JoeCascio.net

I wrote the following as a comment in the “Independent Restaurants” group of LinkedIn. I’m posting it here, too, because I think it came out succinctly.

Pay more attention to the customers you do have instead of the ones you don’t have yet. Too many businesses look at their customers like expendable resources you use once and then dispose of. Businesses spend lots of time and money obsessing about acquiring new customers but give short shrift to the best potential ambassadors of their business, their existing customers.

Too many businesses develop an adversarial attitude with the customer, as though the customer were the enemy. But the successful business always thinks as though they were the customer. That doesn’t mean you give them anything they want, but you don’t hard-ass them with inflexible policies and unreasonable charges, just because it’s in your interest and you think you can get away with it. That engenders distrust and animosity and will give your customers a good excuse to go elsewhere as soon as they can.

Think like a small business. Know your customers by name, give them a “friend on the inside” who can do an end-run around red-tape and they’ll love you for it. Most people are honest and just want a fair deal in return. Don’t lose the majority of your customers’ trust to prevent a small fraction from getting away with something. Those few are the ones you think about firing as your customer.

My friend Steve Woodruff tweeted this intriguing question earlier this morning. I’ve decided to answer this here because it needs more than 140 characters.

You see, Steve has unknowingly stepped on a trip-wire in the jungle that is my brain regarding social media technology. It regards centralized services. Sites like Twitter and Facebook are proprietary, top-down controlled services. I have two basic beefs with this state of affairs.

Single points of failure

As we have seen again and again, Twitter cannot seem to keep their site up and running and properly functioning for any reasonable length of time. It stalls, or stops delivering or posting text messages, or fails completely with disturbing regularity.

Single points of control

Both Facebook and Twitter are notorious for their cavalier attitude towards users. Because they are centralized, they can and do make arbitrary decisions about functionality, ads, privacy and any other terms of service. Twitter has made very controversial changes to its functionality about “@” messages, for instance, and Facebook has made several missteps regarding user privacy for the sake of ad revenue.

Why not decentralized services?

Distributing and decentralizing control would solve both of my aggravations with social networking platforms. This is not a secret, either. In the technical community, we’ve been discussing this issue for literally years. And there are highly evolved open-source solutions out there like StatusNet. So, why hasn’t anything happened? Why do we continue to put ourselves in voluntary servitude to the likes of Twitter and Facebook?

Technical challenges

Decentralizing and distributing requires that some significant number of people or organizations set up servers to participate in a federated network. Literally millions of people self-host their own blogs using WordPress software, but it’s not something that the average person can or would do, or understand how to participate in. There’s some work to be done here to make it accessible by the average person. One of the reasons centralized sites become popular is that they’re easy to understand and participate in. Being “on Twitter” or “on Facebook” is as easy as signing up. It would have to be the same way for distributed social media.

Marketing challenges

Another important reason that centralized, proprietary sites work is that they have a coherent message, a professionally executed marketing effort. Technical people are distrustful, almost scornful of marketing. We feel as though ideas should succeed or fail on their merits, not on how glossy the product brochure is. It’s the same reason we stopped wearing suits to interviews. You don’t hire an engineer because he wears a nice suit and so, it is reasoned, you shouldn’t use software because it has a catchy slogan.

But over the years I’ve come to learn that marketing can provide an enormously valuable contribution to any effort, and that is making it understandable and accessible to the potential consumers. And in the brave new world of Inbound Marketing (as opposed to Push or Interruption Marketing) this function becomes even more important. You need to expend effort to show your consumer how what you’re building applies to their lives and work, why it’s better than other solutions. The farm products store that shows people how to build a horse paddock with the fencing products they sell is providing a valuable service to its customers. It’s not cheating to help people.

Organizational challenges

The blessing and curse of open-source software is that it’s uncontrolled, unplanned, random, emergent. A decentralized, distributed social media system wouldn’t have to be open source, but in all likelihood would be. The challenge again is coherence. How do you herd enough of the cats in the same direction to give a solution some momentum? Again, we engineers are our own worst enemy in this regard. We inflate small philosophical differences in implementation or functionality into major drama. Open source software that succeeds needs a certain amount of magic and luck. And it needs a champion with enough engineering street cred and people skills to woo the contributors. It’s not an easy task and few succeed, but they can become enormously popular and dominant, like Linux and WordPress. Maybe it can happen with Social Media, too.

My wife and I have been looking forward to visiting the completely reconstructed Ocean House in Watch Hill, RI for a couple of years. This is a project that was several years and $140+million in the making. The “old” Ocean House was originally built on a spectacular piece of oceanfront property in 1868 and served the wealthy residents and visitors to Watch Hill until 2003, when age and neglect finally rendered it beyond repair to modern building codes. The property lay empty while various proposals were floated for it use. Finally, a group of local residents, headed by one Chuck Royce put together a proposal to rebuild the resort to its original splendor. And splendid it is.

We visited the resort tonight for drinks on the Verandah, a porch on one side of the building, overlooking the championship croquet court. Yes, a championship croquet court. I will let the pictures speak for themselves, but will add that the level of architectural faithfulness and the attention to detail in this project are beyond compare. This kind of project that pays homage to a grand history without scrimping on single detail is almost unheard of in modern-day America. If you are ever in New England, take a day and visit The Ocean House for beach outing, dinner or just drinks. The views are spectacular, the comforts opulent, and the service friendly and relaxed.

I may have a bit of a contrarian view on print media and advertising. Many have been predicting the demise of print and advertising. I would agree that this may be true on the web, because it is a different consumption experience. But print and advertising are still a good match. Print is still a sensory experience.

Print is still viable, but not for hard news. News is all about speed and brevity. Deliver the core facts as soon as possible. Don’t interrupt it with ads.

Print still works well for long form content and gorgeous, creative advertising. Advertising in print is simply not as intrusive as it is online, and it can be lush and beautiful. Advertising in print can become part of the experience of consuming the content. Look at fashion magazines in particular.

I’ve had a number of requests to post my tomato sauce recipe. I actually started with a published recipe, “Sally Colucci’s Gravy” (in some families, it’s called “gravy” as opposed to “sauce”) that I modified, and which has continued to evolve over time to be quite good. It generates a big quantity including about 15 meatballs, a half dozen hot Italian sausages and enough sauce for a pound of pasta with another couple pints left over for making eggplant or chicken parmesan.

At the moment, I don’t have any pictures or video of the preparation, but perhaps I can add that in the next week or so, when I make another batch. For right now, I’ll post the text so you can take a shot at making it. I would love to hear your comments about how yours turns out!

I’m not hard-core enough to make my own sausages yet, so I use Perri Hot Italian Sausages. But any good quality Italian sausage will do. All the hot-and-spicy in this sauce comes from the sausages. So if you don’t like spicy, switching to a sweet Italian sausage should work just fine.

Meatballs

• 1 pound 80-85% lean ground beef
• 1/2 cup Italian style breadcrumbs
• 2 eggs
• 3 cloves garlic finely chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• Salt, pepper to taste (I use none)

Sauce

• Olive oil from browning meat
• 1 lb hot Italian sausages (sweet also ok if you don’t like spicy)
• 1 medium onion finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic finely chopped
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil or 1/4 cup fresh chopped basil
• 2 – 28 oz cans crushed tomatoes
• 1-2 cups “starter” sauce. I use leftovers from previous batch or some bottled sauce.
• Salt, pepper to taste

Procedure

1. In small pot boil water and par-boil the sausage for about 10 or 15 minutes. When done, remove from water and dry excess water from casing. Save the water!!
2. In a bowl combine the meatball ingredients and mix with your hands until smooth and consistent. Be sure to squish the meat thoroughly. Roll into meatballs about the size of a golf ball. Cover and set aside.
3. In large frying pan or skillet cover the bottom with a good amount of olive oil and brown the meatballs and sausages on all sides.
4. Remove browned meat from skillet and set aside.
5. Pour oil from frying meat into a large sauce pot and heat.
6. When oil is hot, pour chopped onion in and cook until soft and translucent.
7. Add basil and garlic and stir well for a couple of minutes. (This onion, garlic, basil mixture smells great, by the way!)
8. Add the two cans of crushed tomatoes and heat until bubbling, but be careful not to overheat and cause sticking, burning on the pot bottom.
9. Add the sausage and meatballs and stir thoroughly.
10. Add the starter sauce.
11. Simmer for 1-2 hours, stirring occasionally, add saved sausage boiling water in small amounts to keep at the desired consistency.
12. Tastes best if chilled overnight in the refrigerator before using.

Ok, it’s true, I won a free hotel room here for one night, but regardless, The Roger Smith is a deal even at the walk-in-off-the-street rate. If you’re into social media, it’s *the* place to stay. And it’s convenient. At 47th and Lexington, it’s only a 5 min walk from Grand Central Station.

If you think it’s impossible to get a decently sized hotel room for a reasonable price in NYC, check this out.

One of my Boston social media buddies, Todd van Hoosear (@toddvanhoosear), set me off on a rant a couple of days ago by retweeting this from Jon Silk (@prgeek) in London.

I responded with a string of tweets, about how restaurants should put their actual street address in a prominent place so I can enter it into my car GPS navigation system, and also to use regular HTML text (as opposed to a pretty image) so I can copy it easily. I also went off on “fake FAQs” that have softball questions written by the marketing department as a contrived way to push their message. For instance, “How does your restaurant have such consistently awesome food?”

Poor Todd. He had unknowingly triggered one of my hot buttons about business web sites, which is that a company’s site should be about customer service, not marketing. To me, it’s the simplest way to keep in mind the proper design approach and overall goal of the site.

One of my favorite quotes (author unknown) on this topic is, “Please. Just help me. Don’t make me endure the sales process.” I’m sure this will resonate with anyone who has been frustrated trying to find the simplest, most mundane piece of information on a over-wrought, cutesy, Flashy web site that was clearly designed by an agency accustomed to creating TV commercials or print ads.

It’s not about what you want to say, it’s about what they want to know.

As a restaurant owner, I’m sure you want to tell me about all the great things you have to offer, from drinks, appetizers, to decor. But often that’s not what I need to know. When I’m going to a restaurant, I want to know things like:

Where are you? Give me a real street address for my GPS system. If it’s in a crowded city location, give me some landmarks nearby so I can find the entrance. And as Jon Silk said, a Google maps link, not some cutesy schematic map.

Parking. This is huge one for me. If you have on-site parking, SAY SO! If you don’t, tell me where I can park without getting ticketed or towed. Tell me where the most affordable, accessible lot is nearby. Give me pictures of them, so I can find them easily. Don’t make me first double park outside, run inside, ask you where, and then have to go out again.

Dietary options. Are you vegetarian or vegan friendly? Or conversely, for veggie-oriented places, do you accommodate carnivores? How about gluten or lactose sensitivities? Do you use MSG? The list goes on. Know your customer base and let them know what to expect.

Busy/Slack time. Of course restaurants want their places packed all the time. Some actually enjoy that status, but most places have slack time. Personally, I prefer going at quieter times, when I can have a little privacy, talk and perhaps get better service. Rather than people be frustrated having wait an hour for a table, let them know when it’s quieter. You might even out your traffic and get more business overall.

Seating options. Does your restaurant have features like a child-friendly or adults-only section? (I’d LOVE an adults-only section, by the way). Handicapped access should go without saying, but provide details, if necessary. Older buildings sometimes have to use alternate entrances or elevators.

The more real-time, the better…

Nothing’s worse than an out-of-date site with stale information. I’ve actually seen sites lately with the wrong address after they’ve relocated, or bios of the former owners still up.

The ultimate is real-time information. I want to jump on a chat or be able to send a Tweet to a restaurant and ask them a question if their site doesn’t already provide it. I think a lot of people are like me and have grown to detest using a telephone to get customer service. I don’t like being tethered to a handset while  being on hold, or getting a sales pitch (live or recorded) or having to deal with some officious hostess who acts like she’s doing you a favor to talk to you.

How about an accurate wait-time, or even perhaps web-cams, so I can see what’s going on? Give people a Twitter hash tag to use so they can tweet while they’re there. If you love your customers and treat them right, they’ll do right by you, too. And it will give you a real-time sense of what kind of experience people are having, while they’re there, so you can do something about it!

FAQs that aren’t faux

Every restaurant manager knows the questions people ask and what they want to know. Just answer those questions. Ok, you may want to shy away from the last three health department citations you got, but if that’s the kind of place you’re running, this advice won’t help you much.

So, don’t look at your website as just another advertising or promotion medium. Use it to really help your customers and they’ll love you for it!

Back in August of 2007, in Twitter’s infancy, I had a cook-out at my house. One of the conversations revolved around the need for “groups” on Twitter. Since this feature, now called Lists, has finally been added, I thought it might be fun to see what people were talking about way back when. It seems we didn’t really get everything we wanted.

See if you can spot some of the now-well-known peeps sitting around the table. Drop a comment if you recognize anyone.

Click to Play

Today I in the mail, I received a dose of the financial reports that I’ve come to expect from various funds and stocks that I’m invested in. The one from Barclay’s Captial just offended me. It’s as thick as a local phonebook and has densely printed prose, tables and graphs on every page. My question is, who on earth is going to read any of that? This is a horrible waste of natural resources and simply denudes forests to fill up landfills. All this information is undoubtedly online but the default seems to be paper mail. I’m guessing there’s some law about disclosure that requires financial firms to publish these tomes. It wouldn’t suprise me if it was sponsored by the paper lobby!

Tags: commentary, ecology, financial reports, natural, paper, political, resources