February 15, 2017 · 1:26 pm

Unlimited Gall

You might be aware of the battle going on in the wireless provider space which revolves around “unlimited” service. Yes, I meant to put unlimited in quotes because as it turns out there is no such thing. I’ll explain the details in a second but what this represents is mirrored in other businesses too and is a ridiculous bit of anti-customer behavior in which none of us should engage. Let’s see what you think.

First, the phone war. Verizon and T-Mobile are the primary protagonists. Verizon announced it was bringing back unlimited data so you could stream video on your mobile device to your heart’s content. Of course, as one article reminded us, unlimited is actually not:

“Unlimited” data also continues to be a misnomer. If you use more than 22GB of data, Verizon may throttle your connection. You also only get the $80/month price if you sign up for Autopay. If you don’t, it will cost $85/month. While this includes the $20 fee for adding a line, it doesn’t include your phone’s payment plan, so if you want to pay monthly to buy a phone, it will cost more.

T-Mobile responded with changes to their own so-called unlimited data plan. While the plan was unlimited previously, it added on charges for video quality over 480p (that’s not great). It also charged you extra to use your phone as a high-speed (meaning 3G quality) hotspot. It slowed the data down before. In the new plan, those limits are gone but T-Mobile says subscribers who use more than 28GB of data in a given month may see their speeds reduced due to “prioritization” in congested areas. In short, using the word “unlimited” is crap. There are still limits, and if you’re a consumer you have the right to expect that there really aren’t.

The phone companies (and Sprint and AT&T aren’t much better) aren’t the only businesses that do a form of bait and switch. It’s no secret that what you’re quoted as an airfare is also only part of the story since there are fees for bags, boarding passes, seats, and just about anything else depending on your carrier. The airlines say the fees are optional. Yeah, sure. And pay the fee at the airport and there is a fee to pay the fee!

Ever buy tickets to a show online? Convenience (whose convenience?) fees, printing fees, etc. Ever book a hotel room? Resort fees, safe fees, service fees, and more. My bank charges my business account a monthly admin fee even though they make money off the money I have in the bank. My cable operator charges me for sports channels I can’t refuse to take.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that businesses need to be upfront about their true costs to consumers or face a backlash when their dishonesty is discovered. I’d much rather know the true cost of something than to feel as if I’d been ripped off later. Wouldn’t you? Isn’t that how we need to treat our customers?

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February 13, 2017 · 1:01 pm

Contacts, Cost, and Value

A few months ago I installed a contact manager app on my phone. I was quite pleased with it; so much so that I also installed a desktop version of the software on my Mac. As you might gather from some of the stuff about which I rant here on the screed, I read fine print pretty carefully. When I did these installs there was no mention of a trial period nor a limit on the number of contacts. It was quite clear that the version I was using had a premium option with more features, but I was just fine with the basics I was getting for free.

Last week, after a few months of use, I got a message when I opened the app that I would have to upgrade since I had over 1,000 contacts. In fact, I have 2,325 and have had that many for nearly all of the time I’ve used the app. The app no longer performs the free basic stuff it did before. The premium version is $100. Per year. No thanks.

I checked out some other contact apps. Some are also $100 a year, some are $100 once, and some are $2. Based on reviews, there doesn’t seem to be a huge difference between many of them; certainly not a factor of 50 or 100 times with respect to usefulness. Putting aside my anger at my previous app’s misleading and dishonest app store copy which makes no mention of a contact limit, I started to think about one of the most basic business ratios: the cost/value relationship.

Customers assign value based on the benefit they receive – how well you solve their problem – in the context of what it costs them for the solution. Warren Buffett explained it as price being what you pay and value is what you get. Any of us in business need to do that in the context of what other solutions are available and what they charge. A new Lexus and a used Volkswagen but solve the transportation problem but they are only comparable solutions on the most basic level (they both get you from point A to point B). The mistake many of us make is that we look at our unique benefit from our own perspective rather than that of our potential buyer. While we may see the multitude of features our product or service provides, most customers don’t. They see a price tag, first and foremost, and while they might love to have the Lexus they aren’t willing to assign a sufficient enough value differential to the great customer service, the luxurious interior, or the better ride and handling to make up for the large price difference.

I’ll find another contact manager. I don’t even mind paying for one. Like most consumers, I do mind the bait and switch that happened here (and I’ll post a review to that effect in the store). Whatever value we believe justifies the cost we ask customers to incur, we need to be upfront about it as we try to justify the reasons why we’re worth it. Make sense?

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February 10, 2017 · 12:06 pm

Eating At The Buffet

Our topic this Foodie Friday is buffets. Las Vegas is renowned for the lavish and enormous buffets but they can be found almost anywhere across this great land of ours. There are dedicated buffet restaurants, most hotels offer a buffet option for breakfast and many bbq joints offer something similar so you needn’t choose between the 4 or 5 varieties of meat and the 7 or 8 sides they serve. Grab a plate, pile it high, and it’s on!

A Chinese buffet restaurant in the United Stat...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One could make the argument that a traditional dim sum place is a buffet in reverse. Instead of you going to fill your plate from a variety of choices, the variety of choices are wheeled out to you and you choose as they go by. I don’t put salad bars into the buffet category since by definition they have a more limited focus.

My buffet strategy is to skip the “normal” foods (corn, mashed potatoes, cold cuts, etc.) and to focus on the more indigenous specialty items. I don’t want to fill up on food I could get anywhere while missing whatever makes this experience unique. After all, while I have a healthy appetite, I can’t eat everything, right?

That’s business point today. I remind many of my clients that they need to “step away from the buffet.” When you are a growing company and you have a smart, visionary leadership team, there is a tendency to want to try everything on the buffet table. In business, that means chasing down every apparent opportunity in an effort to grow. The reality is that no early- or mid-stage business can afford to do that. Resources are too precious and the time to get to profitability is ticking away. Stepping away from the buffet means having a business plan that’s focused on whatever problem it is that the business is solving for your market segment and sticking to it. Don’t take that to mean that you can’t adjust based on what you’ve discovering on your journey:  you must! But you also can’t keep changing direction as you spot another new hot plate being added to the buffet.

Like a large buffet, business can present an overwhelming number of choices. Our job as managers is to find the best of those choices that align with our business goals. It’s one thing to overeat at breakfast. It’s quite another to run out of resources before reaching sustained profitability. Step away from that buffet!

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