Are you a digital vigilante?

Welcome to Make Good Things Happen, a podcast for makers in business presented to
you by Angela D’Alton and Renee Baker.
Welcome to episode two of the Make Good Things Happen podcast. I’m Angela and
joining me of course is Renee. Hi. Hello. To the goodies out there, thank you for
joining us on second episode. If we’re introducing a couple of new segments in this
episode, starting with Shit Customer Service. And no,
I don’t need any help in that title. We’re going to stick with that one. I was
going to say, I’m pretty happy with that one. The reason it’s become a segment is
because neither of us tolerate Shit Customer Service. When it’s bad,
we hate it so much that we can’t stop ranting about it for quite some time. I was
raised by two people in customer service and they taught me so many things about
it. And I know Renee’s also been kind of entrenched with the ethics and values of
good customer service from an early age as well due to your career. But this
particular thing that we wanted to talk about was the article that was recently
published on the ABC and we like to refer to credible sources of journalism where
possible when we’re talking about things on this podcast. And we know the ABC will
have fact -checked everything. This Sydney real estate that went viral due to an ad
that they placed online for an apartment, I believe it was in Eastern,
Sydney, where there were really strict conditions placed on the rental and the
specifics of Um, the, the specifics being that essentially you were paying $930 a
week there about to can’t remember exactly in rent to stay in a place that
essentially meant you were employed by the daycare centre underneath. So you’re paying
money to work for them. And, And the reason for that is because the conditions of
the rental property, the listing stated, so this is what was published by the real
estate agent on their website, was that you couldn’t enter the property between, I
think it was something like 8am and 5pm. You were required to maintenance on the
daycare, wiping over surfaces and cleaning up leaves and all of this nonsense and it
was that you couldn’t have guests over, what else? Yeah, I can’t remember the
original condition. The thing about this particular article is because it doesn’t,
that isn’t even the story. The story that we’re talking about is kind of the
precursor to the story. There is a link to it because they did refer back to it
because they also reported on the original story, some of them were, yeah, the
occupants were not to come and go during kindergarten hours. So they couldn’t, if
they were out, they were out. And if they were in, they couldn’t go that either
way during the opening hours of that particular childcare centre. Just the rent was
still $900 a week. Oh yeah, bear that in mind. As a result, the internet in all
of its mob mentality went digital in its vigilantism,
which is the new term that I learned reading this article. Digital vigilantism.
So it’s a phenomenon that this article says. It’s emerged in the wake of the
internet, leaving negative reviews or you know,
heaping on basically, piling on.
Unfortunately, I think what ended up happening is a lot of people that hadn’t even
seen the ad, but had only seen about it on other sources. And I think that’s where
I start going. There’s a few moments in this story where I think, “Oh, that could
have been handled better.” Well, I think, yeah. It’s just to work the situations
where no one did this the right way. The idea of choosing to leave a review for a
business that you haven’t actually engaged their services at any point, you’ve just
decided that you feel it’s your duty to let others know that you don’t think that
business is worth working with or you feel that that business warrants a one star
review. So this article is explicitly about this woman who has left a negative
review purely based on what she saw on social media and just talking about the ad
though. So I don’t know, is that an interaction with the business that you could
leave a review about? This is where I’m on the borderline. And that’s why I’m not
sure if it’s customers. This is why I’m going for it as a customer service story.
Because if I’m looking at an ad and I think that your treatment of me as a reader
of your advertisement, as a gesture of customer service, you then put all of these
weird regulations around it. And I’m undecided as to whether or not it’s okay to
leave review based on any interaction with your business. Probably not the right way
to go about it, but she went to town. That’s a good point because I took the
assumption that engaging in a business is using their services. But really, everything
we put forward about our businesses is open to, it’s a communication with our
audience. And so if that communication is met with, if it doesn’t feel right for
the person, then I guess they do have a place to comment and review. And that’s
where Google reviews are so tricky because what’s a Google review? It’s not a
product review. It’s not reviewing anything in particular. It’s just reviewing a brand
name that’s listed on the internet. So yeah, they could really say anything they
want. And that’s where to me that whole system is the can of worms that I will
never go into. It’s the Wild West in Google review land. It sort of means a little
bit to people who tend to treat them with some level of credibility. I don’t know
who they are. I’m certainly not one of them, but I know people do. I’m just not
sure if they hold the same value that we would expect
of a testimony against us. Anyway, this gets better. So then, yeah, the real estate
agent, what happened after that? Well, then in response to the reviews, the real
estate agent decided to, I don’t know how they came across it, maybe some sort of
digital stalking found personal information about the negative reviewers,
reviewees, and left them and shared their personal details in response to the review.
So left things like their ABN number or you suggested that they knew where they
worked, a little bit creepy. One of them contacted the partner of one of the
reviewers through a DM on LinkedIn saying, “Can you please tell your partner to
answer our email?” or something along those lines. Further into the article, they talk
about another ethical question there, which is, -Is distributing public information
wrong? No, probably not. It’s not illegal. Is using it that way considered harassment
or intimidation? Yes, I would say yes, it is. It’s kind of a way of saying, we’ve
looked you up, you know, we’ve done our research about you personally. I mean,
it’s just a bit. I don’t know. Yeah, just the way each step has unfolded is just
such every single point is an example of poor communications but also I I wonder
why it all falls back to the real estate agent in this case because they’re just
the messenger in many ways there’s a daycare involved and there’s a landlord involved
we don’t really hear about them but that’s I guess irrelevant or a story for
another time but it’s just interesting that that the responsibility falls on the real
estate agent as the communicator. Yeah, well, as the communicator,
but also the doxing is coming from them. Well, that is true. The doxing is coming
from them. Because of the negative reviews that have been left by someone who only
saw the ad. So it’s kind of, yeah, you had already said how,
you know, we sort of feel about Google reviews. But I think in this case, what
happened was there was this just momentum of people all getting together and thinking
that it was okay to review this business. But in what happened through that process
was they actually probably in some ways blew it out of proportion or misinterpreted
details. And that’s just as a result of hearing things in 30 second snippets on a
reel or on TikTok. And so at the end of the day, you’re actually jeopardising the
reputation of business based off a soundbite that you heard at some point in time.
Very interesting story and very interesting. The total years. And I mean, they talk
about that, how the real estate agent obviously, other than bad Google reviews, they
had a whole lot of other stuff happen and, you know, the internet’s vile, let’s
face it. So All I’m saying is, there were no winners here.
This was the most lose, lose, lose, lose situation.
Like no, the landlord, the childcare centre, people sharing it, people trying to sell
it. It’s just like everyone had a hard time from beginning to end. Well, iit got
taken down in the end, didn’t I? Yeah. So that is this episode about shit customer
service?
From Scroll To Cart. Now this segment is going to be appearing quite a bit as we
are both passionate online shoppers and we always have been. This segment is going
to cover everything in the journey that shoppers take from social media or
newsletters and through the world of the internet ends up in us buying something
online and all of the experiences and issues that can occur in that whole process.
And we’ve called it From Scroll to Cart, which I think is pretty good. Yeah. Yeah,
it’s tight. That’s tight. And I have a story for you this week on From Scroll to
Cart, which I’m actually not going to name names here. And that is because I feel
I don’t want to dox them, so to speak, but I had a recent example of shopping
online where I needed to buy some things, so it was an essential purchase.
And being someone that has a, well, almost a toddler now,
not a baby anymore, I do spend a lot of time on my phone at night doing admin
jobs like online shopping for essential items. And I was doing this recently and I
kept doing it on my phone, but I was running into user experience issues where I
couldn’t quite navigate the site as effectively as I needed to. Things were jamming.
I couldn’t access certain bits and pieces on the site. So I had two experiences
where I just abandoned a cart or I didn’t even quite get to cart. I don’t think
abandoned site. Oh, no, I must have got to cut because what I then received was a
follow up abandon car email a few days later or the next day, which I actually
received. Well, I was excited to receive it because I thought, great, I can pick
this up on my desktop exactly where I wanted to be to finish this purchase because
I couldn’t make it happen on my phone, unfortunately. And when I opened that email
and scrolled through that email, I had no means of actually completing the purchase
through that email. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with the band and card
emails, if you’re listening or how they work. But generally speaking, what you’re
trying to do is convert a sale that was about to happen or nearly happened.
And what you’re trying to do is make that as seamless as possible for for that
user when you’re trying to just essentially remove all barriers in that process. And
so what you want to do in order to remove those barriers is have links to the
products that the person is trying to buy, or a means for them to just add them
all to their cart and off they go. And unfortunately, that email did not do that.
I don’t even know what it did to be honest. It was there, it had the products,
They just weren’t clickable from memory. I think when you sent me the email so that
we could talk about it the button said complete my cart or Something along those
lines lines up and didn’t even link to anything It also had the images of I for
three or four items that you had in your cart when the abandoned men None of them
were linked So you couldn’t even look at the products, the logo also,
not linked. I’ll say you even tried harder than I did. I just went, oh, I’m
abandoning. In any case, I’m abandoning email. I think there is definitely an art to
the abandoned cart.
People are still getting it quite wrong. And I think what surprises me is that
quite established businesses are getting it wrong and businesses that often outsource
the management of their e -commerce solutions are getting it wrong. The thing that I
feel with abandoned carts is there is that such a delicate balance between annoying
someone making it an irritating communication as opposed to a useful one.
You pointed that out at the beginning actually you said you know it was well
received because the possibility of it being not well received based on timing,
based on messaging, based on what that person’s going through that day. Maybe they
just had an unexpected expense and they were really looking forward to buying that
thing. You’re reminding them that they can’t have it now? Yeah. I just mean things
like that. Totally. Yeah. Like I said, I’m a huge fan of it when, Yeah, in those
circumstances, and particularly, I mean, not knowing necessarily if this is even
possible in terms of tech, but if you can actually identify that you have a user
on their mobile abandoning cart, which is probably most people because most views and
now most website sessions are now done on mobile devices, people still prefer to do
that final sale on their desktop sometimes, or in the case of this website not
working properly, I had no choice. But yeah, I, it’s a shame. And so much so that
I was actually compelled to want to reach out to the company that I was shopping
from to offer our services. But then I thought, oh no, maybe I won’t,
but you never know. Maybe they’ll reach out to us after hearing this.
And they’re like, this sounds like something that was happening to our business.
Don’t we say complete my cart on our emails? Forget to link everything.
I did end up buying the products. Yeah, I did end up persevering and I did take
home the product, but I think I guess what compelled me to think they need help
was I wondered how many people wouldn’t actually bother and would give up at that
point because it was all too hard and maybe because they know that it’s somewhat of
an essential purchase for so many we persevere. But that wears thin over time and
as soon as the next best thing comes out that at the moment it’s my preferred
choice, it’s my preferred brand, that doesn’t mean it will be forever and as soon
as the next thing comes along I go, “Oh well, if they’re going to make my life
easier then I’ll take that option.” And that’s how you can get an edge of a
competitor. Yeah, and it’s important, As you pointed out, that being in demand is
not forever. – No. – Provide your customers, we’re talking about customer service
again, but it isn’t okay to just assume your customers will keep coming back if you
don’t respect them and give them a level of your own loyalty in return for theirs.
Thank you, that is an interesting story and that is So it’s version of from scroll
to cart and stay tuned. This is going to get juicy, this segment in the future. I
can feel it. Juicy.
So since the first episode, or during the first episode, we have renamed this
segment, “Gruen LITE.” This was previously called “Media and Culture.” This is
where Renee and I just talk about stuff that we’ve seen in the world of
communications out there and have a chat about it and also would like to hear your
opinion. So if you are interested in joining us in the conversation, please make
sure that you do head to our website, make good things happen .com .au. There will
be a slash podcast on the podcast button will be available on the website or is
available on the website, depending on when you’re listening to this.
Gruen LITE this week is talking about the PayPal rebrand, and in addition to
that, how I found out about it, which was so interesting to me, it came into my
Google search app suggestion articles.
I’m sure everybody gets those, you know, when you open the Google search app
underneath the search bar now is a variety of Algorithm -fed, you know,
articles that you might be interested in. And I’ve spent a lot of time hiding
things I don’t want and liking things that I do like. And it has given me a very
well -crafted little suggestion box of things to look at from time to time.
Nice. Yeah, this came up from this website that I absolutely love called Creative
Review. It’s a UK -based website. They are a branding and advertising journalism
website. It’s news and information about branding and marketing and communications,
and they recently wrote an article about the PayPal rebrand, which you may or may
not have seen. It’s super fresh. It’s literally only just been announced at the
recording of this podcast, so who knows where it’s going to be at by the time this
is uploaded. It’s quite dramatic, I would suggest as a rebrand. After reading this
article, I realised that the PayPal logo has, like you think of it as the two -tone
blue, actually three because of the Venn diagram where the two P’s cross over.
And what I learned was that that colour that they use in between the two P’s where
they cross over, the Venn is the colour that they’ve used in their offshoot business,
Venmo, which is short for Venmoney. So, the Venmo is that little instant payment
thing. They use it a lot in the US. I don’t really see it a lot here, but maybe
it’s just generationally something that I don’t access. It was such an interesting
breakdown. Go to the show notes for this, and I will definitely leave a link to
the article that I’m talking about. Read it on a mobile. As a piece of visual
communication on a mobile phone, enjoy reading through their breakdown of the PayPal
rebrand. It is beautiful. It is filled with these little five -second videos so that
you can see the examples of what they’re talking about in each of the paragraphs of
the article. So it’s interactive and accessible, entirely accessible, very simple to
read and understand and explains everything really, really well. Not only was I
thought it was interesting that the PayPal had a rebrand because that’s how I found
out about it, but also how enjoyable it was reading and I had to call on a mobile
phone. I don’t know if you felt the same. It wasn’t bad, but I hadn’t actually
seen that website before and it looks like they have a podcast too, so it might be
worth checking that one out as well. I was probably more just shocked by the PayPal
rebrand because I also hadn’t heard about it and thought it was weird that that was
sort of the first experience I had with it given we. I am a PayPal customer both
from a business and a personal perspective. I have emails, I have apps and yeah, I
hadn’t noticed. So I am either behind the polls as they may say and no longer have
my finger on it or it just wasn’t communicated effectively or I just needed to hear
it now for the first time. Or it’s not meant for us as consumers yet.
Yeah, it’s at media level. But aren’t we media level? We grew in light. We’re
light. Exactly. Maybe that’s what we’re talking about it now. Well, I’d just like
just to talk about that for a second. I did think It was interesting how there
were some comments about it feeling a bit similar to some of the other brands out
there, their competitor brands, I should say, like money -based, online payment -based,
paying -for -based business. It’s just, I mean, it’s so weird, isn’t it?
Because it is this like, blandification of brand with the very simplistic colours and
Fonts and shapes and it’s kind of like what everyone’s doing, but then I can see
why they have done it because of how dated that paypal logo is. The original the
older logo but then on the other hand it tells me that they’ve been around for so
long so there’s that trust in it and they’ve kind of stripped all out away with
this really basic simplistic branding for obviously for those of you that haven’t
seen it maybe you all have by now and it’s it’s very commonplace but it’s just
very simple and they’re very much pulling into a new colour palette that includes
black and white which if you know PayPal and I’m sure most of you do was very
much about the blues and a little bit of yellow in the past. So yeah and I think
using the fonts that they have it’s just very – No it’s their own font. Yeah okay.
You’ll see that in the article. It’s called PayPal pro. Yeah, okay. So that makes
sense. And it’s a derivative of Futura. Yeah, I just thought it was Futura. For
those of you in the graphic design world playing at home. I think what I found
interesting about it is, yes, I can see that they’re trying to make sure that
they’re relevant to younger people who are possibly more familiar with other forms of
payment. But I think it’s indicative of a greater issue or issue, a greater trend
that we’re seeing, which is the blandification of industry colours and fonts, we’re
kind of starting to say they must be, I don’t know, telco because of that colour
scheme or of that style of graphic where we’re being given a visual language,
a simplified visual language for category more and more. My ability to differentiate
between two brands in that vertical are harder and that’s almost like what they’re
doing on purpose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do see some of the treatments like the car,
the shopping bag with the logo and the new branding and the cards, the actual
physical card and I think they do look really good. I think it’ll pay off in the
long run. And I mean, good on them. It’s actually interesting to see how many
rebrands there seem to be happening at the moment and how many of them seem to be
using blue because we’ve been on the ABC website as well this evening. And again,
just another rebrand where everything’s kind of that. It’s almost those two actually,
you would feel like you’re almost in the same place. But I do appreciate some on
some level that simplification of it because if we’re talking again about
accessibility and design, then it is, yeah, I guess people are paying more attention
to what is accessible and that in a lot of cases is the more simple, the more
high contrast, the colours that you choose as well, like avoiding reds and pinks in
fonts and things like that. So yeah, I’m not against it. Well, that is “Gruen LITE” for this episode.
This week I, this is our segment where we talk about something we read, watched,
learned, listened to, worked on, or just a funny story. What I do want to say is
that when I listened back to our first episode, our previous episode, you didn’t get
a say in this segment, so I’m going to hand it to you. Oh, that’s all right. You
moved us by talking.
It’s a hard act to follow.
Now, this week, I realised that Guy Montgomery is going to be the future of
Australian television. I think I’ve been seeing it coming for a little while. You
know me, I like watching a lot of comedic -based programming, either stand -up comedy
through to the shows, the panel shows that seem to have a revolving door of the
Australian comedic industry. Have you been paying attention, Taskmaster? Thank God
you’re here and some of the panel shows that you often have on the ABC. The latest
of which is Guy Montgomerie’s Guy Montt Spelling Bee. He is a Kiwi based comedian.
He’s goofy as all get -outs. One of the funniest people that I can honestly say
I’ve ever seen.
He’s, I don’t say that lightly. I just find him so, I don’t know. He’s got that
sort of tone of voice and laid back and you think, “Oh, it’s probably just not
that bright.” And then he comes out, whether it’s Stand Up or whether he’s on Thank
God You’re Here doing improvisation. He’s so whip smart and right on vibe.
And it’s never, even though he’s being often cheeky and a little bit rude, it never
feels nasty in any way. He’s quite goofy and quite silly, but he hosts this show
and it’s co -hosted by Aaron Chen, who I just adore. Again,
from stand up, but also of course, as our beloved webmaster in Fisk.
He’s, again, I think the two of them are about, I mean, I know Aaron Chen spent
some time in the States recently to promote himself and raise his profile a little
bit in that community. The Spelling Bee program, when it first started, I mean, it
came out strong. It’s got this awesome retro feel to it and it’s very ’70s and
he’s purposefully wearing, you know, that kind of host, traditional game show host
kind of gear and the contestants are all comedians and it’s really just one large,
a show that’s just there to expose his wit. Honestly, very, very funny.
Well, yeah, You should probably just watch it. I actually had it recommended to me
through another podcast and then mentioned it to you and you’d thought you’d already
recommended it to me. I still haven’t even watched it, but here I am recommending
it to everyone. It’s got every single comedian you’ve ever heard of, Ursula Carlson,
Wil Anderson, Tom Ballard. Oh, Tim Minchin. Yeah, it’s got a whole bunch of
comedians and it’s great. It’s just great. Thanks for listening to Make Good Things
Happen. If you enjoyed this episode, why not write a review or share it with a
friend? For show notes and more, head to mgth .com .au.
This has been a D’Alton Baker Production.

NB: Transcripts are auto generated and then reviewed for accuracy but we can’t guarantee that they are exactly 100% correct.