The Darkest Evil

Yesterday, I made a rant about how Jelsoft was violating not only defamation law but the rights of licence holders. But some people may ask “Well, Kyle, that’s all well and good but how SHOULD I run a business?” Well, businesses should be run in a manner which allows the people working in them to live a honest and clean life. In order to do this, there are some fundamental principles that you should consider when running your business and drafting your business plan. And this means admitting to doing wrong and making the effort to do the right thing. In the end, it’s worth it though.

Treat your customers right - Your customers can be your biggest evangelists and can be immense for spreading your services to others by word of mouth. Treating them right should be very important to you and you should ensure that your customers are getting the best service you can give them. Basically, this includes asking them about their opinions on your product, posting customer reviews about your product (both good and bad - I’ll explain more below) and of course, acting in a manner you would want to be treated with. And make sure you give speedy service because if you don’t, your customers will go to your competitors.

Get International and get there quickly - People are going to come to your site that aren’t from your country. I posted a rant about businesses and web 2.0 services being US-Centric and I still stand behind it. Before you launch your product line, you should make 100% sure that you are doing your best to internationalize your website. Goodstorm would know nothing about this and unfortunately, I had problems trying to order a WordPress t-shirt because of it. If you are a web-based business you can probably quote your prices in more than one currency. I would recommend quoting in either US Dollars, Pounds Sterling and/or the Euro, given the usage of all three particular currencies. But the decision is ultimately up to you and I would highly recommend working that decision out in your business plan. And later on, you might want to consider translating your services in more than just one language. Languages are an asset and to make your products available in more than one language increases their spread and usefulness.

Admit to making mistakes and learn to say you are sorry - Many people in big business don’t want to admit this, some are even ashamed of it. But there is a truth that spans every culture and belief. Humans are error-prone. You are not any different but when you own a company, you should NOT try to cover up your errors, but rather, make an admission to them. Make an apology and never be afraid to give a refund or store credit if things are really bad. Don’t try to tarnish your rep even more by ignoring the situation or trying to cover it up. Mistakes will be made, of course, but you should learn to say you are sorry and move on. Your customers will respect you all the more for it.

Tags: Job-Related

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 11:35 am and is filed under Job-Related. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.