heartharmony.com.au

It’s easy to stand out in business when you are the only one of your kind, but what happens when the goods or service you offer are exactly the same as everybody else?

I am currently in Cairns getting ready to present at a conference today. Now, Cairns is a tourist town. Every street corner has a hotel or motel – all jostling for the tourist dollar. With all of this competition, how does  a tiny, unremarkable hotel stand out from the crowd?

The place I am staying in is called Inn Cairns on the main pedestrian mall. It doesn’t have  a flashy entry, the rooms are normal hotel style rooms and they don’t supply meals. So why am I writing about it?

Last night when I arrived the owner Selwyn was at the door, greeting me by name (this is my first visit so his crystal ball was great). He held the door open and welcomed me to his place – and not just a pat greeting, a warm heart felt greeting. He introduced me to his son and son-in-law who run the place with him – one of them had been up to my room to turn the lights and air-conditioning on for me. They gave great tips on local food and things to see and were just genuinely nice people.

They turned a room for the night into an experience of being a welcome guest in their home. So what is remarkable when you are the same as everyone else? You are. You need to bring your whole self and your passion to your job and your role. If you do that – people will love you for it and you will become remarkable.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriter

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Following on from our post in relation to can your customers deal with crowds, how many of you have tried mystery shopping your “help desk” (and yes, I am talking to you Telstra hiding over there in the corner with your hands in your ears).

Telstra is one of the main providers of internet and phone services in Australia, and have a history of, shall we say, less than stellar service. Recently they have been moving all small businesses over to small business internet plans with the lure of 24/7 service and faster speeds (and before you say anything – where I live you get Telstra or Telstra for ADSL 2+ internet – there’s no other options for our street).

Last Friday I woke to a dead internet, which in my business is also termed a disaster. At 5am I tried ringing the 24/7 help desk. It rang out. I tried again at 6am and gave up after I had cooked and eaten toast and made and devoured a capuccino, while still being on hold listening to bad music and ads.

At 7am I decided to stay the distance suitably fortified by another coffee. This time the phone rang through to the Business internet help desk. I heard people typing and talking – but couldn’t get their attention. Faulty connection I thought, so I tried again. Same story – except this time I did what my grandmother told me never to do (sorry Grandma) and yelled as loud as I could into the phone. I heard a scrabbling of a headset as it was being placed on someone’s head.

A human!  And a mature aged Australian female. I thought my luck was in until I described the problem. I was told to turn off the machine and turn it back on and when I told her that I already had, was told “that is all I know what to do” . “But … but … but … aren’t you the help desk” I asked in confusion? “I had the same problem a few months ago and the help desk on Bigpond talked me through what to do”. “Well Bigpond has different help desk information, all I know how to do is tell you to turn your computer off and on. I will have to escalate your problem to a senior technician and they will call you back before lunch”.

We then proceeded to have a very bizarre conversation where she kept on demanding my URL – www.heartharmony.com.au I said.  A few minutes of very slow typing noises – “Can you spell it” “w-w-w.h-e-a-r-t-h-a-r-m-o-n-y-.-c-o-m-.-a-u”  A few more minutes of typing noises. “Still no good. Do you have other URLs”. I proceeded to list all the URL’s I own – accompanied by more typing and gradually getting ruder – “No! I need your URL”.

A lightbulb went off above my head – “do you mean the address where people send me emails?” I said suspiciously. “Yes – your URL” she said.

I then proceeded to educate the business internet help desk person on the difference between a URL and an email address and how asking for the right thing may make her job a bit easier. Her comment “Yes, well I am really bad at computers”.

I waited for the Radio station to say it was a gotcha call as the comment was so bizarre … but it didn’t come.

Luckily the senior help desk did know what he was doing (even if he didn’t know what day it was and booked the wrong day for the linesperson to fix the line), so by Tuesday lunchtime everything was back to normal.

But I couldn’t help but wonder – who hired someone who was not good at computers for an IT business help desk? That made me think further – how many businesses actually mystery shop their own help desks to see what sort of service their clients get?

I know it is easy to laugh at Telstra, but I suspect there are many more less than helpful help desks in the world. Want to share your help desk horror stories?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Get Response is an autoresponder company – a very successful one. Previously many businesses chose to use them due to their reliable delivery, great pricing structure and useful features. They were rapidly closing on some of the big companies such as Aweber. But then …

… things turned sour. They undertook a massive overhaul of their system. This overhaul was announced to subscribers as a brilliant event that would give even more functionality and features. They explained that there may be the odd one or two glitches on changeover but to rest assured that within 24 hours all would be ironed out.

Hopes and expectations were high. The IT community waited and watched. Changeover day. One by one web forms failed through their 93,000 customers. Emails were sent multiple times or not at all.  RSS feeds failed, attachments disappeared and newsletters no longer were delivered. Basic features such as unsubscribe or change my details no longer worked. A litany of errors created a massive train wreck.

Aside from the techincal failures, they also had business failures. Pricing – one of the main USPs of the company was jacked up to the same level as Aweber, removing that competitive advantage. So people now were paying the same fees for a bug riddled system.

Throughout it all the customer support people wrote warm reassuring “your feedback is important to us … send us a ticket and we will get back to you” comments on the forum. Meanwhile tickets were never answered, Live-Chat timed out, forum posts only recieved the standard response and the phones rang out.

The CEO disappeared into hiding – throwing in the odd comment about how “the majority of customers were happy” without realising that the majority of his customers probably had no idea that their autoresponder system no longer worked. His big clients – the ones who made thousands of dollars per day or who simply were IT aware and tested things were not happy … And more importantly were telling all and sundry about their unhappiness on forums, Twitter & blogs.

Yes, errors are slowly being resolved day by day (it is now nearly 3 weeks since the changeover), but clients have to totally recode all of their webforms, and in many cases rewrite each and every email campaign. People are defecting in droves and it is a PR disaster of monumental proportions for Get Response.

What could they have done differently?

In the testing phase they could have listened to the feedback they were given.  Reading the forum posts, people who were involved in the testing had advised GR of the problems that resulted. Do not ask for feedback from your customers unless you are going to action it.

Test on all major platforms and browsers. Looking at the forum posts people are being advised that GR works in Firefox. That’s lovely but the majority of the world still uses Internet Explorer. In addition WordPress is the market leading blogging platform – it would have been useful to test the changeover on a test WordPress site.

If a program you launch generates the online equivalent of the Exxon Oil Spill – you need to hire a disaster recover PR company and get cracking on providing a highly visible, co-ordinated response. The CEO needs to be seen everywhere, explaining the situation and the steps to resolve it.

Rolling back to the previous version (similar to the Facebook debacle and New Coke launch) is a definite option that shouldn’t be discounted in the early days when it becomes apparent your launch has bombed.

Get back to people - if people complain with an issue, then the least that can be done is an acknowledgement of some form. Ideally there should be an ongoing list of bugs and the status of the fixes.

Hire people who can speak English and who can spell. The new website (aside from all the technical bugs) is full of spelling errors, typos and is very poorly written in parts. This is totally unacceptable for a major company. At the very least hire an editor to proof everything before going live.

Compensate loss – at the very least offer some compensation such as waiving of fees in acknowledgement of your error.

It will be interesting to watch over the coming months whether Get Response works its way out of the mess it has created, or whether the huge weight of public opinion and bad press will crash the company.

In the meantime – my apologies to each and every one of my clients. Please let me know of any further or continuing problems that you may encounter with my emails, newsletters, product delivery thanks. I will find a workaround wherever I can.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Galaxy research has released a study that shows that queuing in stores is the fastest way to lose sales. In the Australian Queuing Behaviour  Survey it was shown that 67% of people will abandon their purchase if it means standing in line and 75% will take their money elsewhere in future. Danger times are queues over 5 minutes in length.

We are also less tolerant of queues in particular industries. If you have a queue at a fast food restaurant you will have more irritated people than if you have a queue at a supermarket.

And what the cashier is doing while the queues are in place are also a problem. If your cashier is not hurrying but is taking their time you can expect more people getting hot under the collar than if they appear to be moving quickly.

I will quite happily admit to being someone in the 75% category. Recently I had to buy joggers for my daughter so off we went  to Super Amart All Sports. There were about 4 staff at the shoe section – all milling around vaguely helping people and generally doing very little in particular. We ended up just locating the options ourselves and headed to the checkouts.

With three possible terminals, only one was working. There was only on assistant on the terminal – who just happened to be a person I had sacked in a previous role for poor performance – not a good sign. Well she hadn’t improved at all and if anything reinforced my previous decision. She was very slow (walking through custard slow) and pfaffed around with each item for the customer she was serving.

Did I mention that by the time we joined the queue there were 20 people already waiting – and it took her 5 minutes to process one transaction. A person at the back of the queue grabbed one of the sales team and directed them to the register (there was no manager in sight to control the rapidly worsening situation).

The sales assistant looked at everyone and said “we are out of register rolls for the other machines” . “Is anyone getting more” “I dunno”. The assistant then proceeded to slow down the processing even further for the lucky next in line.

At that point I put down our purchase of high priced joggers, and walked out. We were followed out by another 5 customers who put down purchases of everything from smaller items to some who were buying very high priced gym equipment.  A very expensive loss of sales for a few register rolls.

If you make people wait – you lose sales. It is that simple.

This is also true of online businesses. If you are selling a product and then don’t give people to opportunity to pay immediately you are losing sales.  The more hoops you make people jump through the harder it will be to get the sale. So asking someone to email you their order and you will call them to confirm it, is the equivalent of a queue over 5 minutes in length in a traditional shop. You will lose sales.

Ideally allow people to buy and then instantly download your product. People are time poor and want to buy and have it now.

If your product is a tangible product that you are selling on the net, the way to get around this objection is to specify the shipping time for your product – and deliver within those timeframes. Allow for express shipping wherever possible to make it even less of an issue. Many people will happily pay the premium for faster delivery.

There is a saying that time is money. It is!  Your money if you make people wait.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Copywriters

These past few days have been a whirlwind. I have been at the World Internet Summit with the ubiquitous long days and nights with many different speakers. In the midst of this my eldest daughter needed to interview me for a biography she had to write for her English project.

One of the questions from her was “The internet has just turned 20 years old – what were you doing 20 years ago?”

It was fascinating taking a long dip in the memory pool with her to realise how far both I and the internet had come. My daughters have always known of computers and the net and can’t imagine life without it. Whereas me … well let’s just say my love affair with computers started before the birth of the net.

About 5 years prior to the birth of the net I graduated from Uni where I can still remember hand-coding Fortran computer program cards to run simple programs and the net wasn’t even considered. Our libraries still had paper card files and personal computers did not exist in the mainstream (yes … I am THAT old).

20 years ago we were using floppy disks the size of LP records at the Queensland Industrial Commission where I was the Research Officer.

In those days the computer screens were black and white and systems crashed with amazing regularity. Data regularly corrupted and files disappeared never to be be seen again. It was a dicey subject saving files – it was always done with fingers crossed.

Computer terminals needed to be shared between employees, with most people still using typewriters for regular correspondence. I was one of the few with a personal terminal and I remember the pride and love I felt for that temperamental piece of machinery. For me it showed me that I had “arrived”.

At that time I was involved in creating the first Australian National Industrial Relations Thesaurus – a thesaurus of industrial relations keywords to be used across all states and the Federal Commission. I then taught the Qld Registry and Commissioners to keyword their Industrial Decisions so they would be able to be found on the database designed for the net. It is funny how keywording is still a major part of my life today.

Before our project with NIRT I used to research the cases for the Commissioners by manually looking up bound copies of all decisions and by phoning my interstate colleagues. Now people looking for industrial case law can just hit a few buttons and all decisions instantly appear.

I can’t imagine my life now without the net. I has made information easily accessible and the world so much smaller. Yes, it has many growing problems similar to having a rambunctious teenager in the house – but would I turn back the clock? Not on your nelly!

I love the web and the internet. Yes, I have been with the net since the early days. Yes, I still love what I do and yes I still write for the net.

It is in my blood – although I am not so sure I liked the label of “Internet Pioneer” given to me by my daughter. I felt like I should be wearing gingham and in an episode of Little House on the Prairie.

That said, she is right – there are not many people who have 20 years experience on the net.

I wonder what the net will be like in 20 years from now?

What do you think will be some of the changes you will see in the net in 20 years time? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Ingrid

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Web copywriter

The impact of the Moving Forward with fairness workplace laws are already being felt through the industrial and business sectors of society. Workers and employers are taking note of how the new legislation affects their productivity and professional life.

Revamping HR policies and procedures manuals will help to stave off the worst effects that might concern either employee or employer and understanding the changes should lessen the impact.

In November 2008 the Fair Work Australia Bill was introduced. In March the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations announced the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Act 2008 and the impact of the Act is still being understood.

The changes to the work place agreement laws have impacted HR policies and procedures manuals through all levels of business by altering the way in which employees and employers create their working agreements. Gone are the Liberal Government’s extreme and unpopular (with the workers) Work Choice laws.

The new Act demonstrated the Rudd Government’s commitments in the Forward with Fairness and the Forward with Fairness Implementation Plan. The key areas of impact for HR Manuals are concerned with workplace agreements between employees and employers.

The initial impact is that there are no longer any AWAs. The Australian Workplace Agreements no longer exist. Those using AWAs as at Dec 2007 were offered the ITEA, the Individual Transitional Employment Agreements until modernisation of existing Manuals could be implemented.

The new Act introduces the ‘no disadvantage test’ for new collective agreements and ITEAs and enables the AIRC (the Australian Industrial Relations Commission) to oversee the process of award updating. The Act also impacted on the areas of requirement of the organization or business owners to provide Workplace Relations Fact Sheets to their employees.

After ninety days of an existing AWA expiring, the employer or employee would be entitled to apply for a collective agreement or award in the workplace. The employee or employer could retain agreements or extend or vary agreements in limited circumstances if the certified agreements were in place prior to Work Choices and these agreements could emain until the new laws come into place in 2010.

The impact of the Moving Forward with Fairness act should be limited and positive. The Government’s new workplace relations system appears to be and was designed to be fair, flexible and productive.

The Bill to dismantle the Workchoices legislation is a weighty 575 page document listing significant changes that have been proposed to take effect from January 2010. This includes abolition of AWAs and introduction of individual common law contracts with a no overall disadvantage test to ensure their fairness.

Within the legislation another item that will impact on HR policies and procedures manuals is the introduction of a minimum safety net of provisions for all employees earning under $100,000 including flexible work provisions for employees with children under school age. The safety net no longer applies to employees earning over $100,000, they will now fall outside of the award system which also means no protection against unfair dismissal.

The impact of an overhaul of the general unfair dismissal provisions means that small businesses must include a Fair Dismissal Code in their processes from 1 July 2009.

Comments appeared in newspapers and internet revealing how employees view the new legislation.

The idea of Gillard saying businesses need not fear the outbreak of pattern bargaining seems to alarm some journalists. The idea that the impact of the legislation would be returning the workplace to the way things were with the unions during the Whitlam era might be outspoken but does reflect on how people viewed the new laws.

The fear is that the impact of the new laws will restore collective bargaining and replace the individual arrangements between the worker and the employer, which could increase the rights of unions to enter worksites. Together with their ability to access employees’ records, this could possibly raise the likelihood of pattern bargaining or comparative wage justice.

The impact on HR policies and procedures manuals is yet to be finalised and won’t be until the draft legislation is finally passed through parliament and then in 2010 when it finally comes into effect.  We will be monitoring changes and keep you posted!

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance HR writer

A heads up that a colleague of mine from Soul Talk Consultancy Services is running a one day workshop Wed 15th Oct from 9-4.30pm on dealing with difficult customers.

The content curriculum looks brilliant – giving an opportunity to explore what triggers us and why, as well as learning strategies for dealing with the angry, distressed, untruthful and even unappreciative customer.

Raelene Bann is a qualified counsellor and mediator, and really knows her stuff so this should be a great workshop. For more information contact Raelene on 0402 247 459.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Customer satisfaction used to be a USP for business, now it is a given – which means unless you are satisfying your customers needs, you are losing business.

But how do you satisfy customers?  Over at the Neuromarketing blog they covered off three scientific studies across very different groups of people to determine one of the key features of customer satisfaction.

Convicted felons were asked to rate the fairness of their legal process. Not surprisingly those with shorter sentences rated their process as fairer than those who were issued longer sentences. What was surprising though was the impact of the time their lawyers spent with them throughout the process. Those whose lawyers had spent more time with them considered the process fairer than those whose lawyers just made the essential contacts.

Venture capitalists were also surveyed about their satisfaction with the companies they are supporting. Those who had detailed and timely feedback from their companies had greater trust and support for their companies, no matter how they were financially performing.

Finally, a study was done on patients who were injured by doctors to work out why some patients sued the doctor and others didn’t. They found that malpractice cases came about when the patient felt they had been rushed or their views ignored or they were treated poorly. If the patient was treated with kindness and respect they tended not to sue the doctor who had made the mistake.

So what does that mean for business? The simplest take-away is that spending time with your customers is vital. Communicate effectively, listen and treat people with respect.  Do this before things go pear shaped (as they will sometimes do in business with missed deadlines, poor quality or mistakes) and you have a greater chance of retaining the customer rather than heading for a problem.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriters

Last week we upgraded to the latest version of Quickbooks for 08/09. Unremarkable you may think.

Well – Quickbooks has done a great job on “pimping” the look and feel of their program for better usability. The one thing they still haven’t done after all these years is work out the documentation side of things. You have the help file which is average at best … but if you really want to learn the package you either need to pay to attend training or go and buy a book.

I decided on the Quickbooks for Dummies series – doing my research on the net as to what was available and which was the Australian edition that matched the latest Quickbooks software.

Then it REALLY got interesting. I wanted the book yesterday so thought I would just pop down to the local store to get it. My thinking was … end of financial year, with all the people wanting to ensure they were doing the right thing financially bookstores would be swimming in the top selling guide for one of the two major financial pieces of software. Wrong!

4 major shopping centres and countless bookstores later … Some major booksellers couldn’t find anything to do with the Dummies series (even to order it in – what planet are they living on). Others could order the US edition but not the Australian edition.

I finally tracked down a copy of the essential manual in time for the start of the new financial year in an obscure book-store miles away from home (but it was still cheaper and faster than ordering on line).

The good news was the Quickbooks QB for Dummies Australian Edition manual was great – I learnt lots of tips and tricks I had not heard of before and now have everything just about in readiness for the end of financial year.

The lesson for me was how unfocused were all of the major booksellers on what else was happening in the world.

End of financial year happens each year. Each year people will want to get ready for tax time, improve their financial knowledge and generally get organised. And yet not one store had a display table or promo with end of financial year books and office supplies. They didn’t have any stock of the top selling books (even MYOB books had disappeared in most bookstores).

This is a major lost opportunity for the booksellers. They are missing a peak selling opportunity by not creating a promotion that matches the main calendar events.

For your business – what have you done to reflect this time of year? Do you have any special promotions or services that tie into the end of financial year? If not … why not?

Ingrid Cliff
Heart Harmony

Putting your business into words

Today I decided to try the newly installed self-serve check-outs at Woolworth’s for my fortnightly shop. I had great experiences at the self-serve at Big W, so was optimistic the Woolworths system would be be as simple to use.

Big disappointment! You first need a human to key you into the system (sort of defeats the purpose) at our supermarket. If you use your own green bags you totally confuse the machine, so every bag you add and remove means another human visit to swipe their card in and key your green bag into the system. I gather their is a tiny button on the first screen to use your own bags that will reduce this hassle, as our friendly assistant told us when we were half way through scanning.

The technology is slower than returning library books – beep – wait – wait – wait – put it in your bag. If you move something from one bag to another in packing you need a human to recalibrate the system, if the item is too heavy for the scales under the bag (think of cans of soft drink or dog food) another visit from the human.

If you move too fast – another visit from the human. If you take the bag off the scales a second before you get your three green lights as ready to move (another few seconds delay) and another human visit. They have built in so many layers to reduce shoplifting that the system is slow and cumbersome.

The only place to put filled bags is on the floor for everyone to trip over unless you are in the know and bring your own empty trolley with you to fill.

Ever had the idea that it would actually be faster and easier just going through the checkouts with humans on them? As someone who embraces their inner nerd and detests grocery shopping I was really hopeful that this would save time. Not with this round of software Woolies.

Reading all the media releases suggests Woolies only really wants people with one or two items to use the self-serve and those with bigger shops to go through the ones with personnel on them. They have achieved their goal. I am going back to the old fashioned method until they bring out V2 of the software. That of course is until I can find a company where I can do my full shop on-line at a good price which means I can avoid supermarkets all together (ah bliss!).

Ingrid Cliff
Heart Harmony

Putting your business into words