Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-02-28 06:11:24 - Graham Ellis
I sleep easily and went to bed early on Friday night. But a TV program had me attentive and delayed my slumbers for a while. Subject? The success of EBay; now with a turnover that beats many countries of the world and growing rapidly all the time.
I'm not a great "ebayer" myself. I have done it, nice system, admire them for what they do but I've only so many hours in the day. So the following may be a "duh - of COURSE" for any of you who's a regular 'bayer ... the way their success is generated by their feedback system. Very neat, and self motivating / self justifying / self-policing.
When we launched OpenTalk here, several years ago, to allow past trainees to get back and ask questions, we questioned our own sanity. Other training outfits typically don't have a "get back to the tutor" board that's open to all comers on the internet. But OpenTalk has worked and has worked well. It does call for a certain daily dedication - I've just answered two questions this morning before posting here, and I expect there may be others during the day. But it gives trainees and potential customers a valuable way to provide feedback, and to get back and ask a question too. And these things accumulate into a useful FAQ since it's public.
The Ebay program inspired me in other areas I was working on too. Our wiki based internal note and communication system now has a public face - our share system where visitors can browse the latest gossip and (in some areas) contribute too. And a new page encourages our customers to talk about us and link to us from their own sites.
I'm proud of our product and what we do, and happy to talk about it and discuss it in public. It's a great success in our niche market, and we enjoy working most through networking with friends, colleagues and contacts.