"You can dream, create, design and build the most
beautiful place in the world…but it requires people
to make the dream a reality."
- Walt Disney
Recommended
book of the week:
Focus
- the future of your company depends on it. - Al
Ries. Published by HarperCollins
This
week's "moment of truth".
Sufficient
staff.
Many
businesses do a fantastic job of marketing their
products and services and in attracting customers
to do business with them. But alas, when the customer
makes contact, either in person or on the telephone,
all the good marketing comes undone when the business
has insufficient staff to handle the new business.
A
question I often ask during seminars is "hands up
those who like waiting?" You guessed it, not a hand
in sight.
Well
guess what, neither do your customers. I sometimes
feel as though we think of our customers as some
homogeneous group who come from another planet and
have a completely different set of expectations
than us.
I'm
here to tell you that they don't. What annoys you
when it comes to poor service, is exactly the same
as what annoys your customers.
The
key then is to make sure that your staffing levels
are sufficient to handle the ebbs and flows of customer
demand. This includes having enough call-centre
staff to handle incoming telephone calls and counter
staff to handle surges in customer traffic around
peak times. There is nothing more frustrating than
entering a business around midday and having to
wait for an eternity because staff are off on their
lunch break. Banks are a prime example of this.
Now I'm not saying that staff are not entitled to
a lunch break, but please, please, please, give
some thought as to when is the best time for them
to take it.
Running
a business is not dissimilar to sailing a yacht.
Everyone has their designated position, however
there are times when all hands are needed on deck
to handle certain situations. What really frustrates
customers is when they are waiting to be served
and other members of staff are running around doing
'stuff' rather than attending to the people 'who
pay their wages'. I don't care if you are the CEO
or the mailroom clerk, if there is a customer waiting
to be served or a telephone waiting to be answered,
stop what you are doing and take care of the single
most important thing in your business, YOUR CUSTOMER!
If you are not trained to handle customers, get
trained.
Research
reveals that it costs on average six times more
to attract new business than it does to take care
of existing customers. Yet still I see many business
owners and managers concentrating all their time
and effort into attracting new business whilst their
existing customers continue to leave in droves because
no one is available to take care of them.
The
easiest way to take care of business is to take
care of customers. The easiest way to take care
of customers is to have sufficient trained staff
to take care of their needs.
Until
next week, stay true to yourself and your customers,
and remember that great service happens in the moment,
moment by moment.
