What inspired this idea?

Well it started with a simple business idea, or philosophy that it’s 10 times cheaper to retain a customer, than get a new one. Never is this more true than in the travel industry, a happy guest will return and tell there friends.

Ok….

Well a client and friend Nattily Schooling invited me and Sienna’s Mother to attend her “En Lighten” lecture on Branding and Customer service, I loved it and brought my staff to see the next one, then we had a number of day camps, brainstorming ways to improve customer service.

How did that work?

We all wrote good ideas on post it notes, stuck them on the whiteboard and voted for the best initiatives, the idea to send flowers to clients on there birthdays, or at least a card, was excellent.

Ok I see where the birthday gifts idea came in, but FaceBook?

Well the trouble with the idea was, it was hard to implement manually, not the least of which was knowing when clients birthdays were. So I decided to make it part of a CRM program I was designing, so the process could be automated.

CRM?

Customer Relationship Management Software, the original CRM page uploaded in February shows the functions quite clearly. http://www.s-world.biz/Early_Tourism_plans/Page_5_CRM.html

So why did you not work further on the idea in February?

Well it was one of many good ideas, but in itself it was not profitable, in fact it was a cost, as the idea was for companies to give there sales people a $2,000 or so allowance to spend on there clients. It was a fantastic branding idea, but far from a money spinner.

So what changed?

I was having dinner with my best friend Zenda, we were talking about new ideas for integrating S-World into FaceBook, and out it popped, a $30 gift times 500 Million users, made a ridiculous amount.

And then?

I made a mock up of the gift devise and showed “Andrew Lee” he was gob smacked, he said it’s the most amazing thing he’d ever seen, I went to the office showed Mike and he suggested the automated gifts section. Then we started work on the web demonstration.

And the charity and Good Causes part?

That was also worked out in February, besides being a good thing to do, it’s an extremely effective branding exercise.

Explain?

Lets say you had the choice of buying 2 identical products for the same price, if you knew company (a) gave half there profit to charity, your going to buy from company (a)

If this concept were to snowball it could change global economics, and become the norm for most trades.
It also makes a very powerful PR tool.