Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: business advice

  • The polite victory

    I’ve discussed before how manners matter online. A bizarre exchange illustrates this and how you can lose an argument by being rude online.

    The exchange started with a New York Times article on the Qantas A380 emergency in Singapore. The final paragraph in the piece claimed the airliner’s Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) didn’t work properly;

    “Even the cockpit voice recorder did not work right, according to a report by Australian investigators. It failed to halt when the plane landed, and because it operated in a two-hour loop, the critical periods were recorded over.”

    That nugget of information lead me to tweet out the following;

    A few hours later, the following tweets appear;

    On protesting I wasn’t posting “deliberate & malicious misinformation”, I’m then told I’m a liar;

    From there conversation doesn’t go far and I end up blocking the guy so I can no longer see his twitter posts.

    The funny thing is the gentleman is correct in saying the A380’s CVR worked properly, as the Australian Transport Safety Board states on their website;

    “The cockpit voice recorder was transported to the ATSB’s technical facilities in Canberra, Australia for download and analysis. Over 2 hours of cockpit audio was recovered. However, due to the failure of the No 1 engine to shutdown in Singapore, and therefore continuing power supply to the recorder, the audio at the time of the engine failure well over 2 hours before the No 1 engine could be shut down, was overwritten. That said, elements of the available audio are expected to be of assistance to the investigation.”

    QF32’s Cockpit Voice Recorder didn’t fail, it’s designed to turn off when the engines shut down and as the crew couldn’t turn one of the engines off the CVR kept going and ultimately overwrote the critical parts of the flight. Which isn’t the fault of the recorder at all.

    I was wrong.

    Now, had the gentleman suggested something along the lines of “Paul, you’re misinformed. CVR worked fine. Read the ATSB report” I’d have read the correct report, apologised and moved on. However this gentleman chose to be rude and aggressive.

    Thankfully the worst that can happen online is a flurry of rude words followed by one or both of the people blocking the other, in the real world behaving like this – say by barrelling up to someone in a bar and calling them liar – probably isn’t going to work out as well.

    Which shows how in the online world, just as in the real, offline community, manners do matter.

    Choose your words before disagreeing with someone, just as being aggressive at the school hall isn’t going to work out well, it probably won’t online either.

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  • focusing on the product

    Chris Thomas’ Smartcompany column last week suggested the latest Google search changes will see a lot of wasted Search Engine Optimisation investments, this saga illustrates a couple of peculiarities about the Internet that all business owners should keep in mind.

    The most important is that almost all the Internet tools we use are privately owned. When we use Google, Facebook, Twitter or any of the myriad other online applications, free or paid for, we are beholden to their regulations.

    Nipplegate was a good example of this, regardless of how silly Facebook’s rules are regarding nudity it is their their sandpit and if we want to play in it we have to agree to their rules.

    This is why it’s important we have our own websites, so at least we have some control over our content and a central place for our customers to find us regardless of other sites rules and problems. Although your own web address is still subject to the sometimes arbitrary whims of domain registrars and Internet filters.

    We also need to be careful of not getting too obsessed about the net. Often we spend too much time perfecting our SEO strategy, harvesting likes on Facebook or gaining Twitter fans. It’s like the days when we discovered desktop publishing and whittled away hours playing with fonts and the position of clip art.

    Getting the fonts, web key words or Facebook page right is important, but we should never forget that it’s our product that matters. The best website in the world means nothing if we aren’t delivering a product our customers believe is value for money.

    Big businesses are struggling with this because in the days of mass media it was possible to bury your mistakes under an avalanche of advertising, for smaller business without a corporate marketing budget they had to deliver a consistently better product or they’d be extinct.

    Today, the tables have been turned in that small businesses can afford to be distracted by the bling of cheap, easily accessible online marketing and lose touch with the people that really matter – our customers.

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  • Choosing a mobile phone plan

    What’s your budget?

    This is the most important point. What can you afford?

    Be careful though as plans can be deceptive with a number of traps.

    Understand your usage

    Have a read of your bill and understand how you use your phone. Total up the number of calls you make and who make them to. Many providers allow you to download an electronic copy of your bill which you can then analyse your bill with.

    If you do that, look at the total number of calls you make each month and the average time of those calls. You’ll find this is important as various plans have different billing periods and flagfall requirements.

    Call rates

    This is one of the trickiest areas to deal with on phone plans. Keep in mind each plan has unique tricks like minimum charges and flagfalls. So one provider offering 50c per 30 seconds call with a 35c connection fee may be cheaper for many of your calls than a provider offering 90c per 60 seconds with a 40c connection fee. This is why it’s important to check the average call costs.

    Friends deals

    Many providers have plans where calls between people on the same network are free, or you can nominate friends for a discount rate. If there’s a small group of friends you call a lot, it’s worthwhile looking to see if you can save money that way.

    Don’t ignore data

    In the age of the smartphone, data is now a major revenue generator for mobile phone companies. Have a close look at your data usage and keep in mind everytime you check your email, look up a bus timetable or find a restaurant you’ll be downloading data. This can add up and if you are going to be a regular user of online services you shouldn’t choose a plan with less than 1Gb download.

    Coverage

    It’s important to remember that the phone and the plan are pointless if you can’t get a signal. Check with the store before buying that your home and work can get a reliable connection. Also, if you’re going to be on the road a lot you’ll need to choose the provider who covers those areas well.

    The best way of finding out is to ask your friends and colleagues how they find their connections. They’ll have the best feedback on which providers have the most reliable service.

    Roaming

    If you travel overseas you’ll find international charges can be a killer, so check carefully what you’re up for when you’re travelling.

    Locked phones

    When entering a plan, you may find the “free” handset included is locked to the network you’ve signed up to. If you want to “unlock” it, there’s usually a fee of several hundred dollars to release your phone from captivity.

    Watch your bills

    The danger period when entering a new plan is the first few bills. This is when any hidden traps can bite you. Check those first couple of bills carefully to make sure there are no surprises.

    If you find any bill shocks, take a deep breath and call your provider. Should it turn out the plan doesn’t cover something, the phone companies will usually move you to the next plan up that will keep you within your budget.

    Mobile phone plans

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  • The listening game

    Last week’s Qantas A380 problem illustrates the power the Internet has and how businesses can’t ignore what’s being said on the various online channels.

    Thankfully most of us will never have a morning where the world is told we have lost over four hundred of our staff and customers in a fiery accident as Qantas did last week.

    While not a Qantas customer, I had a lot of sympathy and respect for their management and staff who had to deal with conflicting accounts while balancing their obligations to regulators, shareholders and, most importantly, the loved ones of those aboard QF32.

    The initial story that went out on the media was a Reuters’ report that a Qantas A380 had crashed on taking off from Singapore. While Qantas were able to quickly deny that, they found their other assurances that no debris had fallen from the plane were quickly contradicted by online photos of the pieces in a nearby Indonesian town.

    Luckily, Qantas’ communications teams appeared to be listening to these comments so were quickly able to verify their accuracy and amend the company’s position before they were embarrassed.

    Today’s connected consumers armed with camera equipped, Internet enabled smart phones and can post images contradicting or confirming your message or understanding of the situation quickly. Which is exactly what happened in this instance with passengers and witnesses quickly uploading their views of the incident.

    In one respect this is a threat to traditional management where controlling the message is everything, to the modern manager this is a fantastic opportunity to react quickly and positively to changing situations.

    One of my favourite stories comes from the Virgin Blue checking problems in late September where staff, alerted by complaints on Twitter, were able to get water bottles out to thirsty passengers stuck in queues. It didn’t rescue Virgin from the PR battering they took, but it helped a few of their customers and just maybe won a few of them back.

    This isn’t to say the Internet is infallible, far from it — the Internet is mankind’s gift to the ill informed ratbag and the mischevious troll — what you read on Twitter and Facebook needs to be treated with the same suspicion as what you see on Reuters and CNN.

    Even when the information is downright wrong, you at least have an early warning there’s a perception problem in the community which you can quickly work upon. The key is to evaluate and recognise the credible from the silly and then be able to act on the credible while countering the silly stuff.

    One big lesson from both Qantas’ problems last week and Virgin’s in September is how important it is to point all of your communications channels, including call centres to the organisation’s web site where up to date, verified information is available for the public, staff and customers.

    While the net represents great challenges to business owners and managers of all organisations, it’s also a fantastic resource for getting your facts right and reacting to fast moving changes. Make sure you have the tools and the team to deal with the opportunities and threats our connected economy will throw at us.

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  • Core competencies

    Outsourcing is a good idea for most households and organisations. Asking someone else to do a task you’re not particularly good at or interested in makes sense and most of the service industries are based on the desire to get others to do the work you can’s or won’t do.

    Take outsourcing too far and we lose touch. Just like the parents who outsource all their childrens’ upbringing to nannies, managers overdoing this can lose contact with the very reason their business exists.

    Two stories in the last few days illustrate this; Silicon Alley Insider’s story on the dangers of outsourcing social media and an HP contractor’s employment practices in Western Sydney.

    Hewlett Packard’s story is very instructive, like most of their world wide operations they outsource their Australian assembly operations to a contractor who then engages a labour hire company to engage hourly rate casuals to fulfil their orders.

    This gives the big corporation plausible deniability on their employment practices and saves a few dollars on completing orders — it also means a loss of control of their brand and product.

    HPs customers don’t care if poor work was the responsibility of Foxteq, the assembly company, or Weststaff, the labour hire company. They bought a product with an Hewlett Packard sticker and it’s HPs problem.

    Outsourcing makes sense when it isn’t your key competency, but in the case of HP, hardware and support are key competencies. Over the years they’ve outsourced these to the degree they no longer have control of their own product.

    Unfortunately HP aren’t alone as most of the IT industry decided long ago that IT wasn’t their core business; they were “virtual corporations” where management can sit back and count the pennies while brand consultants look after the products name and outsourced  manufacturers, assemblers and couriers can look after the production, support and logistics.

    All this works well for a while but eventually it catches up with the business, as Dell found with the Dell Hell debacle. While Jeff Jarvis articulated it, many of Dell’s former customers had experienced the poor product quality and awful after sales support first hand.

    Twenty years ago Dell could have bought time by engaging in massive advertising campaigns to hide their poor quality offering but today where everyone has a voice they are quickly caught out.

    Silicon Alley Insider nails that problem for the social media PR channels, rightly saying a company’s voice is too valuable to be outsourced. Today our logistics, sales and support are just as an import part of an organisation’s voice as the PR team.

    Outsourcing everything to save pennies is fine for companies that are run simply to deliver privileges to a pampered cadre of overpaid and unaccountable executives, but for most organisations outsourcing has to be done carefully and with the recognition those contractors are as much an ambassador for your brand as anything else you do.

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