Shopaholics.

I used to be easily pleased at the mall when looking for products to buy but with so much choice, the things that stand out because of exemplary service or product design are the only ones that really catch my eye. Whereas we used to buy local because we were and we used to buy local because that's what the jingle espoused, we no longer have those restraints or expectations and as such we have become dissatisfied with our life at the mall. This particular scenario will be played out globally as real versus virtual shopping has one fulcrum that will sway either way, service people.

Seems Australian shoppers are no longer as relaxed as they used to be, in fact a recent survey by American Express over 10 countries found us to be only behind the French when it comes to complaining about service. Even the English and the Americans are happier shoppers, which should send shivers up our spines and shake our belief in the relaxed "she'll be right" attitude we have on most things, including picking up the groceries.

Seems a lot of us (39%) believe that we are not getting the service we deserve when engaging with real shops and real people. Customer Service Institute of Australia executive director Brett Whitford said the results showed local firms needed to focus on improving customer service. This is especially true if they intend to stem the tide of online competition or at least find a niche in the struggle to keep face to face shoppers happy.

The investments that companies need to concentrate on today involves their staff and how they interact with their customers. The survey
found the health of many businesses depended on training their frontline staff to go that extra mile because that is what customers expected for them to spend those hard earned dollars. Australian shoppers indicated, by a whopping 73%, that they would splurge on products if they were given first class service while 25% thought their business was taken for granted. There is a lot of room for improvement between those numbers and any slight increase in customer satisfaction ends up on the bottom line or even more important, survival.

This is an edge that real life can use over virtual life. Many websites think that putting an email address or phone number directing customers via push buttons on their site for communication or feedback is all that is required, when people are looking for so much more. There is a reason there are only a few sites like Zappos around, they have found out what it takes to provide service on the web and its all about people and how they engage and interact.

Real life has an opportunity to take the lead from an area of competition that most think is insurmountable. Convenience and cost will always grab a certain section of the buying public but service and recognition through the right employees will gain you lifetime customers willing to become advocates for what was once taken for granted.

When was the last time you really went that extra mile with first class service? It could put you so far ahead of your online competitor that you may not even have to contemplate building that App for your business.

Harbour Views.

I take a ferry and then a train to my place of employment most days. It's a pleasant journey but one that hasn't been touched by technology, considering the ferries have been plying their trade on Sydney Harbour since the late 1800s and the trains have been running since the 1855 line was opened to Parramatta. All the while uninterrupted while the rest of the world raced head long into a technology future no one could have imagined in the 1800s. So I find the juxtaposition of the really old carrying around the absolute latest in technology very interesting, like a giant sausage with ingredients of bytes, electrons and applications.

The morning commute used to be for friends and colleagues to meet before arriving at work, marveling at the majesty of one of the world's great harbours and if long enough on a train, maybe to read a newspaper. Today not much of that happens as individual isolation has taken over with the help of ear buds and tablets. I travel with pretty much the same 800 or so people on the ferry everyday, yet aside from recognising some faces and maybe a curt nod of recognition to some, no engagement or conversations take place.

Having said that, it's not unusual to see people conversing via their screen on Facebook, email or text. We've just stopped talking to each other face to face on the morning commute. One of the reasons is that work has encroached on all of our time, including what used to be just a journey to work and back. Expectations are that you have cleared those pesky emails by the time you hit your first morning meeting and maybe even a report written and compiled while the ferry passes through Sydney Heads. The ability to accomplish these tasks has not been lost on employers and expectations have risen with the advancement of the technology enablers.

What used to be considered dead time or unusable has now turned into usable time. For me it is often more conducive for thinking and work related matters because like everyone else the work environment consists of interruptions and meetings called by someone else. How fortunate we are to be able to read the latest news, listen to the latest podcast and improve our work smarts all the while carrying smaller and smaller technology to make this happen.

The way home often takes on a different slant with reading material leaning towards trashy gossip pages, maybe a sports story or even some YouTube fun, all the while listening and being entertained by your favourite music. The way home may even lead to some personal interaction but not too much as the technology has long since won the battle for our attention.

While I'm happy for the technology race to continue to improve my life I don't want it to get to "Star Trek" speed where I just beam myself to work. The ferry will do just nicely, no matter it creaks and rolls on its way across the harbour. After all, on the way is where we do our best work.

Hostage Takers.

In 1979 a small Texas airline called Texas International decided to change the aviation landscape by trying to turn the US penchant for in store coupons and coffee cards into a way to encourage their customers to keep flying with them. Ahead of their time but behind the times in computer resources to make it happen the first airline loyalty program didn't take off but that didn't discourage American Airlines from taking the idea and expanding on it, to what we see today, customers shackled, emotionally and commercially.

Okay a bit dramatic but a ring of truth. Flying has not been the same since that auspicious launch in 1979 and every airline worth its peanuts has tried to influence the buying decision of flyers via their loyalty programs. Everyone knows the cost of everything an airline does, goes into tickets and ancillary products like frequent flyer programs, so to brand it as a loyalty program when you are just getting back what you put in, can seem a reach. Loyalty is when you make a decision to buy, based on your experiences of a product that exceeds your expectations and you continue to go back to the well.

A company like Apple competes in a very tight technology market along with global giants like Samsung, Dell and Nokia, yet they haven't come out with a loyalty card or rewards program. They create loyalty by innovation, design, products that work and complement each and ipeople in Apple stores. This is especially true when you consider how many people buy an Apple for their own use while work supplies them with another, "people use a Dell but they are Apple".

The same thinking is not consistent across industries but I wonder if airlines supplied the best product, always flew on time, treated their customers as lifetime clients and gave away the occasional bag of peanuts would they still need a loyalty program? A difficult question and one the airlines can't answer as frequent flyer programs are intrinsically woven into the seat fabric and will forever be a consideration in the purchasing decision. The best case scenario for flyers today is choosing an airline that best meets their expectations and having the miles as an added bonus.

People say it's a hostage situation caused by the airlines but isn't there a certain amount of avarice and greed on behalf of the flyers? Don't you know of people rorting the system to accumulate points, aren't we all hoarders in the end and who can deny the prize at the end of the points rainbow doesn't give you satisfaction over mere mortals stuck n the ground? The last point segues into the status and recognition debate that if people weren't so hung up on their perceived status given by the airlines then they wouldn't have nearly as much influence on that buying decision?

So it ends up a two way push pull scenario that may have started out as a good marketing idea but ended up in a frustratingly complex argument over who owns what ( miles accumulated ) and why can't I just fly a product that engenders loyalty via the experience?

Nothing for Nothing.

There is nothing better than not paying for something and being happy with what you didn't pay anything for. I'm not talking about the esoterics, the sunrise you'll never forget from your first all night party or the so called things in life that are free, I'm sure there are less of those now anyway but things that have a worth to you today.

We used to pay for premium information from experts, leaders in their field and opinion makers at meetings, conferences and the like because we had no other recourse to get the latest trends, futurisms and initiatives. We used to pay for business and entertainment products along with access to applications to make our days easier. Today that has all been turned around and there are no shortages of places to get all of the above and free to boot. The search engines combined with a globalisation of knowledge and opinions has lessened the need for that premium slice we used to pay for along with the burgeoning market providing free applications for everything.

We have so much, that is now free but what if we want more? Surely the forces of the crowd will demand that everything be free and we go on living in an online utopia. You could do it. You could live online, search online, play online, view and listen online for free as long as you live. Yet human nature wants more and that's where "freemium" comes into the equation.

We all use the web, applications and online tools that are free but a lot of people also pay to use more efficient and better versions of the "freebies". The "freemium" business model so succinctly described by Chris Anderson in The Long Tail is turning out to be the model that makes money from the few who are willing to pay a premium for the total package. From Google Apps to Spotify, Skype, the NY Times to my favourite cloud app Dropbox, we are seeing innovation provided free until you get hooked on the product and want to use it to its full capacity.

It's a customer segmentation pricing strategy that works effectively as the "freemium" model requires businesses to rethink their customer equation on acquiring first and then turning that acquisition into revenue. The benefits are quickly demonstrated before they are expected to pay for it and that's a powerful incentive. Apple has seen their coffers expand via mobile game applications that are free and then enticing the hard gamers to pay for the next levels. So much so that last month the top 100 free games on iTunes generated twice as much money than those that charged to download.

"Freemium" has long since raced past the old "free trial period" and the ad-supported free space examples such as Gmail. It has entrenched itself into the expectations of the online community that there are now certain things that will always be free and others that can command a "freemium" price tag. The model requires you to have customer insight because you need to uncover the difference between those casual users who will never pay anymore and the one who truly value your service.

If you can find that customer insight, and if you can offer at least a basic version of your service at minimal cost to your firm, then you may be able to follow the freemium model, and make much more money by letting your customers in for free.

What's your hook?

Uptime.

Cost aside, why do people buy certain products over others? Why do you prefer to deal with some people over others? What are you striving for when you produce work? The answer to all of those questions is quality, which seems a harder concept to nail down than you think. A recent article by Seth Godin pointed out the confusion surrounding quality and looked at it from a manufacturing and a design view point.

I don't manufacture anything but I do produce, so I look at it from a personal view point in the way I go about getting to my end objective or piece of work and the needs to have a quality control about it. A factory that requires no end quality assurance guarantee has been set up with quality manufacturing and is so much cheaper to run than continually fixing something once it's built. This is the thinking people need to apply to anything they produce, rather than continually going back to the client and tweaking whatever they have delivered.

Phillip Crosby in his book from 25 years ago, "Quality is Free", figured out "why spend all this time finding and fixing and fighting when you could prevent the incident in the first place?" So back to the simple, deliver what you are say you will deliver and the quality of your work will not be questioned. The latest list of favourite quality brands in America showed how much easier it was to be a manufacturer like Mercedes Benz or Apple, with only a couple of service providers like Amazon in the top 20.

David VanAmburg, managing director of the ACSI, describes how much easier it is to actually make something. "Service industries tend to score lower on the Index than products. Products are far more reliable and easier to quality control than services, which more typically involve the variability of the human element. With the exception of Amazon, all the very best-scoring companies – the ones that get an 85 or greater – are manufacturers.”

From a design view point, your work has to have the insights and thoughts your clients are after so that they are delighted by the end result and become advocates for the quality of service you provide. Without harping on the fruit factory, Apple does this better than most and users become zealots about recommending the products. Sometimes the hardest part is getting to that nirvana of "zero defect" that manufacturers talk about and that service companies strive for but can never hope to achieve.

For a technology company that guarantees a 99.99% uptime, to increase incrementally and get to 100% uptime is going to cost a fortune, so instead they need to concentrate on how their people interact and work with their clients because that 99.99% means nothing if you can't deliver a quality service in face to face business. No one cares that the servers are always up if the service attitude is crap and your web interface sucks. No amount of PR regarding uptime will get around the lack of quality service from the staff.

The issue with quality is the concept is in the eye of the beholder, before purchasing, during purchase and after delivery. So for you to deliver quality work no matter what you do, you have to exceed expectations of your customers and maintain that standard over the life of that relationship. Difficult to do at the best of times, so why are you trying to please everyone when you can work with your advocates and supporters to produce quality. The more a product is diluted the more likely the quality is seen as reduced.

It costs 8 times the amount of revenue to get a new client as to keep an existing one, so why dilute your quality and chase rainbows without a pot of gold at the end. You are in command of your quality control and as Philip Crosby so aptly put it "Quality is free but it is not a gift".

West of the Wall.

That jaunty little ditty by Toni Fisher referred to the Berlin Wall and the sadness it caused to a city and a country. Erected in 1961, cutting off millions from their friends and family, to this day is part of the psyche of all German people determined for that never to happen again. The "Wall" has often been used in business analogy when talking about security and corporate governance and the protection required for those agendas. The issue of course is the "Wall" was built on cultural ignorance, insensitivity and ultimately ineffective, so we need to be careful in the business usage today. Even after the Berlin Wall came down, we continued the analogies with "Chinese Walls" protecting companies from the evils of sabotage, espionage and the occasional cup of coffee with friends from competing companies.

I lead with the above to show that there are still situations in today's business where companies try to wall their employees from what they see as either competitors or concerns of proprietary and intellectual intelligence being compromised over a cup of java. Do you have friends in competitive companies? Do you have friends that work for companies still ringed in paranoia? Are you really a spy to be avoided? Does your company trust you?

I wonder when companies, with such strict adherence to legacy policies look at hiring new employees, do they do so with a controlling view or do they hire on trust and skill factors? In the business world it should be for the latter, so why brick them in with a wall of insecurity and old thinking. If people really wanted to find out relevant competitive information it can be easily attained with technology available to everyone today. As is often the case, companies from the Americas seem to be the ones most engulfed in their own paranoia, as if they believe all those CIA movies with "our Tom".

People nowadays don't stay in roles as long as they used to and next week those in competition could be working for a partner organisation, which would bring up the question of wether it was now alright to meet for a coffee or lunch? As trite as that may sound, it is often the case and shows up the idiocy of short term thinking. The worse case scenarios entail friends staying at competitive companies for years and years and losing contact because of that walled in thinking.

The egalitarian, inclusive, mateship view we have of our Australian lives, precludes us from ever being involved in a "Wall" environment, unless you include the "Rabbit Proof Fence", so why do people put up with it at the workplace? I have a particular friend this applies to and if neither of us decides to move roles in the next few years we will indeed lose contact and in the great scheme of life, that is a tragedy.

The "Wall" went up almost overnight and cut through the heart of a nation for decades. Even in the small business community we work in, it's hard to imagine we have learned nothing in the meantime.

Trust me, I'm a Doctor.

A thousand comediennes feasted on that line but the tacit approval and trust given experts was a by line of past society. There were particular people and occupations that engendered trust by their mere position or standing as a so called experts. It wasn't the people close to you like Aunty Jean who you asked about that pain in your side or your friends where you should spend your honeymoon and you never asked your parents anything? Generally people kept to the "expert" concept of who they should consult and trust but things have changed dramatically in the last decade, especially in the virtual world.

There have been countless studies on the fact that people now trust peers and strangers more, and that social sites have become the arena of the new "experts" as pointed out by the Neilsen Global Online Survey in 2009. What a recent Pew Research Centre study has uncovered, is all this trust and confidant dialogue between friends, acquaintances and strangers has a medical reasoning behind it. Seems our brains release what scientists have dubbed the "cuddle hormone" or oxytocin whenever we relate and engage across any social landscape including the virtual one.

According to the research, regular social site users, especially Facebook, are twice as likely to trust people than other Internet users. That warm feeling you get when someone "pokes" you or sends through a "like" is relatable to the release of oxytocin and wraps you in a blanket of trust, even though you may never have met some of those people you are engaging with.

Trust is a strong foundation upon which nations have built economies as shown by countries like Germany, Sweden and the US, with a trustworthiness factor far outreaching countries with less defined economic models. Neuroeconomist Paul Zak a professor at Claremont college in the US points out that many nations didn't flourish economically until they agreed on areas of trust across things such as weights and measures. So this hard wiring to connect across nations and people is behind the success of the social sites which make virtual relationships seem as real as, well as real ones.

"When we believe that someone trusts us, we trust them back, and this alters our behavior: It makes us more generous, for one". Ultimately, oxytocin is, Zak says, "the social glue that adheres families, communities, and societies while simultaneously acting as an economic lubricant that enables us to engage in all sorts of transactions".

The reason that sites like Facebook have doubled and tripled in less than a decade shows the desire for many people to reconnect even if it doesn't involve face to face. So the worry about lack of face to face relationships as the Pew study found, "has little validity to concerns that people who use social networks experience smaller social networks, less closeness, or are exposed to less diversity." so many articles and research papers have now found that people have even more social ties than they did two years ago and that social isolation is not as great a concern as first thought.

So Mr Zuckerberg, thanks to the "cuddle hormone" we trust you more than the Doctor.

F.O.C.

The above three letters are my favourite in the alphabet when used to get my attention for products and services. They will always get me to look twice at a buying opportunity and consider my want over my need for a product. "Free Of Charge" opportunities used to be sought out and highlighted as milestones given by companies wanting to "get you in". That was before the web decided a lot of things should and would be free like information, marketing, publishing along with opinions and privacy. Yet some things may seem freer than others and some things come with a conscience.

I've been sitting in the cafe for about 90 minutes with the remnants of a cupcake and a couple of coffees in front of me that have been brewed beyond taste. Why? FOC WiFi of course. Free with some caveats and obligations open to abuse. How long can I sit here using the free network access? How many cups of coffee pay for my stay? What's a cupcake worth, 30 minutes or 10 minutes? The waitress rolls hers eyes in a way I interpret as buy another coffee you free loader or vacate the seat. So my predicament remains as my conscience is pricked to make a move or buy another of yesterday's cupcakes.

I'm not as concerned for the global players like Starbucks and McDonalds but the local guy on the corner paying for the WiFi is a different matter. How much does he make out of a coffee or how much does he pay his staff? Not much on either account, so I keep buying coffees. Yet somewhere I must cross a line where I have truly paid for my seat and the WiFi. From a personal view, ten dollars usually makes me feel more at home and comfortable taking up space on the WiFi band width.

Yet there is another consideration I take into account and that's the occupancy of the cafe whenever I hook into their network. Empty and I'm happy to sit on a coffee for a long time as I'm helping out perceptually that it's worthwhile coming inside for anyone walking by seeing customers inside and the justification that the owner has already paid for the WiFi anyway, right? A full cafe makes me want to continually have a full coffee in front of me as now the cafe is working on turning over of tables and I don't want to look like that freeloader.

So taking into account all of the above, my calculations on time spent on FOC WiFi works on supply and demand and keeping a rough track of my purchases. Having said that I can buy a month's worth of connection for the iPad for around $20.00 and I surely drink more coffees than that in a week so maybe the cafes should be consider highlighting FOC WiFi without making you think twice about sitting on one cup for an hour?

Steve Jobs wants to turn the whole world into a free WiFi zone and if that happens, cafes will have to do more to entice customers into their establishments. A good cup of coffee would be a start.

Footprints.

I'm off the Mexican food. I'm also off the pea and ham soup, not to mention legumes as a whole. Yes I'm considering my emissions output as the talk of carbon footprints and taxes overtake traffic and real estate water cooler talk in Sydney. I work in the travel industry and know the challenges, not the least pertaining to airline traffic and the perceptions regarding carbon emissions. Interestingly enough, airlines have not been targeted by the government in the top 500 polluters list.

So what are the facts regarding aviation emissions and who are the airlines not doing the right thing, or at least attempting to find solutions? Brighter Planet a carbon accounting and offset firm has studied more than 9 billion passenger departures to try and target the good, the bad and the truly ugly in energy efficiency per passenger mileage. Factoring in fuel economy, seat availability and distances travelled for more than 130 million flights over the last decade they have found the most efficient airlines to travel.

Surprises are always fun and in this case it involves one of my favourite subjects to write about, international carrier Ryan Air, who along with Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific topped the rankings as the most carbon efficient airlines globally, while others like SAS, Lufthansa and Swiss filled out the bottom ranks. Guess you don't have to pay top dollar to save the planet, according to Michael O'Leary of Ryan Air. Ranking first or second for efficiency in load factor and seating density gives Ryan Air a huge advantage over its rivals. Along with more efficient and newer aircraft Ryan Air are the benchmark to gaining the smallest airline footprint or skyprint.

Those efficiencies can mean a lot of difference to CO2 emissions if we compare two airlines across the same route from LA to New York where JetBlue with smaller aircraft and better load factors is three times more efficient than Qantas. This brings in arguments for corporations often targeted with reducing their own carbon footprint, where simple changes to flying more efficient airlines within corporate monetary guidelines can gain reductions of up to 40% in emissions. By studying two large US companies over 300,000 flights to come up with the 40% reduction using carbon efficient airlines, Brighter Planet made the point even more understandable when they equated the reduction to the equivalent of eliminating 74,000 flights.

So what are you or your company doing about this dreaded footprint? Is it a political football being kicked around? Do companies understand or even care about their footprint? Do you? Who is right, Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott, or is the truth hidden somewhere in all the political hype? The biggest problems seem to be understanding and agreement on measurements and how to accurately predict what your footprint will be and how you can best influence it without having to go off your favourite bean burrito.

The carbon tax issue causing so much discussion at the moment, hinges around understanding and enunciation of a problem centered around marketing and selling the resolution. We all want to save the polar bears but on an individual basis it seems very difficult to make a difference or even to understand the problem. When was the last time someone showed you what a ton of CO2 looked like and how it was produced by you or any of the 500 top polluters? How does the carbon trading scheme work? Can't we find a more efficient way to stop industries polluting, other than taxing or fining them? Can't we just plant a bazillion trees to suck up all of that CO2?

If we can't get simple answers to those questions, how are we expected to enjoy our Mexican food?

Successfully Succeeding.

It's a word meaning many things but mostly attached to significant personal achievements. Success in business often refers to bottom line, career advancement and profile awareness. Unfortunately in life, success is often linked to that same business thinking, making it difficult for many to see themselves as successful if the work side of the equation was not adding up. Too often you work in large enterprises with no real influence on the outcome of the company or its products making it difficult to measure success on a personal level which carries over into the most important part of your life outside the work environment.

So maybe you just need to redefine some of the success parameters and give yourself a break. Did I have a successful night's sleep, was it a successful bowl of cereal and did I succeed in putting my shoes on the right feet? Okay you can go overboard and denigrate the definition but the point is success varies so much that we should not be looking at other examples and other people to constantly measure our own success. Is a barrier to your success others with a privileged educational background, having too much money and being special in some way and so succeeding more easily?

If you think that then the trick is finding similar attributes from the success of others and then seeing if any apply to you. Everyone has the capacity and capability to be successful on some level and most people would agree you are successful if you or your work have had a positive influence on others. As a bright guy once said, "try not to become a man of success but rather a man of value", Albert Einstein. So it's less about the money and more holistic in its interpretation. After all, I'm sure you would not classify the corner stoner, successful just because he sells a lot of drugs and drives an expensive car.

Success is measured across many areas from health, spiritual, emotional, career as well as financial. It's a list that needs more categories if work is seen as a barrier for you to find success. Without getting back to the right shoe on the right foot, success can come from what many consider soft areas, such as when you give back, mentor and have a positive effect within your work environment. When people you have helped achieve success, you by virtue of that success are also successful.

So think hard about your success and celebrate the milestones to keep up your enthusiasm for more. Winstone Churchill, a man known for achievements put it succinctly when he said, "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm".

To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;

To earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty;

To find the best in others;

To give of one's self;

To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;

To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation;

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived -

This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.