Customer service is what makes us different

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Jon Stow

 

More than just the figures

Choices

Our prospects need to differentiate between a huge number of offerings. How do they know to choose us? For small businesses it is often going to be through recommendation; referrals. How do we get those referrals? It can only be by delivering great service and by perceived as being that bit better than the rest. We need to give our customers a nice warm feeling inside.

The wrong way

Recently there has been a very amusing thread on an accountancy forum where the querist has apparently been reluctant to pick up the clients’ books and records or to deliver them back. He thinks it is an expensive exercise to do that and wants to charge the clients for doing it.

What a strange attitude! Surely a client would look forward to a visit? It would make her or him feel that they matter to the accountant and that the accountant is interested in them. They may have questions they wish to ask.

At the same time the accountant will gain more background to the business that may be relevant in understanding the client and preparing the accounts. There may be an opportunity to sell more services. If the client has that nice warm feeling they will be happy to pay for a good service. If they just get their accounts prepared on a production line they will get price sensitive and shop around for the cheapest option. Alternatively they will go to someone else who will give them that nice warm feeling. We need to have a relationship with those who matter to our businesses, and they are the people who provide our income.

Accidents

Of course no matter what we do, things may go wrong, but it is how we then deal with them that makes all the difference. Accidents will happen. We may have to swallow our pride or suppress our emotions.

Play the ball, not the person

I do a little customer service work for one of my clients. Recently they had a complaint from a customer about something which had gone wrong, and really it was one of those accidents. My client could not have prevented it but it was within our power to fix it. By “our” I mean as in my client and me acting on my client’s behalf.

The strange thing was that I had been on the wrong end of some very bad customer service meted out by this individual on behalf of her large corporate employer. Nevertheless I was “all sweetness and light” and dealt with the problem. I wrote to her and advised her. I asked her to let me know if there was anything else I could do. She did not thank me or even reply, but I guess that was no surprise. We do have to stay professional and keep our emotions out of it.

What we do for our customers and clients should give them a warm and fuzzy feeling and give them reason to recommend us. The value of what we provide is our USP, isn’t it?

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Running your business the right way

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Jon Stow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of us are very serious about our businesses. Many people work very hard but do not use their time well. It is so easy to get involved in matters which don’t make money.

  • Some people try to do all the admin themselves; all that form filling on-line and off-line.
  • Some people using marketing methods which experience should tell them isn’t working, but other people still do it.
  • Some people offer the same product or service as everyone else in their line, and wonder why they never increase their market share.

It’s just like those people in the gym who waste their time or do exercises which address their fitness needs.

In a small business:

  • You have to be different.
  • You have to be memorable
  • You need to show your personality or personal brand because your customers buy you.
  • You have to stop wasting your time.

I am a business fitness trainer. It ‘s a great advantage to have someone from outside looking in. A mentor, an extra brain, someone who will get their hands dirty on what needs to be done and who can work alongside you when you need it.

Can you count on help and advice when you need it? It’s all very well ploughing your own furrow, but sometimes you need someone to tell you that you are on the straight and narrow. Who do you ask?

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Playing at business

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Jon Stow

I don’t think I am unique in believing that I should take seriously every activity which I undertake. This is whether I do it for fun or for money. I don’t pretend to be an expert in my hobbies. I am going back to photography, which was always one of my favourite activities, and I intend go “retro” too in using my old cameras with those things you put in them called films. Remember those? But I have to be serious about this otherwise I am not going to get results, or not the results I want.

Most people go to the gym to get fit or stay fit. Most people work hard too, whatever age or physical condition they are in. Some people don’t go to the gym to be fit, though. They go for the social aspect. That is a need for many of course, and it’s fine as long as they understand that is why they are going.

Some gym customers think they are going to the gym to be fit, but actually don’t do anything. They may look nice in their latest gear (there is a fashion aspect to gym-frequenting, at least for some) but if you spend most of the time lying on an exercise mat with your friend texting on your phone and sharing photos, you are not going to achieve much. You are going through the motions by going to the gym, but you aren’t doing anything to achieve your object if that object is fitness.

Some people play at business.  Being in business is serious, though. We need to make money. You need to make money. That’s the point. It’s not something you can pick up and drop.

It is not always easy to keep focus. To keep our eye to the ball. That is to be the most efficient in doing what we do in the best way we can.

I enjoy helping clients see past the distractions to making their businesses work better and improving their profits.

Do you get distracted, or are you the fittest person in the business gym? How do you stay focussed?

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Don’t compare

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Jon Stow

No one can have missed the incessant TV adverts for car insurance and car insurance comparison websites. They are nearly all very annoying and I think insult my intelligence (no snide comments, please).

Discounting the one-in-twelve of British motorists who go uninsured and therefore have no interest in any car insurance, the advertisers are all competing just for market share. Apart from the occasional special offer for new customers, none of them claims to be cheaper. All they are really offering is a tool or means to find cheaper insurance, but essentially they are all offering the same service. It is not about being better or giving the customer more satisfaction. They are trying to get an idea stuck in the viewer’s mind. That idea is not insurance but a ghastly confused cartoon character or an irritating unfunny faux-opera singer or Russian immigrant animal from the Kalahari. The latter is the only theme I ever liked and that has palled by now.

The same premise of just advertising to get a share of a fixed or static market also applies to feminine hygiene products and it used to apply to cigarette advertising when that was allowed. In other words such things are either needed by a section of the population or in the case of cigarettes the target was those who didn’t need them but couldn’t give up.

I accept that there is a measure of personal choice in a way of doing things in the same way that I prefer a particular type of toothbrush. Others might make a different choice. In the end, though, all that is on offer is a mass of relatively indistinguishable products.

Small business owners cannot compete with large suppliers. Why should we? Large suppliers cannot give personal service. They cannot go the extra mile. They cannot think about individual customers or cater for their needs. They cannot tailor the service to the customer.

You and I don’t need to compete with our large competitors. We don’t need to compete with each other because what we are doing is selling ourselves with personal branding. My clients buy me. They don’t buy a cheaper service. That is not what I am selling.

I sell an individual service specific to my clients or customers. That’s what you do too. Insurance comparison websites are really all the same. We are really all different. That’s our advantage, isn’t it?

 

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Commuting a life sentence Part 2

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Jon Stow

All our yesterdays

Empty Rails - Jon Stow

It is almost ten years since I was an employee with a large firm, and at the time they were just thinking about the concept of hot-desking. I must admit I did not like the thought of not having my own space in the office, and having to scramble for one when I got to work.

I believe that we do need our own little workspace or territory and it needs to be a certain size. In my last job, the desks were so crammed together we could hardly move, and they had tried to alleviate the problem by having partitions around four feet high. I felt really hemmed in and uncomfortable in that environment. I was adequately compensated in financial terms up to the point I was included in their indiscriminate staff cuts, but I cannot say that the office environment was pleasant or conducive to allowing concentration on quite technical matters.

Behind the times

Hot-desking twenty years after the concept was thought of seems out-dated, but some of the big City corporates seem to think it is a really good idea, even for their senior staff. I would think it would be a real downer for morale because people are by nature territorial. Of course the idea is to save office space since not all office workers will be in at the same time. I think it could be costly in terms of production due to disaffection of the employees.

Well, you might argue, in the modern age we can work anywhere we wish. That is true in a sense. I take my netbook out and about and I have worked in cafes and hospital waiting rooms in the last few months. It is fine to work on the fly, but I have my own office back at base. Hot-desker employees do not have that refuge or nest to return to.

There is a problem in thinking with senior management, and especially those worried about security. We know that hackers can get into most systems eventually, but surely security could be good enough to allow most office-types to operate from their homes? That way they could have their own territory, feel less oppressed when they did need to go into the office to hot-desk, and they could save on their commuting costs. Need a meeting? We have VOIP and video conferencing. Have they seen the adverts?

Fat controllers

The problem is in management-think. There are many who do not trust even their most senior staff and best workers to apply themselves when out of sight of their boss. This reminds me of the old Bristow cartoons by Frank Dickens which ran for many years in the London Evening Standard. Bristow the buying clerk had a fearsome boss called Fudge who used to tower over Bristow and yell “Get on with your work”. It is precisely that attitude of control-freakery which still seems to reign and which is holding big business back, and requiring unnecessary commuting.

Employees work better when they are trusted and respect their managers. As long as there is good communication there should be no problem. I would have thought that providing more facilities for employees to work from home would more than satisfy the cost-cutting requirements without making the employees uncomfortable as they will be with a daily fight for a “nice” desk in the office.

Goodbye to All That

It might take ten or twenty years, but I believe the days of the daily commute for the majority of office workers are numbered. It is time that big corporates realized what we small business people already know: working from home or from your own chosen office or workspace makes you a lot happier, and also more efficient. How do you see this?

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Commuting a life sentence?

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Jon Stow

The Daily Commute - Jon Stow

Here in the UK there was news recently that commuter rail fares may rise by 8% in January 2012 at a time when the economy is struggling and fuel (petrol / gas) prices are very high. We are told that more people have been travelling by rail, and no doubt that is in part because of the cost of motoring, but we all know there are consequences when no one bothers about joined up planning. You really have to plan ahead.

I commuted into London for quite a few years and never enjoyed the experience. There was a feeling of uncertainty because the service was unreliable. Unfortunately it still is, with equipment failures always liable to cause chaos. It only takes one breakdown to have serious knock-on effects. If you have to be in a certain place at a certain time, you do not need the stress of worrying whether you will get there, especially if you have arranged a meeting.

Price hikes and value

My feeling is that actually such a sharp rise will be costly to the rail network. The extra money will not go into rail investment but to reduce the Government subsidy. Customers will need to pay more and way above inflation but out of a smaller amount of disposable income. And they will get no better service for their money.

The big advantage of rail over road is that it is an extremely energy-efficient way of moving people around; vastly better than having them drive. Another big plus is that if enough seats are provided, travellers are able to use the time either for reading their newspaper, book or Kindle, but yes, actually to work. None of that is available to a car driver.

Just the same, people always look at price over value unless positively persuaded otherwise. As we who sell know, prospects have to think about the experience to buy value, and no one is selling that value to commuters.

Choices

Another problem is that with the advance of technology, there really is no logic to squeeze customers who may in the next decade no longer needed to commute. We on-line business people already use conference facilities which don’t involve our leaving our offices or homes in order to talk to our colleagues, business friends and customers. Even for big business it won’t be necessary to have all the workers on-site in service and financial industries, which are the ones who have the majority of rail commuters. Rail customers will have choices and they may stop choosing rail.

Short-term thinking is costly

The short-term short-sighted policy of squeezing a market which is likely to go away as a result doesn’t make sense. Railways will remain a very efficient way of moving goods, but they are currently also a very efficient way of moving people. As in the tax world, the more people have to pay, the more the revenue will fall and the rail companies will not be paying tax if they have no profit. It all seems rather counter-productive and rather damaging. It doesn’t send a good message about saving energy which is necessary with dwindling carbon fuel resources.

Delivering value

You and I know that we need to deliver value to our customers or clients. We have to convince them that they are getting great value and we have to deliver that value. We can’t just put up our prices blaming the costs of our overheads. I wish the Civil Service advisers to Government understood that, but they have never been in business, have they?

Do you rely on the rail network? How do you feel about this? Is it a life sentence despite the cost?

 

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The Frank Sinatra guide to running a small business

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Jon Stow
Frank Sinatra 1973

Image via Wikipedia

The local councillor who couldn’t help me might have been a local version of one of those politicians who think it is sufficient to reach high office and do not have a vision or a plan to do anything when they get there.

Perhaps I am being unkind, but I could list you three British Prime Ministers in office in the last fifty years who thought being Prime Minister was in itself sufficient for their egos, and another three who really thought they could change things for the better. I am not going to list these PMs because I do not wish for a political debate, but they are not all on the same side of the political fence. We have had some who just liked being PM, and others who tried to get on with what they believed they should be doing.

I have been working with small businesses in one way or another throughout what one might grandly call my career, and until the last recession it was probably only the seriously entrepreneurial types who started new businesses. There were others who inherited the family business of course.

Going back a few years, I came across people who had built vast empires from nothing or from cheekily borrowing large amounts of money on a promise or on conviction which they had conveyed to the lender. So I knew people who started engineering businesses with almost no money, and aristocrats who had inherited money but really knew how to run a hands-on business themselves. There is a certain talent needed whatever your background, which is to think on your feet and to know about people. It is not easily taught, but can be learned.

People these days often try to start businesses because they cannot get a job and need some income, but it takes a bit more than that to make it work.

So, going back to the Prime Ministers, it is not sufficient to be in charge of a business. Just having one is not enough, because unless it is actively managed, it will fail as the three PMs failed their country. To be in business is to do because if you don’t do, you won’t be in business. It’s the truth, and many who think it is enough to put up a sign (or a website) will fail.

Kurt Vonnegut (great for good quotes) joked

“To be is to do”–Socrates.
“To do is to be”– Sartre.
“Do be do be do”–Frank Sinatra.

To be in business we need to do and keep doing it. Don’t we?

 

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The Peter Principle and the newly unemployed

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Jon Stow

A rhino I met once

I recently asked a local government councillor if he could advise on a local issue. He was of no help whatever. Firstly he didn’t seem to understand the problem and secondly he wanted to pass the buck to someone else. Maybe he was having a bad day, though his emailed reply to me was barely coherent.

You know who this guy reminded me of? One of those people who work in large organizations and who have been promoted beyond their ability in accordance with the Peter Principle. This states that “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence”. We can’t blame these people for their failures. They just can’t help it.

Of course undue promotion may not just place people beyond their technical ability. Often their actual technical ability may lead to promotion beyond their managerial ability. When I worked for a large firm of accountants there were managers and partners who were technically excellent but entirely incapable of looking after human beings. They didn’t understand at all how to relate to them, get the best out of them or manage their needs. They were insensitive or maybe had the skins of rhinoceroses.

Serious geeks like these people need to be left to get on with what they are good at and of course reward them properly. Not everyone is cut out to look after people or indeed to make management decisions; decisions which affect the future of a business.

I worry about those types who are coming out of employment rather sooner than they might have expected. Either they will be bored to death on their possibly reduced pensions with the current low annuity rates or they will feel impelled to go freelance but won’t actually have a clue how to talk to the people they need.

You cannot run a small business if you do not know how to deal with people. Will coaching help with this? Would someone who is not a people-person always realise their inadequacy in this area, or just blame everyone else for their failings? I don’t know the answer. Do you?

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The blog post that never was

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Jon Stow

Since I started blogging in earnest (and do you realise that there are over 200 posts here at On Our Bikes?) I have found that in writing down my experiences I have helped my own business thinking. It has also often been good for me to let off a bit of steam. I was going to say it was therapeutic, but that is a bit of a grand word for a blog, isn’t it?

As I write this, over the last week certain on-line occurrences involving bloggers and social media people I like has got me going. I have seen spats and unpleasantness. I wrote a blog post about it because I was upset for certain parties and found myself believing other friends were wrong.

A sky to chill out under

The trouble was that after writing that post I realised that some who might read it would recognise themselves and would take offence. There has been quite enough pain already so I pulled the post before it was published. It has ended up “on the spike”.

Just the same, I do think that writing down my thoughts eased my stress and in rationalising the issues I have been able to put the upset behind me. I managed to chill out.

Do you write posts on your blog and then have second thoughts? Do you find that writing about an incident helps you, particularly when you have been upset? Have you ever published a post and then regretted it? What did you do?

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What information should we share with our customers?

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Jon Stow

A lot of businesses are very secretive about how they work and how they deliver their product or service to the customer or client. I suppose they like to think they are protecting their expertise or intellectual property by not sharing the process. They must think that somehow the paying customer is going to steal their idea or their knowledge.

This mindset is bad for a couple of reasons. Firstly, sometimes what the customer says they want is not what they actually want, but they have not explained it very well. Secondly, customers, being people, change their minds about what they want and end up unhappy.

I believe that if we are open about what we do, there are many benefits, including:

  • People do get what they want and they understand what they are paying for.
  • They will be more willing to pay for more.
  • They will appreciate your expertise and be more likely to refer you to their friends.
  • They will not worry about delivery and the product during the time it takes for your business to do its work.

Because a customer understands your process doesn’t mean they are going to copy it and do the work for themselves. They probably wouldn’t have the skill. If what you are doing is that simple that they can do it, then it is likely to be of low value and you shouldn’t be doing it because it doesn’t make enough money. Concentrate on the higher value stuff and remember to sell on what it is worth to the customer, not on the cost of doing it to your business.

Having recently mentioned the fish and chip shop, I should now refer to one of our local Chinese takeaways. When you place an order in there, you can see the chefs cook the food. If you go on their slack day, which is Monday, they will immediately spring into action to cook whatever you have ordered. Seeing the food cooked gives you assurance that it is all freshly served, and indeed it provides entertainment far better than the obligatory TV screen. You know everything about the delivery of your product and feel engaged in the process.

I believe that is how we should all work. Our clients and customers are much happier if they know what we are doing for them, when we are doing it, and in certain businesses we should let them watch us in action. Do you appreciate an audience?

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