The disruptor gets disrupted

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 seven of Make Good Things Happen. Thank you for joining us on
this episode. We’ve got some meaty stuff to get through. We’re going to Start this
episode, Renee, with Shit Customer Service Stories. We both had stories,
but yours was personal. Mine was third hand about situations when people buy
something online or otherwise. When you return things now, it’s handed a little bit
differently to, I guess, what you and I would expect. Renee, I know it was the
result of me buying a gift for you from one of a, you know, from a department
store. And that gift, well, not for you, for your daughter. And that particular toy
that I purchased was, let’s say, faulty because, and I was there, it was definitely
not working as it should have been, as per consumer affairs requirements,
to that an item has to do what it says it’s going to do, fit for purpose, etc.
You returned this item saying it was a gift, you didn’t have the receipt, all of
the things that are very common when you’re managing refunds and returns at one of
these department stores. Renee, tell us what happened when you went to do this
particular thing, have this transaction? Well, I think the backstory from my side was
that we actually had this bath toy sitting on our kitchen bench for possibly a
month and you know how life admin stares you in the face until it just blends into
the background and then you just kind of get used to it. And it got to the point
where either myself or my partner said that thing has to go into the bin or just
get it dealt with because I’m sick of looking at it. We probably both said I knew
that I didn’t have the receipt or, you know, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to
return, but I thought, you know what, the alternative is me throwing it straight
into the bin. So I may as well go try. Anyway, so we took it in, I took it into
the shop. And as you said, gave my story, this was faulty. It was a gift,
I don’t have the receipt. Yada, yada, yada. And before I’d even finished the person
working at the counter said, Yep. No worries. I can give you a store. I store
credit. You just have to use it in store. I said, “Oh, that would be fantastic.
Thank you.” Like it was more than I expected. So I was, you know, chocolately
surprised. But as they were saying this, they take the box,
didn’t even look inside to validate my story. Without even turning to look over
their shoulder, flung the box into a gigantic trash can that was bad.
And I just, you know, I had the win of the celebration of being just told I was
about to get however many dollars in store credit immediately deflated by the thought
that, oh, but it’s still just ending up in the bin anyway. As you’re watching it,
frisbee and turnover at the box doing circles in the air towards this large dump of
unwanted products, no doubt. It did get me thinking though, we kind of know this
happens and I mean returning things has been around since products have been for
sale, I imagine in some capacity. I guess we all have this kind of like what we
don’t see, we just kind of ignore and if something doesn’t work or if something’s
not quite right and we return it, we kind of remove ourselves of any responsibility
or responsibility or care as to what happens next, not, I don’t mean that on
purpose. I mean, it’s just subconscious. It’s kind of like, it’s not my problem. And
companies, I suppose, like, if we’re talking about good customer service, they’re
generally also very much not putting any of that kind of behavior on show, because
for them, it’s about, they don’t want people to think that their product just ends
up in the trash. So it was very interesting that the way this was handled, I
imagine, if one of the CEOs or a big boss or something had been witnessing it,
that staff member might not have scored very well in their performance review, but
yeah. But I mean, it does come back to that very handmade business philosophy of
that make -do -and -mend, the idea that we should actually just try and repair things
or use things, even if they aren’t exactly what we needed them for. And to be
fair, even for this bath toy that was kindly gifted by you, we tried to repair it
ourselves. We tried a few different things and we did actually take some elements of
it and use those as it was. So yeah, I guess all in all, the rest was due to be
thrown out. But unfortunately, there wasn’t much more we could do about it unless I
had the ability to melt plastic and recycle it or something like that. – Yeah. – But
yeah, I think it is interesting how there’s just that reminder of what we can
actually do to try and reuse things that we have and repair them and keep them in
use where possible. And if you are a handmade business, again, this like comes back
to that unique selling point that you have, how do you manage your returns If
someone returns something that’s faulty but being used, are you just going to throw
it straight in the bin, or is there a way that you can actually repair it and
repurpose it and return it? Because that makes a great story to tell in your
marketing. I know some jewelers, I think, who melt things, and that’s the beauty of
when you’re using elements that can be reused like silver and gems and so on and
so forth. It’s almost a really amazing selling point to highlight if you think that
your target market would be interested to know what you do with items once they’re
returned, especially if they’re custom or personal. The shit customer service story
that happened, and I’ll just add this in in case there’s anything of value in there
too, but it’s a similar story that happened to my mum,
she purchased a major household appliance, I think, one that needs to be installed.
It was a fairly big investment from a website, having the items delivered,
etc., in her new home. And during the process had logged in,
it was a website she’d bought something from before, so she was all registered and
so on and so forth. goes through the process, chooses the items, goes through to
PayPal, make sure the address is correct in PayPal, etc, etc. away she goes.
And then she gets the text message saying, “You’re getting everything tomorrow.” She’s
like, “Wow, that’s way quicker than I anticipated.” And then she gets a message the
day after saying, “Delivered.” And she’s like, “No, they’re not.” Gets on the phone
or, you know, on the chats, finds out that what she’d done was left her original
address, her previous address, in her online profile, even though her PayPal address
had her updated address. But because she had updated it in PayPal, apparently that
is the agreement, is that that address overrides and that is the one that the
delivery people are supposed to use if you pay by PayPal. And that was really
interesting for me to know. That particular company said, “We have to refund you, we
have to do this, we have to do that.” But once again, with the items, they just
said, “The people who bought your old house, they can consider it a gift.” They
literally didn’t want to know about where these products went to.
And it wasn’t cheap stuff. It was big. It was mechanical. it had a lot of things
involved and electrical items. Anyway, my mum is resolving the issue by having a
relative of hers pick them up because she has been in touch, of course, with the
people who purchased the home that she used to live in. One of her relatives is
picking up the items and arranging delivery so that mum will have a backup set.
Yeah, otherwise they were going to be the problem if they were just, I mean, it’s
not like she’s down the road. It was just mum and I both like, hang on. So
they’re just making it someone else’s problem? Yeah, they might not have even wanted
them. And they, I mean, they probably didn’t need or want them. Precisely. Can I
just clarify, was the PayPal address the correct address, or that was the address
that your mum had an update? It was the correct address, which was why they
comfortably processed admitted fault, okay? responsibility, refunded the money,
sorted it all out. We’ll get you another set delivered as soon as possible. You
know, it did all the right things. And then mum was like, well, what happens with
the old stuff? And they did not seem to care. Again, I’m not going to mention who
that was, but I guess I’m just surprised that this is becoming very common place in
a world where we know we’re already creating too too much waste. Yeah. And that is
the thing, isn’t it? And then it just starts to make me question that my shopping
online at all, because you have to kind of manage a lot that goes on in that
whole process. Right. It’s less transparent than walking into a store or buying from
someone at a market. There’s a whole lot of other layers unseen that you can never
really be certain about. And I think this is what we’re learning as the internet
gets older. Ah, but hot tip for everyone to go and check their PayPal addresses
because pretty sure mine’s probably from three houses ago.
So that’s probably where all those missing items have gone.
Making good things happen. Yes, this is a good one because we love talking about
good things that have happened in our community. And this one is, I guess, it’s an
awesome story about a sad subject, Rachel Burke, who is a prolific mixed media
artist, storyteller, almost performer in the way that she presents her work, her
artwork, has recently had a solo exhibition that I had been following along the
journey of, for I think it was 12 months in the making, that she created all of
the pieces using donated. Here’s actually a good flip in our whole waste for
throwing things out story. Rachel Burke actually collected little tiny plastic melty
beads from her followers and from people from anywhere who wanted to donate them to
her and send them to her, and used them to create melty bead artworks. And if you
don’t know what a melty bead is, think back to, depending on your age I suppose,
think back to your childhood where you would get those little packets of beads with
like a little kind of plastic tray with spikes in it and you would put all the
beads in and create a artwork or create a design and then get your mum to iron it
with a bit of baking paper over the top. That’s I guess the melty bead artwork.
artwork. So yes, I was following along right to creating this work for the last 12
months, but then she announced the exhibition and the show and received quite a bit
of press for it because of how impressive the body of work is. But what I guess
was a surprise to me and I don’t know if Angela, it was the same for you, was
the subject matter of the work which was actually to do with her recurrent
miscarriages that she had been experiencing. So the work was actually something or
the process of making the artwork had actually been something that Rachel started
doing as almost like a form of art therapy or meditation or healing to help manage
the grief and the trauma of these reoccurring miscarriages that she’d been
experiencing, which yeah, like I said, I had no idea. So it really had quite a
strong impact on me when I saw the finished work and I only saw this online.
I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing this in real life because the show is in
Brisbane. But yeah, it’s worth having a look on Rachel Burke’s Instagram because
there’s quite a lot of information about it. But what I guess is really generous of
Rachel as well as part of this is she’s also shared some of that more behind the
scenes information about what it actually took to create A piece of work that size
and how often as makers it can feel a little daunting at the thought of creating a
really huge body of work and so we seek out the quick win the instant gratification
of something small and easy to achieve in a day or a sitting whereas this work was
so laborious and intensive that it took her 12 months more I don’t even know how
Honestly, to me, when I look at that work, I think that took you five years, it
is a lot of work. It is a lot. Yeah. It was a really interesting message about
just how you can say to yourself, this is what I want to achieve and I’m just
going to chip away at it and I’m going to just make it happen over time. I think
particularly when it comes to healing and being a creative person and needing to
have an outlet when you are in those healing times of your life and by that I
mean going through grief or being on the other side of a difficult challenging
traumatic event. The only way you can do it is in small grabs but you don’t have
the need to I guess see that it come to fruition, what you’re doing is you’re
planting a seed, you’re kind of like believing in future you when you’re chipping
away at something because you’re saying I know I’m going to be here until this is
finished. So that means I can take a little bit of a moment each day to do this
because I’m still here. I think that’s where the healing probably comes into it and
it allows you to go through a process, a journey from beginning to end, seeing
progress in a visual format that you know is also occurring inside of you in some
way. Change. Because not all healing is linear, obviously. It’s not necessarily like,
“Oh, wow, I’m halfway through this. Boy, do I feel awesome.” It’s about reminding
yourself that you’re capable in these little moments and that you can still, it’s
the first step, second step, third step. It’s when you commit yourself to being
healthy in 12 months time rather than four weeks, that allows you to do it in a
way that is sustainable. It allows you to do that in a way that you will succeed.
You are setting yourself up by success, essentially, when you chip away at something.
Yeah. And it also, it comes back to that really, the important cliche of one foot
in front of the other one step at a time which we often say to people who are
going through a hard time just you know put one foot in front of the other keep
going and so that kind of also applies to getting through a big major body of work
because I’m sure there were plenty of times particularly if a gust of wind came
through her studio and blew those melty the way that Rachel would want to have
given up on that. One of the dogs runs in, grabs her by one of the ankles as
she’s holding a bowl full of those and then she accidentally spills it on the
floor. Can you imagine? Those things are tiny and then I wonder what they feel like
to tread on.
But congratulations to Rachel for all of I think,
yeah, obviously, it’s a very impressive thing to have shared as in the,
like I say, the work itself. The vulnerability. Yeah, the vulnerability. And yeah, I
don’t know, it meant a lot to me to see that and to hear that story. And yeah,
I’m really grateful that Rachel was able to share that.
The segment that I will probably or want to do every episode, Grewin’ Light.
This week, I had the experience where what I’m calling the disruptor is disrupted.
I ordered a meal from a local franchise restaurant.

Yeah, you didn’t actually tell me where that burger was I’m sorry, I’m burying the
lead or whatever it’s called. I’ve just ruined your story.
It’s all right. I actually wasn’t going to name them.
I’m trying not to name things. Yeah, but it’s a good news story. It’s fine.
Well, it’s, I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but I guess they’re doing it, so
they have to own it. But okay. Yesterday, I ordered a meal from a local franchise
via a delivery app, one that is associated with being a subdivision of a disruptor,
shall we say, as opposed to a business that started as a standalone app. This was
their secondary, but possibly more popular offering. Anyway, I used that particular
app to buy my dinner from a local restaurant,
which is a small franchise chain, I guess, called Boss Burger. I enjoyed my meal a
lot. It came in packaging, however, which made me,
which peaked my interest. I will take a photo of it to show our lovely listeners.
Dear goodies, you’ll be able to see it in the show notes, Both pieces that were
part of the packaging of this particular burger and the fries that came with it had
messaging on there. The key messaging was ditch the third party apps,
save up to 35%, download our app order direct. In this kind of cool comic style
advertisement that was just on a part of their packaging and I purchased to eat my
dinner in. – It wasn’t a separate flyer. It’s actually on the packaging, yeah, ’cause
they’re probably not allowed to use a separate flyer. And by they, I mean anyone
using one of these delivery services. – It occurred to me that maybe that might be
contravening some kind of terms and conditions in and of itself. But what I was
most interested to see was that, you know, this is like one of those, I don’t
wanna say it, but it’s almost a full circle moment where we’re going back to the
old delivery model, but just using an app. I guess always bound to happen once
there was a democratisation of the technology available to businesses in terms of
apps. Now, apps are far more affordable for medium level businesses to create and
own in their own right, as opposed to necessarily being too small to therefore have
to rely on a third party to manage that aspect or the delivery aspect, I guess, of
your business. But yeah, I actually found it really interesting that they were bold
enough to just kind of put it on their packaging. But it also made me think about
it almost immediately. I thought, “Oh yeah, that’s not a bad idea. I’ll do that.”
And of course, what the additional thing that that would no doubt give them is much
more opportunity to market it directly to me because they’re now in my phone,
they’ve now got the potential to notify me, all sorts of things. – About 10 minutes
before dinner time, before cooking dinner time. – Then they also need to manage their
own drivers and things and you can’t, I just wonder how all this works. – Back in
the olden days, restaurants had their own delivery people. – Yeah, but then that’s
someone that’s just sitting there waiting for deliveries. – Like this was the thing,
it actually became unsustainable once you hit a certain size because you would have
one person. Now you have the ability to have a variety of people coming and going
that are being sourced from all of these different apps, locations, and it would be
a difficult choice. But anyway, it didn’t, all I’m saying is it worked. This is the
first time I’ve ordered from this place. And I went, oh, this is good food. And so
maybe I will have a download. Yeah, But I’ll thank you about it keep us posted if
you do and let us know how fast it takes to come with its own And how much I
really do say because up to 35 % was a shock to me I’m like so hang on not only
am I not paying service fees what you’re gonna charge me less No, because most food
businesses now add on the Roughly 20 to 30 percent Markup that they have to sorry
after, sorry, not Marko, the fees they now pass on. – Speaking of passing it on,
another, I don’t know why I didn’t talk about this before, ’cause it’s not really
shit customer service. It is actually more of a growing conversation, but my car
service the other day, they said, “Oh, if you’re paying cash, “you don’t have to
pay a surcharge.” It’s like, I don’t really carry wads of hundreds around with me
ever. So the paying of cash would be pretty rare when I’m getting my car serviced.
Anyway, 1 .1 % surcharge, which for me at that particular time meant nearly $10 in
surcharge space. That’s a good question. I don’t know. Yeah, if I had known this
was going to be brought up, I would have done my research on ACCC. But we can
always follow up. We can come back and talk about this in the future to do some
of your well -known consumer advocacy detective work. Well, there was something
recently around this because it was this big unspoken trend in businesses of all
kinds, but in particular cafes and small supermarkets, just adding that surcharge
without warning. So there was different, a new law or something was announced to say
that they must give you the heads up beforehand and that the surcharge was only
able to be x percentage of the total bill. Right. Of those two criteria,
I would consider myself warned. There was literally signage. You could tell they’d
been challenged about it by someone probably less understanding than me. But the
percentage I don’t know about. But it did tell me what the percentage would be on
the signage. It said, “Payment surcharge 1 .1 %,” and it showed you all of the card
type logos. These are etc. So I was forewarned,
but that didn’t make it feel more, I didn’t feel more comfortable about it. It was
more, I felt resigned to do it. Yeah. Maybe that was the other condition that if
you were going to have a surcharge, you had to offer alternative methods. And that’s
probably why they have to ask you if you want to pay cash. The funny part was
that a guy came up to pick his car up next to me and they said, “Oh, how are
you paying for that?” He said, “Cash and he rips.” About, you know,
just 20s. Yeah.
It was pretty funny because he counted it out and then someone else counted it out.
And I’m like, remember the old days when we knew how much cash was in our hand,
we didn’t have to keep counting it over and over again because I imagine you or I
caring about that back in our retail days. I bet you were the money counter at the
end of the shift. Oh, well, I mean, for my first job at McDonald’s, we had to get
our $100 notes checked over by a manager. You had to go and shine some little
light on it. We took money seriously. But yes, I was the money counter. – Knew it.
(upbeat music)
Before we go, I will very briefly mention show that I’ve only just started watching.
So I didn’t want to do too much research into it because for the first time in a
long time, I’m watching a show or a movie based on a book that I haven’t actually
read. And I don’t mean that to sound like I read everything. What I mean is I
would only ever see a film of a book I’ve read, I prefer to have read the book
first, put it that way. But I was, yeah, under pretty much all circumstances,
I want to be able to see it through my eyes first, before someone else inject
their vision into my head, you know, because it’s indelible at that point, I won’t
get my imagination back. Once I’ve seen it, someone else’s way. But in this
particular instance, I thought, You know what, I really want to watch this show.
I’ve already got 60 books in my to read file. I’m just going to watch this show
and maybe, and see what it’s like watching a show when I don’t know what’s
happening. And so I did therefore haven’t done a lot of research on it, but I am
absolutely bewitched by this program /story. It’s called “The Lost Flowers of Alice
Hart.” And yes, I am very late to the game. This is not a new discovery. It’s
just me bragging about something that I like. So it’s based on a book by Holly
Ringland. It’s an Australian production. It is an Amazon Prime production,
starring so many amazing women. Australian actresses such as Asher Keddie,
Leah Purcell, Sigourney Weaver is in it. It is full of strong female characters as
a story. It’s not easy subject matter. It is very much centred around stories of
domestic violence. But it is set in this incredible background of,
it feels like North East, New South Wales, South East Queensland,
semi -tropical, I would say, environment, but very bush focused. And I think it’s one
of those shows that you think about when you’re not watching it. It is beautiful to
look at. It features beautiful handcrafts and flowers. And so there’s a lot of
information, detail, metaphor, discussion of flowers in the whole story.
I’m just really like enchanted, like I’m enchanted by this story. It’s story. Like I
said, it’s not easy, but I want to know what’s going to happen. It’s very
interesting and deep and emotional. It’s extremely feminine in its strength and beauty
and all of those things. But yeah, as I said, I haven’t watched it all. I’ve only
just started three episodes in and I think it’s a total of eight. It is definitely
worth a watch. I haven’t done any other research about it because as I said, I
don’t want to spoil it for myself. – It all sounds pretty solid. Thanks so much for
listening to this episode of Make Good Things Happen, the podcast,
a podcast for makers in business. Please check out our website, makegoodthingshappen
.com .au ’cause we have loads of information on there and all of the show notes and
all the bits and pieces that we talked about, but also previous episodes, which if
this is the first time you’re listening, please go back and catch up on those. And
we’re looking forward to chatting with you next time. Thanks. Bye bye. 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.