Category Archives: Work

Choose your business alliances carefully

Posted on by gianniponzi

As a lot of you will know, I recently became involved in a really exciting new Company called Ad Dynamo. My “job” is to make sure it grows in Ireland and that our clients a amazingly happy with the service.

With this in mind I’m leveraging (sorry, I have to use at least one buzzword per post ;-) ) all of my business contacts and looking for new ones.

In the best possible way for all parties, I hope!

I’ve recently been trying to decide on who I approach and with this in mind I’d like to share a thought I had.

Choose CAREFULLY. Yep, pretty obvious :-)

While a possible partner might look incredibly attractive, never forget what YOUR core values are and make sure you compare them to THEIR values and make sure they share at least some of yours.

In the end they are in business to promote THEIR services so your priorities will always be further down the list.

If you share common values, the risk of your company being incorrectly sold, should be decreased.

Lastly, if you were hoping for some scandalous accusations, sorry to disappoint you. :-)

Customer service – Is it that hard ??

Posted on by gianniponzi

The other day I clicked into a blog post on Customer Service by @patphelan

I don’t know the man personally but I do follow him on Twitter because of the company he started and my natural interest the type of people who start their own companies.

ANYWAY…

His post had to with the lack of Customer Service from a, wait for it,  Service Provider.

I agreed with his sentiment and nodded sagely at all the points he was making but as needs must,  went back to work.

Funny then, that a few minutes later, the ol’ Customer Service skeleton come out of the closet and bite ME in the arse .

Here’s a synopsis;

  • I have a very large and important customer
  • Said customer has lots of users on their website, aka mini-customers. 1500 of them
  • The digital (security) certificate of their website required renewal.
  • Naturally, I did my bit and renewed it.  Simples !
  • No, NOT simples it seems.

The payment to  “the hosting Company that shall not be named”,  was made on the 11th.

After MANY support emails, waiting on the phone and even having to goon Twitter to get attention (that didn’t work either), 5 DAYS later the SSL cert was finally applied.

I am ranting on, so to pick up on Pat’s theme, if they had communicated clearly with me and showed me that they were actually trying to resolve the request, maybe I would have been a little more patient.

Unfortunately, the support person was NOT very helpful with information and in fact blatantly lied when giving me the deadline by which the cert would be installed.

The net effect of all of this is of course that recommending them, WILL be avoided like the plague.

I’m so adamant, that I won’t even put the Company name in this post.

Needles to say it was NOT this crowd, they’re awesome :-)

So the question remains… Customer Service, is it THAT hard ??

Answers on a postcard or just leave a comment.

 

P.s Do NOT use a Hosting Company that ends with 365……

 

Hope you are having fun.

Posted on by gianniponzi

You’d think they were innocent enough words.
Used in a holiday or hobby context perhaps.

No, those 5 words, written in an email by a former work colleague of mine, have finally ignited the spark to start a new project which I have been thinking about for the last few years.

Yes, you heard me correctly, YEARS.

Why has it taken so long ?  Work, family, hobbies, the excuses are endless and I’m not really going to dwell on them, because they are only excuses.

Why now? Well, back to those 5 words.

I had emailed Joe, to see how he was doing and congratulate him on his achievements.  In his reply, he casually (I think), added;  “I hope you’ are having fun”.

Without hesitation, the answer in my head was;  “No, I’m not”.

Since the 14th, I have set about putting together my new project.

I don’t for one minute expect this to be a party. I know there will be hard decisions, tough times or whatever you want to call them, but the mere fact is that this is something that has been in the back of my head for a LONG time.

Most importantly, it feels right.

I’ve done more work on this project in 9 days than anything else I’ve worked on, and it did not feel like work.  To me, that’s a good sign.

Am I having fun ?

Yes!

I’ll be launching the project soon.

If you have a few seconds, please leave your email address and when the project launches, I’d love to hear your feedback.