Free software was a Critical Non Essential

Morgan PR has written before about the marvellous concept of CNEs - Critical Non Essentials, a term coined by Australian dentist Paddi Lund - and we saw a brilliant one today after buying a new flash memory card for the camera.

It was back on Saturday that a card crashed mid photoshoot at the Little Jogs Nursery School. Naturally we carry spares so the day was not lost - but some great photos were!

I tried a few freeware programs to rescue the images to no avail and in the meantime ordered a new memory card, from SanDisk, via MyMemory. When it arrived it came with a free copy of RescuePRO, which swiftly recovered the photos! How delighted was I with that service? And all because of a CNE!

Paddi Lund says that Critical Non Essentials suggest that paying attention to detail in the Little Things surrounding the customer experience could have such a dramatic impact on the way customers feel about the business, and more importantly about the kind of stories they tell their friends.

He's not wrong!

I guess there is a certain irony that with the program I might not have bought a new memory card for the camera, but being unable to recover those photographs prompted paranoia about crashing cards, hence the new purchases.

Tales of the Unexpected

How can you delight your customers and get them recommending you to all their customers, friends and family?

This was the question addressed at the training session following the Faringdon Profit Club this morning, run by ActionCoach Sally Rainbow- Ockwell. Entitled 'Creating Raving Fans', the session covered how we can take a new look at the services we provide our customers and ensure we can provide both consistency and a 'wow' factor to what we do.

Sally also talked about Dr Paddi Lund, a dentist from Brisbane, Australia. Morgan PR heard Paddi speak a couple of months ago and are working on incorporating many of his philosophies into our business. His books are well worth a look for any business owner; they concentrate on the aspects of the business that often get overlooked, but can make such a difference when they are there.

The Blue Orchid and the Critical Non-Essentials

What a fabulous name that would be for a band? Thankfully it is also a suitably intriguing title for today’s blog post.

To clarify, The Blue Orchid is a Thai restaurant in Marlborough, Wiltshire, which we visited on Saturday evening with our good friends and talented entrepreneurs, Robin and Judy Winnett, and the Critical Non-Essentials (Or CNEs) are those little touches that while not essential to a business, can ultimately dictate its success or failure.

I wrote about Paddi Lund the guy who coined the concept of CNEs in a blog entry after a group of us went to see the Brisbane dentist live in Birmingham. Throw in the Brad Sugars event in Las Vegas which talked about the ‘common sense mistakes’ and it is little wonder that ever since it has been easy for Morgan PR to spot where businesses fall short on their CNEs.

Leaving aside the food, which was pretty good if rather small portions – not as good as the Siam Orchid in Andover but better than The Old Thai House in Newbury, which is still finding its feet. So it comes down to the supporting acts.

Disappointing was the intermittent topping up of wine. Now don’t think I’m not afraid to top up my own wine, I just feel that if someone starts then they should carry on; here it was done if someone thought to do it.

Poor to the point of complaint (if we were not frightfully British!) was the response when we asked for them to call us a taxi. It turns out they do not do that. It is ‘too difficult’. However, we were free to use their phone if we wanted to try! (In the event we walked out and picked up a taxi without any problem!).

Excellent was the way the same waiter who could not help with the taxi order positively shone with a unique flourish I’ve not seen before. Rather than pop the piping hot towelettes on the tables for us to pluck and juggle, he neatly tore each one open and presented them in turn. So we did not have to fiddle with those wrappers. How excellent was that?

Rather nice was the helping on with jackets as we left – imagine the impact of this quality departure if it had followed an entirely positive experience?

The restaurant has been ‘under new management since 12 July’, as a notice informed us, so maybe it too is finding its feet.

A Trip to See the Dentist

Rarely does a trip to the dentist instill a sense of anticipation, but a group of leading business entrepreneurs from West Berkshire headed north to Birmingham yesterday, to hear a dentist speak.


Okay, this was not just any dentist, this was Dr. Paddi Lund (pictured above with gold plated coffee machine he has in his surgery), the modestly well known business guru who only works part time, only accept patients by referral and charges more than anybody else.

It was rather like a Newbury Business Group field trip with Mark Arrowsmith from Snappy Snaps driving my wife and I, together with Robin Winnett from the Win-IT Consultancy and his newly appointed Operations Director Paul Flight.

It was six (largely unrelenting) hours of Paddi imparting his experience and in turn expertise, but there were some real gems liberally sprinkled through his account of how to do business.

I feel genuinely invested enough not to want to divulge too much of his wisdom, however one of the most interesting things I took away, which like so many was really quite obvious if you stopped and thought about it, was this:

Customers do not judge your expertise on areas they do not understand, but pay attention to the areas they do.

Like I say, kinda obvious, but how true? It neatly comes back to the 'Critical Non-Essentials' that Paddi cherishes - those little things customers take for granted, but taken away have a detrimental impact. It is the supporting cast of good manners, time keeping and so on that may have nothing to do with your core offering, but are essential for people to want it.

There were some clumsy errors for someone who preaches the value of the 'Critical Non-Essentials', We were given workbooks (incidentally, they'd only printed enough for pre-event tickets sales, so those who turned up on the day went without) that did not match the order of the slides he talked about, indeed he kept apologising for them being out of date, but they were labelled 2005. Ample time to update them! Sloppy!

But then this was not your ultra-polished sales pitch. To be honest Paddi honestly does not seem particularly bothered about selling his philosophy as much as he does sharing it. He simply did not push the table of books and other material at the back of the room, nor is his material available anywhere else other than a website in Australia. No Amazon and not even eBay, at least not in recent weeks.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about today though was lunch. Not that Robin bought it, but that it only cost £5.40 for fish and chips for five of us, from a little chippy a few streets away from the Aston Villa ground!