Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: apple

  • 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.

    Similar posts:

  • Being Steve Jobs

    Being Steve Jobs

    Wired Magazine asks is Steve Jobs’ story a cautionary or inspirational tale for entrepreneurs and managers.

    It’s always worrying when any one individual is cited as being the role model for business leaders – over the years we’ve seen Jack Welsh, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and dozens of others lauded as being the perfect CEO.

    None has probably lauded more than Steve Jobs, in many ways rightly so given the way he way he steered his business back from disaster and by the time of his death had made Apple the leader in a range of technologies that barely existed a decade earlier.

    Despite Steve Jobs’ successes there’s no doubt he was a very difficult man – the stories of his bullying and striking fear into Apple’s staff are legendary and no-one has chosen to contradict them. For many people, he was impossible to work with.

    George Bernard Shaw once wrote “the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

    No-one would have ever claimed Steve Jobs was a reasonable man.

    Steve Jobs was unique – as is Apple, Microsoft, IBM, News Limited, Nestle, Joe’s Pizza Bar and the local plumbing supply shop. Every business is unique and different in it’s own way

    For some of those businesses, a manager being an unreasonable asshole like Steve Jobs could be a recipe for success although disaster is probably more likely.

    Disaster was the result for most manager and businesses in the 1990s who blindly copied the then eulogized Jack Welsh’s Six Sigma strategies or “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap’s slash and burn philosophies without appreciating the subtle differences between their organisations and GE or Scott Paper.

    In business – as in life – there’s no “right way” or “wrong way” and thinking in a “yes” or “no” mindset, doesn’t work in a nuanced, complex world.

    The Wired article on Steve Jobs itself falls into this binary thinking in asking readers if they are an “acolyte” or “rejector” of Steve Jobs’ methods. In reality, few people would totally reject every aspect of Jobs’ behaviour but few of us would be capable of totally imitating his behaviour.

    Perversely, aping Steve Jobs is probably a career limiting move for managers. As Adam Hartung writes in Forbes Magazine, Steve Jobs couldn’t find a job today and someone with his quest for perfection would struggle with the bureaucracy of a corporation or government agency.

    Like our businesses, each of us is unique and here’s a bit of Steve Jobs in all of us – at the same time most of us would also be repelled by many of Steve Jobs’ characteristics.

    Simply copying someone else is neglecting our own strengths and acquiring someone else’s weaknesses. Surely it makes more sense to work to our abilities.

    Similar posts:

  • Building an ecosphere

    Building an ecosphere

    One of the keys to success for a software platform is its ecosphere  – the community of developers, consultants and advocates that grow around a service.

    By far the most successful company in building a community around its products is Microsoft, who over the years have attracted hundreds of thousands of developers and partners to support Windows.

    Microsoft’s thousands of partners are the company’s greatest asset in beating back the threat posed by Google, cloud computing and Apple. The sheer size Microsoft’s supporter base gives it a natural buffer against competitors.

    Apple too have that buffer, in the company’s darkest days during the late 1990s it was the true believers who kept the flame burning. The ecosphere that has developed around the iPhone and iPad has now cemented Apple’s iOS as being the dominant mobile platform.

    The same thing happens around various industry software packages, as one company becomes identified as the leader in their sector they develop a following among users in that industry.

    At the Xero conference last weekend, the cloud accounting software company showed how an ecosystem of developers, accountants and bookkeepers are developing around their software platform.

    Companies as diverse as inventory management, point of sale system and document scanning services are plugging into Xero’s accounting data which adds functionality for customers.

    In turn, those third party services makes Xero more attractive to the bookkeepers and accountants looking for ways to make their jobs, and those of their clients, easier.

    Xero’s biggest competitor, MYOB, also has that strength with an army of certified consultants from long being the incumbent in their market.

    The battle between Xero and MYOB for dominance in the business accounting software market will depend upon how well the incumbent can hold onto their existing markets and the effectiveness in the incumbent building a ecosphere that makes the newer product more attractive.

    Disclaimer: Paul travelled to Melbourne and attended the Xero Partner conference courtesy of Xero.

    Similar posts:

  • Android’s corporate wins

    Android’s corporate wins

    Telstra’s launch of the second iteration of their T-Hub device and the Commonwealth Bank’s Albert tablet Point of Sale device are notable in their choice of operating system.

    For the T-Hub, the first version was a bug plagued and slow proprietary system that which one of the reasons for the device’s market failure. Telstra’s second attempt runs on the Google Android system.

    The Commonwealth Bank didn’t make Telstra’s mistake with the Albert device, instead choosing  the open source system from the beginning.

    Choosing an open platform like Android makes it easier for the developers and company to support the device and develop new products. There’s also the advantage of thousands manufacturers supplying hardware that runs on Android.

    If we compare the costs of developing a proprietary system and sourcing hardware for it to run on, the choice of an open system is almost irresistible.

    For Microsoft, this adoption of Google Android by corporations is another blow to Windows’ dominance of the market, a few years ago all of these devices would have been running a version of Windows but Android is a cheaper, more flexible and better suited to most of the tasks required.

    It could be worse for Microsoft – Apple could be dominating this market. Apple though have had their own victory on consumer devices and increasingly companies have to cater for their customers and staff wanting an iPhone or iPad app.

    Like on smartphones, the battle is now between Android and Apple.

    Similar posts:

  • How much did Vista really cost Microsoft?

    How much did Vista really cost Microsoft?

    Microsoft Vista was the company’s despised stepchild – released way past schedule, clunky, slow and disdained so much by the market that PC manufacturers started offering “downgrades” to Windows XP to attract customers.

    Despite the embarrassment, Microsoft retained its position as the world’s leading software company and does so today. But Vista certainly did hurt Microsoft and today’s marketplace shows the deep, long term effects of that damage.

    Research website Asymco earlier this week looked at the ratio of Windows PCs sold to the sales of Apple Macs over the last 30 years. The ratio peaked at 56 to 1 in 2004.

    Today that ratio is 18 and when phone and tablet sales are added in, the ratio is approaching 1:1. Apple has caught up.

    It’s no accident 2004 is the peak of the Windows-Apple ratio. In 2004 Windows XP had matured after three years on the market, the older computers running Windows 98 or ME (another hated operating system) were being retired and a new version of Windows – codenamed Longhorn – taking advantage of newer technologies and with improved security was due to be released.

    On August 27, 2004 things started to change with Microsoft’s announcement Longhorn would be delayed two years. This effectively broke the product roadmap that underpinned the business models of Microsoft and their partners.

    To make matters worse, Apple were back in the game with their OSX operating system well established and a steady stream of well designed new products coming onto the market.

    For consumers and businesses one of the advantages Windows systems had over Apple was the cost difference. The “Apple Tax” started to be eroded by the company’s move to Intel CPUs which delivered economies of scale coupled an aggressive program of tying up the supply chain with key manufacturers.

    Then Longhorn – now known as Microsoft Vista – was released.

    Despite the cheerleading of the Microsoft friendly parts of the technology media, consumers weren’t fooled. The product was slow and buggy with a new interface that confused users. Making matters worse was Microsoft’s ongoing obsession with multiple versions offering different features, something mocked by Steve Jobs,  which further confused the marketplace.

    Vista languished, customers decided to stick with Windows XP or to look at the faster and better designed Apple computers, and Microsoft’s market share started to slowly erode.

    By the time Windows 7 was released Apple had clawed back their market position, launched the iPhone and caught the shift from personal computers to smartphones.

    Probably the biggest embarrassment of all to Microsoft was the launch of the iPad, the market had been gagging for good tablet computer since the late 1990s and Microsoft’s partners had failed to deliver, partly because Windows XP, Vista and 7 didn’t perform as well as Apple’s iOS on the tablet form factor.

    Microsoft’s completely blowing a decade’s lead in the tablet market is almost certainly due to the misguided priorities and feature creep that dogged Vista’s development. This is now costing the company dearly.

    Asymco’s conclusion of Microsoft’s new market position is stunning and accurate.

    The consequences are dire for Microsoft. The wiping out of any platform advantage around Windows will render it vulnerable to direct competition. This is not something it had to worry about before. Windows will have to compete not only for users, but for developer talent, investment by enterprises and the implicit goodwill it has had for more than a decade.

    It will, most importantly, have a psychological effect. Realizing that Windows is not a hegemony will unleash market forces that nobody can predict.

    Vista’s cost to Microsoft was great, it meant the company missed the smartphone surge, the rise of tablets and – possibly most dangerous of all to Microsoft – the move to cloud computing.

    A lot hangs on Microsoft’s next operating system, Windows 8. Another Vista could kill the company.

    Similar posts: