Customer intimacy

A new for something completely different: a crash course in Strategic Management.

I always wondered how certain companies stay in business. Everyone knows the little restaurant of shop in the middle of your town and every time you pass by, there isn't a single customer. How do they survive? How do they pay their rent? How can they afford the BMW, whereas I and my girlfriend both work full-time and even I can't afford me one? (This is not completely true, but you know what I mean). Well, thanks to my forth-coming degree in Commercial Sciences, I now know: They don't. If you have a look at the statistics, there are indeed a lot of businesses that don't survive, simply because the people who started them don't have a clue about continuity and rentability. (Ok, I was planning to tell you about my new glasses, but one way or the other my story and mind always wanders off ...)

Most of those business owners have a good idea, manage to realize this idea and are able to sell it, thus making a profit. After a couple of years, they've become quite profitable and then they get greedy and put all their earned money in the newest Porsche or a mansion. And everyone is happy. Well, not really, you can't run a business on 1 idea or 1 product (well, honestly, a happy few can) and when the time comes to differentiate themselves, to keep the competition of their back, the money is gone and it's too late.

So, stop, rewind, record, bottom line of my story : a business needs to differentiate themselves for their customers and according the some much smarter people than me (Porter, Tracey and Wiersema, ...) you can excel by using some generic strategies and one of them is customer intimacy and the optician, where I bought my glasses obviously never heard of it.

Like every well-bred male, I hate making expenses for my appearance (Do you have any idea how much a good pair of shoes costs and I agree my present pair is ugly and worn, but they are still functional)/ My girlfriend has been bugging me about buying myself a new pair of glasses, since my (nowadays) old ones have been missing in alphabetic order: a bolt, some paint, a nose part and style. Why would I need to spend money on a new pair of glasses, if they are still functional and most of the times I wear contact lenses. So, the answer is no.

After 3 months of nagging, my mother pushed the right buttons to persuade me: if you buy a new pair of glasses, I'll pay half of it. Right... So major irritated for having lost the battle against my 2 women, I drove to the closed shop to purchase myself some glasses.

First shop was bummer, the shop intendant didn't even blink an eye to help us, although he was able to help the other customer, who incidentally spoke the same language as he did (Belgium has 2 main communities: French and Dutch speaking and they don't get along very well) and the prices were …. high. So me even more pissed, I got in my car again and was on my way home, never planning to enter a shop again in life (which is indeed one of my life long dreams, besides the Aston, the yacht and a billion or 2)

But because you want to be a good boyfriend, I made the ultimate sacrifice, stopped in the neighboring village, entered a shop, choose myself a pair of glasses and went home (this took me about 5 minutes). My girlfriend was overjoyed and I was pleased the nagging would stop. (Guess again).

Three days later I called the shop and asked them if my glasses were ready. Yes, sir, they are ready and you can pick them up today. It seemed the shop that day was only open till 6'o clock instead of 7'o clock, so I told him I was determined to pick them up today and being 5'o clock at the time, I left work (too early, which I had to make up on Friday) and drove like a mad-man to the shop. Arrived at the shop, it was already closed, although it was only a quarter before 6.

Ok, that you have to close early I can understand, but that the shopkeeper didn't even called me to inform me about this and thus saving both some times and a lot of frustration, is unforgivable.

So, Friday I had to work late to compensate for my missing hours (for nothing) and yesterday I and my girlfriend went to the shop to collect my glasses and had a little talk with the shopkeeper about me standing for a closed door on Thursday. He said sorry, and that's about it. No explanation, no reductions, no good will, nothing. I must say I’m quite happy with the glasses now, but that's about the last time I entered his store and If you come to think about it, there are a lot of businesses who don't have clue on how to serve their customer, no customer intimacy at all.

Furthermore, I can say the last 2 days have been the most eventful ones in my life, but it's too early to tell about it. But do keep an eye on this blog.

A bridge too far

For my final exam (only 2nd year, still one to go) we had to prepare an assignment in group. One of my classmates was so kind to open up his house to us and while sitting and working at his house, an old feeling got hold of me : I want a house of myself. (Which is not so strange, since it has been genetically imprinted in every Belgian).

So, one evening, instead of preparing for my exam, I started searching the internet for a house and a miracle happened : I found my dream house, it was splendid situated, had a lot of space and was quite cheap, compared to similar houses. Really, all I every wanted in life (except for the Aston Martin, the yacht and a billion or 2) was that house. Impatiently waiting until my girlfriend came home from work I told her about the house and lucky me, she shared my enthusiasm for the house completely and suggested I immediately should contact the broker, which given the time of day, didn't answer the phone.

During that night, neither of us slept and the first thing in the morning, I called the broker who at the time was still on her way to work (sometimes I'm a bit impatient), but promised to call me back. An hour later, she rang me back with the message that I was very lucky, since there were 8 other people who were interested in the house and the first person in line just had cancelled his appointment and now we were the first to visit the house. (How convenient). Realizing that this house must be one hell of a deal, I contacted my parents and told them I've found a house and asked if they could accompany me, since we would have to make a quick decision and I wanted a second opinion.

Overjoyed, I called my girlfriend at work and told her we could visit the house on Thursday around 8'30. But rational as we are, we were a bit skeptic about only being able to visit the house in the evening and it was indeed a very cheap price. So, we came up with the master plan to visit the house on Wednesday ourselves and to have a little chat with the neighbors to gain some insight in the history and flaws of our soon-to-be property.

That evening, we only succeeded to depart around 8'o clock, thus losing the advantage of visiting the house in daylight, but nevertheless we were quite determined to visit the house ourselves. After a drive of half an hour, we finally reached the community, but couldn't find the street, where the house was situated and being technically challenged (read : too cheap-ass to buy a GPS device) we lost almost one hour asking people for a street name no one knew. Around 9'30 and completely fed up with the search, we stopped in a pub in the neighboring village and asked the barmaid for directions.

She perfectly knew the street, she even knew the house and surprise, surprise, the neighbor of the current residents was sitting at the bar and of course, she know him too. My girlfriend swift as always, bought the man a beer and the man proposed us to show the way to his home and our we-just-need-to-sign-the-check property. During the trip, I and my girlfriend were continuously wondering ourselves if we would find any flaws or detect the reasons why the house was so cheap.

Just having crossed a bridge across a motorway, the friendly neighbor pulled over and pointed to a house on his left. I think it's fair to say that it only took us 1/2 of a second to realize the reason for the cheap price : The motorway we just crossed ran through the garden of the house and as a bonus, a high voltage tower was standing next to the house.

Of course, the neighbor started talking about the house and we learned that he was a good friend of the previous owner, who sold his house 1,5 year ago to the current residents for half the price, they were asking. Right ......

Completely disillusioned we returned home, realizing why it takes other people over 2 years to find an attractive house and not the 2 days we thought. So, the next day I called the broker and told her we wouldn't be visiting the house, since we already did and found out the house was very close to the motorway on which she responded : yes, we get that reaction from all the visitors. Well, don’t you think it would be a good idea to tell people this before they travel through half the country to visit the house.

Later that day, when looking through the pictures of the house again, my girlfriend realized that on one of the pictures, you can actually see the railing of the bridge in the right corner. That is, if you know it's a bridge. Nevertheless, I'm quite confident the house will be eventually be sold, if they lower the price a bit and find some people who have hearing problems, no children who like to play in the garden and never ever are planning to organize a BBQ.

One chance to make a first impression

So let's start my blog with a post about a product and a company I always (let's put it kindly) mocked at : Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2.

I've been running Windows XP for almost 2 years and to be honest about it, I'm quite happy with this version of Windows. I left the Microsoft productstack around '95 when I had to reinstall my brand new Windows 95 operating system for the 9th time in a WEEK. So, like every good IT-guy, I have had a love-hate relationship with Microsoft for the last 10 years. Nowadays, when I grow older, have become less extreme in my prejudicides, don't have so much time as in the old days and Microsoft products became better, my relationship with the company formerly called MickeySoft became better.

But no one could have imagined that one day I would be starting my own blog about the latest version of Windows on the latest version of Windows. (Oh dear God, how I betrayed thou).
Downloading was a breeze, it only took me 35 minutes with 3 segmented downloads to download the 3.5 GB image. I however had to install it 2 times, because the first time, it simple refused to load the graphical shell, after the second install, it started perfectly, albeit a bit slow (strange are the ways of computer electrons).

First impression about the product : graphically very nice, but slow as hell. Feels like running a Windows NT on a i386. On the other hand, nihil nove sub sole. I also have my doubts about the stability of the products, but hey it's a beta for a reason. Also installed the Office 2007 beta 2 and Windows Live Messenger beta at the same time. Beta + Beta + Beta = Alpha ?

Reminds me about a story of a friend of mine, while he was working at a computer store. One of the customers came in, raging about something not working on his pc and some idiot completed reinstalled his pc and now it was even worse, so my friend tried to calm him down. After a while the man started to tell his story and it seems, he had bought a brand new pc at a local store a couple of months before, running at that time the latest version of Windows (I think it was Windows ME). A couple of days ago he had bought a Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 Joystick, bundled with Monster Madness (also a Microsoft product). So he installed everything and every 5 minutes the pc compeletly stalled, with the only option to reboot it. The man had gone back to the local store and the shop keeper had told him to return the pc and he would have a look at it. After returning the pc (and of course charging a fee), it seemed that the entire pc had been reinstalled, thus leading in a loss of all data and worst of all, the problem still existed. So the man fed up with his old store, entered the store of my friend, told him the story at which point my friend answered : Oh, I know what the problem is, you're running a Microsoft game on a Microsoft Operating System with a Microsoft Joystick, no wonder it doesn't work. The man left the store and never came back.

We had a good laugh at the time, but this give a nice impression about the love-hate relationship between myself and MS. But now it's time to call it a night and i'm sure i'll enter some more Vista-related posts on this blog in the near future

Introducing ... myself

Have been hearing about blogs for a couple of years now. Seldom read one, never tought of starting one myself. Err... correction. Never started one, because

1) I don't have the character to post something periodically
2) Who in the world is interested in my ramblings ?

However, a couple of days ago, for reasons totally unknown to myself, I decided to start a blog and discovered I already created on more than 2 years ago (please see reason 1)

So what you can expect ? only time will tell ....