Cheap talk is best value service

Managing a rapidly growing company gives me little time to go shopping for the vitamins that are  part of my health regime (which includes of course a glass of red wine a night with dinner). An advertisement for evitamin.se caught my attention and being a keen online shopper I took up their introductory offer. 500+kr later I looked forward to delivery within the advertised 5 days.

3weeks later and not a word from the company (email, telephone) I am still waiting. A quick search revealed that there are a lot of other angry, ripped off customers of evitamin.se out there and despite my efforts to contact the company I am 500kr poorer for the experience.

Customer service is always top of our mind in our e-commerce wine company. Every company has had its delivery problems but we have learned that the problem matters less than how and how fast the company responds to it.  Shopping online is convenient but impersonal and a fancy website can not make up for real people’s voices. Emails can be misinterpreted and are rarely successful at solving problems. Emails impart information, they can not communicate or build trust.

Australian Wine Club had 7 day a week call centre (0200 33 88 88 ) from our first day of direct selling and we have always preferred to call a customer rather than email, where possible. As we have grown so fast (January has been our best month ever) we have not had the resources to handle every customer contact as good as we wanted. If there is no telephone number on a website I am not going to buy from them in the future. I recently bought a camera from Scandinavian Photo and their service (online and in their Stockholm store) was first rate.

Talk is cheap but worth a lot so now we have trained a team of wine consultants who will give advice on what wine to order on the telephone and take orders directly. To avoid long waiting times we have introduced an SMS service where customers can SMS to 72500 wine (in the text field, along with their name) and we will call back as quickly as possible. After the first call the customer will get the phone number of their own personal wine consultant that they can call to get wine advice and to order.

When things go wrong, as theysometimes do, we now have Caroline, a wonderful new customer service whiz whose friendly voice will be heard more than her emails. I used to answer customer service emails myself but now I just read them all and fortunately we have 99 happy customers for every 1 not. If you are the 1 unhappy customer, you will soon be hearing from Caroline!

If you are following our saga with Posten and KF, there is nothing to report. KF’s media comments are “no comment” and Posten has decided not to return our emails. That is good service! I await their call….

Cheers to good service (I got my vitamins from the bricks and mortar store)

Mark

New boss for Systembolaget

Congratulations to the newly appointed CEO of Systembolaget, Magdalena Gerger http://www.svd.se/naringsliv/nyheter/artikel_2365505.svd#articlecomments who takes over from the former prime minister’s wife Anitra Steen on May 1st.

The differences between Anitra and Magdalena say a lot about the way Sweden has changed since the new centre right government came to power. Anitra was a career public servant, during her tenure became married to the Prime Minister and Social Democrats political appointment without any retail or private sector experience.  Under Anitra’s 10 year reign 99 store managers were found guilty of taking bribes from Systembolaget’s suppliers and not one senior executive lost their job to take responsibility.

Appointed by the new centre right government, Magdalena has an impressive consumer products, private sector and even alcohol industry resume that would make her suitable for a deregulated alcohol retailer let alone a monopoly. She is quoted as saying that she does not expect to make many changes which sounds like typical new CEO diatribe given how different she is from her predecessor and the enormous experience she brings to the job. If the board did not want to change things they would not have appointed such an experienced and accomplished successor to Mrs. Persson. Given that only half of Swedes support the monopoly and contrary to what SVD mentioned in their interview with her (Du som kommer från det privata näringslivet, känns det skönt att slippa konkurrenter? Coming from the private business sector, does it feel good to not have competitors?) Magdalena will need all her impressive marketing and management skills.

Congratulations Sweden, in the words of the 44th US President, This is the change we need!

Cheers

Mark

Swedes and Aussies have a lot in common

Swedes and Aussies have two important things in common: fairness is important and therefore we detest bullies; and we live in hostile harsh climates and therefore are strong and do not easily give up.

These similar cultural traits have shown strongly since SVD exposed the dishonest actions of the giant KF retailer (Konsum, COOP etc) against our small wine club company. The blogasphere is buzzing with comments of DDR Sweden,  outrage (but not much surprise!) over KF’s actions and support for our position. Blog and web comments live forever thanks to Google!

KF executive Pär Jansson was this week quoted several times in the media (see page above: KF Replies World of Wine article) accepting that he was responsible for the contract with APW but he had no comment because the “issue was finished”. The matter is “with their lawyers”, he added. KF unleashed Sweden’s largest and most expensive law firm against our small company and threatened to sue us (for what they never said) but perhaps that is their next move – bully us harder and hope the next blood nose they give us will scare us away. The last beating they gave us really hurt our company, but this made us stronger and more resolute.

Aussies love a fight against a bully and what characterises a bully is their own insecurities and weaknesses. KF’s weakness is their concern for their reputation above all else: “our 3 million members do not want us to market wine,” said Jansson. What damage does a reputation for breaching legal contracts, bullying small companies and acting unethically do for their company?

“Never give in to a bully”, my father told me when I was a boy, “even if you get hurt, by standing up to them maybe they will think twice before bullying someone else!”

cheers!

Mark

KF’s dishonest actions against wine freedom

Jan 16 and World of Wine industry newspaper published an interview with Pär Jansson on their reasons for cancelling the contract:  link to the whole article and below are Pär’s comments extracted: http://www.wownews.se/?a=6735

Det ligger hos Antipodes om de vill kommentera. Men jag ger inga som helst kommentarer, säger KF Näthandels ordförande Pär Jansson när WOW News ringer upp.

Men det är ganska allvarliga anklagelser att ni ska ha brutit ett avtal.

− Inga som helst kommentarer.

Men ni har haft ett avtal?

− Ja, vi har haft en överenskommelse, det stämmer. Det är jag som är ansvarig för den.

Och nu är det bruten?

− Vi har en tvist, det är det enda jag kan säga. Frågan ligger hos våra jurister, säger Pär Jansson innan han lägger på luren.

Since SVD exposed the dishonest actions of the retail KF (Coop, Konsum, Mataffaren, Akademibokhandeln, etc) there has been a number of other media publications contacting us and writing about it as well as a number of influential blogs writing about it. We are not alone in believing that KF has acted unethically and illegally!

Pär Jansson was quoted in one newspaper article saying he would not comment because the matter is finished as far as they are concerned. Famous last words!  Tell your friends about this blog if you also care about business ethics.

Fortunately AWC has had its best sales month ever and due to the support of our happy members we continue to grow and grow.  A good bottle of wine at home is a small luxury many of us would very reluctantly give up! 

If you are interested in how the giant KF deals with small companies working hard to promote free choice read this editorial article in SVD:

http://www.svd.se/opinion/ledarsidan/artikel_2285131.svd

For more details read the page above titled: Ideology overrules honesty: Mataffären - KF

or more here http://www.thelocal.se/16820/20090109/

or this interesting blog: http://gudmundson.blogspot.com/2009/01/sjlv-fredrar-jag-grnstedts-monopol.html

Cheers

Mark Majzner

Mark (at) antipodeswines.com

Christmas is like Ground Hog Day

To read my post Christmas column on The Local, click here

Cheers

Mark