You Win, I'll Buy Again...

I was personally reminded yesterday of just how important providing award-winning levels of customer service can be in keeping existing customers. I am sharing this experience because I feel that the way I was dealt with is a shining example of a company getting it right. All too often I read or hear about how a customer is lost due to poor levels of service. I am happy to say that this is not one of those stories. Read the following, give some thought on how your organizatin is dealing with customers, and then see if your service organization would live up to this real example.

I recently ordered clothing off of an online retail site that promotes itself as a high-end distressed inventory clearing house. When my order arrived, I had received the incorrect merchandise. I had originally ordered two dresses for my daughters and received two t-shirts. Nice t-shirts, but clearly not the merchandise that I had originally ordered. This was the first time I had ordered anything from this portal. This was a fatal error on the part of this business. As far as I was concerned I was done and would never order anything form this business again.

The next day I called their customer service department. I shared my story with their representative. As we spoke a credit was issued for the charges. I had yet to request any action to be taken. It was though the customer service rep anticipated what could be the best possible outcome for me (the customer) and proceeded to take care of my needs proactively without me having to exhaust the energy to rectify the issue.

Moments after taking my call my credit card had been credited for the original charges, the correct merchandise was placed in my shopping cart for me, and a credit for shipping was added to my order. As a bonus they even let me keep the t-shirts for my daughters. This was due to the return shipping/restocking costing the business more than simply allowing us to keep the merchandise, but even that was impressive. What I mean by that is here I was dealing with a customer service representative who knows that the cost of returning merchandise under a certain dollar threshold would actually cost the business more than the value of the merchandise itself and was empowered to make that decision. Very compelling.

I was transformed from a disenchanted customer who was now hanging up the phone just blown away with what had just transpired. Not only did they take care of my situation in an award-winning fashion, but they have earned my future business and will now have me advocating their business to my friends and family. Yes, they messed up my order, but in a way I am glad that it happened. I now have a great customer service story to tell and have been reminded at how fast you can lose a customer if you do not empower the right people to make critical customer-facing decisions.

Who do you have on the front lines of customer interaction in your business? Are they empowered to make decisions on how your business will react to certain types of customer-facing situations? Even if this is predetermined based on situational information, it could prove to earn, keep or retain your business customers and even turn frustrated customers into advocates, which is what happened in my case.

Pull It Apart

In order to be an effective leader you have to be willing to take risks and set goals that others might perceive as too extraordinary, too difficult to achieve or too visionary. Today's business and economic climate has created an environment in which an out of the box approach to traditional business as we know it could represent a refreshing approach that would act as a magnet for attracting customers.

In order to explore what this type of approach would mean for your business, you have to step outside of what you do on a daily basis, which is difficult to do. You need a fresh set of eyes to take a look at what you do that will give you the ability to ask the "why" question on everything that you are currently doing. Why do we do this in this particular way? Why are we investing here? Why do we measure this, and why is it important? Sometimes, in order to put something spectacular together, you have to first pull it completely apart.

Our business is structured in a way that we have multiple business units with our parent company. This gives us at The Employment Guide the ability to look at how other businesses approach certain aspects of their business and find what might make sense for us to try. One of our sister companies is For Rent and another is Homes.com. We like to compare notes on what they are doing to give us a fresh perspective on some aspects of our business. It is almost like having a built-in consultant team.

This type of resource is going to be of even greater value in 2008 than in years past. Given the conditions with which we are all faced, including the credit and investment market upheaval, slower job growth (projected to fall to a total of 100,000 in 2008 by Kiplinger), identifying new ways to approach your business will be invaluable. After the innovation process, you have to make sure you have the resources to develop. That in and of itself can be a challenge, especially if you are in an industry that has faced restructuring, layoffs, etc. (such as the automotive industry). Then you have to allow for the proper amount of time for testing, quality control and a trial period before taking your new product or service to market. What is interesting is that while this process takes time, it is the businesses that can compress this time-frame and get their new product or service out to market first within their industry that will typically be looked at as an industry leader. It is my opinion that within the realm of electronic or internet related businesses the understanding that back-end development will need to take place after a product is launched is readily accepted more so than the "make sure the product is 100% before we roll it out approach." This is largely due to the fact that you can measure what your customers are doing with your product and modify the product to better meet their needs as you track usability. In fact, within our electronic media industry, this is now becoming the norm. Typically the website that you are on this week will change in some form or fashion next week. These changes are not readily noticeable, but they are in fact designed to enhance the returning visitor's experience.

So what are you going to do in today's business environment that will change the way you are approaching your business? What are you going to do differently? If you are ever going to take a great risk with the potential for high rewards, now is the time!

Take what you have currently and pull it completely apart. Can you put it back together in a way that so the end result is better than what you currently have? If so, do it.

Any time there is change there is opportunity. So it is paramount that an organization get energized rather than paralyzed.- Jack Welch, CEO, General Electric

Finding Y-our Focus

In a changing business landscape companies are routinely challenged to develop new products to better meet the needs of their current customer base while continuing to expand their ability to acquire and retain new customers. Many businesses will tackle this process by adding new products or brands to the current offering. Typically these brands are overseen by a brand manager or business development manager while utilizing existing infrastructure and resources to deliver new products to market.

The recruitment advertising industry is not exempt from this process. Our business, The Employment Guide is also not exempt from this process. As we enter our eleventh year of business we are a much different and diversified organization than we were in 1997. We have added to our product offering through the development of our job fair business and our award winning website EmploymentGuide.com. We have also added our targeted niche product offering to the transportation recruitment industry CareersinGear.com and as of yesterday just released our newest member of our product family HealthCareerWeb.com. All of this change is due to the changing needs of our customers and emerging needs within certain industries that are the fastest growing areas of within the recruitment industry.

So what does this mean to the leaders within our organization and the individuals that they lead including our sales personnel? What is or should be our focus? At first glance the thought of this question can appear overwhelming. How am I going to sell all of these products? How can I get my staff to sell this and this and this...? Where do I find the time? When do I spend time selling this or that? It can become a daunting task if not properly managed.

Realistically, from a leadership perspective, we are not asking our sales teams or leaders to do anything different. We continue to ask our sales personnel to focus on calling existing customers and prospects to discuss their needs and to match the best product or combination of products from our portfolio that will satisfy those needs while developing their overall skill set and knowledge base. Nothing new. The line-up of products that we have today affords us an increased ability to expand our total customer count by satisfying a wider array of needs. Once we earn a prospect's business and they become a customer; it is then up to us to work on retaining that customer by exceeding their expectations while providing award-winning customer service. Basically, our expectations of our sales teams and where they focus their efforts will not change. Do they need a broader range of knowledge and skills due the fact that they are talking to a more diverse group of prospects and dealing with new technology? Yes. Are we asking for these individuals to do something outside of their core responsibilities and focus? No. We cannot nor will we ever be all things to all people. It is important that we are the right things at the right time to the right people, which equates to providing the right combination of products and services to meet the need of the customer or prospect on whom we are focused at the particular moment in time.

Businesses can grow by adding products and customers or selling more to existing customers, or they can grow through acquisition (buying new customers). The way that a company stimulates progress and the ability to grow can come in a wide range of packages. We have expanded our product offerings, which in turn offers us as an organization to meet the needs of an increasing number of prospects and customers. The purpose of this expansion is to meet specific needs within targeted markets in the recruitment industry while adding to our overall customer count. We are working towards accomplishing this in a way that has allowed our business to remain true to our roots in the fact that all of our products are niche in nature and are in line with the core ideology of our organization.

In my opinion, customer acquisition and retention must always be the primary focus of a business. A successful company will always be customer oriented. How a business chooses to tackle this task should be based on their core values and purpose. The road map will always look different from business to business and leader to leader, but the goal of customer acquisition and retention will always be an underlying part of a "for profit" company's purpose.

What are you doing to increase the focus of the individuals that you lead in the area of customer acquisition and retention?

Have you found any specific time-management techniques that have worked for you or those that you lead?

Best regards,

Jeff Littlejohn