You're in a restaurant with a group of friends. The waiter won't let you split the bill, so you offer to pay for it on your card and have your friends send you their share. How much would you charge them for that service? That sounds absurd, right? OK, you might agree to split the bill evenly and maybe come out one drink in profit - but it's still a bit of a social faux pas to deliberately make money off your mates. Recently, I was asked if I'd like to run a market stall at a geek event.…
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It has been a full calendar year since my office sent me home for the last time. A few weeks later, lockdown was announced. For years, the biggest lie from customer service call centres was "Your call is important to us!" Then, a few years ago, it became "Due to unusually high call volumes, it may take longer than usual to answer your call." Now, it is "Due to the unprecedented situation, please bear with us while we try to answer your call." Well, no. It has been a year. I totally get…
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Another in an occasional series of blog posts where I discuss products I've worked on which failed. It boiled down to this. Was there a way we could make normal people want to be on a conference call with their family and friends? Let me explain. ARPU - Average Revenue Per User - that's all mobile network operators care about. When it's up, the money flows like wine. When it's down... the drought makes people do crazy things. Voice revenue had been falling for years. Skype and WhatsApp…
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Another in an occasional series of blog posts where I discuss products I've worked on which failed. It was the early 2000s and the large mobile telco I worked for had just spent billions of pounds on a 3G license. 3G was the future! Sure, faster data would be nice, but the real money was to be made in Video Calling! What could Video Calling be used to improve? The answer was obvious - Interactive Voice Response menus. You know the sort "Press 1 for billing, press 2 for accounts, press 3 to…
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A few years ago, my work sent me on a training course. It involved the usual things, trust exercises, team bonding, and personality profiles. I filled in a few forms, answered some questions, and the very professional looking lady marked up my paper and said, "I see that you're a Scorpio. That means you're focused externally, and you deal with things rationally and logically. You do have a tendency to act via your intuition - sometimes to your detriment." O...k..., I thought, that's a bit…
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