The social business revolution
If you're looking for commentary on Google Buzz, bugger off. This is about something meaningful. Game and life-changing. Want to be part of 2010's headline event? Read on... You're a small business grasping for recognition. You compete against the work of big brands, but your customers are way happier with your service. Why shouldn't you have the advantage? Why shouldn't your reputation among customers count for everything? Welcome to a new way of doing business and getting what you want. Welcome to Exceptional Businesses for Exceptional Success.The theory is simple: you give great service, you get great growth.The concept: Reviews and customer feedback drive business achievement. In practice: A variation on the Google Maps theme is populated with every single business on earth. As your service and product quality grows, so does the map presence of the business.Key advantages of EBEC:
- If you're a very small business with an exceptional commitment to service, you have equal footing with an established business with moderate reviews. As you grow in reputation, so you evolve on the map
- Business spend is focused on product development and delivery, not on wasteful advertising strategies.
- Legalise a mandatory system of customer feedback. Interaction and reporting on customer feedback is an absolute element of EBEC. Without mechanisms to obviate consistent and measurable feedback, this new method of business success cannot succeed.
- Reinstate freedom of speech regarding service and product reviews. No more of this bullshit where you're impeded from writing an honest negative review because your opinions are taken hostage by threats of legal action/ramifications.
- Teach children from an early age the importance of serving the community by spreading news by word of mouth and mouse, objectively and without prejudice.
Point one necessitates imposing restrictions on human rights organisations. I'm all for saving people from filthy jails but we need to understand that to progress society, we need to adopt certain processes that traditionally might be perceived as bordering on the invasive. For example: in the case of those people without computers or internet access, with their permission we must be allowed to make note of their commentary via on-street recording devices. I'm all for identity cards, incidentally, but that's an aside. So long as we can prove without impediment that the individual has approved their feedback to be channelled for a common benefit, that suits the means.
Shops and businesses should be provided with on-the-spot methods for gathering customer service intelligence. Feedback buttons should be placed on exit, feeding real-time customer satisfaction results to displays above the entrance.
There's no reason why you couldn't extend EBEC to public services, such as schools and banks. Remember, this is a way of benefiting us all.
While the caring, sharing business is the obvious beneficiary, the community advantage is in sorting the wheat from the chaff. You'll know where to shop, where to get your accounts done. Those business with the potential to become great will pull their socks up and their Monopoly-esque houses on the map will become big hotels. The differentiator between EBEC and now is in the level playing field. So you don't have money for huge ad campaigns? To hell with it: your products are rock solid and your people are incredible. The rewards are obvious. How do we kick things off? There are organisations in existence already that could facilitate EBEC. Sites like GetSatisfaction could extend their remit to cover off the electronic channel for harvesting and analysing customer feedback data. We're in an era of Anywhere connectivity. Why not let us make it work for us, for a change?
EBEC is the stuff of incredible futures. For us. For businesses. For everyone. All it takes is a change of mindset and a plan of action. Are you ready to make the change?---------------------------- A few days ago we sorted today's kids out by enforcing compulsory community commitments for those claiming state benefits.
Now we've sorted business out. What shall we sort out next? World poverty? Greenhouse gas emissions?Let me know what you want the Ideas Geek to work on and we'll get it done. Sharpish.
