Repeat
I recently heard a story from one of my clients – a wonderful endorsement of the way they did business.
"Last year, one of our consultants helped a client with an application. In the end, the client decided on a different supplier that suited them better. As always, we respect their decision and choice, wished them well and closed down the case.
Imagine our delight today when the same client showed up with two friends who needed our help! They wanted them to use us because they had been so pleased with the service they received before.
That’s what it’s all about! I can bang on about service standards to the team and they are all great with their clients, but it’s times like these that bring the message home in the best possible way!"
This story illustrates perfectly, though, the old saying about “as ye sow, so shall ye reap”. In this case, although the client didn’t stay with my client, they brought new business to them.
They were treated well, and they did what we all want – they brought my client more business.
Clients who are well-treated tend to be more forgiving of mistakes (as long as they’re put right) and will tell their friends about the great service they received. Those who are treated as “transactions” will act like “transactions”: they won’t come again and they’ll tell their friends about how they were treated…
We all know how “difficult” clients can be (I certainly do) and can all share horror stories about being abandoned after doing so much work for them. This client of mine works incredibly hard to ensure that their staff project the “right” level of professionalism and empathy. The work is paying off not only in this case, but from comments they showed me about them (and one of their competitors) on social media.
At times, dealing with others seems one of the most thankless occupations imaginable. However, we know we’re getting it right when they come back for more. And more is always good for business.
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Selling
Can You Call Back?
I’ve encountered a number of occasions when I’ve called a business to speak to someone only to be told they’re not available. I’ve then been asked to “call back”.
My question is: what does this say about the business’ attitude towards others? It may be a case of training staff to take a message, but even so, how many people, on being asked to call back, may simply put the phone down and not call back? How much potential business could be lost because of this simple error?
The telephone is often someone’s first encounter with a business (assuming these days that businesses even provide contact numbers). Their first impressions of that business, its staff and their professionalism will be influenced by that first contact. There’s no more effective way of turning business away that being unprofessional on the phone.
One of the problems people tell me about is when they have to be transferred from one person to another (because the first person doesn’t have the expertise of authority, perhaps) and then have to repeat the same information over again to the latest responder. This once happened to me three times in a single call.
The solution to telling a customer to “call back” is to ask the caller for their name, contact number and a brief description of why they’re calling and then to ensure that information is passed on to someone who will act on it. In some businesses, people are trained not only to do this, but also to check that the person to whom the information was passed did call back.
What can we do to correct this? Simply agree standards with our people and make sure they’re followed. These can include:
- How to greet customers
- Words and expressions to be used
- When to pass the call to higher authority
- Number of times the phone may ring before it must be answered
- Tone of voice
- How to pass information to colleagues when transferring a call
- How to take a message
Reputations can be made or broken on a single call. How to ensure this doesn’t happen is one of the least difficult tasks a business faces.
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Selling, Strategy, Teamwork
Luck Is...
How many times have we heard that someone was “lucky” to get a piece of business, or to achieve something? I came across a useful formula for “luck” some time ago which made eminent sense to me:
Luck = Preparation + Opportunity
Having thought about how this applied to me, I felt that I could agree. The main question is then, what should we prepare for?
To me, preparation in my business is thinking about possible training or consultancy scenarios and then thinking up and researching material to cover them. It might also involve thinking about what I don’t want to happen to my business (e.g. new burdensome regulations) and then working out how to handle the “problem”.
I’ve found that, in the case of training scenarios, a lot of what I prepared some time back is suddenly in demand, and that often all I need to do is update material to have a realistic proposition in a short space of time for my potential client.
Of course, all the preparation in the world is no good if the opportunity to use it doesn’t present itself, but that’s a risk one takes. So much of life is spent preparing for what doesn’t happen, but experience and “keeping our ear to the ground” helps us to see what may or may not be important.
Taking things a step further, could “Business Continuity Plans” contribute to a business’ luck? If a business can weather a crisis better than the competition, is this “luck” or “good planning that was given an opportunity”?
However we care to look at it, preparation has a great part to play in how things turn out for us.
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Leadership, Productivity, Strategy
Tree Growers and Pit Diggers
On 31 December 2019, the BBC news website ran an article by Business Reporter Dearbail Jordan in which he quoted rotating chairman of Huawei Eric Xu as talking about “tree growers and pit diggers”.
Xu defined “pit diggers” as "Those who prioritise short-term gains and pass problems on to their successors.” “Tree growers”, however, are "[Those] who put long-term success ahead of short-term gains by continuously contributing value to the company.”
In an ideal world, we want all our people to be “tree growers” and not “pit diggers”. Our problem is that our performance management methodology often encourages the “pit digger” mentality as people are rated mainly on their annual performance (some even on their quarterly output).
If we’re seen to reward short-term thinking, or to penalise longer-term thinking, we shouldn’t be surprised if the “pit-digger” approach then prevails. Our general corporate culture is, sadly, skewed towards short-termism, in no small part due to the fact that we’re expected to produce a continuous stream of positive results for “senior management” or “shareholders”. One wonders, however, if people ask themselves whether such positive streams can be kept going ad infinitum.
In the end, something will happen to knock the business sideways. Similarly, in government, the same short-termism prevails as democratic governments are usually elected for periods of five years or so.
In an ideal world, we have a mixture of short-and long-term goals. We are rewarded when we take on problems and wrestle with them. The lessons of struggle and failure are (as long as we learn from them) more valuable than continuous success and not taking any risk.
What can we do as leaders to make sure that: a) we aren’t “pit diggers” ourselves and b) that we identify those in our organisation who are? Answering in reverse order, ask colleagues: everyone knows who the person (or people are).
As for the first part of the question, we need to balance our activities between long-and short-term goals and to look at performance metrics that support us in measuring “tree growing” activities and results.
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Leadership, Productivity, Strategy, Teamwork
