Category archive: News

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Help new businesses create wealth and prosperity

Journalist and former accountant Dennis Howlett, a seasoned tech and business advisor, has started a new resource for small/start-up businesses. The resource will be in the form of a wiki, and will cover all of the basics, and beyond, for new companies.

I will certainly be contributing in any way that I can to this initiative, and encourage anyone with expertise in any area of business - HR, legal, marketing, finance, IT, office management...anything - to get involved. This is a UK-centric resource, but there is much advice which will apply universally. Entrepreneurial life is one that many people think they can only dream of; those who know better will benefit, too, from showing them otherwise.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Barclays Bank's customer service Rx

Peter Curtis writes on The Business Editors blog of Barclays Bank’s plans to go cheesy with their customer service.

As the BBC reports, its ATMs are to be renamed “holes in the wall” and a sign in the window is to welcome customers with the message “Through this door walk the nicest people in the world”. Give me strength.

Perhaps I’m just a miserable curmudgeon, but I’m afraid there’s something about this faux-chumminess that makes me want to heave… By all means talk to me in plain English – ditching the jargon that often surrounds financial products can only be a good thing. But don’t pretend to be my friend – it simply isn’t credible.

The problem, of course, is that money - not even the amount in Barclays’ coffers - cannot buy credibility. No matter how much a business wants to appear to ‘keep it real,’ the money-churning, almighty effort it constitutes to them still shines through. You can almost hear the bank managers groaning in anticipation - along with customers.

What would it take to really shape up their customer service? Curtis has a practical suggestion:

If Barclays can deliver genuine improvements in service, that will be something worth shouting about. As someone who’s fed up of negotiating labyrinthine bank call centres, a renewed focus on a more branch-based service would certainly be welcome.

More generally, I’d suggest this prescription (from Adrants via the Big Blog Company):

Give a shit. Basically, that’s what this boils down to. Consumers are not a vast collection of numbers on a spreadsheet or a nice collection of 5 categories with silly marketing names like “early, suburban adopter.” They are people with real concerns that will, ultimately, lead to a better product. Listen and give a shit. That’s good marketing medicine.

Verizon CMO Stratton talks tough to agencies

Oneangrycustomer relays the details of Verizon Wireless CMO John Stratton’s take on what awaits ad agencies in the years to come. Sounds like someone’s been taking a ride on the Cluetrain (or listening to Kevin Roberts of Saatchi & Saatchi). Some highlights of Stratton’s remarks:

“What you’ve been selling for the last 50 years no longer works.”

“Before they figure out where to put their money, your marketer clients will hire and fire agency after agency, seeking someone, anyone, who can tell them where they might go next.”

“But your clients actually need more than just an audience. One of the consequences of the evolution of our media-delivery systems over the last 10 years is that the audience you do ultimately find is much less receptive to the message you’re trying to send. They are absolutely armed and ready to get to the content they want while avoiding the message you are trying to implant within it.”

“They need much more than an audience. They need an audience that cares about what they have to say. They need their message to be relevant to the audience they are saying it to.”

It is tempting to wonder how it could take so long for such educated and experienced people to understand this. But it is refreshing and heartening to hear very blunt talk along these lines from someone in Stratton’s position.

The fact is that individual companies have been figuring this out on their own, without much guidance from industry bigwigs or major research projects, for years now. It is, after all, pretty straightforward to understand. The question for businesses everywhere is whether or not they are going to wait on the industry bigwigs and major research projects to help them figure out how it all applies to them. If the answer is no, keep visiting this blog or get in touch.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Blogs are business

Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters company, has a blogging CEO, Clare Hart. Euan Semple points to Hart’s latest post, which should ring some bells for those in business:

Factiva prepared a Business Terms index for The Financial Times Deutschland throughout 2005. We saw the term “blog” rise from 9th out of the 45 words we were tracking in January across the German media, and move to number 1 by the end of 2005. As the article points out, the term “blogs” was the most widely mentioned business term in December above terms like Risk Management, Crisis Management, Corporate Governance, Turnaround, ERP and Wikipedia.

This was the German press.  When applying the Business Terms Index across all of Factiva’s sources, the term “blog” moved from number 4 in January to number 1 in December 2005.

Adriana Cronin-Lukas, who is on our advisory board and whose Big Blog Company is an EA-approved supplier of blog consulting services, is also a risk management expert. If you suspect that gives her an edge when it comes to teaching her clients how to eliminate or reduce the risks associated with blogging, you’d be correct.