16 minutes is the average time from waiting till resolution on the phone.  

>24hrs is the average time for an email resolution.

What is the average wait time in a physical shop?  

Yesterday I went to a flower shop in Newtown, this shop called Abso-Blooming-Lutely in Newtown Wellington, I was in a moment of need.

There was a customer service rep in the shop who was talking to her friends and I was in a rush.  

I politely asked whether I could buy a bouquet of flowers within 15 minutes.  ”No, I would have to wrap them” the customer service person said, “you will have to wait your turn”.  I explained that I was in a bit of a hurry I needed to buy some flowers within 15 minutes and did not need anything custom, just a pre-made bunch.  ”not possible” was the answer.   I pointed to a pre-made bunch of flowers on display.  ”can I buy these ones please”?  ”No” was the answer, “they are display flowers”.

We live in such a connected and global economy where almost everybody has a voice. Every customer interaction addresses their moment of need.  Today my moment was not met by this florist.  So I am posting here using my voice.  This is an example of what happens to you when you are shit to a potential customer. Somebody writes a negative review of you.  Its out there forever.

Long story short, I went to another florist in the same street and brought some flowers within a minute of entering the store.  The second store was not a full florist either it was a convenience store that sold flowers!  I spent 10 minutes of back and forward with the first florist and 1 minute of instant service from the second.  

The second florist has won my business as he gave me what I wanted instantly by addressing my moment of need.  The first florist has lost a customer for life, I will NEVER go back there and this review will be here forever.  In my moment of need you were not there Abso-Blooming-Lutely.  

Thanks to the owner of this place for the help, you’ve got a customer for life.

So that begs the question:

do you have any customers or potential customers you have turned down in their moment of need?

In the iPhone space choosing a marketplace is essential to business success.  For example in the iPhone space it would not make sense to place a bet on iPhone in a marketplace like New Zealand.  The reason being that there is a very low number of iPhones in New Zealand, estimates are <40,000.

The app needs to appeal to a market that makes sense for your business.  That means getting outside the bubble of technology people you are in and seeing what real people want.  Hanging around with technical people can give you the illusion that iPhones are really popular in New Zealand.  They are not. Rarely anyone owns one.  Here are some approximate numbers based on my experience:

To get to the top of a category in the New Zealand App Store you need about 60 downloads a day, a pitiful amount that brings a great illusion of ‘success’ for being #1. 

To get to the top of the Australian market you need about a thousand downloads per day, a still small amount but a better overall marketplace of about a million iPhones.

To get to the top of a category in USA it takes tens of thousands of downloads a day with a marketplace of 50 million iPhones.

If you are building a mobile app for only the New Zealand market place and that app targets consumers I suggest you not build an iPhone app if you want a profitable business.  

Expand your offering to include overseas marketplaces, local will not be sufficient in the current market conditions.

A mobile website would suit more or an html 5 website that customizes itself based on a consumers handset model would be more suitable in the New Zealand marketplace.

There is a difference.  The ideas person has ideas but never qualifies them or executes.  The entrepreneur has ideas, qualifies them, identifies a market opportunity and executes.

Here lies a great fallacy of logic for the ideas person.  Because they do no execute the idea seems valuable alone.  To an Entrepreneur, the idea seems meaningless, its the execution that really counts.  That long road of execution from the forming of an idea and validation of a marketplace is exponential.

One of the most valuable discliplines of an entrepreneur is to stick with an idea, see it through market validation and execution without executing on ‘other opportunities’.  The good entrepreneur only executes on their BEST idea. A fallacy of an ideas person is to be executing on ‘many different things’ at a time.  It rarely works.