A couple of months ago friends of mine and @davideedle Josie Meadows and Col Red who run a little and very gorgeous frames shop in Albert Park, let me in on the secret that they’d just received a rather scary letter from Google’s lawyers about their business name Scoogle.

Col Redmond sporting Scoogle frames.

Now before you make the obvious link, well hey aren’t they playing on the hugeness in the brand Google here, the answer is actually no.

Scougal is the maternal family name of Josie’s and goes back a long way with particular resonance for Josie and Col. The business name was chosen to honour in a quiet way, history and heritage and some unique individuals on this side of Josie’s family. The change to Scoogle was an honourable nod to the family name but jazzing it up a little.

Josie is an optician by background and Col is an industrial designer. Both Scoogle founders have a great love and passion for unique and interesting design. Col for many years has been working on a new design for a scooter. The two go to Belgium and Spain and Paris every year talking to frames designers and picking up some of the best frames that are being hand-made anywhere in the world today.

Scoogle sells frames for fetching faces and is being sued by Google.

The frames at Scoogle (I have 2 pairs of sunglasses and one pair of optical glasses) are all gorgeous, individual, hand-made and lean towards a tradition of artisanship and care and quality in the design and creation of the utilitarian object. Scoogle sells products that are artisan/craftsmanship of the highest order.

So ironic then that this tiny store, selling a very specific niche product should be under legal fire from the monolith that is Google about losses due to infringement of brand, or something to that end.

You can read all about what’s going on with Scoogle and their legal stoush with the goliath that is Google in a great article by @bengrubb in today’s Sydney Morning Herald at Screw you, Scoogle, says Google.Please take the time to vote in the poll at the bottom of the story and lend your support to Josie and Col at Scoogle. And don’t hold back from voicing your opinion about this if it stirs you, on Twitter and Facebook. It’s worrying when a small, niche Victorian business is legally intimidated by a huge global monolith that seems to know no bounds.

Photos: Col Redmond

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

Michel Hogan runs the brand alignment and advocacy company, Brandology. Check out her weekly blog Brand Matters at Smart Company.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

However, we didn’t just want to map out and then tell the Arts Hub story, we wanted to condense the journey into some key lessons for those who wanted to venture into niche publishing. It was our belief then and it still is that one of the great frontiers online that has only partly been exploited is that of niche content.

What we mean by that is that if you can provide content of a high quality in a specialist or niche field for a bunch of people who are interested in or work in that area, then you can create a product that those people will pay for. Many of us understand that it’s important to keep abreast of the trends and challenges in our industry or even in an area that is a hobby for us, and pulling this sort of information together for people has a value.

One of the opening stories in the book David and I subsequently wrote about niche content and the Arts Hub journey, Niche Content Millionaire, was about our treat to ourselves and our children immediately after selling our business. David describes the bliss of being at Hayman Island in the Whitsundays, dropping the elder children to Hernando’s Hideaway (the island’s Kids Club, right next door to the Hayman Island State School – believe me they have a school there!) only to find out that the children needed their runners that day as they were going out on the reef, and that rather than David having to go back and get said runners, a porter was called to do the task. In the life of a harried parent, such service is gold.

In May this year I succumbed to a delectable special offer by email from Jetstar Holidays for a 4 night getaway to Hayman Island and the offer being just too affordable to be believable, I signed us up for it. The only dates we could get were in the third week of August and David and I are just back from our getaway to Hayman Island in the gorgeous Whitsundays. This time our visit was without children.

Hayman Island - has mastered the art of an Australian style of sophisticated service

It’s not often I’ve been known to say that a merchant has improved their service, but I must say that whilst the service we received at Hayman Island in 2006 was faultless and fantastic, this time round David and I agreed, it was even better.

When it comes to elite service, how do you get better? Surely the calibrations of certain kinds of service quality become much thinner, and individual perception and preference starts to have more of a sway?

Well what I noticed about the difference in service at Hayman Island Resort this holiday was that they seem to have perfected the art of an Australian style of great service, that is relaxed and empathetic and in tune with the customer. All our requests were deftly met and with absolutely no resistance, I can not say that that is my usual experience with any kind of service here in Melbourne. And that is not to bag Melbourne establishments.

Now you can say that it is easy to provide good service in a perfect climate when all the guests are relaxed and happy and not in the mood for trouble of any kind. However when you understand the sheer logistics and complexity involved in providing all the bits and pieces Hayman Island does to its customers with absolute ease and mastery, then I think you would be churlish to say that they have it easy.

I mused on this issue of even better than fantastic service on the plane home to Melbourne and decided that behind the scenes, Hayman Island must have one really great staff training program and that there must be some kind of focus around constant improvement, otherwise we would have experienced either the same level of service as in 2006, or not as good service.

And the impressions that this classy Australian style, friendly, warm, attentive but non-interfering service had on me – well I can’t wait to get us back there.

Hayman Island might be one of the older elite resorts in the world but to my mind the service quality there is the best I’ve experienced. In fact there were a number of lessons about business and excellence I took away from our recent visit to Hayman Island and I’ll share a few more of those with you over the next few days – one I want to tease you with is the Martini Igloo – more on that tomorrow!

Photo: Sarah_Ackerman

If you’d like to know more about how we celebrated the sale of our business Arts Hub, read our book Niche Content Millionaire.

PS – the constant references to Hayman Island are due to the writer’s hankering to return there as soon as earthly possible. The Into the Mountain folk, unfortunately have no commercial connection with the resort or its owners.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

Michel Hogan writes weekly on all things brand in her blog called Brand Matters on Smart Company. You can find out more about the work she does and how she helps companies get all aspects of their brand right at Brandology.

This interview was inspired by an event moderated by Michel Hogan at the Melbourne Churchill Club on luxury.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

Michel Hogan is an expert in the field of brand advocacy and runs the company Brandology. You can also read her latest thoughts on brand at Smart Company’s Brand Matters blog.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

Michel Hogan writes regularly about all things brand on her blog at Brand Alignment and on Smart Company at Brand Matters.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

Michel Hogan talks to Fiona Boyd regularly about all things to do with brand. Michel also blogs about her brand insights at Brand Alignment and her weekly blog on Smart Company called Brand Matters is an ITM must-read.

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Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

Fiona: In one of our last interviews, Michel Hogan from Brandology spoke about the rise of the customer you really don’t want, the Customerzilla. I thought we might talk a bit more about this creature today, so welcome Michel.

Michel: Thanks.Fiona: I listened to a podcast you did with a colleague and a long-time friend of yours from the US, Cindy, whose surname I’ve missed. She’s recently put out a book about customer service and she’s called her book the Rules of Woo. I was quite interested in a lot of things that Cindy had to say, but she also referred to Customerzilla, but she calls it the serial killer customer.

Michel: I love her name for it.

Fiona: Which says that she perceives them as really quite dangerous to your business. And she was saying that they make up about 2% of your customer base at most, but that they’re going to chew up more than 40% of all your time and energy across your whole customer base.

Michel: Exactly.

Fiona: Did you want to elaborate on that, Michel?

Michel: Absolutely.

Fiona: …of how Customerzilla…

Michel: …eats up your time, yeah…Customerzillas – and – Cindy’s surname is Solomon, she’s actually a long time customer service, customer loyalty consultant in the US, works with a lot of, everyone from entrepreneurs and start ups all the way up to Fortune companies so this is a topic she knows a fair bit about, and her serial killer analogy is so true because as she said 2%, roughly about 2% will be your serial killers, your Customerzillas, they’ll take up 40% of your time. At the other end of the scale you’ll have your 2% that are your fans, your true fans, your dream clients, your evangelists, the ones that go out there and talk to everybody, and you know, tell everyone about you. In the middle is the rest, the 96% who are your day to day bread to butter, who keep coming back, who buy your services, who really never demand anything of you, who are generally pretty happy with what you’re doing, and they’re the ones, they are the casualty, actually, of the Customerzilla. They’re the ones that get shortchanged because you’re so busy trying to make these people who will never be happy, happy. And it’s actually, it’s a spiral, and I think Cindy’s name is very appropriate because serial killers are toxic to your business, absolutely toxic…

Fiona:..your community, I mean, those people, that’s your community of interest.

Michel: Yeah…

Fiona: And they are toxic to that, because those people can no longer get attention because the Customerzillas have got it all…

Michel: …have got it all, and, and, the thing is, it’s not just toxic to that community, it’s toxic to the internal community of the organisation, because when you’re constantly dealing with the squeaky wheel, with the people that can’t be made happy, you start to question the very fabric of what you’re doing, and whether you’re doing it well or not…and, well, we must be doing it wrong, because this person’s never happy.

Fiona: Was it a good mission to start with?

Customerzillas can be your business's worst nightmare - take action, walk them carefully to the competition.

Michel: Yeah, we’re delivering what we said we were going to deliver and it’s still not good enough. And there’s a cycle of things that does tend to feed into this. And we’ll talk a bit later about setting expectations. But I think that if you are going to minimise your Customerzillas, having really strong customer expectations upfront, setting them and communicating them really well is key, but the piece that I like what Cindy talks about, with the Customerzilla or the serial killer, and she uses the terminology that you need to lovingly put your arms around their shoulders and walk them to the competition. And let them be their serial killer. And I love that terminology, because there’s an inherent guide in that, it’s not just, drop kick them to the competition, it’s not boot them out of your organisation and create an enemy in the process, it’s that you lovingly take them there because the one thing that you don’t want to do is end up with a really really viciously annoyed customer who will badmouth you to kingdom come. They may well do that anyway. But I think it behoves you to perhaps do everything you can to avoid that situation.

Fiona: There is a it of a belief that, and this has been going around, well a couple of decades, that if you exceed customer expectations that somehow you can win the difficult customer over. And maybe you can win the difficult customer over because they sit within the larger group of customers. But can you win the Customerzilla over?

Michel: Never. Never. They’ll never be happy. It won’t matter what you do, it won’t matter how often you do it, you could do everything perfectly. And in a conversation I’ve had with a friend who runs a retail store in, you know, in country Victoria, actually. And she talks, we were having a conversation about this very thing, these people, you could do it perfectly. To the letter, to the absolute nth degree and they will still find something to be unhappy with, every single time. And it’s just, for whatever reason these people are just not, you can’t please them, you can’t please them and it’s a matter of understanding and recognising them really early on, you know, put in whatever warning systems you need so that you can pinpoint who these people are and start thinking about what strategies you can employ to lovingly get them out of your business. And you can’t, you know, you can’t make them feel bad about you in the process. It may be unavoidable. Downstream, it may be unavoidable.

Fiona: And Cindy does mention this…

Michel: …yeah…

Fiona: ..that they are toxic, and they will badmouth your business no matter what, so in a sense it is better to identify them at some point and to have that strategy to walk them somewhere else.

Michel: Yeah…

Fiona: Do other customers actually listen to Customerzillas? Do they have the power to damage your brand? Or do other customers end up seeing them in a similar way that the company does?

Michel: I think the answer, well, I think the answer to that question is twofold. One, what is the other customer’s experience with you? So, Cindy used the, Cindy and I had a little laugh when we were doing our interview, because we talked about United Airlines. And United Airlines has a, by most people’s take, a well-deserved reputation, um, for, and Cindy laughed…I think I’d been one of those Customerzillas, for them, who they’d wanted to walk to the competion. Uh, because I’m always complaining and I’m never happy. And I said, it’s interesting because my experience with United, and I know there’s some stories out there, but I’ve never personally experienced it, and so, does the fact that I know there’s a lot of angst and a lot of anger and a lot of bad feeling about United out there impact my decision? No, because I haven’t had that experience. So I think the overall impact of them is potentially not as dramatic as people think…

Fiona: …it might be interesting, what they have to say, but at the end of the day, your next purchasing decision, you’re going to reflect back on your experience.

Michel: Exactly. Now if it’s my first decision, if I’ve never bought from you before, if I’ve never transacted with you as a company before and now I am looking for a frame of reference, that’s a different situation, because that is when your Customerzillas can potentially have – especially if they’re vocal Customerzillas, that’s where they can start to have an impact.

Fiona: Just quickly, let’s just wrap up with, exactly what do you do again when you think you’ve got a Customerzilla on your hands? What’s the best way to neutralise this creature?

Michel: Well, that’s such a hard question because for every single company it’s going to be different…

Fiona: …identify them first…

Michel: It’s going to be different. You’ve got to identify what makes a Customerzilla for you, as an organisation, because everyone’s Customerzillas will be different. So identify what is a customer – and look for, how much time are they taking up? You know, how much nurturing, care and feeding are they requiring in relationship to the value that we’re getting from them as a customer. You know, they may be a pain in the butt to deal with, but they’ve bought you a hundred other customers…

Fiona: …oh, I think that’s just a difficult customer…

Michel: Yeah, OK, I would potentially see that as just a difficult customer, but you know, look at how much time they’re chewing up, what sort of energy they’re chewing up, what sort of impact they’re having on the internal morale of the organisation. You know, when all of those things start to show indicators, you know, you’ve probably got a Customerzilla on your hands.

Fiona: And at that point, as much as possible, you wrap your…

Michel: …arms around them…

Fiona: …arms around their shoulders and walk them lovingly to the door…

Michel: Yeah, and you figure out a way to do that, that defends your reputation, and by and large stays true to your brand and what you’re about.

Fiona: Thanks Michel.

Michel: No worries, Fiona.

Fiona: I’ve been speaking today with Michel Hogan, principal and founder of Brandology.

Photo: flickr MonsterPhotoISO

Michel Hogan writes a weekly column on Smart Company called Brand Matters. You can contact her through her business, Brandology.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

Michel Hogan is the founder of brand advocacy Brandology. Michel also shares her big picture thoughts on brand at Brand Alignment and you can read her weekly post called Brand Matters at Smart Company.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

Well have I got it wrong. There are still plenty of companies out there who think that the customer is an inconvenience to be tolerated and that the systems and the protocols of the business are all about making it easier for the staff and management of the company.

Why do I say this?

Two weeks ago David and I were sitting down to have our weekly life and business lunch meeting at the Middle Brighton Baths Restaurant and I’d just checked into Foursquare (Stan is the Mayor at this venue) and I get an incoming call on my relatively new iPhone. Thinking it’d probably be an rsvp for my daughter’s birthday party which was getting huger by the minute, I took the call. Now David will tell you how unusual it is for me to actually answer an incoming call with a number I don’t know or that is blocked. I just don’t answer these calls, I let them go through to voicemail and pick up my messages there.

However on this day I did take the call and it was an arts company that I had sent a subscription form to for their season for the second half of the year. This is an innovative arts company that presents interesting work. David and I have been subscribers in the past, and have recently thought that we’d like to get back into seeing some live theatre.

Is it my way or the highway with your customer service? Don't give your customers a reason to take the highway - be flexible

It’s quite unlike me to do anything with paper these days, but because I had found this company’s online booking form incomprehensible, I actually sat down and for an hour went through the hard copy subscription brochure and chose the shows I thought David and I would enjoy seeing. David started life as a lighting designer and stagehand and has had a whole career as a technical manager and venue manager and has seen lots and lots of theatre, and he really doesn’t want to see any more bad theatre, so it’s important to make the show choices with some care. I figured out which shows might work, pulled out my Saints football fixture and made sure the dates I’d chosen didn’t conflict with a St Kilda football game, cross-referenced with school holidays etc, then worked out the cost, which was not insignificant, wrote in our payment details and sent the form off.

Since I’d chosen quite a few opening nights in the season I wasn’t expecting to get all of these. Which was the case as the call from this venue’s box office staff confirmed.

There was much clinking of glasses and china in the room as we spoke and I asked the caller if she could email me the alternative dates she was suggesting for the shows we had to change our date preference on and I’d match with our calendars and confirm what works. Really, my mind was on lunch not on solving a booking issue.

And this is where it all went wrong. The box office person at the end of the line told me quite firmly that that was not the way they did things at this particular arts centre and that this problem must be worked out over the phone. Maybe I could call back at a more convenient time? They did not use email for such a purpose as I was suggesting, it just would not work out for them to do business this way.

So here we have a standoff as I’m someone who never, ever calls anybody to sort out issues, but instead uses email to get a message across or clarify a situation, mainly because it leaves a paper trail and it’s easy to identify when things have gone amiss. Phone calls leave you open to he said, that she said and somehow, nothing gets done. And of course, it’s all about what you remember having heard, not something that’s staring you in the face in an email that can be saved and referred to in the future if need be.

As it was I didn’t want to sit down and go through the subscription brochure again and then have a long discussion about it over the phone, my preference was for the box office person to send me a few suggested dates by email and I would then accept or feedback where it wasn’t possible. I knew it may take a few goes, however, surely one can do this sort of work in the quiet times? A box office is not always busy.

Not so. Determined not to have my lunch spoiled I told the box office caller that I’d have to think about it and not to proceed with our subscriptions at the current time.

I have now thought about it and do want to proceed, however I now need to gird my loins to tackle a tedious phone call with this person to sort out available show times. And simultaneously I must make sure I have my footie schedule and calendar open so that I don’t go and  book a show that conflicts with the rest of my life.

Why is this so? Why is it that this innovative arts company cannot be a little more innovative and flexible and customer-focused when it comes to doing a transaction with a customer? Why does it have to be their way or the highway?

Mmmh, I’m still rather perplexed. When David and I founded Arts Hub a common complaint from artsworkers was that the public didn’t appreciate or support the arts enough. Now I have an experience from the other side and I’d like to make the point that some arts companies need to make it easier and smoother for a willing artslover to transact with them and that they should be more inclined to do it in a way that suits the customer and not just in a way that works for the box office manager.

And I’d like to pose this question to my readers – is there a process or person who is currently getting in the way of your company and your customer transacting? Fix that issue and you may not have to expend so much energy on chasing and marketing to new customers.

Love to know what you think about this. Please feel encouraged to file your comments.

Photo: flickr kia4067

David Eedle and Fiona Boyd founded Arts Hub in 2000 and sold the business in 2006. They took pride in delivering great customer service to members. You can read more about the Arts Hub adventure here.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now