Category Archives: Operations

Make your business run more effectively

Doing Business on the Edge of a Cliff?

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I recently went to a potential client’s site and have lots of lessons to share with you. This is an $8 million-per-year (revenue) business with the potential for much higher. However, they also are doing business on the edge of a steep cliff and don’t even know it. Yet.

I’m telling you this, so that you don’t have to make the same mistakes they have. Additionally, I see these kinds of mistakes in businesses all the time. You really don’t want your business to be one of them.

Every one of the items below is easily the subject of an post… or a chapter in a book. And we might cover them further in the future. However, let this post be a wake-up call for you and your business. You don’t have to make the same mistakes this business has.

Pinching pennies
Most of the time, I see businesses err on either spending too much money or too little. An under-capitalized business will tend to spend too little. An over-capitalized business will spend too much. But a business that starts on a shoestring and later makes good, tends to keep the “frugal” culture they had to adopt in the early days.

They tend to look for the cheapest solution and apply “Band-Aids” to any problems or needs, instead of the best solution. In the end, you get what you pay for.

Organic growth
Organic growth can be good or it can be bad. I often recommend a small business to stick with organic growth as it lets them implement solid foundations… if they have the foresight to do so.

But, sometimes, organic growth can be unplanned and chaotic growth. This happens when pursuing business without forethought as to how to serve the new-found business. If you are trying to grow your business based on every opportunity that you chance upon, you will be having unplanned and chaotic growth.

Your business can grow into a well-tended yard (organically) or into a weedy field (also organic.)

Owner Abdication
The owner/leader working in the business instead of on the business… and fostering a culture of same.

Why do I call this Owner Abdication? Because the owner is the leader of the business. A major function of the owner is to plan for the future of the business, oversee that the plans are carried out, and make whatever adjustments are required. Whenever the owner gets down in the trenches and does the work of the employees, he is abdicating his position as leader.

The sad part is that once the owner does this, no one else can be the leader, either. He has modeled how the company is supposed to run. And this ends up as a company with a bunch of workers but no leader.

Systems Lack
If a business doesn’t have systems, that means that every day is a new day… and each customer encounter, each business transaction, each decision is customized for the moment. It might be based on experience, but if the experience is missing… or flawed, then the transaction is also flawed.

When you encounter a business with poor service, employee (and owner) overwhelm, and/or “a crisis a minute” drama, you have discovered a business with poor (or missing) systems.

Process Ignorance
When you ignore the importance of process, you are risking everything on key people staying healthy and available, not to mention creating an inconsistent business.

Process is related to systems. A process is how you do something, and in what order, so that you get repeatable results. Processes can contribute to systems. A process can be as simple as how you answer the phone (before the third ring, announcing the company name, your name, and asking how you may be of service.) It can also be very complex.

If you don’t have processes for all the routine things in your business, every day is a new day and each interaction requires employee thought and decision (and, possibly, guidance.) Additionally, there will be no consistency in your business.

A corollary to this is to have processes, but not have them documented. When a new person joins the team, they have to learn everything by osmosis. Additionally, if a key person leaves, the process knowledge may walk out the door with them. Documenting the process is cheap insurance.

And more….
There are more mistakes this particular business is making, but discussing them may not be a good value for you at this time.

Please note that this business is enjoying a level of success — both financial success as well as growth. These are good things. But the success is taking a serious toll on the employees and on the owners. Further, their business is in a precarious spot as a result. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

It doesn’t have to be that way for your business, either. The sooner you put the remedies in place for your business, the sooner you can enjoy success, growth, and increased profitability, yourself.


Concerned that your business is making these mistakes, too? Want an experienced eye to look it over and help you decide what to do about it? Contact me. The business you save may be your own.


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Should Customer Service Be the Top Priority?

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We’ve all heard so much about good customer service. And we all like to think we deliver it. At the same time, we don’t think most other companies and people deliver good service. Is the solution to make customer service the top priority in business? Let’s explore that.

In previous posts we have looked at the components of customer service — attitude, ability, and structure (Systems and Feedback, so far.) We have seen that Structure has several components.

You will remember that the 4 parts in structure are:
1. Systems (that promote or prevent customer focus)
2. Feedback
3. Priorities
4. Employee empowerment

In the last post, we covered Feedback and how you need a feedback mechanism in place (as well as making sure you pay attention to the feedback.) Today we’ll address Priorities. Next time we’ll visit on Employee Empowerment.

Priorities
One of the things that all businesses struggle with is Priorities. There are so many things competing for priority. Depending on which business book or guru you listen to the top priority should be customers… or mission… or profits… or marketing and sales… or cost control… or having fun… or living lightly on the planet and it’s resources, or….

What’s the right answer? There are many right answers, depending on the business. Every business will have it’s own uniqueness, challenges, and opportunities. This combination means that what is right for one business will be wrong for the next. And this is why running a business is challenging.

Because of this (many different and competing needs), customer service should be a priority, not the priority.

But you and I both know businesses that don’t even have customer service on the priority list. As a result, when it comes to hard decisions, customer service gets the boot. Oh, they don’t deliberately say “let’s treat the customer like dirt.” But, by making it a non-priority, that is what will happen.

What does it mean to make the customer a priority?
“Wait a minute. Didn’t we talk about this under Attitude?”

Yes and no. We spoke about attitude as a foundational aspect of good customer service. But, today, we are talking about customer service as a part of the structure of the business.

If we don’t make customer service part of the structure of the business, then we are leaving customer service up to the attitude of the individual employee (or the mood of the boss). In other words, we make it random, rather than deliberate.

By making the customer (and good service to him/her) a priority, we put into place structure that makes it easier to provide good service — in fact, it makes it almost automatic. You see, we will start to build customer service into our processes and our systems. We will instill it in our employees. We will start to look for it everywhere.

The result?
The result is that it becomes easy to provide good customer service, even when you (or your employee) don’t feel like it. Read that again, because that is huge. Think about it: making good customer service happen, independent of mood, feelings, and whether or not you got enough sleep last night. That happens because you built it into the structure of your business.

And when you and your employees do have an attitude of customer service, then the service can transcend from good to great. (Good to Great. That would be a great title for a book. <wink>)

When customer service as a priority is built into the structure, it no longer has to be fought about, traded-off, or rationalized. It will be seen as one of roads leading to profit, and expansion, and growth — in other words, a no-brainer.

Your turn. Have you made customer service a priority in your business? One of the top priorities? If so, then have you taken the next step to make sure it is built in to all of your structure? Go ahead. Brag about it. (Use the comments.) Or you can confess your shortcomings here, too. Either way, we can all learn from it.


Looked at your priorities and found them lacking? Unsure of what to do about it… or maybe just not convinced that it is that important. Contact me and let’s talk about it. Together, we can find a road forward for you.


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Can You Hear Me Now? Feedback and Customer Service

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In previous posts (here, here, here, and here) we have looked at the components of customer service — attitude, ability, and structure (though, to be fair, we only started structure in the previous post.) Just as Ability has several components, we saw last week that Structure, also has several components.

You will remember that the 4 parts in structure are:
1. Systems (that promote or prevent customer focus)
2. Feedback
3. Priorities
4. Employee empowerment

In the previous post, we covered Systems and how they affect your customer service. We discovered that a poorly crafted system can really hinder customer service, even though it wasn’t intended that way. We also saw how a well-crafted system could enhance customer service.

Now, let’s take a look at Feedback.

Feedback
All organisms are governed by feedback and, as a result, so are businesses. If we get positive feedback, we keep doing what whatever it is that we are doing. If we get negative feedback, we begin to change what we are doing. If we get no feedback, we will respond according to what we want to believe. (This latter is reflected in the saying, “no news is good news” or “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”)

How does this apply to customer service? Suppose a customer tells you, “Thank you for stocking this product. Everyone else makes it a special order and I have to wait for days when I need it. I’ll be back for more.” Does that feedback make you feel good and encourage you to do more of the same (stocking the product)? Of course it does.

And if a customer tells you, “I never order from your website. It’s just too confusing”, does that cause you to reexamine your website and whether you are losing others sales from it? Most likely.

But what if both of the above cases are accurate reflections of customer thinking, but they NEVER TELL YOU? Will you improve your service? Unlikely.

As a business owner, you probably don’t need to be sold on the value of feedback from your customers. However, are your employees just as sold? If you haven’t made the case to them on the importance of soliciting feedback from the customers, you may be missing valuable feedback.

What’s the take-away from this? You need to make sure that you have a feedback mechanism in place (here’s where a good system would come in handy) AND that you pay attention to the feedback you get from it. (It doesn’t do any good to collect feedback if you ignore it.)

(By the way, structure can get in the way here, too. Make sure it is EASY for customers to give you their feedback — both in knowing that you want it and in providing it.)

Next time, we’ll talk about Priorities and how they can affect customer service.

Speaking of feedback, we would love some. Use the comments and tell us about your experiences with feedback and customer service.

What about your business? Do you have system in place to regularly and easily get feedback from your customers? If not, maybe we should talk. Together, I’ll bet we can create something that is both cost effective as well as friendly.


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Is Good Service In Your System?

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In recent posts we have covered how attitude and ability help determine whether or not you are providing good customer service.

(Remember that customer service in not just a problem a customer has after the sale. It is also encountered in how you turn a prospect into a customer, how you treat the customer as they are buying, as well as after they have bought. Some people might not consider a prospect as a “customer” until after they have bought from you, but “how you do anything is how you do everything”. Your prospective customers will be judging your after-the-sale service by your pre-sale service. So, in that sense, it is all one big continuum of customer service.)

There is one more component to customer service for us to discuss… and that is structure.

Structure covers the way the business is set up and the systems that are in place that help or hinder customer service. These could be things that make it easy to look up a customer’s information or buying history; policies that make it easy or difficult to return a product or invoke a warranty; systems that make it easy (or difficult) to make an exception for a customer. Systems have a surprising impact on how successful the business is… including in customer service.

Just as we have seen that there are several components to good customer service, we have seen that each component has several parts to it. This is also true for structure and it’s contribution to customer service.

There are 4 parts in structure.

1. Systems (that promote or prevent customer focus)
2. Feedback
3. Priorities
4. Employee empowerment


We’ll cover Systems today and address the other three in the next post(s).

Systems
A system can either promote or prevent customer service.

How can a system do that? Take, for example, a phone routing and monitoring system for a help desk. Suppose it has metrics to measure how many calls per hour that a help desk person handles… and the rewards/bonuses/promotions go to the ones who handle the most calls. (This is a very common policy and system among help desks, by the way.) It seems like a good thing, right? The more calls you handle, the more customers get helped and their wait time on hold is lower. So this is good customer service, right?

Nope. It doesn’t take long for a help desk person to realize that their quality of help doesn’t matter. In fact, taking time to listen to the customer and help find the best answer for them will get the help desk person in trouble. He’s taking longer per call than the others. There must be something wrong with him. He quickly learns that call volume is what is required.

If you were that help desk person, how long would it take you to start suggesting to the customer on the other end that they need to reboot (for a computer help desk) and then call back, knowing that you are unlikely to get their call… and if you do, that it still improves your metrics? And what other short cuts will a creative person like yourself find to make sure that your work is seen in the best light by the manager/supervisor/owner?

I have seen it over and over again at one help desk after another. (And have been on the receiving end of them, over and over again, too.)

And, all that is unintended. The originators of the policy and the metrics thought they were doing a good thing.

By contrast, I have encountered some systems that encourage good customer service practices. (Disney and AT&T Wireless come to mind.) They have systems that monitor your call for help so that a supervisor can periodically check up on how the employee is doing. They also have a survey at the end of the call asking you to rate your satisfaction with the help desk employee and how well they helped you (and if they answered your question or resolved your problem.) Additionally, the policy will require them to ask if there is anything else you need from them (or if there are other ways they can help you.) And, then, serve you in that area if you do.

When you get rated on the quality of your help and the satisfaction of the customer, you have an incentive to do what it takes to provide good customer service.

You may not have a help desk, but I guarantee that you have systems in place that are preventing the best customer service. Those systems may be manual (they may even be policies), but whether manual or automated, whether you are a solo entrepreneur or a business with 500 employees, I haven’t seen a business yet that didn’t have some systems that were hindering customer service.

(Right here is where I remind you that in the opening post of this series I pointed out that customer service is only part of being in business — a major part, but only a part. If you can’t profit from your transactions with the customer, then you will go out of business. For the long haul, you can only provide the level of service that will keep you profitable. As in most of life and business, this is a balancing act.)

There are lots of other systems in your business that either promote or prevent good customer service. I encourage you to take a look at your business and identify one that is preventing (or at least discouraging) good customer service and change it.

What are your customer service challenges? Share them with us (use the comments) and tell us how you addressed them (or didn’t). We love a good story.


Having problems identifying the bad systems in your business? Maybe it’s because you are too close to it. (Or because you designed it… and can’t see it from another perspective.) Having someone like me take a look at your business may be just what you need. Contact me and let’s talk about it. Of course, you can always just keep on as you have been… disappointing your customers. It’s up to you.

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Customer Service – Are You Able?

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In previous posts (here and here), we have begun to look at customer service and what it means to a business… and what it takes to achieve good (even outstanding) customer service.

So far, we have identified 3 areas that must be addressed.

1. Attitude
2. Ability
3. Structure


Last week we looked at attitude in more depth.

Even if you have a great attitude and desire to please the customer and give him/her great service, you may still come up short. (By the way, when I say “you”, I am also talking about your employees and everyone involved in your business.)

What could cause us to come up short, even when we want to give great customer service?

Ability.

What do I mean?

Ability is about both the business as a whole as well as the individual employees (just as attitude was.)

A person (company) can have the best attitude in the world, with a desire to really serve the customer, but if he doesn’t have the necessary skills, he will fail. Suppose you are on the computer help desk, but you don’t know the first thing about computers. Even though you really want to help the customer who calls, how helpful will you be? (How would you like to be the customer who got you on the phone? Actually, I’ve come pretty close to this situation calling a help desk… you may have, too. But let’s not go there.)

The necessary skills include people skills, product knowledge, computer skills (unless the business is run totally without computers — and if that’s the case, they will soon be out of business), organizational skills, and financial skills. (It’s true that a business can outsource some of the skills — to a certain degree — but a core level of skills is still necessary within the business if it wants to be a success.)

If you ever have to say to a customer (and mean it) “I’d like to help, but…”, then you are demonstrating that you have the attitude, but not the ability.

Sometimes the inability to help comes from structural reasons rather than personal inability. For instance, when the organization has set things up so that the employee is not given the authority (ability within the job) to satisfy the customer. He may know exactly what needs to be done, exactly how to do it, and want to do it, but doesn’t have the ability because the company won’t allow him to.

I encountered this at my stay at Walt Disney World resort. When I arrived, I discovered that they had assigned me to a room that was pretty much the opposite of what I requested and needed. The desk clerk wanted to help me, but the system wouldn’t let him. He did all that he could but I had to wait a day to get to someone who had the power to correct the situation. We’ll talk more about this aspect in the post on structure’s contribution to customer service.

Leaving structure aside, there are three areas within a person that can affect their ability to perform good customer service.

Those areas are:

  1. Strengths
  2. Training
  3. Personality

Strengths
You may want to provide good service to your customer, but if your strengths don’t run in the areas that the customer needs, then you won’t prove very useful. The example I used earlier about no computer skills on a help desk is an extreme example of this.

Quite likely, what you will encounter is not a complete lack of skill in a required area, as much as not enough strength in a required area. For instance, I once had an employee that could understand the technical reasons behind a problem and could correct them. However, while he spoke English (just like the customer), he could not speak on their level and left them feeling frustrated, confused, and thinking that the problem could not be fixed. That is not good customer service. (We addressed the issue by having a “bridge” person act as an interpreter between the employee and the customer. This increased customer satisfaction because they understood the situation and that the employee would fix it.)

What strengths are needed for good customer service? It depends on the customer, the product or service, the industry, and the problem. That’s why there are no automatic formulas for good customer service. (Nor are there any automated systems that can provide good customer service in all situations and scenarios… just limited cases.)

Training
Sometimes the impediment is a lack of knowledge (not skill) for a particular case. For instance, you might be computer literate, but never have worked a Point of Sale (POS) cash register. (These are computers with a cash drawer attached.) You might be able to figure it out on your own through trial and error. Or your intuition. But, would you want to be the customer waiting as you fumble through the exploration of the POS register?

Until you are trained on how to use that particular one, you may have all the desire in the world to help the customer, but still be unable to ring up their sale. Not good customer service.

(There may also be an issue with the software being difficult to use… or quirky… but that is also a structural issue.)

I, myself, have lost customers (from the phone line, not from the business) when I was trying to transfer them to another person because I didn’t have a firm enough grasp of the phone system. (Do you wait for the other party to answer before you hang up, or do you hang up after you hear it ring? One system did it one way and another did it the opposite.) After a couple of times of that, I studied out what the proper procedure was and pinned a note over the phone so I could get it right every time.

It is important when trying to improve your customer service that you pay attention to the training issues so that you and your employees know how to address your customers’ issues and find solutions rather than create more problems for them.

Personality
If you have a personality that is task driven, impatient, and eager to “do something, even if it’s wrong”, you will have a problem performing some types of customer service. Imagine that personality listening on the phone to a problem from a customer who has difficulty describing what their issue is. He will be so impatient to find the problem and fix it, that he is likely to assume the wrong problem. Which, of course, leads to him trying to implement the wrong solution. Meanwhile the customer on the phone first wants to be heard.

On the other hand, for a customer who knows what the problem is and wants a specific, quick solution, this “take charge” personality type may be just what is needed.

(There is no one personality type that is right for all the possible customer service issues that arise. This is why appropriate diversity in a workforce is beneficial.)

As you can see, excelling at customer service can be hard because there are so many different things that must come together for it to work right. In the next post, we’ll examine how the “system” may help or hinder you customer service.

In the meantime, take a look at your business. Do you have the right people with the right skills in the right places doing the right jobs? If you do, then you have a third of the customer service problem licked. If you don’t, then I encourage you to figure out how to get the right combination so that your customers brag on you.

Have a take on customer service we missed? Share it with us in the comments. (Don’t be shy.)


Need help figuring out what isn’t right… or how to fix it? That’s something that I do really well. Go ahead and contact me and let’s talk about it. Who knows, you might just be the next company that Inc. Magazine spotlights for your excellent customer service.

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