Gary Gale

Posts about win

The Theory of Stuff

2010-02-01 12:33

Anne Elk (Miss), I have a theory. I call it my Theory of Stuff. I'm sure that other people, far more learned and erudite than I, have articulated such a theory but I've yet to come across any evidence for this and for now at least, it remains mine and it contains three buckets, looking something like this:

Once again, this is not the post I set out to write. The one I set out to write was called "In Search of Location's Sweet Spot" and it's sitting in draft and not yet posted. That's because before I can submit that post I need to write this one as a warm up act. Just like Anne Elk (Miss), I have a theory. I call it my Theory of Stuff. I'm sure that other people, far more learned and erudite than I, have articulated such a theory but I've yet to come across any evidence for this and for now at least, it remains mine and it contains three buckets, looking something like this:

On the far left hand side we have the stuff bucket. Whilst stuff may sound vague, it's entirely intentional. Stuff is defined as a collection or set of items, things or matter. Though I was focussing primarily on location data and location based mobile services, this applies equally well to other businesses and markets. It could be stock, inventory, left handed widgets or a plethora of other things. On the far right hand side we have people bucket. The exact number of people doesn't matter, for small businesses the number will probably be small and for large businesses the number will be, err, larger. These people are your customers, your audience. Hopefully they have money as well. And then in the middle we have the secret sauce bucket. Again, it doesn't matter what this is but it's very important to look at what the secret sauce actually does.

The secret sauce is a bidirectional pipe that connects stuff to people.
It allows you to expose your business's stuff to the people who are your customers, hopefully adding value along the way.
It also allows you to extract money from the people in exchange for access to your business's stuff. In the Internet industry we call this monetizing your audience.

In order for your business to succeed, you need to have all three of these buckets in place. Have people and secret sauce but no stuff? Fail. Have stuff and secret sauce but no people? Fail. You get the idea. Take a look at every business that is succeeding, especially those that are online and where the stuff bucket contains data, and you'll see that they have all three buckets in place. Take a look at those businesses which have failed or are failing, especially those that are online, and you either see one bucket missing or there's just not enough of it. Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344) Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

Avis: They're Trying Harder

2009-10-30 20:25

once or twice or, as Guiseppe Sollazzo commented on Twitter recently "your blog today looks like a customers' rights advocate". To be fair, it's not just me; there are other people I know who are equally strident about this, be it directed at the Apple Store or O2. Most of the time, the companies concerned just ignore complaints but sometimes, they try harder and given my recent experience with Avis at Heathrow, trying harder is rather apt.

It's probably due to the amount of time I've spent in the States this year but I seem to be more and more incensed by the crap customer service that companies in the UK seem to think that their customers should accept. I may have blogged about it once or twice or, as Guiseppe Sollazzo commented on Twitter recently "your blog today looks like a customers' rights advocate". To be fair, it's not just me; there are other people I know who are equally strident about this, be it directed at the Apple Store or O2. Most of the time, the companies concerned just ignore complaints but sometimes, they try harder and given my recent experience with Avis at Heathrow, trying harder is rather apt.

Just after my experiences with Avis at Heathrow, I turned up at the Avis garage at San Francisco International to pick up a rental car. I'd never had any problems here before but was prepared for the worst. Which failed to materialise as I bypassed the inevitable queues, went to the Preferred board and found my name in lights. Less than three minutes later I was out of the building and heading for CA-380 and CA-280, a much more pleasant way to get to Silicon Valley than the I-101. But I digress.

"On behalf of Avis, I would like to extend my sincere apologies for any inconvenience that this situation caused you. As a gesture of goodwill, I would like to send you Free Day Coupons to assist on your next rental in the U.S. Please let me know the best address to use when mailing these." So fair play to them ... but. All of the rentals I tend to use are when I'm travelling for Yahoo! so Day Coupons, whilst a nice touch, aren't of that much use to me, so slightly emboldened by success I tried an alternate tack. "Whilst I really appreciate your offer of Day Coupons, all of my car rental is on company business and so these aren't of much real use to me; would it be possible to convert these into, say, an upgrade for my next few rentals?" I knew I was probably pushing it but was even more pleasantly surprised by the reply. "Yes, I can send you coupons for an upgrade. Please let me know the best address to send these to." So fair play to you Avis; you took a really bad experience and a deeply cynical customer and turned the experience right around. Mind you, I'm not picking up any cars from Heathrow for a while ... just to be on the safe side. Photo credit: X-travalueMeal#2 on Flickr. Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

O2 in Positive Customer Service Shock?

2009-10-07 04:11

" throws up such gems as "O2 customer service consists of PAY UP OR ELSE" and "O2's customer service has to be the poorest I have ever come across".

O2, the UK Telefonica brand and soon-to-be-loosing-the-iPhone-exclusivity-to-just-about-anyone mobile operator, have a reputation which is, to be honest, just a little bit crap. Their coverage in the rural wilds of Central London, especially around Soho and Covent Garden, seems to be scaled for a single user and a web searchfor "o2 customer service problems" throws up such gems as "O2 customer service consists of PAY UP OR ELSE" and "O2's customer service has to be the poorest I have ever come across".

So we'll leave aside for one moment the fact that I have to pay an additional £20.00 for a measly 10MB of data when abroad via O2's Data Abroad 10 bolt on and accept that I ordered this to be added to my account so I could use data on my iPhone when in the US for this week's Open Hack NYC.The first mailed response from O2 didn't inspire confidence."Hi, Thanks for getting in touch. We'll look into your query and get back to you as quickly as we can, normally within 24 hours."So I waited and less than 24 hours later I got this"Good Morning Gary. Thanks for emailing us about adding the 10Mb Data Roaming Bolt On to your account.Gary, you'll be pleased to know that I've added the 10Mb Data Roaming Bolt On to your account effective from your next bill onwards (10 October 2009). You'll be charged £17.02 excluding VAT (Value Added Tax) per month for this Bolt On.If you want to add the above Bolt On on a different date, please reply to this email and we'll help you further."Data roaming on; WIN. Data roaming on from the date of my next bill and after the event in New York; FAIL.So I asked them, nicely."I'm having to travel at very short notice so I really need this up and running from my first day out of the country which is this Wednesday, October 7th. Can the bolt on start date be brought forward to this day?"That automated reply came back again"Hi, Thanks for getting in touch. We'll look into your query and get back to you as quickly as we can, normally within 24 hours."I'd expected a cut-and-paste response that they could only start services such as this on the first day of a new monthly bill, which basically means minimal work for them and maximum inconvenience for the customer. Then this morning I got this, which was emphatically not what I was expecting."Good Evening Gary. Thanks for emailing us as you want to pre-phone your Bolt On start date. I've pre phoned your Bolt On start date to 07 October 2009 as requested by you. Important - When you email us please provide: your date of birth, postcode and mobile number as it helps us answer your query faster"So fair play to you O2; I'm not entirely sure what pre-phoning is and a bit surprised that you expect me to provide personal data including my date of birth and postal code in every email, but I went into this dialogue with you with zero expectation of success and you pleasantly surprised me. Now if we can just fix that "No Service" in Central London ...Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

You Don't Always Get What You Pay For, But Sometimes You Get It For Free

2009-09-02 19:05

well that's a turn up for the books". We look longingly across the Atlantic to the US and talk admiringly of the "American service culture" whilst conveniently overlooking the fact that our US counterparts get paid rock bottom wages and have to work damn hard to garner enough tips to make a living.

Here in the UK we're used to bad or non-existent customer service, so much so that it's virtually ingrained into our genes. We're well aware of the oft used expression that you get what you pay for except that you actually don't; you continue to pay and act pleasantly surprised when you actually get what you've paid for, murmuring "well that's a turn up for the books". We look longingly across the Atlantic to the US and talk admiringly of the "American service culture" whilst conveniently overlooking the fact that our US counterparts get paid rock bottom wages and have to work damn hard to garner enough tips to make a living.

But there are exceptions and the global geographic reach of the Internet means that those here in the UK we get to benefit from these exceptions. Consider the following case of Internet startup (and yes, it's a US Internet startup but let's just conveniently overlook that for a moment) posterous.com. Now I know I'm writing about Posterous a lot at the moment but indulge me for a moment.Whilst playing with Posterous' free, yes free, service I noticed a slight ... deficiency which I documented here. Posterous claims to handle links to images in a sane manner; their FAQ says"We’ll do smarter things for photos, MP3’s, documents and video (both links AND files)”.So I tried a sample post with links to TwitPic, YFrog, Flickr and, pushing it a bit, Facebook. YFrog and Flickr worked flawlessly, Facebook didn't but that wasn't unexpected, but TwitPic didn't and that was unexpected. So I noted this in a Twitter post directed at the Posterous Twitter account: And there I left it, either expecting a non committal response, or none at all. Twenty four minutes later, two four, twenty four, I got a reply.

What? Just like that? Surely not, they obviously meant they'd added it to the list of stuff they really need to fix. But apparently not. And I tested it and it worked. Conditioned as I am to the UK norm, this was pretty unheard of, hence the need to write this experience up. So on the Internet, at least, you don't always get what you pay for, but sometimes you get it for free. Posted via email from Gary's Posterous