Adii Rockstar

Ever wonder why supposed & so-called experts are still getting all the kudo’s, when the internet should have democratized these “privileges” & opportunities? Well, as frustrating as it is, experts still rule all the niches and it’s down to better self-marketing & branding to get into those spaces.

Here’s a few thoughts from my upcoming book - Rockstar Business - about becoming the expert.

I recently had two distinctly different experiences as a customer with two brands / companies that I interact with quite often. In both cases, I had a really bad experience in the customer service that we (@Jeanne_Vos & I) got and suffice to say, wasn’t that happy about either.

After the bad experience, I contacted both companies, as I felt that the owners should know about our experiences, as feedback from customers are always very valuable. The difference thereafter was in the way that these companies responded…

Experience #1: Glasshouse

I’ve been going to Glasshouse for quite a while now, to be pampered every now and again; and for recent visits Jeanne has joined me as well and we make an “outing” of it (and in the process spend a fair amount of money).

When I complained about our experience, the owner responded to my e-mail and apologized for the experience, whilst also explaining the situation that created the problem to begin with. We were also offered a free treatment each on our next visit, which we have received on a subsequent visit. On that visit, the owner also spoke to me in person, again apologizing about the previous experience and making sure that we were happy this time around.

Suffice to say, Glasshouse now has a very happy & extremely loyal customer, because they fixed the situation.

Experience #2: Sevruga

Sevruga is an amazing seafood & sushi restaurant in the Cape Town Waterfront and Jeanne & I have been there a few times, each time enjoying amazing sushi.

So on our last visit, we received extremely poor service from the waiting staff, which included us not getting the correct order and not being offered further drinks or even dessert (all the while, not being able to get the attention of a waiter). The bad service is also significant in relation to the premium prices on the menu, where you kinda expect the service to be just as amazing (as you are paying for a premium experience).

Upon complaining via e-mail, a manager responded to my mail with a vague, impersonal apology, as well as enquiring about the table we where sat at and the waiter that had served us. His response also included an invite to come to the restaurant again, as he believed that they had had an off-day and our experience the next time would make up for our shitty experience before.

His response did not include: a personal response to me (i.e. not just any customer), any kind of actual gesture to apologize or a proper invitation to come to the restaurant again.

Never say never, but we probably won’t ever go back to Sevruga.

Conclusion

I’m not after freebies and I don’t complain simply to get freebies. Instead I’m a firm believer that every owner needs to know when their staff has screwed up, as it gives them the opportunity to rectify the matter with the irate customer.

I also believe that a company that screws up and then fixes it, is a better company than the one that never even screwed up from the beginning; everyone is just human and we expect companies to screw up, which means it’s all about how they fix it.

If a situation is fixed afterwards, I can guarantee you that I will go back to the company every time in future. If however it is left impersonal and open-ended, I doubt whether I will find the incentive somewhere to actually go back ever again…

Read this article by the 37Signals folks and whilst I agree with them 99% of the time, I’m just not feeling very agreeable today…

See, I can agree that an obsession over a product name isn’t worthwhile as that time could be better spent doing stuff (i.e. developing your web app) that will create a bigger return on your investment / effort.

But the thing is, those product names become your brands too, which means you do need to put some initial thought into how you want to brand, market & position those products. If you go with a shitty name from the start (because you’re taking the approach of not obsessing), then it’s definitely gonna limit the space you have in which to tweak & market in future.

In the end, it comes down to finding a balance in terms of the things you spend your time on. So do spend time on deciding your product / brand names, but don’t be overly anal either as that is just valuable time being lost…

One thing that I’ve learned over and over again of late is that there is absolutely no space for compromise & complacency when dealing with customers. These are the people that makes your business a success and they ensure that you are able to pay the bills; so never - ever - stop short of pulling out all the stops to please your customers!

In the extremely agile online world, there seems to be a premium placed on getting to market first with a new feature or product. But I’d like to contest the viability and probably the suitability of that premium, since I don’t believe that it’s crucial to be the first to the market**.

Getting to the market first, gives you the bragging rights and all of the hype / publicity that goes along with that. This is obviously great and I’m sure this is every marketer’s dream, since the marketing angles are pretty easy; it is undoubtedly much harder to hype & market something when it already exists, but when you’re game-changing this is a massive advantage. It is also considerably easier to create & build your own share of the market, when no competitors exist.

So all-in-all it would seem like a great idea to get to the market first. This does however not mean that you need to make this the be-all & end-all of your strategy.

I believe that you have just as much space & just as many angles to market your brand & offerings when you aren’t first to the marketplace. You may need to be a little more unique (both in terms of your offerings, which need to solve problems in an unique way *and* your marketing efforts), but it is 100% possible.

In fact, sometimes I actually prefer this approach, as I have a lot more information available to me before having to commit to a specific strategy. When we first launch the club subscriptions on WooThemes (for example), we were heavily influenced by some of Joomla theme developers (most notably RocketTheme), who were already offering similar services. We may have not been first to market and club subscriptions definitely wasn’t a groundbreaking idea at the time, but we did bring our unique thinking to the business model and today it makes up a considerable chunk of our monthly revenues.

If you can do something better or in a more unique way to your competitors, you’ll always have a chance to gain market share and build a business from your efforts. So don’t be too focused on getting to market first; rather do something unique in your own personality & time.

**Note: This applies in most cases, so I’ve used a good dose of generalization here.