This week started unusually when Peter returned from a visit to India straight into a Monday morning meeting with David Cameron and Boris Johnson at our offices at Central Working. The topic was entrepreneurialism. A small group of entrepreneurs were invited to put forward their insights ranging across supporting growth, flexible space, banks, government schemes and red tape.
Couldn’t resist posting this one. Something inspirational as an antidote to student rioters who lost the plot and politicians who don’t understand doing what you say you’ll do.
This is a great one for anyone stuck in snow in Scotland, for anyone thinking of visiting Scotland and for bikers everywhere. Don’t try this on a Boris bike! Thanks to @euan for intro
The first song is Wax and Wires by Loch Lomond, and the second is A Little Piece by the Jezabels
Boris Johnson during the launch of the capital's 'Summer of Cycling' in front of the London Eye Photo: GLA/PA Wire
Having launched a few businesses of my own and taken part in several others, I’m always fascinated by what it takes to get from idea to success. Its been great fun watching Boris’ bike scheme lift off over the past few weeks. I can rattle on for hours about start ups but I’d like to focus on a couple of factors in this 2 wheel enterprise – engagement and learning.
Why is this still so after several weeks?
There’s a great big obvious design problem. All the bike racks are full of bikes. There are the same number of bikes as racks in the system. Its like playing that kids game of moving the 8 letters around a 9 space square, only there are 9 letters and 9 squares and no space to move. All the customers know this. Because when they gather around docking stations in frustration they talk about it.
The front line staff all know it – because if you do get through by phone, they say the know there’s a problem. But try and suggest anything and its “talk to the hand”. I’ve tried talking to the hand – email – and got no sense of listening, only reasons for things and complaint handling language – which isn’t what I was trying to do. The staff sound brow beaten already.
They had a poor guy on one of the stations in Soho Square yesterday to collect bikes in piles – a temporary solution…… He looked so dejected from the “advice” he was getting from customers who have been so frustrated – because they all love the scheme and want it to work.
The difficulty is that Boris’ Bike Scheme isn’t designed to listen. I’ve tried. By phone, by email, in person.
I ask my favourite question of what they’d do if I gave them feedback and its obvious there is no formal listening process. It’s a member only launch so they get it right according to the letters – but they cant “listen” so how will they get it right?
So if anyone reads this at the scheme or at Boris’s office or at sponsor Barclays, here’s 3 easy things you can do to make it feel like it isn’t a bike scheme designed by a bank
a) Put the stickers on all the maps at all the terminals not just some – the stickers that say some of the terminals don’t exist yet
b) Take bike capacity out of the system to make it work- most of the time there are just too many bikes standing and not enough space. OK, when you have many more members and more bikes are on the move, then add capacity back but not yet
c) Put in a formal listening system, make it part of front line people’s jobs to learn and feedback what customers know. Make it part of manager’s jobs to aggregate the feedback and identify top issues, allocate them to the right people and fix them in real time.
If you don’t, you’re going to build a business that’s great at having crises and fixing them. Whereas a smart business would be good at listening and avoiding problems.
For those of you starting a business, here’s a few thoughts about launching and listening:
1) It’s never “right” from the outset, despite the best planning and design. You have to build in room to change. Look at Egg, starting as an online proposition that rapidly had to move to telephone.
2) The take off ramp sets the trajectory for the business. A classic comparison is when Orange and Mercury One2One launched in the UK. Orange built brand and capacity and credibility with customers. A much slower acquisition of customers who in turn recruited others and so it became large – imagine a growth curve that looked like a smooth but steepening slope. Whereas One2One decided to give free calls in the evening, the first time anything like that had been done. Instantly capacities were overwhelmed in all directions and the business shot up to shoot down again – imagine a growth curve of an oscillation.
3) Staff think it’s brilliant on day one – well if they don’t what’s wrong with you !
4) Staff talk to customers lots right from the start so they know the issues from 100s of conversations about the same things. If nothing gets done about these things they weary quickly.
5) Customers spot everything so they can talk about the issues intimately. And many can see the solutions with clarity. And if you don’t fix the dumb stuff, they will tell their friends. Reputation is very important to adding customers. ‘”Customer effort” is very important to growth.
6) How fast you learn and react to what customers know is critical to your growth trajectory. Client WorldPay is a great case in mind, sold recently for £2billion. When we put in place the listening processes in 2003 they were tiny. The CEO knew he could grow much faster if he didn’t have to build infrastructure to cope with dumb things.
7) Consistency is more important than being brilliant at some things and cracks appearing elsewhere. I love the bike scheme – but if the basics aren’t fixed soon then it will fall out of use for me
Better to put the listening, learning and action processes in place before you launch not after when the business is ‘bigger” or the cracks have started to appear. Listening to customers is something that is so simple to design in, so hard to add later costing millions, but more importantly making your business ordinary, destroying differentiation. Companies like Amazon, Skype and Google grew without marketing costs because they were so easy, so on target and so word of mouth.
So here’s wishing luck and listening to Boris’ Barclays Bike Scheme – but more than luck I wish you ears.
