a canadian startup

I actually used Idée’s TinEye!

So I sometimes tease Toronto startup TinEye because I like it so much but couldn’t figure out a use for it in my day-to-day life.

But here’s a cool example of a way it actually did something useful for me.

See, RIM has been advertising for the Blackberry phone I have, the Bold, using a picture of the phone with this really cool background:

Isn’t that city background really cool? Well I wanted to use that background but RIM doesn’t actually provide a copy of it anywhere.

I am not alone. Many people on the internet have been arguing about what city that is in the picture and where they can get a copy of the background.

Read here for a forum of sad people arguing about it.

Well. I’ve solved it. Using TinEye!

I first uploaded the picture I have above, but TinEye kept showing me more pictures of blackberries. Then I cut out the center part of the image of the actual skyline and this is what TinEye responded. (There’s no “link to this search” button on TinEye but I am now requesting it).

It turns out that the original image is a stock photo of the Tokyo skyline. Here’s a link. (The Blackberry version has been photoshopped to be darker, but if you look at the stock thumbnail, it’s definitely the exact same buildings from the exact same angle)

Great job, team TinEye! I am now the envy of the Blackberry Bold community!

Well.ca Mentioned in the Financial Post

Great article in the Financial Post today about Well.ca with a couple quotations from me about running a lean operation.

Interview by Allentrepreneur

Tien from Allentrepreneur interviewed me here about starting Well.ca. I really enjoyed the previous article on Allentrepreneur with star Canadian entrepreneur, Ben Yoskovitz

What do you Need to Build Phenomenal Customer Service

If you’ve read this blog, you know that Well.ca is addicted to offering phenomenal customer service

As we train Jenessa, the newest addition to our gaggle of friendly people with phones on their desks, we’re thinking about how to “build” friendliness. How do you teach new people to be the kind of phone operators that make angry customers melt into happy ones, and happy ones melt into gushing ones?

Check out this message we received on LiveChat today:

We want to build the kind of service that elicits that kind of feedback every day.

How?

It starts with offering a great service. Make the value to the customer so great, that they have trouble believing that it’s true. Build your service and design the presentation in a way that makes people smile.

Then hire the nicest people. They’re easy to recognize: they smile too much, like to bake things for people for no reason, and give an inappropriate number of hugs or high-fives.

Then surround them with other friendly people in a friendly environment. All the meanness they’ve built up over the years will disappear when they’re surrounded by warm, funny people with candies on their desks.

Then be goofy. Make sure there is a Wii in the office, all your phones have googly-eyes on the handsets, and someone sends out weird YouTube links about cats doing cute/funny things.

Remove barriers to kindness. Don’t time calls, give flexibility in how to resolve issues. Train people to never lie, recommend competitors if there’s a better option, and say “that’s terrible and our fault” when things are terrible and your fault.

And lastly, do unexpected acts of kindness. Here, we’ll send surprise chocolates to some of our nice customers, or toys to their kids. We write hand-written “thank you” notes to every single person that orders from us. Do you have other good ideas of special little things we could do?

Last advice: when great customer experience stories happen, let the person on your team that made it happen know and own the story. Have them announce it to the rest of the team. Everyone here at Well.ca is waiting to be responsible for making the next person’s day.

Here are the three training documents we send to all new people in our customer service department:

• Joel on Software’s article on customer service
• Guy Kawasaki’s article on great customer service
• And my article (self-promotion alert) on owning the problem.

When Adwords go Terribly Wrong (Oops)

Recently, someone at Well.ca (I won’t name names…) had the brilliant idea of creating a test campaign of adwords purchasing thousands of words based stuff including tags associated with products. So if a sunscreen was tagged with the word “sunburn” and someone on google.com searched for “sunburn” our product might show up.

Sounds like a good idea, right?

Well… take a look at the following ads we automatically purchased (and ran!) for baby shampoos:

and:

I like “from a trusted Online store” the best. Surprisingly, we received very few clicks from people wanting to buy babies. There’s a market for it, I am sure.

Don’t worry, Alex here caught the weirdness early, and we’ll be making fun of the person responsible on Monday.

Goops.

Managing People is not a Science

The most important lesson I’ve learned when it comes to managing, coaching, and teaching people is that there is no silver bullet. There is no single management methodology or formula that works on all people. Good managers are able to look at their unique team of individuals and develop a system alongside them that helps individuals develop their talents, serves to achieve their personal goals, supports their creativity, and aligns their efforts with the overall movement of the company.

Just as each manager is different, as is each individual’s needs from a manager; hence, every individual is best managed in an individual manner.

A lot of the radical advice you’ll hear about managing people is wrong when it makes the implication that “you’re doing it all wrong.” Outside-of-the-box management advice should serve to make you question your assumptions; but don’t switch just because an HR guru told you so.

There’s something to be said about authenticity, too. If you steal another person’s management practices, it won’t work when you try it yourself.

Parenting and management are similar because the best parents are not the ones that have a secret way of parenting — actually, my experience is that the products of radical parenting techniques are weirdos (heheh). No, the best parents are those that actually care. Good parents are equitable, they care, they listen, truly want to be good parents, respect their children, and invest time into the relationship.

In terms of management, I find that every action you take has positive and negative implications. For example:

• If you reward people, you create extrinsic motivations (bad) but if you don’t, you can fail to recognize extra effort
• If you step in to solve problems, you demonstrate come-to-me leadership, but you also discourage individual problem solving
• If you give free meals, people are happy, but it can also serve to create a culture of entitlement

So… be balanced about it, try different things, and see what’s best for your team.

We’re doing our year-end staff reviews this week so this is all on my mind. I am lucky to be able to work with Laura, one of the best HR managers I’ve ever met — she forces me to think about these things more deeply.

Well.ca is “Canada’s best Angel-backed early-stage investment opportunity”

From the 25 companies that presented at Canada’s largest gathering of Angel investors, Well.ca won the #1 spot as “Canada’s best Angel-backed early-stage investment opportunity”. The award was based on a survey of all the 120+ investors present, based on an 8-minute presentation where I talked about our business, the milestones we’ve reached, and our plans for the future. The event was organized by the National Angel Capital Organization.

Congratulations, Well.ca!

We were honoured to have been invited — the companies that were there were all vetted by a regional Angel investment group before they were allowed to present at the summit.

I am happy to announce that Well.ca was one of the few companies that won a second award that night: we won the other award for being one of the five fastest growing angel-funded companies in Ontario (based on revenue and employees).

Below are the slides from my presentation (for those of you who would like to see a real-life pitch-deck). I’ve removed most of the confidential data and numbers and added some notes in yellow. The format was as follows:

1. Told the story of our product from the customer’s perspective (i.e. product value proposition)
2. Transition to how customers have responded (based on feedback and sales)
3. Typical pitch stuff: market size, customer profile, funding, plans…

This was the first award that Well.ca has ever won as a company, and we’re all very excited internally. With the growth we’ve experienced in the last 6 months, we’ve been focused very much on handling all the increased demand — it’s nice to take a moment to step back and celebrate all that we’ve achieved.

Congratulations Well.ca team — we won this award because of the hard work you’ve all been doing!

Tough Decisions? Ask your Customers

Here is an example of using a community to help you make decisions.

Recently, we’ve been approached by shipping companies asking us to use their service instead of our current shipping partner, Canada Post.

Because our order volumes are high, the prices are all very competitive. So when UPS approached us with really amazing prices, I was thinking, hey, yeah, let’s use UPS. UPS is a courier — that should be better than regular mail, right?

Well, right before sending the “yeah, let’s sign a contract” email, I posted the following message to my friends on Twitter:

And I posted a similar question to RedFlagDeals.com — the eCommerce forum in Canada.

Within days, I had dozens of answers from people that buy online frequently and have experienced both UPS and Canada Post.

Check out some of the responses:

1) UPS pick up centres are in the middle of nowhere. 2) They charge crazy brokerage fees when you ship across the border.

-funkaoshi (via twitter)

And RedFlagDeals offered this feedback:

I loathe UPS and much prefer Canada Post.

I actively *avoid* retailers that use UPS actually, so keep that in mind.

And:

I hate UPS and won’t buy anything if that’s the only option. [...] Hatehatehate UPS

Or:

If a company only offers UPS as a shipping option, I always go a with a competitor (all other things being equal).

Do not use UPS

And:

Why yes… I DO hate UPS.

Companies that use UPS are guilty about caring more about themselves and less about their customers.

And most convincingly:

UPS sux b___s.

Long story short, customers really, really, really hate UPS and we’re not going to use them. You can read the whole forum here. I had no idea – but it’s easy to make a decision now! Here’s the email I sent to UPS telling them that we cannot use their service.

If there is an engaged community around the product that you develop, why not participate and ask them for advice? To some this looks unprofessional. For me, speaking directly to our audience, minus the corporate messaging, is the best way to connect.

This example alone may have saved us a great deal of money. Thanks community!

Ketchup Chips + Apple Juice

Kiela and I have been working together since the beginning of Well.ca — when it was just us two in a room the size of a closet.

Kiela is full of weird facts, but not all of them are true — that’s why she hates Wikipedia (we use it to prove her wrong).

One day Kiela told us that, without a doubt, if a person eats ketchup chips and apple juice, they will throw up. Unfortunately, there was no information on the Internet to prove her wrong or right.

So I decided to prove her wrong by actually eating a lot of ketchup chips and apple juice on an empty stomach. Here’s the result. Welcome to the world of Well.ca.

Ketchup Chips + Apple Juice from ali on Vimeo.

Serious Face

I asked the team at Well.ca to make their best serious face on camera:

Serious Face from ali on Vimeo.