Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

As I have noted elsewhere, our customers mostly like us, and what we do – the results we received from the survey we recently conducted were largely what we expected, in this sense.

When I find a bit more “spare” time, I’ll summarise some of the feedback here.

It’s a nice thing, but one we can’t take for granted.

From my perspective, we’ve already disappointed some of them on too many occasions.  I really want major improvement in the months ahead.

If we are really going to make “Customers First” our prime reason for being, we need to have an explicit measure of the extent to which we really do live by this motto.  When we have this measure, we will drive the company by this measure.

The development of this measure will be one of the core responsibilities that our new GM for Finding, Attracting and Delighting Customers will need to adopt, when we have recruited them.

Hence it was with interest that I stumbled upon this presentation titled “Ideas for Building Better Software Businesses” from Dharmesh Shah (of HubSpot) at the Business of Software conference in 2009:

Note that Dharmesh (as an additional service to his customers and fans) has prepared this page from his “OnStartups” blog to list some of the key points in the video.

I like this approach of “going the extra step” to make the message more understandable.

The following notes are specifically about his suggestions for the Customer Happiness Index (CHI):

Note that there is plenty of other good stuff in this video (you have to get to minute 47 before he mentions CHI), which I might have a chance to talk about at some other time.

read more »

For those who have been frequent readers of this blog, you will understand that I have a number books on the go at any one time.

This makes for eclectic reading, and generally slower progress than would otherwise be the case.

1)  Binary Review

… however I pretty much flew through this one, given it was aligned with our primary core value of “Customers First”, and the other ones as well.

The Book	What we thought
“I love you more than my Dog” by Jeanne Bliss	Just where we are headed

read more »

I’ve just posted a book review of “I Love you More than my Dog!”

The following five-step action plan for saying sorry to customers was provided by the author (p144) and is worth remembering, so I’ve posted it separately here for east of reference:

STEP 1 = “Delivering a swift response.”

STEP 2 = “Showing humility and empathy for what the customer is experiencing.”

STEP 3 = “Accepting accountability”

STEP 4 = “Providing an honest explanation of what happened and a commitment to improve”

STEP 5 = “Extending the olive branch – to right the situation and mend the relationship”

I know we have a long way to go until we can say that we follow these steps unfailingly in all circumstances…

On Friday last week (5th March) at Beer O’clock, we brainstormed about what it means (to us) to share the primary value of “Customers First”.

We will continue this process in subsequent weeks with the aim of identifying the specifics of what each core value means to us, and how we (and others) can hold ourselves accountable.

The following is a shortened list of some of the points made during the brainstorming session (a fuller list is here as a restricted post).

read more »

I have previously written about how we need to be focused on delivering value to our customers in order to achieve our vision for the growth of our business.

A relentless drive to deliver real value to our customers is one of my Core Values.

I know that this is not the way every company approaches business, but it is where our bus is headed.

Hence it was with great interest that I had a chance to read through Roger Martin’s article “The Age of Customer Capitalism” in the HBR Magazine for January-February 2010 – as this provided another reason to do the same.

read more »

Here’s another back-dated post, with a date chosen shortly after Joel’s post to which it refers.  I’ve done this to ensure that these comments are read in context.

My apologies to those for whom this practice offends – as noted before, I believe ICT is an enabler, not an ends in itself (or, to put it another way, I am not interested in form without substance).

.

1)     Introduction to Joel’s Post

Back on November 1st, Joel Spolsky made a post for Inc magazine entitled “Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death?”.

One of the guys in the office found this, and it stimulated a bit of discussion internally about where our bus is headed (on a restricted post).  This was good, as we had commenced our Autopsy 2 process. read more »