alyssagardina.com - business

The Cost of Doing (Good) Business

agardina — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 20:30:19 +0000

I took one accounting class in college. And, honestly, I really enjoyed it. Something about the evenness of liabilities, assets and equities appealed to me. So, with that expertise in mind, let’s talk about the cost of doing business.

The cost of doing business, by definition, is overhead. It’s the cost of anything you have or do that doesn’t have to do with actually producing a good or service. These include: insurance, utilities, accounting services, attending networking events.

Every business incurs some sort of overhead, and tries to limit it as much as possible. After all, these costs impact the company’s revenue, and overall financial well-being. However, I think there’s a fundamental difference between the cost of doing business and the cost of doing good business. And great companies see the distinction between the two.

For example, here are two articles posted today on The Consumerist. The first was about a customer’s interaction with OXO. A customer had received an OXO Salad Spinner as a wedding gift, and was disappointed when it broke after a few months of use. Like many customers, he reached out to OXO via their online contact form, but wasn’t hopeful about getting a response. Surprisingly, OXO responded a few days later, saying they would send out a replacement part. No hassle, no cost to the customer.

For an accountant, this is the cost of doing business. For a marketer, I’d file this under the cost of doing good business. The company incurs costs here – the cost to manufacture the part, the cost to ship and the cost of having an effective customer service department. But they also gain value – goodwill from one customer, who by sharing his story with the Consumerist, spread the awareness to a massive audience. And take a look at the comments:

On the flip side, there’s also a cost of doing bad business. Again on the Consumerist, a user tells a story of their interaction with customer service. This time, though, it’s not so positive. From the user’s email: “DirecTV will never have my family's business again and via Facebook, Twitter and obviously email, I plan to tell everyone I know about this horrid experience with a company that evidently wants my business so bad.”

Instead of generating goodwill on a heavily trafficked website, DirecTV brings out feelings from the other side of the spectrum:

In this new, more social, world, is it more important to calculate the cost of doing traditional business, or the cost of whether it’s good or bad?

Book Review: "Delivering Happiness" by Tony Hsieh

agardina — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 03:17:16 +0000

When reading Tony Hsieh's "Delivering Happiness," (affiliate) it's all but impossible to keep thinking the same thing over and over: "This guy is Zappos. And Zappos is awesome." End of story? Not so much.

All in all, this book could belong in the self help section as much as it could be shelved among business books. It's uplifting, inspirational and, at times, irreverently funny. The first third of the book is best read with a half smile on your face - Tony's stories of growing up, going to college and starting out definitely elicit a "that's me too!" reaction.

Then the book takes a turn. It's called "Delivering Happiness", a nod to Tony's success with Zappos. But, it could also be titled "Fighting for Happiness", and that's where the best lessons lie. To achieve success, to redefine customer service, to build a multi-billion dollar company, Tony and the Zappos team fought tooth and nail every step of the way. The book consistently returns to a few recurring themes, including:

Taking Risks
From Fred, a department store shoe salesman with a shipping solution to Tony himself, investing his first fortune into the business ideas of others, so many of the success stories in this book result from taking risks. All kinds of risks - quitting a job, moving to Nevada, going for broke on a company in an industry you don't really know. Fighting tooth and nail for whatever you believe in, and not really knowing if at the end of the day it'll all pay off (spoiler alert: it does.)

Staying Loyal
Through it all, Tony stays loyal to his employees and to his company. Above all, he stays loyal to himself and what he believes in. We all talk about loyalty, but Tony lives it, breathes it and shows us how it's done.

Having Fun
We all work long hours and often find ourselves drowning in projects. The team at Zappos sure does. But, for me, one of my favorite parts of this book were Tony's stories of living in his loft, going to movies with friends and sharing stories at a bar. The tone of his writing shows how fond he is of these experiences - and that there does exist a balance between work and play.

I highly (highly!) recommend this book. It's a quick read, but it leaves you simultaneously shaking your head in admiration and thinking, "maybe I could do that, too!" And, hey, maybe you can - because, after all, happiness isn't delivered. It's fought for, and it's won.

I have a copy of this book to give away! Want one? Leave a comment letting me know how you find, fight for, and deliver happiness!

Twitter, Promoted Tweets and the Perfect Storm

agardina — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:15:11 +0000

Today Twitter announced plans to roll out advertising in the form of Promoted Tweets. From Twitter's blog:

"Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users...You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages...Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand."

Reaction on Twitter to the news has been mixed. Some users believe that advertisements will be invasive and add clutter to an already chaotic network. Others (like myself), know that Twitter had to monetize somehow, and think that this execution is a great approach.

For my part, I admire Twitter for integrating these ads into search pages (and, at this point, not profile pages or Twitter streams), where they will be seen by users who are already searching for information on that topic. Twitter's mysterious "resonance" score, calculated by click-throughs and ad response, can add another layer of moderation.

What's most interesting about this launch is how Twitter approached it. I'm still in the anti-retweet button camp, so I'm wary of anything new that Twitter foists upon it users. However, from the perspective of a launch, Twitter created an almost perfect storm. Leading up to this announcement, Twitter:

Began to feature posts that were popular (as calculated by retweets and replies) at the top of search pages:

Redesigned their home page and added a section for "Top Tweets"

As opposed to some of their other feature launches, it seems like Twitter has really thought this through. Promoted Tweets, if moderated well, can provide a solid business model for Twitter, a better marketing experience for companies and (dare I say?) a more useful environment for users.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments!