I am a great fan of The Fog of War,  a documentary where Robert McNamara (JFK’s Defence Secretary) gives 11 lessons from his long life.  I thought I would like to try and emulate this documentary in my own small way with a series of posts where people give their lessons for life.  My first subject is Will Wynne from Arena Flowers.  Will is the only person I know who has a tribute twitter account as well as a real one.  Take it away Will:

When Trevor asked me to write up a guest post I figured that I’d try to do something a little different.  So I decided to write a list not of what we consider the most important parts of founding a business, but a list of the ten things that caught us by surprise or that we never really expected.  You may think some of these are obvious, but for us they weren’t.  This topic also means I avoid giving away all our trade secrets and competitive advantages.

NB we are not a hugely venture capital funded business, more of a bootstrapped start up with limited resources, so some of our issues may not be relevant for a mega VC funded start up…

So, without further ado, here we go:

1. Everything that can go wrong probably will at some point

Bad things happen.  Bright eyed start ups never expect them as that stuff happens to “other people”.  If you’re lucky that might be the case, but in reality, there’s a reason that big businesses have disaster recovery plans; because they’re needed.  Some examples, none of them our fault (honest!):

• Exploding three phase electricity blowing all power at Flowers HQ for 3 days (despite us rewiring the whole building before moving in);
• A 6 day internet outage in Park Royal, the biggest business park in Europe (our DSL supplier invoked “Act of God” clauses to get out their responsibilities - it was actually a man with a digger cutting 6000 the cables);
• Death.  It’s not a nice topic and no one likes to talk about it, but people do die.  We never gave a moment’s thought to the possibility that if someone’s relative/partner/friend died, they would disappear at very short notice for weeks leaving our already very lean team totally overstretched;

There are many more examples of totally unpredictable disruptions I could give, but I’ll spare you.  The point is the unthinkable does happen and you need to at least have thought about it, even if you don’t enjoy doing so.  We find “manage the downside and the upside will take care of itself” a useful maxim to keep our minds focused on this point.

2. Legals

Everyone knows this stuff crops up and I nodded absentmindedly when told “take care of the legals” as I’d said this myself before in my days working in venture capital.  Let’s be honest, legals are really boring. But get them wrong and you’ll pay the price.  At some point most business will have a disagreement with one or all of a supplier, an investor, a competitor, an employee, the government, a plagiarist or just a random nutter (we picked up a weird stalker/troll just recently).

The “gentleman’s agreement” - ie a deal that isn’t properly written down and documented is a prime culprit here, as it leaves room for different interpretations through being too unspecific.  At the very least, get things spelled out in a clear and detailed email that can be referred back to reliably.  NB legals don’t necessarily require lawyers. Legals just need doing.

This is also an interesting article from the Harvard Business School on the top ten legal mistakes made by entrepreneurs.

3. The stress is massive, but not in the way you expect

When I talked about the stress to friends, they would typically look sort sympathetic but would clearly be  thinking “good, it shouldn’t be too easy”.  Our senior team members have all run teams before, but previously it wasn’t, ultimately, our fault if the overall business went wrong.  Now, if it does, it is.  Wasn’t easy in the early days when we had no money in the bank and I would meet one of our driver’s newborn sons and try to smile in a calm way and say “Ah, isn’t he cute!” when actually I was thinking “I hope we don’t screw this up and have to lay off your father”.  Such thoughts don’t make for restful sleep!

My father runs businesses in the Congo and I remember when I explained this feeling of mild panic and terror to him he said “Finally. Someone else in the family knows how it feels.”  He then added, “Don’t worry. Just be calm, logical and do what’s right”.  Sound advice.

Nonetheless, I’m very glad that the mania and mild terror of the early days has at least receded if not disappeared entirely.  I have lost half my hair as a result though. L

4. Buy this snake oil! NO!

There are a flabbergasting number of people out there selling absolutely nothing for stupid amounts of money.  Such businesses feel very parasitical and probably have a lot of success tapping into the budgets of large businesses that don’t measure the ROI on their spend.  “Only £2k for a ¼ page advert!” in some zero circulation magazine that will never be read.  One lady started shouting at me when I’d politely declined “HOW ARE YOU GOING TO GET ANY CUSTOMERS IF YOU DON’T BUY ADSPACE IN [celebrity home makeover man's] MAGAZINE?!  YOUR BUSINESS IS DOOMED!”. Erm.  Okay.  Thanks for that.

I no longer answer any calls to my mobile from numbers not already in my phone book for fear of a sales call or other random caller.  All calls to the office are screened and our CS team revels in winkling out sly salesmen (salesmen have ways of evading the “So, is this a sales call?” question that would make politicians blush).  Standard answer from CS: “Send [team member] an email”.

Spinvox is also handy, as it turns all voicemails into texts so you don’t waste time calling up to listen to them and you can read them during a meeting without seeming too rude.  Though I didn’t take Spinvox with me when I got an iPhone as the iPhone visual voicemail system is pretty good, though slightly different.

5. Never ever be dependent on one supplier - they WILL try and abuse that relationship

12^th February 2008.  Two days before Valentine’s Day.  Phone call from one of our courier partners (a market leading name). “Hi. There’s a problem with your packaging; it’s leaking.  I’m afraid we’ll have to manually process all your orders.  That will mean a £5.00 surcharge [on top of a similar normal charge per unit].”  Given we were set to send about 4000 orders through that partner that week, this would effectively have cost us £20k.  Nothing had changed in our process for 6 months.  We had asked them to confirm everything was fine weeks before.  They didn’t.  Then their last minute bombshell.

They were simply taking the mickey thinking they could get away with it and help themselves to an extra £20k from our pocket.  Charming.  Sadly for them, we’d recognised this as a risk in December and had just completed an integration with another courier, unbeknownst to the original partner.  We discussed the call, agreed that the original partner was behaving appallingly, and switched ALL our orders to the new partner.  The old partner suddenly began groveling and toad eating for Britain but to no avail; they are now our reserve partner but lost several hundred thousand pounds a year of business by trying to abuse their position.

We could give a number of similar examples.  Simply, if you depend on one partner, you’re over a barrel and they can do what they want.  And they’ll probably try it.  We now ensure we have a back up supplier for every key part of our operation, to spare greedy suppliers such temptations.  PS obviously, this is also important for disaster recovery planning too.

6. Suppliers can be bigger “investors” than, erm, investors

Pre credit crunch at least, even a new business didn’t find it that hard to get credit from suppliers.  There is a lot of focus put on raising equity from angels, friends, family and so on.  But a lot of the funding requirement can in fact come through credit from suppliers.  One of our suppliers pointed out this out to us once: “How come you owe me more than your investors put together and I own none of the business?”.  Cue awkward silence, shuffling of papers and then saying briskly “Anyway, moving on…!”

It’s not the lowest risk approach ever and not the way to finance a business long term, but it can give extra liquidity that was never expected.

7. Product Product Product

Business advice talks a lot about SEO, market size, scalability, teamwork, web design, business development, networking, fund raising, financial controls.  All important things.  But all totally useless if you don’t have a decent product.  If you are in a business that gets £1 off people once, then this point is less important.  But if you want repeat business then unless your product is actually any good, it doesn’t matter how good you are at all the other stuff.  It’s only a matter of time til your demise.

We make as sure as we can that, within the constraints of making money, that we provide an outstanding product.  That’s not to say we don’t make mistakes, and, as with all businesses, we can’t please all the people all the time, but, 99% of the time, our product will delight the customer (and recipient) and be better than that of our competitors.  That’s a good foundation on which to build a business.  If you don’t try to deliver the best possible product for your customers then you don’t really deserve to succeed.

8. Nothing ventured, nothing gained + BONUS: you can rewrite history after the event (if your idea works)

Our conservative instincts tend to make us want to be careful and risk averse.  Mine certainly did.  But a number of times we’ve just said “Ah, let’s just go for it!” and seen where it’s taken us.  For instance, our European expansion could be reframed as a stroke of tactical genius; hindsight is a marvelous thing.  Actually, there was some inspiration, some detailed analysis and strategising but, mostly, there was a large chunk of “Yeah, sounds good. Let’s do it.” luck.  We can now talk wisely about rolling out our operation abroad to cover Europe and develop the brand’s international reach.  At the time it wasn’t nearly so clear cut.  Realising that not everything can be worked out in PowerPoint or in a spreadsheet is a great freedom and lot of fun.  Just don’t expect it to work every time.

9. Turns out that stuff about team work is actually true

If you’re like me, you’ll probably have always thought that all the “teamwork is great” and “I’m a team player” chat on CVs was interesting but a bit “yeah yeah, whatever, no one cares about that really”.  And in larger companies, in my experience, it was less necessary and sometimes felt somewhat forced.  A fun thing about working at Arena is that there are lots of different types of people: techies, award-winning florists, linguists, operations gurus, flower buying experts, finance bods and so on.  The key is to getting all the different parts to work together and understand the overall business’s priorities because everyone has to muck in to different areas.  If you don’t get on, the business won’t succeed.

One other thing is that you can set the attitudinal weather in a small business around the leadership team’s values.  In our case, we absolutely don’t allow is any petty politicking, childish bickering or any “it’s not my problem, guvnor” rubbish, nor do we blame people for making mistakes - at least not the first time :).  The aim is to deliver the best service for our customers as efficiently as possible.  Childish spoilt brat behaviour has no place in that process.

10. It feels good!

“What’s it like to be your own boss?  Do you enjoy it?  Is it all it’s cracked up to be?”  I get asked that a lot. The answer is “Absolutely!”.  At least once you’ve got through the pain and the horror of the start.  Once you’ve broken the back and moved from “start up” to “established [but still young] business” the scales lift from your eyes and you remember what it’s like to be human plus begin to enjoy the freedoms of being your own boss without having a Board sending down instructions and messing you about on HR reviews or telling you what to do and what to think daily.  It’s an incredibly uplifting feeling and I hope never to have to go back.

Seeing teams build and relationships develop and reading emails from elated customers is a great thing when you were part of the team that built it from absolutely nowhere.  One of my favourite things is when people write emails saying “Thanks, Arena!”.  I can still remember the day we sat down and worked out what to call the business; it’s great to hear it taking on a life of its own.

have you got some lessons from life you want to share?  If so please contact me.

In my adventures in online reputation I came across Niggle, a new way for businesses to get feedback from their customers.  As I didn’t give them many column inches before, I caught up with Paul Fisher to get the whole story.

Could you give us some background on Niggle please.  How’s it going?

Niggle’s primary aim is to make it easy and convenient for customers to send feedback to businesses, and to help businesses deal with that feedback in a way that improves their business and bottom line.

The seed of the idea stems from my days as a restaurant owner, when I was totally fascinated by our fluctuating sales patterns and became intensely curious as to what was going on in the minds of my customers.  When I started looking at collecting feedback from customers I found that there are lots of barriers that stop people for communicating directly with businesses, and so Niggle’s job has really been to address those barriers.

Niggle helps businesses to ask for feedback in the right ways.  For example, by using Niggle a business is guaranteeing to it’s customers that their feedback will go to the right person.  We also guarantee that the customer will stay anonymous if they wish while still allowing the business to reply or issue vouchers or rewards.  For businesses with premises, we offer the use of text message feedback, or feedback via Twitter, which is both convenient and instant for the customer.

In the current climate where everything is public, businesses seem to appreciate ways to foster private relationships with customers.  Just one month out of beta testing and we have several hundred independent businesses and a number of small chains using our technology.

Niggle is different from services such as Qype and trusted places in that the feedback is private between the customer and the company. Surely, however this prevents your site from becoming a destination site for consumers looking for information on the best service.  Are you shooting yourself in the foot?

Qype and Trusted places are very much focused on consumers, where we are very much focused on businesses.  If we do our job and enable those businesses to effectively communicate with customers, negative public reviews should be avoided.  In some ways, our website is our last line of defense. First and foremost we aim to pick up customer feedback and complaints by text message or our mobile site while the customer is still on the premises.  It’s only if the customer has managed to get home and get online that they might find our website when searching for a business name. Our hope is that at that point they choose to send direct feedback to the owner rather than post a public review.

The side effect is that our website isn’t a consumer destination, but rather one of many channels in to Niggle.

The British are a reticent bunch and not very good at giving feedback.  Is Niggle going to change that?

As a nation we would rather tell our friends about our experiences than those involved.  It’s all tied up in our famous reserve and embarrassment of uncomfortable social situations, meaning that we have some unique barriers to feedback that are not found elsewhere.  It’s the reason why public review websites have been so readily taken to heart in this country, and the reason we hope Niggle will too!

What are your plans for the future (new functionality etc).

We’re experimenting with lots of interesting new ways to collect feedback. A trial is due to start soon with a national retailer where customers complete a short text message survey in exchange for a discount code sent to their phone. Instant customer rewards break down one of the biggest barriers to feedback - apathy - and can be a great means for businesses to foster customer loyalty.

We are also reviewing the idea of allowing businesses to publish items of feedback, alongside their responses, on our website. This could help businesses avoid repeat questions and also showcase their customer service skills, however we will tread carefully to ensure that we are not perceived as just another review website by customers. Watch this space

I have recently finished reading Nudge by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler.  The book suggest strategies for enabling humans to make decisions which are in their interest, such as giving up smoking or saving more, given human shortcomings.  The word humans here is important, as humans are lazy and have inbuilt reasoning biases.  They many not always act in their own interest.

The book talks a lot about decision architecture, that is how to construct a decision making process to enable people to make the more appropiate choice.  How choices are presented will, to a great extent, determine the choices which are made.  For example, in many cases people will simply go for the default choice.  Subsequently defining the default choice becomes very important.

I was reminded of nudges when I was talking today about payment gateways and how awful they are.  These days it is very easy to collect credit card payments on a website via service like Google Checkout and PayPal.  There are however security setting which are very important to fraud prevention which, in my experience, are not properly presented to merchants when they set up their account.  I recently had a big problem when using a provider whoses default security setting was no security.  Guess which setting I had accidentally chosen!

Looking at payment services, it amazes me that they do ot have some sort of wizard to step customers through the process of creating the security setting on their account.  I have setup a Google Checkout and PayPal payments pro account with out any mention of security setting like CV2 and AVS, although their are important security settings.  Sagepay is better, offering merchants an easy way to define their own security settings, but still I had to research the best setting for my business and actively set them up, which is more than a lot of people would do.  I also like the traffic light system which Sagepay uses which I think translates the complicated fraud information into an easy to understand system.

Credit card payment gateways, you don’t have the read Nudge as I have read it for you.  This is what it would recommend:

• Currently there are too many choices for merchants and more choices is generally just confusing.  Create well constructed default(s) which can be chosen by the merchant.  Allow the merchant to set up their own setting if they wish.
•  Create an easy to use wizard which allows merchants to choose the security setting most relevant to them based on their appetite for risk.  
• In this wizard the merchant should be forced to make an active choice of security setting (low, medium, high) as I don’t think a single default setting will be workable.
• Provide feedback on transactions in an easy to understand way.  For example the some sort of visual traffic light system like that employed by Sagepay
• Provide regular fraud reporting giving the amount of fraud on the account and comparing it against average for other security settings for comparision.

In my experience very few directories have the potential to drive any kind of traffic and this includes services like Yell and Scoot. (In fact, rather embarrissingly I once bought an entry on Scoot.  The entry produced so little traffic (one hit per month) that I wrote to Michael Grade and got my money back).  Scouring the web for links produces no end of sites that want £10 or so for a listing.  It is rarely worth it.  Most directories are also of very limited use to consumers, giving very limited informations about their entries (i.e. they are for SEO purposes only which is fine, as far as it goes).  They are compiled without TLC.

One notable exception is Toy Shop UK.  This excellent directory is not only free, but generates quite respectable traffic for my site.  The directory allows retailers to add a comprehensive description of their business and categorises by useful categories such as brand of toys, toys sold and location.  In short a rare example of a directory which is both useful to retailers and consumers.  Good work!  Check out the Hello Baby entry.

I caught up with Tim Hawkins from Toy Shop UK, to find out the secret of their success.

Please give us some history behind Toy Shop UK

As ex-independent toy retailers, we wanted to create a site that enabled smaller, independent shop owners to compete on more of a level playing field with the larger national stores.

We came from the basic principle that if you’re not even mentioned, you’ll never get found - so something that helps you to be found for free really is a no-brainer.

Whilst we’re not on any particular crusade to blindly promote independents over larger companies, at the heart of Toy Shop UK we do believe that a characterful and diverse High Street is something that is really special and worth championing. This is even more true online, where independents provide an invaluable service by being able to offer far more expertise and choice in the brands and ranges that they choose to stock.

Although we can’t ‘protect’ independent toy shops against the expansion of national chains, the fact is that we have helped many independent toy shops increase their online sales - and we’re very proud of that.

What do you think makes a good directory and how have you implemented this on your site?

Having submitted to hundreds of directories ourselves for previous businesses, we knew instantly what the main flaws of most directories are.

Slow turnaround times and the inability to speak directly with a real-life administrator were definitely high on our list of gripes. However, the cost of inclusion and the disappointing levels of resulting traffic were easily the two biggest criticisms that can be levelled at virtually every single directory we’ve submitted to.

The price was easy for us to sort out - we simply made it free and decided that we would generate an income from people other than our advertisers.

Generating real traffic for our visitors was a harder task. With the guidance of an online optimisation expert, we’ve worked really hard to create a great looking site with high-quality, original content that is not only found by people searching online for toy-related search terms but is genuinely useful for them too. That probably sounds really obvious, but if you look at most online directories - even the really famous ones like DMOZ they don’t actually provide visitors with any tangible traffic.  Even Yahoo’s Directory which costs $299 to be considered for doesn’t achieve good traffic referrals - and that’s why we wanted to create something different.

Do you think consumers use directories instead of just googling?

Traffic stats for Toy Shop UK show that there is a definite place for directories. This is backed up by high page views and low bounce-rates which reassures us that people are genuinely browsing the site rather than simply finding a result and leaving straightaway.

There’s no doubt that the vast majority of online directories don’t perform any using searching/browsing function and I think that has tarred the reputation of directories in general. That certainly explains why many people just see directories as a necessary evil; something that you have to spend three days submitting to whenever you want to launch a new site.

Many of our listers submit their website simply to get that all important hyperlink - and whilst that is totally understandable, we make a big effort to try and change the perception that all directories are just there as a way to shift Page Rank around the web.

Many of our listers are pretty shocked when they realise that we actually send them a consistent flow of traffic. It might not be huge quantities of traffic but it’s of a good quality, and crucially, it’s targeted. It’s much more likely to have a higher conversion rate than traffic from search engines, simply because a human being that knows the industry inside has already filtered the results and removed all the garbage.

What is your business model?

We decided early on that the site would be free for toy shops to join on whatever level they felt comfortable with. The site has a light sprinkling of Google ads, and there are a few affiliate listers on the site that pay small commissions.

Advertising space will soon be available strictly for manufacturers and suppliers only, in order to maintain complete impartiality for our listers.

New developments are constantly in progress, and as the site becomes even better known we see it as the first website of choice for anyone wanting high quality information about toy shops, toy brands, toy reviews, toy categories or toy organisations.

Ideally we’d like to partner more with independent shops and maybe even work towards some kind of comparison system for just independent shops as most similar systems out there are well outside the budget of most small retailers.

Plans for the future?

Once we have the model perfected, Toy Shop UK is certainly something that could be rolled out to other industry sectors - but I can’t possibly tell you which ones that might be yet!

I recently received a copy of Raw Magazine which had a picture of Max Clifford on the cover.  Is it just me, but I found myself rather reluctant to open the cover of a magazine who had such a famously unpleasant character on the front.  

The magazine is affiliated with million impossible, a rather dubious social network for entrepreneurs who keep ringing me up to try and get me to join.  My advice to entrepreneurs is to avoid networks like this as they are full of sellers and no buyers. Networks like Linkedin, Xing and even facebook are full of a much more varied group of people with whom to network.

Following on from my post on online reputation services, I have interviewed Will Paterson, founder of Plebble.  We talked about Plebble and the future of the online reputation business

Please give us some background on your product and company 

Plebble was co-founded by me and my brother James.  We launched Plebble.com in January 2008. Plebble.com is a website where consumers can rate and comment on the level of service and the value for money provided by every business in the UK.  Consumer ratings are used to help other consumers find the businesses that give the best service/value and avoid the worst.  Plebble also acts as an online meeting place between consumers and businesses, which helps businesses understand what their customers think of them and allows businesses to engage with their customers on a peer-to-peer level.  Plebble has the dual benefit of helping consumers get better service and businesses gain stronger loyalty and reputation.

Who is your main target market? 

Although Plebble.com is open to any business in the UK, our main targets are big consumer brands and brands that sell commoditized products such as broadband, mobile, utilities, banks, etc…  These are sectors where consumers often receive the worst service but where service levels are a key distinction point for businesses. 

Do you have any plans for integrating information from multiple sources e.g. eBay and amazon feedback 

We are looking into integrating information from multiple sources. It is unlikely however that we will integrate eBay or amazon feedback.  This is simply because of the complex nature of eBay feedback and amazon ratings principally being focused on products.   

I notice that you charge for some services on your website.  Whilst you are trying to boost users, won’t this put people off? 

We operate a ‘freemium’ model whereby businesses can sign up for free and use many core features for free, however we charge on a simple credits based system for some features.  We also gift new members free credits to encourage them to use the service.  So the barriers to use our service is extremely low.  This is simply to encourage business adoption.  We think it would be a mistake to market the service as a completely free service to businesses and then try and implement payments at a later date. 

How do you see the market for online reputation services evolving.  How soon before all online retailers are using services like Plebble 

Plebble is  directly targeted at giving consumers a place to air their customer service experiences and designed to put consumers and businesses together.  There are however a vast number of platforms where consumers can share their opinions about businesses for example other review sites, forums, social networks etc….  With a growing number of consumers posting their experiences online, retailers and other businesses won’t be able to pick one platform to engage with, they will have to engage with the platforms that their customers choose to go to. They will also have to know the rules of engagement on individual platforms.  So I think we will see a much greater adoption of platforms like Plebble coupled with a rise in solutions that help businesses engage with multiple platforms. 

Attitudes are changing and businesses are seeing services like Plebble as opportunity rather than a threat. As such adoption is growing.  It’s difficult to predict when an industry standard will be achieved, but the market is heading in the right direction.

Plans for the future? 

Our plan is continue to develop and improve Plebble.com.  With reference to the approve question, we are also planning on helping businesses understand and engage with their customers through their own bespoke needs.  We are doing this through Plebble Systems www.plebblesystems.com

Balance Transfer Cards

I want to give a quick plug for what I think is probably the best discount codes site on the market - www.promotionalcodes.org.uk. Unlike a lot of voucher sites out there promotional codes takes time to give each retailer a full profile and the site is really easy to navigate and has a simple effective design.  

They also win tufty point by not ringing me up every week to try and sell me ridiculously overpriced advertising unlike myvouchercodes!

In order to amuse myself whilst Mrs eBay, eCommerce, life was in mothercare in Stratford (I do wonder what people will think in 2012 when they come out of Stratford tube and are confronted by one of the most horrible shopping centres in London) I bought the launch edition of the UK version of Wired.  

After reading the 4 hour work week by Tim Ferriss I decided to implement a trickle down theory of receiving news.  I would not go looking for new information, but (the theory goes) the interesting stuff would find me, via friends and the limited number of news sources I do read (the economist, observer, the odd blog).  Spotify is a success story of this theory.  I heard about it from two different friends and then i downloaded it.  Outstanding.

Whilst saving me a lot of time, I had recently been thinking that perhaps the baby had gone out with the bath water.  Was I missing lots of interesting stuff, was my dinner party conversation suffering?  So, anyway, in order to see what I was missing I bought Wired.  

I am sorry to say that I was a bit disapointed.  I think that wired can’t decided what it is.  Yes there is a lot of stuff in there about technology, but overall the content is not that different from something like Esquire, or any other general interest magazine.  All the usual stuff was here, fashion, gadgets, TV, film, novels which could be found just about anywhere.

£3.90 poorer, I found myself thinking that I should have known better than to stray from the one true path of the Economist (and occaisionally the weekend FT).

I have come across several online reputation management systems recently, all of which seem to be missing a trick or two.  This is sad as one day these systems will be to web in general what feedback is to eBay (hmmmmm, perhaps that is damning with faint praise).

There are a lot of products out there which allows customers to give businesses reviews.  Sites like Qype and trusted places are built around local business reviews and are primarly offline in focus.  From a directory point of view, with their richer content I can see local search services like these giving slow moving monsters like Yell.com a run for their money, however their review service are pretty basic.  For example they do not pull information in from any other sources (e.g. RSS feeds) or in any way ensure that the customer are genuine.

Plebble is a site totally based on giving rating of businesses. It is more interesting in that it provides more information on a business and greater opportunity for the business owner to customise their profiles.  However, where Plebble is going wrong is in trying to charge for parts of this service too early.  Consumers are not yet using these services en masses, and until their do, there is no way that anyone is going to bother to pay.  Niggle.co.uk is a similar service.

A more interesting, if slightly bland service is eKomi.  This service claims to give a feedback experience like eBay and amazon.  Certainly it does have the advantage over those mentioned above in that it contains reviews from genuine customers, and not just anyone with an opinion.  Where I think it fails is in having none of the search facilities of sites like Qype.  it would be nice to bring some search functionality to allow users to find businesses with the best profiles.

What I would do…

• Integration with established reputation management systems.  I am very surprised that no reputation management system has integrated in with eBay and amazon feedback to provide an overall view of the feedback on a business.
• Pull in other sources of information.  A really good system would pull in information such as company registration details from companies house.
• Rich profiles.  A company should be able to sell themselves by creating a compelling profile
• Search.  Finally, customer should be able to find the company with the best reputation.

I have recently bought a typewriter (on eBay of course), to try out my new theory of mine.  I have opined before about letters being a successful medium for getting things done*.  To recap, I think that in this world of cheap electronic information, letters are rare and subsequently their impact is greater.  Also, a letter can not be deleted with the touch of a button like an email.

So as an extension to this theory I am going to see if the type written letter will produce an even greater response.  Alternatively the receiver may just think I am mad!

*Incidentially I did eventually get all my money back from eBay,  but I had to resort to drastic measures.  After being repeatedly ignored, I wrote a letter to the MD of eBay UK at his home address which got the ball rolling.