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Why is online feedback so broken?

Posted on by Billy Tucker

service on yelpConsumers have changed in the past 5 years, now they do more than consume, they create too.

Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Foursquare and others have trained their Billion users combined in the art of publishing. The pursuit of Comments, Likes and Shares are at the heart of Consumer Publishing, and getting those Likes can sometimes be more important than being truthful.

When it comes to feedback, trying to write a sharable review is at odds with the needs of the business being reviewed. Constructive feedback is great for the business owner, but isn’t all that sharable. Controversial, sensational, emotional, hateful and provocative are better. Combine this with an unhealthy disregard for issues of liable, with Online Ratings and Reviews sites perceived to be a Safe Harbour for the reviewer, and your business can suffer very badly indeed, with little or no recourse.

Yabbit provides a channel for consumers to give feedback that is both discrete and constructive, giving the Business Owner the chance to follow up and diffuse any issues before they become public. By promoting Yabbit you encourage your customers to channel their feedback to you in a constructive way, saving your business from expensive long term brand damage.

It isn’t all about surprise and delight, keeping customers is about getting the basics right

Posted on by Billy Tucker

Today’s customers are more sophisticated than ever, sampling the wares of more brands in more locations than ever before, happy to journey to a café in the suburb next to the next suburb for a cold drip, encouraged to buy from overseas by far flung Friends’ waxings on Facebook and keenly eyeing the swings in their local currency for macroeconomic bargains. This Neo Consumer is older and richer than before too, more thoughtful, more discerning and always ready to Switch.

The Neo Consumer is empowered, in control and they know it.

Informed and empowered Neo Consumers are hard to impress too. Battling for their business is harder than ever, and the dangling of ever-oranger carrots has become an increasingly important part of the game. 3 Hour delivery, 100 day free returns, free international shipping, and super slick omnichannel blah blah have apparently become the battleground. But too much emphasis is lumped on the need to differentiate from the competition with whistles and bells at the expense of profit, and worse still, at the expense of consistent, good service that’s required to keep the hard-to-win Neo Consumer coming back.

With that empowerment also comes a willingness to walk away at the slightest hint their expectation won’t be met. And for the Neo Consumer, switching to a new provedore is easy come easy go. No warnings and no second chances, one slip, and they’re gone.

Why Dick Smith Electronics is a dead brand walking

Posted on by Billy Tucker
Dead Brand Walking

Less than a year after Woolworths (WOW) sold DSE to Anchorage Capital (after 20 years of ownership), and the basics of retailing seem to be all but gone at the struggling Electronics retailer.

It was always hard to imagine that the specialist Private Equity firm could do a better job than WOW at shaking up DSE’s retailing fortunes, suggesting that their focus may be on the DSE Website. But try as they might, they will not build an online profit pot big enough to counter the millstone effect of a failing retail chain.

Get face to face with one of the DSE crew in any of the 325 stores (that’s Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi put together) and you will more than likely abandon any idea you once had of purchasing some battery powered thingamy.

My third trip to DSE George Street Sydney in so many weeks has left me agape at the ineptitude of the floor walkers, scarce as they may be.

Here’s an example. “hey” I said, “can you tell me about this Kensington GPRS device”, “no”, he said, “I don’t know anything about it”. “ok, well, what about this Jawbone UP?”, “no, sorry”.

Where is “Let me find someone who does”, or, “let’s look it up on one of the 200 effing PC’s we have in the store”, or “give me your email and I’ll send you something”, or ANYTHING FOR THAT MATTER – SHOW ME YOU CARE, SHOW ME YOU GIVE A SHIT! This is about care for your customer, which is an attitude. JB Hi-Fi seem to solve it with hiring and incentives, but failing that getting the culture right is a good place to start.

I may have been unlucky. Three visits and three checked-out check-out workers. But that’s all it takes to kill your brand once and for all – and after 45 years on the high street, that would be a tragedy.