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We had an epiphany today: Chambers of Commerce are wonderful resources for networking in your local area (or indeed any area you wish to target). This may well go down as a fine candidate for the ‘It should have gone without saying’ award, but I wonder how many of our subscribers are dallying with buying expensive lead lists or worse, paying telemarketers for ‘warm leads’ when they haven’t made effective use of the nearest three or four Chambers?
We had this revelation while returning to the office from the monthly Chamber lunch here in Basingstoke – where we met and networked with solicitors, accountants, bankers and adult education specialists. Guess what? They’re all slap-bang in the middle of our target market. They weren’t the only people there, but the Chamber had kindly provided name-tags and a list of attendees (including Business name and core business). So all we had to do was find our targets and start the networking process. We were like guided missiles – except with smiles rather than warheads!
Vanessa recently completed an incredibly revealing survey exploring the key spurs to customer dissatisfaction, and today’s article Three Ways to Ruin Your Business Reputation gives you the headlines. If you’d like to get your hands on the full report drop us a line at info@zee2a.com and we’ll happily oblige.
Three Ways to Ruin Your
Business Reputation
Funny how the minute I use the word ‘reputation’ ears prick up. We all know the power of a good reputation, and the damage a bad one can do. Businesses are concerned over matters like their environmental impact; Fair-trade policies; adherence to health and safety standards; etc because those issues impact on their reputation. A good reputation drives good publicity and ultimately longevity of a business. A bad reputation leads to bad publicity (whether via the media or simply the power of ‘word-of-mouth’), lost customers, and can ultimately result in business failure.
This article is not about to focus on environmental impact, Fair-trade policies, or health and safety. What it is going to focus on is three other areas that customers find critically important. Customers are, after all, the lifeblood of your business. If we as businesses are not delivering what our customers deem important they will drift away and go to our competitors that are. Specifically we are going to address three customer satisfaction issues that impact on your business reputation.
I recently hosted a survey among a group of consumers, to find out what key issues made them extremely dissatisfied with a service provider. The following three issues came up over and over and over again. They were:
- Recurrent Mistakes – with little or no attempt to prevent future occurrence,
- Disrespectful Behaviour from a member of staff, and
- Appalling Telephony Systems.
Recurrent Mistakes
No one is saying that we have to be perfect and are not allowed to ever make mistakes. Humans, being imperfect as we are, will always need to allow a margin for error. The problem comes in when people do not learn from their mistakes and keep on doing the same wrong things repeatedly. A number of complaints I have heard are around the lack of effort to correct mistakes.
There could be different reasons why mistakes are repeated. At times a lack of skills or training is to blame. At other times it is a personnel issue – either the wrong person has been assigned to do the job, or the employee involved is simply careless and takes no pride in their work. And of course a management issue is often involved – failing to address issues before they escalate (be they training, staffing, or attitude issues).
Disrespectful Behaviour from a Staff Member
Now while you as a business owner are gasping that none of your employees would ever treat a customer disrespectfully, 2 out of every 5 people I surveyed (that’s almost half of them) have a different view! The kind of behaviour that they find disrespectful includes:
- An inconsistent level of service from different people in the same organisation;
- Discrimination based on their perceived value (or lack thereof) as a client;
- Staff members unwilling to take responsibility;
- A member of staff who obviously regards customer interaction as an interruption; and
- Unfulfilled promises (phone calls and emails not returned; promises not followed through; etc).
Would it surprise you to know that Harvard Business School conducted a study a few years ago, which established that nearly two thirds of customers that leave an organisation do so as a direct result of bad service or discourtesy from a member of staff? And it’s not just junior members of staff that are guilty of disrespectful behaviour either. In my survey there was evidence of managers and other senior people giving their junior staff very poor examples to follow.
Appalling Telephony Systems
Ooh, now this is a hot-potato isn’t it? Customers hate call centres!
We can all relate personal experiences of being caught in an automated loop with no quick way to a real, live person; or being stuck with “"option 1, option 2, and option 3" whether our call had anything to do with those options or not; and when we do actually get to speak to somebody on the other end, often they can’t actually help us at all.
Is it the call centre per se that is the problem? Or is it perhaps the individuals on the other end of the telephone that either enhance or ruin your experience?
There are two distinct areas here that need addressing, and both relate to training. On the one hand, customers need to be better educated to use the alternatives available to them. I feel qualified to say (because I am frequently guilty of this myself) that if the customer first referred to their user manual / policy document / the business website; there would probably be no need to pick up the telephone at all. On the other hand, the staff within these call centres need to be more adequately trained in product knowledge and in effective use of the telephone.
Let’s face it, as a customer, I would have no objection (nor be any the wiser) to my call being answered anywhere and by anyone, as long as my call was efficiently dealt with.
It’s easy to see how failing in these three areas can completely ruin our business reputation. Customers talk. Fact. We really don’t want them spreading negative publicity about us. I’ve heard it said that a happy customer will share their story with one or two close friends, but an unhappy customer will tell everyone they can! So then is there an easy way to protect our reputations? Absolutely Yes!
These issues (and indeed many others too) can usually be resolved by the following three steps:
- Sharpening the recruitment process – finding the right people, and putting them in to the right roles;
- Managing problem staff more closely – being close to the causes, is it motivation, attitude, or a skills gap? and
- Providing an adequate, ongoing, and consistent training and personal development programme for all members of staff.
Do you ever receive customer complaints? Are your staff repeating the same mistakes? Do you run a call centre? Don’t despair, Zee2A can help! Vanessa works with organisations who desire increased commitment from staff who take pride in their work. Organisations that are striving to provide a faster, friendlier, more efficient service. Organisations that want satisfied customers who remain loyal and evangelise about how great your service is, to others. Read about our Service Essentials Programme here.
(If you're unfamiliar with the concept behind Front2Back 2Front please go here to read the explanation in our launch issue.)
We recently parted company with a long-term service provider, after much toing and froing lasting almost two years. The really sad part forms the object lesson for today’s Front2Back2Front: The service provider couldn’t understand why we were unhappy enough to take our business elsewhere. Instead, they were at pains to enumerate all the things they had done in an attempt to solve our problem – even though none of the things they had done had addressed the problem!
What can you learn from their sad example? Please, please PLEASE realise this: When you screw up, nobody is interested in your excuses! Customers only want results, and if you can’t produce those results they will cease to be customers – it’s not brain-surgery. When a customer raises a complaint a clock starts ticking. If the problem has not been resolved to their satisfaction when the second-hand reaches zero you are history.
You can’t afford to try and resolve the issue! Always remember the wise words of one of the 20th Century’s great philosophers, Yoda (should that be George Lucas?) who said ‘Do, or do not. There is no try.’
 Do you have an experience to share illustrating how service providers offer excuses rather than solutions? Why do you think that happens?
Click here to send us your thoughts, using 'SoapBox' as the subject. Alternately you can email us at info@zee2a.com. If we like yours it will appear in an upcoming issue of The Marketing Edge.
Last month we posed the question: Do you have an uplifting customer service story to share?
As Dr. Kevin Morrell from Birmingham explains, sometimes it's the little things:
"Staying at the Sheraton Hotel in Sakat, New Delhi. Everything about the service was wonderful - friendly polite and helpful staff, great food. The thing that stood out for me was going out one evening and coming back to find that an old battered pair of trainers that I wear for travelling had been cleaned. Whoever had done that had done a wonderful restoration job and had also twisted the laces before then relacing them which looked kind of cool - I do have no fashion sense though :) - they still look better today than they have in years. In any case that small gesture said a lot to me about that hotel."
Thanks Kevin, your story powerfully illustrates that delighting customers needn't be about huge expense and international cooperation. Mostly it's just about doing a little extra.
A selection of networking events that we’ll be attending in the next few weeks:
- Wednesday 20 Feb – Business Link Event at the Red Lion Hotel, Basingstoke
- Tuesday 26 Feb – TFN Breakfast Networking, The Ark Conference Centre, Basingstoke
- Thursday 28 Feb – (AM) BNI Breakfast Networking, Fleet, then (PM) Wired Wessex Networking, Winchester
- Tuesday 4 Mar – David is the guest speaker at Basingstoke Networking (Mixed Event: Ladies and Gents) at the Red Lion Hotel. Click here for more info and to book.
- Wednesday 5 Mar – Our VIP Reception at Business South 2008. Click here for more info.
SAVE THE DATE:
Tuesday 1st April Vanessa is guest speaker at Basingstoke Ladies Networking at the Red Lion Hotel. Her presentation is on Handling Difficult Customers with Care. More info in our next e-zine.
If you would like David, Vanessa, or both of us to come and talk at one of your upcoming events, training sessions, or board meetings, please give us a call or drop an email to info@zee2a.com. We are fully booked for March, so please speak to us NOW about April.
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