Have you gotten the gist of one of our priorities here at SimpleHelix? We’re pretty big on customer loyalty, and understanding what makes our customers ENJOY being loyal to us.
And, also, I found another example of how a company has completely ignored a loyalty factor. (Oddly enough, it’s another example of business at a coffee shop.)
So a writer’s local coffee shop has taken the common route of charging for per-hour internet use.
I don’t know how I feel about this, honestly. Because I can see both sides of the issue.
Side 1: Customer loyalty, obviously. Without question, your customers are more likely to hang out and potentially consume more the longer they stay. The more at-home they feel, the more they accomplish during their stay, the more likely they are to buy another cup of coffee. That’s obvious. And then there’s the potential word-of-mouth that could accompany it; I mean, people like free stuff. They’re gonna tell their friends about free stuff. And then their friends become customers too, potentially. And they may enjoy the free internet and hang around and drink two and three cups of coffee as well, right?
Side 2: Customer comes in, asks for a cup of water. Sits for eight hours, using the bandwidth. Decides that, hey, free water and free internet? SCORE! and then declares the shop his “home office”. Tells his other friends that they can kill their internet accounts and just log in 8 hours a day at this coffee shop and, hey!, all the free water you can drink! Now you’ve got three or four guys watching cats play basketball on YouTube and hogging all of the store’s bandwidth, preventing paying customers from being able to utilize it.
I’ve seen both scenarios work. I’ve seen the customers who understand that they’re essentially “renting booth space” at a coffee shop and repay the coffee shop through patronage. But I’ve also seen people set up entire corners of a restaurant as their own personal office, and never even buy a small, black coffee. They shoot annoyed looks when they’re trying to conduct a business phone call and a nearby patron laughs loudly. They want to mark the territory around their “desk” and get irritated when anyone nears it.
What’s the right answer here? Man, if I knew that, I would probably start a coffee shop.
Gary is one of our admin geniuses at SimpleHelix. He’s also earned his own internal Wiki page here because he is SUCH a wordsmith.
When we suffered a DDOS attack earlier this morning, we had more than a few customers calling up with various solutions to avoid this in the future. Of course, we all batted them about, trying to decide if any of them were feasible; that’s the unfortunate nature of a DDoS attack.. they’re almost certainly unpreventable. It’s repeatedly taken down giants like CNN, Yahoo, and other incredibly robust systems.
When I asked Gary to explain a DDoS attack, he gave me the BEST analogy I’ve ever read. 1) because it features fast food and 2) because it features ZOMBIES.
A DDOS SYN attack in laymen’s terms:
Imagine if you will, a stadium full of zombies 70, maybe 80 thousand people. And in the center, one man with a bullhorn.
He screams into the bullhorn “Let’s all go to Burger King, stand in line, and when you get to the counter, just stand there. When they kick you out of line, go back to the end of the line and do it again”.
Now 70,000 zombies are all standing in line at Burger King and of course, the management FREAKS OUT, traffic around Burger King is stopped, news crews show up.. it’s chaos.
The manager, of course, is not amused and bans the zombies as fast as they get to the register.
Eventually he’s banned all 70,000 zombies, so now there are 70,000 people standing AROUND Burger King’s parking lot, just staring at the workers through the windows. Traffic is still stopped, no one can get through the drive thru, maybe 1 car every 10 minutes at most.
Someone asks, “Why don’t we install an anti-ddos router?” Sure we could do this; think of it as a chain link fence, around our little imaginary Burger King. What good is that when you have 70,000 people OUTSIDE the fence just standing there?
This is the syn attack in a very long winded nutshell.
Thank you, Gary, for your topical and socially-relevant insight.
So, it’s probably no surprise that we at SimpleHelix are gadget geeks. Our employees are the first to get the new phones, MP3 players, tablets.. you name it, we have it first. And then the rest of the office drools over the new toy until another prototype comes along, and then we’re back in line for that one.
We watched the Apple iPhone 4.0 OS release live, all sitting and pondering the next announcement before it was vocalized. And we knew we weren’t the only ones, because the two sites we were watching continually froze and stuttered due to the massive audience.
With that little bit of background, you can IMAGINE the frenzy in here yesterday when it was reported that the new iPhone had been found. In a bar. Disguised as a 3GS.
Within hours of the news release, all of us geeks over here were just giddy with the excitement. And, of course, pitying the poor bloke who accidentally left the prototype in a bar after a round of German stout.
We watched as it quickly took over all of the tech blogs, made CNN national news, and it was suddenly the news on everyone’s lips. Where as the platform OS 4.0 hadn’t raised a lot of interest, the new 4.0 MODEL? Was suddenly something everyone was lining up for. It was THE new hot ticket. Forget the iPad; you HAD to have this new phone! It has a forward-facing camera! And no curved shell! See all of the exclamation points?!
And yet ..
I’ve been around for a rodeo or two. I’ve seen some of the best publicity in the business.. and honestly, Apple is usually on the forefront. Apple knows what it’s doing, and it knows how to keep things fresh and exciting. Also, Apple is known for it’s incredibly tight lock-down of anything new and beta. That’s why every conference and news release is so highly viewed; it’s the ONLY way to find out what’s really happening.
.. so how did this happen?
I’ll come out and say it, because I really believe it: this was an incredibly well-played media stunt.
Gray Powell is the now-famous former-Apple employee who did what we’ve all done at some point .. he lost his iPhone. But the story just seems too convenient. Some really random stranger convincing someone else at the bar to take the iPhone? Rather than passing it on to the bartender? Or pocketing it himself? I don’t know. I just .. perhaps I’m jaded, but it goes without argument that Apple’s done MARVELOUSLY well from this “catastrophe”. They’ve gotten substantial coverage in several arenas at a time when their strongest competitors are coming forward with new technology. (Coincidence that Droid was beta-testing Flash, which Apple will never carry, the day before?) And at a time when Apple has been dodging arrows for the network instability of AT&T, suddenly the news is “leaked” that a new device will perform better on the existing network. All of it seems just too convenient.
… now, having said ALL of that, I will TOTALLY admit that I’ll be first in line to upgrade my iPhone when they’re available.
Done! The time is now!
If you’re looking for the right time to expand your business and look at growth opportunity, now is the time. SimpleHelix has a limited number of new servers coming in the door SOON, and we’re offering a great deal to get you started on your way to success.
For a VERY limited time, SimpleHelix is offering a Buy 1 Month, Get 2 Free offer on a new Build 2 server set-up. You read that right; buy one full month’s package, and we’ll cover the next two months for you. Not only that, but we’ll also provide an SSL certificate for one domain .. for a full year. Just think, you could be ready to expand your business or your site by leaps and bounds with new servers ready to be utilized by April 21! See below for your savings breakdown:
Build 2 Base Server – $159 per month
· Intel X3420 Quad Core Xeon Processor with HT
· 4 GB RAM
· Dual 250GB SAS Drives (configured for RAID 1)
Typical Addons – $135 per month
· cPanel – $35 per month
· LiteSpeed Web Server – $55 per month
· Management – $35 per month
· Installatron 1-Click Installer – $10 per month
So here is how the costs would be broken down:
Month 1: $159 (base server) + $135 (add-ons) = $294
Month 2: $0 (base server) + $135 (add-ons) = $135
Month 3: $0 (base server) + $135 (add-ons) = $135
Every month after: $159 (base server) + $135 (add-ons) = $294
You’re saving two month’s base-server cost, which is over $300, AND getting a free SSL, which saves you another $100! Of course the add-ons may vary, but for a typical Build 2 set-up, this deal could save a customer over $400 for the life of the promotion!
But don’t be hesitant; this offer is first-come, first-serve and we expect these servers to go fast. You could save over $400 by utilizing this offer, so call us today!
Offer only applies to base server plans; no additions or extras to a monthly package will be included in free month offer. Offer only applies to upgrades and/or new orders; downgrades or existing Build 2 customers cannot redeem offer. Limited amount of servers available; offer only available while supplies last.
This is one of those ideas that starts brewing and you don’t really know where it’s going to go, but you just know that there’s something good in there. Maybe you can help.
I caught wind of an interesting marketing technique being employed by a Barista out of London. Matter of fact, Gwilym Davies is the World Barista Champion, and he has a coffeeshop based in an up-and-coming coffee scene in East London. So Gwilym’s talents are not in questions; he has clearly been recognized in his industry as being head and shoulders above the rest. Quite frankly, he could just hang his hat on his championship and walk-away, knowing that he’s now a valuable commodity in not only his neighborhood, but his entire business class.
But that wasn’t enough for Gwilym. And this idea? So incredibly revolutionary and good-natured that I can’t stand it and I’m starving for a way to incorporate it into what we’re doing here at SimpleHelix.
Gwilym devised and implemented a “Dis-Loyalty Card”. Which sounds scary to any company, when you just read the title. It evokes feelings of loss, of running of your regulars, of encouraging them to spend their hard-earned dollar elsewhere.. and, well, that’s EXACTLY the point.
Regulars in Gwilym’s coffee shop were encouraged to try coffee in eight other shops around East London, all hand-picked for their quality coffee by Gwilym himself. And after trying all eight shops, the user was allowed to come back to Gwilym’s shop and get a free cup. So the entire community was profiting by this, and chances are the customer would return back to redeem their free cup of coffee and be reminded what kept them there in the first place.
Admittedly, I’m a hippie at heart, so the idea of spreading the love (and the money) sits well with me. But I imagine you’d have to be a in pretty comfortable spot to begin with, coupled with the assurance that your product would stand well against the obvious competition. So what say ye, readers of the blog?
April 27th, 2010
Posted in Uncategorized
(0) Comments
Share This
