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| Business Tips |
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Business Tips
Supplied by Andrew Ballenthin from Sol Solutions
check back each week for a new tip you can use to move your business forward
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Moments of Truth That Grow Sales |
 Article 2 of 4 – Why Your Business & Products Are The Best
Having the drive, discipline, and passion for Excellence in every part of your business ensures each “Moment of Truth” you interact with your customer is a 100% wow experience. This is what sets you apart from competitors that care less about details, forget to follow-up, don’t learn about future needs, and simply assume “my way is the best way”.
Any company can achieve Strategic Excellence and consistent Moments of Truth by; Defining Key Areas of Excellence; Systemizing Activities; and Measuring What Matters. There are several other steps that are part of this exercise but for the sake this article we will focus a few areas that make a major impact.
Sample Business: Call Centre for Inbound Customer Support
To help illustrate how a business defines Strategic Excellence we will use a fictional call centre that is responsible for answering customer questions, noting changes of information, and managing billing. You might relate to this as the companies you call regarding your credit cards, cellular phone network, or internet service provider. The following example can be applied to any type of business.
Part 1 - Define Your Strategic Key Areas of Excellence
In every business there are only 3 to 5 major areas which make a massive difference. The role of these high level measurements is to provide a quick review on whether the business is on track or falling off course with customers, operations, profit and staff. The following are examples this call centre may have in their strategic Key Areas of Excellence.
1. Ensure the first 90 seconds of the call are simple, professional, and create a genuine impression `we are glad to be of service`. Note: this business recognized that complexity and frustration at the start of a call left people with a bad impression even after helping the customer.
2. Resolve 95% of customer needs accurately within 3 minutes. Note: the call centre reorganized data management so 1 agent could access more information and empowered employees to make more decisions within guidelines to ensure call time was reduced and satisfaction increased. The result was massive savings in labour and increased customer retention.
3. Keep customer and staff retention at 85%. Note: a direct relationship was found that when staff were dissatisfied so were customers. By improving employee conditions and empowering them to be more effective, staff enjoyed their work and tried even harder to retain customers.
Part 2 - Systemizing Activities : Consistently Achieving Excellence
Knowing your strategic Areas of Excellence is great but without systemized ways of consistently producing results, chaos follows and energy is wasted re-creating basic activities. The challenge is to identify what should be a process, what is a policy, and what are guidelines to support decisions.
1. Define Processes – activities that are repeated several times a day or week, and can make the difference between a successful or disastrous outcome should be defined and documented.
2. Define Policies – activities that come up only a few times a week, or month, and do not require perfect consistency for every step should be noted as policies. This ensures decisions are consistent and not continually re-created every time the issue comes up again.
3. Define Guidelines – there are number of areas that fit into grey-zones. In this case give flexibility to the decision maker so work is not held up and the outcome fits overall performance needs.
Part 3 - Measure What Matters
Without measuring the effectiveness of the first 2 sections you can be slowly heading towards failure while doing all the right things. As an example; if a ship was to leave a port and be off its navigation by only 2%, the end result over many kilometres is the arrival at a completely different destination.
Time is precious to businesses of any size. The key is to know what measurements you can afford to keep track of that prevents the 2% of daily, weekly, and monthly mis-navigation. Some tips are:
1. Strategic Measurements - fit on ˝ a page to 1 page and are reviewed monthly or quarterly.
2. Operational Measurements – fit on 2 to 4 pages. Key areas are reviewed weekly at team meetings. All measurements should be reviewed monthly. These reflect effectiveness of processes, policies and guidelines and help to retrain staff and prevent going off track.
3. Process Measurements – these are reviewed on an as needed basis against the detail of the activity going on. This will help simplify activities and ensure consistent Excellence.
4. Policy and Guideline Reviews – these should be checked quarterly or annually.
Summary
No matter what industry your business is in it has the ability to deliver a 100% Wow to customers. By following some of the tips noted you can create superior performance at less cost then your competitors over the long term. In the end your customers, staff, and bottom line will thank-you and Moments of Truth will be easy to achieve time-after-time.
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Upcoming Articles On This Topic
Article 3 of 4 – When Things Go Wrong – How to Create Loyalty Regardless
Article 4 of 4 – Generating Growth through Referrals
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About That Horror Word `Recession` |
 Growth Is Possible Even If Customers Spend Less
Nearly everyday there is news about a “slowing of the economy”, reduced national projected growth versus past years, rising costs, unemployment, the strong Canadian dollar and its impact on manufacturing and exports, and so on. Considering this environment, some businesses are still growing strongly, others are prepared for weathering the storm, and others are closing shop. The challenge is to understand our present environment and adapt so you can continue to grow.
What are some of the factors that will affect long term free cash flow in the economy?
1. Fuel costs will continue to rise - many countries overseas are now consuming petrol in larger quantities as they are being developed by companies that see cost savings by operating overseas. The result will be ever increasing pressure on a finite oil supply which will continue to drive up fuel costs for everyone and decreases disposable cash and reduces profits.
2. Increased material costs - every time an item moves from its raw state to production to market it will be absorbing the increased energy costs. In addition, growth overseas in consumer and business markets is putting more strain on raw materials to supply larger populations and their increased living standards. The result is an increase in raw material costs due to a limited supply.
3. Food costs will continue to rise - more farmlands are being converted to food products for production of fuel alternatives and ethanol. The result is there is less farmland for producing staple food needs, which due to less supply, and continued demand increases food prices.
4. High income & living standards - by comparison to three quarters of the world’s population, North American and European living standards are expensive. Overseas we are seeing countries with people working longer hours with equal qualifications on far less salary. On a global basis, count on these jobs competing with ours for a long time to come. The result is dollars that would have gone back into our economy, in some cases, are going elsewhere to get more for less.
5. A variety of financial market factors - the list is long on this one including the US credit crunch, the strong Canadian dollar, and the swinging of stock markets as companies declare reduced profits or losses due to the points above, and many more. The result is businesses and consumers hold on to their money as they are uncertain of what the future brings.
How Does A Company Grow With These Factors At Work ?
Understand Your Customers` Increased Costs
To be ahead of the curve, look at how the factors above, and any other ones not mentioned, will put a strain your customer’s ability to buy from you. Once you understand what pressure your customers are facing adapt products and service to help them reduce costs in advance. Ideally reach an agreement that they will give you long term repeat business if you help them win. In consumer markets, create offers that acknowledge people may want to spend less and consider loyalty programs that reward returning.
Look At Reducing Your Cost Structure Sooner Than Later
If you are not feeling the pressure of the economy yet, look ahead and start trimming costs in advance. Ask questions like, can you bring costs down with suppliers by negotiating long term agreements? How can you get more work done with less effort so you either reduce payroll or your staff is focused on maximizing customer growth, retention and efficient operations? What are non-essentials that you can avoid spending money on or reduce usage of?
Be A Better One-Stop Shop
Your customers are buying services from direct or indirect competitors. Understand what they are buying elsewhere and if you can make it fit within your business model, offer new options at competitive prices. By diversifying and becoming more of a one-stop-shop, you will capture more cash from your customers and give them more reasons to stay with you longer.
Communicate What You Do With Excellence
Take a look at your branding, pricing, and services and see if it really speaks your customer’s language. There is a massive amount of information your buyers are bombarded with that want their attention. One of the ways to rise to the top is make it easy for your new customers to identify with your business. People do not have time to figure out what you do – do it for them. Also, investigate new ways to advertise using online media at lower costs then traditional means of print. Pass savings back to customers as incentives for trying you and then do everything right so they will not want to leave.
Look At Whole New Ways of Doing Business
It is unavoidable, we are moving into a global market place. As much as loyalty to your suppliers and staff are fantastic traits to have, consider what services you can tap into overseas to help you offer more service or reduce costs. By looking out of the box you can keep your loyalty to the staff and vendors by ensuring you have a healthy business which continues to support them for the long term. It is possible to avoid massively stripping costs or going out of business by considering these options well in advance.
Cut The Politics Out Of Your Culture
Sadly many businesses that employed just a few to tens of thousands of workers have died due to their internal politics. The intelligence and talent was in the business but the power struggles, lack of shared information, and inability to work towards a common goal meant great people went the same way as the dinosaurs. Spectacular things can happen when a team comes together and leaves `power and authority` behind. Creating a culture that puts energy into competing against the market versus itself is amazing.
Summary
The good news is there are many things that can be done during tight economic times to help your business thrive. One of the most important things to recognize we are in a long term changing global market and cost structures are unlikely to enjoy the lower operating values we’ve been familiar with for years. If you plan to change in advance, the future will hold many bright days ahead.
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