Watch this excellent screencast in which, Geoffrey Grosenbach, the owner of Peepcode, a web business which makes training videos for computer programmers, shares frankly and honestly all the lessons he learned selling intangible information products online.
Read the transcript here.
In July 2009, a Canadian musician named Dave Carroll uploaded a song onto Youtube about his terrible treatment by United Airlines. Within 10 days the video had 1.7 million views and United Airlines’ share share price dropped by 10%. Learn about how social media platforms have shifted power back to consumers, and how you can use these to get your own revenge on bullying companies.
Dace Carroll: Canadian
What happened to Dave Carroll?
In the spring of 2008, I was traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my bandmates witnessed my guitar being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers. The $3500 guitar was severely damaged. United Airlines didn’t deny the experience occurred, but for nine months every person I communicated with put the responsibility on everyone other than themselves, and said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. The last person to finally say “no” to compensation was Ms. Irlweg (), and I promised her that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.
Hear the story from the man himself in the original United Breaks Guitars video:
United Break Guitars
How the video went viral
Dave Carroll’s lighthearted approach to seeking justice contrasts with the all-too-familiar balding couple screaming at a frightened customer service representative. Dave’s approach is not only kinder and pleasant to the ears, but also more far effective.
Dave uploaded the video onto Youtube on July 6, 2009 and featured it on his website. The video received steady traffic. By the next day, United Airlines acknowledged that they had become aware of the video in their tweet:
The real spike in traffic came when mainstream media became aware of the song. The story was featured on prime time news broadcasts and print media outlets across North America and on many of the traditional media’s online news sites. Between July 8 and July 10, the story appeared in approximately 339 mainstream online news sites and approximately 777 blogs. During this period, there were also over 2000 Tweets. Considering that some of these twitter feeds had over 1 million watchers a lot of people heard about United Airlines policy towards broken guitars.
The cost to United Airlines
The economist reported that United Airlines’s share price dropped by 10% during July, wiping $180 million off the value of the company. With lyrics like, “I should have flown with someone else, or gone by car, because United breaks guitars.” , you can see how this turned into a public relations nightmare for United Airlines.
The attempted cover-up
The consumerist reports that United Airlines tried to pay Dave hush money, but Dave refused, asking United Airlines to give the money to charity instead.
In his video statement, Dave says that:
United has been in contact with me, and they have generously, but late, offered us compensation, and I’m grateful for that, but like I said before, I’m not looking for compensation. And if they would chose to give that money that they were thinking I might want to a charity of their choice, I’d be very happy to see that happen. I’d only ask that they’d share that news with us as to where that money went.
Davie reaches celebrity status because of the video
Dave’s song now has 6.6 million views on Youtube and all this exposure has really “drawn attention to my band and my music.”Traffic to the website has jumped and CD sales are through the roof.” Indeed, like all America successes, Dave’s too has spawned a sequel, United Breaks Guitars 2.
The lesson for consumers: Link to this article and threaten with song
Forget about arguing and sending angry e-mails and letters. Instead e-mail public relations a link to this article, and promise them you’ll write a song about your experience and upload it on Youtube for millions of potential customers to see. You’ll hear back – I promise.
The lesson for businesses: Negative publicity spreads like wildfire through social media platforms
All it takes for a customer to create viral bad press about your company is a high enough degree of stubbornness, $15 worth of video equipment and a couple of free hours on a Sunday afternoon. These evangelists don’t need media contracts. They don’t need any money. Any and every customer could create a PR nightmare for you and so the only safe way to do business today is to treat every customer as if the whole world is watching. Because the truth is, the whole world really is watching.
Credit: David Fitzgerald, web savvy physiotherapist in Ireland and expert in computer related injuries
Welcome to the fixth and final part of the Hermes Technologies Ltd. Business 2.0 series, where we explain this new philosophy for doing business. In this post I’ll explain how a Business 2.0 company must ensure its employees have a lifelong commitment to increasing theirproductivity and improving their work processes.
Lifehacking – an obsession with improving productivity
A movement, known as “Lifehacking”, has sprung up across the Internet over the last decade. Disciples, known as “life hackers” (or more playfully, “ninjas”) have a near fanatical obsession with increasing their own productivity, organisation and work processes. The core idea is to get more done in less time. In my experience, the difference between the output of a worker who practices life hacking versus one who doesn’t can be the equivalent of the difference between a mini cooper and an actual car.
The most common topics for life hackers are inbox management systems, ways to maximise attention span, ways to eliminate procrastination, ways to beat writer’s block, which is to stay organised, and ways to automate and you repeated process. In this blog you can read about my ideas as a dedicated live hacker.
The advantage of creating a culture of lifehacking: efficiency
In business, the company which uses it resources most effectively will win the competitive process. If one company is filled with life hackers, working at five times the efficiency of normal workers (a realistic expectation in my experience) then a normal Business 1.0 company will have a very hard time competing.
Reusable systems for getting stuff done
Like hackers like to reusable build systems for getting various things done. For any task which they do with regularity life hackers analyse what has worked for them in the past and what hasn’t and then use this experience to build a system to apply to the task in future. In designing these systems inspiration can often taken from other life hackers who share their experiences.There are many blogs across the Internet dedicated to sharing lifehacking tips and techniques, the two best being 43 folders.com, lifehacker.org
A Lifehacker’s system can always be improved
A lifehacker never feels that they have found the perfect system — they always are on the lookout for ways to tweak the current system either by learning from past experience, experimenting or incorporating new ideas or technology.
Example of a lifehacking system: Inbox Zero
A good example of a lifehack I use is Inbox zero, a philosophy from dealing with bulging e-mail inboxes. Many modern information workers find their e-mail inboxes to be sources of great consternation. Dealing with e-mail takes more and more time out of the working day, leaving less time to actually get work done. In addition it can be a source of great guilt as many friendly e-mails from friends or co-workers are left without response for days, months or even years
The Inbox Zero philosophy for dealing with email says:
1.E-mail should only be checked manually once an hour, rather than automatically every minute with on screen alerts and sounds signally new email arrival. The reasoning for only manually checking once an hour is that instantaneous e-mail alerts disrupts your work process slowing you down, most often over something trivial. The cost to your momentum and attention span is not worth the value in having the information an hour earlier and so instead email is checked efficiently, once an hour.
2. Despite our use of the word “check” in the previous paragraph, you actually should never just “check” your e-mail – you should always process it instead. It is a waste of time to just read an e-mail and then go back to work. You should instead take one of five actions:
The reasoning behind this is that “checking” email is a form of procrastination. In reality there is always a decision to be made about what action to take. With Inbox Zero you take this action right away instead of leaving it until later, allowing your inbox to overflow
Welcome to the fourth part of the Hermes Technologies Business 2.0 series where we explain how we are adopting a whole new model of doing business. In this post we explain the advantages of not having an office and utilizing a global workforce.
1. Office not required
In business 2.0, there is no need for company to have an office, especially at first when funds are low. Employees can work together from their homes, collaborating on the Internet.
Advantages to not requiring an office:
A. The cost of finding, negotiating, renting and maintaining an office is done away with.
As commercial property is outside the expertise of most businesses this allows business 2.0 companies to focus on their core business activities rather than running around trying to find office space, light bulbs, cleaners etc.
Me (w/laptop) and John (w/ armchair) busy working from our home office
B. Each employee saves time they would otherwise spend commuting.
In situations were one is self-employed this saved time equates to money and leads to a competitive advantage. It is not unreasonable for managers to require workers to put in a little bit of extra hours into the work considering they have saved quite a lot of time by not having to commute.
C. You can recruit from anywhere in the world rather than being limited to the talent available in your locality.
With increasing specialisation it can be hard to find someone with the appropriate skills in your neighbourhood and so, in the business 1.0 world you may have to settle for a less skilled employee. With Business 2.0, however, you can find the specialist you need by choosing from the enormous global marketplace and thus your chances of finding someone with the appropriate skills are greatly increased.
There can also be cost advantages to this. Business owners can take account of international salary differences or currency fluctuations to minimize the cost of employment. For our HiredHelp.ie website, which at this point in time is still in development, we took advantage of the very weak Sterling to hire an exceedingly talented programmer at a greatly reduced price.
Reservations about supervising employees when they’re working remotely?
Managers may fear that there is no way to tell whether an hourly wage employee is doing what they’re paid to be doing or is wasting time. This supervision problem is met by the use of a number of online tools.
Two we like to use are Skype and Basecamp. Requiring employees to log onto Skype when they get into work means you can see that they are starting work at the right time. Online project management tools like the excellent Basecamp allow managers to effortlessly set each employee sets of tasks (in the form of to-do lists) with each task being assigned its own due date. Employees then have a responsibility of registering a task is completed on the Basecamp system as soon as it is done. This way managers can see the approximate speed at which tasks are completed and can judge an employee’s effectiveness on this basis.
Using Basecamp to manage the Hiredhelp project
2. Employ experts from across the globe on very short-term contracts
Websites like Elance allow business owners to browse through an enormous variety of experts in different fields and then hire them on either an hourly or a fixed price basis.
A. Safety
Each service provider is reviewed on the site by other employers and so, just like in eBay, any scam providers are quickly caught and removed from the system. Additionally the use of an Escrow system (where employers lodge money into a middle bank account first and then only release the funds want the task is complete) means that The incentive to scam anyone out of their money is no longer present as it has become so difficult to do so. These measures make Elance a safe bet form of employing people.
B. Finding the right expert
To help you choose the right expert Elance offers service providers a set of tests which they can take to have their skills rated in the areas they profess expertise. You can also see a portfolio of each experts previous work and comprehensive reviews of their previous work made by previous employers. Interviews both by e-mail or by phone are also possible on the website.
C. Employ only on an ‘as-required’ basis
On Elance you can hire people for contracts worth as little as $100, very handy when you need an expert to do a small task which might take one of your employees a number of days. Being able to hire experts only when they are needed allows you to save a great deal of money since you don’t have too keep employees on the payroll in case they are needed in a pinch.
When we were creating the FindGrinds.ie website, we required some help programming the credit card processing software. I logged onto Elance and posted up a description of the work I required alongside my time frame and my approximate budget. Within 48 hours nine different experts had placed bids on the work and had gotten in contact. I then browsed through their portfolios and reviews then exchanged a number of e-mails with the most promising ones before eventually choosing the one I regarded as the best value for money.
Welcome to the third part of the Hermes Technologies Business 2.0 series in which we explain what exactly this new paradigm of doing business means. In this post I’ll explain why in the Business 2.0 world you must present yourself as a collection of people, rather than a classical corporate monolith.
Two models for doing business: the monolith and the human company
Traditional companies often adapt monolithic corporate identities. Business communications are phrased in dry, inhuman business speak. Everything is formal, everything is bland, cookie-cutter and lacking in personality and attitude.
By contrast Business 2.0 companies like to present themselves as nothing more than a collection of people, individuals were personalities and real lives, working together. Like real people they have attitudes, they have needs, they have pressing timetables and they make mistakes. By presenting your company as a collection of people you will find it far easier to deal with consumers for the simple reason that they now have a more realistic set of expectations about you.
Aspects of being a human company
1 Never claim infallibility and admit to being wrong
If you website breaks down and its users are denied service for a period of time, you should send out an e-mail apology, personally written, explaining what went wrong and what your doing to ensure won’t happen again. This is far better than a generic “services temporarily down” statement. Your customers are far more likely to forgive you and continue doing business with you rather than move elsewhere.
It’s essentially a matter of expectations: a customer expects a monolithic company to be perfect and always function — if the company breaks down for some reason it is not fulfilling their expectations of a monolith and so the customer looks elsewhere for a company that does meet their expectations. If, however, you present yourself as a collection of people then expectations will be more realistic — its acceptable to make mistakes, after all no-one is infallible. By presenting yourself this way you lower expectations to a more manageable level, an enormous advantage in customer relations.
2 Show customers the hard work you put in
When customers see you as a collection of hard working people trying to make a living by making a good product they will start rooting for you and hoping you will succeed. When this happens they are less likely to do things like illegally download or upload your software to file Business 2.0 Be a collection of people not a coroporate monolithBusharing sites. They feel bad about screwing over a couple of hard-working guys because they can see their own humanity reflected in the company. This isn’t the case with monolith companies, since people, somewhat irrationally, often assume they have unlimited resources and that no damage can be done to them by the small act of piracy.
Giving your company a human edge can also allow you to charge higher prices. I remember seeing a website in the UK for private tuition. British teachers could make themselves available to give private tuition by placing a paid advert on the website. On the pricing page the Webmaster explained that he had a disability that prevented him from working as a teacher and that his sole income was from the website. As a consumer I would certainly feel more comfortable paying what seems like a high price when I can see a real human, rather than an identity less corporation benefit.
3 Using a friendly human tone in your communications rather than business speak.
When you use simple conversational human prose rather than jargon filled, dry business speak, customers are more more likely to both read and understand your message. This saves marketing and other communication costs.
Using a human tone helps in the process of getting your customers to see you as a collection of people rather than a monolith. When they see you this way they like you more and are more tolerant of your imperfections and delays. They are less likely to get angry at you because it’s much harder to be angry at a person. It’s similar to how you can be extremely nasty to someone was then a car but if you met the same person on the street you are cannot bring yourself to act that way.
4 The human touch makes customers feel appreciated.
Customers can see the business you have built and know how busy you must be. Yet, when you take the time to respond to them in a personally crafted e-mail or response to a blog comment they will feel flattered. The will like to company more because they feel a human connection with it. They will be loyal.
So why haven’t companies made the shift from presenting themselves as monolithic corporations to presenting themselves as collections of people in the past?
The reason is simple – the financial advantages of being a monolith made it a competitive necessity. When customers complained to a company in the past they would often be met by the inflexible monolithic corporate wall one which they felt powerless to fight. This way companies scared customers out of making even legitimate complaints and reasonable requests were met with responsibility-less statements of “company policy” or the automatically generated false email promise that “we’ll get back to you”. Yes, customers got pissed off, but there wasn’t a lot they could do.
Monolithic corporate practices
As such companies adopting a monolithic identity companies could cut costs – they dealt with less complaints, were more inflexible and avoiding spending time writing personalized responses of consumer inquiries.
Today these kinds of business practices are becoming more and more difficult to maintain. The huge availability of online reviews and other forums for consumer expression means that any poor treatment of customers or poor customer care is quickly noted and registered by thousands of others, dissuading all these potential customers from doing business with you. UPDATE: As an example of the little guys fighting back take our terrible experience with Allied Irish Banks in Grafton street Dublin. They incompetently managed to lose our original certificate of incorporation (i.e. the business passport, the most important document a business can have), then treated us rudely when went to complain. We struck back. We post a forum post about our experiences with AIB grafton street. We wrote a review on foursquare warning people not to go to the Allied Irish Bank on Grafton Street and another one warning whoseview.ie warning people to avoid AIB’s Grafton Street branch.
In the past an angry customer could not reach many years. Web tools change this. Within 24 hours hundreds of people had heard what we had to so. No longer can corporations treat individuals or small companies terribly. The web changes everything.
Additionally, increased globalization means that there are now far more competitors than ever before, many of whom are offering identical products. One of the key differentiating factors to help you complete is how you treat your customers. Good customer is appreciated and customers will communicate this positive word-of-mouth using online tools to express themselves.
The social web means that you can no longer hide your failings with the ease your previously could. It also means that good deeds will be remembered and quickly spread across the web. All this means that the cream is going to rise to the top faster than ever before.
Business 2.0 Thoughts from our business experiences in the online world
Design: Design sites and systems that work
Features: The crossover between life, computers, business and you in the age of Google
Productivity: Get more done
Marketing: Aim and amplify your message
