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Ling is in the well! Q&A with Ling from lingscars.
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09-01-2010 6:20pm#1Ling from www.lingscars.com has accepted our invitation to be thrown down the proverbial well and answer the questions which we pose to her.
The Rules are as per usual:
1: Ling doesn't have to answer any question which she doesn't want to.
2: Insults etc will not be tolerated.
Thanks for doing this Ling!
Also for those who know nothing about her, Lings time in Dragons Den might be a good starting point.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtib4WZW_4MComments
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What does a average working day look like?
Are you physically active?
Yep, play ping pong, go to gym etc.
Start early at home (can work anywhere due to being online biz - for example I use laptop in bed (obviously I do not say I am naked in bed, nits), and just did 2 weeks work from China over Xmas, and did some when delayed 24hrs at Schipol) then get into office and continue, clear all overnight LINGO CRM and emails before 9am usually.
I will say, customers are classed as friends.
Then the day is a) loading car deals, b) chasing suppliers, c) dealing with customers (in any order). My server announces my customers going online and I know who is on my website if I already ID them... so customers get amazed that I respond to them predictively before they have asked their questions.
Pride myself on max 5 minute response times to questions and LINGO CRM posts. Time over past 4 working hours is displayed on website, and to customers, so they know how long to wait for a reply. Most wait online. emails get answered as fast if they are customers/new visitors/enquiries, but customers 99% of the time are in my LINGO CRM on webserver. Car quotes typically take 90 minutes as they all need much pedalling to shop around for prices/stock/availability/alternatives. Quote time over last 8 working hours is displayed. I measure the times over several past hours to even out the peaks and troughs.
Emails are in a completely shared box by all staff, so there are never unanswered emails. Nothing is ever private, everyone knows everything, even company bank balance etc. We dish them out using outlook coloured flags but they never leave the central email box (staff/me do not have private email boxes) and we use peer pressure to make sure they are 100% up to date. We share opinions on stuff. We all suggest funny responses etc. None stagnate except ones selling stuff and spammy ****. If one staff member goes for a pee, others will answer the messages/mails because we are never behind the curve.
If we have cleared everything and have a brief free minute, we kick customers off by having fun with them and provoking responses depending on what they work at etc. I am terrible, we tease customers rotten. They love it. As we have built a trust, and the chat is 100% private, even people like bank chairman and police chief inspectors let their hair down. Customers give themselves a "friendly name" or nickname, for instance a customer called Mark Hudson uses "Rock", so I always call them by that name. Breaks all the barriers. Fun. We have money bets on when and what a customer will respond with. Customers are all kids at heart and cars are emotional. On the other hand I do not hesitate to be very hard on customers if they start to get ars-ey or make up stuff. I slap them down, then rebuild it, just as you would with a child.
All day is orchestrating my staff, between 3 and 6 of us depending on the day, working on quotes, customers in process, new deals, renewals, suppliers and IT stuff (we do all IT on the fly, live, I have 3 part-time Sunderland Uni students who can do ANYTHING and enjoy being given impossible tasks. We regularly accidentally take the server down and have to scream for a quick reboot, while doing the impossible stuff and making stupid errors. All live.). Then all post is cleared by 6pm and sent at the sorting office by 7pm, all messages cleared. Never any unanswered in the day.
I answer all phone calls personally. Usually direct people back to website, frankly, but always have a small chat. Many people just want to reassure I exist as some don't believe it.
All actions are done over local sound socket from website server with selection of tunes and noises and speech, so my office is a never ending stream of aural clues to what is happening on my website. Website can never be ignored!. We all hear when a quote comes in, when a customer leaves a message or visits the site, when a car is proposed or delivered or an invoice is raised. All by sound. Often we work in verbal silence (nice) with sounds playing all around to let us know what is happening on the website. Hard to describe until you experience it. For instance a car proposal (personal) gets a Chinese Numa Numa verse, a proposal (business) gets a Chinese punk Internationale verse and an Invoice gets a Chinese National Anthem verse. A customer message gets a "ribbit", a proposal message gets a "oho" (from ICQ noises), and a quote enquiry gets a foghorn. Customers are announced by name by an Indian girl voice (LINGANI, hehe) when they arrive online.
Website traffic is a "click" each time a visitor lands, so when busy sounds like a Geiger counter, but if it goes silent we jump and say "check TOP, what's happened to the website, has it crashed?".
Must say the MD of BT Business stood in my office in amazement as we aurally managed 200 customers. He said he had never seen/heard anything like it and we have interest in developing the live website monitoring system with them now.
Often log in the evening to clear any customers urgent queries, it is fun as this is dealing with real, happy people who show amazement they get dealt with so fast.
Continual loop, every day, every day.
Do ad hoc on Sat and Sun, like now. It is quieter at the weekend, but for example, have had 10 car proposals today so far and 2135 website visitors (Sunday to 20:30, so it is always busy and active).
But, NEVER get a backlog. Most other car companies seem to work with a permanent backlog of emails, are slow, unresponsive and frankly, hard to deal with. Why people do that, I dunno. Easier to be ahead in my view.
Phew.0 -
Could you give a brief history of how it all started?
What were the biggest pitfalls you had to overcome?
What, if any, were the mistakes you made which you wouldn't if you could do it all again?
Do you have any regrets?
What car do you drive?
Easy Q first:
Audi TT Cab (Quattro has been lovely in the snow as have heated seats
Do you like the flag? Local council told me I need planning permission, hahahaha, National flags are outside planning permission. I got the Chinese Embassy to write to them and put them right. Council have gone all quiet, now. They don't want to pick a fight with PR China!))) Other people say I should fly a union jack courtesy flag, but I say I do not want a BNP flag, hahaha.
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Could you give a brief history of how it all started?
What were the biggest pitfalls you had to overcome?
What, if any, were the mistakes you made which you wouldn't if you could do it all again?
Do you have any regrets?
What car do you drive?
Mistakes: I would design the website properly (backend). That is the most limiting factor and we are completely re-writing the CRM "properly" to allow multiple css style sites, white label, affilliate and 3rd party involvement. The site at the moment is a house of cards, and as I say we crash it often, but... hell better than being a boring flat dead site We have work arounds on the work arounds on the clagged up work arounds, so anything we touch has knogk on effects which have been forgotten over the years. 300+ database tables. You get the idea. What a laugh, eh?
But, as the BT boss admitted, many of their own sites are the same and are clagged together, he said ebay is like that, all glued together as things have been added and changed, etc, and I guess most sites that do complicated stuff are the same. If a website is perfect, I think it is not doing much. A bit like MS Windows, the pile of sh1t is built on so much old sh1t it just MUST break from time to time. Have you added a font lately? That is still Windows 3.1 dialogue box, in XP. For example.0 -
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Why do I write all this, you lot are in Free State? You cannot buy my cars. Who cares, I want more ideas, so I welcome any discussion. Please suggest brilliant ideas.
Emigration is at a high here Ling, so you never know, we might just be customers in the future.
Also we are a republic now
I'd imagine there will be a lot more quesitons for you tomorrow as a lot of people use this site for in work browsing.0 -
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Heres an idea Ling.
Why not set up some television cameras in your office and do a kind of Osbournes Show, call it the Ling Show:D. I'd watch it.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall in your office.
I'd say its amazing to watch you work.
Webcams, not TV cams. 3 of them here: Cams
However, you miss the noises
Not sure if it is The Osbornes, hahaha.
I was offered to take part in "Naked Office" where there is some pretext and the result is everyone ends up taking their clothes off, on Virgin, but... I declined. Shame, eh? Hahaha!0 -
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Hi Ling,
Thanks for taking the time to answer questions
When I first saw your website it looked like some sort a scam to me - just because your design theory goes against what many people believe to be *good* website design (i.e. clear and simple, ease of use, etc...). After looking into it a bit more I can clearly see that you run a tight operation with no messing about. This time yesterday I had never heard of Lings Cars, and now I'm sure I'll remember it for quite some time - and for no reason other than your website is so different from many/most other businesses.
I saw the comments here where many people think your website has a bad design...my question is, off the top of your head, are there any websites in particular that you think are poorly designed?
Thanks 0 -
Hi Ling,
Thanks for taking the time to answer questions
cut slavering rubbish, hahaha
I saw the comments here where many people think your website has a bad design...my question is, off the top of your head, are there any websites in particular that you think are poorly designed?
Thanks
Hmmm, well, for me, I just sigh when I see yet another website who uses grey 10px writing (always too much of it). Usually generic "mac" design. Which is always based on grey which is the new beige. Or black backgrounds annoy me.
Things which are boring annoy me. I want to be entertained. I want to say to someone in the office "look at this, hahaha". I want nice big pictures and not be left hanging for the basic information.
I want to know who runs the website, it annoys me when companies say "we" all the time, but don't say who "we" are. Understandable with massive companies, but smaller companies I think - who the hell runs it, a kid in a bedroom or a proper business?
I don't mind things if they are not perfect, if you can see what they are trying to achieve - but I hate websites that have glaring formatting errors or ones that are plainly broken in FireFox, or ones that the owner clearly never uses.0 -
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nice1franko wrote: »Also, not a question but a statement... this is brilliant: http://www.lingscars.com/werthers.php
Currently, Age Concern are complaining about it. I am winding them up to give me a formal letter of complaint. Then, that will make a news story I think it is fun, they think it is ageist and patronising/insulting to old people.
If you want a Chinese Werther's fill in the form.0 -
Q1: What are your 3 best/worst business qualities?
Q2: What do you think is going to be the next big thing online?
Q3: If I didnt know who you were and came across your website I would probably think on a quick first look that it looks fake or some sort of advertising/spam website and would probably move on. Do you think that without the exposure on Dragons Den your business would have taken off like it has and be doing so well?
Q4: If you could start again tomorrow what would you do differently?
aaaaagh multiple questions!
1. I am quite naive, I open my gob and I don't maximise profit on cars. I treat all customers alike, I don't rip people off. I decide margin and stick to it. I could make more money if I was more opportunistic, but I like being nice to customers and will choose to save them cash instead.
2. Live website visitor interaction - I am building this product
3. DD was good, and gives some credibility. Gave me a boost. I thought it was great to get 5,000 visitors a day (day after DD). But now, I often manage to do that midweek, with a bit of tickling. But now, I am past the critical mass. From 100k visitors a month, business cannot fail to happen. Just need to make people react when visiting my site and keep it up the top of Google. Of course the basic service has to be good, and work.
4. Build the website properly in a css framework and a more considered database structure. Doing that at the moment.0 -
More multiple questions - keeping you on your toes :P
Q1: For someone looking to start out in business online right now what would you suggest as a good place to start, and what type of business for example importing from China or offering a service etc. With the recession etc there are loads of threads here every week with people looking for advice that are starting out.
Q2: Have you any other businesses or areas you want to get into down the line outside of the car trade?
Q3: Who is your favourite Dragon from the Den?
Q4: 3 people in business you most admire?
Q5: Whats your favourite flavour of ice cream? 0 -
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More multiple questions - keeping you on your toes :P
Q1: For someone looking to start out in business online right now what would you suggest as a good place to start, and what type of business for example importing from China or offering a service etc. With the recession etc there are loads of threads here every week with people looking for advice that are starting out.
Q2: Have you any other businesses or areas you want to get into down the line outside of the car trade?
Q3: Who is your favourite Dragon from the Den?
Q4: 3 people in business you most admire?
Q5: Whats your favourite flavour of ice cream?
FFS!
1. Dunno. If I knew I would start it. Data is always a good business.
2. Yep, software.
3. Pshhhhh stupid question. It is a TV programme. All rubbish. I do not know them.
4. O'Leary, Seth Godin, ummm... I like people who hammer away to make stuff work.
5. Stupid question again.0 -
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You know their business backgrounds etc, surely you have a preference of one of them over the others. I for example find Peter Jones to be very shrewd and great on the show.
The last question was a fun question, not every question in the Q&A sessions has to be serious and revolve around business.
Must be my free stater sense of humour..:rolleyes:
Hahaha, well, I do not know them as people. All we see is TV personas. So who knows?
Well, my sense of humour is different Hahahah, ice cream choice isn't a big thing for me, you know Chinese don't do puddings very well. Have a Werthers! 0 -
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Did you start lingscars.com through your own financing or through bank loans etc? Did your business plan include your "Wacky" website design, promotional methods etc? Do you employ someone to make changes to the website or have you learned to do all this yourself?
I did not need financing, it did not need money to start, as I had all the basic stuff (computer, isdn line back in 2000), just needed loads of hard work.
Website just developed, no one planned it. Even now, I added the Werther's on a whim as I saw individual wrapped ones in China and brought 17.5kg back for a laugh.
All just on a whim. That's what makes it such fun. Drives my IT mad.
I do most basic webpage stuff myself or with hubby Jon. I do things like ani gifs and layout. Basically involves filling all white space with flashing stuff Hahaha! To pull complicated stuff together and maitain all the massive LINGO CRM you never see, we have 3 part-time ubergeeks from Sunderland Uni who love to be set impossible tasks. Begins: "could we", and "what if" and we end up with a 3 month project.
Have done loads of stuff that has not been used but looked like a good idea at the time, or needs integrating into something else. Visitor trolling is one, with chatty divs. Have spent months of wasted time on stuff. It is like advertising, 50% is wasted, but not sure which 50%.
Some stuff starts as one thing, ends up as totally another. Everything takes 3 times as long as planned.0 -
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