The customer service journey

How do we know that the customer service journey is good? It goes smoothly and seamlessly. We look online for the business, find an entry and we can book a table, a ticket, an appointment, a click-and-collect: the bookings process guides us through detailing our requirements and we are taken to payment and we are done. Or we next receive a calendar appointment that we can add to our diary to remind us that we have our session coming up. And then we are done. It is so easy that what might have taken an hour last century is done in seconds in this one. Bricks and mortar retailers have largely adapted to a hybrid environment, putting the power in their customer's hands with online bookings platforms, email, instant messaging, answer services, chat bots and smart payments (Lin & Cheng, 2025). This is called omnichannel marketing, where "customer touchpoints [...] occur through multiple channels[: ] face-to-face, phone, online, [and] mobile apps" (Babin & Harris, 2022, p. 107).

I ran into a complicated 20th century customer service journey recently, and it reminded me of just how smooth most customer service journeys are today. I needed to book an appointment for a family member at a local franchise business in the nearest small town, so I went to book online as I live 35 mins away on a good day; 45 on a not-so-good day. However, I was unable to find an online booking service for the entire franchise, let alone for the local branch.

OK. So I searched for a business email so I could email a request. Easy. Except there was no online email address that I could find. Anywhere.

Right. So this would need to be old school. I searched for the phone number, found one online, in two places (who uses a phone number?!). This was a retail business, and it was Saturday morning, so rang them, thinking they would probably be open. But there was no reply - no answer service, nothing. Just that ringing, on and on. Just in case it was a manual answer service, and the machine was already busy, I rang again. But I got the same result. OK, perhaps the business wasn’t open on the weekends. I would try during the week instead.

On Monday, I called again, and got no answer, and no answerphone message. Never mind omnichannel (Lin & Cheng, 2025), this place was not even mono-channel.

Gritting my teeth, and not feeling full of familial cheer, on Tuesday I got in the car and drove to the business. It was a not-so-good day, and took 45 minutes, due to two sets of stop/go roadworks and a transporter carrying a double-lane-wide shed being moved on the highway (hilarious). I arrived at the business was staggered to see the storefront had been gutted. There is no signage in the windows to say where the business has moved to. I entered the worksite and asked builders doing the fit out where the business had moved to, and they didn’t know either. It looked like business had gone OUT of business. 

What was worse was that, as a customer myself as well as my other family member, I had received no communication that the business was closing, or moving, or temporarily closing and moving. I was in the dark.

I thought about going to a similar business which was just over the road. But, I was on an errand for a family member. I knew there was another franchise another half hour further away, so I called them - despite thinking that this wouldn't get me anywhere as I assumed that the two businesses were run independently. But they don't appear to be franchises: it sounds like they may just be separate branches (but I am still unsure). I was told that the business nearest me was moving to a new location, but would be closed for three months (three MONTHS!). The staff appear to be working in the other branch for now. 

All in all it took me six goes to get in touch with them. If I hadn't been doing this for a family member, I wouldn't have made a special trip, and I would have gone elsewhere on finding the business closed. Most customers will not try more than two or three times. 

Wow. This was a classic missed opportunity to advise customers what was happening. They could have gone old school and simply had a phone answer or service/message stating "please contact the X branch on xxx-xxx-xxxx, as this branch will be reopening in new premises in xxx on ..." and not even taking messages. That might have cost them $30 a month at business rates (and they probably could have negotiated much less than that). Or just as easily, they could have forwarded their branch phone to the other branch. 

For just a few cents, they could have put a relocation notice on the old store front, and left the shop outfitters a brief statement - or a few flyers - to share with any customers asking questions. Or they could have negotiated with the new business to stick a flyer box on the window of the old premises to hold flyers until the new business was open. 

In addition, also at very low cost, they could have put a relocation notice on the two sites where I found their phone number (and perhaps updating the contact details to other branch temporarily).

They could have invested a little more, and have someone in the business create a short script, then paid a school leaver to email everyone the business had an email address for; text everyone who has a cellphone number listed; and call everyone on a landline who hadn't yet been contacted.

And they should definitely look at getting an online bookings service, to put the power in the hands of the customers. 

But the story gets a bit worse. I needed to get some paperwork to them from my family member, so needed the other branch email address. They carefully read out a quite complex email address which was all numbers, unrelated words and a domain name and a country unrelated to the actual name of the business and its location. We treble-checked it. It seemed to me to be a B2B mail address, not a C2B. Why on earth hadn't this been rerouted to an appropriate business domain with a clear address by their IT people? Even info@business.co.nz would have been better than the jumble that I carefully recorded and read back. I could see why the email address was not normally shared with customers: it was not fit for purpose. We are 26 years into the 21st century - email is not new technology! I got my first email address in 1992; over a generation ago.

And it turned out the other branch had given me the email address of the closed branch: and it bounced. I had to call back to ask if there was another email address. Apparently the mailbox was full 🤦🏼‍♀️. I got another, similar email, and we went through the treble-checking again. I finally got the email sent.

Then when I went to pay for the service that was to be provided, I needed to pay a deposit. I asked for their banking details, but the business does not have bank transfer facilities or any online payment channels. I could either spend two hours there and back in the car to manually use a credit or debit card, or give them the details over the phone. It was - of course - the phone. 

This business, if they don't get their act together, are going to be no more in fairly short order. All that investment in their new premises will be pointless when considering the erosion of the client base. They need to urgently expand their communication channels, until they too are an omnichannel business. And that will hopefully mean that their customer service journey is delightful, not a series of - in the words of the old woman to the Knight from the Canterbury Tales (Chaucer, 1400, l. 1000) - "you can't get there from here"'s.

Sam

References:

Babin, B. J., & Harris, E. G. (2022). CB Consumer Behaviour (9th ed.). Cengage Canada.

Lyrics Translate. (2026). The Wife of Bath's Tale [from G. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales]. https://lyricstranslate.com/en/geoffrey-chaucer-wife-baths-tale-lyrics.html

Lin, S. W., & Cheng, K. T. (2025). Exploring the Impact of Omnichannel Service Attributes on Consumer Well-Being Across the Customer Journey. SSRN. Advance online publication, 1-33. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.538245

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Goodbye Google News

Until March this year, I used the Google News aggregator (here). Despite being a subscriber to a number of news feeds, my go-to for news for many years was Google News. 

Unfortunately, I have been noticing that Google News has been more and more, of late, Google Olds. I will read an item, only to realise that it is five days old already (and yes, each item did say when it was published, but in tiny grey writing that I often missed). Further, last year Google decided to make the format of - what was a very simple layout - much more whizzy-do. They up-marketed it.

When first offered the option to upgrade last year, I checked it out. And immediately searched how to turn the new version back off as the simple format was now three columns wide, fussy, and hard to read... as per the image accompanying this post. I was thinking that this format was irritating as all get out to read on a PC screen, and would be impossible to read on a phone. I had to keep reading across in these little blobs instead of just simply following my feed down the page until I got to something I wanted to read. It took a bit of searching to find out how to get the classic view back, but I did, and everything went along, ticketty-boo, until March this year. 

Sigh. 

And then the big switcheroo happened, and the NEW Google News arrived whether we wanted it or not. There was no opt-out option. There appears to no way to revert to the classic layout. Google didn't ask, and we had no way to tell them. Many people have grumped online about it, but we all know how far that will get us with Google: nowhere. So, goodbye Google News. It was jolly nice knowing you, but you are now consigned to the dust bin of technology, along with telegrams and reel to reel tapes. 

But it does make me wonder why Google News would want to brass off their users. Perhaps this is the first curtain call for axing the news service altogether, as news organisations are looking to make Google pay for content rather than simply being able to scrape it for free. Possibly.

Only time will tell.

Sam

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How do we know when to refer?

While I have written about referral before (here), there is always more to understand about a topic. Let's begin with a definition: when a client has approached us, but we feel for any reason that we cannot meet their needs, we then suggest or "direct[... them] to a[n alternative] counsellor or [to an] alternative source of treatment" (Counselling Tutor, 2022; Feltham & Dryden, 2004, p. 192).

Why might we consider we could not see them? We are obliged under our professional memberships - for example, as laid out by the Career Development Association of New Zealand's code of ethics here in New Zealand - to be appropriately qualified for the services we are providing. The CDANZ Code of Ethics makes it quite clear that professional members must "Represent services, qualifications, and experience accurately and fully, and only undertake those practices for which they are qualified and in circumstances where they have appropriate experience" (2016). If we are not expert, we must refer clients on to someone who is an expert, particularly when we are dealing with people who may be considered vulnerable.

Further, the process of referral consists of four stages, that of "(1) identifying the need to refer; (2) evaluating potential referral sources; (3) preparing the client for the referral; and (4) coordinating the transfer" (Gladding, 2000, p. 102). This needs to be a hosting process: we host our potential client out of our care, and smoothly into the care of another, with appropriate briefing or hand-over. Think five star hospitality.

An alternative to referral is, should our client have a strong preference to continue working with us, for ourselves as the practitioner and our client to place ourselves under the supervision of an expert in the required field. However, our duty of care is to always ensure that we act in the best interest of the client, and to minimise our collective exposure to harm.

It can be difficult to do the right thing. But we need to.

Sam

References:

CDANZ. (2016). Code of Ethics. http://www.cdanz.org.nz/uploads/CDANZ_CoE_Word%20English%20Final.pdf

Counselling Tutor. (2022). Referrals in Counselling. https://counsellingtutor.com/referrals-in-counselling/

Feltham, C., & Dryden, W. (2004). Dictionary of Counselling (2nd ed.). Whurr Publishers.

Gladding, S. T. (2000). The Counseling Dictionary: Concise definitions of frequently used terms. Merrill Prentice Hall.

Good Therapy. (2022). When Should You Refer a Client to Another Professional?. https://www.goodtherapy.org/when-should-you-refer-a-client-to-another-professional.html

NASW. (2022). Ethical Standard of the Month: 1.16 Referral for Services. National Association of Social Workers. https://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Ethics-Education-and-Resources/Ethical-Standard-of-the-Month/Referral-for-Services

read more "How do we know when to refer? "

Recognising the need for referral

I have recently been thinking about what we do in our practice when we run thin on the ground. We need to remind ourselves that we need support too. As we learn or formalise our expertise in any area, and as a reflective practitioner, we learn that we too need to seek "support, advice, and consultation" (Nelson, 2014) from our colleagues - or specialists - to assist our work; to both keep us safe, and to further develop us.

In an NCDA article, Nelson provides us with a few sensible pieces of advice:

• "Know when to refer a client to a therapist; it is okay to suggest putting aside career work until personal issues are worked through"
• "Don't be afraid to refer clients to colleagues whom you think would be a better fit; colleagues will refer clients to you"
• "Consult with colleagues when it makes sense, to learn about resources or for their particular expertise. This experience will enrich your practice by learning from your peers. Don't underestimate how important fellow counselors are not only for support but for future career opportunities"
• "Always maintain the confidentiality of your clients unless they give you permission to disclose. Even if you have permission, disclose as little as possible", and
• "Take care of yourself. You can't give anything if you're empty yourself. Counseling can take a lot out of a person". (Nelson, 2014).

Signs we may need to refer a client on may be when any of the following occur:

• We find ourselves working beyond our level of competency
• There is someone better suited to working with this client
• The expertise required for this type of work is better suited to another specialty or agency
• The work between us and the client group is not related to the contract we originally negotiated
• A psychological issue emerges in our session that can not be contained within the session, or
• A health issue emerges within the session that can not be resolved appropriately within the session.

Some things we can all remain aware of.

Sam

References

• Nelson, M. (2014). 30 Tips for New Career Counselors. National Career Development Association (NCDA). https://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/news_article/5417/_self/layout_details/fals
• Smith, S. (1972). Not Waving but Drowning.https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46479/not-waving-but-drowning

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TradeMe's Customer Service, or "How to pay for your own data"

I had a rogue entry on a two month old bank statement, and wondered if it were a TradeMe payment made to me on an auction, without the purchaser having remembered to load the reference number.

Being tax time, I really wanted to know where this transaction had come from, so I could classify it correctly. So I thought I would pop into TradeMe and view my sales history. This is something I do regularly with Amazon and eBay.

However, when I got to TradeMe, I was only able to access the last 45 days. That can't be right, I thought. I checked every single link in 'MyTradeMe'. I checked the 'help' files. I googled it. Nothing. Nada. Zero.

OK, I thought: I must just be tackling this the wrong way, or using the wrong words.So I emailed TradeMe to ask.

A bit over one week later, I got a very polite response, which was great. But the content was not so great. In summary, I had to PAY $20 to get an extract of my data. I also needed to specify what period I wanted the data from, and what particular data I wanted from a helpfully provided list (Sold items; Won auctions; Ledger; debits & credits; GST Receipts; or the Pay Now ledger).

What peeves me is that to access my own sales and purchase transactions for any time longer than 46 days ago, I would have to pay $20 for the privilege. It also might well be that if I specified the wrong data set, I would have to pay another $20 to get the right data set. Ouch.

TradeMe cheerfully takes our commissions, but then refuses to provide OUR OWN data unless we pay them again. And possibly have to pay again, if we make a mistake on our requested data set.

So let's have a think about why we want our old data. It is because we have forgotten the transaction. That doesn't happen within 45 days: that happens months down the track. It happens at GST time (a 60 day cycle plus 30 days before it is due) or at tax time (a 365 day cycle).

eBay allows customers to access at least three years of our own sales and purchase transactions online. Amazon allows access to all our transactions since we started our account (I have 17 years of history that I can browse whenever I want to). So why can't TradeMe allow at least two year's worth of our own data?

All in all, I have decided to take a bit of action, and let people know about TradeMe's lack of customer service (never mind taking eight days to come back to me when promising a turn-around on queries in 24-48 hours). Together, perhaps we can change their views.

Forward this post to people you know and leave a comment.


Sam

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Two Examples of 'sticky' Customer Service

Sticky experiences are those that will stay with you for some reason. They stick in your memory. Over this past week, I had two very sticky customer service experiences: one with FreeParking, the other with the ANZ.

I completed a MOOC on creating your own blogger site with Udemy and found that I could have Google's Blogger host my website for free instead of having to pay for web hosting. However, I needed some technical information from my current site hosting company to complete my move from my freely hosted blogger address to my own domain name.

FreeParking was my current web host, hosts my email services, and holds my domain names. When I contacted FreeParking during this past weekend, Jason gave me assistance that was service in its truest sense. Jason was helpful, and went the extra mile, even though it would cost FreeParking money; telling me what I needed to do to down-grade my service pack to an email only account, and providing all the information that I needed. I felt that he thought about each requirement from my point of view. He made things easier for me, and for that I thank him - and FreeParking - for a truly customer-oriented culture.

If service is “the action of helping or doing work for someone”, then FreeParking got it spot on.

My experience with the ANZ should have been the same: I look after some funds for my Uncle’s grand-daughter, who is studying in the UK. Her account is linked to mine at the ANZ, and I transfer funds to her as she needs them. I had transferred her Uni fees for this year, then noted that ANZ had then charged her $15 per month to keep her account open with $3 in it. I emailed the bank and suggested that they had made a mistake. “Oh, no”, they said. “No mistake”. They told me that they would charge $15 every month, but might graciously cancel this coming month's charge if I closed the account toute de suite. However, they would not refund the amount already charged. Intractable. As a result, that account is now closed, I am in the process of moving my personal and business accounts to Kiwibank. ANZ are losing a long-term customer (25 years+) because of what appears to be an inability of the bank to think from the customer’s point of view. I was so incensed about ANZ's response that I went so far as to create a poster about their lack of foresight, based on some of their current advertising, and posted it on Facebook.

I related both experiences to my leadership classes at NMIT, where I lecture in management and asked my students for their thoughts. They related similar poor service stories. The sad thing is that of those two experiences, the one which will stick the most in people's memories is that of ANZ. The negative is so much more sticky.

But we should remember FreeParking. Hold onto the positive!


Sam

PS: My Uncle went into the local ANZ branch and got the fees reversed. But I am still changing banks: culture is pervasive.

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Newsletter Issue 34, October 2001

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 34, October 2001

Hi guys,

In this issue we have part three in our series Fancy Yourself as a Rupert Murdoch? , this time looking at  how to create an html newsletter, freeware and payware programmes, at writing articles, submissions, advertising options, and promotion.

How do you make your organisation more customer-focused? There are a few tips below in Becoming Customer-centric. 

Back on Backups Again   TLAs for SMEs        Short & Hot Keys        Hot Linx

Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

Fancy Yourself as Rupert Murdoch? Part 3

This time we are looking at creating a newsletter in html and what programmes you can use, at writing articles, getting and using submissions, advertising options, and ways of promoting your ezine to increase your readership.

Software Options

There are a number of software options;

• Word. One of the easiest ways to create a newsletter is use as a newsletter template in Word (using varied columns, fill colour & font etc but no graphics), and then create a webpage by; File| Save As | "Save As Type" | Web Page (htm, html). Works a treat. No added costs. Pretty easy.
• Netscape Communicator. You can download Netscape Communicator from . This is freeware that you can use to create and edit html documents in. Just remember that your document will not look QUITE the same when viewed with IE. Go to http://home.netscape.com/download/sd_cc32d47uk.html 
• 1st Page. This is freeware HTML editing software which comes bundled with over 450+ Javascripts and supports all the latest web languages. Download it from http://www.evrsoft.com/download/ 
• FrontPage. For slightly more funky layouts etc you can purchase FrontPage, but you really don't need to go this way unless you will be looking at using it for creating or maintaining a website. Cost in US is about $170 on its own. You can download a 30 day trial version at http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/evaluation/trial.htm 
• Coffee Cup. This software costs reasonably big-time. $300 US. Supposed to be pretty good though. Check it out at http://www.coffeecup.com/ 

 Article Writing

This is one of the best ways to build your subscriber base. Writing good articles will build the relationship with your customers; and trust. Once you establish yourself as an expert in your area, people will be interested in other information and knowledge you have. But make sure you;

• Write about what you know about
• Speak your customers language; make it appropriate for your readers
• Research your topics well
• Keep your articles to the point 
• Keep articles short (if it's too long, split it up over a few ezines)
• Quote any sources
• NEVER pirate anyone else's work

If your articles are effective, people will keep coming back for more.  

Promotion

Once you get your ezine designed and formatted, you can start promoting. It is a good idea to start promoting before the actual publication date. This way you will have some subscribers to send your first issue to. 

There are many more ways that you will learn as you spend more time publishing your ezine. Some of the ways to promote your ezine are;

• Signature Line. This is the write-up that you add to the end of each of your articles explaining who you are and what your business is. Always include your subscribe address and your email address so people can easily contact you (and you should note that here I do not follow my own advice!!)
• Submissions to other Ezines. Submit articles to other ezines to build your own reputation. Just remember to link your signature line to a sign up for your own newsletter
• Direct Link Email. Always include your ezine with subscribe address link so that people can subscribe directly via email
• Ad Swaps. This is a method in which you run another publisher's ad in your ezine and they, in turn, run your ad in their ezine. This is a most effective method because you can get your ad placed in many quality ezines at no cost. To find other publishers who are interested in swapping you can join these lists:

• Group_Advertising-subscribe@yahoogroups.com 

  Ezine-Ad-Swaps-subscribe@topica.com 

  dSwapsforYou-subscribe@egroups.com 

  Or visit these sites: 

  http://www.freezineweb.com/ad-swaps1.html 

  http://www.bizpromo.com/ezinetrades.htm 

  http://www.adswap.net/ 

  http://www.swap-ads.com/ 

  http://ezine-swap.com/ 

• Ezine Directories. A good directory can bring you subscribers. Submit to as many as you can. These directories can also bring you advertisers to buy ad space in your ezine. 

• http://www.worldmegastore.com/newsletters.php 

  http://www.fun-lists.com/ 

  http://www.ezinelocater.com 

  http://www.atozines.com 

  http://www.bluechiptraffic.com/ezines/ 

• Automatic Responses. You need to ensure follow-up on all your site & email queries... and most of the time we are too busy, too sporadic or too late to follow-up with prospects and past customers. Automating your follow-up process can take your site into profit. Check out the following sites for advice;

  http://www.InformationByEmail.com

  http://www.autoresponder.co.za/ (NB: this one costs)

  http://www.getresponse.com/ 

Just remember to ALWAYS provide quality content and limit the number of ads. Your subscribers are important to your business, so ensure that you give them what they are looking for. Don't overstep the bounds of good taste or they may go elsewhere, taking their business with them. 

And don't forget to ask your customers regularly if they find your newsletter useful, what they like and what is most useful to them in their business. Good luck!

Becoming Customer-centric

Being  an organisational leader is one of the hardest challenges: how on earth do you align the activities of a diverse group of people... who are fighting over the same resources.. and all have different goals and agendas? In other words: how do you become a successful cat herder?

Of course, if you want to keep doing the same-old same-old, don't do anything about customer service. Your business will eventually die of its own accord as the industry you are in becomes obsolete through technological change. Evolve or die!

There are some things you can do to turn your team into a customer- focused player. But don't underestimate the size of the challenge. It's a biggie.

• Before you even start, make sure that you have a rock solid mandate from your CEO; or if you are the CEO, you must support customer-centricity widely and with ACTIONS
• Go and talk to your key team members. Establish their concerns. Identify the ones who will be hardest to shift. Understand where they are coming from and what they think about the concept of aligning the business around the customer
• Identify what obstacles there are to change
• Design a plan that includes the interests/concerns your team members, dovetailed into your own objectives. Use presentations, meetings and workshops to establish what change is required
• Include in your plan how you will facilitate/manage change in these five key areas: 
  • business strategy 
  • customer strategy 
  • organisation design 
  • information architecture 
  • performance management 
• Present your plan to your team so that they can see that their personal and work objectives will be more easily achieved by customer-centricity
• Develop actions from your plan, helping your team to plan the change AND providing necessary resources (which may include IT to better handle customer information, changing team/member objectives or performance-based rewards) 

If all this looks familiar to you, that's because customer-centric best practice is based on change management. Complex systems are change-averse (and very stable) as they are grounded in the grouped beliefs of those people within them. These beliefs are VERY hard to change, especially as they are inextricably linked to their own personal sense of worth and company rewards.

So you have to make it easy for your people to accept change by changing not only how you do thinks and how you think, but also by how you measure success, and how you give rewards. Requiring a change all the way through the organisation. 

THEN you have to explain to your people that you have changed the rules, how and why. And how it will affect them. And what they have to do now.

Good luck with the cat herding.

Backups Yet Again

Viruses, theft, and natural disasters are just a few of the ways you could lose the data stored on your PC or server. 

Imagine losing all your documents, customer information, financial information, emails, appointments and employee records all at once... we know it can happen; just remember New York. Ten minutes to wipe out everything. 

Your business insurance may replace the machine, but money can't buy the hundreds of hours spent accumulating information. And don't forget if lost data is personal or confidential, you are at risk for fraud or negligence. 

1. Backup regularly. Set a day once or twice a week (depending on your creativity rate). Log it as a recurring appointment in your calendar and discipline yourself to complete it on the day
2. Keep your back up off site in a secure location in case of localised disasters like fire, theft, earthquake or flood (I keep mine in my Post Office box)
3. Rotate your backups. You should create backups AT LEAST weekly and have three copies that you rotate in case of delayed-action viruses
4. If you have lots of information, think about automating your backups with the help of hardware and software
5. Test your backups before you need them. The point of maintaining a backup schedule is to successfully restore data following a catastrophe. If your hardware or software fall short in the event of an emergency, your time, money and effort are lost. Norton Ghost 2002 is a utility that allows you to back up your drive quickly and easily. It also guides you through the reinstall process should you need it. 

Backups can be tackled easily with a bit of forethought and planning. But do it now.

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs for you;

• VPN, virtual private network. Enhances security by making it more complicated and difficult to gain unauthorized access to the network, & takes advantage of encryption and authentication to make data unreadable and verify its origin
• CSO, Customer Service Officer anywhere. IRD. Banking. Reception.

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Short+Hot Keys... and now tips

Another Function key for you - this time it's all you can do in MS programmes with a straight F4

• Excel "Absolute a cell reference ($A$1)" or "Repeat the last action"
• IE "Display the Address bar history " 
• Outlook "Find text" 
• PowerPoint "Repeat the last action" 
• Publisher & Access "Drop down a Combo box list or open/close a list box" 
• Windows "Open Save In or Look In in the Save As or Open dialog box" 
• Word "Redo or Repeat" 

Hot Linx

Wanna know what "Roller Coaster" really means? Well, stick your Garden Hose into http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.com/ 

Remember Waterbeds? Mouseketeers? Flares? Streaking? To find out just how many fads you have indulged in, check out the Badfads Museum site at http://www.badfads.com/home.html 

Lacking a bit of humour in your life? Then perhaps this site might give you a bit of a boost. Check out what makes kiwis chuckle at www.fairsuckofthesav.com 

And do you want to check out the scientific progress towards finding the world's funniest joke? Then you must visit www.laughlab.co.uk 

---

                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here

read more "Newsletter Issue 34, October 2001"

Newsletter Issue 33, October 2001

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 33, October 2001

Hi guys,

This time we have part two in our series Fancy Yourself as a Rupert Murdoch? below. We are looking at  content, consistency and professionalism.

We take a look at why we should focus on the customer in What is "Customer-centric" 

 TLAs for SMEs        Short & Hot Keys        Hot Linx

Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

Fancy Yourself as Rupert Murdoch? Part 2

Last time in this series on electronic newsletters we looked at why you would want to add "journalist" to your list of duties, customer service, clean, sharp design and injecting personality into your newsletter.

This time we are looking at content and how you get it, creating consistency and professionalism.

Content 

The most important thing for a useful customer ezine is to have high quality content that is useful to your clients. 

Beware of turning your ezine into a giant advertisement. Limit the number of ads - or don't have them at all - leaving more room for resources and information that does provide a customer service. 

Content to include in your ezine: 

• Informative articles on your business topics
• Product or service reviews 
• Tips and hints 
• Freeware, shareware or other freebie resources 
• Fun or useful links 

Remember copyright and don't rip off anyone else's articles. Read widely and adapt other's ideas, summarise and create your own original material from your research. 

There are a whole heap of places to get content ideas; and needless to say, the web is the best place to check things out. Google is probably the best place to go to run a search. 

Another great source of information and resources are discussion lists and other newsletters. Join ones that are related to your field, and the articles in them will give you ideas for your own. Don't forget hardcopy professional magazines as well. Use your professional development time to really further your business!

Write articles or run an editorial in each issue. If you end up with enough materials via your research, you can theme your newsletter each time with related articles. Show your personality through your unique passions and skills in business. 

I use FrontPage for my newsletter, but you can use Word and save it as html. Set up a template and whenever you find a content idea, put it into your "working" ezine doc straight away. 

I also have a "newsletter" folder that I save ideas to. I cut and paste bits of articles out of the other newsletters that I get, scan hardcopy articles and save weblinks for later reading and consideration. If something has come in on a newsletter that I keep, not only does it get saved to my newsletter archive for that publication, it also gets saved to "newsletter". Things are only dumped from this folder once they have gone into my newsletter. That way good ideas are never wasted!

Consistency 

You have some choices on how you demonstrate your consistency; probably the best way of demonstrating this is through regularity of publication, longevity and reliability, combined with quality content. 

You can set a publication schedule, notifying your clients that you publish on - say - the first of the month. Just remember "under-promise & over-deliver" and consistently deliver on time. You can keep things slightly more loose, and publish every four weeks-ish or so when you have the articles / time. Just let your clients know.

The big thing to remember is that once you start, you don't dwindle off into nothing. Be reliable and ensure that you demonstrate that once you start something, you carry it through, confirming your readers trust in you. 

However, sometimes there are circumstances outside our control (take this week for the most extreme example). Be professional by sending an apology and explanation and resume your original schedule with the smallest blip possible. 

Professionalism 

Make sure there are no careless mistakes in your ezine such as spelling or grammar (my favourite thing to miss... I looked at last time's newsletter and found I was missing a plural!). We all make mistakes, but set up systems (a proof reader, a waiting period before sending then rereading) so that you avoid the silly ones.

An ezine can have heaps of good content, but if it looks shoddy and careless it implies that your business is the same. 

Ensure professional - and indeed expected - standards are maintained alongside your personal touch and you will be a success. 

Being reliable doesn't mean that your newsletter can't evolve into something else: you can merge with another publication if yours gets too hard to do: you can contract it out; if you find that your customers don't read it or want it, you can discontinue; a discussion board may be what your customers want; an internal newsletter may be more appropriate; you may find a newsletter better than yours that you add your client list to...

Catch you next time when we look at creating a newsletter in html and what programmes you can use, at writing articles, getting and using submissions, advertising options, and ways of promoting your ezine to increase your readership.

What is "Customer-centric"?

Customer-centric. How many have heard of the relatively new buzzword in CRM? That's Customer Relationship Management to those of you who don't know the OLD buzzword! 

Being customer-centric is all about making the customer the focal point of the business.

And why would you organise your business to focus on the customer? Because it increases your company value long-term.

Customer service, as always, requires determination and care; it still involves hiring the right people, and training and motivating them. But the difference with CRM is in going back to corner store principles: you treat individual customers individually. 

Knowing each customer is crucial. The CRM  arsenal contains some pretty big guns via software and the net; including development of personalized responses, being able to focus on the most profitable transactions, extending life spans, identifying and responding to behavioural change in your customers and being able to see big trends early.

Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, says that Amazon is the "Earth's most customer-centric company." But even they couldn't make that claim without one whacking great software programme that swallows all their data, chews it up and spits it out in prices that they can use for analysis, definition, profiling and updating customer information. If they don't have good systems, the rest of the CRM arsenal could not be used.

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young has just released a new survey of 250 senior marketing, sales and customer service executives, that reveals most companies must deliver more satisfaction to customers. By increasing your ability to identify, attract and retain more profitable customers, being customer-centric can help your business increase revenues, profitability and competitive advantage. 

The survey also concluded that few companies track investments made in customers and, therefore, have no real sense of ROI (return on investment) in CRM. 

Financial business accounting used to be all about stewardship of assets and overall ROI. So anything that increased the bottom line - cost price negotiation, discount deals, retro supplier payments, and so on - were VERY important. 

However, ROI and asset stewardship do nothing to grow customer earnings long-term. The transaction was the be all and end all because money moved; the relationship was nothing. Customers were disposable (replaceable); whereas suppliers who gave good discounts were not. 

So which is more valuable, a supplier dollar or a customer dollar? 

A supplier dollar comes once, and it probably gets worked into the cost price; whereas a customer dollar should be the first of many, if we manage the relationship properly. 

So we have probably been focusing on the wrong end of the spectrum when it comes to profitability. 

With the advent of the Internet, web-hubs, EDI etc, transaction costs are falling rapidly... and there are the three laws to factor in:

• Coates's law that "business raison d'etre lies in the ability to reduce each transaction cost to an economically-efficient level". BUT this only works in a high transaction cost environment; as it is easy to maintain lower- than-average costs when the average is high... and the internet has killed transaction costs dead, and
• Moore's Law the oft quoted goodie of "Processing speeds and capacities double every year" and 
• Metcalfe's Law "The value of a network is the square of the number of nodes". 

So all this means that economies of scale are harder to realise. And will get harder. We have to sweat our tangible assets so hard now that it makes asset ownership less of an advantage. 

I think that we have got stuck with an outdated view of assets and how to measure performance. 

If businesses move away from "asset ownership" towards more intangible and fluffy ideas, we move towards organisations where we can't use old value measurements. Scary stuff, really.

One of our major intangible assets is our customer relationships. Profitability is not really measured in this area; but it could be, via putting a value on the lifetime relationship value (or relationship number growth rates). Damn hard to measure, though.

How on earth can you value a customer that may not provide you any true loyalty? Or who may stick with you through thick and thin and constantly bring you in new business? It would certainly make a lot of organisations look far more positively at their customer base if they had an asset value on their balance sheet. 

But hard to do. We would need to build financial models that support the idea (perhaps by looking at some companies who use these measures now and succeeding with them.. Ben & Jerry-type organisations). Then we need to figure out what the performance measures and accounting models should be.

And then, because our measures are focused on customer-centric values, we would actually focus on our customers. And increase our company value long-term. 

Fingers X-ed, eh?!

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs for you;

• ASP, Application Software Protocol. Application rental deals for software; the new great thing that Bill Gates is heading for...
• ROI, Return on Investment. Calc for working out whether you have achieved value from your business investment (owners equity) 

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Short+Hot Keys... and now tips

Another Function key for you - this time it's all you can do in MS programmes with a straight F5

Access "To switch to Form view from form Design view" or "To refresh the Database window" or "Move to the record number/page number/subdatasheet box; then type the record/page/data number and press ENTER" 

Excel, Publisher & Word "Display the Go To dialog box"

Frontpage "Refresh"

IE "Refresh the current Web page only if the time stamp for the Web version and your locally stored version are different " 

Outlook "Check for new mail" or "Refresh" or "Update the files visible in the Save As dialog box (on the File menu, click Save As)." 

PowerPoint "Run a ppt presentation slideshow" or "Update the files visible in the Open or Save As dialog box (File menu)" 

Windows "Refresh the Save As or Open dialog box or the contents of a window"

Hot Linx

Need a bit of typing assistance? R U a hunt & peck person? Then check out Andy Huang's freeware typing tutor at http://www.arlido.com/zijianhuang/downloade.html

Want to know something about anything and you can't find it on Google? Then check out DMOZ. This is the Open Web Directory Project; the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast global community of volunteer editors. Check it out at http://dmoz.org/ 

For any of you with an interest in all things nautical, check out Te Ohu Kai Moana. This is the site of the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission at http://www.tokm.co.nz 

Avoid passing on any misinformation - or check the b/s level in items you get in the mail - at http://www.urbanlegends.com/ulz/ 

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                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here

read more "Newsletter Issue 33, October 2001"