Archive for May, 2015

“Don’t worry, I own your problem now”

May 31, 2015

Taking ownership of a problem

We had a really interesting networking session at the recent Business Owners Network event at Dublin Chamber.

This group of business owners meet pretty much every second Friday morning, bright and early from 7:30 am till 9am. The sessions always involve some informal networking over a coffee and normally there is a guest speaker about some topic of interest.

(I would highly recommend it to business owners in Dublin – great for networking, learning, contacts and new business)

At our recent session, which I was privileged to chair we did some formal networking by breaking the room into circles of six people allowing each person a proper chance to share with the others what they do. At the session we also looked for people to share their number one business tip, which was quite interesting and varied.

At the end of the session each group were asked to share their learnings, which again generated some really interesting topics;

  • Nothing beats meeting people face to face
  • Listen to your customer and be open to changing your offer according to what they need
  • By listening to others you always learn something new
  • Cold calling can be quite enjoyable!
  • Don’t be afraid to ask for the business

My big learning from the session was that you should never under estimate the wisdom that experience brings – in every conversation with someone you nearly always learn something new.

I was chatting to one of the attendees, Sean who was passionate about customer service. The gist of the conversation was that customer service has disimproved generally and that there is huge customer frustration in particular with the call centre culture whereby you rarely get the feeling that someone is really ‘on top‘ of your problem.

You know the drill ..you call, you are often in a queue to be heard, you go through a sequence of pressing numbers, then you give your account details and eventually you get a chance to describe what is wrong. From here you can end up being passed from pillar to post, each time repeating your details and the nature of the problem.

In fact when you have an issue you need to put a good half hour aside as the whole process can end up taking that long.

He used a great expression to demonstrate what a great process would look like. You just want the person you speak to first to say: “Don’t worry, I own your problem now” and leave you with an assurance that they will see it through until it is sorted.

Do you own your customer’s problems?

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR, Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

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Posted in Customer Care, Handling Complaints, Networking, Staff training | 2 Comments »

Nothing to play for

May 23, 2015

Chelsea-v-Manchester-United-Premier-League

The end of the football season is always a very strange time – it manages to produce unexpected results, surprising comebacks and even more surprising defeats.

Teams that were hopeless all season all of a sudden put a run together and start winning matches, virtually unrecognisable from before. They miraculously survive.

Teams that performed well all season but know that they can’t win the league start losing and drawing games, which before they would more than likely have won easily.

The teams that know they are ‘safe‘ from relegation take a breather for the last few matches because they know the job is done and they start losing matches.

The teams involved at the latter stages of the cup tournaments start performing lousy in league matches because the players are ‘saving’ themselves for the glamour matches.

At this stage of the season those at the bottom with the desire to survive always seem to be able to dig deep a little more than those near the top. Survival is possibly a stronger motivator than getting as high as possible at this stage.

The best teams to play against seem to be those who have ‘nothing to play for‘. With a stronger motivation to win surely the team who needs it more will have a better chance at overpowering a team who don’t really need it at all?

There are always exceptions like the team that is already relegated and manages to win their first away match of the whole season against a team fighting for their lives. The extreme pressure was off and they managed to relax and play the football they were capable of but never managed before.

It is at this stage of the season that you see who the great managers really are.

These managers are the ones who inspire their teams to win even when there is nothing to play for such as Jose Mourinho. Even though the team has already won the league he still manages to motivate his players enough to beat teams who have a lot more to play for.

No matter what you do you must give your team something to play for; some target, some goal, some challenge so that they can dig in, reach higher and keep winning.

What are your team playing for?

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR, Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

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Posted in Management, Motivation, Teamwork | 6 Comments »

You, your story and your www

May 21, 2015

Emperor

Before it was your shop front, your building, your address or your Golden Pages listing that were the main things that would create that first impression to make you and your business look good.

While these things are still really important your online presence is your new shop front, the place where your customers will make up their mind about you with frightening speed.

Before you know it that prospect has come and gone, they have clicked onto your online presence (whatever that might be) and without any opportunity to say hello, show your wares, sell the benefits of what you do they have come and gone with their minds made up.

Your online presence includes your website, your blog, your LinkedIn account and all of your social media platforms and each of them in their own way will tell a story about you and your business.

When you do get an inquiry you should know that you have done a good job – they have found you and they liked what they saw, at least enough to make an enquiry.

The selling starts with your www … Ask someone you really trust (thing the Emperors new clothes!) if your online presence really captures your story, the very best of you?

How is your www? 

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR, Graphic and Website Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

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Posted in Branding, Graphic Design, Marketing, Web Marketing | Leave a Comment »

We are all connected 

May 17, 2015

PSA World Tour

As part of our normal Dublin routine we arrived early at the Mespil Hotel, our home in Dublin for the last few years. I parked up and quickly popped into the loo … Much needed after the spin from Cork!

As I walked past the reception desk a guy who was chatting with the receptionist caught my attention. He had an unusual shaped bag hanging off his shoulder. On closer examination it was a carrier bag for lots of, what looked liked tennis rackets.

Was he the manager of a team or playing in some tournament I wondered?

As always we had a busy day in the office, Dee was off at some networking event and I made my way back to the hotel and went about checking in. I was exhausted and was looking forward to chilling out for the evening.

We know the team at the Mespil Hotel well at this stage and I was greeted with the usual big smile as they looked for our room reservation. They seemed to have trouble finding the booking and slipped into the office to double check the paperwork.

Mespil Hotel

As I waited a couple came to the desk on spec hoping to book a room. Unfortunately for them there was no room at the inn!

The guy I was dealing with still had not appeared so I was starting to worry about our bed for the night. Eventually he appeared and apologised that they had no record of our booking.

Dee normally books the hotel in block a few weeks in advance and does this with faultless efficiency but this time the booking fell through the cracks.

There wasn’t a room to be had in the hotel so the really helpful team at the Mespil started ringing other places for us in earnest. It quickly became clear that due to some big conference that day, hotel after hotel were full and Dublin was totally choc- a-bloc.

I started my own search and discovered that even all the bed and breakfasts were full.

An hour later and still nothing … I popped outside for some fresh air and contemplated a drive to some hotel outside Dublin somewhere.

The receptionist came out to me beaming. “I have great news” she said “We have had a last minute cancellation. A guest of the hotel was in a squash competition but lost his match so he is heading home early!”

I presume it was the guy I saw in the morning.

We are all connected …

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR, Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

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Posted in Customer Care, Hospitality | Leave a Comment »

Pick the right maverick and get out of their way!

May 13, 2015

Young Wonder

“Just a quick note to say thank you.  The video you created is really special; I’ve made videos for 15 years at a major label and hated nearly every single one of them…too many compromises, too many cooks….this is the treatment played out in front of us and its f**king brilliant… many many thanks”

Brendan Canty, Feel Good LostThis is a fantastic email my son Brendan Canty (he has his own production company Feel Good Lost) received after completing a recent music video project.

He tells me it was one of the smoothest projects he has worked on and one with a fantastic outcome.

They loved his original idea and he delivered it without any interference.

He tells me this is often not the case. In many projects too many people get involved, there are too many opinions, too many opposing views, too many egos and too many comprises – he is not a compromiser but sometimes he tells me you end up doing what you need to do to get a job completed.

It tells us a very simple message about engaging with any creative talent including artists/designers/professionals.

Pick the right maverick, get out of the way and then let them do what they do best  ..

Brendan  has just finished a fantastic music video for a talented and ‘soon to be huge‘ Irish artist Gavin James.

The track is a beautiful song called “For You“.

You already know about this video by another Irish artist called Hozier, which he also happened to direct. At the time of writing this has been watched 247,000,000 times!

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

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Posted in Creativity, Entertainment, Graphic Design, Media, Music | Leave a Comment »

Michael Cawley, Cork Airport and “What’s the Point?”

May 2, 2015

Cork City

It was my first time listening to Cork born Michael Cawley, the Chairman of Failte Ireland and former Ryanair deputy CEO and Commercial Director. He was speaking at a business anniversary breakfast for Paul O’Donovan and Associates, Accountants.

Everyone is a product of what they do and Michael a former accountant and a senior member of the Ryanair team for 17 years is certainly a product of his career.

At first he spoke a lot of sense and he believes that everything starts with great management. He spoke about Dubai “a hole in the ground” and how great management has turned the place into a major travel destination.

He then spoke about the Irish tourism and hospitality sector, which employs 205,000 people. He reckons this could easily rise by another 50,000 but says we must ‘elevate’ how we view the industry and start respecting the work that people do in it.

Cork Airport – hopelessly uncompetitive

He then went on to talk about the €17 landing charges at Cork Airport that he says makes the airport “hopelessly uncompetitive“.

He expanded on this by talking about the Ryanair perspective “The passengers belong to the airline, not to the airports. The airlines will seek to make money, whether that is in Bari or in Cork“.

While this message was delivered with all of the arrogance you would expect from a Ryanair executive it gives you a clear insight into the thinking of airlines that are removing routes from Cork Airport.

However he makes a good argument and suggested that if the airport wants to compete for traffic it must drop the rates, suggesting that the region could even subsidise it because passengers will spend significant money when they visit. We must look at the big picture.

All of this makes perfect sense and those running Cork Airport need to start listening and start to view Cork as an economic gateway to our region instead of a stand alone cost centre. If this requires some write off of the debt then it will be no different to so much other debt that has been written off in Ireland over the last five years.

Michael Cawley, Failte IrelandMichael went on to give some general business advice to those gathered in the room “You must define your competitive advantage to be successful”

He explained that in Ryanair’s case “price” was it and this was achieved by relentlessly driving down costs .. airport landing charges is clearly a big part of this and in Cork’s case it is easy to see how we are losing Ryanair routes to Shannon and other locations.

He also spoke about the importance of “innovation” and in his view driving costs down is the ultimate innovation – I don’t agree with this as I detest what Ryanair represent and I hate how they have wrecked the flight experience, which was a ‘treat’ many moons ago, even if it was a lot more expensive.

“Bring back the peanuts” I say!

Michael joined the panel at the end of this breakfast briefing whereby guests were able to ask questions – I asked the question “What did the panel feel was the unique selling point of Cork?”

Michael took this one on and gave the room his very worrying opinion of Cork – We should get over ourselves and realise that we are not as special as we think. All talk of us being a “competitor” in a European context is silly as Ireland is really about Dublin.

..I couldn’t believe I was hearing this

Even worse he reckoned that it was pointless for money to be invested promoting Cork as it was not a proposition worth promoting.

When a Cork born Chairman of Failte Ireland holds this view it is very concerning – who is going to subsidise Cork Airport’s costs/landing charges (as he suggested) if no one believes it is a region worth investing in?

Michael …

I 100% disagree with you and as much as I respect your role and your ‘cost squeezing’ experience I think you and your colleagues in Dublin are misguided.

Cork is a very special place for both tourism and business as we witnessed in our research on the Cork Brand Marketing project and a few others have noticed too ..

Lonely Planet were the first to start talking about our ‘friendly city’ and the Huffington Post included Cork in a list of “Overlooked European Cities you must visit in a lifetime”

Please take a fresh look at the place that you were originally from and ask the question..why are we so overlooked?

All of us in Cork, our business and tourism groups, our stakeholders and politicians need to start making a lot of noise if we want something in change.

As for Michael…thanks for the helpful insight

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

 

 

 

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Posted in Air travel, Cork, Destination Branding, Irish Economy, Marketing, Tourism, Travel | 21 Comments »