Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: business advice

  • When disruption meets regulation

    When disruption meets regulation

    Taxi booking applications have been one of the big areas for smartphone developers. Around the world apps for hailing cabs have popped up following the lead of San Francisco’s Uber.

    One of the opportunities for copycat developers is that in most places taxis are regulated by the local city or state government, so an app for New York will struggle in Los Angeles, Paris or Tokyo and savvy entrepreneurs can create their own Uber knock off suited to their own location.

    The problem is in most places taxis are regulated as a cartel, not a public service. Sometimes that cartel is to protect drivers, sometimes the companies that run the networks and often taxi license holders.

    Sydney, Australia, is a good example of the latter two. The New South Wales state government’s rules are designed to protect the interests of the greedy ‘investors’ who’ve bought taxi license plates and the networks who run the booking systems and management of the cabs.

    The result is Sydney cab drivers are treated like serf in what can only described as a feudal system while customers have to put up with lost bookings, poorly kept vehicles and high taxi fares.

    It’s a lousy deal all round and is a great example of where disruption can change things for the better.

    The problem is the incumbents will fight innovation that threatens their cosy and profitable arrangements and the regulators are part of that comfortable alliance.

    In New York it looks like the Taxi and Limousine Commissioner does have some of the consumer interests at heart, pointing out that the metered fare is what passengers have to be charged by law. In most cities though, particularly Sydney, protecting the passenger is just another smokescreen for protecting vested interests.

    Something that many innovators don’t realise is the power of those vested interests.

    In the case of the taxi app developers many of them are about to get a nasty taste of just how vicious incumbent and their tame regulators can be when confronted with a threat to their cosy business arrangements.

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  • Signing off voicemail

    Signing off voicemail

    A survey by US phone company Vonage reports cellphone users are ditching voicemail and moving to alternatives.

    Messages left on user accounts in July fell 8% while retrievals fell 14% compared to last year.

    While those figures may have something to do with the billing practices of US carriers, it shows a much bigger trend in the telecommunications sector away from products which have been very profitable over the last two decades.

    Voicemail, like SMS text messaging, has been a lucrative earner for telcos since the arrival of mobile phones.

    Users get billed for calling a number then for leaving a message – often with a few delaying menu items to make sure callers get hit with a couple of billing units. In turn the receiver is charged for being notified they have a message, billed again for retrieving it and then pays a monthly fee for the privilege for all of this.

    Five bites of the cherry for one phone call – nice work if you can get it.

    This entire revenue stream is now dwindling as customers start using Internet based services to send messages. While the telcos charge extortionate rates for mobile data it is still far cheaper per message than the alternatives.

    In many ways the profits from voicemail and SMS were a classic transition effect – a profitable window of opportunity opened for a short period when a new technology was introduced. Now those windows are closing.

    For telcos, they have to find some profitable new channels. Even if they achieve their dreams of becoming media distributors or even content creators they’ll find both of those fields are far less lucrative than the mobile phone networks of a decade ago.

    While telephone companies aren’t going to grow broke soon, today’s data networks aren’t the golden goose many people expect from telcos.

    The smart telcos will adapt and survive, the ones who think the good times of a decade ago are coming back soon are in for a miserable future.

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  • Nightlife Computers: Sockpuppets, trolls and fakes

    Nightlife Computers: Sockpuppets, trolls and fakes

    Paul Wallbank joined Tony Delroy for the 6 September 2012 ABC Nightlife technology spot to discuss sock puppets, what they mean on review sites and what this means for businesses using social media as a marketing tool.

    If you missed the program, you can listen to the podcast from the Tony Delroy’s Nightlife page.

    This week’s sock puppet scandal puts the light on authors’ book reviews on sites like Amazon while other review services like TripAdvisor, Yelp and Urbanspoon continue to struggle with figuring out which reviews are real.

    Businesses also have to worry about what people are posting in light of the recent Advertising Standards and ACCC rulings making businesses more accountable with what’s posted on Facebook.

    Some of the questions we’ll look at include;

    Join us from 10pm, Australian Eastern Time on Thursday September 5 on your local ABC radio station or listen online through their streaming service at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

    We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

    You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

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  • Owning the customer

    Owning the customer

    During the tech boom of the late 1990s the early wave of web developers had a business model that required locking customers into a relationship.

    Having spent thousands of dollars for designing and building a website, a business then found they would have to spend hundreds of dollars every time they wanted to make even a minor change.

    While that model didn’t work out for web designers as new tools appeared that made it easy for customers to look after their own sites, it’s still the ambition of many businesses to ‘own’ as much of the customer as possible.

    Department store credit cards, supermarket petrol cards and airline frequent flier programs are all examples of how big businesses try to lock their customers into their ecosystem.

    Possibly the dumbest, and most counterproductive all, are the media companies with policies of not linking outside their own websites. The idea is to keep readers on their sites but in reality it damages their own credibility and betrays their lack of understanding how the web works.

    The airlines too have discovered the risks in trying to ‘own’ their customers as their devaluing frequent flier programs has irritated and disillusioned their most loyal clients.

    Many businesses, particularly banks and telcos, try to tie you up into knots of contractual obligations with reams of terms and conditions. All of this is an attempt to make the customer a slave to their business.

    Outside of having a legally protected monopoly, you can’t ‘own’ a customer – the customer has to grant the favour of doing business with them.

    They’ll only do business with you if they trust that you’ll do the right thing by your promises; whether it’s delivering the cheapest product, the best service or quickest delivery. The moment their trust begins to slip, you risk losing their business.

    Executives who talk of the concept of owning the customer are either working in organisations with little competition or those steeped in 1980s management practices. If you hear them talking like that, it might be best to take your business, and investments, elsewhere.

    Owning customers didn’t work for the web designers of the early 2000s and it won’t work for businesses in other sectors. The only way to ensure most of your clients keep coming back is to deliver on what you’ve promised them.

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  • Empathy and the genius salesman

    Empathy and the genius salesman

    One of Apple’s great successes has been in delivering services through its stores. Tech site Gizmodo managed to get a peak at Apple’s training manual for their in-store ‘Genius’ technicians.

    A word that keeps popping up in the manual is ’empathy’ – as Gizmodo says;

    The term “empathy” is repeated ad nauseum in the Genius manual. It is the salesman sine qua non at the Apple Store, encouraging Geniuses to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,”

    While the Gizmodo writers and many of the site’s readers seem surprised or cynical about this, it’s not surprising for anyone who’s worked in sales or tech support, and the Apple Store Geniuses are doing both.

    Empathizing with the customer or caller gives them confidence and builds trust. For someone in sales, listening and emphasizing is how one finds out what the customer really want. On the support desk, putting yourself in the customer’s position makes it easier to diagnose the problem.

    That empathy a real return on investment – US Apple Stores earn 17 times more per square foot than the average retail store. The next most profitable retailer is Tiffany & Co who only boast have the revenue.

    What Apple again show is that training matters. Every surly computer store assistant, every grumpy flight attendant or bored call centre worker can, with the right training and incentives, be just as effective as an Apple Store genius.

    Sadly too many businesses, particularly retailers, see training as a cost and their employees as naughty children. Those businesses have a serious problem.

    Without empathy – the ability to put yourself in your customers’ shoes – your business is working with a distinct disadvantage.

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