Business, Innovation and Ideas

Feedback Activator - Location based feedback

2011-05-18T14:08:00.000-07:00

When I'm anywhere and I want to give feedback I'd have to go to speak to a customer advisor, or their manager. But that's an effort right and perhaps embarrassing? and I can't give anonymous feedback. Or feedback like that I could give to web application providers.

Feedback Activator think they have the answer. An anonymous feedback system that works on your smartphone and records your location. Here's a video:

I think they have a great idea but... they might have it backwards:

They don't have an app, just a website.
Feedback is anonymous, so you never get a follow up?

I'd build an iPhone and Android app, add photo upload for illustration, automatically find businesses in the vicinity to be tagged, open it up to local councils, make it linked to a person unless you specificity opt to be anonymous (the use of which would be limited at a particular venue). I might even consider making the feedback public.

They've probably already thought about all of this though!

Customer Support, helpdesk, knowledge bases and community forums

2011-05-14T06:36:00.000-07:00

These are my own personal views on the following products and services - please view them as such.

Clearly any business looking to scale rapidly should be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to customer engagement.

Web app and SAAS solutions for tracking customer enquires, community chatter and knowledge bases are growing in number and quality all the time. They are especially helpful for fast growing businesses needing to manage huge ratios of users to support agent.

I've recently been assessing the market leaders in this space. There didn't seem to be any decent comparisons available so I thought I better create my own.

I'll be comparing:

Parature
Get Satisfaction
Zendesk,
Assistly
Uservoice

Rightly or wrongly I've ruled out Force.com's service cloud and Rightnow from the outset as I regard them as overkill for an SMB - complicated to set up and little or no improvement in experience to the 5 above. I'll try to be 100% objective throughout this analysis - using metrics, absolute ratings and weightings where possible.

First I drew up two lists of requirements, provider experience and customer experience. Examples of provider would be "Track Customer Queries, Fast User interface", and of customer - "Suggested answers during ticket writing, Branded portal". The full list of 48 requirements are in the attached excel spreadsheet.

Next I signed up for the full featured free trial on all the services (except Parature which we are currently using).

Then each requirement was weighted for importance from 1 to 10 with 10 being most important. And each product was ranked each product from 0 to 10 on every requirement. A 0 means no support for that feature, and a 10 means I believe that it's a great implementation.

Here's the full list (with the weightings hidden):

Summary Review of Each Product:
I've also included a link to each company's own helpdesk (What I would assume to be the best possible implementation of their system)

Parature
https://support.parature.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=51

Lots of good features hidden within a nasty frame based back end UI - think 5 refreshes for every action. Forum support exists but isn't worth using. The next version to be released will allow a frameless version of their knowledgebase, which is a great step forward. Also on the plus side, ticket management is strong - SSO, SLAs and customer tracking works very well. They released an "easyanswer" ticket deflection system in Q3 2010. This suggests knowledgebase articles on the fly based on question content before the customer presses submit.

Get Satisfaction
http://getsatisfaction.com/getsatisfaction/
Great for public engagement around feature ideas, bug reports, and general public questions. Simple and clean customer facing UI, suggests existing questions and allows you to highlight employees easily. No support for private helpdesk features (unless you integrate with Zendesk).

Uservoice (Full Service)
http://feedback.uservoice.com/
Uservoice's new system is a triumph. Although lacking in features like uploading screenshots to embed in the knowledge base (I assume this will arrive soon?), and twitter integration. The ticketing system is amazing. It works a little like the new twitter interface. You can quickly search for the ticket you're looking for. Then see the thread load immediately on a separate pane when you select it. The best feature of the Uservoice system however is the customer facing ticket creation lightbox. It searches your knowledge base and feature requests as the customer types. but compared to Parature and Assistly's implementation it is less obtrusive. One of the smartest features is the rolling ticket counter at the top of the agent screen. Answering support tickets is not always as fun as it sounds ;-) and a counter recording your achievements is a little positive nudge in the right direction.

Zendesk
https://support.zendesk.com/home
A good and well rounded product - scored relatively highly across the board because it wasn't missing many obvious features. One feature that I felt was lacking was an autosuggest implementation - submitting a ticket seems to be a simple contact form. Although the ability to search the knowledgebase is always available and fast. Knowlegebase pages can look spread out and messy - there seems to be lots of scrolling involved from a customer's point of view. The back end is powerful and has a decent twitter integration for creating "twickets". On the other hand it is very green, and also feels a little like you've zoomed in on your browser by mistake! Internal analytics is good and the extended functionality via GoodData lookz very impressive. Live chat is thrown in too.

Assistly
http://support.assistly.com/
I hadn't heard of Assistly before I started looking into this but their product is remarkably good. The twitter integration is mighty impressive and I really like how quick and easy it is to drop knowledge base articles into tickets. Their get-satisfaction integration is also slick. The back end is easy to navigate and but complicated due to the massive functionality. The knowledgebase articles are full featured and easy to edit. Front and back end experience is better than Zendesk's, but worse than Uservoice's. Powerful analytics also included as standard.

Overall I'd go:

Uservoice for a super fast and great looking customer and agent experience with a trimmed down feature set.
Assistly for great looking and full featured support including twitter and chat integration (Salesforce coming soon)

During my analysis, after a couple of tweets, as you'd hope from companies who build this kind of customer engagement software, I received fast replies:

Zendesk's CEO Mikkel Svane:

Assistly also got in touch quickly - both through Twitter and separately by personal email:

And Uservoice's CEO Richard White:

Which is great. I'll be in touch with sales from all three soon so they can correct any misrepresentation in the above assessment!

Best Regards,

James

BBC Dragon Doug Richard points out how brilliant Fish on Toast is.

2010-07-27T02:26:00.000-07:00

So get on over to The University of Southampton Entrepreneurs now.

Fish on Toast is Officially Southampton's Best Society

2010-05-05T06:48:00.000-07:00

You be pleased to know that Fish on Toast won SUSU's "Best Society" at the EVAs last night for our achievements in the last year. Proud would be an understatement.

Thank you to everyone who has helped make Fish on Toast great this year.

First, to our sponsors: Microsoft, The Utility Warehouse Business Link, Coverzones, Venture Finance and Huddle. They have donated their money and time for us to run some fantastic events and competitions this year. 100 T-shirts, 140 pizzas, 75 cookies and 100 bottles of water weren't free you know! Most of all they have facilitated epic expansion of our membership, and our reputation on campus. Thank you.

Second, our guest speakers. Every one of you donated your time and expertise for the benefit of all the Fish on Toast members. Loads of lessons were learned and get contacts and connections made. Thank you.

Third, the committee who gave up huge amounts of their time for free to make Fish on Toast a success from the Bunfight all the way through to the AGM.

Fourth, the staff members who have helped us this year (There are loads more who we can't fit here) particularly;
Helena Schulze - Student Enterprise Officer, offering fantastic council, funding and great ideas;
Janice Rippon - Head of Student Services, who made entrepreneurship a real concept for the careers service; and Debra Humphris - Pro-Vice Chancellor, who has promoted Fish on Toast and SIFE to the upper echelons of the university management. Thank you.

Finally to the members that make Fish on Toast what it is. You are inspiring, exciting and intelligent people and I know that I've met individuals who will change the world for the better. Thank you all.

It's been a great year and I've really enjoyed it - I hope you did too!

All the best in the future,

James

--
James Cornelius Pipe

Outgoing President - Fish on Toast: University of Southampton Entrepreneurs

NACUE - National Student Enterprise Conference 2010

2010-03-28T16:21:00.000-07:00

Just back from a great weekend at the first annual National Student Enterprise Conference, organised by NACUE and held at University College London's Engineering Building. I met some fantastic people and the whole event was inspiring to say the least! I'm annoyed that I had to miss the second day.

Victoria Lennox kicked the event off in trademark style - a brief but hard hitting message about embedding entrepreneurship in education.

Julie Meyer
She was followed by Julie Meyer (Ariadne Capital, First Tuesday, Entrepreneur Country, BBC Online Dragon). I personally think Julie is brilliant. Always a little bit controversial and a great speaker. She talked about a concept she calls 'individual capitalism'. Basically that the internet has enabled anyone with sufficient ambition to set up a business and begin creating wealth. The first dinner party atmosphere killing fact for you:

"6% of individuals running fast growth companies in the UK are creating 54% of the new jobs"

One of her most interesting points was "Challenge the Mainstream Media". The argument was that as the established media focus their coverage on the corporates, not only does business seem boring, but they hide the exciting world of entrepreneurship from the general public.

She also seemed pretty adamant that the public sector is bloated and doesn't reflect the changes that all other business entities have had to make throughout the credit crisis. This point received a pretty strong reaction in a later panel session when Richard Leyland (Worksnug) argued that the government had done pretty well to protect public services in light of "Entrepreneurialism gone wild". Personally, I'd side with Julie on this one - I think it was a lack of accountability in big banks plus the exploitation of the financially desperate that really tipped it.

Julie's final message was a great one, and it was that Britain has shown time and again that we can handle big. We just need to "Suspend our disbelief", be personally accountable and... "Follow the Entrepreneur".

Oli Barrett took over at this point with a charismatic introduction to speed networking and some inspiring words of wisdom. A high five to Monika Gierszewska, Frances Brown and Florian Jenson who I met in 12 minutes! Next up was the...

Internet, Software and Mobile Technology Panel

(images stolen from Linkedin)
Richard Leyland - Worksnug (Founder and CEO)
David Bozward - NCGE (Director of Technology and FlyingStart)
Alistair Mitchel - Huddle (Co-Founder and CEO?)
Paolo Barone - Microsoft (Software Evangelist)

All interesting speakers - the first I had seen of Richard Leyland - after an impassioned defence of government, he recommended that we take the long shots and contact people way out of our league for help. Dr David Bozward surprised me by having the most ridiculous amount of experience I'd ever heard and a PhD in 3G mobiles! Ali Mitchell revealed that he had the idea for Huddle whilst sitting on the loo, looking at a BT billboard. The legendary Paulo Barone gave us the quote of Saturday:

"76 million people use Farmville and it's the most boring game ever!"

Most of the chat was about Crossing the Chasm - and to be careful of getting stuck in the Techcrunch world - away from the public at large. I think it was Paulo who recommended we "Speak to our mums" then make something she would use, not just our friends, if we wanted a product to have mainstream appeal.

Over lunch, I had a look in on the Enternships networking event with Raj Dey. He was on great form as usual, Enternships seems to be going well and he pointed me at an interesting and fast growing startup called My City Deals. Definitely worth a look for graduates wanting exciting experience. Huddle.net are also looking for interns this summer so everyone get on over there too. I've been up to their office on Burmondsey Street twice now and I've never met a more welcoming bunch of people.

My afternoon was jam packed with meeting great people, the Clean Tech and Green Business Panel and the Finding Funding Panel. I'll write those last two up later, but for now I'll just spew out a list of interesting people that I met or caught up with during the day, in no particular order, so you can find them too!

Adnan Ebrahim - President, UCL Entrepreneurs Society + Founder of CarThrottle
Andre Campbell - Ex President of Kingston Entrepreneurs and Founder of Enthuse Youth
Lucian Tarnowski - Founder and CEO of BraveNewTalent.com
Christian Bush - Co-Founder of Sandbox Network
Oli Barrett - Networker and Entrepreneur
Victoria Lennox - Founder and CEO of NACUE
Matt Smith - Groups Director, NACUE
Anthony Francis - Co-Founder and President at South Bank Entrepreneurs
Richard Leyland - Technologist and Founder of Worksnug
Raj Dey - Founder of Enternships
Jamie Broadey - Beem Mobile Money
Victoria Atherstone - Founder of Urbanites and Scooters
Ali Mitchell - Co-Founder and CEO at Huddle.net

People that I'm particularly gutted to have missed out on talking too by dropping out of the second day:

David Langer - Co-Founder and CEO, GroupSpaces Ltd
Hermione Way - Founder of Newspepper and Techfluff.tv
Penny Power - Founder of Ecademy
and the estimated 150/200 other entrepreneurs I failed to chat to!

Check out #nsec on Twitter for some of the weekend chatter.

Thanks NACUE!

James

Making Friends at the 3 Market Social Enterprise Event - Southampton

2010-02-09T04:06:00.000-08:00

Just a quick one today!

I've spent the last couple of hours at the 3 Market event that's being run at the University of Southampton. It's great networking for social entrepreneurs and their keynote speaker, was Wayne Hemmingway. (Big Brother, Gadget Show, http://www.hemmingwaydesign.co.uk/)

Initially I was dubious because I didn't know much about Wayne. It turns out he's a brilliant speaker and has been involved in loads of great social projects and businesses since selling Red or Dead in 1999.

Most interesting for me was his KisosKiosk project. It allows Entrepreneurs in the creative industries a planning permission free store front that is mobile enough to be placed in high footfall areas really easily. It was launched in London with the help of Boris Johnson a year or two ago and is now in Nottingham nad Manchester.

I think it would be great to bring the concept to Universities accross the country so that Students starting businesses can sell direct to the rest of the student body, rain or shine! I'd love to hear what you think, drop me an email James {at} jamespipe.com or comment below.

Thanks!

James

I've got a great idea, now what?

2009-11-16T03:16:00.000-08:00

I often talk to people who think they have a fantastic idea but wont tell anyone. The usual excuse is that "someone will steal my idea and take it to market before me".

This is ridiculous. The fact is, there are no new ideas, just different execution. If you've thought of something that is easy to implement, and completely obvious, then someone else has too. I'm afraid it's a sad truth but you and I are not as great or unique as you we think we are.

Not even asking your friends to give you feedback is stupid. Personally, I am fantastic at selling myself my own ideas. If I only asked my own opinion I would have made a whole heap of crap decisions by now. Giving yourself constructive feedback is not possible so stop wasting your time.

Multi millionaire Chai Patel told me that he always broadcasts his new ideas. This is for two reasons:

Because your friends and contacts will offer to help you out ONLY if they know you need their help. You will get new ideas for your product, marketing and customer service for FREE.
Because if you tell everyone about your new business they will keep you focused. Every time you meet you'll be asked how it's going. Peer pressure is a fantastic motivator.

David Langer (founder of Groupspaces.com), Alastair Mitchell (founder and CEO of Huddle.com) and Peter Czapp (Founder and Director of thewowcompany.com), have spoken on different topics at Fish on Toast - The University of Southampton Entrepreneur's Society. All of them have concluded with the same mantra: "Ideas are worthless. Execution is priceless."

There is however one exception that I know of to this rule. This month, Fish on Toast are running a business idea competition. We will be giving out ten prizes of £100 to the best business ideas then give you free time with a lawyer, accountant, web design team and professional sales coach. For more information check out our website and sign up to our mailing list now.

So I have a final thought for you: Stop looking for that unique idea that you'll never find. Start looking for proven business ideas and work out how your going to do them BETTER!

Here is my 5 step idiot proof business idea generation system...GO!

Think of anything that annoyed you in the last month. You have found "the Pain"
Think about how many other people might also get annoyed. This is "your market"
Think about how you could do it right and get paid. This is "a business idea"
Write it down in 100 words on a computer of your choice. "This is a 100 word business idea"
Now, if it's not yet the 22nd of Feb 2010, submit it on the Fish on Toast website!

Good Luck!

James

Microsoft Sponsor Fish on Toast - and we get a grand day out in Reading!

2009-11-06T18:00:00.000-08:00

Microsoft UK have teamed up with NACUE to provide a ground breaking sponsorship opportunity for UK Entrepreneurs Societies with Sponsorship. Following a 1500 word pitch that I wrote a couple of weeks ago, this week, Brad Fitchew (Fish on Toast Post Graduate Officer) and I visited the beautiful Microsoft UK campus up in Reading. Our aim? To find out how we can help them increase the reach and effectiveness of their student initiatives; The Imagine Cup, Dreamspark, StudentZone on Facebook and the Studentzine Newsletter.

It was a great day out. There were about 10 societies represented and loads of great ideas generated. We played on the Microsoft Surface and touchscreen Windows 7 machines, toured the New Technology Centre and saw the trailer for COD4 and promo videos of project Natal on XBOX360! They also told us what they were looking for in their Grad scheme interviews and applications.

A big thanks goes to Victoria Lennox of NACUE, and Lars Lindstedt, Ed Dunhill, Sarah Melrose, Paolo Barone, Bindi Karia of Microsoft for making it happen. I've included a list of opportunities available to students through Microsoft below...

The Imagine Cup

The Imagine Cup is what happens when student teams from around the world compete to solve the UN's Millenium Development Goals to free a major portion of humanity from the shackles of extreme poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease. They established targets for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women, environmental sustainability and a global partnership for development.

The Imagine Cup is also the world's premier student technology competition open to all students over the age of 16. Key competition categories are Software Design, Embedded and Games Development. Software design is the biggest competition with teams of up to four people; the best teams are mixed discipline with developers, entrepreneurs and domain experts. We don't have long left to promote the Software Design competition as the round 1 deadline is 16th December by which time teams must have submitted a proposal document via imaginecup.co.uk.

To find out more visit The Imagine Cup Homepage and use the promo code: IC0014

DreamSpark - FREE MICROSOFT SOFTWARE!

DreamSpark is a software access programme for all students who can verify themselves using their .ac.uk email address. Click through to free access to Windows Server, Visual Studio, Expression Suite and more.

StudentZone Facebook page

Microsoft UK have recently established a Facebook page which aggregates a bunch of great content for students interested in technology and business into one place. It also gives students a great platform to interact with Microsoft and find out more. Visit the Microsoft UK Facebook Fan Page now!

StudentZine Newsletter

Each month we send a newsletter out to 10k+ UK students. If you are looking for a career in technology, or are hoping to found a tech startup, you should be one of them. Subscribe now!

The University of Southampton Entrepreneurs - Fish on Toast

2009-10-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

What we do...

This year I'll be president of Fish on Toast, the University of Southampton Entrepreneurs. I'd like to tell you a little bit about us as a group and our plans for this coming year.

We are, quite literally, the most inspiring club that students can join at uni. Together we will learn the secrets for business success.

Most people will not have thought about what they want to do after graduation but that doesn't matter. If they're simply looking for something fun to fill their Thursday evenings with or want to start a business next week, Fish on Toast is what it's happening.

Fish on toast is an group of like-minded individuals up for changing the world - literally. We're about getting inspired by each other's enthusiasm and that of our incredible visiting speakers, running our own businesses, and entering business competitions. Every week we buy pizza for all our members so everyone can network after our guest speaker presentation.

I'd also like to introduce you to the rest of the people running Fish on Toast this year. Click here to find out more about the committee.

To sum up, I've mashed up a quote from one of my heroes, Doug Richard:

When you first join Fish on Toast, you might be wondering: 'Can I be an entrepreneur?'.
When you leave you'll be asking yourself: 'How can I not be?'.

NACUE - National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs Launch!

2009-05-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, Tony Kissack, Chris Houghton and I (James Pipe) travelled up to the Microsoft headquarters in London for the launch of NACUE: The Leader's training weekend. It was an incredible event, organised in the most part by Victoria Lennox, outgoing president of Oxford Entrepreneurs. Both days had early starts but the whole event was EPIC.
Tony stayed at his sisters but Chris and I bunked up in a hostel north of Hyde Park where we probably both caught swine flu from our South American backpacker room-mates. The sweaty situation was made even worse when a couple of the girls we met at dinner said their uni had paid for two nights in a twin room at the Crown Plaza!!! (We'll sort that out next time!)

Day One

started with an awesome talk called 'Goals for Success' by Huston Spencer He got us all to close our eyes for the first 3 minutes to get us "out of our heads"...right!
After that, Lars Lindstedt, head of Microsoft's emerging business programme, told us about all the great stuff they're doing to help small start-ups like some of our Fish on Toasters want to be. I even got to talk to him a little more on the London eye and he explained why he made his job title "Software Economist"! On the Saturday evening was kicked off with an amazing meal at the Crown Plaza hotel followed by the brilliant Mike Southern and his keynote - "The Beatles". Afterwards we were whisked off to the London eye where we went for a double flight with champagne and canapés (it's alright for some eh?)!
As if that wasn't enough, we were finally dropped off at the Adam Street Private Members Club on the Strand. We hobnobbed with the entrepreneurial elite of London - and the 100 other legendary students who also attended the weekend.

Day two

was all about knowledge transfer - we set up the "NACUE South" region with big hitters like Oxford, Cambridge and Bristol to name a few. Tony will be co-chairing the Southern area next year (so we are hoping for some Fish on Toast preferential events!
Microsoft's Paolo Barone showed off Microsoft's cool new technologies like Surface (which we played on), Windows 7 and Photosynth. Needless to say, the shamelessly geeky among us all have Windows 7 installed on our laptops now.
The incredible Julie Meyer, founder of First Tuesday and Ariadne Capital was the closing speaker. She's one of the most influential women in Europe and it's easy to see why. Check out Entrepreneur Country to find out more about their manifesto for positive change in the world through entrepreneurship.
Overall, an absolutely brilliant weekend and I recommend everyone gets involved next year to make NACUE as powerful as it should be. I see government lobbying on its way!