Business content from Leo Nelson
When I get my inbox to zero, I’m like and other great start up analogies.
Great interview with Square COO Keith Rabois, on his thoughts of e-commerce, recruiting, the cost of a free cup of coffee:
Traditionally, the businesses we serve were basically counting cups, and they would literally stack their cups up in their coffee shop that they would know the number of coffees that were being sold or cappuccinos that were being sold by the end of the day. That’s exactly why they won’t give you water if you’ve ever tried — it screws up the inventory management system.
and of course, his thoughts on mobile apps and their placement on the home screen of user’s devices:
If you are installed on a home screen, it’s not accidental. So being installed on a home screen encourages more use, whereas on the web you don’t necessarily have that home screen. Then secondly, what’s on my home screen here is self expressive. I know people are going to see my phone so I have Yelp here intentionally, and I have Twitter here intentionally, and Quora is here intentionally. So it’s not just a shortcut.
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From Your Credit Guide, under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act) consumers can now request and obtain a free credit report once every 12 months from each of the three nationwide consumer credit reporting companies. For residents of the North East states, AnnualCreditReport.com is the only authorized site that provides consumers with the secure means to order free credit reports from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
One of my friends is trying to put together the ultimate site on credit. A site that provides resources, credit card applications and a whole peer review system for credit cards. It’s definitely work in progress but he’s hopeful that the site will provide the necessary resources to help with establishing credit, checking credit, living without credit and even applying for credit. If you have a second, please stop by Your Credit Guide and do send in suggestions and feedback on how to improve the site.
Start with the customer and work backwards. Those two things, passion and customer-centricity, will take you an awful long way. – Jeff Bezos
It’s not a big deal finding a toll free number for a company, but finding a toll free numer that can eventually lead you to a live human operator is becoming an ordeal. Thankfully the good folks over at Quickbase have a customer service chart with shortcuts you can take to avoid the typical corporate Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system – the press #1 followed by 2 followed by 3 followed by ‘Please Try Again – A Response Is Required’ system.
Two numbers I definitely need from the chart are for Amazon.com (800-201-7575) and for Comcast (800-266-2278). In the past my computer manufacturer’s number would have been on the list, but unlike Dell, Gateway has a much more friendlier and more efficient customer service team and as a result I’ve never had to wait more than 2 minutes to speak to a customer service representative. In fact just two days ago when I called to have my laptop CD-ROM drive fixed, the whole troubleshooting process and new shipment confirmation was done in less than 5 minutes.
As a consumer, if I can speak to a company representative in less than 2 minutes and get a problem fixed in less than 5, you’ve essentially got me locked in as a life time customer.
Yesterday I received an email from a Hotmail Product Manager asking if I was still having trouble with connecting to Hotmail via Outlook/ Outlook Express. I was baffled; my blog post about my negative experience with Hotmail was heard and after a couple of e-mail exchanges my problem was resolved. Although, a large part of this solution was probably because of my beta testing experience with Microsoft, I’d like to think that that Aditya Bansod took time to listen to my feedback and act on it, and ultimately reflect very, very positively on the new ultimate listener on the block – Microsoft.
As I blogged about earlier, I think that a company that is willing to exceed the wants and expectations of the customer ultimately wins the battle. In my opinion a listening company encourages constructive feedback back to the company and also creates massive positive word-of-mouth advertising. After this experience you’re going to have to work twice as hard to get me to switch to a competitor’s product and to any company customer loyalty is the ultimate prize.
Thank you Aditya for listening and solving my Hotmail problem. It seems like the new team working on the Kahuna/ Mail Beta is dedicated to changing the service lockin perception and has already laid an amazing foundation to support this change.