When You Forget the Needs of Your Customer

Need more customers? Are you treating your existing customers with kindness?

Spending time in New York City (for the Fabulous 50 Small Business Inspiration Tour) and traveling cross-country avails one to much opportunity with customer service. It is always good when there are opportunities to contrast the great with the poor, as well as the mediocre.

I had a sales manager years ago who used to pace around, fists in the air, shouting, “It takes WORK to be mediocre — why not work to be GREAT?” – that made a big impression with me. Perhaps it was the fists, or his 6’5″ former football-player frame – but it did make an impact.

Mediocre: Jet Blue, although I love them dearly, has had issues with the runways being closed at JFK Airport – now I know that delays and flight cancellations are not their fault, but I believe they could do a better job alerting passengers – they have my email and cell phone – why not let me know the flight has been delayed? Why not put a blurb in the ticket information for those going in and out of JFK that there is only one runway open some of the time currently. It could make them look like the hero and not the villain.

Great: Participating in the Oprah Winfrey O Magazine 10 Year Anniversary weekend – there were four events – and we say Oprah at three of them. She did not spare any expense for a day of workshops for 6000 attendees, and at Radio City Music Hall she stood for 90 minutes on stage talking about HER story, in HER words – along with stories about the magazine. It was spectacular. I had no idea what Oprah would do on stage – certainly I expected her to sit down in a comfy chair.  She and her big staff created a weekend that will be talked about for months. If you don’t believe me, just Google, “O Magazine 10 Year Anniversary” or “Live Your Best Life NYC Weekend”. and you’ll see.

Poor: I saw a multiple best selling business author speaking to a large group of business owners lose his edge. He forgot about who the customer was – he talked down to the audience and got mad (although he tried not to show it) when he was asked to deliver more “bottom-line” nuggets of wisdom. Amazing. I’ll keep his name to myself for now and will write more about this later.

Business owners or their staff often forget how important consistent interactions with the customer are – and what it costs them NOT to consistently be great. What are your customer service stories, and how do they add to your bottom line? Post a comment or send an email to me at Score More Sales, and I’ll mention them.

Lori Richardson is on a “Fabulous 50-50-50-50″ tour around the U.S. and parts of Canada. If you know of a town she should visit, or a local expert she can co-present with, drop her a note. Set your big audacious goals and post them for the world to see – then take action on them. More on Lori and the tour at Score More Sales.

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Informal PC Security Measures

Millions of people are now running PCs that are truly instrumental to their success.   This is clearly more evident today than ever before.  Many businesses, without the use of operational PCs, will totally shut down.   This is really the case if your PC is used in the act of production or providing the service that is sold.   If you are a manufacturer and you use your PC for converting blueprints into CAD design plans, the lack of the shop floor computer that makes these conversions will likely shut down your operations until it can be repaired.

Therefore, the security of PCs and their data is now a paramount consideration in small businesses and large.  If you are in this environment you are likely running a quality virus protection system on your PCs and oftentimes you may believe that this satisfies your security concerns.  If you review your operation from a data security perspective, however, you may find that there are glaring steps missing in your provision for data security.

For example, assume that you are the graphic arts shop described above and you are working diligently on a new project for a customer that you have been working on landing for some time.  Let us assume also that you have tight tolerances and a very tight schedule.     Now assume further that on day three of a four-day project – and just as your rough-draft version of the product is to be reviewed for signoff by the client – you have a head crash on your PC that housed all the files under development.  Lastly, assume that you do not regularly perform backups on this PC.   Your new client – when they realize that prototypes will not be ready today, nor will the final product be delivered on time – will likely take their business elsewhere.   While an extreme example, this sort of thing happens every day.

Assuming that the prior point is well taken, what are the kinds of soft security measures that you as a business owner should take?  As can now clearly be seen from the previous scenario, data security and overall file backups are as vital as virus protection.   You should back up your data files weekly in a typical, accounting-only environment.  If your data files are critical to business execution as in the prior example, then you should provide for their daily backup on CD and store these files offsite.   You might even consider an internet based service that auto-backs up all your data daily – even hourly.

Do not forget to maintain and backup your Windows Registry. You can get high-quality registry software that performs the maintenance, backup and other registry fix functions that accomplish the needed Registry Repair and maintenance.

Treating Lazy People

Some people are too lazy and they don’t want to admit that.  They usually make too many excuses just to avoid working and they don’t care about the way they look.  They wear some old mens shirts and they don’t want to make a change. Maybe they should change their clothes and get some fresh and stylish custom shirts. When you wear these mens shirts, you will not look lazy and negligent. 

It is difficult to deal with the lazy people.  The lazy people usually spend too much time at home watching the TV and eating snacks.  You need to find the way to change their habits. Having a lazy person in your house is not that easy and you can have some conflicts with a lazy person.  The lazy people don’t clean their dishes and they don’t want to clean their rooms.  You just cannot stand it any more. They don’t care about the hygiene.   You need to make some rules. If you want to change their ways, you need to teach them some discipline. You need to make the rules. Every home has its rules and they should obey those rules. If they are still ignoring you, you need to take some other measures. You can try to give them some rewards, if they are willing to change their habits. You can encourage them to find some work. You also need to encourage them to do some sports. Maybe you are able to change their ways. You will see how the lazy people can be motivated. If you have some lazy people in your company, you can also try to change their ways. Every company needs to have some discipline and you can improve the working efficiency. You can find some good ways to change the lazy people into the diligent people