Philip Wilkinson on Sep 13, 2007, in Uncategorized
4 commentsThis is a late night post but thought a quick looksie at our new Wordpress template might be in order:
Hopefully a lot cleaner and encourages the rest of the team to contribute + some guest bloggers.
Philip Wilkinson on Jul 30, 2007, in Uncategorized
3 commentsThis weekend was really productive as I had both Bartek (one of our top developers from Poland) and Oliver (our new CTO) in the trusted places office - thanks guys.
The whole purpose was to go through every single aspect of the new upcoming site, covering:
We’ve also been working out of our favourite haunt at adam street where we get free wireless, a great choice of drinks, and a nice “cave” atmosphere which always works well when you’re doing technical work!
Here’s Bartek working hard on the new “crowd” display algorithm:
and me (for some reason without a left hand!):
Now of course, Bartek is in his last week with us as he’s moving on to start his new business idea “travels.to” in Poland later this year - I must stop telling people how great starting your own business is 
Oliver will be taking over of course - fun times ahead!
Philip Wilkinson on Jul 23, 2007, in Uncategorized
1 commentIt amazes me how many companies out there still have very bad customer experiences and treat the customer as a commodity they can churn and replace. Now everybody makes mistakes and you can never please everyone all the time, but surely it’s the processes you put in place to minimise this as much as possible and how well you handle the problems and mistakes as they occur.
Let me give you some examples from my own experiences:
[Boxwood Cafe]
Owned by Gordon Ramsey (who is brilliant for putting the customer first), I had a meal there with my wife and in-laws, and had a really nice time with great food and nice atmosphere. As we got near desserts, they started taking a while to bring the dishes and got some of them slightly wrong, which made things a bit awkward. Anyway, as the bill was being prepared I saw the manager having a chat with his waiting staff over it and I went over to speak to him. I outlined how I wasn’t happy with the latter part of the experience and he immediately agreed that he also felt the same way and would like to discount all the desserts, coffees, teas, and wine from the bill. Great - both of us were happy.
So, they made some mistakes, admitting them, then corrected them in every way to please the customer. Net result - I have even more respect for them and will definitely go back again.
Virgin Media (no they’re not getting a link)
Now this is appalling. Not only did they lose the Sky One deal which annoyed many TV customers, but there have been thousands of complaints about Virgin Media who have been having slower and slower internet speeds (myself included). To top this, they introduced a technical support charge at 25p / minute for anyone wanting to try and get things fixed!
So quite a few mistakes here and I rang Customer Relations today and spoke to an annoying little scottish man named “William”. Now let’s be clear about this team’s role as I used to work for Telewest years ago before it became Virgin Media, in their commercial team. The Customer Relations team are supposed to “retain customers” in as many ways a possible as it costs 10x as much to acquire new ones. They can apologise, give discounts, suggest offers, and arrange to follow up problems directly. So what does William do? Well, firstly he interrupts me when I’m speaking, tells me I can eventually get a refund on tech support calls if I prove it was their fault and write a letter after I get the bill next month, and then says there is nothing he can or will do.
When I mention I am just going to disconnect everything and tell everyone I know not to bother with this abysmal service - he accuses me of threatening him and that this is not a good way to get any help from Virgin. HA HA HA! Pathetic.
British Airways
I was supposed to be at an outdoor adventure clothing show meeting some brands with one of the companies I have invested in for outdoor adventure equipment ecommerce site called Webtogs, on Friday - post Monsoon Morning as we shall now call it. So, arriving at the airport, most flights were of course cancelled and our BA one being one of them. We spoke to the customer service rep who apologised and gave us a single A4 sheet explaining how we could try and rebook another flight via internet, phone, or waiting in a 2 hour queue. They also stated that a full refund would be due.
In this scenario, it wasn’t really their fault and they were trying to book people on new flights and give you lots of options how to do this. For such short notice, this was actually a decent customer experience.
Summary
So, three sample customer experiences here, all of which made mistakes, but only one of them did a really good job of handling things and keeping my trust, while another kept me satisfied, and the third lost all respect and loyalty.
In summary, I believe so much in customer service being the number one thing to get right with any business and brand - not only at the point of sale and using the product, but right into when something goes wrong and needs handling. My question to you is why brands with bad experiences continue to thrive instead of everyone boycotting them and voting with their wallets..?
The Storm on Apr 19, 2007, in Uncategorized
2 commentsWord of my departure from Crowdstorm is spreading fast, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to express my thanks to the team, to the users, and to everyone who has helped along the way. It’s been thrilling, challenging, and downright fun.
I’d like to clear up a misconception that’s being floated around about the reasons for my decision to leave. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m absolutely not “sold on the old way” of doing things at Crowdstorm. I feel very strongly that the site needs to evolve into something completely new and exciting. I wish Phil and the team all the best with the giant development effort before them, and I look forward to hearing about their successes.
As for me, I’m in search of a new adventure. (Will work for chocolate.)
Philip Wilkinson on Feb 20, 2007, in Uncategorized
No comments
If you haven’t seen it already - I would really recommend a great post and call for action from Saul Klein on his blog, under the subject: Y Europe can seed growth of its new stars. This is a real push for European wide entrepreneurs, angels, and investors to create a real sustainable and innovative concept for driving forward our internet businesses from this side of the pond.
It has often been the case that Europe can lead with some really good ideas and implementations, run by very talented people, but often lack the real vibe of Silicon Valley and their attitude to risk and openness.
Saul doesn’t just talk about it in this post but actively wants to engage the topic and gather feedback and ideas for exactly how we can all do something about this in 2007.
So - let’s get cracking! Get involved and help shape what happens by leaving your comments on Saul’s post. Keep checking by his blog regularly too as he will constantly be updating things based on the feedback and outlining next steps.
Philip Wilkinson on Feb 02, 2007, in Uncategorized
No comments
Both Crowdstorm and the Social Shopping space got mentioned in the US .Inc magazinepower of suggestion and also in a summary table entitled Let’s go Shopping. Its basic angle was to suggest that social shopping sites are becoming a good way for smaller merchants to get noticed and build a bit of a brand and traffic - for what looks like no fee right now. It also suggested that small groups of taste makers get together in groups and help recommend products to each other.
Now, it may just be me, but this seems a very shallow interpretation and not without a few flaws. Of course, Crowdstorm in the form you see today may not be much different from the competitors so I can’t really complain - BUT… from my Kelkoo days I remember that dealing with even a medium number of merchants (100+) was an admin nightmare - let alone trying to aggregate 1000’s of them into a social shopping environment and getting them to a: pay and b: reports to them on a regular basis. Ugh!
With regards to small groups around similar tastes - isn’t that just a super blog?
So - thanks for the article Inc but would have been nice if you’d delved a bit deeper…
Philip Wilkinson on Jan 18, 2007, in Uncategorized
No commentsA new conference from Ryan and the Carson Workshop guys, following on from the ace Future of Web Apps 2007 that is being run in February.
These conferences / workshops are always really well done and gets a great line up of speakers. Details:
What: FOWD London
When: April 18th 2007
Where: Kensington Conference Centre, London
Price: £59 limited early bird offer! £85 full price
Speakers:
Ryan Singer (37Signals)
Josh Davis (JoshDavis.com) tbc
Joshua Hirsch (Big Spaceship)
George Oates (Flickr)
Andy Clarke (Stuff and Nonsense)
Rei Inamoto (AKQA)
Florian Schmitt (Hi-ReS)
Denise Wilton (Moo)
Jason Arber (Pixelsurgeon)
Dan Saffer (Adaptive Path)
Jeff Croft (WorldOnline)
Mark Tutssel (Leo Burnett)
Simon Collison (CollyLogic)
You can register on the official site of future of web design.
See you there!
Philip Wilkinson on Jan 09, 2007, in Uncategorized
No commentsNow, I can only say this is a Mac in your hand.
A touchscreen, widescreen ipod + phone + internet communications device all in one.
Widgets, iChat, iCal, Mail.app, runs OS X.
Touch and feel the music:
Built in speaker - built in 2meg phone.
Quad band GSM, which means it will work in Europe and the US!
Really easy contacts viewer, email “push” IMAP.
View and size iPhoto’s:
The interface is “drool-tastic!”.
When is it out?
: June 2007 with a 2yr Cingular contract
: Q4!
Philip Wilkinson on Jan 09, 2007, in Uncategorized
2 comments
Something the xbox 360 could have been but just fell short (due to daft limitations on only really being able to stream music and photo’s, and mostly via a media centre PC)… comes Apple’s cool new little device - the Apple TV
Formerly the iTV, it is now real and has USB 2.0, Ethernet, WiFi, HDMI, bunch of standard outs, and a 40GB hard drive.
720p resolution, up to five computers can connect to it, can watch movies, TV shows, photos, play music, and even pull full streaming video off a site.
Say goodbye to your bank balance folks - the Crowdstorm boys will be buying this for the office.
Philip Wilkinson on Dec 22, 2006, in Uncategorized
No commentsI wasn’t going to do another post before christmas but Pete Cashmore contacted me from the great Mashable blog to say we had been put up as one of the entries for Best Social Shopping Site of 2006.
So - we need your help…. Just click on the button below or follow this link to vote for Crowdstorm. All you need to do is write a comment on the blog post and state “vote: Crowdstorm”
Really appreciate any support - and merry christmas again!
The Crowdstorm Blog is about opinions and peppers and stuff like that - honest - nothing to do with a blog about what we're up to and stuff.
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