The power of real time feedback

A few months ago, we developed an online feedback tool that we send out to customers once we have shipped their orders. An example of this can be seen here.

The results are ultimately listed on the product pages, our customer review section, and sorted by client. The concept is hardly revolutionary, but we have been amazed at how customer feedback has transformed the way we approach the business.

Here is an example:

A few weeks ago, we produced an order of blankets for a customer's executive retreat. The blankets were reasonably well received, but the client had a concern about the embroidery backing on the opposite side of the blanket (90% of the time, embroidery requires a backing called pellon to hold the stitches in place). They posted a comment to this effect on our site. While the blankets were embroidered properly, there are two ways we could have done this: (i) with a backing or (ii) without a backing if one uses a tearaway material. We chose to embroider with the traditional backing, but realized quickly that we had made an error after reading the customer's comments.

The client posted the comment 48 hrs before their event. When we received notification of the concern, we were able to react quickly by looking at the tearaway option. We produced the re-run of blankets within 24 hrs and were able to overnight ship the goods to the location of the retreat. All in time for the event.

The concept of feedback is not new. However, what was different in this case is we were able to provide the customer with an easy forum with which to express their views.

By giving the customer a platform, we are able to keep on top of any issues that may arise. This has allowed us to pull certain products if we receive consistently negative feedback. On the flip side, it allows us to stock up the winning styles when the positive reviews come in. Most importantly, it gives us the chance quickly turn a mediocre client experience into a highly positive one.

Honest feedback also influences the purchase decisions of other customers who visit the site. While our product universe is vast and our knowledge of the products is deep, nothing complements this more effectively than an honest customer review.

Delight

I saw Once the other day.

It's the story of a down and out street busker who meets a fellow musician in Dublin. It's an unlikely tale of how these two come together for a week and make incredible music.

It's a delightful tale as the power of their musical chemistry is so unexpected.

One of the best scenes in the movie is when they show up at the studio to record a few songs. The producer-for-hire looks dismissively at them when they are starting up ("who is this motley crew?"). It takes about a minute into the song for him to start paying attention and by the end he's sold. This is a fabulous scene.

In many ways, I draw parallels between the producer and customers. Customers want, but don't necessarily expect, to be delighted. I say this as the bar in business is often set at mediocre, making truly delightful experiences rare at best.

In business, delighting people (employees, customers, vendors, etc) should be the name of the game. It's actually pretty rare these days which is why when one is truly delighted, they seldom forget about it. It's always the little things that go a long way when it comes to delighting people (in our case, we make this a priority with an easy to navigate site, real time reviews, engaging staff, the ability to make people smile).

I was genuinely delighted by Once, and I loved how this scene in particular reinforced how nice it is to be taken by surprise.

Welcoming the newest member of the RS Team!

On May 26, we welcomed Alexandra Susanne Graham into the world. She is tiny at 5lbs 15 ozs and is doing very well. We expect her to be roaming the office corridors in no time :)

Here are some photo highlights of Alex's first day.

$75,000 raised for Special Olympics!

On May 23, the RIGHTSLEEVE Raiders participated in a day long fundraiser called Marathon of Sport. All funds raised at the event were donated to Canadian Special Olympics. Throughout the day, we competed alongside Special Olympians in Ultimate Frisbee, Flag Football, Soccer, Basketball, Volleyball and Floor Hockey.

Over the course of the day, all 18 teams collectively raised $75,000 for Special Olympics. We came in 4th place with a total of $6,132 raised.

Marathon of Sport is organized by motionball. motionball's mandate is to introduce the next generation of donors, volunteers and sponsors to the Special Olympics movement through integrated social and sporting events. Since inception in 2002, motionball has raised over $1,000,000 for Canadian Special Olympics.

Software is a curated collection of ideas, benefits and features

I credit Jason Fried, of 37 Signals fame, for this clever statement on software development.

I really enjoyed Jason's presentation at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo as he hit upon several of the issues we face at RIGHTSLEEVE as we roll out various web software features internally and externally.

 

One of the biggest challenges we face is feature creep and the desire to include every little request we get from our clients to improve a component of the merchandise store technology we provide.

This also impacts our internal development as it relates to our CRM/VRM engine that powers our business. After years of design, it's often the simple features that stick, while the complex features die a quiet death. For example, we developed a Facebook style news feed to highlight the important selling and production activities in our company - I am not sure where we would be without it. Ironically, this feature was an afterthought.

We have a graveyard of nifty features that made sense in theory, but never worked in reality.

Having said this, software development is a process of trial and error .... and signal vs noise. Without the noise (ie. the attempts, brainstorm sessions, blue sky ideas) there would be no signals (ie. the simple "Aha" features that just work). It's improving the ratio between the hits and misses that's key.

As Fried says, it's our job to be the curator by collecting the best ideas while sifting out the rest.

Passion (continued)

I was captivated (and haunted) by this 1994 Time Magazine article on the Life and Death of Kevin Carter, a relatively unknown photojournalist who covered the Apartheid conflict in South Africa at its most bloody and horrific. Carter, above all, was a man driven by a passion for his craft.


I am a big believer in passion, having written about it before on this blog.


I am drawn to the way it brings out the very best in people. Unfortunately for Kevin Carter, his passion to do the right thing (expose the evils of Apartheid through gripping photography) was overwhelmed by his unstable mental state as he claimed his own life in the summer of 1994, arguably at the height of influence.


I find it hard to draw any real comparisons between the work we do at RIGHTSLEEVE and the demanding work of a war photographer. However, what it did reinforce for me is that with passion, one can do anything. In Carter's case, this meant winning the Pulitzer Prize for Photography and, in doing so, shining a spotlight on the famine in Sudan with this photograph.


Passion brought out the best in Kevin Carter. His accomplishments still endure several years after his untimely death.

Swag 2.0 product launch

Swag 2.0 was a great success yesterday. We had close to 200 people attend the product launch - thank you very much to those that were able to make the event (and for those who were not able to make it, you were missed and we look forward to seeing you in 2010)!

We have some great pictures of the event that are now hot off the press.

A number of people were also asking for a link to the product specials we had on display at Swag 2.0. Here they are

Thank you for your continued support.

The RIGHTSLEEVE team

Trust

We recently launched a campaign focused on the single most important asset we have at RIGHTSLEEVE - our clients' trust in us.

We wanted to keep it short and sweet by letting the images do the talking.

To all of our trusted clients - thank you. We look forward to many more years of working with you.

Susur's challenge with Shang - the curse of being in the middle

Prodigal son Susur Lee has returned home to Toronto from April 1-15 to offer Torontonians his 5 course tasting menu imported from his new NYC restaurant, Shang.

We went last night as we were eager to taste Susur's latest delicacies. It was okay.

Don't get me wrong - the dinner was superb. For $60/person, we had a 5 course tasting menu consisting of skirt steak, shrimp, hamache, tofu and molten chocolate cake. With a bottle of wine, we were around $200/couple tax and tip included.

But here's the challenge: Susur is a culinary genius. He is famous for exceedingly complex dishes and his former restaurant in Toronto, Susur, was near perfect according to most food critics in Toronto and beyond. It was also an expensive restaurant, hovering around $400/couple.

A few years ago, sensing demand for a less expensive alternative to Susur, he opened a lower end restaurant called Lee right next door to appeal to people who wanted Susur at a fraction of the cost. An average tab at Lee is $125/couple. Lee has been a great success as it occupies a good spot in the market - interesting food by a top chef with cheaper ingredients at a reasonable price.

Susur had done a masterful job at offering a product for two very different markets.

So what happened with Shang?

This is the issue I have with Shang (or at least Shang imported to Toronto for 2 weeks). The food was great, but I was not blown away and when I am paying $200/couple I am expecting to be wowed. The molten chocolate cake, for instance, was fantastic but I can get molten chocolate cake at 75% of Toronto's restaurants. I left wishing I had paid $400 and got the real Susur Lee experience, not the middle Susur option.

I think this is Shang's challenge and likely explains why his restaurant in NYC has met with average reviews - he's in the middle. NYC, even more so than Toronto, can accommodate a handful of wildy expensive restaurants run by top chefs. Furthermore, the people that Susur used to cater to in Toronto exist in droves in NYC - diners who will happily pay upwards to $500/couple for a stunning meal. Not many chefs are able to deliver outstanding masterpieces at any price, but Susur is most certainly one of them.

This is why I left scratching my head last night. Susur is at the top of his game and Shang was no more than 3.75/5. This is a chef who can do almost anything he wants. If his creations must cost $400-500/couple on account of top quality ingredients and complicated prep techniques, then he has the credentials to pull it off. By opening up a $200/couple restaurant, he's in the middle market in NYC and I wonder whether this prevents him from delivering the world class food he once did at Susur.

To make matters worse, I suspect that most wealthy diners would rather skip an above average $200/couple meal for a stunning $400/couple meal at a place like Nobu.

In my view, this is the curse of being in the middle - not cheap enough to attract diners looking for great food at a reasonable price (this would explain The Spotted Pig's success in NYC) or expensive enough to attract the high end diners looking for an extraordinary culinary experience (like Eisenginn Farm in Collingwood or the French Laundry in Napa).

I hope that Shang can find its place, but I suspect it will only come by differentiating itself through extraordinary food. Perhaps that means a return to the old Susur.

Individual color shots are here

We just launched a new database feature that allows us to showcase individual color shots on http://www.rightsleeve.com/.

When we first went live with the site a few years ago, we simply displayed the same thumbnail/regular size/enlarged size colorway per product. The balance of the colors were listed as text on the product page, without the ability to click a link and see an individual colorway. This was fine for a color like black, but did not help as much with a color like Dijon.

This was inconvenient and grew to be a point of frustration for clients who wanted to see all of their options. You told us this, and we did something about it.

Over the next few weeks, we will be adding individual color shots to the majority of our web database. Thanks for bearing with us.

Check out a few examples of what the individual colorways look like on these products:

Zoomies

Bowling Shirt

No more emailing individual color shots - everything can now be seen on one web page.

Earth Hour - A year of coffee savings

It's hard to believe that a year has passed since 2008's Earth Hour (scene from our house pictured above). We'll be turning off the lights again tonight for the 2009 affair, but the lead up to this year's Earth Hour has made me reflect on one of the simple things I started doing about a year ago to reduce my carbon footprint and save some cash at the same time. I started using an enviro mug.

I know, I know - it's not revolutionary, but it's still a feel good story.

Here's my story:

I take my dog Jack on a walk every morning - and most days I stop by my local Starbucks. It's a great way to start the day as I have blogged about before. Each morning I leave with my favorite tumbler which fits nicely into my hooded sweatshirt pocket.

 

I ask for a Tall Bold (12oz), but the barista invariably tops up the tumbler which is more like a Grande (16oz). The charge for a Tall coffee is $1.68 (after the enviro mug discount). The cost of a Grande coffee in a regular Starbucks cup is $2.02.

So, here's the math on annual basis:

($2.02 - $1.68)  x 52 weeks x  5 average weekly visits

= $88.40 per year

While I am not going to get rich doing this, $88.40 is better than nothing. It's also nice to know that I am not sending 260 Starbucks cups and lids into the landfill every year.

There you go - I still get my morning coffee treat, and I save cash and reduce the landfill in the process.

My take on Twitter

There has been a lot of hype of late about Twitter and the debate still rages: "Is Twitter a soapbox for useless chatter or a legitimate communication medium"?

I have followed Twitter's rise since it started 3 years ago though it took me a while to really get into it. I suppose my hesitation had to do with finding my true voice on Twitter vs jumping in haphazardly and using it because all of the cool kids were hyping the heck out of it.


I wrote an article in 2007 on the value of social media for a business within a traditional industry. Twitter was left out of the post as I did not have a lot of personal experience with it at the time. As I have now jumped into the Twittersphere, I have come to learn a few interesting things about the service and its value as a social media tool, especially for businesses struggling to find their footing amidst all of the social media noise out there.


Here are my top 9 lessons learned:


1. Twittering is less time consuming than blogging. As opposed to spending hours on a blog post, you can jot down some whimsical thoughts and presto! you have joined the twittersphere. There is a reason they call Twittering microblogging.


This also means it's easier to be profilic and develop a following relatively quickly (note: this assumes your tweets are interesting, relevant and not full of narcissistic drivel). When you Twitter, you are publishing to the web which also raises your profile on Google ("Googlejuice" as Jeff Jarvis would say). If you google "rightsleeve", our Twitter feed is the 3rd result, second only to the RIGHTSLEVE blog and the main web site http://www.rightsleeve.com/.


2. Twitter is a very quick way to learn about breaking news. Depending on who you follow, Twitter is a great way to stay in the loop. The other thing is that the stories are also highly relevant (ie. if I am following tech blogger Michael Arrington, I know I can get up to the minute updates on news I am interested in).


Another example was the way I learned about the FedEx crash in Japan on 3/22/09. I saw the following on my feed from Mathew Ingram. Without Twitter, I likely would not have known about this until the following morning when I read the paper.


3. Twitter's news feed is an amalgam of your specific interests. If you follow 100 people whose opinions you respect, your news feed becomes your own personal newspaper. Instead of content being delivered to you by a predetermined number of journalists (as you would with a newspaper), you are able to read articles/musings/updates by those you are interested in following. The neat thing about Twitter is that you can access the feeds of total strangers (ie. Lance Armstrong, Barack Obama, etc) and get the low-down on what's interesting to them. This is fundamentally different than Facebook where the other person has to accept your friend request before you get access to their personal information.


4. Someone's feeds annoying you? Get rid of them! If you follow someone who spends their time yammering on about something boring, irrelevant, or just downright narcissistic, then remove them. You don't have to listen to anyone you don't want to.


5. Twitter is an amazing distribution channel for your content. As mentioned above (and in my previous post on blogging best practices), if your content is interesting and relevant to others, people will follow you. As Seth Godin discusses in Permission Marketing, having a group of people who actually want to listen to you is an incredibly powerful asset. If this privilege is abused, people will leave you as I point out in #4. In today's crowded marketplace, getting people's attention is getting harder and harder to do.


One of my favourite people to follow is Mark Evans, one of the co-founders of the Mesh Conference. Mark uses the platform to share his expertise on a wide range of web marketing and technology topics. As a social media consultant, this is an invaluable tool for building his credibility online.


6. Twitter makes it easy to follow and join in on the conversation. Millions of people on Twitter are having conversations about everything from brands to music to swag. All points of view are discussed - the good, bad and the ugly. As a marketer, it goes without saying that following this conversation about your brand is critically important. The bigger your company, the greater the liklihood that people are talking about you online. One of the things I have come to learn over the years is that a disgruntled customer can be turned into a fan relatively quickly if they are listened to by someone who cares.


Twitter allows marketers to quickly gauge what people are saying about them. If customers are crying bloody murder online, then smart marketers join the conversation and show the customer base they are listening and hopefully doing something about the problem. Twitter is a great tool for getting your finger on the pulse of this conversation.


Two great tools you can use to see what people are saying about you are Twitter Search and IceRocket (twitter tab).


JetBlue is a great example of how a company can use Twitter to listen to its customers. Check out this exchange with passenger Mark Hurst to give you a sense of how some companies are using the service.


7. Great way to discover new experts. As Twitter's news feed allows you to see people's replies as well as follow a conversation thread, it's easy to meet new people. If someone is referenced by one of the people I follow, I am likely to track that person down, check out their feed and add them to my follower list so I can get their updates. This is also a standard feature in blogging as well, but I find it to be quicker on Twitter.


8. Twitter gives your brand a personality. As Twitter is the antithesis of the polished marketing brochure, the comments tend to be more personal, off-the-cuff, and informal. Such a conversation style make consumers feel that the brand is talking with them, not at them. In my view, this can only be a good thing. Most consumers see through marketing speak and are wary of slick ads. While advertising is still an important part of the marketing mix, Twitter adds another dimension to the overall puzzle.

9. Speak your mind, but be mindful of who is reading your tweets. Yes, Twitter is a less formal environment, but it does not mean that "anything goes" especially when it relates to tweets that could be incriminating in the future. The Globe and Mail published an interesting article on Twittering (esp. at work) and highlighted an example of a tweet that resulted in the "twitter-er" losing their job offer.

Here was the incriminating tweet:

“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

As tweets are searchable via Google, Cisco tracked down the comment and ultimately had this person's job offer rescinded.

The lesson? Speak your mind, but exercise some common sense.

In sum, I think my comments will be most relevant to people newer to the whole Twitter phenomenon and, perhaps more specifically, to people who are trying to make sense of this whole web 2.0 thing and how it could possibly apply to their business.

I'd be happy to hear your thoughts (as well as your experiences in using Twitter to advance your marketing objectives) - just post your comments in the section below.


To see how we use Twitter at RIGHTSLEEVE, click here

Google vs Twitter

I thought this was a very interesting post about the increasing relevance of Twitter as a search tool compared to Google. I don't think that Google has much to worry about in the short term, but the rise of Twitter and other social media properties like Facebook and Digg in the last 3 years must give the search giant pause considering their social media strategies have pretty much fallen flat.

Google is still amazingly clairvoyant and I can't imagine what life would be like without it, but I am also increasingly turning to the likes of Twitter to complement my search for relevant information. This social component gives me the added relevance I need (i.e., having immediate access to a friend's analysis on a topic is invaluable to me). That combined with what Google tells me makes me all the more informed.

It'll be interesting to see how the next 12-24 months unfold as it relates to the concept of social search.

Swag and "He's Just Not that Into You"

I admit that I went to see "He's Just Not that Into You" last night.

It wasn't amazing (surprise!) and quite frankly I am not sure what I expected other than I think that Kevin Connolly (Entourage fame) is a great actor and I like how he dropped "douche bag" into one of his lines in the movie ... but I digress.

Swag is all over this movie. I suppose I have a keen eye/ear when it comes to this given what I do. So here goes:

- Connolly's character, Conor, is accused of cheesy real estate marketing tactics for using branded notepads and promo frisbees while on a date with Gigi (played by Ginnifer Goodwin). Shortly after the date, the camera pans to an open box of full color promo frisbees (I swear I know where they were made). For the record, I think frisbees are a cheesy way to market real estate services, well, unless they are Ultimate discs from Discraft. :)

- Gigi uses a promotional pen from a dentist's office as a lame excuse to see Conor again (claiming that he had "forgot" the pen on the date).

- Alex, Conor's buddy who falls for Gigi, uses the same promotional pen to express his love for her at the end of the movie (boy produces pen, boy kisses girl). I won't get into any more details fearing I have already spoiled the movie (deepest apologies) ....

Not sure the movie is a must-see, but it was amusing to see the use of promotional goods as a tool for landing a date.

Impact

A good friend of mine, Tyler Gompf, forwarded me this amazing video on the meaning of customer service and the impact that any employee - regardless of rank or experience - can have on their organization.

http://www.stservicemovie.com/

Swag 2.0 is back

On May 7, we will be hosting our 2nd annual Swag 2.0 product launch party. Like last year, we will be having the event at the Century Room on King St West in Toronto.

For some event pics from 2008, take a look here

Registration for 2009 is now live

King for a Day - My Zappos Visit

I was in Las Vegas for Magic last week. On my last day, I paid a visit to Zappos, the wildly successful online shoe retailer.

I was drawn to Zappos after reading so much about them in the press. I had heard they offered tours of their offbeat company and I was keen to see it in person. So I emailed CEO Tony Hsieh about being in town and whether I could drop by to see his company. Within 10 minutes, I had a personal response from Tony saying I was more than welcome and that his tour leader would schedule a time for me ... and by the way what hotel was I staying at as the Zappos shuttle would come and pick me up. Wow!

I was picked up at 8:30am by a friendly Zappos staffer named Jo who told me about her previous job as a waitress at a local restaurant steps from the Zappos office. Looking for a new challenge she submited her resume to Zappos (after restaurant regular Hsieh urged her to apply). She told me she had been at the company for 13 months and had never felt such a close affinity to a job before.

Zappos front desk staff cheered (literally) when I arrived at reception. My name was advertised on a flat panel monitor and to set the stage for the tour, I was offered a bag of popcorn from their vintage popcorn machine (circa the vaudeville theatre era). I was then greeted by their Training Supervisor, Loren, who enthused about his 5 years at the company and how he left a job as a dive instructor in California to join Zappos in Vegas.

He spent the next 2.5 hrs showing me around his company.

He grabbed a Zappos flag and off we went around the office. We weaved through a series of departments (legal, finance, marketing, purchasing, merchandising and customer service). 90% of the office is open concept, including the executive corridor which is festooned with jungle vines.

As we passed from department to department, staff would jump out from their cubicles with pom-poms and party horns welcoming me to their section of the office. I was dumbstruck. This was the furthest thing from a typical office environment. This was camp, albeit one with $1 Billion in annual sales.

I ended my tour with a stop in the office of Zappos' in house coach, Dr Vik. A tall man with a beaming smile, Dr Vik explained that he was a resource to staff to help them plan and achieve their goals. I suppose if Zappos can be described as camp, Dr Vik would be its head counsellor. He directed me towards an upholstered throne in the corner and asked me to select my choice of headwear for a polaroid photo (between the tiara and the crown, I opted for the crown). I was given one copy and the other one was pinned to his office wall. There were hundreds of photos of past visitors covering the wall. (and yes, I know the pic is super nerdy)!

Upon my departure, I was given a 2008 Zappos Culture Book. This is the company's yearbook celebrating the past 12 months of company life. The focal point of the Culture Book are the employee comments about their experiences at Zappos. I browsed through the book on my flight home and the word "family" was mentioned in almost every sentence. It was a deeply personal tribute to the company.

The Culture Book is handed out to all visitors, business partners and employees. It is also an amazing marketing piece that speaks volumes about what Zappos is all about and why you would want to work with this company. The fact that I have told this story to about 50 people in person (and many more on facebook, twitter and my blog) is a testament to the power of viral marketing.

I would strongly encourage others to visit Zappos and see first-hand how they are re-writing the rules of how to run a 21st century business. Just drop them an email at tours@zappos.com

Thank you Zappos!

What Would Google Do?

I just finished Jeff Jarvis's fascinating book, What Would Google Do?.

I loved this book on so many levels:

1. It's a quick and entertaining read.

2. Jeff takes us on a journey on how Google's model of transparency and collaboration could disrupt almost every industry we know (health care, real estate, education, banking, politics, insurance, etc). Not coincidentally, the sectors most in need of a fix today.

3. He pulls no punches, and is unsparing in his criticism towards old school business models.

Most importantly, it was refreshing to read a book that focused on how an innovative business model like Google's can be applied to a range of businesses. This book could very well be the prescription on how to get us out of the economic mess we find ourselves in today.

My key takeaway from this book? People should spend more time innovating, and less time complaining!

RIGHTSLEEVE.COM featured on ITBusiness.ca

I donned my suit and tie on Monday for an interview with ITBusiness.ca.

We discussed how RIGHTSLEEVE has been able to use web technology to transform our business model - both for the user (on the front end of our site) as well as for our employees (through our web-based production management and CRM system).




The transition has not been an easy one, but it's been worth the time and effort. Three years ago, we moved from a traditional paper-based company to a paperless web company that runs the entire business off our web site. This has allowed us to expand into other markets across Canada and the US, as well as differentiate ourselves from more traditional competitors that have yet to wrap their heads around the web.

As we built the site using open source software (MySQL), our costs have been limited to development time. The advantage of building our own site (vs outsourcing to a white label promotional site) has resulted in a customized interface specific to our supply chain intensive business. Updates and modifications are done on the fly as we receive feedback from employees and customers about what can be improved.

Having a dynamic web model has allowed us to expand our supply chain and product selection exponentionally, without having to add a commensurate number of staff.

RIGHTSLEEVE wins!

On Jan 25, RIGHTSLEEVE won a silver Image Award for our work with Softchoice Corporation. The Image Awards are the "Oscars" of our industry, so we were super excited. This is the fifth Image Award we have won.

A big shout out to Julia and Jackelyn for their efforts in putting together the award entry ... and, of course, for a stellar job in designing and executing the promotion!

More details on the specific promotion design can be seen here