Carsonified

One of my favorite ‘Getting Things Done’ sites, the famous 43 Folders, has just been re-designed.

We asked one of our customers to pay an invoice and this is part of the email we got back. It’s so absurd that I had to laugh. I’ve bolded the funniest part:

Italy 90 days from the end of the month the invoice was issued in

Finland, Norway, Sweden Net 30 days

Denmark Net 35 days

All remaining EMEA countries Net 45 days (UK is one of these.)

To request payment terms shorter than the standard noted above, complete relevant lines in the template and email it to your Finance Director for their approval. Once the FD has approved, forward this template along with the FD approval to your BU VP and your CFO Staff VP for their approvals.

If you need to be paid before these date, you need to fill the form.

I don’t even know what a ‘BU VP’ is and we sure as heck don’t have a ‘CFO Staff VP’! They’re making it so damn hard to get paid promptly that I’m sure most people give up (including us!). Sheesh.

This just seems wrong - why can’t you pay your bills on time (within 30 days), like everyone else? This strong-arming is just bad business.

I’m helping put together an invite list for a discussion with Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) here in London on October 1st.

Microsoft approached me because they wanted to invite folks who don’t always agree with Microsoft and their online strategy. It should be an interesting discussion and I’m hoping it will generate some great conversations.
There are only 10 seats left, so if you’d like to attend, please email me (ryan at this domain) and I’ll let you know if we can get you in.

Here’s the schedule:

• 09:30 - 10:00 Arrive
• 10:00 – 10:10 Lars Lindstedt, Microsoft:  Introduction
• 10:10 – 10:45 Brent Hoberman, lastminute.com, mydeco.com: What makes a successful web start-up
• 10:45 – 11:30 Steve Ballmer, Microsoft: The Online Opportunity
• 11:30 – 11:40 Panellist introductions:
• Saul Klein (Index Ventures / Seedcamp)
• Cary Marsh (mydeo.com)
• Ben Way (Making Rain / ViaPost)
• 11:40 – 12:15 Panel discussion – The Future of Web Entrepreneurship and Q&A, chaired by Ryan Carson
• 12:15 – 13:00 Lunch

Tonight is the brand new SkillSwap Bristol event and our very own Elliot is presenting a talk about support for IE6. He’ll be joined by Andy Budd of Clearleft.

I love posters in Airports becuase they have to convey a simple idea to you very quickly. You’re walking by and the poster has about 1 second to capture your attention, communicate a message and make you remember it.

I saw this DHL poster in the airport in Berlin and loved it:

Ithink it’s the perfect summary of good customer service. I’ve made some customer service mistakes in my time, but the one thing I’ve learned is that you just need to practice saying “Sure, I’d be happy to do that for you.”

Real Life Example

This happened the other day with DropSend. I had a customer email me because he wanted to cancel his account. Well, one of the nice things about DropSend is that you don’t have to ask us to cancel your account. You can do it yourself by just going to the ‘My Account’ page and clicking ‘Please cancel my account’. Bam, your done.

I started writing this response:

Hi xxxx,

We’re sorry to lose you as a customer! All you have to do to cancel your account is login, go to the ‘My Account’ page, and click ‘Please cancel my account’.

All the best,
Ryan

However, after a second of thought, I changed it to:

Hi xxxx,

We’re sorry to lose you as a customer! I’ve cancelled your account for you.

Hope we can serve you in the future.

All the best,
Ryan

It meant I had to spend time logging into the DropSend Admin, searching for his account and clicking ‘Delete’. Time I didn’t want to spend, but looking back, I think it was important.

I never heard from that customer, thanking me for doing this. And I didn’t expect to. But hopefully it made his life a little easier.

By Elliot Jay Stocks

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Sorry guys - we’ve been so busy! The rebranding is now heading towards its very exciting conclusion and we’re going to show you where we’re at…

Part 11a:

Part 11b:

We’ll be back in a couple of days’ time with more (perhaps the final) updates, so stay tuned!

I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw this poster at the airport in Copenhagen:

That’s the myth, isn’t it? Bigger is better, therefore every company should be bigger. Bullshit. Maybe if more companies stayed small and focused on quality, instead of revenue growth, the world would be a better place.

By the way, if you own a business and you can only read one book this year, make sure to pick up a copy of Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big

P.S. Before I get torn to pieces in the comments, let me say this: I understand that certain companies need to be big in order to function. Visa is a good example: the more places it’s accepted (which means they need to be bigger to support the business), the better.