Just stop it!
By Shep Hyken There’s an old joke that goes something like this: A guy goes to the doctor. He raises his arm and complains, “It hurts when I do this.” The doc says, “Then don’t do that.” In other words, “Stop it!” That reminds me of a very funny video I saw on YouTube that features comedian Bob Newhart. It’s called “Stop It!”. In the video, Bob Newhart is a therapist and his patient is complaining about a problem she is having. She has a fear of being buried alive in a box. Remember, this is a comedy sketch. His solution is to tell her, “Stop it!” Customer service is the same way. In some of the workshops we present on service, there is an exercise where we ask the audience members to come up with the most common complaints they hear from customers. We also ask them how often these complaints occur. Sometimes I’m amazed when the response is every day – even multiple times throughout the day. That’s when I share the solution. I look at the audience and state, “I have a solution to this problem. Are you ready?” I then pause for dramatic effect and say, “Stop it!” That gets a laugh from the audience. They know it’s a joke. If it were that simple, they would have already stopped doing whatever was causing the problem. But, it’s a great set up for the conversation on how to eliminate or at least mitigate this problem that causes customers to complain so often. How many times do we upset a customer with the same processes, policies or rules? If you are hearing the same complaint again and again, realize that there are many other customers who have the same complaint, but just aren’t sharing it with you. The statistic most commonly shared is that in an average business, for every complaint you hear from a customer, there are 26 others that have the same complaint, but choose not to tell you. Even if that stat is half true, that’s still a lot of unhappy customers. You think they are happy because they don’t complain to you. But, they aren’t happy. They may or may not come back. Can you afford to take that chance? So, have a discussion with your team. If there’s a problem that’s happening repeatedly, and you’re hearing customers frequently complain about it, find out what’s driving that complaint. There has to be a way to make it better. Because something bad that happens over and over again, shouldn’t happen over and over again. So…stop it! • • • Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow Shep on Twitter: @Hyken (Copyright © MMXVII, Shep...
read moreThis week in small business: Easy, simple, and smart advice for success
Some wise folks were busy posting useful advice over the last week or so. I think you and your business plans will benefit from the easy, simple, and wise guidance in this collection of curated content. Leadership, management, and productivity I prefer easy over difficult, so I appreciated Gabriel Nathan’s article, The Easiest Ways To Enhance Productivity And Efficiency At Work. I also prefer simple over complicated, so I also appreciated Mike Michalowicz’ article, Simple Strategies for Accomplishing More in Less Time. Shhhh! Kevin Kruse suggests that the secret to your success might be quiet time in this interview with Justin Talbot-Zorn and Leigh Marz! Some say that nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. I disagree and point to this stylistic stroll down web design memory lane by Sean Hervo. Of all the investments you make over the course of your life, investing in yourself should be #1. Nicholas Cole offers good advice on how to spend your free time. Writing for the Marketing Insider Group, Jacob Warick gives us five ways that companies are screwing up their e-commerce growth. Judi Wineland and her two daughters share nine business lessons “from the wild” that they have learned in their far-flung travels in this Forbes article by Laura Begley Bloom. With 30 years of entrepreneurship under his belt, Mike Kappel describes what kind of small business employees you need to grow your company. Marketing and sales Writer’s block and content marketer’s block are closely related. If you ever suffer a “block,” you’ll find help in Bryan Blackburn’s 6 Brainstorm Resources for Content Marketers. When you use visuals to tell stories, you have a better chance at web success. Check out the 10 best tools for visual storytelling outlined in this piece by Kylie Ora Lobell. Don’t miss this introduction to ranking your local business on Google by David Mihm on the Yoast blog. Dave Mendoca shares podcasting success tips from three top women entrepreneur hosts. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Need a good ecommerce idea? Check out this list of trending business ideas at Shopify. Successful craft brewer Sam Calagione scaled back his hit beer! Cheers?! Get the backstory in this article by Jason Feifer. Are you strong enough to swim against the current? If so, check out what Ross Tsakas has to say about how entrepreneurs can successfully challenge convention. Politics, government, and the economy Scott Lanman does a great job boiling down what the four-month high in consumer confidence means to the economy. Think about it: Are sales tax holidays really a good thing? Kelly Phillips Erb has the guts to honestly address that...
read moreUse your NPS to guide your business
Are you a “big picture” person? I think it’s good to always have a feeling for the big picture. It takes a vision of the big picture to make the big decisions in your business. You need to have your eyes on the horizon – people who are constantly staring at their feet end up walking around in circles. The net promoter score (NPS) is perhaps the best single metric we have that gives you the big picture with regards to how well your business is doing. It is simply a number between -100 and +100 that captures the number of “promoters” your company has as they relate to the number of “detractors” your company has. In other words, do more people have a positive or negative feeling about your company. One simple question You have all seen the question that drives the NPS: On a scale of zero to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend (the brand) to a friend or colleague? Individuals that give you a 9 or 10 are deemed “promoters,” those who score your business 6 and lower are deemed “detractors,” and anyone who gives you a 7 or 8 is considered “passive” and they aren’t counted in the final score at all. I like the NPS question because it’s essentially asking, “How likely is it that you’ll give my business word-of-mouth advertising?” We all know that this is the most valuable kind of advertising any business can hope for, so the NPS gives you a good idea how likely you are to benefit from word-of-mouth advertising. If all your customers were willing to talk you up to others and gave you 10s, your NPS would be 100. On the other hand, if you have 100 percent totally Unsatisfied customers, your NPS would be -100. You could expect to be bad mouthed in the marketplace. Using your NPS When you make contact with your customers for the purpose of getting their feedback, be sure to ask this question. The NPS is a concept everyone in your organization can relate to. It puts the nebulous feeling of “customer satisfaction” into a hard number that can be used to inform and motivate your team. When it goes up, you can celebrate the result and catalog what you’re doing right. When it goes down, you can rally the team and identify the areas that need improvement or the situation that caused customer experience problems. It’s a tool that can be used to keep everyone rowing in the same direction. Don’t ignore the details At the top, I asked if you were a big picture person and gave my reasons why it’s good to always have the big picture in mind. However, the problem with big pictures is that they are usually made up of several smaller pictures and if any or all of those are bad, they detract from the big picture. This means that you can’t rely on the NPS alone. To some lesser degree you need to survey your customers on their satisfaction with the smaller “scenes” that all come together to make the big picture. Fortunately, surveys are easy and inexpensive to conduct today so even small business owners can gather the information they...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: Economic omens, cheat sheets, and startup advice
Cheat sheets, tips from a Facebook insider, and some gloomy economic thoughts (sorry, I don’t write them, I just report them) are among the interesting and important items you’ll discover as you work your way through this week’s created content. Leadership, management, and productivity In this installment of Laura Emily Dunn’s Women in Business Q&A, she talks to Amy Jain and Daniella Yacobovsky, the co-founders of BaubleBar. On a related note, Oliver Staley says that women in business profit when they talk to each other. Have you tapped into the five incredibly valuable resources (that actually work) described in this piece by Helen Callier? What you don’t know about a small business can hurt you, says Shawn Porat, so get up to speed. Do not put off reading Jeffrey Hayzlett’s article, Six Steps To Go from Procrastinating to Productive. Facebooks SMB director for North America, Katherine Shappley, delivers four success tips from small businesses that are “doing it right.” Marketing and sales Looking for growth? Maybe it’s time to go international. John Winter outlines the top five challenges of creating a global marketing campaign. It’s a common question: Are marketing and advertising the same? Laurel Mintz answers (no) and explains why you need both. Jonathan Long uses a fashion brand as an example showing us how to leverage marketing trends for viral growth. Your high school teachers may not have liked them, but cheat sheets are a great tool Ted Dhanik provides one on marketing technology for small biz owners. Matei Gavril gives us four things that we can’t forget when we’re creating a digital marketing plan for a startup. Save your money with the nine low-budget marketing strategies described in this Entrepreneur article by Tony Tie. Jonathan Chan covers the basics of buyer personas for e-commerce. Are you using them? Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Jules Schroeder interviews mompreneur Kelly Roach to reveal the secrets of turning a side hustle into a seven-figure business. Smart city governments will take the advice of Geri Stengel and start unlocking the potential of women entrepreneurs. It took just one question to convince Michael McTeigue to quit his corporate job and start his own company. Check out Trent Innes’ article to find out what that question is. You can handle a list with just one item on it, right? You’ll appreciate Murray Newlands, This Is the Single Most Important Thing You Can Do as an Entrepreneur. Politics, government, and the economy In this article by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa, economist Stephen King explains how the U.S. economy is on the verge of breaking two records – one good and one bad. (BTW, it’s another Stephen King.) In Sabrina Willmer’s Bloomberg article, she outlines how Larry Fink thinks dark clouds are a warning on the U.S....
read moreFor success today, take a page out of the Philadelphia Opera’s songbook
Business leaders can learn a few things from the professionals who manage performing arts organizations. I once suggested that website owners borrow a theater company strategy to boost visitors. You see, managers in the performing arts get immediate feedback on their successes and failures: How many rear ends were in the seats? Further, some are dealing with many of the same “generational” challenges legacy industries in all areas are facing. The classical performing arts – ballet, opera, symphonies – are struggling to find new, younger, audiences, as their traditional supporters age. The Met Opera, for example, has probably the most aggressive live movie theater broadcast program of any performance art group in the world. They broadcast a dozen or so operas each year to theaters around the world. The broadcasts are in HD video and feature behind-the-scenes look at each opera. Fans can sign up on the web to receive additional materials for each Met broadcast opera. This helps grow the Met’s base of subscribers and these people, of course, are asked to support the Met in exchange for various benefits. A recent article by Matthew Sigman in Opera News details how the Philadelphia Opera is aggressively innovating its approach to bringing opera to its city. The opera company’s approach to defining and reaching buyer “personas” is revealing. Business leaders in virtually every industry sector could take some inspiration from the approach they’re taking in the City of Brother Love. The way they break down or define their personas is based on several important consumer (audience member) attributes: retention, churn (there’s one every business owners can relate to!), demographics, psychographics, probabilities, preferences, and Net Promoter Score. From those attributes, the opera company has created buyer personas like these: Classic Buffs Mini Buffs Adventurous Buffs Omnivorous Buffs Attender wallflowers Attender bargain hunters Attender uncommitted As you see from this group, the opera has created two general categories – buffs and attenders – and then broken them down further. Let’s look at why this is important. Let me start with a question: Do you base projections and therefore business decisions on a customer lifetime value? You probably do, so let me ask one follow-up question: Do you think the customer lifetime value of all the personas identified in the above list from Philadelphia Opera are the same? The answer to the second question is obviously no. A related and important observation is that those groups would not be receptive to the same marketing materials. Marketing materials and offers should be created that target each of those groups. Sending the same materials and offers to every group would be a waste of time and money. Further, the opera will probably have to use different channels to reach some of those personas. A popular word in business today is “granular.” The Philadelphia Opera has taken a granular approach to defining its consumer personas and this allows it to take a granular approach to marketing itself. How granular is your marketing? Have you really drilled down far enough to truly understand your customers and potential customers? Leveraging the abundance of data today and the wide range of digital and legacy marketing channels is a prerequisite of continuing success. Businesses that don’t “think a little harder” and “reach a little further” than they did 10...
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