Monthly Archives: June 2015

June 19, 2015 · 8:15 am

The Hole Truth

This Foodie Friday, let’s delve into the world of food mysteries.  I hadn’t really noticed but apparently the holes in swiss cheese have been shrinking and no one quite knew why.  A cynical commentator (who me?) might speculate that the opposite ought to be true, as margins rise when you’re selling empty space.  Be that as it may, it was really a problem and scientists did some investigating.  The answer is instructive for anyone in business.

You know that cheese is made by the interplay of bacteria and milk.  The bacteria is added and the differences in the milk (sheep, cow, goat, etc.) and the strain of bacteria are what make different cheeses.  Swiss cheese is cow’s milk and three unpronounceable strains of bacteria, none of which had been changed;  yet over the last hundred years, and very much over the last fifteen, the holes have been shrinking.  Why?

Turns out it had to do with improved cleanliness.  Better sanitation resulted in a safer product but also removed microscopic bits of hay from the milk.  Those hay bits were critical in the formation of the holes.  That solves our mystery but also raises the business point.

We’re all familiar with the law of unintended consequences but how many of us take the time with our team to think through the effects that law might bring with every new action?  Product changes, a new marketing plan, or any other change has the potential to bring about changes that aren’t readily foreseen unless we spend the extra time to think about them.  It’s nice to tie executive compensation to our stock price but maybe that has the unintended consequence of focusing on the short-term or good financial results at the expense of better customer service.  Maybe we cut the price to get a deal but then realize we’re losing money.  Maybe we reduce quality to save on costs and watch as a competitor steals share.

Making the milk cleaner was a great idea – who wants customers getting sick and dying?  The unintended consequence was a big change to one of the product’s signature features.  After all, without the holes, Swiss Cheese is just Emmental and Appenzell.  That mystery took 100 years to solve – hopefully the mysteries inherent in your business won’t take that long.

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June 18, 2015 · 12:12 pm

The Freemium Come On

I had the same sort of thing happen to me twice in the last 24 hours so of course I feel compelled to rant about it. In the first case, I was searching for a better system to keep track of my business development work. I spent some time reviewing solutions and I thought I had found one that I liked. Research told me that there was a free solution that would meet my needs so I signed up. Imagine my surprise when my account said I was now using their enterprise solution for a 30-day trial.  I wrote to customer service asking about the promoted “free” option and was told that in 30 days my account would be downgraded to the free solution although some pieces of what I had access to would be lost.  No, he didn’t tell me which pieces so I’m a little wary of getting too invested in this since who knows if I’m building a database which will then be held for ransom.

In the second case, my “thing” about grammar led me to a browser extension that is supposed to improve upon the tools built in to the operating system, my word processing software,  and the browser.  It too said it was free so I installed it and registered for an account. The first document I ran through it contained a number of errors, some of which were labelled as “critical” (spelling and a comma fault) and others labelled as “advanced.”  Hovering over the critical issues allowed me to fix them immediately, choosing from several proposed solutions.  I clicked on the advanced list and was taken to a page which told me I needed to upgrade to fix the advanced writing mistakes as well as to enhance my text.

In both of these cases, I don’t begrudge the companies for charging for their services.  I think freemium is a pretty good business model and there are some free services that I’ve paid to upgrade over the years after having used them for a bit.  I have a bigger issue with companies that begin as free and then begin charging for features which had been free.  The issue I do have is a lack of clarity upfront.  If it’s a freemium service, state that and lay out the differences between free and paid.  Hopefully, your product is good enough that you’ll convert folks who use it and want a deeper involvement.  Don’t play the airlines’ game of promoting a low cost (or no cost) and then hitting a user up with charges for everything under the sun.  That’s just deceptive.  That’s my take.  Yours?

 

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June 17, 2015 · 10:37 am

Getting Chosen

You probably have been spending a lot more time interacting with your mobile device over the last year.  You’re not alone, and much of that interaction takes place through apps.  I don’t know about you but I have a lot of apps installed (and even more that I’ve used and uninstalled over the years).  I just checked my phone and there are 131 app icons.  Putting aside that there’s probably a dozen or so that are pre-installed crapware from my carrier and the handset manufacturer (I ranted about that previously – you get a reprieve today), that’s still a large number of apps competing for my attention.  There are hundreds of thousands more in the app store too.

My reality, and I’m guessing yours too, is that I only use a couple of dozen of them on any sort of regular basis.  Turns out we’re not alone, at least according to the good folks at Nielsen:

Despite the increase in choices, the number of apps used is staying the same. A recent Nielsen analysis found that on average, U.S. smartphone users accessed 26.7 apps per month in the fourth quarter of 2014—a number that has remained relatively flat over the last two years. And consider this: Over 70% of the total usage is coming from the top 200 apps.

However, while there appears to be a consumer threshold to the total number of apps people are willing and/or able to actively use during the month, the time they spend engaging on those apps has increased. In fact, the monthly time spent per person has increased from 23 hours and two minutes in fourth-quarter 2012 to 37 hours and 28 minutes in fourth-quarter 2014—a 63% rise in two years! So the reward for being one of the chosen apps is heavy engagement by the user.

It appears our app usage mirrors our TV usage.  While we might have access to hundred of TV channels, most of us only watch 21.  As has happened with TV, the engagement deepens with the chosen few.  The challenge for any business is to become one of those two dozen.  The means making the potential user base aware that you are the best solution to their problem, whether it’s how to amuse one’s self or how to get to a place you’ve never been or how to get clothes that are reasonably priced and fit well.  It means avoiding the dreaded “uninstall” – that action that takes place whether you’re an app or not when a customer moves on since you didn’t deliver on the promise made.  Maybe you were boring.  Maybe you were bloated with ads.  Maybe you tried to sneak in a lot of extra charges.  Those things aren’t limited to apps but they’ll lose you the “chosen” status much of the time.

What are you doing to be chosen today?

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