August 12, 2020 · 2:43 pm

As Clear As Broken Glass

I bought a new (used) car a couple of weeks ago. The old one, which I loved, had some weird electrical things going on and I figured it was smarter to get rid of it before it decided to bail on me. Frankly, I didn’t like the service department at the nearest official dealer either. The last time I went there (and I only went there for warranty repairs), they kept me for 4 hours for something that they said would take an hour.

The latest car is great except the screen for the entertainment/navigation/etc. system had little spider cracks in it. It turns out it’s common to this make and is due to dramatic temperature changes over time. It is under warranty and I could have it fixed for free. Well, guess who was going to do that repair?

You can’t make this up, but it was the same service department that serviced the other make of car. Oh sure, it was in the building next door but it is common ownership and, as I found out, common customer service philosophy. The dealer from whom I bought the new car called and set up an appointment for me to go have the screen replaced. The part was ordered. I got there on time. When they called me back in after an hour, the screen hadn’t been replaced and they gave me an estimate to do $2,000 of other work. Do you think I was happy?

I won’t belabor the story, except to say that it turns out the dealers have to submit photos that they take via their internal system to have the warranty repair approved prior to making the repair. I found that out from a second “official” dealer I went to. They had me there for 30 minutes and said they’d call when the part came in. It came in and yesterday the repair was done in exactly the amount of time they said it would take. New screen, no charge, great service. Yay!

Of course, the first dealer wasn’t happy about the review I posted nor about the response I gave to the questionnaire about my service from headquarters. They never explained the need for an initial visit nor did they explain why the part they had ordered was given to another customer according to what my dealer found out.

It’s a great reminder that customers can handle pretty much anything except being lied to or being kept in the dark. They posted an answer to my review but my comments are out there. They’re accurate but probably could have been prevented had the manager simply explained the warranty process to me and not tried to sell me on a bunch of stuff I didn’t really need at that point. I went to him with a problem. Instead of a solution, he tried to tell me I had many other problems (or my car did) without solving the one I needed him to solve. 

Be open. Be honest. Solve your customers’ problems. You’ll be in business for a long time.

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August 7, 2020 · 2:05 pm

Feeling Fit

This Foodie Friday, it’s about chickens and eggs. Putting aside the age-old question about which came first, I read something interesting about them the other day and I thought it pointed us all in a good direction.

Before we get into our topic at hand, let me ask you if you wear any sort of device such as a Fitbit? I only started wearing one about 9 months ago but I’ve learned quite a bit about how my body works. For example, I have a very low resting heart rate and I generally fall within the norms for men my age when it comes to my sleep pattern. It’s also helpful when it comes to tracking how much exercise I get and I was surprised to find that walking up and down the hills of my golf course is equivalent to walking up and down 60 floors.

It turns out that we can use Fitbit-like devices for other things, one of which is to improve egg production without chemicals. Scientists at the University of California have found that a Fitbit-like device worn by farm chickens may help combat insect infestations and eventually increase the production of fresh eggs. The tiny device tracks bird behavior rather than steps. It measures a chicken’s distinct actions, such as biting, pecking, and preening. Chickens who engage in more feather cleaning are more likely to have infections, and the data can help farmers track down affected chickens before an infestation spreads to the whole flock.

It got me thinking about how we tend to take whatever measuring we’re doing in business for granted without actually spending time thinking about if there are things unmeasured that could be useful or if we could measure things in a different way. Many of the analytics we’re used to seeing are, frankly, pretty useless. Marketing investment is justified based on activity (GRPs, Impressions, Reach, etc.), and not based on outcomes (Revenue, Loyalty, Intent, etc.). The chicken producers are smarter than that. Their focus is on the outcome – more eggs.

We need to think about what we measure in terms of purpose and not just in terms of output. We need to reframe our thinking. And I must be pretty passionate about this because according to my Fitbit, my heart rate is up a full 3 beats per minute as I’m writing this!

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July 24, 2020 · 3:26 pm

Yanking The Chain

Earlier today I prepped some chicken thighs for dinner. They’re the last of a 10-pound bag which was part of a 40-pound box we bought at the start of the pandemic. It was more of an opportunistic buy than panic buying. Many of the food distributors were getting rid of the boxes they would ordinarily sell to the restaurants which had been forced to close. We have a freezer and who doesn’t love a great deal? No, I’m not cooking 10-pounds of thighs this evening but I’ll admit that it’s been thigh week (bacon-wrapped thighs, chicken and black bean soup, and chicken enchiladas if you are curious as to where the other 8 pounds went) here.

Why do I bring that up this Foodie Friday? Because my opportunity buying was the result of a disruption in the supply chain. At the same time as I was getting chicken thighs, other folks were buying boxes of burgers and pork chops. What was unusual was that the same items we were getting dirt cheap were often unavailable in the supermarkets. That pesky supply chain again.

You’re probably aware of the toilet paper shortages. With people staying home, the paper made for institutions and offices was in lesser demand while people panic-bought the home version. The same thing happened with food and, in fact, is still happening if my trip to the market yesterday was any indication. There was nary a canned vegetable to be found other than the really large cans that might have otherwise gone to a commercial kitchen.

This from Bloomberg:

As consumers cook more at home, driving up grocery store sales, they’re steering clear of restaurants, which has big implications for how suppliers package and sell their meats and produce — and for demand. Restaurant portions are bigger, and meat, cheese, and butter, in particular, are consumed in higher quantities at restaurants, but so are vegetables.  Before the pandemic, Americans spent more than half their food budgets on dining out. Over the next 12 months, 70% of consumers plan to significantly decrease spending on restaurants, according to a Bank of America survey.

How does this apply to your business? It’s a reminder that every business needs to think hard about and prepare for disruption. It means doing things differently. As an example, I would never have considered a 40-pound box of thighs, even at the wholesale food price prior to the pandemic. The great price coupled with the uncertainty of the food supply chain at the time changed my mind.

The funny thing is that the food supply is quite plentiful. The issue is that the distribution system between the producer and demand is out of whack, which is causing massive headaches for every person involved: farmers, packagers, distributors, retailers, and end-users. While it’s the rare business that can bypass that broken system altogether, every business needs to make alternative plans just in case. Backups for your backups, I guess. Make sense?

 

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