The Fledgling Entrepreneur

Review Centre: Our First Tutors Review

2010-05-12T11:25:00.004Z

So, it has been a while since I wrote, with good reason. It has been a truly crazy time but we're hopefully through the other side. Which means now I can turn my attention back to business and to occasionally commenting on the frustrations and triumphs of running a small business.

Today I want to write about Review Centre, as a warning for other companies. Now, I have often wondered the extent to which reviews are reliable, either because the person writing may not share your perspective on life and reason or, as we saw last week with Orlando Figes, because a lot of the time reviews are fabricated nonsense written by competitors.

This brings me neatly to Review Centre, with whom we have a real problem. You see, we have two categories of people who enjoy flaming us on Review Centre:
- Competitors (obvious reason)
- Customers who have learned that using social media as a method of blackmail is an excellent way to elicit a refund, whether justified or not.

Let's be super clear here: if we think a customer has a genuine reason to be upset, we deal with it very quickly. We wouldn't still be trading after 5 years and a terrible recession if that were not the case.

Anyway, after these reviews were posted I wrote a response to the genuine customer which explained how we dealt with her situation. I then checked with customer services who confirmed she had actually been handled correctly and was successfully in touch with her tutor. I wanted the world to see that we did deal with these kind of customers. I also invited some of our tutors to also post some genuine reviews to balance the negative impact of these reviews.

Amazingly, there is no verification process - so, with Amazon you have to at least buy the book to comment on it. At eBay you have to try the trader to comment on them. At First Tutors you have to buy the tutor's details to comment on them. At Review Centre you have to give an email address and then you can say whatever you like and they'll publish it for you. So, erm, not open to abuse at all then. "Speaking from experience" is their slogan, but "Talking utter crap" would work just as well.

Review Centre then removed my review and that of our actual customers because someone complained. Well, I wonder who that could be?

So now, we only have negative reviews. The moral of this story? Avoid Review Centre like the plague and trust nothing you read there.

Fasthosts, worst hosting ever... A Case Study

2008-09-26T12:36:00.007Z

So, yesterday I listened to a talk by Matthew Brazil of 6Consulting on social media monitoring at the CaMedia networking event. Smart guy.

He reckons some brands care enough what people say about them in the social sphere to do something about it, so I thought I'd be mischievous and test that premise with a case study, Fasthosts, self-proclaimed as "the No 1 for UK hosted sites", and with over "2 times more UK hosted sites than its nearest competitor." As you'll see from the email trail below between me and their support monkeys, I suspect that's because no one can ever leave Fasthosts...

Hi Fasthosts,

I wonder if you can help please. Could you advise please what is the
best way to cancel an annual hosting subscription? Is it okay to just
give you a call and arrange cancellation over the phone? I want to keep
my hosting and domains in the same place but the odds are I won't need
the hosting beyond year one and don't want to get caught in a circle of
paying for hosting I don't need.

Many thanks,

Anita

*******

Dear Anita,

We are sorry that you wish to close your Fasthosts Hosting package.

Your Hosting package is not yet closed. In order to ensure that your request is dealt with quickly and correctly please call our Customer Care Team on 01452 561858. The team operates from 9.00am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday.

Kind regards,

Customer Support
Fasthosts Internet Ltd.

*******

Hi,

I'm confused. My business partner did call over a year ago to say he
didn't want the hosting package any more but Fasthosts have said they
have no recollection of that conversation and now we've been billed
again this year. If Fasthosts never recall cancellation conversations,
how can we ever leave your company? We haven't used your hosting package
for over a year and we received no notification that we were going to be
billed again this year.

Thanks,

Anita

********

Dear Madam,

If you wish to make a complaint then you need to send an emails to escalations@fasthosts.co.uk. Full details of our complaints escalations procedure can be found at: http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/companyinfo/termsofservice/
Kind regards

Customer Support
Fasthosts Internet Ltd
Tel: 01452 561858

*********

Dear ?,

I didn't say I wished to make a complaint. I asked a simple question
which I will repeat below for your benefit:

Please note my name is not 'Madam.'

Thanks,

Anita

**********

Dear Anita,

When you call to close we create a ticket to record this and also send out a confirmation email.

Therefore, when you call to close if you are concerned your request is not being actioned you can ask them to provide you with the ticket reference number and then you will know that your request has been noted.

I hope that this answers your query but if we can be of any further help please reply to this email.

Kind regards,

Customer Support
Fasthosts Internet Ltd.

**********

Hi,

Thanks for giving a straight forward response, much appreciated.
However, what I don't understand is that my business partner called
today and made it exceedingly clear we don't require hosting and again a
year ago when this happened but evidently on neither occasion has the
hosting been cancelled as requested. It is particularly galling this
time round because no one has used the hosting for the last year and yet
we are being billed again one year in advance. Of course, no doubt no
one has any recollection of this morning's phone call? I cannot
understand why a ticket reference isn't just given because as it is,
essentially you have a process where a customer can never close an
account because the conversation recalling the event is never recalled.
Unless I have missed something, in which I would be grateful for
clarification. I will now go and use the convoluted complaints process.

Kind regards,

Anita

***********
Dear Madam,

We do have a ticket noting the conversation that was had this morning, however due to the fact that your colleague was advised no refund would be due they did not request to close the package and were instead provided with a refund request form and details of our complaints escalations procedure. If you wish to close the package, please contact customer support on 01452 561858 between 09:00 - 17:30 Mon - Fri.

Kind regards

Customer Support
Fasthosts Internet Ltd
Tel; 01452 561858

************

Are you joking?

First Tutors recognised by The Daily Telegraph

2008-07-25T12:32:00.003Z

Very pleased to say First Tutors has a positive mention in the Daily Telegraph today, yeay! We're recommended as, "the UK's largest database of private tutors" - can't ask for better than that really! Wahey.

Always very interesting to see who else is listed as a bit of competition keeps you on your toes! This time it was the long-established Personal Tutors, a tuition agency, and also more curiously localtutor. The latter is quite interesting as it would appear to have been developed by someone I know personally, though as ever, there are no contact details/accountability on the site. How do I know it is someone I know? I tried to register for a quick peruse and my *personal* email address has been manually blocked. Wow. Now that's below the belt. Come on guys, don't be scared - get out of the closet and own up, who are ya?!

First Tutors: Music available for preview

2008-07-11T14:42:00.001Z

So, ahead of official launch on Monday, you can sneak a peak at First Tutors: Music, the new place to find music tuition.

Let me know what you think!

EduNation now in Lancaster

2008-06-27T11:31:00.003Z

Well, here's an update on where we are now...

1. We are literally now up at InfoLab21, Lancaster University's ICT cluster building with lots of clever computer science geeks and a whole load of digital networking going on. The NW is really trying to boost digital as a growth industry which works for us because it means they're batting for you rather than against you. We're offering web development services, so if you're in Lancaster and have a project in mind, do let us know.

2. First Tutors, our service in the private tuition sector continues to do well, so that's all good. If you're a credit crunch victim who wants a good tutor but doesn't want to pay agency prices, find a private tutor with us.

Here's one we made earlier...

2007-09-10T15:08:00.001Z

So, today we're launching another client site for Star Events Group, the UK's leaders in staging, rigging and design services for the event industry. We're pretty pleased with this one...

First Tutors relaunches

2007-09-06T12:33:00.001Z

Ok, so after a fun all-nighter (mm...) we're up and running. The new look First Tutors is very cool indeed (we think). But if you disagree we're all ears.

Fighting the Daily Fire

2007-07-16T09:29:00.000Z

I just took a long weekend and it was amazing, just what the doctor ordered. I read a great book, got outside of my comfort zone and relaxed. I took Friday off. This morning I have over 100 emails in my inbox from the weekend. I had been wondering why I felt so tense and this is the reason. I estimate I actually needed to receive c.20 of those emails and the rest were irrelevant or could have been dealt with by a phone call/use of initiative.

This brings me to a bigger issue. It is very difficult to balance the time one spends working on the business dealing with 'right now' concerns with the time spent working on forward planning and making sure the business actually moves in the direction I want it to go. I read an excellent book on the plane this weekend called, "Millionaire Upgrade" by Richard Parkes Cordock which despite its abysmal title and inherent cheesiness nonetheless had some good key points to make. For example, like the importance of setting big goals and plans to achieve them.

I used to be very good at this. I remember my grandmother laughing when I said I wanted to go to Cambridge University when I was about 11 and me sitting down and trying to figure out how I was going to get there. So this week, I'm going to work hard to balance the immediate fire-fighting with the big picture.

How to use LinkedIn

2007-07-03T18:42:00.000Z

I like LinkedIn. I used to be very cynical about it - I supposed it to be just another means of showing off how many aquaintances one has. I always felt that those who had to demonstrably make a point of mentioning who they knew usually did so spurred by a sense of shortcoming (ahem, see facebook).

But actually, LinkedIn has proved me wrong because it is genuinely about sharing contacts rather than showboating. It is the inverse of the above, it is saying here is my little black book, feel free to use it if it helps. Or at least, it ought to be.

Three other reasons I like it:

I got offered work through it last week. A friend of a friend was trying to solve a problem and via LinkedIn I became aware of that opportunity.
The Answers thing works. Think of all the clever stuff your colleagues know, all the latent knowledge just sitting there. Well, this brings it to the surface. I used this today to get a recommendation on good ways to learn PHP. Saved me hours of looking at the wrong tutorials or reading Amazon reviews I don't necessarily trust.
You can see what people are up to/into in tech via the questions being asked.
When you're set to meet someone new you can see who you both mutually know beforehand

So there we go, rock on LinkedIn. You have at least one fan in Cambridge, UK.

The Golden Rule

2007-06-23T09:37:00.000Z

I've been watching trends in VC investment recently via Mashable and cannot help but wonder how some of these companies are attracting money. Partly, I'm awe-struck by the ability of whoever's leading the pitch to bring in the cash, but mostly I just don't get it. Here's how it must go:

Pitch: "We have an amazing idea for a new web phenomenon which we think will bring in lots of users and as such, having already built the thing (that being the time-consuming expensive part where money might be useful) and with 50 users including all of our extended family, we would like you to give us some money so we can spend it on marketing, hire consultants and get a piece on Mashable. We will use the piece on Mashable as evidence that we are hot and show it to all our friends in the pub whilst we're 'networking' and 'team building'. We estimate it will cost £5m to both find the right marketing manager and pay the consultant we use to find them. Oh and we don't have any predicted revenue streams but we think [google/yahoo] will buy it because it has rounded edges, lots and lots of Ajax and a stupid name. We think Bob at Google will pay at least £200m for us because I met him once at a conference and now we're buddies."

Few of these businesses seem to:

a) have revenue streams (what if google doesn't buy them?)
b) necessarily solve a problem/meet a desire

Here's an example which in my opinion fulfils b) at least (a is just too easy). A large VC-backed firm has just entered our market in the UK offering outsourced tutors over the internet. The lead guy has run other companies, though not in this market or related to education. The market potential is apparently huge because lots of people want tutoring/to improve their child's educational prospects. Ok, fine. But do they want to be tutored over the internet by someone at the other side of the world? Did anyone ask that question? I.e., does their solution solve the problem from the customer's perspective? I'm not debating that we all want a good education but is that particular notion the way people want to receive said education?

Someone tell me, am I missing something? I genuinely would like to know.

How Paypal won us back...

2007-06-08T10:07:00.000Z

That's right, we're staying with Paypal. They've resolved the issue and as such we're happy. Moreover, their customer service is fast, responsive and intelligent and their rates are competitive. Good for you, guys.

Let us compare and contrast to HSBC who after 2 months had still not finished processing my merchant bank application. Their processes were staggeringly convoluted: for example, I needed to send them a formal letter setting out my business's address details when I already have a business bank account with them and as such they send my bank statements to my business's address.

Goodbye HSBC, hello again Paypal.

Today's graduates: not team players?

2007-05-15T17:18:00.000Z

So, you haven't heard from me in a while... Sorry

Here's some exciting news to make up for it. I've been invited to sit on The Orange Graduate Panel.

This Panel aims to help organisations understand how to better motivate and support graduates. Sounds self-indulgent on the graduates' part until you comtemplate that most graduates leave their first job within 9 months so there really is a lack of satisfaction out there; moreover, this is expensive if you're an employer both in terms of knowledge and skills built and lost and the cash cost of continuously recruiting. Our findings so far have been summarised by the beeb and the IoD.

The idea is we draw on our own personal experience and give our opinions on life as graduates. I've mainly been lucky; the first two jobs I had after graduating were stimulating; one on Whitehall working with very smart people, another at Library House, working with more very smart people. Both reflected the culture I had come to know at university: that asking difficult questions was a necessity and that a good working environment seeks to encourage and foster this by creating an open atmosphere and setting steep challenges for those that could handle it (at least, that was my experience).

But difficult questions don't always go down well, even if they are for the greater good. A well known Minister who definitely doesn't shop at Tescos looked less than impressed when I naively asked him in my first week why we were promoting the success of a funding scheme by the number of spinouts rather than the quality of them (that's another debate). Equally, I have worked in environments where using those honed skills you developed at university, namely to question assumptions where there is no evidence or to argue conversely in order to better understand the issue is not well received because it is not perceived to be the behaviour of a team player. Rather it implies a lack of belief in the corporate doctrine. When you've lost the freedom to ask questions in an organisation, you're done for.

Why Paypal suck as a merchant provider

2007-03-21T08:44:00.000Z

So, we're just about to move to a new merchant provider because we felt the time had come... And just as well! Yesterday I was hit by a barrage of emails by my usually happy customers saying they couldn't pay me. This is never music to anyone's ears. Why? Because Paypal did a cute little roll out without bothering to test it properly and evidently broke people's ability to pay. Oops.

I raised it with them and got this cheerful response:

"I apologize for the frustration this is causing. The issue you are describing, is currently a known issue in the PayPal system. There should be no request, or error concerning the CVV code. A CVV code should not be required for this payment type. Our engineers are aware of the issue, and working actively to resolve it. There is no estimated time for a resolve. I appreciate your patience, as we work to resolve the issue."

This payment type being anyone with a credit card or switch card (erm, pretty much everyone). Please Paypal, take your own sweet time on this...

How the littlest things upset the best laid plans

2007-03-07T23:29:00.000Z

I hate printers. I lost 2 hours of my day today to trying to persuade my bloody printer to work. It is its sole function in life, it should be such an obvious thing for it to do that it can't get it wrong. And yet, I have never seen a printer in an office anywhere that does not cause inestimable amounts of irritation and cost inordinate amouts of time. I hate printers. I hope there is a hell for printers where they are tortured horribly by having their cartridges ripped out. Grrr.

Why accountants are ace and lawyers suck

2007-03-06T19:32:00.000Z

Today I went to go and see a recommended accountant about sorting out the formalities. As the title might suggest, they were ace. Assuming we go with them, it would seem likely that what we spend with them on services, we'll save in terms of tax, which to my mind is the hallmark of a good accountant (that and being willing to explain the rationale for what they're doing).

By contrast, most lawyers speak in terms of liability, potential risks, dangers, pitfalls, blah blah and rather than explaining things when asked prefer to patronise you as though it's black magic. It reminds me of bad Catholic churches where the congregation turns up for fear of what it might cost them if they don't go to church and you have this funny feeling about the donations plate...

(At this point I would like to add two heavy caveats:

1 - I am sure some lawyers are nice people, in fact I know a couple of nice lawyers, however I believe them to be the exception not the rule.

2 - Many Catholic churches are very good

I love Gantt Charts

2007-03-05T00:08:00.000Z

No wonder I've been walking around twitching slightly and behaving erratically. I just wrote my to-do list. 115 lines later, I feel hugely relieved to at least have written it down. Now I just need to prioritise it... Bring on Project baby

Did you know you are breaking the law?

2007-03-03T19:00:00.000Z

Oh yes, if you're in busines, I reckon the odds are you're breaking some bureacratic law somewhere and you don't even know it. I am feeling irritable about this tonight because it would appear that I need to review my business (which fortunately we're in the process of looking at anyway) regarding some inane bill that's been put through and now impacts upon it.

Now, we could ignore it. It's not like our government is particularly able at enforcing laws, but I'd rather stay squeaky clean. So I'll add that to the To do list.

Over the last year, we've had to make several major adaptions so as not to break the law. Here's an example:

Some of our tutors were international students. No problem, we thought. Good for them. Makes sense that you might want to tutor Mandarin and in doing so raise the nation's generally appalling levels of linguistic ability. But, international students apparently have horribly complex rules surrounding whether they are allowed to work on a self-employed basis. We're talking about £10 a week for an hour's tutoring. God forbid the taxman might lose out on that.

In light of said bureaucracy, we can't advertise in a number of desirable places for fear their students might get themselves in trouble. Leaving aside the fact that the other 90% of home students miss out on the opportunity because of said bureaucractic procedures and that their students are in fact, grown ups more than able to do adult things like pay them £3,000 a year or check their own visa, does this not strike you as ludicrous?

We even have a big button saying, "make sure you check your visa before registering." Tutoring is skilled work, great CV building stuff and stimulates the brain a lot more than working 4 hours a week in Tesco. But apparently stacking shelves doesn't break any rules in the knowledge economy.

What kind of idiot startup are you?

2007-03-03T13:11:00.000Z

Friend of mine just sent me a great link to a quiz called "The Idiot Startup." I recommend it for entertainment purposes... This is what it concluded me to be... I think my boyfriend would agree with the last statement ;) I laughed out loud.

Your Entrepreneur Type:

The Visionary

Creative, bold, and charismatic, you want to change the world.

Entrepreneurial strengths:

passionate
charismatic and a team builder
focused
creative and able to envision the future

Entrepreneurial weaknesses:

may lack the pragmatism needed to achieve
moody and inconsistent

Last night I had an epiphany

2007-03-01T10:17:00.000Z

It was a wonderful but wholly painful moment because I realised I'd had the same epiphany about two years ago and decided not to act on it.

Basically, two years ago when I looked at how to bring my tutoring business online, we'd surveyed various models and decided that the market (by which I mean actual customers in this instance) was ready for some of these ideas, but was not for others. So we put them on ice, until a later point when we could roll them out and see market adoption as a realistic proposition.

In the meantime, I got a full-time job working at another start-up and proceeded to have either ideas, not least influenced by the rise of social networking, etc. I decided one of these was half decent and asked to work with the Judge Business School to see if they thought it was any good. They said it was well on the way and the market potential was there, but if they were going to be honest, there was something missing. They suggested a killer app back then which would tie things together and last night I figured a good, elegant way to pull all of this together and make something beautiful but not contrived. I am feeling slightly sick, though reassured to see a VC backing a company who is thinking along similar lines.

So now I just have the responsibility of making it happen. Cup of tea might help methinks...

Further to my comment about crappy beta products

2007-02-27T19:53:00.000Z

...I would like to congratulate blogger.com - who are now out of beta and yet buggy as hell. What is worse than a crappy beta product? A crappy 'wahey-we're-no-longer-beta' product.

Moreover, reporting a bug is like trying to break through a virtual fort knox. You would think they would want the feedback...

This is something I clearly just don't understand. Why don't companies want to hear from their customers anymore? It's like they're an inconvenience, one of those pains that must be endured. As opposed to their livelihood. And it isn't like customers don't have a voice anymore... Can someone enlighten me?

More particularly, why doesn't Google want to talk to its customers when it is utterly crap at community (I cite Orkut as irrefutable evidence)? They're not meant to be evil. That's why we liked them ('m narrowly resisting dark side jokes...)

All this said, I caveat by adding that sign-up was very friendly and until the very ugly bug I stumbled on about twenty minutes ago - it's taken twenty minutes to find where to report the bug only to be told I can't because I'm not a member of some perverse Google group which I really can't be bothered to join - and that I had been suitably impressed by the ease of use, navigation, etc.

Gripe over.

The customer is always bright (mostly...)

2007-02-27T13:35:00.000Z

So now I'm going to say some politically incorrect things. If you are a whiny PC type, look away now.

Over the last couple of days I've been enduring the whining emails of a particular client. This client bought the product without RTFM and is now moaning. Her total spend with us was a tiny amount by anyone's standards. The 'manual', so to speak, was plastered clearly in bright lights for all to see and thankfully, thousands of our customers have understood this with no problems. Normally I would take the following approach:

1 View the customer's problem as our problem. Because if the customer doesn't get it that means we need to do better to explain it.
2 Acknowledge and appreciate the feedback and give the client a refund/freebie so they leave your care with a good impression of your company.
3 Make changes so the same problem doesn't happen again.

This is what I mean by 'the customer is always bright' - because they find the problems you may not see, especially where the web is concerned.

However, in the case of this one individual customer, who has been stunningly rude despite our courtesy and is frankly, stunningly stupid, I am not going to give a refund. Nor am I going to change our website. Because if thousands can and one person can't, you have to recognise that sometimes the customer is just a rude moron.

Can't get the staff

2007-02-25T21:44:00.000Z

This is the major concern on my mind this evening. We hired a new developer (or thought we did) to help us out with the cool project we've landed. Except now he's gone awol. No replies to emails, no answering the phone. So either he's taken a holiday or he's decided it is not for him. I would like to think the former or he'd at least have let us know.

Recruiting is a horrendously time-consuming business and there's nothing more frustrating than finding the perfect person and then being let down. My other service, Bright Tutors, absolutely relies on professional people who will answer the phone, turn up to teach every week and let you know if they are no longer available. That's before we even get to whether or not their teaching is good. When you find people who have both the talent to do the job and the willingness: pay them well and tell them you value them. One of them is worth ten of the others.

You snooze, you lose

2007-02-21T14:32:00.000Z

So, on Tuesday I was indeed a highly effective human being (we'll say nothing about yesterday). I spent the morning with a client kicking off a very cool web development project (I'll link to the end result when the project is complete) and I think they liked our ideas on what we could do for them.

Then I cleared all my customer enquiries for my main service, First Tutors. First Tutors is the UK's largest site linking parents to tutors and vice-versa. If any of my customers happen to be reading - tell me what you think, always looking to improve...

In the evening, I attended the Enterprise Tuesday networking event and lecture. Phil O'Donovan (aka co-founder of CSR) lectured about fundamentals in starting up and reminded me of some things you know but can lose sight of. Eg, get the product out the door before some other bugger beats you to it (he put it more delicately) so that you get market share.

Personally, I think this is a judgement call. There is such a thing as shipping the product too early - look at the backlash against 'beta' web products at the moment, which aren't actually beta. They're just broken or offer a crappy user experience.

But on the other hand, no point building the perfect product if someone else's solves the problem adequately before you and everyone goes there - and let's remember, the web is a critical mass game. So O'Donovan's was a point well made. It will help me in creating my plan (which ahem, I haven't started yet...)

Dominate The Fear or it will dominate you

2007-02-19T22:37:00.000Z

My aim by this time next year is to have a business which is known for being the leader in its field, which offers genuine value to its customers and which is innovative and pioneering in its approach. A business I can be proud of.

I firmly believe there is nothing more difficult than sticking your livelihood, reputation and employability on the line and starting your own business. Which is why it appeals. I have an appetite for risk and I like things to be really hard - if you're not challenged, you're not alive. I fully recognise that this makes me either a) an incredibly naive idiot or b) a sadist of some sort.

Today was Day 1 in this challenge (I left my day job on Friday). Today I learnt:

Don't panic. Remember the incredibly nauseous feeling you had during revision for your finals where it became apparant that it wasn't going to be possible to read Marx really quickly after all and that, you'd be having to blag it?.. We called it The Fear at Cambridge. The realisation that the task was insurmountable and that everything you had worked for at school was about to be decided by 1 exam which you hadn't read properly for. And that you may not get a job if the exam went badly enough. And that then you would be a disgrace to your family, yourself and the subject of sneering pity from the nastier elements at your college (you get the idea...).

The key was not to let The Fear dominate you. Do that and all is lost. You had to break it down into little pieces to make it manageable. That's what I need to do with my business so that my time is managed properly instead of jumping from one thing to another. Damn the internet for all its distractions.

By the end of this week I will have a plan. A proper one with deadlines.