Yes. You. You rock.

Thank you so much to everyone who participated, voted, and annoyed their friends to help us during our Mission Small Business voting period. I’m happy (ecstatic) to report that we made our 250 votes with over a week to spare, and ended up going over by several votes by the time the contest ended. We’re now on to the next round, where our application is judged and 12 grants are awarded.

Should we win one of the grants, we want to expand, hiring several more employees in the very near future. So good work, by taking 30 seconds of your day to support us, you’re creating local jobs! We’ll also be able to discount more work for local non-profits and provide modern solutions to help them help others. But the long term effects are even better – adding more employees means we can also start concentrating on our own products. By investing in ourselves, we’ll be able to grow even more, adding more and more jobs. It also makes us more resilient and stronger as a company.

Again, thank you all so much for supporting us, and we hope we can return the favor real soon.

This will make sense in a second

Each day has it’s own adventures, only some are more exciting than others.  Karma’s daily adventure fell on the more boring side of things today, but an adventure nonetheless.

“Where should we go to lunch?” became limited to the fine restaurants in downtown Louisville close to the DMV office, as requested by Chris.  The day before this, Chris mistakenly wound up with two titles to the same vehicle, a problem that needed to be tended to quickly.

Kayla and I looked at each other with an equal amount of dread when walking into the DMV, to which Chris responded (and I’m fairly sure this quote is 100% accurate), “Don’t worry guys, I’ve never spent more than five minutes at this office.”

A shaky guarantee like that inevitably jinxed us beyond control.  His number was called fairly soon, and then he promptly broke the DMV.  As it turns out, resolving this issue was on par with my cat trying to solve a rubik’s cube (see above).  They didn’t understand what it was, batted it around for awhile, and then fell asleep on it.  The computer couldn’t figure out the problem, the printer broke down, files were missing, lines were backing up, and children were weeping.

Customer service is a beautiful thing when it’s there, and when it’s missing, everything else falls apart.  If any of you savvy Mac users have ever had an issue, you probably know the sweet side of it.  The genius bar in the Apple Store is there to figure out what the problem is, and if all else fails, give you a new whatever.

Great customer service requires a couple of different things.  First things first, you have to have know your product or service inside and out.  If customers come to you with questions or issues, you have to be able to distinguish and solve the actual problem.  If applications on my Mac are running slow and I take it to the make Apple Store, the genius bar will likely find that the issue of speed is the symptom of something else.  Nothing is more frustrating to a customer than being put back on hold once they finally connect to a customer service rep because they have to ask their boss what to do.  We all have the responsibility of being knowledgeable individuals in our field.

Secondly, you have to make it easy for customers.  There’s a whole world of technology, and the DMV is still using smoke signals to communicate with the public and other offices.  Are you utilizing as many tools as possible to connect with consumers?  Are you making customers lives easier, or forcing them through a maze of automated telephone messages?  Another look at our friends Apple, and we see the ideal system.  Online arrangements are in place to be as helpful as possible, friendly customer service reps are reachable via telephone, and a reservation system for Apple Stores was set up to keep customers from drawing a number and waiting for hours (like you know who).  Think about how you can beef up your customer service using customer-friendly technology.

So what technology could the DMV implement to bring it into the 21st century? An online help center.  After some quick research, I found loads of forms that you can print off and fill out before you leave house, which would save everyone precious time.  However, that’s only if you can figure out which forms you will and won’t need.  This could all be solved with a simple chat feature where drivers could connect to DMV workers to ask questions, and get information. Or, even  simpler, a form system which lets you answer specific questions, like New Registration -> Boat -> From Out of State, and gives you all the forms you need to have with you.

What else?  Kids at Disney World can figure out which lines to get in thanks to those helpful average wait time displays before you enter.  Wouldn’t it be nice to get online before you leave the house to check how many folks are already in line waiting? Maybe from a mobile site, or a text message. And wouldn’t be amazing if you could reserve an appointment for yourself online?  All of these capabilities are widely used by others, saving both you and consumers time and frustrations.

Let’s wrap this up, and get to the point.  You are going to have customers bring problems to you.  How you handle their problem has the ability to create a life-long loyal consumer, or send them running to your competitor.

Also don’t go in the DMV after Chris.

source beatcanvas.com

Conventional wisdom says to cut your marketing and advertising budget in a recession, but if you did then you’d be wrong!

Let me explain. See, despite how much you loathe commercials and advertising telling you what to buy, without them you’d be lost. That’s where you get 95% of your knowledge about products and services. Advertisers also know that consumers buy the things that are most familiar to them, and unless something catastrophic happens, they will most likely keep buying it! Here are my top 3 catastrophes (in no particular order) and how to avoid them.

1. Poor customer service

Cutting customer service or outsourcing it could be a deadly mistake. Even if your product fails at the most inopportune time imaginable, if your customer service makes it right, most people will still forgive you. Conversely, if your product fails, and it’s not even that big of a deal to them, but your customer service sucks, they will buy something else and tell everyone how bad you suck!

You may just have to bite a bullet here, but many companies have had great success re-configuring how their customer service works. If your product is a web application, you may want to have your developers start taking on some of the support tickets. This can give the developers a first hand view of what the most common problems are and where in the app the hang-ups are.

2. Your customers are indifferent

If your customers don’t have any reason to buy your product or service over a competitor’s, they won’t! Passion begets passion. I drive an Audi, and man I love that car. Ford would have to make make something absolutely incredible to get me to buy that and give up my A4. I love my Audi so much that I got 3 of my friends to buy them (I’ll do a whole post on Audi in the near-future).

Advocates are the key here. Make sure your current customers are not only bringing in future customers, but talking about how great you are, all the time. You should also look at fresh, original ways to keep your customers feeling special. Twilio, a cloud-based IVR, gave me a $20 credit twice, just because! We’ve spent thousands of dollars with Twilio, and all it took to keep us from looking elsewhere was a $40 credit, which probably cost them less than $5 in hard cash.

3. Your customers forget about you

In 1988, a major food brand in the US slashed their advertising budget, cutting it from $7 million to $4 million. Right before the budget cut, a blind taste survey showed that the brand was given a 24% higher rating when seeing the brand as opposed to consuming it ‘blind’ (not knowing which brand they were consuming). 4 years later, in 1992, as the advertising money for the product had continued to erode, the same test was conducted. This time, the brand was only given a 10% boost when seeing the brand as opposed to blind. The brand had lost over half of it’s ‘brand power’, failing to appeal to it’s consumers as it once had.

There have been many theories as to why this particular brand fell off the radar, but almost everyone attributes at least part of it to its brutal marketing budget cuts. Don’t forget about your customers, or they will forget about you! It’s a crucial mistake, and an unnecessary one, considering there are tons of ways to grow your customer base without growing your budgets. From higher ROI options like SMS marketing, to social media (like Facebook, or Twitter).

Milk stopped advertising altogether, and saw no drop in sales for the first 12 months. But then it started into a sharp decline, and continued to drop at a staggering rate. On top of that, it took another 18 months, just to stop the decline! In the end, they spent more than they would have had they continued advertising and marketing. Plus, if everyone else has stopped advertising, and you still are, you are going to gain market share!

Make sure you have an advertising strategy that fits your budget but also is not just a ‘placeholder’. Even with a small budget, there are always ways to reach your customers and potential customers. Don’t set yourself up to fail. Not advertising is not a marketing strategy!