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Brick No127: Now in Orange, Red and White
By Matt Weston, Friday 21 January 2005 I'll spare you the gory details, the before, during and after pics of reconstructive surgery, and the espresso fuelled early hours . . . . . . the new Business Bricks website (Mk3) is live at http://www.businessbricks.co.uk (you might need to refresh your cache to see it in its orange, red and white glory). This page, in particular, is required reading. Before I continue, I must thank Andy and Noam at Mint Digital for designing, crafting, and building the site. I'd still need a young Aled Jones to sing their praises highly enough, now you can see why. We're ironing out one or two glitches today, so if you spot anything unusual it would be great if you could let me know. I need to ask you another favour regarding the website, but more on that in a sec. How to extract more wisdom from the Aussie dentist Because I've been buried under something heavy this last fortnight (see http://businessbricks.co.uk/archive.shtml the full weight of the archive, all 126 Bricks), I've been neglecting my inbox. If you're awaiting a reply, I'll try to get back to you by early next week. But I did pick this out, courtesy of William Davies: " Dear Matt, I loved the one about the dentist but doesn't this fly in the face of the idea that you should work to make all your customers happy as the unhappy ones will tell 10 potential customers but happy ones will tell fewer? (I can't remember the exact proportions). " Will runs the <East London School of English btw. And he's talking about Paddi Lund, the Brisbane-based dentist in Brick No125, see <Seth's blog for the write up. And Will is right. I'm not sure there are any exact proportions. But academic after academic has shown that, for the average business, an unhappy customer will tell at least 10 others, whilst a happy customer will tell maybe 2 or 3 others. And for every complaint received, the same average business has over 20 it never hears. But this is my take on the Paddi Lund story: (1) He didn't sack his "Type C" customers lightly. These were customers who "always complained, turned up late and b*tched about his fees". Trying to please them was like pulling teeth. Okay, bad simile. But his "Type C's" were unhappy whether they were customers or ex-customers. (2) It's a myth that unhappy customers are more influential than happy customers. An unhappy customer will vent to anyone who will listen, however irrelevant the product. But a happy customer will only recommend your product to somebody who is likely to take the advice (hence "Type A" customers are most likely to refer other "Type A" customers). In this case the 2 or 3 listeners trump the 10. (3) Paddi's masterstroke wasn't sacking half his clients. It was working out that the best way to get more "Type A" customers was by word-of-mouth, and that the best way to achieve this was to make referring at least 3 other "Type A's" part of the dentist/ client deal. Unlike Paddi Lund, I'm not going to make it compulsory that you refer at least 3 other "Type A's" to Business Bricks . . . But by the same token it's not making much of an assumption to say that, to me, you are a "Type A" reader. I worked out that about 65% of you found Business Bricks because of word-of-mouth (or mouse). And almost everyone on this list is a real-life small business owner, sole trader or freelancer. And because you're a "Type A" reader, I need you to find other "Type A" readers for me. Perhaps you could drop an email to all your small business friends, clients, contacts, and suppliers, directing them to the <new orange, red, and white homepage to sign-up? Or if you've got a website, how about including a link to the UK's Liveliest Small Business Newsletter? (A text link is fine, but if you'd like a banner or tile image, see this page. Remember to sign up: back to top |
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