Jonothan Stribling

I spent some time yesterday with a bloke who ran a web design business that has built a great platform covering all the bases for a small business website, from brochure to feature rich online store. I can’t disclose the name of the business but there were a few things that impressed me about their approach and it wasn’t their technology.

Don’t get me wrong, their technology is great but it doesn’t set them apart from the multitude of businesses with mature web platforms like Adobe’s Business Catalyst, Yola, Weebly, Wix and BigCommerce. Their tech does all that you would expect a web publishing platform to do including forms, pages, galleries, email marketing, shopping carts, pricing levels, metrics and so on. The technology is fine, what sets them apart is their approach to the customer.

Everything is geared towards ensuring the customer has a delightful experience. Everything.

The proof of their success is that they have had only three cancellations in three years. Out of thousands of customers only three had been so unhappy that they have taken their business elsewhere. That is pretty goddam impressive.

So how do they do it?

Simple. They make the customer feel like the most important person in the relationship. This isn’t the typical relationship between the all knowing web dude and uninformed customer. It is a relationship where everything is structured so the customer gets a great result from their website from the pre-sales to well after launch.

They do this in two simple ways.

The first and most important way they make their customer feel like a star is by talking once every month for 45 minutes. This is included in every website price and let’s the customer know what is happening with their website, what they should be focussing on, and gives the a opportunity to ask questions and manage their online channel with the assistance of professionals eager to help.

This is superb customer service and the essence of being a social business. Do what makes your customers happy an nothing else!

The second way they approach their business differently is by documenting every process and I mean every process. Whether their staff are pitching a deal, servicing a customer, or managing a design brief everything is documented so their is no room for error. The customer will get the same service everything they interact regardless of the staff. Simple but very very effective.

What I recognised about this business is that their are no technology businesses only people businesses. Any business that becomes obsessed by the tech and forgets the customer is doomed to disappoint. The technology is simply an enabler to make customers lives easier. The next time a geek or techie goes on and on about tech remind them about who uses technology.

How could you approach your customers differently? Would a phone call once a month make them happy?

I was talking with a colleague about the BONDS Facebook page today admiring their 600K+ likes when she challenged me to find another Australian brand with a higher number of likes. I’m happy to say that I did.

A few things stood out.

Australian fashion brands dominated the rankings. Global surfing brands Quiksilver and Billabong led the charge with over 1 million likes, followed by BONDS.

The NRL leads the AFL by around 30 thousand likes. Interestingly, the NRL fan site, my-nrl.com, has slightly more likes than the official NRL site.

Holden has over 200K followers, no doubt on the back of a big “social” campaign to launch the new Captiva. This indicates a well executed social media strategy.

The telcos, Telstra and Optus are pretty evenly matched. What’s interesting is that as “technology” brands they don’t have a higher number of likes.

The banks are poorly represented. The only banks I could find were the NAB and the new Bank of Melbourne. The new Bank of Melbourne billboard campaign has prominent social media icons and this has obviously been relatively successful as it has generated more followers than NAB.

Retailers like Myer, David Jones, and Harvey Norman are at the lower end of the rankings. Harvey Norman however did appear to be pursuing a pretty successful Facebook places strategy. It was unclear whether this had been initiated by them or simply organic.

The Australian brand social media rankings

1. Quiksilver 1,213,398
2. Billabong 1,040,527
3. BONDS 629,363
4. NRL 373,949
5. AFL 343,217
6. Holden 228,059
7. Optus 52,079
8. Myer 43,359
9. Big W 36,491
10. VB 33,643
11. Telstra 25,584
12. Seven Eleven 24,730
13. David Jones 22,993
14. iiNet 18,888
15. Harvey Norman 8,837
16. Bank of Melbourne 8,290
17. NAB 8,245
18. Coles 5,360
19. James Boag’s & Sons 3,814

This ranking was created 18 August and the brands ranked were my best estimation of major Australian brands. If you think any are missing, drop me a line.

Image Credit

I found out today that Myer have started to offer free shipping in Australia. This is a welcome step and a sign of the maturing of online retail in Australia.

The large department store and big box stores have largely ignored ecommerce for the past 15 years and have started to act after being faced with changing consumer behaviour and declining profits .

There is a long way to go. The David Jones online store has made big improvements but is a great example of getting a lot wrong.

Some retailers like Bunnings offer only store location tools and catalogue downloads. The catalogues are a prime example of Australian business taking the easy way out and not thinking about what’s good for the customer.

Who wants to navigate a printed catalogue online? It is a horrible user experience and only encourages customers to look elsewhere for better service and value.

I applaud Myer for being bullish about online retail in Australia and going for $50 million in annual sales. It is a great target and shareholders, customers, and the business will all benefit.