The world is in rough shape right now. We’re still licking our economic wounds when suddenly – BAM – there’s more oil blasting into the Gulf of Mexico than we can possibly manage… and it just keeps flowing and flowing. The world’s attention is focused on those two catastrophes because they are simply gigantic and not easily stopped.
As business owners, we can feel powerless when faced with what seems to be insurmountable issues that even large governments and trillions of dollars cannot correct. But nothing can be further from the truth! If there is anyone who can effect change, it’s the small business owner and his or her customers.
Small business owners represent millions of people and billions of dollars of influence and their customers represent even more. We can all step out and create change. So, if the two biggest issues right now are financial and ecological, where can we start?
Financial Let’s start with some ethical, customer-service-focused, good old fashioned sales hustle. Let’s get out there and make sales, ethically selling our high value products and services to the people who need them. And, as consumers, let’s buy from others even if the price is slightly higher than we want to pay. Getting money into the economy is going to be the best thing for it and getting a bunch of money into the economy is going to skyrocket our personal, professional, and national economies toward better conditions.
On that note, here is a great article about good and bad profit – there is a difference! – and the few simple things you can do to make sure you are earning good profit.
Ecological
Individually, we’re not going to be able to cap the oil spill or reverse the trends happening there. But collectively, we can make progress elsewhere in the ecosystem to influence an overall change for the better. That starts with going green in our business. When we go green and ask our vendors to go green and buy green products and services, we’re making a significant contribution (in dollars and commitment) toward a better environment.
And here is a great article about green marketing; about turning your business from a regular business into a green business that can promote itself as an eco-friendly alternative.
Just a couple of days ago I wrote about the customer service you provide in your business as being an investment and we mentioned a Freshbooks blog from way back. While thinking further about this issue, I was clicking around and found an article in a newspaper that referenced… Freshbooks and their take on customer service.
So, since it’s so closely related to what I was just talking about a couple of days ago, I just had to share this article, too. Find it at The Globe and Mail. The article is written by Mark Evans, a consultant who uses content and social media to help businesses get more attention.
Evans writes that customer service is not just about correcting bad things from happening but also about building and leveraging a positive experience. For example, he mentions connecting with the customer to touch base with them and to show them that you value the relationship. And here’s how Freshbooks plays into the subject: Evans quotes Mike McDerment, CEO of Freshbooks, who says that a happy customer provides referrals. Although I might have disagreed with this a few years ago, I think that today’s socially connected world makes that true now. Just look at what interactions are like on Twitter: One person might tweet “boo! Invoicing day. My least favorite day of the month.” And someone else might respond with “Try Freshbooks. I like them.” A simple referral from a happy customer can go a long way.
And just when I thought I was wrapping up the topic, there was a link at the bottom of the article to a blog by Ben Yoskovitz. Yoskovitz is an entrepreneur with an impressive background and lots of interesting things to say and in his blog post , he reviewed the book BAM: Delivering Customer Service in a Self-Service World. His review/summary is incredibly helpful as he lists 9 points from the book that every entrepreneur should pay attention to. Number 1: Tie customer service to revenue and profits. Brilliant! Number 5: Tie customer service to surprise. There are others but those were my two favorites. Read this blog , change your customer service, and transform your customer’s experience!
When I was a kid, my parents needed a washer and dryer and they saw a set advertised so they bought it. It turned out not to be very good and they had a terrible time trying to get the company to service the products. But my parents had little recourse, besides haranguing the manufacturers. I was just thinking about their experience the other day and then comparing it to my own: Recently, I spent a lot of money on a new furnace for my home. The furnace is generally pretty good but there was a service issue that should have been fixed right away and wasn’t. I called and called and called. When the company finally responded, they sent several “specialists” out, none of whom could fix the problem, and every visit was scheduled for one day but the specialist came a day or two late. Unlike my parents, though, I don’t have to just “tough out” the situation and hope for that my constant phone calls would help. Instead, I can go online to my personal or professional network of thousands and I can make one single tweet or wall post or blog. And? The problem gets solved right away.
Customer service has shifted yet again. Customer service used to not exist at all. Then, it was its own department – just a guy with a phone. Then it became trendy to call the sales staff “customer service” (even though they did mostly selling and almost no back-end support service). Today, lots of businesses claim to have great customer service but really don’t.
The reason, as suggested in this excellent (but slightly older) post by Freshbooks, there is no clear and obvious ROI in customer service. Rather, the Sales department has clear metrics – sold products or not – but “happy customers” is ethereal at best. So, because companies can’t easily quantify the customer service experience, the customer service department (or skillset) is often the first thing to go.
Unfortunately, that’s a mistake. A business may not easily be able to quantify customer service with obvious and conventional metrics, but the results of customer service are clear. If you ask me, I think customer service metrics can be found in the following places:
Customer retention
Long term profitability
Ratio of positive-to-negative statements on social networking sites
How can your business make an investment into customer service? Here are a few ideas:
If you can’t afford to hire someone new, train your staff to watch for negative customer service signs and – this is huge – empower them to address those signs immediately.
Run frequent searches on various social networking sites for references to your company. For example, use HootSuite or Tweetdeck to keep a search running for the name of your company (along with various misspellings) to see what people are saying.
Google the name of your company plus the words “hate” or “sucks” and see what comes up. While you may not be able to address every concern of a vocal minority, it’s a good way to see where some potential common problems are.
In a previous blog we talked about the use of Twitter in customer service. It’s often thought of as a marketing tool but can also keep customers up-to-date.
In that blog we wrote: “Is your shipment of thneeds delayed because a lack of raw material? (By the way: big props to the first person who can write in the comments and tell me exactly what raw material a thneed is made out of).”
No one answered our query, which leads me to believe one of two things: Either people don’t know what a thneed is or they prefer real prizes over props.
So, “what raw material a thneed is made out of?”.
The answer: “Truffula tufts from the Truffula tree”.
Still not sure what we’re talking about? Take 24 minutes and 49 seconds to journey back to your childhood and be reminded:
Dr. Seuss’ beloved story The Lorax is a (still relevant) story about the tension between economic decisions and ecological decisions: Nature versus the marketplace. People require items but those items come at a cost (not just a monetary cost but an environmental one). That’s the reason we’re seeing aggressive emissions controls and recycling programs being put into place.
And there’s a broader lesson that can be learned when we take this story out of the ecological context and consider other influences as well. For example, the economic turmoil we find ourselves in now is the result of a type of mass cutting of Truffula Trees.
Thanks for the warning, Dr. Seuss! We’ve heard the Lorax’s warning about the environment; it’s unfortunate that we didn’t hear him warning us about the economy!
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