Choosing Integrity Over Profit

Welcome to Throb, The Reality of Business podcast. Real business chat from real people without the shiny veneer of gurus anywhere near it.

With your hosts Bertie Cordingly and Paul Chapman and maybe some guests along the route, we'll talk about our experiences of running business, helping others run a business and sharing real stories based on real experience. Paul, how are you? Mate, I'm very well, thank you. Very well indeed. We're in a change of venue today. This is lovely, yeah. We have come out of your dungeon down to your lounge. It's lovely, mate.

Yeah, so we're in the dining area. The dining suite.

Dining suite, it's lovely. Lovely, lovely, lovely. How are you, mate? Is it all good?

I'm very well. Yeah, currently trying to move house. So we've got lots of stuff that needs selling, packing. So hence why we're down here, not upstairs, because it's an absolute shithole up there. We'll have an office in the new place. We'll have to get used to recording at the dining table.

Good Lord. Or sat on your bed again like the early days.

Anyway. Anyway, moving on. Moving on. So, yes. What's annoyed you this week, Paul?

It's not an annoyance. Of course it is. Do you know what? A really interesting experience yesterday. This fascinates me. So, I bought Amy some stuff for her birthday not so long ago. Needless to say, it's going back. Right. So I've taken it back yesterday. What did you buy? She wanted a couple of hats, actually. She wants a kind of beanie pom-pom kind of thing.

Right.

It's actually really hard to find a really nice one. So I bought a few. No, not sure what. Anyway, so somewhere gone back. Gone to the post office. And the lady says to me, do you want to insure this? So it's another pound. Do you want to insure it? And I'm like, look, no, I don't. Because, you know, it's a bit like that kind of, do you want to extend your warranty? I just do. Thank you very much. And then she said, which was really interesting. She said, oh, well, if you, if it gets lost or damaged, you can't claim against us. And, you know, I was in a rush. I didn't really think about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just need proof of postage. That's fine. And then she said, she gives me the proof of postage. And on there is stamped. I've got it in my bag. But something like customer has declined compensation, unable to claim or something like that. And it wasn't until last year, I think this is nuts because what they're basically, and I may be understanding this, forgive me post office if I've got this wrong. But what they seem to be saying to me is that we can now throw this package in the bin. We don't have to spend any costs on sending it anywhere and you can't do anything about it. And that just, that blows my mind. And I think, you know, and again, there must be something I've misunderstood here because I'd love to be able to, I'd love to have not been in a rush yesterday to have gone back and said to them, well, hang on a second. What's that 385 or whatever? What does that cover then? Because you're now saying to me that you can just do whatever you want now and I've got no rights. And it just kind of made me think, and again, it must be something I'm missing, but I know business integrity. You think, look, that just feels like bollocks. That feels, I mean, I'd love to be smart enough to know it's legal, illegal. I mean, I guess it has to be, I guess they'd be smarter than me that I've had their legal department look at this, but are they just hoping that people pay the extra quid because they're too scared? Or are they hoping that actually they won't pay it, they don't have to deliver a service anymore, or they can be more, they can make a cheaper service when things do get lost and broken and I can't do anything about it. I mean, you know, I'm fascinated by business. I don't, I can't get my head around that.

Yeah, it's like, I've had a similar thing in a post office. So I'll talk about that and then we can just, it's probably the same thing. In that when I was offered insurance for something, probably the same type of thing. I don't remember anything being stamped on the receipt.

But yeah, I was asked what it was and I can't even remember what I was posting.

And yeah, I said, you know, do you want to pay for the insurance stuff? And you know, I just said, no, no, no, I trust Royal Mail. And the post, I think it was actually the post master, the people that own the post office just went, huh, I wouldn't. And it's like, it doesn't really fit. And I get like, so I suppose to unpick what you were saying, yes, there's a lot of money in selling insurance for something because they're doing exactly the same service.

The reason they probably sell the insurance is they know actually that the majority of stuff is going to get there on time and that, you know, it's a huge money spinner, right? Like if they're taking a quid off everybody and one gets lost in every, I don't know what the numbers are. And imagine it's not very many. Personally, I've never had anything lost with Royal Mail.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, you know, that's when I said to her, like a trust, like she, you know, she might have the odd complaint, but I would imagine it's very, very small edge case when stuff does get lost. I mean, probably the listeners that might have had different experiences and I've had stuff lost with other companies, which are, which, uh, won't name, but Hermes are fucking shit, aren't they?

You know what? They really are. And that's really unfair because I do, but your heart sinks a little bit when you get your traffic.

Yeah. Um, and yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I spoke about the whole, you know, the time when I had the camera lost thing. Yeah. Yeah. Went through all of that, but I've never had, anything really with Royal Mail and anything really like, you know, you have the odd delayed Christmas card or whatever it is or, um, but, but nothing. So yeah, I mean, insurance from my point of view, that is just a money spinner. It's just a way to get extra cash out of it. It's like we've spoke before about an upsell. So, but a good thing for a business to do, like, you know, people do want that peace of mind. So I generally don't pay for insurance, but I do use services that have compensation, especially the only time I'll use it is when I've sold something. Like I mentioned, I'm selling loads of things on eBay at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I do make sure that the stuff is covered, um, and I'm getting a signature because it's not that I don't trust the service. It's that I don't necessarily know the person that I'm sending.

Yeah.

So, you know, if I got some dickhead, like, oh, that never arrived. It's like, it did fucking arrive. You idiots. Um, you know, we've all had those sorts of things happen.

Um, so yeah, cause it's, I mean, it's, it's, there must be something I'm missing, I'm sure, but I just, none of it makes sense. And I don't know whether it's made, you know, and it could, it could be a training issue. It could be that the lady has, um, mis-explained it or I've misunderstood it or whatever it is. And I think, you know, you know, is it, you know, is it the upsell? Is it the upsell that actually has kind of gone wrong? Because upsells are brilliant. I'm a huge fan of upsells. Upsell is, you know, if you in your business, dear listener, don't have an upsell, find one. Mate, we're all over. We're into something like our 25th country. We're in Bangladesh, Iran, Japan, Finland. Mate, it's mad. Anyway, um, if you don't have an upsell, guys, listening to this, just do it. There's, there is, it's just profit. That is just pure, pure, pure profit. But, and I think it has to be a genuine upsell. It has to be a good reason for it. And in my head, and again, I'm sure I've got it wrong. I will stop saying that, but I don't want to, you know, in my head, this is crazy because they're saying is, well, you're going to pay us five quid for this service. But if you actually want us to do the service, you've got to pay another pound. Yes. Yeah.

And I think, I think that's a really good example of where upselling or yeah, even miss selling, because actually what they're doing is by offering that new service, they're in a way devaluing the first service. So, you know, I get that offering insurance is like, it's pure profit, right?

Yeah.

Like it is, it's a hundred percent pure profit on, on insurance, you know, in, in that regard.

So they, I would assume that they're getting a commission on that. So for, I don't know, like if a, if a post office sells a stamp, I could imagine that there's a very little margin in there, but there's probably a huge margin on the insurance. This would be my assumption again, you know, I'm happy to be corrected, but this is how it works in other industries. So I would assume it would be the same one there. So I could imagine there's either a pressure from either because they're trying to generate more revenue themselves or from whoever it is that sets targets for post office. I don't know how the system works to sell more insurance. I mean, again, that's how it is in most industries that have that, that's that sort of thing, but the techniques to, to use them don't fit.

Yeah.

The techniques or the tactics that they're using to sell that doesn't really feel on brand because actually what you're saying is if you don't pay the insurance, it's probably going to get lost. And, and we're taking a responsibility on it, which doesn't really feel on brand. Like it almost should be a look, you know, it's, there should be like, if you're going to sell that properly, how many things get lost in Royal Mail? I don't know, 0.1% as the other side, like, by the way, the majority of stuff gets, is going to go on time on. Is this really important? Would you be really disappointed if it got lost? Would you like to pay the insurance on it? You know, you know, that is giving you like a, giving you all the facts really, rather than it's scare tactics, isn't it? Yeah. It's scare tactics. And I think the point that you're trying to make then is actually like the way that they've done that, you're walking away thinking, well, actually you could just throw that in the fucking bin now. And I've literally just told you, I've signed on a piece of paper that, yeah, you throw it in the bin. It doesn't matter because nothing is going to happen. Yeah.

And maybe, remember, that's it. Maybe it is just how it's communicated. Because, you know, and it, sadly, because of the world we live in, you're always suspicious. You're always not sure. It always just smell, you know, even the fact that it was only a pound. It just, I mean, yes, that was kind of 25% more, but it just feels a bit smelly. Do you know what I mean? It's weird kind of like, you know, and then particularly to stamp the proof of postage saying this person declined any sort of compensation. It just, you know, and again, maybe it's a communication thing. I mean, it's interesting, like kind of like on that and I'm sort of changing a service over and I won't kind of say who, because again, it's not really fair, but I've had an increasingly aggressive set of emails from previous person about a thing. And I don't know what the thing, I mean, you know, my views on technology.

Is this a technology thing?

Yeah, it is a technology thing.

Everything to you is a thing. It's a thing.

Bertie has helped me move my laptop across today and just to see his face when I opened my existing laptop where you couldn't see the screen because of like stuff on it.

It was, yeah, it made me feel physically ill.

And then I didn't have passwords at all, which I have now. Hackers, I've got it. But look, me and technology is not a thing. And I've been getting my technology from someone or a technologically based thing from someone. And I just got these weird emails about a thing I didn't understand. They were getting increasingly aggressive.

And I just presumed it was a scam until kind of I called the, you know, I called the person who I knew at the business and said, look, mate, is this what's going on? I don't, I keep getting these weird emails. I get more and more angry. Well, it's a real thing. Well, okay. But there has to be another way of communicating. There has to be. And I think that's the thing perhaps with the post office is that, you know, all I did with this company, just I knew someone else. He's, he's brilliant. I just rang him and said, look, I keep getting this email. I don't really understand it. He just said, look, Paul, introduce me. I'll sort it. Do you know what? I'll pay for that. I love that. I love that kind of thing. And I think, you know, in that instance, I can do that because there are a million IT people. You can't do that with a post office. There is literally, oh, you can use parcel people, but you don't. There's only one supplier. And that's why it almost kind of fills into that. And again, I'm sure you've got it, but it's that, it's that business integrity. And I think this will probably happen somewhere in everyone's business. There is this thing that makes people go, you know, cause you know, like these things, I was getting these emails of, you know, you have to act now. Otherwise you're going to get charged more. We're going to lock you in for months. And it's still something I don't understand. And, you know, again, maybe I am in the minority in the fact that I'm such a kind of a technophobe or just, I just don't like technology. I just can't really be asked with it. You know, so I'm not, you know, I'm sure most other people have acted on it, but it's that communication thing, isn't it? It is.

And I think it's when you start to put profits over integrity, it's, I think you've got to be very aware that you are making a choice then on your, on how your brand is going to be perceived. And I suppose, you know, of course it varies on, you know, what there's some people where people just, sorry, some things that people buy and they just don't care whether the brands put or not, you know, they'll just, it's just. You're cheap and cheerful and you sort of get what you expect.

Right.

But I think, yeah, with the Royal Mail, you know, something that is stamped by the Queen.

Yes.

You know, you don't really expect, you know, I suppose they're just things you inherently trust. So, yeah, that feels a little bit like it is devaluing the brand a little bit. And yeah, that's, that slipped through the net. I mean, yeah, you've, I've spoke about whether it was on this podcast, but like one thing that I did a while ago with a business was at the end of the online checkout, we had this thing that popped up and it gave like the customer a 10 pound voucher off their next meal. It was very, I mean, these things are still in existence. I can't remember. I think they just changed names because the companies are shoddy. But basically you, to, you get a 10 pound voucher off it next time you get a month free trial of this service, which gives you discounts. But the subscription of it is 15 pound a month or something.

Yeah.

And the reason that we did it, yes, you know, it gave a 10 pound discount to the customer, but the redemption rate of it was super low. Like nobody really used it because it was so complicated, but we made like 20 quid each time that someone signed up for that thing. Caused loads and loads of complaints, but actually we were generating revenue from it. And that was a big learning for me because actually, you know, when you start to do those things that yes, it can increase revenue. And in that case, it does increase revenue.

But it's creating something bad for the customer and it's not adding any value. And in fact, it's detracting value from it. So what ended up happening?

Yeah.

You know, we'd made like a ton of cash from these people that signed up to this discount scheme. Um, but then they weren't happy and they were having to cancel it and they were asking us, how do they cancel it? And they weren't sure. And it's, it's, you know, we've offered that they thought they were buying it from us, but it was a third party company. So it's, um, yeah, you've got to be really, really careful with those sorts of things. And I've seen it with like, when I've bought cars on finance, you sit down there and then they offer you like the gap insurance and stuff. And it's real high pressure stuff, right? And it's like, oh, you know, if you, if anything happens to this car and you have to buy another, you're going to lose 10 grand and it's, and then you can end up signing for it. And the gap insurance, what you pay for again, you know, I'm not an expert in this industry, but it, it just feels like pure profit in that instance, because it's such a low thing that's ever going to happen. Like a car being written off on that. Then the insurance is going to cover most of it. Like, what the fuck are you paying for? Like, I'm sure you don't need gap insurance. I imagine it's going to be one of the PPI things.

Again, it's one of those things. You know, insurance is something that, you know, you always regret not buying. Yeah. And, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's, you know, it's a valuable and relevant thing. I mean, kind of no, no issue with kind of the industry or kind of how it's, or that, but it's the, how it's done. It was like, it's like, it really was that combination of the, you know, it, right. You know, can I, I want to send this back. Great. Yeah. That's three pound 85. Great. Thanks very much. I'm my service. I'm paying them to get it from there to there. And then for them to then go, but you know, if we lose it or break it, that's not our problem.

Right.

Well, yeah, but that's what I'm paying you to do. You know what? And again, you know, it's that, it's that integrity thing. It's that way of doing it. It's interesting. I've just kind of pulled up my phone. So I saw this on, um, on Insta the other day. And it's a lady I follow in America. Uh, and I basically just got this message from a company that came to do some work. Effectively, you know, pleasure speaking to you. We didn't resolve, as we didn't resolve the issue, we're offering to waive the $500 service fee in full. If you are able to provide a five-star positive review for Google on Google for our services, you think, well, they've come out, they've not managed to fix it. Can I give them a five-star review to waive that? And I just think, I'm sure it's done with the best intentions, but that's just horrible. That's just a really dirty, unintegritous.

There we go.

Paul's new word of the day.

I'm appalled by that one. Yeah, and it is, and it's, ah. Yeah, and it's, you know, and it's even that, you know, let me know if you have any questions. And if you prefer to pay the service fee for the thing that they didn't do, let us know. We'll send you an invoice. You just think, it's just a horrible way of doing it. It's a horrible way of running business. And, you know, I think this is, this is where you have to, as a business, you've got to have kind of check-ins with yourself and everything. I think, look, are we doing things like this? How are we doing it? You know, because it's, in the old days, that was fine because no one would find out about it. But now, you know, some dickheads are, you know, railing on about it on a podcast or that's going on social. You think, it's just a horrible way of doing it. And I think, you know, this, I think we had every talk before, like integrity, like being able to, you know, does it pass the mirror? I think you've said the mirror, is it the mirror test? Yeah, does it pass the mirror test? Can you look at yourself in the mirror and say, I'm really sorry we didn't deliver this service. But instead of charging for what we said we'd do, why don't you write us a review? If not, it's $500. You think, that's just horrible. And you can see because most people do it. And actually, you're going to get this company that, from the outside, looks like hugely credible because they've got all these five-star reviews, yet they've all been paid for. And, you know, and there's a business there in itself of actually just saying, because they've basically bid to say, oh, we can fix this. So, oh, great, come and fix it. It's going to cost this, but actually we won't do that because we can't, we haven't done another service. I don't know, mate. It's mucky, isn't it? It doesn't need to be mucky. It is, yeah.

And I think, you know, sometimes it's, you can use those things as an incentive. And it's competitive, like, I think, you know, like, I think asking for a review sometimes is often underrated.

Yeah.

And it's just not like, just saying, you know, would you mind giving a review for that is, I think, enough. Well, certainly to get you over that, you know, to start, if you're not getting any reviews for your service, like just asking people, you know, that's, that can really help. But I think when you start to, I think you can incentivize for a review. I think when you start incentivizing for positive reviews, that's where it starts to get really mad. I don't even think it's legal anymore. I mean, certainly you can't do that on the likes of Amazon and stuff. I mean, I get often like emails from companies where I've bought things from and they'll get other things and they'll say, you know, we'll give you a free in exchange for a review. But you always buy it first. So actually, like, I've done those things in the past, but I've bought it, actually see if I've liked it, whether it's worthy of a review and then review it. If it wasn't, I would just have sent it back. So I've done both the things. I've thought, actually, this is shit. I'm not going to review it and just sent it back and got a refund anyway. Or so, you know, I think that I think that's OK. I don't know. Maybe even that's on on dodgy ground. I suppose some people would just go out and just give a positive review. That's not something that I would want to do anyway. Certainly not now. But like, I'll tell you what we had for Christmas. My son got me a meat thermometer.

Nice.

So, like a meat thermometer. So, yeah, you know, like relatively, you know, like it's, yeah, I cook a lot of chicken and food and whatever. You know, just stick the pro. I like to probe. I love it.

Whole different podcast, my friend.

You know, everyone loves a good probe. So, yeah, I got a thermometer probe for food. Yes. Food. For Christmas. And, you know, he was really excited by it because, so you had an old one which was broke. And since he started working in a takeaway, like he gets to use a professional probe. And one, you know, one thing, well, two things you want from a probe. One, you want it to be accurate, obviously. Now, ours wasn't because we tested it. And the second, you want it to be quick because when you've got the oven on and you're running around, you want it to be like as quick as possible. So, this probe is, oh, I've looked at the reviews. It's like full five star. This one's really, really good. And then we tried it and it wasn't that good. But in the box, there was a thing that basically said, give us a five star review. Like, give us a five star review and we'll give you your money back. And this is the link that you send it to. Don't tell Amazon. And that was in the box. So, then you realize, instantly you feel cheated then. It's like, oh, so I've got this. So, you know, from his point of view, he's got me another one now, which is fine. But, you know, we had to then go through the process of sending that one back. And, you know, it's like a Christmas present. You just feel like, you just feel cheated by it, don't you? So, I think those sorts of practices are really, really shit. And people should not be doing them now. Because, like you say, it's so easy to spot. Like, when you actually went back and looked at those reviews in detail, you could see. But, you know, no one's going to read every single review, are they, for stuff.

And you don't, yeah. You know, asking for reviews, I think that's a brilliant thing. You know, to have something in there, you know, hey, thanks so much for buying this. Hope you enjoy it. You know, if you do, we'd love to hear about it. You know, Google reviews really help our business. So, if you can see fit to do it, great. Da-da-da-da. If it's not met your expectations, look, you know, tell us. You know, let's find out a way. You know, I think that's beautiful. I think that's a really good way of doing it. Absolutely. But the whole kind of, you know, do this. Particularly, you know, don't tell Amazon. But, you know, do this and we'll give it to you for free. You just think, it's just grubby. It's just.

It is dirty.

Yeah, and it's unnecessary. Because actually, there's loads of things. You know, I went to, it was a really nice hotel not too far away from us. Amy had a night away in there. And it's just a cool, cool place. Cool surroundings. Cool people. Great food. And I got a lovely email. You know, Paul, lovely to see you and Amy. Da-da-da. Da-da-da. Da-da-da. You know, we'd love to hear from you. You know, hope it was great. This and this. Anything we can help with. Da-da-da. You know, if you did love it. You know, you know how it works. You know, reviews are great for us. Thanks very much. Yeah, of course you jump on. And it's, that's way better. And you're going to get a much better review. Like real, actual reviews. But, you know, we're sort of in that place where, you know, people will probably read one or two reviews. But all you need to see is the fact that, you know, over 500, they've got 4.9. Oh, that's fair enough. And it's just, I don't know, maybe we're old fashioned, but I just think it's much better.

No, I don't think we are. I think, I think this makes a lot of sense. And people just don't. I think a lot of people are scared of negative feedback because, you know, they see it as negative or devaluing their brand. And a lot of the time people haven't even got a brand devalued. But anyway, that's a whole different subject. But I think people are scared of that negative feedback because, I mean, no one likes to be told that something's shit, right?

Yeah.

Either a product or even worse, if it's like a service that you are personally delivering. That's really, really hard to take.

However, you need to know, like you need to know the good and the bad. Because with that negative feedback, there's a big difference between negative and, sorry, between criticism and feedback. And, you know, sometimes you are just going to get criticism for whatever reason. And that's something different. But if you're getting genuine negative feedback, genuine stuff that you can improve on, something that you can look at and think, oh, actually, like, I could make that better next time. You need to hear that. They probably don't know that thermometer place, that the thermometer they're selling is a bag of wank, right? They've probably got no idea. There it is. That it's, yeah, it's just toss. So, because they're getting, you know, it's like the whole X Factor thing again, isn't it? It's like, oh, you're amazing. Then they go on stage and the audience aren't in on the joke.

They're kind of screwing their own business by altering their own reality, aren't they? Exactly. You know, our product's got those many reviews. And you think, well, actually, but it's, they're not real. They're not.

So, you know, I mean, it might be either they are the manufacturer of that and they might just be able to tweak the design a little bit that makes it a little bit faster, I don't know. Or they could maybe buy another thermometer that worked a little bit, but they're never going to find out. So, actually, you just end up in this cycle of selling shit, giving loads of shit away to get positive reviews on something that actually, like, if you had a good fucking product in the first place, you might be paying a little bit more for it, but you wouldn't have to give loads away. And you'd be in a much healthier product cycle. Yeah.

And, you know, I think on a season one of this, did we, Tom? But we talked about mistakes. Yeah. And we talked about how, actually, it is simply impossible to run a business without making mistakes. Absolutely. And, actually, you need to get your head in town. All the kind of the embarrassment and the nervousness about it. Look, you know, you are, even the people there that are too scared to get feedback, you're just making mistakes. You are getting things wrong. You are doing something badly. And you just, you make a decision at some point, I think, in your life as well as your business to actually just put your big boy pants on and ask the question, knowing that your business cannot deliver what you want it to do if it has these issues in it. You cannot find these issues yourself. It's much harder to find these issues yourself. So, you have to be open and honest and not even thick skin because you are, we're all doing something wrong. And I'm doing loads of stuff. You know, it's just how it is. And, actually, I am serious about it. I do want things to improve. So, I'm going to go and look at it. You know, we have, kind of one of the business ideas, we have kind of sheets where we look at every single project. And we go, look, why did that go wrong? Where is it? And, you know, it's out all the screw-ups. It's our responsibility. Absolutely. Because we've allowed this to happen. And, you know, you come across some bad people and you get stuff that you can't necessarily have foreseen. But that's fine. But, you know, you only let it happen once. And, actually, I think, you know, you just, I don't like making mistakes, which is weird considering how often I make them.

But that's just how it is. That's the reality of what we do. You know, particularly, I think, with, well, every business. I'd say particularly with kind of, you know, our sort of thing where it's us and doing it when we're trying to be wearing so many hats. But it's just how it is. Just get on with it. I don't mind making mistakes. But I want to know about it. I want to, you know, I want to hear something about it. But, actually, most people don't. But the best businesses, they're the ones that put in a process for finding out where we've gone wrong. And, actually, like having that in the meat thermometer, if they'd had a look, tell us how we did. You know, all reviews are welcome kind of thing. You've just got to realize you are going to make mistakes. Things are going to go wrong. But you have to look at it. You know, there is no way that, like, this IT company would do what they were doing if someone was looking at it and asking questions and trying to see, look, how could we do it better? And I think, you know, and I'm sure this won't happen with the post office. And, again, I may have missed the point here. But it just feels grubby, you know, particularly so because I know there's nothing most people can do about it.

Yeah.

It was just it was both hugely frustrating but absolutely fascinating. And I'd love to I'd love to dig into it more to find out what it is I'm missing or indeed not whether, you know, somewhere, somehow I've signed up to some terms and conditions by not accepting something that says, yeah, you can just throw this in the bin now. We'll save all our costs on this because if it gets lost, you didn't pay a pound. Yeah. Mug.

Well, hopefully your letter or whatever it was you've posted is going to arrive. Oh, no, it was your hat.

Well, I'll figure you find out next time.

Those bobble hats that got lost should have paid the quid. I hate that. You'll go in and the post will be wearing the bobble hat.

No, you're right. You're right. Funny, my parcel didn't get delivered, did it not?

Did you pay a pound? Yeah. Hey, Vera. Didn't pay his pound. But that seems like a bad decision.

Then Vera comes out with the other hats.

Riding a unicycle taking pictures with your camera.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I don't know. But have a look, guys.

Have a look in your own business. There'll be something. But just think about these things. As ever, I think we always come back to think, if you think about it, this kind of stuff doesn't happen. Because you're either communicating it differently, you are doing it differently, or just finding a different way to do it. Upsell's good and completely understand insurance. No issues with that. But just think about how you do it. Yeah. Yeah.

I used to have a process, actually. I know we're about to finish off. I used to have a what, sorry? A process. Ah, okay. A process. And when you're talking about reviews and things like that, what I used to do with online takeaway is we had, after every order, an automatic would you review us link goes out. And that still happens, I think, when you order on takeaway websites. Same with Uber, right? You open the Uber app and it's there. You can't physically move forward until you give them the stars.

But what I noticed was that the majority, when you do, so getting that data, allowing people to review it, actually is really insightful. When I looked through the majority of our one-star reviews, it wasn't actually because of anything to do with the restaurant. It was because of a delivery error. Yeah. Or the food hadn't arrived yet. Or people had just gone on there and gave a one-star review because it was supposed to be 40 minutes and it was 41 minutes. And everyone's hungry and angry. Yeah. Yeah.

We've been on there.

Worst customers to deal with.

You know, we've all been there, haven't we? So, yeah, the majority of the one-star reviews actually came from people that just hadn't had their food yet. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it wasn't really a fair representation of the restaurant, as in there was things that could be done. So, a simple tweak to the review system. So, all I did was ask a question. So, before they gave the review, has your food been delivered? Yes or no? So, if the no button was ticked, it doesn't matter what they ticked the review on there because we didn't send it to review. It was clear what was happening. It raised a ticket. Yeah. So, instantly, we could then do something about it. Oh, that's lovely. Yeah. So, as well as, so, you know, one, it saved loads of negative reviews, but it wasn't saving them artificially. What it meant was we could then actually deal with the issue on hand to give the user then a chance to give a fair review for the restaurant. So, you know, there are always things I think you can do in your review process just with a little bit of thought and testing because something like that was so simple to, so simple to put in and just had a huge effect on them, the amount of views. So, we weren't artificially changing it.

Yeah.

We were acting on the bad reviews as they happened because, yeah, people, yeah, that was the point. People were using the review system as, yeah, a way of venting for something that actually could physically be changed in that moment.

Yeah.

Like, we could actually pick up the phone, find out where the food was, maybe, I don't know, something had gone wrong, offer them something on their next order. Like, there was things that could be done. It didn't stop all of them because, of course, there's always going to be times where you get your food and it tastes like shit. I mean, that's the thing when you work with different takeaways, right? Once this guy, just reminded me, we had to take him off the site in the end. A guy called Max.

It's not, is that an identifier? But fuck it anyway, it was years ago. It's a little late. Yeah.

So, like, Steve, Steve, I meant Steve.

Like, I mean, we once had a complaint through saying that the pizza had been delivered with a bite out of it. Or the cheese, right?

I went back to this guy. This is a true story. I went back to this guy and said, yeah, and you would think, so if you're ringing up, like, you know, this guy, how do we present this? You know, I don't know if you know your delivery drivers, like, took a bite out of pizza, whatever, or you think you're going to deny it. No, no, no. You just say, oh, yeah, the driver was hungry. That was his response. The driver, safe to say, like, we didn't send him any more orders. Like, I mean, you can't fucking make it up.

The driver was hungry. That's fixational. How long does he go? Just have a, I mean. Didn't lie to you, though. Yeah.

No, no, I suppose not. You know, I suppose the integrity is there. Yeah, yeah. You know, if you go and pick McDonald's, you always have a few of the chips, don't you? You know, before, like, handing them over to the kids. Because I can imagine that happens, but bite out of a fucking pizza. That's brilliant.

I like that guy.

How did Noah bite? Did he put the slice back? I don't know.

What's the bite out of, like, the crust? Or, like, the middle? That's what I'm thinking. I think you can perhaps, like, almost rip a bit from the middle and just squash them together a bit.

Yeah, I'm wondering whether he just took a bite out of the... Or maybe there was a slice missing.

I did see that. There was another one. I'm sure it's not real. Nothing to do with the podcast. But a guy complained about his pizza. Right. And he said, look, I don't know if this is a joke, but my pizza's come and there's nothing on it. It's just the base. And he sent this message. He kind of sent this message or review in. And about three minutes later, he's like, no, sorry, my bad. I'm that pissed. I realised it was upside down.

Oh, God. Anyway, so, but just before we do end again, that's really interesting what you said there. So, actually, there is value in having the reviews.

Yeah.

But there's a stack load of value in working out what to do with the reviews. Exactly. You know, actually, it's not so... Because I see this all the time. You'll look at, I don't know, something, a pair of gloves on Amazon or whatever, and you just look, over the last seven years they've been selling this, quite a few people have said, don't really fit as per the size chart. I think that must be just such an easy fix. You know, if they are getting this again and again and again over a period of years, something can be... And that goes away. Yeah. And that's the thing. And, you know, I think people get caught up in all aspects of business. They're caught up in doing the thing without thinking, well, shit, we've got that. I wonder if we could do anything about it. You know, what... Do we start to say to people, actually, your food's delivered in 45 minutes. And it's not 40. Exactly. Because it doesn't matter, really, in the grand scheme of things, until you get to minute 41.

And that's exactly what... That's exactly the sort of stuff that we would do. So if people were then constantly getting their food late, it's like, well, let's just reset the expectation. Yeah. And almost do it for them as well. Say, you know, like, it's... We've noticed now 45... Yes, it's taking 45 minutes, not 40. Let's just change it to 50. And then you're under-delivering. Yeah.

Over-delivering. Yeah. Under-promising.

So, yeah, there's a much... There's better ways of doing it. But you can only do that with that feedback. And the same, like, if we would then take delivery areas when they were just too far, but you can only do that with that live feedback.

Yeah.

So, yeah, having that system in made a huge difference for us. It was a relatively simple thing. But, you know, the alternative to that is actually just to not capture that data and just only publish the five-star reviews.

Sort of live in ignorance of it. Exactly.

But your service doesn't get any better. And those customers then will start going elsewhere. Because it's easy.

Someone else can come and do that and think... Someone else can look at your reviews and go, hmm, why don't I do this? Because that fixes all of those. And your marketing goes down the line of, hey, you know how most people just don't get it there in 41 minutes? We guarantee in 47. Or whatever it is. Yeah.

Some of the people try and... But, yeah. Yeah. Well, in fact, we're not going to go into a different subject now. We will...

We'll call that a day. I enjoy that. I do not. I feel better. I do not. I'm still going to look. I'm fascinated. Next time I go in, I'm going to have a conversation with a lady wearing that hat. And just... Just say, look, what am I missing? It doesn't make any sense. But anyway, I enjoyed that, mate. Let's... That's it. Let's say goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

And we'll see you for season three. Next time. Is that the last one? That's the last one.

Oh, good Lord. This is like the longest running April Fool's joke ever.

I'm going to have a little break from you now. Yeah, we're nearly coming up to the year anniversary, aren't we? Madness. Two seasons. 24 episodes.

Oh, the weight we've put on. Good. Anyway, thanks for listening, guys. We'll see you next time. See you later. Bye-bye.

Bye.

We'll be back next week for another edition of the Throb podcast.

If you want to find out more, you can find me at paulchapmanuk.com.

And you can find me, Bertie, at bertiecord.co.uk. Thanks again. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.