Tag Archives: business

April 22, 2013 · 11:38 am

How Many, Not How

Mondays are no fun.  As you might know if you’ve been on the screed on a Monday, I spend most of my weekends when the ground isn’t covered with snow playing golf.

English: Golfing in Ontario golf course, Oregon.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mondays are the days when my obsession with the game (and my lack of golfing prowess) usually shows up here.  This Monday, it’s about a thought I had while I was playing in a tournament on Saturday.  I was playing on a team with a person who had clubs that were at least 10 years old.  Golf technology changes very rapidly, and his driver was the size of my five wood (meaning it was way smaller than any modern driver).  The shaft of the club was slightly bent down by the club head and I had no clue how he could hit the ball.

Hit the ball he did – some of our team’s best drives came off that club.  In fact, he hit some amazing shots both good and bad.  My favorite was a worm-burner that rolled and rolled and rolled maybe 150 yards until it stopped rolling 10 feet from the pin.  Which reminded me of the old golf adage “it’s not how, it’s how many” which is my business thought today as well.

It seems to me we spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing the tools we use in business just as there’s an equipment obsession in golf.  Those are really about the “how.”  No matter what tools you’re using, none of them matter if you’re not being consistent and clear about what you’re trying to do with them – the “how many.” It’s easy to get caught up processes and in so doing you miss a focus on achieving the real goal.   If you haven’t clarified the things you want to accomplish over time, there’s little chance of success.  The tool or app is less important than the way you use it.  The process isn’t the business.

We’ve all had bosses who focused on when a report was delivered and then never read it to see what was inside.  Woe be to those who missed a deadline, even if the work was crap.  That’s “how”, not “how many.”  Take an extra day and achieve perfection is my preference.  Hit one long and straight with a crooked driver.  Make a par with an awful shot that winds up next to the pin.  There are no pictures on the scorecard, folks.

You with me?

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April 19, 2013 · 9:23 am

Is Hospitality A Goner?

After a tough week, it’s finally Foodie Friday.

Andrew Zimmern before taping

Andrew Zimmern before taping (Photo credit: Lester Public Library)

I’ve written a lot about service and how I think that’s one of the most important aspects of any business in a time when many goods and services are being commoditized in most consumers’ minds.  That notion came up again yesterday during an “Ask Me Anything” with food writer Andrew Zimmern on Reddit.  He was asked the following and gave this answer:

Is there a current trend in food that you wish would go away?

[–]andrewzimmern[S]  Where to begin! I think one trend that is very noticeable in restaurants is less and less emphasis on service. I think that’s a horrible trend. Even at a hot dog stand, you want to be greeted.  The saddest trend is that the word hospitality is going extinct.

Exactly.  Hot dogs, to use his example, can be found everywhere from convenience stores to food trucks to specialty restaurants, and there are few foods that are more of a commodity item.  What ultimately gets people to choose your business to provide them, and to get the customers to return, is service – the biggest part of the relationship with the customer.

Over the years I ha the pleasure of working with the folks at Anheuser-Busch.  They had a very simple goal at the core of their marketing:  make friends with the customer.  Even today, when you distill their marketing down, it’s about making the brand a friend.  Service is what does that along with delivering the inherent brand promise – this is how our product makes your life better by fulfilling a need or want.

So that’s the question with which to end the week:  when was the last time your did a service check on your business?  Maybe it’s mystery shoppers or maybe it’s a survey but how are you checking, analyzing, and improving customer service?  Another great partner – Microsoft – bases a fair piece of their reps’ compensation on annual feedback from partners.  That’s a great notion – maybe one you might consider.

Zimmern called it hospitality.  I’m using the term service today.  Call it what you will, it’s the lifeblood of any business and while he thinks it’s becoming extinct, I think it’s the businesses that lose it that will be the ones leaving the scene.  What do you think?

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April 16, 2013 · 9:01 am

I’m Telling Mom…And Everyone Else!

By now it’s become pretty obvious that given a megaphone, people will use it to express their opinions. ZenDesk-sharing-customer-service-stories-Apr2013I think many of us also assume that the ones who will scream the loudest are those who are unhappy (ever heard a happy baby crying?). So today I’ve brought along a little proof of what we thought to be true: people tend to share their bad experiences with a business more often than they do their positive ones.  See that little chart?  It’s from a study conducted by Dimensional Research and it found that:

Customer service has a long-term impact on buying decisions, with customers continuing to be effected years after the initial interaction. Customers share service interactions more widely than ever before. Social media and review sites are providing increased awareness of customer service experiences and these stories influence the purchases of others.

You can read the entire thing yourself here (pdf).  Back to our assumption about unhappy people.  They found that those who suffered a bad interaction were 50% more likely to share it on social media than those who had good experiences (45% vs. 30%) and 52% more likely to share it on an online review site such as Yelp (35% vs. 23%).  And it turns out they do so LOUDLY – 54% of respondents who had shared a bad experience said they shared it more than 5 times, compared to 33% of those who had shared a good interaction.

So what?  So:

All survey participants were asked if they had seen online reviews of customer service. About two-thirds of participants (63% for negative and 69% for positive) reported that they did recall reading these online reviews.  These reviews are very impactful. The vast majority of participants who have seen reviews claimed that information did impact their buying decisions. This was true of both positive reviews (90%) as well as negative reviews (86%)

The days of bad customer interactions being a quiet little problem are over.  What are you doing to be sure the problem isn’t one you have?

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