It’s called Zebkey and it works by making a nine-digit ’Zebkey’ part of a business card or by putting it on the footer on an email. People visit www.Zebkey.com, type in the zebkey and all address details are ready to save into their computer’s address book.
Printers have the opportunity to purchase the zebkey service for themselves at half price for three months from June 1. Licences to sell Zebkeys are also available. A 10 percent commission will be offered to printers for any lead that eventuates into a sale.
Zebkey general manager Maurice Dubey says it’s a simple idea that has been waiting to happen and the plan is for Zebkey to become an everyday business tool like emailing and faxing.
He and his business partner Frank Wiseman have been developing the idea for the past year and they now have the patent application processes in place, which are allowing them to move to the next stage of taking their product to the world.
Maurice Dubey says smart companies that adopt the system will find there is a far higher likelihood of people keeping their contact details and therefore getting the business at the time of purchase.
“But it’s more than that. Some studies show that if companies can lift their customer retention by 5 per cent they can add up to 50 per cent to their operating profit. The idea behind using Zebkey is that it can help stop businesses from just losing customers.
“The reality is that the workforce is becoming increasingly mobile, people change jobs and roles and the process of updating contacts is often done poorly or not done at all. We’ve all rung the rep who is no longer there or the valuable contact who has changed jobs and discovered, to our disappointment, that we haven’t been notified.
“Some bigger organisations do run customer relationship programmes but these inevitably require a lot of nursing and upkeep and are usually very expensive. Once Zebkey becomes standard practice, the maintenance of customer address books will become easier with reciprocal benefits to all parties.
“The beauty of Zebkey is that its such an easy process that people will use it. Not everyone in business has the time to work at keeping contact details up to date, or the discipline to input every detail of every business card they get into their computer system.”
He says Zebkey is ideally suited to selling and service organisations and for professional firms like lawyers, consultants and accountants ( in fact any organisation that wants to efficiently keep in touch with its customers or members.
Groups adopting Zebkey will do so on a small annual subscription that is based on the number of staff who would require zebkeys.
Dubey and Wiseman are expecting big things of their new operations. They are negotiating with agents in the United States and Britain and the plan is that there will soon be an on-the-ground sales force in these countries signing-up customers.
“What we have is a totally global service that has a low-cost internet backbone and the potential to become an international standard,” says Dubey.
“This product is not limited to any specific supply chains or industry type. Our market is anyone who has a business card and that’s a market of some 50 million people if you just look at the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
“We think we have an idea that’s set to fly. The great thing is that others are starting to think so too. We have been fortunate in gaining two Industry New Zealand Enterprise Awards and are now poised to begin the process of marketing and commercialising what we think will be the next industry standard in communication.”
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