Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

I was doing my weekly shopping over the weekend, and something grabbed my attention. While I was looking for some kitchen cleaner spray, I noticed that the most any of them kill is 99.99% of household germs.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know that’s a pretty high strike rate, but what then is differentiating them from one another? What is setting them apart from their competition? For the most part, it’s brand loyalty that’s driving it. I’ve always used Mr Muscle, so chances are I will buy it.

But imagine if a one of them developed a household cleaner that killed 100% of the germs. When you’re talking about something that matters to people, this extra .01% can give you a massive competitive advantage.  I know that there is probably a major scientific explanation as to why that extra .01% is so hard to obtain for household cleaners (given they got to 99.99%), but I think it illustrates an important point.  Read more...

On the weekend I caught up with friends for breakfast at a local café. They had turned up earlier than me and already ordered. I sat down and ordered a coffee, and then had a look at the menu. It was from here that an almost comedic service routine started.

I was asked not long after ordering if I’d like to order a meal, which I did. At the same time, my friend ordered another coffee and had it arrive about 5 minutes later. Still no coffee for me. The waitress then came to clear my friend’s plates and asked if we would like anything else. Perhaps my meal, or at the very least my coffee?

So then I got my breakfast. Still sans coffee. After asking yet again for my morning caffeine fix, I was told “we’re really busy”. Not “sorry”, just “we’re really busy”.  Read more...

Every Saturday morning I take my son to his swimming lessons, which is truly one of the highlights of my week. My wife has deemed these weekend classes “dad soup”, because it seems this is the day when all the fathers are around to jump in the pool. Last weekend, I bumped into an old colleague who I had not seen in several years. We were Facebook “friends”, but in typical fashion, never really interacted much aside from the casual status “thumbs up”.

It was clear from the way the conversation went that he had been following what I was doing through my activity on Facebook. This gave us new things to talk about, particularly given I had done some work in his area of speciality, and it also led to the discussion of some potential contract work.

This is a great example of the intersection of social and real world networking, and the tremendous value of the latter.  Read more...

Those that have been following some of my tweets during the last week will know that I have been searching for a new laptop. On top of this, I’ve also upgraded my broadband, making this a week where I have dealt with my fair share of sales people and customer service reps.

I always enjoy major purchase shopping, because it lets me negotiate and hammer a sales person (metaphorically of course!) until I get the deal I want. I spent time in four different stores negotiating, along with a friend who was also in the market, thinking that the promise of buying two would buy greater leverage.  Read more...

Following on from my post about managing your online business reputation, I wanted to talk about using Twitter as a customer service tool, something that I experienced today.

This afternoon my internet connection died. Lights were on, no one was home. It wasn’t an issue with the computer, the modem, or the wireless router.

I called the Telstra technical support line and spent 20 minutes with an automated recording that was trying to talk me through resetting my equipment. Eventually I hung up and called the number that you use if you are calling from overseas, as I worked out that they put you straight through to a real person (an important tip for reputation management – there comes a point where customers don’t want to speak to a machine).  Read more...