Decoding the new economy

The business of baffling choices

Jan 072012

In his Daring Fireball blog, John Gruber’s takes to task the view that Apple suffers through not having a wide product range.

John makes the valid point that Samsung seems to stealing market share from HTC rather than Apple but the whole theory of offering too many choices strikes to the heart of two industry’s business models.

Those two industries are the mobile telco business and the Windows personal computer sector.

In the PC world, the wide range of models has been both an advantage and a weakness; it’s allowed Dell and others to create custom machines to meet customer needs but also leaves consumers – both corporate and home buyers – confused and suspicious they many have been taken advantage of.

All too often customer were being had; frequently buyers found they’d bought an underpowered system stuffed with software that either was irrelevant to their needs or an upgrade was necessary to get the features they hoped for.

The entire PC industry was guilty of this and Microsoft were the most obvious – the confusing range of operating systems and associated software like the dozen version of Microsoft Office was deliberately designed to confuse customers and increase revenue.

For the PC industry, the “baffle the customer” model reached its zenith, or nadir, with Windows Vista where Microsoft deliberately put out an underspecced ‘Home’ edition designed to push sales up the value chain.

Compounding the problem, most of the manufacturers followed Microsoft’s lead and put out horribly underpowered systems in the hope that customers would upgrade with more memory, better graphics card and bigger, faster hard drives.

Most customers didn’t upgrade and as a result the Vista operating system – which was horrible anyway – enhanced its well deserved reputation for poor performance.

In the telco sector, consumer confusion lies at the heart of their profitable business model; a bewildering range of phones and plans often leaves the customer spending too much, either through an overpriced plan or paying punative charges for ‘excess’ use.

Having a hundred different types of Android phone adds to the confusion and, by restricting updates, they can cajole customers into ‘upgrading’ to a new phone and another restrictive plan every year or so. This is why you get phone calls from your mobile phone company offering a new handset deal 18 months into a two year plan.

Apple’s model has been different; in their computer range there has never been a wide choice, just a few configurations that meet certain price points. The same model has used for their phones and iPads.

For Apple, this means a predictable business model and a loyal customer base. They don’t have to compete on price and they don’t have to fight resellers and telcos who want to ‘own’ the customer. It’s one of the reasons mobile phone companies desperately want an alternative to the iPhone.

Companies using the baffling choices business model – Microsoft, HP, Dell and your local mobile telco – may well continue to do okay, but that business model is coming under challenge as new entrants are finding new niches.

For all of us as consumers all we can do is make the choices that are simple are reject complexity. Warren Buffett has always maintained he doesn’t invest in businesses he doesn’t understand, perhaps we should have the same philosophy with the purchases we make.

The importance of transparency

Jan 042012

transparency in policies and behaviour matters online

The US Federal Reserve has announced they will release more details from the information they use on determining official interest rates. On the same day the social networking site Twitter is embarrassed when its opaque verified account policy fails.

Being open and honest is the key component in trust and in turn trust is the bedrock of society. If you can’t trust your neighbour, the local cop or the grocer at the shops then society quickly starts breaking down.

Many big businesses, particularly those in markets where they are one of a small group of incumbents get away with abusing your trust; they tell an illegal surcharge can’t be waived because “that’s their policy, you can’t change an account because of the “terms and conditions” and that the call centre’s operators name is Janet even though it’s Rajiv and you know that when you call back asking for “Janet” you’ll be told”there’s 35 Janets working in the department right now”.

All of this we’ve come to expect from big bureaucratic organisations like the phone company, the bank and the tax office. The interesting thing is how many new businesses that are adopting this anti-customer model of operating.

Rules and policies are fine – as long as everyone knows them, they aren’t too onerous and they are applied fairly and consistently.

The challenge for all businesses – particularly those taking on incumbents – is they have to show they are more trustworthy than the existing operators. If you can’t show that, then maybe it’s time to think about how you operate.

ABC Christmas Computers

Dec 262011

radio talkback & discussion on technology, the web and social media

For Christmas 2011 Paul joined Nikolai Beilharz to discuss dealing with problems with your Christmas tech gifts.

We had a number of callers with problems including setting up a wireless network, what to do if a drink is spilled on your keyboard and how older people can get useful computer training.

Seniors Computer Assistance

John from Hobart asked about where he could get instructions on using his computer.

The Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association is a volunteer group bringing together local computer clubs that cater for older folk.

ASCCA’s national members directory lists local clubs by state and contacting the nearest group should help you find the right assistance from your peers.

Oh no! I’ve spilled a drink on my computer?!?

Watching a freshly spilled cup of coffee, glass of wine or can of softdrink pour into your keyboard makes for one half panic and the other half despair.

If you move quickly and you turn the keyboard upside down then you have a chance of rescuing a laptop computer before too much damage is done. The important thing is to stop liquid getting onto important circuits.

Having turned the keyboard or laptop upside down, leave it for a day for the liquid to dry out. Then its a good idea to take it to the local computer store to see if it the residue can be cleaned up as usually the keyboard becomes sticky and some keys may not work.

Should the liquid damage a desktop computer’s keyboard that’s usually easily fixed by buying a new keyboard but if you’re using a laptop, then the motherboard – the key part of a computer’s circuits – may be affected and that’s usually time to start shopping for a new system.

Setting up a wireless network

Most of the tech devices we’re getting for our households require some sort of wireless connection.

If you have a wireless network, it’s important you get the security right as you don’t want neighbours and passers-by using your connection. The IT Queries site has instructions on securing these networks.

Once have a secured network, preferably using the WPA2 encryption standard and a strong password, you can then connect each device. You’ll need the name of the network and the WPA2 password to make it work.

Sometimes some devices want older, inferior security settings and occasionally they just won’t work at all. It may take several attempts to get them to work and it’s worthwhile re-reading our ten tips for setting up technology.

Our next national ABC spot will be on February 9 next year. We will probably have some more spots over the summer break and we’ll let newsletter subscribers know about them as soon as we do. We also post them to the events page.

Comparing local review and search sites

Dec 012011

With the Australian launch of local search and recommendation site Yelp, it’s worthwhile comparing the different sites to see how well they worked.

The sites work in different ways, some – like Sensis Yellow Pages and True Local – are online directories that search just the title and description of business.

Yelp, Foursquare and Word Of Mouth Online, are socially based and derive their searches on the content and number of community reviews. Their algorithms, the formulas to figure out what customers are looking for, are more complex than the basic online directories.

Most complex of all are the hybrid searches, notably Google Places and Facebook Places, that build local upon their search and social media data.

Each model has it’s own strengths and weaknesses which shows when we do a search. Due to time restrictions we only did two.

Looking for brunch in Neutral Bay, NSW

The first search was using what somebody might be expected to search for on a casual weekend or holiday morning. Neutral Bay and surrounding suburbs have plenty of cafes catering to the brunch crowd so it should be expected to return plenty of hits.

Yelp

The new contender only found one local result and the rest being on the other side of the Harbour Bridge, including one at Bondi Beach which may as well be in the Upper Amazon to the average Sydney North Shore dweller.

Interestingly, entering neighbouring suburbs changes the first two or three results to that suburb but the subsequent listings are the same remote locations as for the Neutral Bay query. This might indicate popularity with the current Yelp users or may be part of the package merchants get when they pay for a listing.

True Local

News Limited’s True Local disappointed one cafe in the district was identified and the number one result was in the city.

This poor results are probably due to the word “brunch” not appearing in the local cafes’ descriptions or titles, but this is a serious weakness for True Local, particularly in a district where they dominate the local news media.

Google Places

Surprisingly, Google Places returned an extremely poor result with no local businesses found.

Again, this is probably due to the failure of business owners to ensure keywords are entered in their business description and it illustrates how Google is allowing an opportunity to pass them by.

Facebook Places

Nothing. Nyet. Zip. No brunch for you.

Yahoo!7

Another poor result that has just scraped information off the web. It shows the weakness of the Yahoo! and Channel Seven joint venture which, like News Limited, is letting opportunities pass.

Bing/NineMSN

Probably the most disgraceful of the results, NineMSN returned two cafes for the whole of Sydney, a city of four million people.

The second result entailed, according to Bing’s directions, a 38km drive timed at an optimistic 23 minutes involving $9 in tolls and an illegal u-turn.

NineMSN’s performance shows just how irrelevant Microsoft has become in the online space and their Australian joint venture partner is more interested in selling big integrated campaigns to advertising agencies.

Given NineMSN and Bing are the default browser and search engine on nearly two million computers sold in Australia each year, not having a local business strategy is squandering a massive opportunity.

Citysearch/Sensis

Founded by Fairfax, Citysearch could have been a great success combining the assets and readership of Fairfax’s metropolitan and local newspapers coupled with their experienced sales teams selling advertising space and subscriptions. Good management could have done this.

Sadly Fairfax was being run by Professor Fred Hilmer and his army of power suited McKinsey consultants and Citysearch was eventually sold for a pittance to Sensis, who have allowed it to shrivel away as the zero result for our search shows.

Eatability

Eatability was a genuine surprise, returning no brunch establishments in the area. The only thought is that no cafe in the neighbourhood has the word “brunch” in their keywords. Still a very poor result.

Urbanspoon

The web version of Urbanspoon returned the most bizarre result, correctly finding one local cafe but misinterpreting the address as being in Bankstown on the other side of Sydney.

Urbanspoon’s iPhone app returned a far better range of results in surrounding suburbs although it only found one cafe actually in Neutral Bay which wasn’t the one incorrectly found on their web app, which didn’t appear at all.

Word of Mouth Online

Word Of Mouth Online delivered the best result of the web pages with two of the first three results being relevant. Of the other seven, they met the criteria of being within a 5km radius of the location which in Sydney can be a 12km drive.

The results would have been better with more local establishments but it appears the keyword “brunch” hasn’t been used by many of the WOMO reviewers.

Note: After the review I was contacted by the founder of WOMO, Fiona Adler, it appears some of the reviews have have been updated in the meantime. I’ve changed the results below, but the left the one above as it was correct at the time of the review.

Foursquare

Like Yelp, Foursquare relies heavily on users’ contributions and this shows in the flaky, almost useless results for our search terms on a web based search.

Foursquare’s iPhone app was far more efficient, identifying a range of good venues in the area which were ranked according to friends’ recommendations.

Sensis/Yellow Pages

Again, “no brunch for you.” It’s almost scandalous that Yellow Pages has no entries at all for “brunch” for an inner Sydney suburb.

Redoing the search

Clearly the term “brunch” is problematic in all the services, so as a check here’s the relevant first page results for other search terms on each of the services;

Service	Café Neutral Bay	Breakfast Neutral Bay	Lunch Neutral Bay
Yelp	7/10	2/10	7/10
True Local	9/30	0/30	0/30
Google Place	10/10	0/10	10/10
Yahoo!7		not relevant
Bing/MSN	3/10	0/10	0/10
Citysearch	6/10	3/6	4/4
Eatability	40/50	8/8	23/31
Urban spoon	3/3	0/0	0/0
foursquare	3/20	1/20	1/20
WOMO	8/10	2/10	5/10
Sensis	7/10	0/10	0/10

As we found with the earlier search, Yelp was somewhat inconsistent and no doubt the social aspects will see it improve as more users come on board, the results are highly dependent on the terms used by reviewers and this will affect the search results.

True Local’s score was surprisingly bad, the search for “cafe” found 12 places but three are long closed. “Breakfast” listed B&B accomodation and “lunch” found outlets in the city and Eastern Suburbs.

Google Places also disappointed on “breakfast”, picking up some B&B establishments along with some city cafes. This is almost certainly due to keywords missing in descriptions.

Yahoo!7 doesn’t get a rating as all it does is scrape other sites and often refers you to other search services. They are just going through the motions.

Microsoft and NineMSN’s service again failed dismally; the “cafe” result was poor, “breakfast” looked for B&Bs and “lunch” amazingly didn’t find a thing in Neutral Bay.

Citysearch’s results for “cafe” found nine places, three of which are long closed which indicates the lack of maintenance their database receives. Encouragingly, Citysearch was one of the best performers for lunch and dinner, albeit only on four and six places found.

Eatability had by far the most impressive number of results, however a large proportion of the places have closed and are not flagged as such. This probably indicates a lack of maintenance by the owners.

WOMO was good and like Yelp their results are highly dependent on the words used by reviewers, so key words could be missed simply because reviewers didn’t use them.

Sensis performed well on “cafes” except that three of the ten listed were closed. The lack of results on “breakfast” and “lunch” is due to no places having those words in their name.

Conclusions

This comparison is not scientific, being based on a narrow search and small sample size, but there’s a few things we can take away from the experiment.

Search is still young

Right now, search is still a crude tool.

From the results, we can see that the keywords used by reviewers and businesses matter. If the public are looking for “brunch” and that isn’t on your cafe’s website and online listings, then you won’t appear.

Over time that will change as the web and search engines get smarter but right now search is still at a basic stage in its development.

You have to be there

Customers are using these tools to find what they need and if a business isn’t listed, then they can’t be found. Setting up a profile and getting some favourable reviews is important.

The business who are being pro-active are the ones who are succeeding.

There’s a lot of opportunity

It’s no surprise that older organisations like Fairfax, Sensis and Microsoft are failing to understand local search. What is suprising is how poorly the newer players like Google and Facebook are doing.

This opens up a lot of opportunity for services like Yelp and Foursquare in adding value to the data already available through services like Google, Facebook and Sensis.

Yelp’s tie up with Sensis makes a lot of sense from the US company’s point of view; they get to ride on Sensis’ sales team, maybe some licensing fees and – most importantly – they can access the richest, albeit not always accurate, database of Australian businesses.

For small, local business there’s a lot of opportunity as well. By getting online and registered on these services, it’s possible to become more visible and improve your competitive position.

The market’s young and there’s a lot of potential for disruptive players. It will be interesting to see how incumbents deal with the threat.

Mad, bad or dangerous: The One Percenters we need to avoid

Nov 072011

Collecting bills can be a fraught process

“I’m not going pay you, your technician was constantly looking at his watch,” growled the customer when asked why she’d stopped a cheque for some work we’d done for her.

There’s many excuses for not paying your bills but a tradesman trying to keep the client’s bill to a minimum is an excellent dodge.

Over the phone call’s ten minutes, it was clear this lady was going to be a tough customer.

First the job wasn’t done properly, then the charges were too high, she accused us of taking advantage of vulnerable women and finally she was going to complain about us to her union.

It was clear we were in for a fight to get a hundred dollars from her, so I let it go. She went away believing she was right.

The saying “the customer is always right” was coined by US retail pioneer Marshall Field and exported around the world by Harry Selfridge, one of his employees who also founded a business empire.

We can be sure neither of them actually meant that customers are always correct in what they do, just that the key to successful service is the client walking away believing they are right.

Regardless of how well we deliver on our promises, there are always going to be some that aren’t happy. In most cases this is due to misunderstanding, or just a bad day on our part, but sometimes there’s the one percent of customers who are mad, bad or dangerous.

The Mad

Some customers just aren’t quite with us. These people, some of whom have genuine psychological problems, simply aren’t going to be reasonable.

There’s no point in fighting them as that’s only going to make their issues worse and maybe even transfer some of their problems to you.

Fortunately as you become more experienced in business you get better at detecting and avoiding these type of customers although there’s always the odd one who sneaks through.

The Bad

There’s a certain breed of people – and businesses – who don’t pay their bills, seeing their suppliers as banks and an invoice as an interest free loan.

Often these customers are charming and the perfect client before the bill is presented then they string you out for months of years before paying your invoices.

For these people and organisations, who are genuine deadbeats, there’s the fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me philosophy. It’s usually better to write them off rather than sink hours of management time.

The Dangerous

Of all the bad payers, the most dangerous is the game player. To these people, not paying debts is an intellectual challenge which they enjoy and play for fun.

These folk will just as happily mess around the phone company or the tax office as much as the local plumber or newsagent, it’s just a game which they’ll play to their maximum enjoyment and your frustration.

For the big companies, these people can be a benefit as they justify the existing of entire bureaucracies dedicated in getting them to pay; small business though don’t have the time and resources to spend the hours of work over years to extract payment from them.

Thankfully these folk usually stonewall as the first invoice so there’s early warnings you’re dealing with trouble. Resist the urge to play the game with them as they are usually better at it than you.

Regardless of which category these bad debtors fall into, in each case it’s better for your valuable time and sanity to let them believe they are right, write the debt off and move on to helping customers who really matter.

Fortunately these people really are the One Percenters and only representative of a tiny proportion of our customers.

The taste of copping a loss is always painful, but at least we get good stories from the excuses they give. What’s the best reason you’ve heard for a customer trying to dodge a debt?

What business can learn from Groupon

Nov 042011

Groupon, pioneer of group buying and one the fastest growing companies in history, will have its launch on the stock markets today with an initial public offering (IPO) that’s values the business at thirteen billion dollars, more double the $6bn that Google offered for the three year old company last year.

A recent Business Insider profile of Groupon had some fascinating insights on this unique company and its growth, there’s a number of lessons that most business owners, entrepreneurs and managers can take from this company’s dramatic growth and market leadership regardless of the sector they operate in.

Apply tech to your business

Many people make the mistake that Groupon is tech startup when it’s actually a sales operation.

Groupon’s business model isn’t really new, what they have done is applied various web technologies to the directory and voucher shopping industries and come up with a 21st Century way of doing things.

Bringing together different modern tools like social media, cloud computing, local search and the mobile web makes businesses more flexible and quick to develop new market opportunities.

Prepare for quick changes

Groupon was born out of another business – The Point. As The Point steadily died, Andrew Mason and his mentor Eric Lefkofsky decided to try something different and Groupon was born.

This ability to change focus quickly – often called “pivoting” – is essential in changing markets. In volatile times like today where today’s business conditions can’t be taken for granted we have to be prepared for rapid changes.

Fortunately the cost and time to changes your business focus has dropped dramatically with digital and online tools, which is another reason to embrace tech.

Get a good business mentor

Eric Lefkofsky bought maturity and a perspective to Groupon’s young leadership, having a different and more experienced view of the business helped it develop and grab the opportunity.

An experienced business mentor can be worth their weight in gold.

Back a good idea

In Nicholas Carson’s Business Insider profile he describes Andrew Mason role at Eric Lefkofski’s business before The Point as “an intern, ‘kind of squatting in their offices’”. Lefkofski was prepared to back the geeky kid camping on his premises.

Putting your prejudices and judgements on the shelf to back good ideas, particularly those that don’t cost much to execute, is one way to find where the opportunities lie.

Tell your business story

Regardless of what you think of Groupon’s claims, they tell a very good story which has lead to their amazing growth and the development of the group buying industry.

Being able to tell your story, in your terms, is one of the great advantages the web, local search and social media deliver. There’s no reason why your business shouldn’t be dominating the local market in whatever field you work in.

Regardless of what your business does, it can benefit from applying the online tools that are available to all of us.

We may not be the next Groupon but the web gives us the opportunity to build our business to take advantage of the 21st Century. It’s worthwhile understanding the new tools at our fingertips.

ABC Nightlife: The next wave of smartphones

Oct 242011

radio programs for techonology, web, social media, cloud computing and computer advice

The world of mobile phones is getting busy again as a whole new range of smartphones appear. Paul Wallbank joined Rod Quinn for ABC Nightlife on October 20 to discuss what the new smartphone wars mean for home and business users.

We’ll be going to air from 10pm, Eastern Australian time across Australia on ABC Local Radio’s Nightlife to look at the following questions;

Why were people disappointed with Apple’s iPhone 4S that was released a few weeks ago?
The big competition are the Google Android phones, what are they doing?
What’s happened to Nokia? They seemed to have lost their domination.
Microsoft were the other big player, what are they doing?
How are the smartphones changing business?
Shopping centres seem to be jumping on board with various social media checkins. What are those?
There’s been a push to online payments, how are the smartphones affecting this?
Are smartphones going to be the big buy for Christmas?
What are the best plans for consumers and business?
How do people deal with telco disputes?

The podcast from the program is available from at Nightlife website, and some of the information we mentioned can be found here;

Dealing with Telco complaints

We’ll be adding more resources in the next few days, the next ABC Nightlife spot is on 23 November and our events page will have more details. If you have any suggestions for future programs or comments on the last show, please let us know as we love your feedback.

The agents of change

Oct 172011

new technologies are dealing with our aging and changing society

It’s understandable technologists see technology as driving change. Often it’s true – technologies do build or destroy businesses, alter economies and collapse empires.

Sometimes though there’s more to change than a new technology changing the economy and while it’s tempting to credit innovations like the web, social media and cloud computing with many of the changes we’re seeing in the world, we have to consider some other factors at work.

The end of the 40 year credit boom

In the 1960s, the United States started creating credit to pay for the Vietnam war; they never stopped and after the 2001 recession and terrorist attacks the money supply was kept particularly loose.

The worldwide credit boom allowed all of us –Greek hairdressers, Irish home borrowers, Australian electronics salesmen, US bankers and pretty well everyone else in the Western world – to live beyond our means.

In 2008, the start of the Great Recession saw the end of that period and now the economy is deleveraging. Consumers are reluctant to borrow and businesses struggle to find funds to borrow even if they want to.

Any business plans built on the idea of almost unlimited spending growth are doomed. The era of massive consumer spending growth driven by easy credit is over and the days of expecting a plasma TV in every room are gone.

The aging population

An even bigger challenge is that our societies are getting older, the assumption we have an endless supply of cheap labour is being challenged as a global race for talent develops.

The lazy assumption that economic growth can be driven by building houses and infrastructure to meet increased demands will be found wanting as the Western world’s populations fail to grow at the rates required to power the construction industries.

Our societies are maturing and increased economic growth and wealth is going to have to come from clever use of our resources.

Innovations in computers and the Internet – along with other technologies like biotech, clean energy and materials engineering – will help us meet those challenges but they are tools to cope with our transforming societies, not the agents of change themselves.

Had tools like social media come along in the 1970s or 80s they probably would have been massive drivers for change, just like the motor car and television were earlier in the 20th Century. In the early 21st Century they have been overtaken by history.

Smart businesses, along with clever governments and communities, will use tools like social media, local search and cloud computing with the demographic and economic changes, but we shouldn’t think for a minute the underlying challenges will be business as usual.

Technology with Carol Duncan on ABC Newcastle

Sep 262011

In the occasional tech spot with Carol Duncan, we looked at Facebook’s new changes and what they mean to users.

The immediate changes to Facebook are the News Feed at the top of the page where updates and posts will be ranked according to what Facebook thinks are your interests, to the left of the screen is “the ticker” which will give summaries of updates.

Coming in the next few weeks will be the Timeline feature which will give show the history of all your posts.

A great summary of the changes with a hands on review is Jason Kincaid’s article on the Facebook changes in Tech Crunch. The official Facebook blog goes into the detail of all the new features.

The purpose of these changes is to increase Facebook’s value as an advertising platform and it raises the question of the viability of these networks.

One of the interesting features of these changes is that users will start seeing increased advertising, if you’re not happy with this our Netsmarts site goes through the process of shutting down your Facebook account.

Join us on ABC Newcastle with Carol Duncan to discuss these issues and more.

Trusting online reviews

Sep 162011

keeping a customer happy in the online world is important

Review sites where customers can post their experiences are changing consumer behaviour and bringing a new level of accountability to businesses, but how do we trust the comments on which appear online?

Travel review site Tripadvisor is a good example of how consumers are able to spread the word about their good and bad business experiences, much to the displeasure of the UK hotel industry and its media friends. To make things worse, many of those reviews are further spread by social media services like Twitter and Facebook.

While the travel industry complains about fake reviews from competitors and disaffected customers, the majority of fake reviews are from hoteliers themselves pumping up their own business. It’s always interesting how many gushing reviews are from anonymous posters with only one or two reviews to their name.

Should any of the threatened court cases actually make it before a judge, there may be a few hoteliers finding themselves in an uncomfortable position, a classic case of being careful about what you wish for.

That’s not to say Tripadvisor doesn’t have a problem, the comments in a recent Telegraph story about the service show they have the web 2.0 problem of lousy customer support which comes from a low cost, user generated business model.

A more serious point which is overlooked by most of the critics is that Tripadvisor, like most travel sites, is linked to certain booking services. If you attempt to use the site to book a property that isn’t aligned with the site, it may well falsely report there are “no rooms available”, which is deceptive and will almost certainly fall foul of competition laws in most countries.

For users of sites, it means we have to be careful with what the reviews and the sites themselves tell us. So what should we watch for?

Spotting dodgy reviews

The obvious thing is the planted review. The easiest way to spot this is by the number of reviews submitted by the commenter.

If a commenter only has one or two reviews then it’s almost certain they either have an axe to grind or they have been submitted by the establishment or it’s staff as most rational people don’t have the energy or time to build a comprehensive profile of reviews just to shaft one place.

Another useful tactic is to look at the reviews around it, do others disagree with that reviewer or are they consistent? Outlier bad reviews can indicate a plant, a grudge or simply a bad day in the kitchen.

Dealing with bad reviews

As we’ve pointed out before, consistent bad reviews on these sites usually indicate a structural problem in the business however if you suspect a fake or planted review, most services have a “flag as inappropriate” option or a dispute mechanism.

Be careful using these however as flagging a legitimate complaint as malicious or fake may antagonise the poster and give the poor review more publicity than you would like.

The social aspects of the web, such as review sites and social media services like Twitter and Facebook, are going to become more important over the next few years as internet users use them to help sift through the massive amount of information on the net.

All businesses, whether in hospitality or other industries, need to take these sites and the reviews on them seriously.

Decoding the new economy

The business of baffling choices

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The importance of transparency

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Mad, bad or dangerous: The One Percenters we need to avoid

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The Bad

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