Disqus - Latest Comments for paulsweeney

Re: SXSW PanelPicker®

paulsweeney — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 06:09:17 -0000

Making voice interfaces available to a whole range of people has to be on the equality and inclusiveness agenda. With children the need for privacy and security is even more critical.

Re: Three types of acquisition – view from a public company CEO

paulsweeney — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 07:08:28 -0000

The older I get the more I realise that "timing" really is everything.

Re: And We’re Off! Till ~2024

paulsweeney — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 06:31:42 -0000

The very best of luck to you on this new adventure Lee. In my early data in #Telcoland I really did think there was an opportunity to connect people in a way that alleviates poverty. It hasn't happened to the extent that I would have hoped for, yet. The very, very poor, do now use SMS to do the most incredible things and alleviate the simplest of disconnects. The bio hacking, habit nudging, connecting of everything-to-everything to actually improve health outcomes is not only a huge opportunity, but one worth spending some of your life to attain. Well done on picking something so inspirational.

Re: Take A Very Deep Breath

paulsweeney — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:40:14 -0000

Yeah, just have to add my own thank you for all your blogging over the years. It's been really informative and led me to a bunch of other people. Also, thanks for the book recommendation, passing it on to my wife who loves that sort of thing.

Re: Price drops, volume takes off

paulsweeney — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 12:10:08 -0000

It's actually not a bad idea to seek out step functions. Everyone else might think the relationship is just straight line and unattractive, but experiments might prove otherwise.

Re: Unconscious bias is more dangerous than cognitive bias

paulsweeney — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 08:28:38 -0000

It is also (IMHO) interesting that we think we can improve our thinking (sic). Group decision making, process, and "better" data" may not make the individual, group, organisation or society "much" better at decisions. Are we any better at making the decisions that matter than our parents were I wonder? :)

Re: Lessons and stories from Waterstones’ resurgence

paulsweeney — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 04:19:03 -0000

Always good to keep an eye on the "stuff we call wrong".... it keeps us balanced! I was going to say it might take 5 years to truly know what came to pass and what did not, but at this rate of change that might even be 3 years....

Re: Voice is the next big thing in mobile

paulsweeney — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 07:39:56 -0000

Will Voice Revenue meltdown matter though if you contract with your service provider for "Bundles"? If Voice is bad on one network, customers will find out, and just use another provider. Also, "mobile" circa 2000 was pretty poor quality, but people put up with it because "mobility trumped voice quality". I'm thinking "something else" will trump "voice quality" on next generation voice and messaging services.

Re: How to Deal with Pure Recruiting Mistakes

paulsweeney — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 05:46:31 -0000

As part of the qualification process you can "prototype" by having that person solve a problem, or do a small job that is related to the central "one thing" you really need this person to be able to do. As for hire fast/ fire fast? that depends on actually knowing you have the wrong person for the job. The naonsecond you know that, act fast.

Re: Mayday Points the Way

paulsweeney — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 16:18:17 -0000

Good to hear such grounded open mindedness :) When the mobile phone came out first, the call quality was pretty poor. Lots of fade, latency, dropped calls. The telco's had competed on the actual quality of the voice line, and spent billions trying to deliver it. But mobile was, well, mobile! It "trumped" audio quality to be able to just take and make calls "anywhere". So while we think about Average Handling Time, and Wrap Up Times, etc. someone else has gone "all Zappos" on it. When the trivial interactions can be handed "automatically", (self service), the "deeper engagement" is your opportunity to build trusted meaningful conversations with your customers. I'd say we should all "watch this space"....

Re: Everything you can imagine is real. - The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television...

paulsweeney — Sat, 07 Sep 2013 09:53:18 -0000

probably the best intro to a television series, ever.

Re: Three Reasons Why Multichannel Is Just Not Good Enough

paulsweeney — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:39:56 -0000

Stefan, you're knocking em out of the park these days. Really coherent white paper by the way. Congrats.

Re: The unprofitable SaaS business model trap

paulsweeney — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 06:20:14 -0000

Very many good points raised here and great comments too. While companies absolutely have to run these customer acquisition metrics, getting good benchmarks is the initial key to staying on track. Understanding where you are in the development of your SaaS is also important because how and where you spend varies as you grow.

Having "taken care of business" in this way, you might then find yourself up against a better funded competitor who is spending money on customer acquisition, feature development, and brand. This other company is planning on gaining the #1 or #2 position, demonstrating 40-50% yr on yr growth, and then being bought by the legacy players that have to enter this new "high growth cloud market".

What gets lost is the fundamental business model. What is being delivered more efficiently due to some new constellation of capabilities? What is the addressable market for this new model of delivery (offer), and most importantly are their new "white space" market opportunities? Your point that eventually the market begins to tap out is really, really important. So my takeaway provocation is to ask how your SaaS is opening up new white space opportunity because this gives you avenues of growth and resilience.

(and yes, this will pull against the need for absolute, jaw dropping, fastidious focus :)

Re: Standing up for Enterprise Ireland

paulsweeney — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 04:44:33 -0000

I have to say that Shane Ross has been right more times than wrong, but on this one I think he may be off the point. It reminds me of conversations about the NHS: once you move away from the UK you realise what an absolute star it is.

Re: How To Ethically Get A Load Of Free Facebook Likes

paulsweeney — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:20:44 -0000

What a great reply. Thanks for taking the time out to do that Niall. Tone is particularly hard to read when you don't know the other person very well. Good luck with the agency, good luck with the work.

Re: How To Ethically Get A Load Of Free Facebook Likes

paulsweeney — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 05:16:24 -0000

*disclosure: I know @primaryposition / David quite well, but am speaking for myself here, and haven't "vetted" or passed these comments by him before posting:
____________________________
In the interests of helping you with the post:
(1) You don't care with Mr. Primary's name is: it's there in the tweet as David. Just sounds a bit silly to ignore. It hurts the early tone of your piece.
(2) Telling "the other guy" to keep his own head down and focus on his own business doesn't win you any arguments. Dealing with the accusations with facts does.
(3) You have a great section here on how you actually got likes, and the role of blockbuster blog posts in driving that traffic. It sounds pretty convincing to me anyway.
(4) Having done a great job explaining and showing that traffic, you pretty much discount their value (other than the absolute number of likes that may be actually on-target, but since they were acquired "for free", that's not a problem). However, having discounted the value of likes, you finish the post by pointing out that you wouldn't trust a guy with only 750 likes. Either the likes are valuable or not, on target or not, etc. It's just about keeping internal consistency in your argument.
(5) There is ( I believe) a wider context here in that @primaryposition David has been on a rant for a a few weeks about spending on Social Media versus spending on SEO/ Search Marketing. Sure, this could be old fashioned competitor baiting. I'm sure there are pretty good arguments to be made for how social media and search need to be part of an overall communications and customer engagement strategy, and that's a conversation that I think would be valuable to hear.
Sincerely hope this doesn't come across as trollish.

Re: Smartphone Laws: the smartphone wars and the destruction of everything...

paulsweeney — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 06:42:11 -0000

- Mobile puts experience first: it will transform existing customer experiences and create whole new ones.
- Mobile is the new filter: figure it out.
- Mobile is a surveillance tsunami. Data is not neutral.

Re: Why People in Cities Walk Fast - Jobs & Economy - The Atlantic Cities

paulsweeney — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:21:08 -0000

As a commentator pointed out in this thread, it should be easy enough to pull this data from GPS/ Telco data.

Re: Steve's Seven Insights for 21st Century Capitalists

paulsweeney — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 07:14:11 -0000

A great point. Steve Jobs is "the Center", and maybe without him, Apple will not Hold. The "general wisdom" around listening to the customer, cross-dept teams, etc. etc. are all the communications and structures you have to have in place to overcome the problem of a central all knowing authority. The problem is that when you have a center that is actually mostly, if not always right, then the "best practice" is less efficient.

The point also raises issues in relation to how talent and management are developed within Apple, something I hear remarkably little about, but which I am very interested in.

A final point I'd like to add here, is that Steve Jobs had a "famously" deep interview technique where he quizzed executives to ensure that all facets of their argument stacked up. This is ego-destroying stuff. I wonder what Larry from Google has learned from the mentorship of Jobs?

Re: How to Identify a Great Product Manager

paulsweeney — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:29:08 -0000

Just me, or is there no link in that piece to the actual article?

Re: http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/iangjacobs/~X4uG9

paulsweeney — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:54:42 -0000

you would be suprised at the crazy things you see when people 'blindly" follow a metric.

Re: Capitalism at a Crossroads

paulsweeney — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 07:37:43 -0000

Theory has to lead practice a bit in most cases though sometimes it 'notices' what's going on at the edges and reports it, formulates it, distributes it. So I think it's worth while trying to form these kinds of questions and to question these kinds of forms (structural, organisational, industrial).

I know there is lots to take away from this book, but here is the one thing I took away above all others: fully accounted for costs. Costs don't stop at the end of the corporation. Once you reform your question, many new (and huge) opportunities arise. Have you ever been kept awake by an alarm system in someone else home, and it went on and on? Cost to person not in the house=zero; cost to you? one nights lost sleep, two days of family rows due to bad moods! It's a stupid example perhaps but that alarm cost 100 bucks. An entire building or housing estate was kept up for that lousy 100 bucks. Now if 10% of alarms on an estate go off every year, well... there you go.... now throw some of the principles in Umair's book against this problem and go make yourself some cash..... thick cash at that....

Re: The Irish Banking Crisis: A Parable

paulsweeney — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 01:21:22 -0000

I had forgotten that! oh and by the way, you could also leave a letter or parcel at the local pub for your friend/ acquaintance to collect whenever they turned up. So you didn't need an expensive parcel postal post distribution system either. Of course that was dependent on the publican "knowing" who was who in their own bar, and not being a super-four-floor-time-of-night-price-adjusting rip-off-acracy.

Re: Wishlist: Skype as Personal Data Store (and as Personal Relationship Manager)

paulsweeney — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 05:24:14 -0000

Awesome. As usual. And on the money. This is a big pivot for a billion dollar company though. There is one other thing I'd draw your attention to: Skype is known for being a closed system and relatively "hacked free" (cough, splutter) but it's reputation here could help it gain a position as a trusted personal data bank.

Re: Call Center Confidential: The Underbelly of Customer Centricity

paulsweeney — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 15:40:55 -0000

It is a bit of a trap isn't it? On the one had giving customers predicable, reliable service where they feel "they are in safe hands" and will be offered a guided conversation though to the solution is usually delivered in a programmatic way. You won't feel "what an amazing person that agent was' but you will feel "well they were very professional". You will probably meet expectations without being extraordinary. Which these days, is probably "the bar".

On the other hand, getting into that top 20% (5/5) box of customer satisfaction with an interaction has a big impact on the customers development into an advocate. Can you get a blend of both? Probably by automating what is known and formulaic, and then "injecting a live agent into the process" where it has the highest probability of making a difference to the experience.