Is the Customer Always Right? A Case Study
31 October 2007
I was contacted recently for advice, a post-mortem of sorts on an incident which was already closed. I've written up a brief case study which both the client and I hope will help you provide the very best customer service while maintaining your sanity and a profit.
I've added a link to the case study to this site's navigation, so we'll have a place to put all the others that will be joining it.
Link to Links
There's also a new 'Links' page, with connections to other writers I respect and read, and other writings I've perpetrated myself.
Fearful Power
24 October 2007
I had an interesting conversation a few nights ago which helped solidify my belief that most of us already know the answers to the challenges we're facing in business, we just need some confirmation. It was fun, watching the facial expression that said I knew I was right! That's okay; even a gut-level sanity check is better than no due diligence at all.
One thing that came from the conversation was the concept of using your greatest fear as your unique selling proposition. Fear can be a powerful motivator, although it's usually a bad one. Convince your body that what it's feeling is, not fear, but excitement. At the same time, turn the source of your fear into an asset. You're now burning to talk about something unique to yourself, and eliminating the primary show-stopper from your own mind.
In this case, age was the issue. These are very talented graphic designers who are breaking back into the field after a three-year hiatus. Apparently a number of prospects have expressed surprise that they're not 23-year-olds (or at least in that age bracket.)
Using their years of experience as a selling point accomplishes three things: it puts prospects on notice that these aren't a couple kids, thereby pre-eliminating the bulk of the confused folks who think age matters, and bolstering the designers' confidence by taking their greatest fear off the table.
What's your greatest business fear? Why isn't it an asset?
Keeping Honest People Honest Part II
23 October 2007
Seth G links to an interesting story about corporate reaction to employee dishonesty—or in some cases, was it just stupidity?
Unless the corporate strategy was to intentionally ferret out dishonest or dumb employees, wouldn't it have been infinitely better to prevent this?
In a large corporation, you're going to have less control over the hiring process, less visibility into employee behaviour, and sadly, less control over accounting, than a small business does. Face it, most of us will never have 800 employees, let alone fire that many.
When 'accounting' is the guy/gal across the office from you, the 'warehouse' is the closet, and 'reception' is whoever is answering the phone today, you're way, way better off preventing theft/fraud/stupidity than reacting to it.
Even honest people can be tempted. It doesn't make them criminals, it's just an opportunity for a momentary act of stupidity. Yes, you can catch jerks by leaving cash laying around and then checking hands for exploding orange dye, but if you catch otherwise good people in the same net for making a stupid judgment call they wouldn't otherwise even consider, are you better off as a businessperson, or more importantly, as a person, period?
I don't think so.
No One Likes Surprises
15 October 2007
At least, not after the age of three.
I love music. I love everything about music. Not all styles (some stuff that gets recorded, put on a CD, and sold in music stores, online and off, is not music) and not everything in the styles I like. But if it's about music, there's something there for me.
I've written in the past that liner notes sell albums; good liner notes sell bands. One thing I love about Loreena McKennitt's albums is the massive and extensive liner notes; she's a musicologist who performs her research. I love Bob Dylan's whimsical musings. I like learning that Alan Parsons, of the Project, was the recording engineer on the first Wings album, and that Tony Levin played bass for the other members of Yes when Chris Squire worked on other projects, taking the name with him temporarily.
I learned all that from liner notes.
LaLa.com doesn't care about liner notes, and they assume you don't, either. Or, perhaps, they know you do, but don't want you to realize that they don't.
Some months back, I signed up for this innovative legal way to swap CDs. I always have a few I'm looking to unload for various reasons, and thought it would be cool to send 'em off to someone who wanted Gretchen Wilson's CD, and in a very 'pay it forward' manner, get in return, from and entirely different member of the group, Eric Clapton's "Me and Mr. Johnson."
Until it arrived. Sans case, liner notes, anything. Just the bare CD in the plastic case with LaLa's logo stuck on it.
After emailing the sender and LaLa's support team, I finally found the obscure hidden reference to the fact that they encouraged members to ship only the bare CD, since it would save costs; otherwise, you'd have to stick on extra postage beyond what LaLa provided.
How could they be smart enough to provide postage up front, and so dumb they hid information that was potentially critical to their prospective members? Their response to me was that I could wait a while until their 'deluxe' (read 'more expensive') version was ready. My response was that if they hid one deal-breaker from me, and didn't seem to care when I stumbled across it, what else weren't they telling me?
Trust lost.
The sad thing is that they could have had it both ways. For years I've been buying CDs online from New World Records (NewWorldCDs.com) and they offer what owner Terry Allan calls 'flat shipping.' Instead of the heavy, expensive-to-ship jewel case, they ship the CD in a vinyl sleeve. It's designed to hold the cover booklet on one side, and the tray insert and CD on the other. The entire package fits, and it's even lighter than the clamshell cases LaLa used.
I just checked, and don't see any mention of the 'ship you the whole CD package' version. Or of CD trading at all. And, I had to create an account to find out anything about how it works now.
So, the lesson learned is this: it's much, much better to make a potentially negative aspect obvious, right up front, than to let your suspects/prospects discover it on their own.
Of course, the better lesson is not to introduce the potentially negative aspect in the first place. Sure, that takes creativity, effort, and wanting it.
Welcome to entrepreneurship, using what I like to call 'the right way.'
Responsibility and Authority
9 October 2007
Not what I was planning on writing about today, so I guess LaLa.com gets a short reprieve. When passion strikes, give vent to it.
One fundamental tenet of business management is that responsibility and authority should be equal; that is, if I'm responsible for something, I should have authority to ensure that it happens. If I have authority over something, I should be responsible for the outcome.
To see what happens when this isn't the case, watch the scene in "Joe Versus the Volcano" where Tom Hanks and Dan Hedaya discuss the advertising library, which is low on catalogs. Joe, responsible for the stock, isn't allowed to place orders with the printer. Hedaya's character, Mr. Waturi, one of the great Dilbertian characters of modern cinema, says, "I want those catalogs!" to which Joe replies, "Well, then, please order them."
Are your employees held responsible for customer satisfaction, without knowing they have the authority to create it? If a discount, freebie, refund, whatever, is what it would take right now to make this customer happy, either your employee has the authority to make it happen, or the customer had better have a way to contact you directly, right now, so someone with authority can take responsibility.
Do you have middle managers (or worse, upper management) who have authority to make demands, set deadlines, or create projects, but who then aren't held responsible? Sure, the CIO or Director of IT can set standards for response to help desk requests, but they'd better be ready to pony up the resources necessary to make it happen. It's all too common in the information technology world to assume that (and I quote an ex employer here) "if you just work faster, you can get more done in less time." (No, I'm not kidding.)
Every time a manager, at any level, assigns responsibility to a direct report or their staff, they must either assign matching authority, or simply assign tasks, projects, or deliverables and retain responsibility for the end result themselves.
Anything else is Machiavellian (in the pejorative sense.)
Asking for Help is Always an Option
4 October 2007
I first discovered the local small business development center a couple years ago. When my last job ended and I knew I wanted to stay self-employed I should have gone straight to the SBDC for help with a business plan, marketing information, and any of their other free services.
Instead, I waited an entire year.
Reading Guy Kawasaki's column in the latest Entrepreneur magazine, he makes it clear that without goals, you can't make progress. I guess that's obvious, or should be. Progress is movement toward a goal. No goal, no progress, no matter how much you thrash around.
Don't wait until you have no other options to ask for help. Asking for help is one of your options. Up to a point, more information is better information, and leads to better decisions.
Reasons, Not Feelings
3 October 2007
I read a fairly interesting rant this morning. There was an almost unlimited number of things wrong with it. Primarily, it was clear the writer was promoting making the choice not to use a certain piece of software for what were ostensibly 'reasons', but are really based on emotion.
- The name of the website was 'why [the software] sux' dot com—okay, I'm stretching a little here, but, as an entrepreneur, you would never name anything after your competitor, right? (You also don't write in 'leet speak', but that's a rant for a later day.) Interestingly, the software in question has become the one to beat, the one to 'find alternatives to.' That's where you want to be—not down below trying to knock them off the pedestal.
- The software referred to has a free version. Not a trial version that's crippled or times out: free. I suspect that anyone who writes an impassioned diatribe against a piece of software either didn't try the free version before investing money in it, or worse, tried the free version, and like a blushing bride thinking "I'll change him!" thought that based on their feedback, the company would incorporate all the features they thought were missing in the free version. (The primary difference in the free version is the number of cases you can create; it allows one case, the paid versions have more.) Speaking of the paid versions: they're monthly subscriptions. You don't 'buy' it, per se; you subscribe. When you decide you don't like it, you stop subscribing. No one's holding you hostage, and it's not like you dropped a bundle of cash for something you can't use now.
- They offered multiple alternatives to the software they hate. Except they also included the disclaimer that they hadn't tried most of them. The clear message was 'anything but them' which sounds much more like sour grapes than a business decision. Don't base your business purchases on emotion. Don't choose anything only because it's not something else. No, the software I'm not writing about isn't from Microsoft, who all the programmers love to hate, but I've heard decisions being made based primarily on what's not from Microsoft.
- Another point made was that the writers of the software included themselves in the user base, allowing themselves to participate in the feature request and feedback mechanisms; and in fact, claiming that they knew best how to create what they wanted to create. This was presented as a complaint. I see it as a heroic stance against the long-obsolete mantra that 'the customer is always right'—they're not. (Another rant for another day.)
It's amazing what people will demand from free software.
The software in question claims more an a million users, and references a recent survey wherein 96% said they'd recommend the software to others.
I guess the short version is that the writer was not presenting a business case, it was an emotional outburst. One of its primary points was the supposed unprofessional behaviour of the company in question—a company which has written a free book explaining their business model, effectively nullifying the complaints in the rant.
Pot. Kettle.
Keeping Honest People Honest
2 October 2007
We all like to assume that the people around us are honest. Your family, friends, employees wouldn't steal from you, right?
The September issue of Entrepreneur magazine has an article entitled 'To Catch a Thief' which refers to a report from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners regarding embezzlement losses during 2006. The ACFE's PowerPoint presentation of the report says
"Small businesses continue to suffer disproportionate fraud losses. The median loss suffered by organizations with fewer than 100 employees was $190,000 per scheme. This was higher than the median loss in even the largest organizations."
If someone really wants to steal from you, they will. (The article quotes CPA Gary Zeune: "And what's the best way to prevent somebody from stealing from you? Don't hire them in the first place.") But even honest folks can be tempted. Even honest folks make 'mistakes' (meaning errors in judgment, not errors in accounting.)
Besides good hiring practices, the best way to keep your honest employees honest is to ensure that temptation just doesn't come along. If it's easy to fool around with the company's money, eventually it's likely to happen. If you have good accounting practices in place, it becomes an actual effort to steal, rather than allowing an otherwise honest employee to rationalize 'borrowing' a little from the company, intending to pay it back, or padding an expense account with something that wouldn't pass any real scrutiny.
Most entrepreneurs can't afford a full-time accountant, but no entrepreneur can afford to be completely without an accountant. Get an accountant to review your financial practices. Hire a virtual assistant who understands generally accepted accounting practices (and then, of course, have the systems they put in place reviewed by the professional accountant you're going to consult, right?)