Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: business advice

  • Are Aussie Businesses fleeing the online space?

    Are Aussie Businesses fleeing the online space?

    Every quarter accounting company MYOB releases its Business Monitor surveying the SME sector’s confidence and how they are using technology along, usually these show more businesses moving into e-commerce, setting up websites and adopting social media.

    The July 2012 monitor (PDF File) is unusual as it shows a decline in various online business activities, the main areas that slumped were the following;

    • Paying bills on suppliers’ websites: fell from 44% of respondents to 37%
    • Buying products/services online: fell from 37% to 24%
    • Using internet search engines to promote their business: fell from 31% to 24%
    • Conducting email marketing to potential or existing customers: fell from 26% to 24%
    • Accepting online payments from customers: fell from 25% to 19%
    • Using any form of social media for business purposes: fell from 21% to 16%

    All of these are a bit odd, particularly the first three, and it may be an errant group in the 1,000 businesses surveyed.

    Of the others, email marketing’s fall isn’t surprising as businesses have been finding returns in this field falling for sometime with customers unlikely to open messages unless there is a compelling reason.

    Social media isn’t surprising as there’s a feeling of fatigue among business owners confronted with a new hot platform every few months – increasingly it’s getting harder to become enthusiastic about Pinterest or Google+ when existing experiments in Facebook or LinkedIn haven’t really shown results.

    Accepting online payments from customers declining really does indicate a hiccup with the surveyed group, with more online payment services than ever available to small business, it doesn’t make sense that this service is declining.

    MYOB’s CEO Tim Reed puts the decline down to economic uncertainty saying, “We also found more business operators are experiencing revenue falls than are experiencing rises, and the majority lack confidence in a short term economic recovery. I suspect this has seen many shy away from online activities as they focus on the health of their business.”

    If that is the case, then the small business community is in bigger trouble than we thought. Hopefully MYOBs result is just an errant survey result. We’ll be watching to see what the next index shows.

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  • Losing the hospitality battle

    Losing the hospitality battle

    Travel review site Tripadvisor released its 2012 Industry Index examining the 25,000 responses from hotels around the world and 1,000 Australian hospitality businesses who took part in the survey.

    The index covers a wide range of areas of how the hospitality industry is dealing with connected customers, the web and how hotels are dealing with the relative performances of markets in Europe, North America and Asia.

    A disturbing part of the survey was how many smaller businesses are falling behind their bigger competitors with less than half of Australian Bed & Breakfasts agreeing the statement that an “ability to book via my property’s website on a mobile device is ‘very important,” while 70% of hotels agreed.

    The failure of smaller properties to engage online is borne out anecdotally as well, at a recent business breakfast a B&B owner – whose main business was furniture retailing – moaned about the negative TripAdvisor reviews his place had.

    When it was suggested he might want to engage with the unhappy customers, the proprietor threw his hands up and said “our solicitor told us that it was too expensive to sue.” He wouldn’t accept that the dissatisfied guests might have a legitimate complaint that should be addressed.

    At the same time larger hotel chains have full time teams monitoring comments on Tripadvisor, Facebook and other online forums, fixing problems that are being mentioned and then telling the world they have resolved the issue.

    There’s a good reason for this. Ask someone planning a major holiday and you’ll find almost all of them are reading reviews on sites like Tripadvisor, Fodors or Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree before booking accommodation or flights.

    While many of the hotel management responses are boilerplate – repeated replies like “Thank you for your review and we appreciate you taking the time to share with us your experience as we are always pleased to receive feedback from our valued guests” is not what social media or customer service is – at least there is a perception that senior management is listening.

    At many establishments senior management really is listening, a country manager of one of the world’s biggest chains describes how his three person team sends him a report each day of any complaints being listed online. These are checked out and any systemic problems they find such as surly front of house staff, poor housekeeping or incorrect billings are addressed immediately.

    Having a direct line to happy or dissatisfied customers is one of the major benefits social media offers businesses. That smaller hotels aren’t doing this while their multinational competitors indicates the independent sectors of the hospitality industry are falling behind the majors.

    The furniture shop owner with a B&B investment illustrated the problem, not only was he not engaging with dissatisfied customers on TripAdvisor, he had no idea whether his businesses were listed on Google Places, Facebook or any other online listing service – “my wife does that” was his dismissive answer.

    Possibly the most overused quote in modern business is ice hockey star Wayne Gretzky’s “skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been”. Those smaller hospitality businesses not taking the mobile web, review sites or social media seriously aren’t even in the skating rink in today’s game.

    There’s a lot more interesting ideas in the TripAdvisor report that should have any hospitality thinking about how customer service and marketing are evolving in a connected society. It’s worth a read.

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  • Undoing the untrained workforce

    Undoing the untrained workforce

    One of the notable things about the 1980s way of doing business was how front line workers weren’t valued for their skills and knowledge.

    In call centres, shopping malls and government departments, those who dealt with customers were seen as an unnecessary expense who should be outsourced at the first opportunity or, if it wasn’t possible to hive them off, then encourage them to get more money out of the customer while providing less service.

    An example of this was at electronic superstores where sales staff with little product knowledge were given rudimentary training and then encouraged to sell easy payment plans and expensive acccessories – the HDMI cable scam where connectors of dubious quality earned more profit and commission than the HiFi systems or plasma TVs they plugged into illustrated how lousy a deal this way of doing business for the customer.

    Much of that mentality has been inherited by web2.0 companies that think customer service is an optional extra.

    Some of those companies can’t even be bothered protecting their clients’ data properly, such is their unwillingness to provide service.

    The stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap self service culture of the 1950s and 60s reached its limits in the 1980s and was only given a reprieve by the easy credit boom of the 1990s. With the end of the credit boom, electronic or household goods stores that simply sell cheap tat on interest free terms at a fat mark up without adding value now struggle.

    Gerry Harvey is getting out of electronics partly for this reason – his business model is dead and it’s been difficult for a decade to make the fat profits on consumer computers or electricals without hooking the customers with interest free deals or expensive and pointless accessories or software.

    One of the conceits of management through the last part of the Twentieth Century was the mantra “our greatest asset are our people”, today business have to start valuing the skills, knowledge and corporate memory of their workforces.

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  • Why would a plumber want a broadband connection?

    Why would a plumber want a broadband connection?

    A question that still bugs me from the Cloud + NBN forum this week is “why would a plumber want a broadband connection.”

    It doesn’t seem so long ago that question was asked about mobile phones – in the early 1990s the question made sense as cellphones in those days were heavy bulky things that sat in cars. They were of little use to plumbers or anyone else except the executives and politicians who could afford them.

    Today there are few plumbers who don’t have a mobile phone.

    Why would plumbers want a broadband connection? Job scheduling, inventory management, stock ordering, quoting and invoicing are five tasks that spring to mind.

    One of the big areas for all business is research and training. Keeping up with industry changes, particularly in fields where professional development is required to maintain your license or accreditation, is made far easier with online learning services.

    For the plumber, being able to find out what’s new on the market and how to install or maintain the latest products keeps them in the marketplace.

    Then there’s the necessity of being listed online – without a broadband connection the local plumber will struggle to keep up to date with the sites customers are using to find tradesmen.

    Even asking the question “why should a plumber be online?” betrays just how many of us aren’t understanding how business is changing.

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  • Chasing away the astroturfers

    Chasing away the astroturfers

    Yesterday we heard the collective gnashing of teeth as social media experts, lawyers and business owners complained about the Australian Advertising Standards Board’s ruling that companies are responsible for comments on their Facebook pages.

    The ASB ruling (PDF file) was a response to complaints that comments on Diageo’s Smirnoff Vodka page breached various industry codes of conducts and encouraged under age drinking.

    While the board found the complaints weren’t justified – something that most of the hysterical commentators overlooked – the ruling contained one paragraph that upset the social media experts and delighted the lawyers.

    The Board considered that the Facebook site of an advertiser is a marketing communication tool over which the advertiser has a reasonable degree of control and could be considered to draw the attention of a segment of the public to a product in a manner calculated to promote or oppose directly or indirectly that product. The Board determined that the provisions of the Code apply to an advertiser’s Facebook page. As a Facebook page can be used to engage with customers, the Board further considered that the Code applies to the content generated by the advertisers as well as material or comments posted by users or friends.

    The key phrase in that paragraph is “over which the advertiser has a reasonable degree of control”. Obviously someone posting on Twitter, their blog or someone else’s website is beyond the control of the advertiser.

    With Facebook comments, the onus is on businesses to make sure there is nothing illegal appearing on their streams and any misconceptions or false statements are answered.

    In many ways, this is common sense. Do you, as a manager or business owner, want your brands tarnished by idiots posting offensive or illegal content? Sensible businesses have already been dealing with this by deleting the really obnoxious stuff and politely replying to the more outrageous claims by Facebook friends.

    What’s more important with both the ASB ruling and the Allergy Pathways case the ruling relies upon make it clear that ‘astroturfing’ on social media sites won’t be tolerated.

    Astroturfing is the PR practice of creating fake groups that appear to support a cause or product. A group paid for by an interested party appears to grow naturally out of community interest or concern – a fake grassroots group so to speak and hence the word ‘Astroturf’ which is a brand of artificial grass.

    Organisations like property developers and mining companies have been setting up Facebook pages and websites that appear to be community groups supporting their projects and many smaller business have been inducing friends, relatives or contractors to post false testimonials. In the run up to major elections in 2012 and 13 we’re seeing many of these fake groups setup to push various political agendas.

    For a few consulting groups, astroturfing has become a nice line of business and those of us on the fringe of the social media community have been watching the development of ‘online advocacy services’ with interest.

    While no-one has claimed Allergy Pathways or Diageo were posting fake testimonials on their own Facebook pages, the rulings in both cases are a warning that the courts and regulators are prepared to deal with those getting clever with social media.

    For honest businesses this ruling is a non-issue, it’s timely reminder though that web and social media site are not ‘set and forget’ but need to be regularly checked, valid customer comments replied to and inappropriate content removed.

    The ASB ruling reaffirms what sensible social media experts have been advising all along, and that’s good news for them and their clients.

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