April 20 – Update down the bottom.

April 17 – After seeing an article on Whiteyboards, I checked out their website to find an interesting product.  An instantly usable, reasonably priced whiteboard for your wall.

This is something I can come up with all sorts of uses for that, both at home and in the office.  Spurred on by the offer of free shipping, and yet wondering how that works internationally, I placed my order on the 26th of March.

A few weeks later, on April the 17th, myself and about 30 other international customers, all in the CC field (!) received this confusing email :

Hello,

Thanks for your purchase. I have realized that you placed an order outside the United States. WhiteyBoard only offers free shipping within the United States therefore you must pay for your shipping before we release your goods!

–
Warm Regards,
Saachi Cywinski
____________________________
Founder | WhiteyBoard Startup
Cell (US): +1.818.636.5526
Fax (US): +1.818.508.0667
Skype: WhiteyBoard
Website: www.whiteyboard.com
facebook.com/whiteyboard
twitter.com/whiteyboards

It took about a day for the first confused response to appear in Reply-All.

Hey All,

Heh, this is the weirdest customer support I’ve ever seen. It’s good that you included all foreign customers addresses in one mail.
Maybe we can do a class action thing, I’ve heard they are very popular in your country,  just kidding.

I don’t like this sentence : “Also WhiteyBoard only offers free shipping within the United States therefore you must pay for your shipping before we release your goods!”

My problem is: you don’t mention it on your site during the purchase process. Homepage -> buy -> checkout. I’ve returned to your site and now I saw a FAQ button, where this limitation is exposed.

And in your mail, you don’t even mention a price for which you will release the goods. Are we supposed to mail you back and say “Hey Saachi, how much would shipping cost?”

I mean, you’re a person with a lot of plastic and a website. You obviously know how how to package them and how to send them out. I’m sure most people here don’t expect free fedex express overnight. We’re used to waiting a few weeks for the ‘normal’ post to get across the ocean, should be like, a few dollars?

So please inform us on our options:

- How much would shipping be to Europe, Asia, … ?
- How can we get the money to you? Pay-pal to which address?
OR
- How can we decline your offer and get our money back.

Thanks for any info.

Best regards,

Name Removed

Another Email

Hi all,

Has anyone received a reply from these folks? Mine was directed at me paying up another $30.00 for the shipping to Australia which kind of puts this board at the same price as the one’s here. I wonder if there is another “FAQ” they probably will slip in about a no refund policy

Regards,
Name Removed

Then yesterday, a very upset email :

Whiteyboard will need to make a loss on this – just suck it in and sort it out.  It may mean that 40+ products go out there and you make nothing.

BUT you’ll get the product out into the international market and it’s then up to all of us to work out whether it was worth the wait AND this silly recent email.

Don’t annoy all of us any more than you need to – as we could be repeat customers and advocates for your brand.  I was all ready to say how great it was on Twitter (250 followers) and Facebook (150) and to buy some for my office and show off to clients when they come for a meeting.

You lost that good will – which is stupid.

So, I don’t know how anyone else will react, but I’d still like my Whiteyboard if you’ll still ship it.

If not, refund us all and don’t expect future orders…

Next, a response from Saachi to one person :

Hi All,

Our comments taken into consideration I received the following mail from Saachi,

Ill send to you for free. I feel horrible. Business has been so hectic and I’m still a senior in university. I’ve made a few mistakes so far but I’m learning. Cut me some slack mate. Ill send your goods this week.

I call the white flag…

Then I sent my email :

Nothing like a little trial by fire to learn good customer service

Although I haven’t yet received a mail from Saachi.

Jason Winder

I still have heard nothing back from Saachi.

I have full respect for Saachi, starting a business at 22, as a senior in university. I know when I was starting, I made a bunch of similar and often far worse mistakes. I also found out the only way to fix mistakes, is an apology, full transparency on what is going on, and steps you will take to avoid the problem in the future.

Saachi, if you’d like to make a response, please contact me and I’ll update this post with all the details. I hope to hear from you.

April 20 Update

I received this email from Saachi :

Hi all,

This is Saachi from WhiteyBoards.  Thanks for bringing this blog post to my attention.  I want to address some issues that international customers have been having with their WhiteyBoard orders.

Firstly I want to say thank you very much to everyone who has already ordered a WhiteyBoard.  We really appreciate your order, and we’re excited to introduce more people to our new product. After we were mentioned on TechCrunch, we were overwhelmed with orders.  I soon realized that we also had a myriad of international orders.  We’re set up to deal with US customers only, hence the free shipping offer, but this was not mentioned anywhere on the website.

My second mistake, was not responding to these waiting customers for 3 weeks.  It’s no excuse, but given all of the other orders and my university workload, I didn’t get around to responding. I’m very sorry to everyone who was waiting.

Thirdly, I wrote an email that wasn’t clear and didn’t provide people with the options and information they needed to have. Despite the fact that this has been a very important lesson for me, I feel really bad about the whole situation, and as such, I’ve provided all of these international customers with free shipping, and I have started to ship some of these orders. I’ve updated the website to make it clear that we’re currently only serving US customers, but we’re hoping to start serving international customers within the next few months, and we’re looking forward to selling our product worldwide.

Once again, I’m very sorry for any confusion my actions or inactions have caused, and I hope everyone gets plenty of use out of their new WhiteyBoard.

Thanks again,

Saachi Cywinski

I used to inadvertently frustrate other people with my verbosity.

A client would ask me a question, and I would give them a 10 sentence background, because I assumed this would be helpful.

“Why do I have 3 printers when there are only 6 staff?” was a question posed to me on my first office setup project by the country manager.

I immediately launched into a technical description of the features of the printers.  A cliche but common mistake.

What I failed to realise back then, is distilled to it’s most base level, he is simply asking “Are you wasting my money here?”

A perfect, succinct response would have been :

“The fax/copier/printer/scanner is for faxing and scanning.  Otherwise, it becomes a dangerous single point of failure. The black and white is for daily printing since it’s cheaper than colour. These printers also support your staff growth forecasts.”

He would have nodded his head, and walked away satisfied about his investment, and feeling better about me as a consultant.

Instead, I was half-way through a long explanation about something he didn’t care about, and my monologue was not addressing his core concern.

After enduring a few roastings, my sense of self-preservation set-in, and I began actively seeking to respond to the core issue.   This improved my relationship with my clients, and built trust since I was communicating directly to their questions or concerns.

The most gifted communicators I’ve seen over the years are masters of this.  There is an incredible amount of power in being able to process a large amount of information, and being able to succinctly communicate complex concepts in a simple fashion.

I had a tendency built up over years in IT to make the point fuzzier to try to cover every possible scenario.  This wall of ‘fuzzy’ can give you a buffer of error.  It’s comforting, but it’s a safety blanket barrier between you and the point.

Client : “Will this USB drive be compatible with my 4 year old Dell computer?”

X “Well, most of the time USB drives use a standard set of drivers, so even without drivers you should be able to use it.  If you try to plug it in and you get an error, there might be a problem with the drive. Or maybe, you might be using an older operating system, which might not have drivers for that drive.  If theres an error, I recommend checking the manufacture website to see if you can download suitable drivers.”

O “Yes.”

Client : “Are you able to provide project management services?”

X “Well, it depends on the type of project.  We don’t do much software project management, of course, but we’ve got much more experience in doing things like IT infrastructure projects, or server projects.  We’re pretty skilled at most kinds of projects for a wide range of company sizes.  We can manage general office IT projects.”

O “We’re experts on IT infrastructure and new office and office move projects.”

Throw away the fuzziness.

Harness the power of simple and direct communication. Don’t make people wait through a speech.  Get to the point first.

I can’t think of a single more important thing I’ve done over the past several years than finding excellent mentors.  With their guidance and help, I’ve managed to change Webnet IT from just me running around Tokyo, to a bustling team of bilingual IT professionals servicing companies Japan-wide. Without their help, this would have been either much more difficult, or maybe even impossible.

In this post, I’d like to briefly discuss how to find mentors, how to keep them, and how to give back to them.

If you’re setting up a new business, or starting a new project, the amount of new skills to learn are seemingly endless. All of the problems you’ll encounter are new, and you’ll often find yourself completely lost and confused. Something as common as creating and negotiating your first contract, or hiring your first employee can seem like huge and insurmountable obstacles.

To give you some perspective; you can spend hours, days or weeks trying to figure out what to do in a situation, and you’ll still make mistakes.  Someone with the right experience could identify the correct strategy within 5 minutes. At these times, it can be invaluable to have a mentor to ask for advice.

The Mentor ‘Profile’

The first step is to understand the typical mentor profile.

Anyone who has the experience and knowledge to be your mentor will likely be very, very busy. They will likely be running a company (or several), or be working in a senior position. There will already be a number of people clawing for their time, and they’re going to be naturally suspicious of people asking for meetings.

You’re going to be asking them to take time away from their business to help you.  This time is worth money to your mentor.

Most successful people in business are natural problem solvers.  Much like you probably do, they love to take apart a problem, analyse it, and solve it.

It’s very rewarding for a mentor to help someone who is self-motivated, and who is doing their best to accomplish an objective.  It’s even more rewarding for a mentor when that person goes away, implements a solution suggested by them, and returns and shares the story of the successful result.

With this in mind, here is a complete guide for interacting with your mentor.

The 10 Step Guide For Getting and Keeping Mentors

1. Contact your mentor with the utmost respect for their time. All communication should be succinct, open and honest. It’s important to be friendly, but above all else strike a tone of politeness and respect.
2. To engage with your mentor and receive relevant advice, it’s important that you are trying to achieve a specific goal, and that you’re able to communicate this goal.
   • Take full personal responsibility for the completion of this goal. Make it clear that whether your mentor is available to help or not, you’ll figure it out. This takes away pressure or obligation from your mentor.
   • This goal could be as simple as “Trying to hire an employee”, or “Trying to win this new deal”.
3. Present your situation in such a way that your problem is clear and easy to understand.  Make it very clear that you do not expect them to do your work for you. A good way to do this is to present them with a thought-out possible solution to your problem.
4. Ask for advice.
5. Once they start talking, take notes.  This improves recall, creates a record, and demonstrates respect.
6. Thank your mentor at least twice – in person and by email.
7. Follow the advice as closely as possible.  Even if it’s difficult, and especially if it’s not what you would normally do.
8. Report back the results to your mentor.
   • If it didn’t go well, take full personal responsibility, and thank them for their time and help.
   • If it did go well, wherever appropriate, attribute full credit to your mentor, and thank them for their time and help.
9. Send a gift in order to show your appreciation.
   • If you’re just starting out, it’s likely that you won’t have anything to offer your mentor in return for years. At the very least, send some chocolates.
   • Of course, most mentors do not provide advice for direct return.  Your growth and development is reward enough.  The gift/chocolates are simply a sign of your gratitude.
   • Bonus points if you can send a gift in direct relation something they said, or something they can give a member of their family.
10. Look for any kind of opportunity to help your mentor in turn.
    • Find ways to introduce them to customers, or look for ways to provide them with free products or services.

When I get a chance, I’ll create another article with some example conversations and meetings demonstrating these principles.

I hope this is helpful and you make plenty of great new relationships.  Thanks for reading. Let me know how you go at jason@webnet-it.co.jp.