I manage to catch a TV program on how a small business owner create a different for their business among a common niche. When the business owner mention that her customers help out in some of her daily chores, one of the expert shot out that this is a Web 2.0 concept. This really start me thinking about the possibility of using Web 2.0 on a traditional business or have this always been there for small business?
I came from a family that has always run small business. My grandfather ran a farm, a import export type. Every few months pigs and chicken are shipped in and kept on the farm and sold off 1 or 2 months later. My father and his bothers all ran small business, from photo developing, cleaning to raw supplies. In fact, I am the only one who have been a employee for 3 generations. Now I ran a small software development business now. In traditional business, especially in Asia, its the boss knows best and knows everything, he tells his employee what to do and sometimes the customer as well. Most successful business have come to term that they need input from their customers constantly in order to provide quality service or product. How do we get to that?
Lets take an example of a restaurant. Lets make its specific, its a Chinese, that serves top quality food and have excellence services, highly trained and qualified staffs. The targeted customer are professional and high social status individual, who takes friends and customers for lunch dinners. Strangely, the business is good only on certain days and really bad on certain days. How would you help a business to do well on these days that are not doing well without compromising what the restaurant is already doing.
What we have in web 2.0?
Participation and communication. How do we implement this in an offline world? Feedbacks, yes most restaurant does feedback, but how about putting up comments on a notice board at the entrances or somewhere visible? Contest, how about a cooking contest. Customers takes lesson directly from the chef and serves their own cooking to their friends. Customer reviews. When a new dish is launch, very common in Chinese restaurants, invite a few regulars for food tasting. They will be ask o write a review and display somewhere with their bio and photos.
These are just some ways I have though of. Do you have other uniques ideas? Lets hear it!
