 I moved from working in my business to working on my business!
Jim White, Founder Savor Dallas http://www.savordallas.com |
 I found a community of business leaders who make being in business a lot more fun and less lonely.
Jeannine Sandstrom, CEO CoachWorks International, Inc. http://www.coachworks.com |
 I now have a place to be open about my business success and future challenges.
Debbie Mrazek, CEO The Sales Company Author The Field Guide to Sales http://www.the-sales-company.com |
Posts Tagged ‘America’
This article is an excerpt from Jamie Walters’ book — Big Vision, Small Business: The Four Keys to Finding Success & Satisfaction as a Lifestyle Entrepreneur.
Many companies, large and small, conduct periodic surveys with clients to ensure satisfaction. Surveys can be valuable, but the effectiveness depends largely on the quality of the questions and the listening skills of the interviewer. In some cases, as with written multiple-choice surveys, there is no opportunity for personal interaction or to ask clarifying and probing questions, reducing the value of the data gleaned. While quantitative surveys are certainly useful when statistical data is your goal, qualitative surveys are far more effective for a relationship-driven business intent upon truly guaranteeing client satisfaction and using the data gleaned to improve customer-interaction practices.
While writing this chapter, I received an electronic newsletter featuring a sample customer-satisfaction survey readers could use to "delight customers." The seven-question survey included measures such as "Rate the quality of our customer care" and "To what extent would you recommend our services." This particular survey was a good example of how such an effort can skim the surface by using vague language and yes-or-no questions, and miss excellent opportunities for deepening the relationship and gaining truly useful information. Why? The survey questions might yield an answer such as "Customer care is fair," but provides no specific details about what, specifically, your company is doing from the customer’s perspective to seem caring or uncaring, or to warrant a referral or not.
It’s easy to catch the Vapid Jargon Disease prevalent in corporate America because it’s so contagious, flowing in a torrent from seemingly wise management and leadership books. One example? The ubiquitous use of "delighting your customer" verbiage. Unless you know exactly what you mean by delighting your customer, and you have information regarding what, specifically, delights your customer — and if, in fact, your customer is delighted (or wants to be) — you won’t be delighting your customers consistently. Rather than talking a mean game about delighting your customers — while that’s certainly a nice thing to want to do — perhaps the more practical and enjoyable goal would be to commit to respectful interactions, consistency, good communication and follow-through, and delivery of the products and services you’ve promised in a manner that’s convenient and satisfying for the customer. A poor survey made up of such superficial questions not only gives you information you can’t act upon, but it wastes your customers’ time — hardly something most would find delightful.
Customer surveys, then, might be more valuable if they contain open-ended questions and an opportunity to delve more deeply into answers to allow you to define what’s most important to the customer and whether the interactions with your company are delivering just that. For example — instead of sending out a multiple-choice survey with questions such as "Did you find your recent experience with us delightful?" or "Was your experience with us fair, good or excellent?" — you might schedule fifteen-minute discussions with customers to find out what they value most about your products and services; what they wouldn’t want you to stop doing; and what’s most important to them when purchasing products and services such as yours. One good way to get constructive criticism that many people avoid is to ask, "If you absolutely had to select at least two things that would have made your experience with us better, what would they be?" That gives you more specific, actionable information than more general surveys.
Once you have that information, you can make whatever adjustments are necessary in your delivery or interaction practices to consistently make customer experiences positive — and be much more likely to "delight" your customers.
WHAT’S YOUR "SQ" (SERVICE QUOTIENT)?
If you really want to refine customer service, use these questions and exercises as a discussion guide to brainstorm improved — and deliberate — ways to "wow" your customers and boost your service quotient.
Exercise: Role play
Ask employees to assume the roles of specific customers speaking with you honestly about your current project. With you playing the part of the project lead or point person, discuss with them the service, interactions, products, etc. that they perceive and receive. Afterwards, discuss what was said, asking pointed questions such as:
- How does our organization’s service fare under scrutiny?
- Where does our organization rate very highly?
- Where is improvement needed?
- Where are there missed opportunities to increase the level of service on a regular basis?
- What will change — and how — to improve service levels?
- How will we feel as a group when we know we’re delivering this refined level of service?
- What do we want customers to be able to say about working with us, ideally?
- How does this differ from what they’re able to say about working with us now?
Be as specific as possible, offering detailed examples of what "fair service" or "ideal service" look, sound and feel like — for both your group and your customers. Once you’ve done some role-playing as a group, outline a plan for discussing the questions with a selection of current and previous customers. Then come back together as a group to decide how to integrate the feedback in a way that refines your service practices.
Homework: Analyze your survey
If you’ve designed a customer service survey, ask your employees to independently analyze the questions (not the answers) and share their perspective on how to make the survey a more effective tool for your business and your customers. Have employees respond to the following questions anonymously, if necessary, to elicit honest responses (and if they don’t feel able to share honest answers in the group, you might want to put that on your discussion list next!):
- In your opinion, what is the purpose and intended result of this survey?
- Does the language used represent the company’s personality, mission, and vision?
- If you were asked this question about a product- or service-provider that you use, would you be able to answer it accurately? (For example, a true/false question such as, "We delight you" may be too vague to answer true or false.)
- What is your opinion about how the survey was presented and framed to the reader?
- From the survey alone, what do you believe the company will be able to do with the information that it gathers?
- What needs to happen to convert this survey — and its benefit to customers and the company — from a ‘satisfactory’ rating to an ‘excellent’ rating in that the
- information it generates will be useful in taking real steps to refine service practices?
Reality check: Recap actions taken
Schedule a meeting with yourself to honestly assess how you and your group are serving customers. Once individual group members have reflected on these questions, add them to the group dialogue list for a spirited discussion. Consider:
- What is your rate of repeat and referral business?
- Which customers do or would you list as references, which you’d leave off that list, and why?
- How much do you know about what your customers want in terms of service? (Don’t make assumptions here;
think about actual feedback that you’ve received.) - What service standards have you "made public" (in marketing materials or conversations, for example), and how are you living up to those promises?
- How — on a day-to-day basis — do you and your team members demonstrate the level of service that you claim? Be very specific.
- How have you remedied an instance of poor service?
- What actions do you take to ensure that you’re not becoming complacent about the service that you deliver?
- How do you train new employees to meet or exceed your service standard? (Does this training work? How do you know that it works, or doesn’t?)
- Do all employees (including executive and management team members) demonstrate your desired level of service — regardless of the amount of contact they have with external clients?
- In what ways could you improve service in areas that you, and perhaps even your customers, currently rate as good or excellent? Identify at least two ways to boost it even higher for each category under discussion.
Brainstorm: Discover service boosters
Just as in the case of a vague survey, performing these exercises will not improve your service levels. The exercises will help you identify opportunities for providing extraordinary service — if you take action. With your employees, review the responses to the above exercises and launch into a brainstorming session geared toward developing approaches to improving service. Encourage employees to suggest new methods, shifted responsibilities and additional ‘tools.’ Communicate the agreed-upon actions internally so that your expectations are clear, and follow up with customers, indicating why you’ve made changes and what they can expect from you. You might even adopt an approach used for high performance by other people: Tell your customers about your vision for higher levels of service and let them know some of the actions you’ll be taking to create real refinements in their experience with your company. Once it’s "out there," you’ll feel extra motivation to follow through!
Ready, fire, aim. Wait, the sequence is wrong! But, does this sequence describe the way you do business? Unfortunately, many of today’s businesses “fire” first and “aim” later in an effort to seize an opportunity in the marketplace. While this particular strategy may yield some positive results in the short term, it may have a different effect in the long term. So, what can you do to avoid this? Strategic planning offers options!
Strategic planning may best be summed up by the words of one of the country’s most prominent business authorities, Peter Drucker. According to Mr. Drucker, “Strategic planning does not deal with future decisions. It deals with the futurity of present decisions. What we have to do today is to be ready for an uncertain tomorrow.” The idea sounds simple enough. In fact, in the 1960s the popularity of corporate strategy sky-rocketed and nearly every CEO earned his keep by categorizing, analyzing, quantifying and predicting. Through these exercises, it was believed that one could plot a strategy that would safely steer a company to the threshold of success and beyond. By the 1980s, however, U.S. companies found themselves fighting for market share with their global competitors. In the struggle to catch up, corporate America began the infamous trend of reengineering. While reengineering may help squeeze a little more profit out of operations, it does little to generate a distinctive competitive advantage. That is where strategic planning comes in!
No longer a top-down, internalized process, today’s strategic planning process brushes with a broad stroke and encompasses a variety of perspectives, models and approaches. Goals-based planning is the most popular approach. Goals-based strategic planning offers some striking benefits. By focusing on the organization’s mission and vision, it offers a mechanism to establish goals, strategies to achieve those goals and realistic action plans – all while ensuring consistency with the company’s core values. Documenting this provides a basis from which progress can be measured.
The real benefit of strategic planning is in the process itself, however, and not the resulting documents. Working through the process ensures that all the organization’s leaders are “on the same page” which means that valuable resources are focused on the same priorities. By establishing the process, companies can also react quickly and methodically to changes in the marketplace rather than firing first and aiming second. Finally, resulting from direct involvement in the process, strategic planning may give employees a sense of ownership. Many times, this leads to more efficiency, effectiveness and even greater innovation.
Wondering how to start the process? Companies typically have the most success with outside consultants or facilitators. This is especially true when the process has not been conducted before or previous planning was not deemed successful. Despite the obvious savings of using an internal facilitator, outside consultants offer objectivity and will most likely increase, rather than inhibit, open participation.
Who should be involved and how long will it take? Assembly of the right team is critical and it should always include the CEO and Chairman. Some representation from the other end of the spectrum is a must as well, so that upper management can get a better grasp on day-to-day issues and junior staffers can grasp top-level issues. Most importantly, those individuals who will actually implement the plan must be included. The process, itself, can take several months to complete though numerous factors can impact it including the size of the organization and whether the organization has done this sort of planning before. In general, it is important to have the meetings fairly close together to keep the momentum going and, remember, no plan is perfect so the object is to learn from the process and not to belabor the process until the plan is perfect.
Implementation and Follow-up. A frequent complaint about strategic plans is that they produce a document that ends up on the shelf collecting dust. To succeed, the support of top management is essential from the onset. Before the planning process begins, however, a strategic analysis must be conducted. Conducting a thorough SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) is a good start. Relying on what planners perceive about the business environment they operate in nullifies the entire process. Finally, realistic and specific action plans must be established followed by regularly scheduled status checks.
Ready, aim, fire. Now that sounds better and when it comes to business, it’s the magic formula. As skilled strategic planners, we can facilitate your next strategic planning session. Give us a call to fire toward your future target.
For a majority of America’s workforce, the weekend offers a much needed opportunity for relaxation and rejuvenation. Quite often during the course of a weekend, we find ourselves wrapped up in conversation for hours on end with someone near and dear. Generally, the conversation will meander through a variety of topics from current events to more abstract discussions including what you plan to do when, not if, you win the lottery. Now, imagine the weekend is over and you are sitting in your Monday morning staff meeting struggling to keep your eyes open.
Sound familiar? Well, think about this. Does your meeting format bear some striking similarities to the conversation you had over the weekend? If you are unclear about the purpose of the meeting or find yourself and your colleagues failing to make any decisions, you might just be passing time again. Without a doubt, that is not the intended purpose of any meeting.
To Have a Meeting or Not to Have a Meeting? Today, it seems as though the resolution to each and every business issue begins with a meeting. While some meetings simply can not be avoided, others can – and should. Before you organize a potentially unnecessary meeting, consider some other ways to accomplish your objectives. If it is advice you seek or you have a need to disseminate information, many tools are at your fingertips including a simple email, phone call, or impromptu hallway conversation. So, when is it appropriate to conduct a meeting?
- To inform workers about changes that will impact them directly.
- To build consensus – the success of a project may depend on it.
- To assemble the information required to make a sound decision.
- To brainstorm. The synergy of the team may yield results greater than those provided by each individual.
- To deal with highly complex topics.
- To provide a forum for conflict resolution.
Okay, so you think having a meeting is the right course of action. What can you do to conduct an effective meeting in addition to having a well-defined purpose? You must plan for the meeting, assign action items during the meeting and make provisions for assessment afterwards.
Planning – The Benefits of an Agenda. To have an effective meeting, there needs to be a clear understanding of the objectives to be accomplished. Following that, there must be a determination of who needs to be in attendance. Other logistical arrangements such as time and place may follow at this time along with the designation of someone to take minutes. It is very important to document who was there and exactly what decisions were made. What else? An agenda.
An agenda is always a good idea to keep focused on the task at hand. An agenda typically includes such items as a review of notes from previous meetings, a discussion of new issues and an evaluation of progress toward goal achievement. To build an effective agenda, it may be a good idea to seek topic ideas from team members. If participants know that their topic of concern will be addressed, they are less likely to interrupt! On the other hand, if the topic does not fit into the overall purpose of the meeting, it should not be included. Finally, the agenda should be distributed well in advance of the meeting. This allows participants to prepare, thereby making the meeting far more productive.
Conducting the Meeting. Many meetings fail because no one person is facilitating the meeting or because someone is dominating the meeting. Acting as a facilitator, you may want to establish and enforce some ground rules at the onset to enhance productivity. The starting time and planned duration needs to be decided on and adhered to. In addition, participants should be prepared and, at all times, mutual respect should come into play. Finally, as facilitator, it is your job to keep the discussion on course. Sticking to your agenda is a good way to do this. And remember, as a general rule, new issues that arise during the course of a meeting are best handled in another meeting or off-line.
Assigning Action Items. All right, your meeting is going well and decisions are being made. If no plans are being made to implement those decisions, however, the train is leaving the tracks. To resolve this, specific action items need to be assigned along with dates for completion and plans for assessment and reporting by the appropriate parties.
Meetings can be a positive communication tool! Planning allows for more accomplishments in less time. By working to improve your meeting skills, your whole team benefits.