper cups. Unfortunately, Starbucks tracks cups by writing your name and order on them. It’s how they survive the chaos of the morning rush. So the same company that says, “save the planet, use a mug,” puts those mugs in paper cups to keep track of them. A lot of startups have a great idea, but they fail to think it through all the way. This is a great example of the consequences of thinking it through. If you have a concept, you need test cases. You need to describe your end user in great detail, then build a prototype, then watch them use it, and then iterate quickly.
Monday, June 2nd, 2008
Scarcity rocks
in: Communicate, Create, Standing out
I wrote an article a while back about Linkedin and Notchup. The short version: With a particularly viral offer, Notchup used Linkedin to harvest and enrol 900,000 users in around 3 weeks. But with popularity, the cachet of “reach the people who are hard to reach and not looking” goes away.I call this the Krispy Kreme problem. A friend of mine handled operations for the donut maker years ago (sort of the opposite of high tech), and he wondered to me one day whether the fact that you could get their donuts pretty much anywhere was a bad thing. He was right. Unfortunately, scarcity doesn’t scale.
Many of the blog comments that came back concerned scarcity. The whole premise of Notchup was to help recruiters find the hottest candidates–the ones who weren’t looking. They figured that it was worth paying to talk to this talent, and with a decent paycheck at the end of it, even the most tight-mouthed candidate would be willing to part with some personal details.