Keith Shirley

I was out for a walk last bank holiday Monday and I came across a group of lads spraying graffiti on the new bridge near Eire Og. I sent them packing but it got me thinking – should I have done more – such as call the police? I don’t think there is any point in kicking their arses as

- There were quite a few of them
- I don’t think it would do any good
- I was on the wrong side of the river

I took a video (see it below if Youtube behaves) with the intention that if they think I’ll report them/tell their parents then that fear factor would be a deterrent. Maybe I’m being too innocent and thinking back to my own childhood where if I had been caught doing this I’d probably have been beaten black and blue – and that would have only been by my brothers.

The next day I had the chance to bolster my new found sense of civic pride when a women threw a burning fag out the window of her parked car and it landed at my feet. Did I say anything? Nope – big chicken that I am I think all I managed was a dirty look. How brave of me.

The Carlow Graffiti “Artists” on Youtube

Update: It seems YouTube ate the audio – don’t worry – you’re not missing much. All I said was something like “right lads – time to go home”. Very inspirational.

You’ve just sent your complete customer list to your competitor. Not only that you’ve told them what your current best offers are so they can then follow up with those customers directly and offer them a cheaper price.

No way!, you say. Well you may have done that multiple times over the past year and not realised it.

Last week I received a monthly newletter from an IT company with a list of their current sales prices. That in itself is not a big issue. What surprised me was that when I looked at the TO: address on the email it had a huge (HUGE!!!!) list of, presumably all, their other business customers. Ignoring any data protection laws for the moment – this is

• Bad for business
• Good for your competitors (I presume you are all signed up to your competitors mailing lists)
• Very embarrassing (especially for an IT company)
• Putting you at risk of being brought to court – suppose it was an email for a support group on some personal matter.

There are a couple of ways that you can avoid this:

- The easiest way is to use the BCC option of your mail client. BCC means Blind Carbon Copy and it allows you to send mail to numerous people without them knowing about each other. In some clients it’s always available. In Outlook click the TO button when writing a mail and you will see BCC at the bottom of the window that appears. Microsoft have some extra info on using BCC with Outlook on their website. For other clients – dig around in the help file. If you can’t find it then let me know in the comments and I’ll add some extra info.

- A good newsletter should try to be personal. i.e You should at least use the persons name. What you need for this is an option called mail merge. It allows you to create a template and then automatically fill in details. It has the advantage that the mails get sent one by one and it looks nicer when it works. When it breaks it looks really bad – no one likes to receive a mail with Dear firstname lastname at the top. Unless you are sure of what you are doing I suggest to avoid dealing with mail merge directly.

- To do mailing lists properly I suggest you learn how to use one of the professional tools available. I can recommend Mailchimp and Toddle. These are easy to use web based tools that will allow you to easily send professional looking mails.

Proper mailing list managers will handle failed messages for you and make it easy for people to remove themselves from the list. The mails they create look much more professional than most people can manage themselves. Try them out and let me know of any successes or problems you have.

Fujitsu Siemens are promoting a new offer called Lifebook4Life where (after some conditions) you are entitled to a replacement Lifebook every 3 years for your lifetime.The upfront cost is a little higher as you have to purchase the 3 year warranty with your laptop.

To be honest it sounded too good to be true but I have not yet found any really bad issues:

- You need to be quick. You have to register within 21 days.

- The site currently says UK only but talking to Siemens representatives last week they indicated it would also be available to Ireland.

- You have to return an undamaged laptop after the 3 years. That could be an issue if they are really strict.

- You’ll get a cert that you need to provide whenever you want to claim the new PC. Don’t lose it.

- If you change business names you lose the upgrades. Ouch

Siemens also indicated to me that you will have the option to purchase the old laptop at a “reasonable” price. Considering I personally don’t want to buy a new laptop because I can’t face reinstalling everything, I think this is a nice idea.

Free laptops is my term – Siemens don’t seem to be following the “unlimited” type promises of the ISP’s but if I did do it and lived a long life then it would certainly feel free.

If anyone finds a catch I missed then please let me know. Note: I don’t sell hardware so don’t ask me for prices etc. I’m not sure if your local PC reseller will be so keen on the promotion. They could lose out on laptop sales long term. However, they will at least get license fees for software and, if they charge per PC, extra service fees.

The full details of the offer are current available on the Lifebook 4 Life website. You can be sure I’ll read it in detail before making any purchases.

I was having problems getting a USB mouse from Targus to work properly (model PAUM010). As the mouse was a freebie from a sales event 2 weeks ago I didn’t want to spend too much time on it.

This blog entry is replacing the notes I’d normally write (or at least with all good intentions would plan to write). Maybe it will be of use to you.

The original error was from Windows Vista complaining that there was a problem installing the driver as it was written for Windows 95 (I’m sure it said 95 and not Windows 98….I should have written it down).

My usual steps (change port, restart PC) did not work. Then I remembered I had gone through something like this before.

• Open Windows explorer
• Go to C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository (assuming that is where windows is installed to)
• Copy any folders starting with msmouse to a temporary folder e.g c:\temp
• Plug the mouse in again if needed and wait for the install to fail
• Start the Device Manager from the Control Panel
• You should see the “Unknown Device” displayed. Right click on it and select update driver.
• Choose the option where you can tell Windows which folder to use. Point it to c:\temp if that is where you copied the msmouse folders to.
• Click OK and be happy when it works.

When was the last time you checked the procedures for the answering calls within your business? Have you ever checked? Before this week passes – make sure you do – you’ll be surprised at what you find.

Firstly – you obviously can’t call in yourself. Unless you’re Robin Williams and can do great impressions then you’ll need some help. Start off with checking the easy stuff.

- Prepare in advance – have some scenarios prepared e.g. A customer just looking for some sales information, some more detailed technical support and maybe a customer with a problem. The last one can provide very interesting results if you have a scenario that is technically “not your problem” but as the owner you would like your customers to feel taken care of. An example would be a defect where the item is just out of warranty.Take the opportunity to really test the knowledge of your employees.

- Firstly – How easy is it for your customers to find the phone number? Is it on your web site in a really easy to find place i.e Don ‘t force your customer to fill out web forms.

- Get someone to make the call for you. How long did the phone ring before it was answered? Try it just after the office opens in the morning and just before lunch.

- Was it 100% clear where you were connected to when the phone was answered? Did they give their name and the business name?

- It sounds stupid but did they answer the phone with a smile? Could you tell from their tone of voice that they were happy to help. If you were calling about a problem – did they “take ownership”. in other words – did they convey the attitude that the call was being taken seriously and that a solution would be found.

- If you have a automation system – was your test customer able to find their way through it comfortably? Was a fallback in place in case no options were chosen?

- If you are put on hold – what was the hold music like? Has it been broken for months but nobody knew? Is it the local radio station that currently talking about some off the wall topic? If it’s prerecorded music – is the quality OK?

- As you move on to the detail – make notes there and then about the things that you need to improve. Do your employees need more training? Are you at fault for never actually telling them what you want from them? If they can’t immediatly provide the information do they

• ask you to call back (bad),
• ask if you can wait a few minutes while they get the information (good)
• ask if you would like them to call you back with the info (great). If they really call back then make sure to praise them.

Remember: The whole point of feedback is to be constructive. Help them to understand what was done well and what could be improved on. If you’ve never done training with your employees on how you want customer contact to be dealt with then you can’t expect them to read your mind.

You can also get a professional company to do this for you – they will go into more detail and hopefully have lots of different people calling. I still suggest don’t the first trial run yourself. This week still!

Feel free to add some tips of your own to the comments section or send them directly to me. I’ll update the blog with them.