Long term business success requires a lot of things done right, but one of the most critical things you can do and fully within your control is to live and breathe great customer service.

Why do some companies become an Amazon?

Hopefully the following will cause you to reflect. Maybe it will spark an opportunity for empowerment in your business.

A tale of two businesses….What company is your business modeling?

Amazon…

This past week I placed an order on Amazon and it was supposed to have Free Shipping. Somehow, I selected the wrong box during checkout and the order was processed with 2 day Shipping Charges. The shipping was almost as much as the order!

However, the Amazon solution was painless, simple, and efficient. I simply went to their website, connected to a live chat person and had two short posts explaining the situation. The reply was simple. “Mr. Steinlage your credit card will be credited the charges. Is there anything else we can help you with today?”

I didn’t have to explain my position over and over. The customer service representative didn’t have to check with a supervisor. It was over. Just like that; two simple posts and it was resolved.

Did Amazon gain a raving fan? Am I likely to be a return customer?  Would I recommend them to someone else?

Amazon has created a culture of customer service.

Local Restaurant Chain…

One of my brothers was in town recently and our families went out for dinner. One of the teenagers with my brother’s family ordered an item that was supposed to be for “kids only”, simply because that is what looked good on the menu. However, the restaurant employee was adamant that this teenager could not order this because she over the age limit. There was no reasoning, no option to pay extra, no logic, simply a policy that was drilled into this employee. The employee’s stern position even created commotion among other dining customers. It was truly bewildering to witness! In the end, we let it go and did not get the “kids only” food item.

Did this local restaurant gain a raving fan? Am I likely to be a return customer?  Will my brother (or anyone else that saw this happen) every return or recommend them to someone?

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to make sure your team, your employees, your staff, and you keep common sense in your business. You need to trust and empower your employees to make simple decisions when the opportunities present themselves.  Create a simple checklist or set of rules for what they’re allowed to manage and when they need to bring in someone else.  Hire the right people and give them room to shine.

Trust me, your employees want to make decisions that are in the best interest of your company. They want You to be pleased with their performance and more importantly, they want the customer to be happy. If you honestly don’t think they do, they shouldn’t be part of your team.

Amazon ‘Gets It’. Do you?

We would love to hear how you address this in your business. Feel free to share in the comments below.

Chris Steinlage    Kansas City Business CoachSimilar Posts:

• Do you really have Great Customer Service?
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As a small business owner, you have lots of people telling you that you MUST be on social media if you want to thrive…or even if you want to survive.  It’s not just Social Media anymore, it’s Social Business. 

I’m sure you’ve heard the statistics:

- 1 out of every 9 people on the planet is on Facebook (750 Million +)

- Facebook now tops Google for weekly online traffic

- People upload 3000 images to Flickr…every minute! (here’s my page)

- 1 in 6 marriages are people who met online (nearly twice the number who met in bars)

- Sadly 1 in 5 divorces is being blamed on Facebook

The reality is that Social Media has arrived…and you do need to be doing something with it for your business…but it’s not a silver bullet.  You have to find an approach that makes sense, isn’t going to overwhelm the business, but still gets you out there.

Here are 4 fairly simple steps that can help you make sure your Social Business efforts aren’t wasted.

1. Recognize that Marketing has changed

The world has changed in the last 10 years, and it’s no surprise that marketing (and sales) have changed along with it.  10 years ago, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube didn’t even exist.  Mobile?  You could kind of get to the internet on a mobile phone, but it sucked and it wasn’t really worth the time or the effort.

Fast forward to today – if a consumer wants to buy something, wants to learn something, wants to get opinions, they will go online and search for it themselves, no matter where they are.  They don’t want and they don’t trust traditional advertising.  So where does that leave us from a marketing standpoint? 

“Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t”.  Seth Godin

If you want to market your business successfully, you need to be found online (because that’s where people are searching) and you need to attract potential buyers…not interrupt them.

2. You have to have a plan

Just being online isn’t enough.  You’re going to invest time and money to support your online marketing efforts (although probably a lot less than you would have had to invest in traditional marketing).  And since you’re investing, you need to be clear on a few things:

• What are you trying to achieve (drive traffic, generate leads, educate, raise awareness, support customers – all of these might drive to different strategies).
• Who’s your target (and where do they hang out)?  What are they looking for (keywords)?  What do they want?
• What’s your message?  What benefit or outcome are you delivering?  What problem are you solving.  If you can’t be clear on this, you aren’t going to attract anyone.
• What’s your call to action?  What do you want them to do next?  Call you?  Download a report?  Visit your location?  Buy something?  Be clear and keep it simple.

On top of all of that, you need to have a quality website.  It doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy, in fact simple is probably better.  But it does need to be clean and professional.

3. Develop a Social Media Presence

Once you have an idea of what you’re trying to achieve and you have a sense of who your target is, you need to pick a starting point for where to go with your social media presence. 

If you’re selling something to consumers and it’s visual or has an emotional component, then Facebook is probably the best place to start. 

If you’re selling to professionals or other businesses, then LinkedIn is probably your best bet.

Twitter is great is for engaging fans and supporting customers and there are lots of other choices out there that are smaller more niche plays (i.e. Lawlink for Lawyers or Bakespace for people who love to cook).

Whatever makes sense for you, pick one site to start with, set up an account and start listening.  Listen for people who are talking about your industry, your product, your competitors…get a feel for what’s being talked about.  then start using that information to engage with the influencers.

Use Google Alerts and tools like Tweetdeck to setup searches to help you stay on top of things without spending hours every day doing it.

4. Develop Great Content!

Finally – the real secret to Social Business success is to develop great content (and host it on your site).  Content that will especially appeal to the potential customers you’re attracting.  That content could be a Blog, it could be a series of reports or great emails, it could be videos (check out Will It Blend) or even podcasts or webinars.

The point is that you need to create great information that will inform, educate maybe even entertain the people you are trying to attract.  They get to know you, they get to see that you know what you’re doing and talking about and they have enough information to decide if they want to take the next step with you.

On top of all of that, Google loves great content because it drives backlinks to your site and builds out a lot of context for keyword searches…which just means that your Search Engine Optimization will be a lot stronger than if you didn’t have content…always a good thing.

Bottom line – your prospective clients are looking for you online, so if you want a shot at them, you have to be found.  And when they find you, they want to get to know you and understand you.  They want to learn from you, they want to be sure you can solve their problem.  It’s not easy, but if you can do all of that, you will be in great shape in this new world of marketing and social business!

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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It didn’t start out this way. 

When you first started your business you had a dream, it was exciting…maybe even fun!  Sure there was a lot of hard work, but you can still remember the thrill of your first clients, cashing your first check and the quiet satisfaction of delivering on a job well done.  Unfortunately that seems like a long time ago.  Now you feel more like a caged animal…trapped by a business that demands all of your time and energy and doesn’t give much back in return.

You’re not alone – according to a recent study, only 40% of small business owners took a vacation last year – some because of lack of money, but many of them because they can’t physically be away from their business for any length of time!  You’re past the point when running harder means you go farther and faster – now running faster only makes the wheel in the cage spin harder!

Are you a slave to your business?  Here are some surefire ways to tell and more importantly what it takes to escape that slavery.

How to tell when you’re officially ‘trapped’

Never Ending Long Hours – As a business owner, you’re going to work hard, but you’re at least a couple years into it and the hours are getting worse with no signs of relief.

Gerbil Wheel Syndrome – Running harder doesn’t cause a lift in the business…or if you have to run just to maintain what you’ve got.

Touch Everything – Your business requires you personally to make every significant decision…nothing gets done without you involved,

No Practical Plan Forward – Planning on the lottery, or landing a huge and unrealistic client to break you out of the rut?  You spend all your time fighting the day to day fires without a strategic plan.

Stuck with Status Quo – You’ve stopped asking ‘what if’, you’re not proactively looking for better ideas…you hear yourself saying defensively “That’s how we’ve always done things”

There are lots of other potential symptoms but in general it can be summed up as ‘a strong feeling that you’re out of choices’…you know what you’ve got isn’t working but there’s no real options and the only thing to do is keep working harder and start it all over again tomorrow.

What can you do about it?

The good news is that most businesses can be saved – but you’ve got to break the cycle if you want different results – here are some ideas of where you can get started on making a change!

1. Get a candid review of your business model.

A big part of the problem may be the fundamental design of the business – does your business scale?  Are you strictly trading your time for money?  Can you get any leverage…with other people’s time or can you develop other streams of revenue?

It may be difficult for you to really look at your business in an honest way – enlist a business savvy friend (maybe even a Business Coach?) and have them give you some perspective.

2. Get clear on where you’re going

Assuming your current situation is NOT what you really want, then you must take the time to paint a better picture of the future.  Try projecting out 3 years to a future that’s attractive to you.  How are you spending your time in the business?  What’s the revenue and profitability like?  What’s your client base?  What’s different from today?  Without a clear picture / goal there’s no way to move in the right direction.

3. Get clear on your strengths

Right now you’re probably doing everything…or at least involved in everything.  However if you want to break free, you’ll need to focus on your strengths and let other people do things that aren’t a strength or that you don’t like doing!  The first step is to really understand where your talents are best used in this great business of the future that you’re planning.

4. Lay out an Organizational Accountability Chart

This is more than just an org chart.  Develop a fairly simple (but complete) breakdown of all the roles and responsibilities in your business and outline who owns those boxes on the chart.  Right now, your name is probably in most places…but that becomes a great starting point for planning what things could look like in the future.  Start with today, but also look at the next phase…what could you step away from that would free up your time and focus?

If you’re interested in learning more about this idea (and how to do it) – Contact us for a short whitepaper on creating this kind of planning tool.

5. Identify Opportunities to automate, systematize and delegate

In addition to your roles and responsibilities, you also need to build an inventory of your major business processes (the things you do to run your business).  From that inventory, which of those processes take up a big chunk of time or is painful? 

Are you spending 2-3 days a month on bookkeeping and invoicing your clients?  How could you improve that process?  Could you hire someone to do it for you?  (I know money is an issue, but if you had 2 extra days to prospect and sell…I’m pretty sure you’d bring in more revenue).

Identify the top 2 or 3 process candidates and figure out what it would take to streamline them or get them off your plate.

6. Take action…focused, planned and systematic action to make things better

Here’s the part where things generally fall apart.  Things are painful enough to drive you to come up with some projects, some initiatives that you know would help in the long run, but you can’t find the time or the focus to actually get them done!  Or maybe you just don’t know where to start or how to get started.  By the way – this is absolutely what Coaching is best at…helping you get things done.  The top recommendation is to get some help to make things happen.  However If you need to do it yourself, then lay out a reasonable plan, allocate time every week to move that plan forward, find a way to stay accountable and step by step you will make progress.

What do you need to do?

The business closure rate in the US is right around 50% within the first 4 years of being in business.  Most of the businesses that shut down had viable products and services, many were making money and most had business owners who were competent.  But they couldn’t figure out how to stop being a slave to their business! And without that breakthrough they eventually had to throw the towel in…it’s not a sustainable approach in the long run. 

You can break the cycle for your business…but you have to be ready to make some changes.

What about you?  Do you own your business or is it owning you?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue – drop me a line or comment below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Customer service is critical to long term success…everyone says so, which is why you have great customer service – right?

Think about it though…what company doesn’t think they don’t have good customer service? Go into any establishment and there’s at least one sign in every business promoting customer service, even if it is only a sign the says “Customer Service”. I am sure the owners of the businesses send out at memos, hold a meeting, or maybe even dedicated an entire section in their employee manual to “Customer Service”.  If you ask anyone if customer service is a priority – they’re going to tell you that it is.

Clearly Customer Service is important…but what is it really?

Ah – there’s the rub.  Customer service is actually in the eye of the beholder.  The simplest answer is that Customer Service means different things to different people and it depends on the business at hand. If you’re walking into a fast food restaurant your expectations for Customer Service are not the same as when you walk into a 5 Star steak house.

What does customer service look like to your clients?

As a business owner, the important thing is to think about what do your customers expect?  What does customer service look like to your clients and customers you interact with on a daily basis? What’s expected in your industry?  In your marketplace?

Do all the people in your organization understand and share the same beliefs you have about Customer Service? Have you established boundaries with them? Do they have the authority to effectively handle a potentially combative situation that means making a decision that doesn’t follow the company’s guidelines 100%?

These are important conversations you should have with your employees. A company can easily spend years of time and money building a solid business relationship with a customer or a client base and literally destroy it over something that may have cost the company a fraction of profit in the short run.

Let me give you a quick example:  A few years ago, I was at a local business on a busy Saturday, a gentleman walks in and wants to return an item he had purchased and did not perform as he felt it was represented. The person behind the counter was adamant that the store policy was they could not take that particular item back if it had been used. The customer proceeded to try and explain his case politely, but he was not being heard. The person behind the counter deferred the issue to another person behind the counter, who had the same answer. The customer starts to get a little irate and then grew more agitated. All this time, there is a line of people waiting to pay and observing this great demonstration of “Customer Service”. Eventually the customer lays the item on the counter and walks out of the store.

On top of the poor perception, the employees behind the counter are relieved this “crazy customer” finally left and they feel good that they held their ground with the return policy.  WIthout another word they continued their business of providing “Customer Service” to the rest of the people in line.

What was the impact? To start with you had 4-6 customers standing in line witnessing a spectacle that should be happening in private. What’s the likely outcome for those customers?  How has this influenced their opinion of the store and this company’s “Customer Service”?

The irate customer who left will NEVER spend a penny in that store again and he will tell at least 10 people personally about his horrible experience in that store.  Today in the age of the internet, it’s quite likely he could share his story with hundreds of people. To emphasize the issue even further, the return in question had a retail price of under $20. The average sale per customer at this store is substantially more than $20.  The employees may have won this battle, but they certainly went the wrong direction when it came to winning the larger war.

It’s a fact – negative stories make for more interesting stories

Everyone has several stories of poor customer service they can tell at the drop of a hat. Why? Because those are the stories we remember and tell our friends about.  Think about the last time you had a bad encounter with a business…you’re a lot more likely to go out of your way to talk about than then you are to talk about a pleasant encounter that met or even exceeded your expectations.

The take away?  Effective Customer Service is critical and it can have a huge impact on your bottom line. As a consumer of goods and services, you know there are a LOT of businesses out there who don’t have good Customer Service…it’s hard to do it the right way. 

Make sure everyone in the organization understands what customer service needs to mean to your clients and your markets. Don’t be afraid to empower your employees to make a decision if you aren’t there. Most employees want to do what right – direct them and let them. Discuss situations in advance, so if your employees are ever in a difficult situation with a client a reasonable solution can be reached without the risk of losing them to a competitor.

Good Customer Service has to be just that, it can’t be “Lip Service”, it has to be “Real Service”. I will end with this thought…If asked, what would your customers & clients say about your businesses level of customer service? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Chris Steinlage  Kansas City Business Coach

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What does it take to make a business grow predictably?  Signing up a big client?  Rolling out a hot new product?  Actually those are outcomes…what I’m talking about are the ingredients it takes within a business that if mixed properly and cooked just so will create growth. 

These critical ingredients are embodied in you as the business owner and within your team, whether you have 1 employee or 100 employees.  If you’re missing one or more of these ingredients – then you’re likely not growing consistently and you’ll be at risk in the long run.  The important thing is to have the right mix of these ingredients and to make sure you’re using all of them consistently.

So what are the ingredients you need for growth?  Let’s take a look:

I was inspired for this post from the book ‘The Recipe’ by Amilya Antonetti.  Amilya uses a story format to get across her point that growth and success are based on a team effort…and the right team must have the right ingredients.

I’ve mentioned before, the importance of having the Right People on the bus (they have to buy in to who you are as a business) and you need the right skills for your industry, but even deeper than that, you also need to the right mix of traits…ingredients…to make it all work.

What are the Ingredients for Growth?

Any business that wants to grow consistently and predictably will need a mix of the following:

Innovation

The world is changing fast and if you’re not changing, you will be left behind.  You may start your business with a great idea but consistent and predictable growth requires you and your team to be constantly looking for new and better ways to do things (and new and better things to do).  It’s a lot of work but the alternative is to slide into obscurity.

Ask yourself this:  As a business owner, what are you doing on a regular basis to make sure you’re innovating?  Do you have someone on the team who constantly pushes the limits on new ideas?

Motivation

Growing a business can be a real up hill slog at times and without motivation, for yourself or for your team, it can be easy to start letting things slide.  According to Dan Pink, motivation is driven by 3 main things:  Autonomy (letting people own their responsibilities), Mastery (helping people become great at what they do) and Purpose (getting people to buy into a bigger picture that means something).  A motivated team will blow away a non-motivated team…every time.

Ask yourself this:  How does your organization fare on the 3 components of the motivation model?  Are you (or a key member of the team) consciously focusing on keeping everyone positive and motivated?

Communication

It’s not enough to have great ideas and to start with a solid team, you have to constantly be working to keep everyone on the same page or the message will get lost.  A critical part of leadership is finding or developing the right message and repeating it over and over again until everyone can’t help but get it!  Of course communication is a two way street, so in addition to getting the message out, you also must listen and understand where the team is and what’s going on.

Ask yourself this:  Could everyone in your business clearly and concisely state what you’re doing (and why you’re doing it)?  Do you have regular meetings in place that foster great communication?

Research

Ask any serious marketing expert the key to great marketing and they will likely tell you ‘Measure and Tweak’.  The world is an imperfect place…and even though you may have a great idea, it could fall flat.  That’s why it’s so important to track what’s going on (measure) and continue to improve over time (tweak).  Finding and constantly researching the metrics that drive your business will put you in the driver’s seat.

Ask yourself this:  Are you measuring and reporting on the key metrics for your business every week?  Do you have the right person on the team who loves to learn why things happen?

Planning

Not only is the world moving quickly, it’s also becoming more and more complex.  There are times when you can just make it up as you go along, but that’s more likely a recipe for disaster. Laying out an achievable step by step plan on how you’re going to get to where you want to go is the best way to insure success.  Your industry and your business will dictate how complicated that planning needs to be, however some doing at least some planning is critical…as the old saying goes “Failing to plan is planning to fail!”.

Ask yourself this:  Have you laid out the top 5 things that are the most important things to do in the next 90 days?  Do you have a clear plan for achieving those goals?  Do you have the right person (or people) who can create and manage to those plans?

Implementing

A typical trap for many business owners is not following through.  There may be a ton of effort up front in coming up with a great idea, planning and communicating that idea, but without pulling the trigger and actually deciding and implementing, nothing else matters.  It’s easy to get trapped into analyzing and overthinking things…waiting for it to be perfect.  Successful businesses plan and polish, but just for a little while and then they implement!

Ask yourself this:  How many projects or great ideas do you have on a list somewhere that  you’ve never actually acted on?  Do you have the people on your team who make things happen and get things done?

Mix Well and Grow!

What traits (or ingredients) am I missing from this list?  Do you have all of these ingredients on your team?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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