Few days ago I wrote about my guest post on interaktywnie.com about the contest ‘blog of the year 2009′ and why Polish firms don’t achieve success. Now I’d like to write about it here, however this time – in English.
Maybe I exaggerate… we have few interesting web-based projects, which are more or less famous even abroad. We have FilesTube, nozbe, GetResponse. Propably we have much more, however this time I can remember only these ones.
However it’s not so much, right?
Yeah. Our representation is not so big. Why is that? Do we have bad PMs, founders or developers? No. Polish IT specialists win lots of world-wide programming contests. Bad ideas? No, because similar ones achieve success abroad. So… what’s the problem?
Maybe it’s because of bad approach of our producers?
Yes, that could be a problem.
I have recently seen a speach of Gary Vaynerchuk from Le Web Paris 2009. I liked it. Few minutes later, I told my wife about this presentation (she’s not related to IT industry). Do you know, what was her reaction? I heard: “Presentation is great. This guy knows, what he’s talking about. I can see his faith in what he’s saying. However… in Poland he would be probably called a lunatic. And about his presentation… people probably would say that it was a dream of madman.”
I just reminded about the occurrence of Michał Śliwiński (founder of nozbe) from first 3camp in 2009. I was there and I saw this presentation in real. The speach was really good, interesting, funny, inteligent. However what do people remember about that? Probably not too much. Something like: “some guy came on the scene, he said something about some product, probably web-based product… however I can’t remember the name of it. He was funny, a bit like a clown. It was nice.” I think, that it wasn’t a goal of the speaker? Michał was saying about interesting project and about – let’s call it – methodology of project (or even life) management. He was saying about approach to IT projects and any kind of projects at all. He was saying about GTD. I liked his speach. However despite of the success of his project… the main things, about which he was saying – didn’t find a way to the heads of the listeners.
However… let’s go back to my main topic. Why I want to write about it, anyway? There is a contest for blog of the year, which is organised by the biggest Polish web portal onet.pl. That’s the fifth edition of this contest, so I think, that it had to be popular. I heared about it first time this year. More or less… people, who have created this contest are not in this industry since yesterday.
That’s why, when I think about it… I’d really like to ask: Why they behave as it would be their first project?
I am not saying about the design, promotion or any similar issues. It’s all a question of taste.
What I am saying is something more… I’m saying about approach, communication, feedbacks. I’m saying about solving problems, answering questions and testing their application.
Maybe I will try to describe my situation a bit. I manage and edit three blogs… two in English; one in Polish and in English. Based on the rules of the contest (blogs in contest have to be written in Polish) I’d like to add tspot.pl. So I try to do it…
I’m going to the website and want to fill the contest form. I’m filling all the required data and… nothing is happen. No message with an error, no message about positive ending, no message in my mailbox. Ok… no problem. Nobody is infallible.
I want to report my issue.
I received an answer the same day… it was something like: “try to add again, you should receive an e-mail message within 48 hours, (… ble ble ble …). If you won’t receive any e-mail – please contact us again.”
Ok, message is not bad. It’s even constructive. Apart of the fact, that I already tried to fill the form using few different web browsers and operating systems. It didn’t work on none of them. Apart of the fact, that I asked about an information do my blog is in contest already (maybe I added it, but no message has been shown??). No answer to my request.
However… it’s still not so bad.
After a few days I decided to try to add my blog again. I have tried on few web browsers… result was the same, as earlier. So I’m writing to their support team once again.
I’m replying to their earlier message (I’d like to facilitate their work), and do not remove my previous question and their answer. Name and URL of my blog has been included to the message once again.
Two days of silence and I’ve got an answer… “try to add your blog again using some other web browser”.
Oh my god! Did you need two days for that kind of answer? Where the hell is any willingness to help? Where is the question about the problem? About my web browser? My operating system? Where are the questions about the symptoms? Is that such a huge problem, to check is my blog already added to the contest and answer to my question? Is that such a huge problem, to diagnose and test an application? Is that such a huge problem, to deliver an information to IT department? Is that such a huge problem, to tell me that someone is interested in my issue? That someone wants to solve my problem? Is that such a huge problem, to add my blog by hand? Is that such a huge problem, to behave like a human?
I can understand that you receive lots of e-mails.
I can understand that lots of people in support teams are just some kind of students or interns, because they are cheap labour. However… why did you give them computers; why did you give them a work without any training? Don’t you understand, that they can ruin your image?!
I understand that programmers are not cheap employees. However… to diagnose, implement and fix the bug you would need one programmer… for no more than one day of work.
Tell me please…
How do Polish companies could achieve success, while they have that kind of approach to their clients? When they don’t want to engage themselves? When they don’t want to be associated with good support? When they don’t want to build positive image of their brand?
At the end… my private conclusion: rebuild a positive and professional image of our brand is much more expensive than fixing bug in simple HTML form. It’s even much more expensive than a work day of a programmer.
PS. If they would engage in my issue… I could tell them, where was a bug in their app. I have diagnosed the problem by myself in about 5 minutes. So it wasn’t so hard…
Great post! I completely agree with your thoughts on the approach Polish companies have to potential consumers. I just don’t get what it is, is it the old communist mentality that there is only one company serving a given branch and you either deal with us or not get the service, or is it the lack of understanding that while hardly anyone will say that they had a good experience with a company, everyone will scream that they had a bad one destroying its image.
Im a Polish national but left the country at a young age and lived in the US for 20 years, currently ive returned to Poland as an entrepreneur and have found it a challenge to find a network of highly motivated people that want to change the company centric (as opposed to customer) approach many small and large companies have in Poland. It seems there are lots of complaints but change is very slow.
Its encouraging to see young professionals driven to change the current state by evangelizing they’re thoughts and leading by example by creating ventures that lead by example. Great blog, keep it coming and lets chat.
Regards
So why did you think my message didn’t go through in the presentation? What could I have improved to make my message better or more “sticking in their heads”?
If it was my fault, please do tell me, I don’t want to “just talk” and “be funny”, I thought I was inspiring people… and now I see I was just showing off… It’s not what I wanted to achieve. I’m not promoting my business in Poland.
Please let me know!
@Michael
I don’t think that it was your fault. Like I wrote above – your presentation was really good and I liked it.
The problem is not your presentation, but too little presentations similar to yours. People from Poland focus on their projects and companies in their speaches. I mean that they focus on the number of their visitors, amount of earned money. Sometimes they speak about history of their projects… but in these speaches they focus on dates and numbers. They can say: we started to develop our project in 2000; year later we had 1,000 unique visitors per day; we earned our first dollar in 2002; next year we had 5,000 unqiue visitors per day, etc.
And where the f*ck is an information about engagement with the customers? Where is an information that it was really hard piece of bread? That they had to work after hours, that they had to be patient? That they sent hundreds of business plans before they have found a venture capital interested in their project? That they had to spent some money for promotion? That they were using GTD or any other methodology to manage their time, which was good (or bad) because of something? That they had to hire one marketing people, one programmer, one designer… and after that they had to hire two more salesmen, etc? That they decided to share new API with their users, what had reduced the traffic on their website, but was a great decision, because of something?
I’m telling about something really interesting, something really useful, something what could help other young entrepreneurs. Your presentation was good, because you were talking about GTD. However most of the people already forgot about your speach, because nobody else said anything similar. Your speach simply dissapeared in tons of other useless speaches.