By Leo Valiquette
On Monday, Francis shared some highlights from last week’s International Startup Festival in Montreal, which of course raises the obvious question, why do we not have these kinds of events in Ottawa?
After a false start, serial entrepreneur and all around community booster Scott Annan has launched his Mercury Grove startup incubator. Over at Exploriem, Bruce Firestone and the team are ramping up the scale of their operations. And then there’s the whole reincarnation of OCRI as Invest Ottawa.
There is no shortage of activity in this city in support of early-stage and growing technology ventures. Isn’t it time to knit this all together with a signature event that would feature the best and brightest from locally and abroad sharing their insights with the Ottawa community?
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By Leo Valiquette
Earlier this year, I had the honour of being involved with Northern Lights 2012, a four-day conference that showcased economic and business development opportunities in Canada’s north, along with the social, cultural and environmental considerations that must be part of any commercial activity up there.
The emerging opportunities in the north, as well as the bargaining power its resources afford Canada on the international stage, are immense. The conference focused on the territory of Nunavut, the region of Nunavik in northern Quebec and the region of Nunasiavut in Labrador. Between them, these regions possess oil and gas reserves that dwarf western Canada’s, a diverse selection of mineral wealth, massive untapped green energy resources and new opportunities for tourism.
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By Leo Valiquette
Customer service, and the lack thereof, is a recurring topic on this blog, and for good reason. As public relations and marketing consultants, we appreciate the profound impact that a poor experience with your brand can have on a customer’s willingness to come again or refer your products and services to others. We may not be customer service experts, but we are active consumers who regularly engage with the front-line staff of numerous brands. And it’s what happens on the front lines that matters most.
Francis said it best in a past post, Kudos for empowered customer service:
“My consistent points are that the cost of acquiring customers is almost always far higher than the cost of keeping them, that effective customer service is the only sustainable competitive differentiator, and that most customer-service operations fail by forcing their agents to be powerless automatons more interested in getting the customer off the line than actually servicing them.”
If your customers do not feel well-served on the front line, your marketing messaging, no matter how well-crafted, will not save you. Your brand reputation is built, not by words, but by the actions of your team at every point of contact, from the reception desk to order fulfilment and after-sales support. The purpose of the words crafted by the marketing team is to evangelize the great service you provide. As marketing consultants we can’t create something from nothing and in the age of social media, what smacks of hypocrisy can come under harsh, and very public, criticism quite fast.
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By Leo Valiquette
There’s an old joke about the easy-going work-life balance that results from being an entrepreneur. “I can work for only half the day,” says the entrepreneur. “And I get to decide which 12 hours that will be.”
There is certainly something to be said for being your own boss without any commitment to regular office hours beyond making damned sure your deliverables are done on time and clients or customers feel well-served. But in my experience, being self-employed, which invariably means you are working remotely from whoever has agreed to pay your outrageous fee, requires that you impose upon yourself the same obligations as any teleworker with a traditional J.O.B. and a boss.
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By Leo Valiquette
In early May, I blogged about the need for everyone in the National Capital Region involved with getting technology to market to check their baggage at the door and work together for the common good.
It was a post sparked by my recent discussions with various entrepreneurs and other economic stakeholders at a time when the newly minted Invest Ottawa was getting its house in order and engaging in a long-overdue dialogue with the business community.
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By Leo Valiquette
