Tim Johnson’s Blog

So I’ve temporarily relocated to the great city of Vancouver while SAFI performs some market research here in Canada. Consequently, I have never spent so much time initiating contact with potential suppliers, clients, partners, etc via an online contact form on their website.  Right now, on an average daily basis I must be using a contact form around 5-10 times per day. As I said, I’ve never used contact forms so much.

Website contact forms are a great tool, they do appeal to a very specific type of user, but that type of user is fast becoming one of the largest user bases. The beauty of a contact form is that they are highly convenient and often narrow down your type of enquiry to ensure that the enquiry goes to the most appropriate person straight away. The user can simply answer a few questions, input their question and press submit. BANG. That’s it, set and forget. Now, just wait for the company to get back to you.

And wait.

Wait a little longer.

Hmmm, maybe my phone is off the hook? Maybe my spam filter has filtered out their response…

In a very simple and crude experiment I measured the speed of responses from contact forms and recorded how many contact forms actually worked correctly. I found that the average response time (ignoring the companies that did not get back to me at all) was 2 days. I also found that 40%, YES forty percent of the contact forms did not work – they either resulted in an error or I received a timeout message.

Let me tell you now, if I use a contact form on a website, I am using it because I expect a relatively speedy response and I expect my enquiry to be seen or heard. I don’t believe that I am that unique – surely my expectations would be “average”?  If you have a website contact form, here are some tips:

• Run weekly checks to ensure your contact form is working. Nothing fancy, just input a couple of test enquiries at the end of each week!
• Forward contact form enquiries to GROUPS (if you have the luxury of more than one staff member that is) rather than one individual – share the load and create some accountability.
• Consider asking more information from your website visitor, try to extract as much information as you can – this will help you supply a more relevant and informed response. (Don’t overload the user with 100s of fields though!)
• Consider directing your contact forms enquiries to cell phones (using simple email or SMS), a speedy response is one of the most important aspects of gaining new business.
• If you can’t regularly check the enquiries that are coming in via a contact form, perhaps you should remove it from your website.
• If you’re getting too much spam via your contact form, add a image validation field, or use some method to stop spam bots using your contact form.

If you you’re not sure how to handle the technical aspects of my above suggestions, contact your website developer or perhaps your hosting company, they should be able to assist you. Or, you could of course contact SAFI – we’d only be too happy to help – and of course you can use our contact form to ask us a question!

Ok, I could have thought of a more interesting title. I am open to suggestions.

So, as one of the 6 people who actually read my last blog titled “something quite safi”, you will  know that I was leading in to explain why I felt SAFI Technologies as a company had managed to become a successful business. You may remember that the reasons I alluded to were: “having the right people, the right culture and a darn good attitude” - or in other words, “having safi people, a safi culture and a darn safi attitude”.

So, what does it mean to have the “right” people? Well, in my mind there are a number of things. Though at this point, I’d just like to highlight that my business experience  has been me starting a business from scratch and growing it from 1 person to where it is now, which is 12 I think (I stopped counting at 10… sorry Joel, that doesn’t make you any less of an employee). So, if your business is roughly like what mine is or has been like, this blog may be of use,  if not, well… you still might like to read.

From the day you start your business, to the many years that follow, the chances are the business is going to be a reflection of you - you the individual, you the human, YOU in all your strengths and weaknesses. When it comes to staffing and recruitment I believe there are a few things to consider, and believe it or not, its just as much about YOU as it is the successful recruit.

• You need staff that will challenge you. One of the most common mistakes I believe is made in the recruitment process is the employer hiring “like” individuals. That is, replicas of themselves. Going down this track creates massive limitations for your company and will result in minimal personal growth for you as a boss, minimal growth for your staff, and a very narrow minded company. Get staff who will challenge YOU. A daunting thought perhaps, and perhaps not always the easiest road, but if you and the employee who challenges you are worth your weight in gold, you will learn from each other and respect each other.
• You need staff that you can work with. (I hear sniggering from the 3 people who will read this blog) Of course you say! Of course you need staff you can work with - that goes without saying. Well, yes, I agree - it far too often goes without saying, which is why I am saying it. My advice here is to KNOW yourself, and, know your staff. Know what they like, how they work, in what circumstances they excel, where they struggle etc. Knowing yourself and your staff in this way will enable to you consciously seek employees who will compliment your team. Note, this does not conflict with my previous point - you still need staff who will challenge you - you just need to ensure there is a balance.
• You need to be able to have fun with your staff. At SAFI we have a very diverse team, both in culture and personality - and we all have great fun at work! Our diversity does not stop fun, neither do the timber partitions between us. Having fun in the workplace is one of the most important ingredients to a productive company. Fun of course comes in many shapes and sizes, and will vary in interpretation from employee to employee, BUT, fun in whatever form it takes is CRUCIAL. At SAFI fun generally takes the form of mockery (not sure if that is politically correct) of one another (aren’t we weird creations) but is normally at Toby’s expense. Know your staff, and get to know your new recruit, know who considers what fun, then encourage it and turn it into productivity.
• You need staff who can do the job. The key to this point is knowing what “the job” is.  Don’t rely on qualifications, don’t rely on letters after names and don’t rely on which university it was they went to. Those things may be important, but don’t rely on them, those things are not insurance policies. The employee character is the most important aspect of the prospective employee. Granted, this is not easy to see in a 3 stage interview process, and some people are better at “picking winners” than others, but, look at their experience, talk with their references, know what questions to ask, etc, etc. Joel Spolsky would probably summarise this point as someone who is “smart and gets things done“.

I could list bullet point after bullet point, but I won’t. So don’t shoot me for missing your favourite recruitment tip! The ones above are the ones that I have repeatedly seen are ingredients for building a successful team - within our own company and within some notable other ones. Notice how many of the points relate directly to you as the employer?

Ok, enough from me, feel free to send comments and feedback (makes me look popular). Look for part 3 in the coming weeks/years/century.

We have had a number of emails forwarded to us from our customers regarding an email that they have received from an apparent Asian domain name registrar.  The email is very polite and sounds official and professional. It starts out informing the recipient that the Asian registrar has received a request from another company asking to register a list of domain names that include the company name of the recipient. They claim that they are protecting the recipient from having another company register these domain names and that they are offering the recipient an opportunity to register the domains.

The email is a fraud.  If you want to see a sample of one of these emails, check the footer of this blog post.

We had so many of our customer complain about this, we decided to do some investigations ourselves, along with our US and NZ based lawyers. As a test, we opened the lines of communication with the sender of the email to see what would happen next. When we initiated contact with them, they proceeded to quote us on how much it would cost to have the domain names registered. They then provided us with the necessary order forms to complete the transaction - and it wasn’t cheap! Our lawyers performed some investigations and spoke with ICANN and NZs DNC- neither recognised the “registrar” as valid.

When we informed the “registrar” that SAFI Technologies would be taking action against them, the registrar responded as though we had hurt their feelings!  The “registrar” also kept in contact via phone with us, which makes it seem more valid since they are willing to make voice contact - don’t be fooled.

The “registrar” ceased contact with us once they realised lawyers were chasing them from the US and from NZ.

So, if you have been contacted by these people, I suggest you simply don’t respond to them. Though it might be a good idea to check whether some of the domain names are worth registering! Just don’t register them through this fraudulent “registrar”, because you’ll never get them!

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. A sample of the email is as follows:

Dear CEO,
We are Asia Domain Name Registration Limited, which mainly deal with domain name registration and dispute
internationally. We have something important need to confirm with your company.

On the Jan 31, 2008, we received an application formally. One company named ” Creation International Holdings Ltd ” wanted to register following Domain names:
yourcompany.com.cn
yourcompany.net.cn
yourcompany.org.cn
yourcompany.com.hk
yourcompany.hk
yourcompany.tw
yourcompany.com.tw
yourcompany.asia

Internet brand keyword: yourcompany
through our body.

After our initial examination, we found that the keywords and domain names applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it. If you do not know this company, we doubt that they have other aims to buy these domain names. Now we have not finished the registration of Creation International Holdings Ltd company yet, in order to deal with this issue better, Please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible

Best Regards,
Tony Liang
________________________________________

Asia Domain Name Registration Limited
Tel:00852-3059-3057
Fax:00852-3059-3080
Email: tony.liang@ytym.org
Web: http://www.asiadnr.org

Take a look at one of our latest press releases here: SAFI Technologies reverses acquisition trend

Also, feel free to see what the Christchurch Press had to say about it here: SAFI leads way with booming business

sa-fi pronouced [sar-fee], adjective. “a swahili word meaning cool, classy, fresh, fancy..” You get the picture.

Since SAFI Technologies Ltd started in early 2004, I as a founding Director have never ceased to be amazed at how exciting life in SAFI is and has been. We now find ourselves in 2008, four years on from our humble beginnings, and in that time SAFI has grown to a staff of 10 and has managed to have sustained revenue growth of at minimum 200% every year. Further to that, we can now boast a rather impressive client list, I wonder how many 4yr old start ups can claim to have foreign governments, defence forces, major nationwide retailers, local government and multi-national corporates (I’ll stop now…) on their client portfolio? Well we can. At this point I’m going to assume your time is as precious as mine, so I won’t even get into how exciting and how successful our US expansion is going…

I’m sure you’ve all heard the statistics about business startups, especially that one about how 90% of businesses fail within the first 2 years. As I’m sure you can imagine, I’ve had a fair number of people ask me how SAFI has managed to be in the 10% who make it through that fatal period, in fact, I think I probably get asked that question on a weekly basis. The funny thing is, depending on my state of mind I probably give a different answer every time!! However, there is one version of my answer that I appear to give more often than any other.

Now I really am no guru, I’ve got no letters after my name and I don’t have an MBA. So, the only wisdom I can offer (if you can call it that) is purely based on experience and perhaps what my father would like to call inherited business intuition.

So anyway, how did we manage to be in that elusive 10%? Well I can tell you now its through no one particular thing, but if there is one thing that is a crucial requisite it is this… having the right people, the right culture and a darn good attitude, or perhaps I should say… having safi people, a safi company culture and a darn safi attitude. (Ok, so that’s possibly not just one thing strictly speaking).

So there, I’ve baited you and I’ve set the scene for an exciting (?) blog, but guess what, I’ve just realised that this blog is long enough as it is. Personally I tend to lose concentration reading blogs that are any longer than a screen length, regardless of your screen resolution, I think its just the act of having to scroll that informs my limited attention span that I’ve read enough and there couldn’t possibly be anything more thats worthwhile reading.

So, soon to come will be blogs on having safi people, a safi culture and a safi attitude.

Ok, so now I officially blog.

And here I am, I have finally created my first blog and I have little idea as to what one should write on their first blog…  Nevermind, many more blogs shall follow, so please feel free to keep an eye on this site over the coming months and years!

I have of course also dragged some of my staff into the blogging trend, the chances are their blogs will be infinitely more interesting and helpful than mine, so perhaps you’d better keep a close eye on theirs also!

David Wong - Senior Developer

Toby Behan - Hosting Manager (NZ)

John Miller - Senior Systems Engineer