The company I work for is a pretty big deal. We’ve been blogged about by TechCrunch and GigaOm. We’ve been featured multiple times in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
That said, we really suck. Our product rocks, most of the people working here kick-ass, but as an organization we blow. We’re still a start-up, so we have time to change our ways, but I’m afraid these things will never happen. I feel like many of the mistakes we’re making are the same ones other companies make on a daily basis, so I wanted to share how I would improve: my employer.
Sin 1: Using Twitter as a Billboard
I almost feel like it is better to not use any form of social media than it is to use it and suck at it. And boy do we suck at it.
First there is Twitter. We don’t understand Twitter. Twitter for companies is a great way to raise awareness of your brand and product, and to insert yourself into conversations with bloggers and customers. You can keep up to the minute with trends and convo’s and have the chance to shape how the public views you in a second by second basis. Twitter is a great way to make your company approachable.
Instead, we use Twitter as a web cork-board of sorts. We post any and everything written about us and every update. While these posts are informative they are a complete misunderstanding of the medium. Informative posts on Twitter should be like sweets and fats in the food pyramid, used sparingly.
Sin 2: We have no Blog
This should be the first sin, but I feel sins of stupidity only slightly outweigh sins of omission. The fact is that we are a 2-year old internet start-up company that doesn’t have a blog. I find that unacceptable.
A proper blog can not only bring more eyeballs to your site, it can greatly increase public education with your brand and your product. Look at 37signals (I know they’re a rare form of success, but not one unrepeatable). They are willing to take the time to write TWO blogs, one based completely on product updates and educating the public. The second blog (Signal vs. Noise) has one purpose, to drive more people to their site. It’s interesting, opinionated, and occasionally controversial.
Sin 3: We suck at marketing and advertisement.
We are an internet based ad-network and we don’t know the first thing about it.
For SEO we aren’t in the top 50 for our medium’s keyword, and we’re #4 in our exact businesses keyword. That’s like looking up “computer” and having Dell or Apple not show up on the first page. It’s unacceptable.
We aren’t even running an adwords campaign. SEO is tough, and I understand that, but to give yourself a temporary fix you could at least run a decent adwords campaign.
We advertise in magazines. Let me repeat that, we don’t have an adwords campaign yet we are advertising in the back pages of magazines. WE’RE INTERNET BASED! Gah it’s enough to make me want to tear out my hair.
Sin 4: From a usability standpoint, our website is a disaster.
We have a very clean looking site, unfortunately that’s about the only nice thing I can say about it. It is painfully obvious to me that only two types of people designed our site, graphical artists and developers. No one with actual usability understanding or experience would ever let our site see the light of day. It’s like Ferrari releasing their newest car with seats on the ceiling and the transmission mounted to the drivers side door.
Nothing is intuitive. Nothing is easy to find. I would venture to say that 75% of our site is useless and too damn hard to find.
Not only is the design terrible, the content is obviously written by someone with an MBA and no experience in web-content. There is too much writing, and what is there takes a bit to digest and understand. Nothing is written simply.
We have millions of dollars of investor funding, a great product, a great technical team, and a great sales team, but we skimp in the absolute worst areas. The ones that the customer sees.
I want to make everyone who has anything to do with our site go home and read “Getting Real” and “Don’t make me think”. I then want to show them our site, roll up a magazine, and hit them in the nose while yelling “no!… no!”.
Sin 5: We are a start-up acting like a big business
We act as though we have 2,000 employees when in reality we have 20. We have rigid holiday and sick day structures. We have an obvious hierarchy system. We have cubicles.
Our executives proceed with an air of untouchability to them. They claim to want to hear ideas from everyone but literally do nothing do encourage this. It is obvious in the company’s demeanor that the only opinions valued are the ones with the biggest paychecks.
The problem is we are at a time in our growth where structure should be used as little as possible and freedom for innovation should get priority over politics and hurt feelings. We should have a chip on our shoulder, we should be working hard and playing hard, there should be innovation in the workplace and flexibility on how that’s achieved.
Where we should be: Google 2.0.
Where we are: Office Space 2.0.
Sin 6: We use expensive proprietary software/services
This really is part of Sin 5, because only large companies are wasteful enough to do this, but it’s such a waste of money that it needs its own sin.
We use salesforce and webex. We spent over $5,000 last month on Salesforce alone. Are you kidding me? $5,000?!? 37signals HighRise costs $150 a month and does everything we could possibly need. Hell we could actually have an efficient office by using all of the 37signals products and still be saving $4,500 a month!
Webex is a much smaller transgression ($60/month) but still a sign of waste when we could use Rondee.com for free.
These aren’t the only examples. We have a Verizon phone system (easily $1500/month) when we could get a VOIP based one (we have a T1 connection) for closer to $300/month.
It’s this culture of waste without thinking that starts to drive you insane. How can a company that is supposed to be on the “cutting edge” be run so poorly, without thought?
Sin 7: Our customer service system blows
I am the lone customer service rep for our company. So this area is the one I work the closest with and can see the most mistakes in. Before you ask, yes I have brought many of these points up only to have them stomped out because I thought it up and not someone else.
We have one of the worst FAQ’s I’ve seen in quite some time. This is unfortunate because we have a complex system and it ends up turning away so many of our customers. The ones that stick with it either a) bungle up their campaign, waste their money, and never return or b) call in and waste my time on a question that could have easily been answered in our FAQ.
Want to know the fix here?
1) Improve the FAQ. Make it easier to understand.
2) Improve the in-line help. You know those little “?” on other sites that help on the tricky areas of the site? WE NEED THOSE!
3) You know that money I mentioned saving above? Spend the $200 a month necessary to get a ZenDesk and GetSatisfaction profile for our company. It will cut down on wasted productivity but it will help us convert more “sign-ups” into “paying customers”.
