Confessions of a Mid-Life Entrepreneur

Dear Marketers: This is One of the Hidden Costs of Groupon

Please wait while we find a Pack Member to assist you...

You have been connected to Mindy L..

Mindy L.:  Hello Tom! Welcome to the Great Wolf Lodge! How may I help you today?

Mindy L.:  Good afternoon!

Tom Leung:  Hi there Mindy

Mindy L.:  Hello!

Tom Leung:  I'm hoping you can help me, I'm kind of miffed at the moment.

Mindy L.:  Sure, what can I help you with?

Tom Leung:  I have reservations at your Grand Mound location for today.

Mindy L.:  Great!

Tom Leung:  And my colleague at work is going today as well but apparently he paid 1/2 what I paid. I'm not asking for a refund but would like request a complimentary room upgrade.

Tom Leung:  :-(

Mindy L.:  At this time we only have our standard suites available for today, so we would not be able to offer a free upgrade.

Tom Leung:  Can u put us in a Grizzly

Mindy L.:  They are sold out for today.

Tom Leung:  oh man. that's a bummer. I hate groupon.

Mindy L.:  Is there anything else I may assist you with, Tom?

Tom Leung:  yes, i'd like to request a coupon for an upgrade next time i visit

Mindy L.:  You would have to request that at guest services when checking in.

Tom Leung:  i feel like i'm paying $400 and my friend is paying $200

Tom Leung:  that's just wrong.

Mindy L.:  Our rates change very quickly this time of year based on room availability. As you can see we are almost sold out for today, so that makes the rates much higher.

Tom Leung:  so what can you do for me next time we visit?

Tom Leung:  and you're partly sold out because you gave the rooms away for 1/2 price to a bunch of people and folks paying full freight like me get hosed.

Mindy L.:  Unfortunately, I am not able to honor any add on amenities or upgrades. You have to refer to guest services when you arrive at the lodge.

Tom Leung:  ok thx, please tell your supervisor i intend to blog about this and post to yelp as well. i'm not pleased.

Mindy L.:  All of our chats are monitored by supervisors at all times.

Mindy L.:  Thank you for visiting greatwolf.com Tom, have a Great Wolf day!

Thank you for visiting greatwolf.com! We hope to see you at the lodge!

Your session has ended. You may now close this window.

 

Update: An ABS reader from the ABS Facebook page rightly called out I was a bit condescending and unreasonably upset in talking to the customer service lady.  He's probably right in that this business didn't do anything wrong by charging people different prices and I could have scoured all the deals sites before booking directly from the business itself.  That said, here are some takeaways I'd suggest are worth considering:

 

1.  If you do mega-discounts on the same inventory on 3rd party sites like Groupon while charging direct customers double at the same time, just be aware that it could make the direct customers upset.  Arguably,  those direct customers (the ones who went to your website) might be the highest value ones.

 

2. While it may still make sense to do things like Groupon while charging direct customers higher prices, you may want to consider offering those direct customers something more (e.g. more flexible booking, complimentary services, etc.) which don't need to make the difference but numb the pain a bit more for missing on the great deal.

 

-Tom

Help Test a Minimally Viable Product

Hi Folks:

Practicing what I preach, we've been iterating on a new concept which allows you to one-click call any telephone number from Firefox for free.  Call any telephone number on any web page from browser, bridge to your mobile, or text the number for future reference.  It only works in Firefox now and requires latest version of Firefox.  Would love to get your feedback in the comments here or send it to me directly (tleung <AT> marchex dot com).

Check it out at www.LetsFirefly.com

Thanks,

Tom 

It's 2012, But I Still Like PRD's

I know in the age of agile, things like product requirements docs are a bit out of favor but I still like them -- at least to help solidify the PM's thinking and facillitate some tough discussions. It's often easier to flesh out non-obvious misalignment when you walk folks through a good PRD and some nice mocks than agreeing on the strategy in abstract.

So here are some things I like to see in a PRD. You don't have to write it as a long doc, heck you can even use it as a check list but if you can't answer these questions quickly, you probably haven't thought through what you're building as much as you need to.

• Who's the customer? What do they say, do, think, and feel?
• What problem are we trying to solve? Why is it a problem?
• What does success look like (this is often best written as a "press release")?
• How does it work (best written as a few paragraph user narrative like "jane decides she wants to grow her business...")
• What are the key use cases? What use cases are out of scope for now?
• What are the key capabilities and features we'd need to build to support that (stack ranked P0-P3)?
• What are the biggest open issues (and include stake in the ground for answers)?
• What does the experience look like (low-resolution sharpie sketches).
• What are the milestones? How are we gonna avoid this becoming a never ending project?
• What are the key metrics to measure and goal against? What do we think success will look like from a metrics point of view?

Happy shipping :-)

-Tom