Moment 5 - Ben Francis On How To Respond When Things Go Wrong
This episode explores building business resilience by learning from early challenges like hacks and website crashes. It highlights the importance of proactive planning, extreme customer care, and prioritizing authenticity and human connection over mere numbers for long-term success.
Deep Dive Analysis
6 Topic Outline
Early Business Challenges and Building Resilience
The Black Friday Website Crash Nightmare
Learning from Mistakes: Proactive Planning
The Power of Handwritten Apology Letters
Deep Personal Care for Customer Experience
Authenticity and Values Driving Long-Term Business Success
4 Key Concepts
Building Resilience
Resilience in business is created by overcoming initial significant challenges, which provides hindsight and prepares one for future setbacks. It involves moving past the initial belief that everything will go smoothly to understanding that issues are inevitable, leading to a more 'bulletproof' approach.
Blessings in Disguise
Significant business failures or crises, like a website crash or security breach, can paradoxically be beneficial. These events force a business to learn crucial lessons and implement preventative measures that might otherwise have been overlooked, leading to stronger operations in the long run.
Desensitization to Numbers
In online businesses, it's easy to view customer interactions as mere data points or numbers on a screen. This can lead to becoming desensitized to the fact that each number represents a human being, making it crucial to actively remember the human element behind every transaction.
Authenticity and Care in Business
Genuine care for customers and a commitment to core values, even in the face of significant operational failures, can profoundly impact a business's long-term trajectory. Actions like personalized apologies, though not immediately impacting the bottom line, foster loyalty and differentiate a brand.
5 Questions Answered
Resilience is developed by experiencing and overcoming early significant challenges, which provides valuable hindsight and teaches that not everything will go smoothly, leading to a more prepared and 'bulletproof' mindset for future issues.
Gymshark experienced a major crisis on Black Friday when their website crashed due to Magento issues, leading to hours of downtime, delayed orders, and significant customer frustration.
Following the Black Friday crash, Ben Francis personally wrote thousands of handwritten apology letters to affected customers, and the team worked exceptionally long shifts to resolve issues and ensure future events were meticulously planned with multiple contingency plans.
Ben Francis takes customer issues personally and believes it's crucial to remember that each online transaction represents a human being. He aims for every person to have a brilliant experience, even if they don't buy a product, by inspiring and positively affecting their lives through Gymshark events and values.
Authenticity and genuine care, consistently applied through customer touch points over time, can significantly alter a business's trajectory, fostering deep loyalty and differentiating it from competitors, even if individual acts of care don't immediately affect the bottom line.
5 Actionable Insights
1. Proactive Planning After Failures
After experiencing significant issues, implement comprehensive backup plans (Plan A, B, C, D) for all future major events, launches, or sales. This ensures all possible problems are covered well in advance, preventing a repeat of past mistakes caused by naivety.
2. Prioritize Core Values, Humanity
Operate your business with genuine care and authenticity, actively remembering that every ’number on a screen’ represents a human being. This human-centric approach, driven by strong values, is crucial for building long-term trust and shaping the business’s trajectory.
3. Go Above and Beyond for Customers
When customers experience issues, take extraordinary measures to apologize and make amends, such as personally writing thousands of handwritten letters or birthday cards with discounts. This level of personal care demonstrates deep commitment and reinforces your values, even if it doesn’t immediately affect the bottom line.
4. View Business Issues as Learning
Recognize that significant business problems, like cyberattacks or system failures, are ‘blessings in disguise’ and invaluable learning opportunities. These encounters force you to address vulnerabilities and develop robust solutions that you wouldn’t have learned otherwise.
5. Inspire Beyond Product Sales
Focus on creating positive impact and inspiring people through events and community engagement, even if it doesn’t directly lead to product purchases. This broader mission ensures your work positively affects lives and aligns with your core values, regardless of immediate sales.
4 Key Quotes
you get past that first piece of bullshit and then bullshit piece number two you've got the hindsight of yeah you there is that that thing when you first start out and you think everyone's a really good person and everything's going to go okay and then by the time you sort of I guess while you're a few years in you realize that nothing ever goes okay and there's always going to be people that want to knock you down a peg or two so you just have to sort of be aware of that and and you know and just make sure that you're sort of bulletproof and everything that you're doing is for the right reasons
Ben Francis
I thought every single thing that I took really personally and it did really upset me but we from that next Black Friday was the best Black Friday that we could ever imagine
Ben Francis
the problem with online is it's all numbers on a screen it's very easy to get lost in those numbers and it's very easy to become desensitized desensitized to the fact that each one of those numbers is a human being somewhere in the world
Ben Francis
if you if you imagine that care and that authenticity applied 10 times a day for five years on little touch points that'll come like in my mind that completely changes the trajectory of your business
Host