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Whenever a customer leaves your business unsatisfied, you not only have lost that sale but the future growth potential from all others who had the same need and similarly did not consider that you could satisfy them.

A recent coincidence of events provides some fresh insight into this. Both these examples come from the food industry, namely McDonalds and Subway. These are both well run franchises, with solid business models.

In one case, the business operator was short staffed. Customers were queuing for service and then giving up and leaving. This had the effect of creating frustration and discouraged return visits. Others, seeing the queue, would simply decide not to join it and turn around and walk away.

In the other case, there was a consistent customer product demand that the operator knew was going unmet. Other operators in the franchise group had already taken the upgrade. However, the new features required a very large investment and it was difficult to commit to meet this new demand. The store operator felt it was not really core to their operations and they were doing a good job already. He simply did not understand the need. He resisted the customer feedback and watched over a long period as customers left the store without making a purchase.

Both these businesses were losing current and potential business. Each decided finally to act. One doubled their staff and found that there was sufficient demand to meet this 100% increase in staff level. In fact the realisation was that they could service even more customers if the store was expanded further. The other made a large commitment of $250,000 to remodel their store and found a whole new customer base that significantly exceeded the needed revenue targets. They were amazed and pleased by the response and sales growth. It opened a whole new opportunity.

The key feature of both these outcomes was not that they retained existing loyal customers, but that in both cases they expanded their market share. Listen to your customers and invest in their needs. Your future is in them.

(Apologies to Kermit)
The excitement of having your web site listed in a major daily newspaper is hard to overlook. Imagine the hit rate now! You might reasonably expect that a half page article about you and your site will pull in vast numbers. The fact is sometimes surprisingly different. Not every article that makes it into the news will gain the same readership or result. The case of a filmmaker who managed to get the story of their self-funded movie published is a good example here. The story was well written but the topic failed to gain traction. The number of downloads of the trailer 48 hours later was under 600. When you consider that a popular YouTube clip will get 300,000 or more downloads, 600 is a very low result.

What went wrong?
The concept was good – send out a press release, get some free publicity. But the message missed the mark. The newspaper’s audience was wrong – the topic was not suited and the article just didn’t make the video sound interesting. It concentrated on the producer’s story and not the content. It just did not make you want to see the video. What they missed out on therefore was the impact of social networking - the YouTube phenomena of punchy content with a clear message.

The Internet is vast and its operation and the software used to access and develop applications on the Internet is not within our control. Adverse events or circumstances will arise. Experience shows that regardless of all efforts expended, something will occur that will exceed the capacity of the situation. Usually this will be in the form of a known but unpredictable threat such as a server failure, virus or Ecommerce fraud.

Very few ICT companies are prepared to inform their clients about risk and provide a understanding of their role in the process. The outcome of not being informed is a false assumption that the services being provided will always be flawless. The real difficulty is that unlike other commercial risks, Insurance cover is hard/impossible to get or too expensive for a small enterprise. That means that in most cases the business is self-insuring or carrying the risk itself.

Two examples of unexpected risk come to mind. A few years ago a major hardware/software vendor released a Web Host Appliance Server for use by ISPs and small business. It was very popular. The software had a security vulnerability and one day thousands of these appliance servers were hacked and disabled. The only way to fix the problem was to reload the servers from scratch meaning many domains were offline for 24 hours or more as technical staff struggled with a truly catastrophic failure.

The present day scare ( 3/12/07) over WPAD vulnerability for Microsoft Internet Explorer, shows that evan a bug that was first identified and repaired back in 1999, can unexpectedly re-emerge.
(Microsoft Security Bulletin (MS99-054)
Patch Available for “WPAD Spoofing” Vulnerability http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms99-054.mspx).
It is amazing to find code that had been eliminated re-enter the development cycle, but here apparently is a clear example of it.

The fact is: adverse events will occur that are outside of the reasonable control of both customer and ISP.

One of the most important aspects of the Internet is ‘immediacy’. We get used to having what we want, when we want it.

It is easy for a business to overlook that and so create a less than favourable impression. A recent online purchase comes to mind. The $99 price point was excellent for the product and the company was reputable, so I placed an order. The system backend worked OK and I got a confirmation email pretty quick, followed by another welcoming me as a new customer. All good so far.

Imagine my disappointment to receive an email a day later telling me that my $99 purchase would “arrive within the standard delivery time for the area, which is 07 days”. There are a few problems with this.

1. The ’07 days’ is just tacky and a poor reflection of this business’ attention to detail in their web development and communications; and
2. their competitors are delivering on a next day basis generally and same day for early orders delivered locally.

So this is where the experience fell down. Now, instead of being excited to get my new purchase, I was unhappily waiting for their shipping department to tell me when it would arrive. Their email made it clear that I had already been billed. If they can process my credit card promptly, why not my delivery?

Five (5) days later the goods arrived unannounced. It seems that their back-office systems do not integrate with despatch, only ordering and billing. This is another deficiency that creates a less than complete customer experience. It says that the systems are their for them, not for me. Worse still, I was not required to sign for the goods and so there is no formal record of a successful delivery! That is a big risk for both me and them.

Keeping the customer informed and prompt action are fundamental to running a business online. Even the most ordinary Ebay home business will usually ship within 24 hours and communicate actions with their customers. If your back-office procedures and systems are not robust, you will spend more time than necessary dealing with errors and enquiries. When you consider the cost and time it takes to attract a new customer, the extra effort involved in having comprehensive back-office systems is very small. If you can’t afford professional development of your Ecommerce systems, organise a professional to review what you develop. At the very least ask an experienced online shopper to give you an honest opinion.

One thing that happens is that you will feel under pressure to produce new content. Many bloggers fall into the trap of trying to write something new every day. That’s fine  if your topic allows for it. For example commentary on the day’s TV, financial markets or perhaps your daily life. However, daily entries need to offer some new insight to benefit your audience.

If you are intending to write about yourself, keep in mind that you have no idea who is reading. Personal information can lead to Identity Theft. If you go on holiday for a month but have told the whole world all about where you live, the physical security of your property might be put at risk.

Not everything in life has equal meaning. A 500 word analysis of the 2007 Federal election results is useful, whereas, 20 words expressing your love or dismay of the 2007 winner of Australian Idol is enough to get the point across.

A useful approach is to create your Blog content on two levels. Firstly, a series of forward planned topics written in advance, put aside for a day or so, then reviewed and edited before going live. This technique is the way most successful book authors work. When you put aside your work for a few days, returning to it gives fresh insight, closer to how the reader will perceive it. Your content will still be ‘fresh’ but tighter. Secondly, write short and sweet responses to things that just crop up and feel very fresh in your mind.