heart.head.work.life

Category: Startup

To Blog or Not To Blog

By: Patrick Hoesly – CC BY 2.0

As I explore the social media customer service space – trying to discover and connect, I am learning quite a bit.

Should I join the fray and blog about what I am learning in order to share and establish some sort of profile or authority? I’m concerned that there is so much of the same crap out there that what I have to add – which I consider to be quite disruptive/provocative ideas – will simply get drowned out.

Also, each new blogger is making the problem of finding the useful stuff even harder – a self defeating act. There is a need for some really intelligent curation that helps people find useful and actionable content.

For these reasons, I’m not convinced of the effectiveness of blogging. For each of the most successful, most widely read blogs out there , there are hundreds of thousands that are churning out content that either no one cares about or no one can find. And blogging is deceptive – it feels good to express your ideas (for me , most of the time , this is all I want – pah! who needs readers) – but with my startup, I want people to consider these disruptive ideas and collaborate with me to bring them to fruition, test them and help everyone.

But if I don’t blog – what shall I do instead? I’m open to ideas.

18 July 2013
July 18: A Mixed Bag
By: crabchick – CC BY 2.0

Not sure what to make of this week. It’s a bit like being in the Tom Hanks movie ‘The Terminal’. I’m stuck but actually while I’m in this state of suspension there are really interesting things happening, but mostly I’m still stuck. Unlike Tom Hanks, my becoming unstuck is in my hands, I just don’t know how or I’m currently too scared to try – perhaps a bit of both. The former I can learn and the latter I will outgrow in time and by taking small risks.

Here is my check in:
- Glad that my Spanish language exchange is really going well. Duolingo is great, but it is no substitute for actually getting into really interesting conversations with a native speaker.
- Sad that I will be away from my family for 5 weeks while go do some coaching work.
- Glad that there are Spanish language meetups where I’ll be, so I can keep up
- Mad that I have not cracked this sales thing. I think I need to get a mentor/coach. That will be my task today – understand what I want help with!
- Glad that I will have 5 weeks of doing something else primarily and some focused time in a different location to put into overcoming what is currently got me stuck.
- I’m grateful for being able to reflect on things, sometimes too deeply – but that is a small price to pay for being able to reflect and learn.
I’m confused and stuck and in.

Improve On…
- Completing blog posts I have started
- Being more patient with this journey. Overnight successes take a long time to make.
Today
- Blog. I’m trying to do 3 a day (this one, a personal one and one for ServiceChat about customer service).
- Talk to more customers
- Continue with the promo work for Twumps and BizBuzz. Not quite 20 hits/day but getting there (easier on Bizbuzz than Twumps).
The Trello board

There are many things I could do, do something or do nothing, but whatever I do will be deliberate.
18 July 2013
Twumps is live – get your game on!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about an experiment to see if I could consistently and sustainably fund good causes through an online product/service.

I’m delighted to release the first version of Twumps – my social network trading game, built for social good. Right now it is beta – which means it works (pretty well actually) but is actively being tested and might break. It also means that I’m on standby to fix it pretty quickly if it breaks and that I’m super ready to chat to people to make it better.

Inspiration

Twumps is inspired by Top Trumps – the card trading series of games. In Twumps, instead of super heroes, you have your followers from Twitter (who have stats!). I’ve varied it a little to make it faster to play and perhaps a little more interesting.

Each player builds a stash of cards created from upto 100 of their twitter followers

Each game is between 2 players and a deck made up of 10 of their cards. They play until they have turned over all their cards. Each turn is played by the ‘turn starter’ picking a statistic from their displayed card that they believe can beat the equivalent statistic on their opponents drawn card. A player wins the turn by having a higher stat than their opponent’s card. A game is won by the person who won most cards.

The winning player gets to keep those followers (only in Twumps – not in Twitter – sorry!). The losing player does not keep the cards they won in the game.
A player’s total wins are used to determine their place in the leaderboard:

Easy to Play

Twumps is really easy to play and I have taken feedback from early players that they would appreciate a tour of how to use get about in the game. There is only one view in the game – your current card. I may add a little more complexity later, but for now, you simply select a stat from the next card in your game deck. Check out bits of the tour:

What Next?

Building what I have is only the first step – getting something out there that people can play, derive some enjoyment from. The next steps are getting as many people playing it as possible, getting their feedback to improve it and beginning to discover what I can charge for (it’s all donation based – but I think there should be minimums).

I really need your help

Twumps is a novel idea, to my knowledge there is nothing like this online anywhere. I’m going to do my best to get people to play and enjoy it.

But I really need your help with this.
If you are on Twitter, play it and challenge others.
Regardless, please tell everyone you know who uses Twitter, ask them to play it and tell their friends.

If there is something you feel can be improved tell me and I’ll most likely do it.

Share your ideas for improving it, join in. Playing Twumps is fun and you can be a part of something that will ultimately make beautiful things happen in the world.

13 July 2013
July 12: Traction not tractors
By: D. Miller – CC BY 2.0

Traction is vital, getting early customers to commit to using what I’m offering is very important. Both are vital and important for my finances and startup growth, sure – but mostly for my sanity.

I’m a maker and an artist. I make the art that is in my head. Many of the things I make are because I had a problem and I expressed a way to solve them. When I bring them to the market (as ineptly as I do) and expect some meaningful response, I am investing emotional energy into that. I care that I get a response – much more than the nature of that response. I can handle praise and rejection but much less so, apathy.

So my new strategy of trying to be found by prospective customers is off to a slow start, but a start nonetheless. Here is my check in:
- Mad that I am really struggling to keep my schedule on track, my options for being flexible are limited when I start late and end later. If I start on time (9.30) , I am actually far more flexible to do other stuff (like going to the beach!) because I would have made some progress.
- Glad that I can changed most things to get back to routine – this is a really valuable thing about working for myself.
- Glad I had another idea and my technique for welcoming them and giving them a slot to explore them is successful at keeping me focused on finishing
- I’m grateful for having different onion skins to other people and having mine not constrain me from being myself.
I’m in (onion skins and all).

Improve On…

Being a better marketeer – better meaning braver, more authentic, more dedicated, better organised. Avoid the schmoltz.

Being a better researcher – everything – my potential customers, competitors , collaborators.

Today

The trello board says it all. basically as much of the stuff I have on there as possible. Mostly blogs. But absolutely must…

Write ServiceChat blog post on ‘I am the greatest customer service expert in the world’.

Do some promotion work on Twumps and ServiceChat and get at least 20 unique visitors to each today.

The Trello board…

Ask yourself if you are doing everything^* you can to be successful

^{* – whilst remaining congruent with your values, fair to those you love and kind to yourself}
12 July 2013
July 9 – Back away from the code, slowly.
By: Pascal – CC BY 2.0

Every passing day re-affirms my fear. I have to back away from the code, close the IDE – quit doing what I love doing and start doing the other thing.
You know – the other thing, the hitting-the-phone, sell-your-vision, learn-the-problems, discover-your-customers, dine-with-rejection-and-unreturned-emails thing, you know Customer Development!

Now, I have a world of love for Eric Ries, Ash Maurya, Steve Blank and the other luminaries of the startup world. But they really could have done a better job of communicating how bloody tough it is to get to talk to customers, to handle the silence and the find the courage to carry on until you find the data you need (some might argue that the lack of feedback is plenty feedback – that is a different story).

This afternoon, I had the pleasure of 30 minutes of conversation with Kevin DeWalt, a really awesome and interesting guy with plenty of experience of creating companies and helping startups. He graciously offers 30 mins of free help to founders and startups via his site. I’ll blog more about that on a later post. Anyway, Kevin was really pragmatic and his view was really similar to @saintsal’s (from a couple of weeks ago). I have to spend most of my time out of the building, pounding the phones, the emails, knocking on doors (virtual and otherwise) and really get to meet prospects, so I can learn.

The last couple of weeks have presented some opportunities that I fully intend on exploring. So , what is my strategy?

I won’t be chasing customers. I tried that and they weren’t interested in talking to me. My new strategy is to help them find me – well at least this is my strategy for the next 3 weeks.
This means interviews, blogs and asking powerful questions about how all the businesses I am coming across do customer service. My intention is that these questions will attract the right people.
So it’s not so much ‘build it and they will come’, but more ‘ask it and the right people will answer’.

With this in mind, here is my check in.
- Glad I have a plan, being lost is no fun when you got somewhere to go.
- Glad there are people like Kevin DeWalt, Flavio Martins, @saintsal and Ian Golding who are open and invite you to seek their collaboration. Of course it is mutually beneficial – but their openness to connect is amazing.
- Really mad that I’m succumbing to carbs – the sugary kind.
- I’m grateful for the ability to reflect on my thoughts and the brilliance of others.
I’m in.

Improve On…

Consistent daily Spanish practice.

Testing my code. Recently I have been doing lots of test-free hacking.

Today

Write this blog.

Write insights blog.

Plan my interview series.

The Trello board…

I strive to do more with less, everyday.
9 July 2013
July 8 – Working hard, differently
By: Jeremiah “GrayBeard” Richards – CC BY 2.0

My last post was about 2 weeks ago and you might have wondered where I disappeared to. Well, I’ll tell you.

I was feeling very disheartened about the lack of traction with ServiceChat. So I took some time away from ServiceChat – maintaining focus when you are down is hard, but it is precisely when you need it the most. This time was to try and get some perspective.

This time off was mostly spent building this and exploring alliances with leading customer service evangelists like Ian Golding and Flavio Martins (both of whom are graciously offered to write about bizbuzz and ServiceChat).

So here is my check in:
- Glad I took some time out to think about whether ServiceChat is still what I should be doing. Right now, it is.
- Glad I built Twumps as outlet for my disheartenment, it was fun and completely different.
- Glad that I am discovering passionate people in the customer services/experience space.
- Glad that my spanish one-to-one conversations are getting better and I am also being useful to my partner in his journey to learn english.
- Glad an option to replenish my funding is getting stronger by the day.
- Mad I have such a reaction to insect bites that has laid me low for today.
- I’m grateful for the universe that conspires to help me be successful.
I’m in.

Improve On…

Keeping carbs out of my diet – especially the ones covered in sugar.

Today

Write this blog.

Start an insights blog post

Do some duolingo -I’m getting pretty consistent with this.

The Trello board…(more or less unchanged)

Giving up is the last thing you want to do.
8 July 2013
June 26 – Disheartened
By: Tom Purves – CC BY 2.0

I’m sitting here not really wanting to do anything else but code. I know it’s wrong – I’ve built something I passionately believe is valuable but not getting to even talk to the people I believe it is valuable for is deeply disheartening.
It doesn’t mean ServiceChat isn’t valuable (I honestly don’t have enough data to answer that). It just means I suck at knocking on doors.

So here is my check in:
- Mad that my reach outs to the individuals in companies, that I have identified have a need and a hunch that they give a damn, has not provided the access I was hoping for. Both those hypotheses remain unresolved.
- Sad that I’m facing this whole thing alone. I have advisers, family and friends but no one really in the space with me. I am resistant to going out and finding a co-founder, much rather they found me.
- Glad that this emotion is strong and empowering – in a weird way – it is sparking a survival instinct in me.
- Mad that my spanish conversational meetup (intercambio) was so difficult, it seems the more I know (vocabulary and rules of structure) the less I am able to apply. Rules as binds, who knew!
- Mad I feel so mad.
- I’m grateful for perspective, without it I would think my problems were the most important in the world. They are not. I have options.
I’m still in.

Improve On…

Getting back to my routine – I seem to fall off it when I get emotionally weird, yet ironically it is what gives me a way back to form.
Being courageous and picking up the phone to call people and arrange conversations. Enough hiding behind emails!

Today

Start my ‘insights’ series on the ServiceChat blog – where I share what the data from bizbuzz is telling me (and has told me).

Get back on track with Duolingo – I’ve decided to focus on this as vs split my time between it and Rosetta Stone (which is good also, but not as effective for me).

Blog, blog, blog.

The Trello board…(more or less unchanged)

What does it all mean, really?
26 June 2013
June 20 – Mikey's back!
By: Elliott Brown – CC BY 2.0

The last 13 days

Q: Does a daily blog have to be done every day?
A: Not when it’s @mhsutton’s blog – obviously.

So much has happened in the last 13 days, I don’t really know where to start. I’ve been away because I’ve been a little discouraged with the progress of ServiceChat (no, I haven’t been in rehab – just nose down trying to move it forward!) – So I took a break from writing and the routine, to focus 100% of my time on completing my customer discovery experiments. It was an ineffective move, what may have been more useful might have been to talk to my @saintsal sooner and continue with my routine but with differently prioritised work. Most things suffered in this hiatus – I ended up being able to do less pushups for example!

So here is my check in:
- Glad that I spoke with @saintsal – who very kindly listened to my challenges and offered his honest appraisal based on what I communicated. Sal was gracious but honest – I have been coding an awful lot with real focus on business building and validation. I knew this, but it was hard to accept from myself.
- Glad that my funding strategy is sorted. I’m taking a consulting gig in August that will help me fund the next 7 months from 6 weeks work. Ha, the joys of living a lean life.
- Sad that whilst I’m doing the language study, the practical experience is not really happening. I feel less capable of speaking Spanish now than I did in January!
- Glad that my intercambio is starting on Monday – an hour talking in Spanish, hopefully twice a week.
- Sad to hear of the sudden death of James Gandolfini – who played Tony Soprano on the Sopranos. That show was a large part of my rehabilitation during my divorce.
- Sad/mad that my collaboration with FounderSync fizzled out after one blog, it was actually none existent. A thoroughly poor set up. Chalk it up to experience, I guess.
- Glad I got to talk with @scottcrowther about ServiceChat and he was lovely and kind enough to share more than 20 ideas for improvement and growth with me (including moving back to the midlands!)
- Glad I feel more engaged and more present.
- I’m grateful for saints who pop up with truth and grace.
I’m good and getting better. The future is less dark and almost entirely my own making. I’m in.

Improve On…

Blogging consistently – this and other non-coding things are the highest priority items I have to do now. I basically need to drum up interest in what ServiceChat does. BizBuzz was part of that effort and now that I have gifted it to the public to search , I would like to see more interest in how businesses engage their customers on Twitter.

Today

Start my ‘insights’ series on the ServiceChat blog – where I share what the data from bizbuzz is telling me (and has told me). The first is a summary description of the types of support behaviours I have observed and I’ll try and evangelise with best groups for the topic on LinkedIn.
Reach out to Huffington post and explore how to become a huffblogger.
Reach out to my top 5 ideal customers and get a dialogue going about using ServiceChat
Blog, blog, blog.

The Trello board…

Seek beyond what you know. It is dangerous. Most things worth anything are.
20 June 2013
Businesses apologising on Twitter – see anyone you know?

What is all this about?

For the last few months , I’ve been working on my startup (ServiceChat) and trying to understand how businesses do customer service on Twitter.

It has been a fascinating endeavour – it still is. I’ve learned so much – mostly how not do it – but also seen some amazing individuals really engage with customers to try and solve their problems. I’ll blog about that separately – consider following me on twitter and signing up for my blogs.

In trying to peel away the noise, I built a tool to help me see the conversations I should be following and the businesses I should be talking to. I would love to share that tool with you. It’s called bizbuzz.

In many ways, bizbuzz is info-porn. But in the right hands – it is actionable data. You can use it to decide to do business elsewhere, demand better service. Businesses can use it to decide to improve their engagement with their customers (I’m happy to share what I have learnt, drop me a line ).

Why are you sharing this?

Well, it’s based on publicly accessible data, only reframed in a certain way – the public , especially customers of these businesses , should see it.

Also, we are all consumers and for far too long businesses have paid poor attention to customers after they have taken their money – I want to end this. We each deserve to have fantastic service from the places we do business with. Competition was supposed to let the ‘best’ rise to the top – it hasn’t. A lack of information is a primary cause of this, followed closely by a lack of care. My part is to help with the first bit and to trust that you will help with the second bit.

I would like you to ask the businesses you spend your money with to listen to you and quit wasting your time and burning your emotion. Demand that they meet you where you are and not funnel you into some queue that suits them, seek to have a human relationship with them instead of the scripted zombie systems they deploy to frustrate you.

What can I do with it?

Find the companies you are interested in. You can search for their names. Have a giggle at their responses, guess which ones have auto-responders and the ones that genuinely respond.

Explore some of the conversations on Twitter, maybe reach out to some of their customers and show some empathy.

Bookmark bizbuzz and check to see how your businesses are doing. I’ll add an RSS feed soon.

Talk about this with your friends, share your stories. Share them on here too (as comments). We all deserve better service, honestly!

Use your consumer power wisely. You do have choices, choose to be treated like a person – with respect and empathy. Make better choices.

But before you rush off to tell the world…

Don’t judge these companies too harshly – these are the ones that are actually on Twitter and respond to their customers (albeit many do it with autoresponders) – there are undoubtedly thousands who are not even on Twitter. There are those who are on and never respond. However, I believe if they are on Twitter, they need to be effective and use the platform to its full potential to change customer experiences, not simply add it as another channel to frustration!

The search that drives the data on bizbuzz is tailored specifically at tweets written in English and which specifically include ‘Sorry email us’ or ‘Sorry DM us’. It has been surprisingly effective at finding businesses offering customer service. Ask me if you want to know more.

Whilst I’ve been iterating on building bizbuzz, there have been inevitable gaps in the data. This is less than 100 tweets over about 80 twitter profiles(out of over 8000 tweets and counting)- so makes very little statistical difference. It has been tracking non-stop for at least the last 12 days.

psst. The tech behind bizbuzz is really interesting too, if you get turned on by that sort of thing (like I do), let’s have a chat.

19 June 2013
June 7 – Dizzy with pivots.
By: Chadica – CC BY 2.0

Yesterday(and the previous 2 days)

The last few days have been like driving in a tunnel, with occasional pauses to check the map. Sometimes where you want to is actually a bloody long way away!

All this grind has yielded a bunch of exciting potential pivots – bizbuzz as a data visualisation tool for businesses and opportunities to use it to encourage business to explore ServiceChat. All this is rather cryptic, I know, as they become clearer , I’ll share more.

So here is my check in:
- Sad that I’m not getting the level of end-customer conversations as I want. I feel that this is vital validation I am missing. Plod on.
- Sad that my consistency with language study is dropping. Sad that even though I attend at the scheduled time, I’m not present.
- Glad that both my advisors were excited about the work I had done to find valuable customers. Their insights about other potential uses of the tech is hugely encouraging.
- Glad I have decided that ServiceChat does not really support a freemium model and making plans to change this.
- Glad I decided to go to the beach with my family yesterday, taking a break help reinvigorate me and revitalise my relationships. More memory making.
- Delighted that I was accepted to blog for FounderSync , it will be the bulk of my startup experiences.
- Glad I blogged about one of my favorite poems: ‘A Dog Has Died’
- I’m grateful for what I don’t know. It is the foundation of my curiosity.
I’ve got a stonking cold, but I’m in.

Improve On…

Being present in my scheduled activity

Today

Complete a spike into making bizbuzz more of a public tool.
Work on a biz model canvas for bizbuzz, to explore how it might work as a pivot.
Talk to more of the end customers that I am discovering for ServiceChat

The Trello board…(a slight expanded version)

Remember your limits. Seek to extend them, but remember them.
7 June 2013