Sam Hamilton

Well Google are extending their shopping engine - checkout the video or the blog post for more info

Well after nearly 2 months out of Shanghai and living in a hotel, I am back.

So once again eBay are changing the rules for sellers so once again we need to work out how to react to their changes to keep the business alive. This time round the changes mean that shipping time is critical so our 14 day delivery from Shanghai can only live for so long, so off we go to Shenzhen to find a cross dock and a new speedier delivery system.

This should mean that customers get their goods quicker but costs will likely increase as well but doing business in the south of China is a different beast compared to the north after all most of the goods exported to the world are made down there and then shipped out through Hong Kong.

Great video from Jeff BeZos about Amazon and what his keys to success are:

To say I am looking forward to Snow Leopard is an understatement - the prospect of getting rid of Microsoft Entourage is making me giddy, my only worry is that it won’t live up to the dream. So when at 6pm today here in Shanghai I get an email saying it is in the post I jumped for joy (literally and in a lift which freaked some people out). How do I get my copy of OS X - well first it is shipped to my address in England and from there we FedEx it to China - mad but seeing as they are not releasing it in China on the same day its the only way I can get my hands on a copy right now, well three or four days behind the rest of you but oh well.

It seems some people might already have an early release as the articles are starting to come out including this from Engadget but more interestingly is the fact that I think this next one also from Engadget is spot on, they talk about how the Exchange support will have people moving over in flocks. Perhaps not flocks but if they really have got it right and it all works as you expect Apple products to work then all that is left is for people to realise that iWork is a great product or OpenOffice gets their load time down to something under 30 seconds with some better web 2.0 style graphics then the whole world can tell Microsoft to stuff it.

Photo by FransBadger

Checkout this great little interview where the founder of Mosso now Rackspace Cloud talks over their products.

Going to make this required reading for the company next week!

After reading a great post on customer service, it does make me wonder what is the best possible way to scale customer service and I don’t think it can be just as simple as writing something on the wall. Things like good customer service are built on many layers, things like managers, good processes and a great working environment I reckon are all part of what really makes a small team scale. Imagine if you have a team of 40 or 50 people working out of just a single mailbox is that really going to work, I doubt it. Add a simple CRM and bingo all the customers are going to get an answer.

Now think about the phone, perhaps one of the most badly used tools in any customer service department some companies get it right like Rackspace who always manage to pickup the phone within the first couple of rings and I speak to a human, none of this press 1 for sales press 2 for tech support and most importantly don’t leave me hanging on hold! If this means that your accounting department needs to man the phone then make it happen because if I have a problem or a question anyone who is willing to help me even if they do not know the answer of the top of their head is going to make me feel 10x better.

So how to scale - it is still a valid question and perhaps one of the hardest things to get right but if you want an example of a company that does it right then go checkout Rackspace, I have been using them for nearly 5 years and was the victim of their last downtime but how they responded with email, blog posts, messages in the control panel, youtube video from the CEO and a cash refund gave me trust and actually increased my loyalty.