I heard a story from a friend the other day that I've seen played out on the Internet dozens of times. A blogger who writes about restaurants wrote a post that was critical of the restaurant.

The restaurant owner's lawyer sent a cease and desist letter, claiming libel. In this case the blogger just folded and took down the post, but put up a copy of the lawyer letter with the offending lines redacted.

So the restaurant gets an article in the SERPs below the fold that indicates somebody was really unhappy, but they don't know why. That would be enough to keep me away...

Follow the Rules of Business

The restaurant owner, in this case, completely blew it. They violated several important rules of business:

• Never Take Business Advice From Your Lawyer. Your lawyer knows absolutely nothing about how to run a business. They went to law school and work in a law firm. That's about as far away from the business world as you can get. If you need advice on how to overcharge clients for working more hours than are in a day, then perhaps your lawyer is where to go. But for a PR situation, a lawyer is exactly the wrong person to call. The lawyer doesn't get to bill your hundreds of hours if you decide to just ignore something. Your lawyer wants you to outspend the other side with a big lawsuit. In the end, the only people that ever come out ahead in these situations are the lawyers. If you're fortunate enough to find a great lawyer like we have that understands the needs of a business, then you're fortunate. But most businesses are not, and they tend to defer to them.
• Make Love Not War. An angry customer is an opportunity, not a call to war. Some of your most fiercely loyal customers will be those people that started out with a complaint that you made right. Yes, there are some customers that are complete jerks that you just can't make happy, but you should at least give every customer a few chances.
• It Never Pays to Threaten Someone with a Megaphone. In this case the blogger just had a small following. But the lawyer didn't know that. It could have just as easily been a blogger with 40K+ subscribers. That simple cease and desist letter could have been plastered everywhere across the internet. As it is, the blog post is now below the fold when you Google for the restaurant's name. But if they had gotten someone who knew a little about SEO angry at them they could have ended up with a negative blog post outranking their city search listing (they don't have a site of their own).

A Better and Less Expensive Outcome

So this restaurant owner, who probably doesn't understand anything about Web 2.0 or that whole intarweb thing, probably spent $300 to have a big name law firm bully a blogger into taking down a negative post. Worse yet, the lawyer probably found the post by "policing their trademark". That's when you pay your lawyer $300/hour to Google your company name and send nastygrams to anyone that dares talk about you in a negative light. My guess is they lost several hundred customers because this guy has a pretty good local following.

Here's how it could have been done differently in a Web 2.0 approach. Instead of launching the sharks at the blogger, the restaurant owner could have engaged his customer and called or emailed him and said "I see that we didn't live up to your expectations. How about giving us another try, lunch is on us?" At the very least the blogger would now have a real human face to associate with the restaurant rather than an institution. He might very well have written another post along the lines of "Well, this food isn't my cup of tea, but the owners sure are nice people and a lot of people like this restaurant." Or better yet, the blogger might have had some valid criticisms that the restaurant could have addressed. That could easily have turned things around and they might have gotten good PR out of the situation. Instead of alienating several hundred people, they might have gained many new customers.

Whatever he did, using the lawyers wasn't the right move. It would have been much less expensive and effective to go comment on the blog and tell their own side of the story. They probably could have found a few dozen customers that would have done the same thing. If the blogger wouldn't move, the story could have become about how the blogger totally missed the point. Instead of a negative, they could have generated a big buzz for themselves.

Old and Busted or New Hotness

Their way cost them $300 lawyers fees and probably thousands in lost revenue. It's a very 1980s approach to business. It's like having your secretary print out your email so you can read it. The Web 2.0 way would have cost about $10 for the free lunch, and might have gained them several thousand in revenue from new customers.

Is your customer retention strategy Old and Busted or New Hotness? Your choice.

At least. Which is a pretty good piece of pocket money. I suspect even Warren Buffet would slow down to pick that up.

I attribute this to SEO because even thought it was a change in business process coupled with good SEO that made it happen it could not have happened without SEO.

Fair warning to people looking for "advanced" techniques - they ain't here. But what I'm going to talk about is a LOT more valuable than a trick that may or may not work with Google next week or next year.

Best Ever YouMoz Article

Let's look at the real money quote that J Kelly Garrett put in his amazingly excellent SEO article at YouMoz. This piece of advice will serve you while you climb up the value chain from a specialist to a trusted business advisor:

I took the pile [of papers, documentation, etc], pushed it aside, and asked him [the business owner] to tell me about himself. This is a common technique of mine, whether it is a small business owner, or the Chairman of the Board for Burlington Northern Railroad.

He wasn't asking to hear about the guy's soccer team, he wanted to get the gestalt around the company. What is important about the environment, goals, challenges, employees, culture, customers, etc, etc, etc.

It's Not About the Technology

Really, it's not. Not even in SEO. I wasn't about the technology in OO programming. It wasn't about the technology in robotics. It wasn't about the technology during the dang moon shots either.

It's about how the technology serves the business and makes it more successful. Sometimes 'success' means one or more of:

• Improved profit
• Increased revenue
• Decreased risk
• Stronger resilience
• Faster new product introduction
• and on and on...

But if the technology isn't in service to the goals of the business then it will eventually fail.

The $2M Piece of Advice

I know exactly when I finally understood this. No kidding.

I left one job as a consultant making $55/hour doing NeXTStep programming (hey, that was LOT of money back then) and got another one making $75/hour. The had two slots to fill - lead programmer ($50/hour) and technology business advocate ($75/hour).

For some reason, don't know why, during the interview I was homing in on the business objectives of the billing audit system they were building. I kept asking about change management (people, not source!), about deployment, about disruption, etc, etc.

Next thing I knew I was walking about into the freezing flipping cold in Chicago holding onto a 50% raise. Bubba, you don't get too many of those.

If you work that out - 48 weeks a year, 40 hours a week, 40 work years in a lifetime - you find out that that change in focus gets you a $1,920,000 raise.

Actually, it's even more than that because you keep the advantage while you march up the food chain.

Back to The SEO Example

What really struck me about Garrett's example was that the business took the fairly traditional and predictable approach of getting some SEO guys to graft web and SEO onto a traditional "ring and pitch" business.

The SEO guys put together a campaign that generates 2,500 leads and it kills the guy because:

• ROI goes from "signup" to 2 years.
  
• "He is looking at ROIs that should apply to heavy machinery and commercial aircraft."
• Growth rate drops from 19% to 3% because of process issues:
• "growth rate has plummeted from 19% per year to 3% per year because he is in the office answering the phone all the time with close rates of 12% [down from 97%]"
  

Actually, there were a lot of issues, but those are the two killers. Look at what happened - his profits got pushed out a year from acquisition AND instead of looking at an yearly "takehome" increase of $67,032 he was seeing an increase of $10,584. That is an opportunity cost of over $55K!

You can go broke quickly making money that way.

Do the math

I'm just going to quote Garrett's point in toto because it sums up the whole problem so neatly:

SEO Firm Declares “Success.” The PPC campaign is bringing in over 2500 hits per month. Closing the sales is not really their job. They just need to work with the business owner to further tweak everything to bring in more hits. “Obviously” the copywriting needs work to further capture the ones that do get there, or there is something wrong with the business, or whatever...but we are getting people to the site. Just wait till the site starts to rank higher with the search engines!

Remember, the owner is now going broke pretty quickly, has sunk a fair bit of capital into the new venture AND is probably pretty much apoplectic. In fact, if he's like any dial-and-smile salesguy I know, physical and financial threats are probably in the offing.

What's the Solution?

I won't repeat the meat of the article but basically Garrett becomes and advisor and helps the owner re-engineer his business so that he goes back to ROI on close. But most importantly the business growth goes back up to the previous 19% and then all the way up to 28%.

So, back to the math - previous to the first campaign the owner was looking at a yearly "raise" of $67K based on growth. The slap-on-SEO campaign took him down to a $10K raise. The SEO+BPR campaign took him to a $98K yearly raise. Thus the title of this post because the SEO catalyzed a $31,752 additional raise.

I'd like to read a lot more articles like this, and I hope he keeps writing.

I've given Cari.net a hard time about giving almost good customer service and TracFone for looking like they just don't care about their image. So here is an example of an excellent proactive response to a potentially serious problem. We use Redbox (automated DVD vending jukebox) a lot for kid and probably-do-not-want-to-own (ex: I am Legend) films. It's not perfect, and their online rental interface could certainly use a tuneup, but it's a buck a night and that saves me three bucks a movie for new releases, so I will put up with a lot.

However, apparently someone put a credit card skimmer on a machine somewhere so below is their response:

To Our Valued Customers:

A few days ago redbox detected and removed an illegal credit card skimming device at one of our 7,400 locations. At the same time, redbox also discovered evidence of skimming attempts in two other locations. Skimming involves the placement of an illegal device above the credit/debit card reader on a vending machine, ATM, or in this case a redbox. These devices are used to illegally read or store personal credit card information.

Even if your redbox was not targeted, it never hurts to pay a little extra attention and check for any unusual activities or changes at your local redbox. If you suspect your redbox has been tampered with (click this link to see pictures of skimmer devices: http://www.redbox.com/creditcardsecurity/ ) please call 866-REDBOX3, e-mail alerts@redbox.com , or notify the store/restaurant manager of your concerns immediately.

Although there is no evidence currently that these skimming attempts were successful, consumer security is a top priority for redbox. Reviewing transaction records, there is a possibility that up to 150 customers may have been affected. Although only a small percentage of the millions of customers who use redbox each month, redbox has notified the major credit card companies so that they can monitor the situation. The redbox team is also working with local authorities to investigate the incidents and ensure your security.

Skimming is not new (click this link for more details: http://www.uboc.com/ ). It has been attempted numerous times on ATMs, gas station pumps, and now redbox has been targeted. Redbox has been aware of these industry threats and has spent significant time and resources to prepare for them. The 7,400 redbox locations are visited frequently by redbox associates to maintain smooth operations and an optimum customer experience. In this case, a redbox associate found evidence of skimming attempts and initiated the actions in the team's response plan (including this e-mail message).

Redbox greatly values our customer relationships. As a result, redbox is open and direct in our communications about this type of situation. The redbox team also utilizes industry-leading technology to ensure you have a safe shopping experience and aggressively combats attempts by criminals to defraud customers. Please see the questions and answers below for some additional details on skimming and how redbox ensures the safety of your account information.

Sincerely,

Trina Graham-Hodo
Director, Customer Service

Bill Caputo
Director, Security

Ok, so far so good - clear explanation, promise to stay vigilent. And well written too!

And then they go the extra mile and provide you with more information using outside "expert" sources to help you understand the issue.

Additional Questions / Answers:

Q. What is credit card skimming?

A. Skimming is the theft of credit card information used in an otherwise legitimate transaction. It often involves the placement of an illegal device above the credit/debit card reader on a vending machine, ATM, or in this case a redbox. For more info click these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_fraud#Skimming
http://www.uboc.com/about/main/0,,2485_703976951,00.html

Q. What does redbox do to protect consumer credit card information?

A. Redbox employs state-of-the-art security technology to ensure the privacy and security of our customers' data before, during, and after their visit to our kiosks. Customer credit card information is encrypted the moment it's swiped through our readers. Redbox uses further layers of encryption to protect all data transfers, too. Kiosks are also actively monitored and regularly inspected both on-site and remotely. Redbox never moves or stores unencrypted customer information. Credit card information can not be accessed by outsiders or even by redbox employees once the card is swiped at a kiosk.

Q. Where can I get more information on credit card skimmers?

A. Please use these links to get more information on credit card skimmers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_fraud#Skimming
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/infotheft/2007-07-31-gift-cards_N.htm
http://www.uboc.com/about/main/0,,2485_703976951,00.html

Q. How do I know if a skimmer is on my redbox?

A. Redbox credit/debit card readers are standardized for all locations. Click this link for pictures of the two approved readers and some examples of skimmer devices: http://www.redbox.com/creditcardsecurity/

Q. Who should I call if I have questions?

If you suspect your credit card information was improperly used, contact your financial institution immediately. If you have specific concerns related to this incident and redbox, please visit http://www.redbox.com/creditcardsecurity/ or call 866-REDBOX3. Please do not reply to this email.

Perfect job, IMHO. Responsive, attentive, explanatory, links to authority sites to inform you, etc. Good job guys.

Sigh.  Once again they almost avoid being the rotten apple of my eye.  My not so snarky comments in red.

This evening Cari.net will conduct an emergency maintenance window to provide additional protection and redundancy for the C2 Data Center. [Planned emergency maintence window. Nice!] Every attempt is made to provide advance notice of these windows; however, in the interest of our customers ,it has been decided that postponing these actions may subject our customers to undue risk. [We forgot to send the email, we got the Special Post Mortem Version of D&D.]

At 12:00am this evening (Friday, March 28th) [Ooops, 12:00am Friday was this morning, around 18 hours ago.  You probably mean midnight tonight, or Saturday morning.][Wait, what time zone?], Cari.net Network Service Teams will install an additional BGP router [Oooooh.] within the C2 data center. This router will provide load sharing and additional redundancy to this segment of our network.

The maintenance will begin promptly at midnight and is expected to take approximately 15 minutes. Service impact should be minimal, though customers with equipment or services located in C2 may notice brief periods of latency and intermittent loss of connectivity during this short window as BGP tables are recalculated. [Is my stuff in C2?  How would I know.  Don't you know?  Why don't you tell me?] Senior Networking Team members will be onsite managing this event. [Blame will be allocated immediately!]

This work is being done to augment changes made during the March 21st window and to provide protection against additional large-scale network problems in the future. [We are not sure we fixed it right last time.   Now we're pretty sure it's the fuel injectors and not the distributor.] Customers located in Cari.net’s C5 facility will be unaffected by this maintenance window. [Probably.]

 Golly.  I am starting to think that Dilbert's PHB works there.

Well, when I wrote about this handy utility to see if your site was really down, little did I know that I'd really need to know it right away:

Hmmm, could it be the hosting company:

Well, yes it is. I am soooo disappointed in cari.net right now - years of great service and then a very very bad week.

So I give them a call and here is my conversation:

Me: Can you give me a status?

The Guy: Not really, all the network guys are downstairs with the vendor reps so there is nobody to ask.

Me: The vendors are there?

The Guy: Yes, the outage started in one part of the network and has been rolling over our data centers for the last few hours.

Me: Great.

The Guy: Don't worry, they're calling in everyone they can find to come help.

Me: Somehow that is not so reassuring.

I have a nice long post about Google, Digg, Page Rank Penalties, and why we all need a diversification strategy away from the top few social networking and bookmarking sites. But I have to go call all our affected customers (not everything is on Cari.Net - I am professionally paranoid) and tell them what is going on.

Apropos of my earlier post on customer service, we just *enjoyed* a brief outage from our generally excellent hosting company, cari.net.  Ok, these things happen, it was for an hour or so, and life moves on.  And then they send us the post-incident report:

Broadcast storm of undetermined origin caused link flapping which in turn caused HSRP and spanning tree failures. The broadcast storm apparently began in C2 data center, disrupting traffic on key corporate vlans as well as hosted servers. The C2 core router's CPU became overloaded and inter-data center links were non-responsive, causing STP recalculations and HSRP failures. Key corporate infrastructure became inaccessible as multiple routers attempted to take over (or relinquish) gateway IPs as spanning tree calculated switching paths appeared and disappeared. The C2 router shares switching infrastructure with the C3 core and the initial state of the data center interconnections had most traffic passing through the C5 data center. The broadcast storm cascaded through both the primary and backup C5 distribution networks, leaving access switches with no egress. The broadcast storm propagated through the shared switching infrastructure of the C3 data center facility. Both prima! ry and redundant customer colocation access routers were affected and the storm propagated to the customer access switches. As a result, many customer access devices (in the colocation cabinets) were left in a non-functioning state and required a reboot to restore services. Cisco engineers are on site to determine the root cause of the issue. In the interim we have taken the steps to deploy additional equipment and to remove certain HSRP and redundant switch paths to reduce the severity of link flapping in 100% resolution is proven.

An excellent example of spending money to give terrible customer service. 

All I can think of is John Cleese saying "My goodness, LINK FLAPPING!" and doing a silly walk.  I'm sure that is not the customer reaction they had in mind.

I've been travelling with my family up in French speaking Canada so, of course, customer service and communication are in the forefront of my mind.  For those of you who look North and see a mirror, let me assure you that in the central right hand part of Canada you'll get a chance to practice your French.  Your 18th century French, but still.  So, to summarize, I got on an airline with a buncha kids AND landed in a country where the primary language and culture is French.

Communication

Fewer than 20% of the people I've needed to deal with have spoken no English, but at least another 40% have had very limited English skills.  How do I know they aren't just 'pretending' to speak only French?  Well, I have approximately 100 words of guide-book French memorized and that is usually enough to drive any Gallic waiter in a haughty two star Paris 'straunt into instant perfect English.  I assume that the same holds true in Canada.

The problem here is that I am dealing with people in the service industry: hotels, full-service gas stations (remember those?), bakeries, etc.

It's as if a high tech company took their customer service and outsourced it to a country where English was a second language.  Like, say, Chennai or Bangalore.

Startling Realization

It's would be pretty easy to get an executive at HP or GE to reconsider offshoring customer service by taking them to old Quebec City, pointing at a shop and telling them to get directions to the Funicular.  Then ask them to imagine my mother trying to figure out how to unjam her inkjet with the help of Prashant in a noisy call center.

But We Do It Too

We recently released the Yahoo Store SEO Analyzer and one of our beta members dropped a mention into the excellent Y!Store Forums.  As you might imagine, a LOT of people showed up to try the tool and some of them had some interesting problems that we just hadn't found in testing.

Instead of having our techie guys hop on and answer the questions in gruesome and excruciating detail, I made them explain and show me what was going on so that I could explain in a useful fashion.

Free Customer Service Isn't

It costs money to have your offshore guy deliver the service, and in the short/medium term it is probably cheaper than having someone in a square state deliver the same service.  And I am sure that some bright spark MBA can come up with a chart showing that in the end the lower customer retention actually drives profits.

But, frankly, baloney.

It's not free to spend $1.25 to not solve a problem for a consumer rather than $4.50 to actually solve it.  And then lose a customer. I could probably prove the opposite in a spreadsheet too (after all, I have gotten VC money) but anyone in the real world knows it is false as can be.

Results Count

My mom will never buy another HP Inkjet printer again, she's so scarred from that call.  Now, she's a bit long in the tooth and all, but I figure that is 8 printers that HP won't sell.  Plus when we went to get her a new laptop there were no HP products in the mix.  Ooops.

Her wireless printer adaptor died (power surge) and she went and got a new one.  (My mom is not a techie, but she can usually follow directions - clearely a trait that skipped a generation!)  Of course it did NOT work out of the box so she had to call customer service  - this time she got someone in Manila.  Same weak English.  But well trained - he carefully walked her through each step, and when he couldn't fix it (her WAP was set to secure) he passed her to somebody in ... Russia.  They quickly determined the fix and walked her through it.  In the end it took 75 minutes, but all offshore time.  She is now a huge fan of ... Cisco.

The Bottom Line

You can temporarily boost the bottom line by not providing "free" customer service, but in the end it'll simply cost you money.  My simple suggestions, all of which require upfront investment but can be executed with the losest cost resources availabe:

• Recognize that free customer service can be a cost or a profit center
• Training is critical
• Documentation is necessary
• Set customer expectations up front, especially for complex products

It's really not rocket science.

I recently went on a bit of an SEO testing and shopping spree - you've probably read some of the reviews here. And one of the comments I kept making was that nobody would return my emails.

Customer Service Matters

Look, I've been hanging onto that hilarious customer service certificate for a year, knowing that I would use it someday. Because, while it is funny that someone is proud of being 1st runner up in the Greater Atlanta Metro area, they did get the point that customer service is important to, well, customers.

Customer Service in the SEO Industry

What does it mean when people put "free" SEO tools out and they break? Promise rankings. Sell spammy link pages. Engage customers without contracts or SLA's?

I'm not saying that SEO is different from, say, CRM or ERP implementations. Anyone who has been on the receiving end of a SAP implementation knows what I mean.

I have to say, if I were some Yahoo Store owner wandering through our little universe I'd probably turn right around and leave.

High Points

Look, there are some really great places our hypothetical new customer could land - SeoMoz, ShoeMoney, Aim, Joost, etc, etc. Lots of helpful advice and some reasonable services for sale at an affordable price. And there are tools, like Hubspot , where you get real customer service.

How is Customer Service Different in SEO-Land?

Is it? I think it is. When a customer buys a dozen seats at SalesForce.com for his freon sales weasels, he may not understand all the bells and whistles and features, but he knows he'll get a good pipeline view and synchronized customer contacts.

If the same guy buys "SEO" to get google traffic and then to improve his landing page, well, he might as well be a Cargo Cultist. He might even enjoy and appreciate the results, but they'll be amazing.

Maybe It's The Enthusiasm

Why is it all so mysterious? I think it is down to several things:

• It's all new, so it's exciting and moving fast
• We all play in Google's Matrix, and it is d*mn mysterious
• The industry is clearly pre-consolidation so there are no big players to set standards. Yet.

What Can We Do?

I think we have to wait it out and let it all grow and mature.

How boring is that? But I've been through several technical 'revolutions' and you get so you can see a pattern. In three to five years it's very likely that the players around today won't be around, that the industry will look a lot different. Different price points, the google matrix will feel different, and customers will know what to expect.

And customer service will suddenly look very important. Even though it always has been.