photo credit: Asti21

First they came for the chocolate bunnies, and I did nothing because I am not a chocolate bunny.

Quite a weekend we’re having: Passover, Good Friday, Easter, the Masters and a few thousand Easter Egg hunts, to name a few.

Oh, and I smoked a pork roast that turned out totally incredible. But I digress:)

In the midst of all the holiday celebrations, worship, family time and so on, Amazon gets into the act. So much so that they are trending #1 on Twitter (you must be logged into Twitter in another browser window/tab BEFORE clicking this link, sorry but that’s just how Twitter search works).

The hashtag (ie: search term) on Twitter that is receiving all the attention is #amazonfail.

First they came for those with an Amazon rank

It’s been a while since the online bookseller stepped in it and alienated a huge number of people, but they got into the act again this weekend.

Last time it was about Amazon shafting authors who use print on demand services that weren’t owned by Amazon.

This time, it’s some or all of the “adult” community.

At first, it wasn’t clear exactly what was going on (and still may not be), but an official customer service response from Amazon indicates that they are removing sales rank data for content with adult ratings. Amazon now denies this, calling it a glitch.

A growing number of folks in the GLBT (or LGBT) community (particularly on Twitter) are noting some inconsistency of the removed ranking data, noting that it seems to apply more to content of interest to them than to adult material across the board.

No matter what your feelings about the various forms of sexuality, I should remind you about two things:

• First, the Rev. Martin Niemoller poem, “First they came“. If your business (through you) is willing to take on a group, be careful what you wish for. Be sure of your staying power with your stance on an issue.
• Second, while there are political and other sensitive issues here, this isn’t why I bring this up. There are business issues intertwined throughout this.

In Amazon’s case on this issue, they risk a nationwide boycott from the LGBT community. If they change their mind, they risk a boycott by other groups. If they waffle and end up somewhere in the middle, they might get both.

Yeah but this stuff has nothing to do with my business!

Not really.

It’s 2009. For no cost, anyone can get detailed info about your political contribution numbers and plot them on a Google map and do any number of things with it, including to suggest that people pay you a visit.

Are you ready for that?

If you think your personal values don’t affect your business, think again.

Every business owner will inevitably find themselves taking a side on a political, theological or similar issue at some point (probably several dozen). You need to think through how you will handle situations like this.

• Will you bring your stance on contentious issues into your business?
• If you become active on an issue, will it impact your business and if so, are you strong enough to stand firm when the public attaches the issue to your business? It doesn’t matter what the issue is. What matters is how you will handle it and how your staff will handle it.
• Are you willing to deal with the fact that your staff feels differently about the issue (whatever it is) than you do? Whether you are or not, you should talk to a HR specialist or an attorney who specializes in employment law before hiring people. HR problems are a great way to lose your shorts.
• Is your stance on an issue going to affect the clients and employees you attract? As long as you are sure of yourself, that’s the primary concern. Well, that and are you acting within the law?
• Will your ethics on the issue in question suggest that your business ethics should be called into question?

I’m not asking nor suggesting that you temper your views or how and where you share them with others. Only you can make that decision.

Nor am I suggesting that you be hypocritical. Congruent for sure, but not hypocritical.

What I am suggesting is that you need to decide in advance if you are willing to lose your business (or a part of your business) over your stance on an issue. It’s ok either way,  just be sure of yourself before you go down that road.

Some might suggest that you’ll get more business if you show your colors. In some cases, I think that’s absolutely right. One of the easiest examples I can think of where this likely helps a business is Ian’s stance on China, human rights and his Catholic goods store.

More than anything, I am suggesting that you consider the big picture before you step onto the soapbox.

No matter how you feel, it is difficult to get the genie back into the bottle.

PS: It’s all about the malted milk eggs for me.

UPDATE: An interesting theory on what might be happening to Amazon: http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html

Whether this theory is true or not, it’s a valuable lesson for system designers of social media systems, interactive/community feedback systems and the like.

Meanwhile, a bunch of tweets reference people actively tagging conservative books with keywords that might get them de-listed from the sales rank numbers for the same reason that others are being de-listed.

UPDATE: Amazon says the change in sales rankings is a glitch. In social media circles, they arent getting a lot of traction on that. Time will tell.

Like it? Bookmark it!

photo credit: Atilla1000

Plenty, if you’re thinking and paying attention to what other businesses are up to. 

We had a Hutterite turkey last week, but in the process of digging around, I came across some innovative things that Butterball is doing to make life easier for their customers. 

Things like text messages to remind you to start thawing the turkey. Simple, helpful, smart. 

Who HASN’T forgotten to start thawing the turkey on time at least once in their life? We sure have. 

Learn more about Butterball’s mobile tools. 

Now…salt to taste for your business. What are your takeaways from what they’ve done?

PS: You can learn about Montana’s Hutterites here and get some additional info here.

Download audio file (TurkeyiPhone.mp3)

Like it? Bookmark it!

photo credit: Zesmerelda

After requesting a beta invitation to a web-based service, I received the activation email.

*ONE* minute later, I got an email from the CEO asking how I liked the service. 

Careful there, Sparky. 

While I’d be the first to encourage such emails, you have to think about how – and particularly, when – you send them. 

It doesn’t make sense to send them 1 minute after sending an activation email unless you want to send the wrong signals.

IE: “I’m sending everyone the same email even though my email is worded otherwise” and “I don’t really want your feedback since you couldn’t possibly have any yet”. 

Neither one is really what the sender wants. 

It doesn’t make sense to send the emails until some period of time after the activation email has been clicked on, since they couldn’t have any feedback for you until they’ve activated the service and had at least a little bit of time to use it and see what it’s really like. 

You see the same thing in blogs where you can generate emails automatically the first time someone comments. Sounds great in theory, but if the email comes 20 seconds after you post the comment, it isn’t personal.

Instead of doing that – what if the automated email was sent to the blog owner, giving them time to check the commenter’s website, find out a little about them, much less actually read their comment – then a personal touch can be applied to the partly pre-written email thanking someone for their comment. 

That’s the kind of personal follow up that is appreciated – and it’s still mostly automatic.

There are some hacks to existing tools that auto-email first time commenters. If you use those tools, I suggest using the hacks. Keep it personal.

Like it? Bookmark it!

Last week I received a phone call from SendOutCards, whose service sends personalized postcards and greeting cards – with pictures if you like – simply by pounding on their website for a moment.

First of all, kudos to them. They were just calling to see if I was getting what I needed out of the service and wondered what – if anything – they could do to help me.

Why kudos? Because SO FEW actually make the effort to do this.

Yep, that’s a not-so-subtle hint.

The downside of the conversation was that I blindsided them with my request.

It’s important to clarify that I really like the service – they even let me create a font of individual letters using my handwriting, so that the text I type into the website is printed in my writing on the card or postcard. This includes several variations of my hand-written signature so I can sign the cards any way I want depending on who the recipient is.

The disappointment is that the service lacks the ability to let you automate the delivery of what they produce.

You can import a list from your Outlook or whatever, but that isn’t automation. It’s manual and a pain. Plus it’s a duplication of data – bad idea.

Once you’ve imported contacts, you can setup a series of cards or postcards or notes to go out over a period of days as you like. Setting it up is a little bit of a pain, but it works.

Then the trouble starts. There is no automated way to update the contacts when their contact info changes on my systems, much less to add or remove them. It’s 2008 folks, this stuff is commonplace and simple to implement.

Also – when you have 9400 customers, you don’t have them in Outlook and you don’t want to manually import and categorize them using a web interface.

Their goal SHOULD be to make it as easy to send cards and postcards as they possibly can, since their profit depends on two things: the revenue from sending cards and postcards, and the exposure they get to new people who receive those cards and start using the service on their own.

As it is now, it isn’t real automation. Automation occurs when things happen automatically because something else happened, manual or otherwise.

I tried explaining this to the vendor and gave them a few examples.

If I have an online store that sells stuff, I’d want my online store to automatically send a thank you card with shipping info in it. A month or a week or whatever (depends on the product) later, I’d want to send a follow up thank you that asks for a review, comments, makes sure they are happy with their purchase, etc.

That just scrapes the surface of needs of that type.

Random customer behavior: bad idea

Another example: Let’s assume that I’m performing a service or selling an item to customers who come back intermittently. Your internal point of sale and invoicing system should have the information needed to produce a list of “Who hasn’t been here in 30 days?” (or 60, or whatever).

If you’re on top of this situation, someone is currently printing out that list and having someone mail them a postcard, or a note, or calling them to see if they’re doing OK, need an appointment, etc. Or SendOutCards could be *automatically instructed* by your systems to send a reminder card or what not to try and retain this customer and get them back into the store, office, etc.

If you aren’t on top of this sort of thing, you’re simply waiting on the random behavior of your customers to return to your business – exactly the kind of thing SendOutCards is designed to assist you with.

Smart businesses DO NOT depend on the random behavior of their customers. Instead, they show up (and/or deliver) “Just before just-in-time”, as Don Ferris says.. They also make a point of reminding their customers to come back / purchase / do maintenance (or whatever) when it’s best for the customer… without being an annoying nag about it.

By now, you should have asked yourself what you can be doing in this area. Here are a few questions to ask yourself about your business:

• What do your customers use every month?
• What do they own that requires maintenance every quarter?
• What happens TO THEM if they don’t come back on a regular basis?
• What happens if I lose track of changes in their personal situation (if B-to-C) or business situation (B-to-B)?

If they aren’t buying or maintaining those things on that basis, every day they wait is costing you money *and* it could cost them money too.

Oh yeah, back to that every 30 days list.

What if your systems were automated and knew to send out a postcard (not one of those lame ones from the corporate office that no one reads) when someone should have an appointment coming up? And the system knows not to mail one if you already have an appointment scheduled in the next few weeks.

And it knows to email the right person in your business 10 days after the postcard is mailed to remind them to call that person if and only if they don’t have an appointment (or haven’t made a purchase).

This isn’t rocket science, but the vendor didn’t seem to get how valuable this was not only to me, but to their bottom line (ie: more cards get mailed, more people are exposed to the vendor’s service).

Like it? Bookmark it!

Consider the profitability of the work being done by each member of your staff. Are they making your business more profitable? Or are they doing non-critical work that a computer or service could do?

Why not automate those often lame-but-necessary tasks?

Why? Because you aren’t getting it all done otherwise.

Want proof? Call a vendor who performs a service or sells an item that requires installation. More often than not, you’ll not find someone who can deliver today, or even this week.

Despite the state of the economy. Or perhaps, because of it.

Odd example: I was told late last week that Amtrak passenger trains are packed to the gills because they don’t have any more passenger cars to put in service. Now don’t get me wrong, that’s good thing because it means they’re busy. Busy is good. Means they are doing some things right (and of course that fuel prices are high).

But backlogged and having to force businesses and consumers to go to your competition isn’t good, and it’s a fine line between busy and too busy.

What’s bad for Amtrak in this case is also bad for you. And that’s where the profitability of the work your staff does will come into play.

On one side of the fine line: things that require your expertise.

On the other: stuff that a high school kid could do in their sleep (and they need more sleep anyhow, right?).

Those are the kinds of things to target for automation.

It isn’t about getting rid of people. It’s about giving the people you have the kind of work that generates profit, rather than simply keeping them busy in low-value jobs that take them nowhere.

Why do they want that?

Because the kind of work that generates profit is the kind that makes a job – and thus an employee – more valuable.

Like it? Bookmark it!

photo credit: xiaming

Yesterday, we talked about making it easier for your clients to do – whatever it is that you make them do, hopefully not making them do it at all.

But what about making it easier to do the things that you can’t eliminate? One example is making it easier to reorder from you. You already know what your clients buy, right?

What do you do to remind them it’s time to refill, replenish and reorder? Since you know what they ordered, it should be easy for you to do this.

How do you know? It’s in your order database, point of sale (POS) system or online store order history.

You know how long it has been since they’ve visited your store or ordered online.

Is that number of days getting close? Shouldn’t you send them something (or call) to make it easy to order?

Has that number of days already passed? Shouldn’t you be contacting them to make sure all is well and that they haven’t run out of whatever they buy from you?

Do you have a system in place to get regular reorders pre-authorized by your clients? Makes life easier for them and more fruitful for you.

If you have automated reorders in place, isn’t it that much harder for a competitor to steal your clients from you? And aren’t your clients that much happier with the way you’ve added a little non-stick Teflon to their day to day lives?

Like it? Bookmark it!