Customer Service Lesson
I am always amazed at the cavalier way large companies often treat their customers. They ignore complaints or treat them with disdain. The truth is no one likes to deal with a frustrated or angry customer, but you have to remember that unhappy customers are much more likely to tell a lot more people about their bad experiences than the good ones. Who hasn’t experienced getting caught in an endless maze of voicemail or having to repeat your story over and over to a series of customer service reps, only to hear “I can’t help you with that. You need to talk to another department.” Over and over these days, I hear people complaining about the shabby way they are treated by their bank or telecommunications company. We’ve almost become resigned to it as a way of life.
That’s why I was so surprised by the outstanding customer service experience I recently had with Fido. After two separate experiences with their customer service department, I really was not happy with how I was treated. So I dropped Fido an email just to let them know what my experience had been. I was extremely surprised to receive an email and a phone call from Customer Service asking me for the details. They took the time to listen to my story, asked a lot of questions and then offered a generous solution to my issue. They delivered one of the most outstanding customer service experiences I have ever had – I am really impressed. Here is a large company that really does want to improve customer experiences with their products and services.
The lesson learned? If you have a bad experience with a company, don’t just walk away and only complain to your friends. Let the business know how they fell short – tell them where they went wrong. You might be surprised at the results you get! And if you are a business owner, make sure that you encourage your customers to let you know what you are doing right and wrong. You have to know what is broken in order to fix it.
The Mompreneur Tip of the Week – Abusing or Leveraving Your Network?
When socializing with your girlfriends, do you ever spend a little time talking about your business? And can you describe clearly the type of clients that you are looking for?
A lot of my clients give me the same answer when I suggest to connect with their own network first to see if there are any business development opportunities that could be unlocked among their own contacts.
They don’t want to be selling to their friends and abuse their personal relationships.
Now here is what I say to them:
1. Do you think your friends might like your products or services for themselves or their family and friends?
2. Would they benefit from your products and services?
3. If so, do you think they would prefer to buy from you rather then any other stranger?
4. Do you think your friends would like you to do well and have best intentions at heart for your success?
5. If you were looking for a certain product or service and one of your friends could provide it, would you not want to purchase from them?
I think this is very simple because all you are doing is sharing information about what you do and what you can offer. So why, oh why is there still the stigma that you are ‘pushing’ your business onto your friends?
Here is a task I want you to try this week – when meeting with friends or other moms, spend some time to talk about your business and the type of clients that you are looking for.
Make sure you are being specific about the criteria of how you choose your clients. Even if your friends don’t have a need for your products and services themselves, they will most certainly want to make some connections for you.
Try this in the next week and let me know how it goes!
Conny Millard, Principal of Millard Consulting Group Inc., www.mcgbusiness.com
Who is an Important Customer?
A lot of businesses forget that their repeat customers are some of the most important. Repeat customers, who make purchases as part of their routine, may now be changing those routines as the economy slows. As their routines change, customers may not be purchasing from you as often or maybe not at all. Entrepreneur Magazine has a new article that highlights 5 techniques to keep repeat customers, including reinforcing your value and paying attention to customer feedback. Read the article here.
Are You Kidding Me?
Friends of ours were shopping for a new car last weekend – good news in these economic times right? People who want to buy a brand new car for cash. So off they go to the Mercedes Benz dealer at Richmond Auto Mall.
Where they wander around the lot for 30 minutes looking at various cars and NO ONE from the dealership comes out to talk to them. They were completely ignored. So then they wandered off to Audi, where they got some service. Interesting times in the car world.
Making Eye Contact
I’ve spent the week watching how much eye contact people make when speaking to each other. And what I’ve noticed is a lot of people don’t look me in the eye when talking to me. They scan the room, they look over my shoulder, or they’re busy looking at their Blackberry during a conversation! It’s not just bad manners. More importantly, you give the message that you are not listening. This does not make a good impression and I’m not likely to want to do business with you. When someone is speaking to you, give them your full attention. That is the best way to start building a connection with other people.
The Mompreneur Tip of the Week – School is Out
Yes, my fellow mompreneurs, for those of you with kids in schools, you know what is happening this week! Our children are having the last week in school with many finishing off on Thursday early!
Some of my clients mentioned how quickly it came around – wasn’t it just April? For moms that I have been meeting for coffee recently, there is whole bunch of them who have not prepared well in advance and are now slightly panicking about what they will be doing with the kids in the next 10 weeks?!
Now if you are one of those moms who just haven’t managed to get organized this year, the first thing to do is schedule a reminder for next year in the beginning of May to research options and book your kids in early! You can not change what has happened this year, however you can most certainly learn and plan ahead for the next years to come.
As for last minute great advice on what to do, here are some of my thoughts:
• Firstly take your planner and look at the next 10 weeks
• Be clear on how much time you will allocate to your business in the next two and a half months
• Enter any important events and meetings – personal and professional
• Highlight networking opportunities and be selective about which ones really fit with your niche markets
• Put the children’s names on the waiting list of any summer camps – if someone fails to turn up, you might be able to take the spot
• Look at contacts in your network who you could do some play date swapping with – this will help out other moms by freeing up their time to get things done, as well as yours
• Schedule work that you can take on day trips – if you need to deal with a bunch of emails, you can for instance write them up in the park, put them into ‘drafts’ and fire them off on your return to your home office
• For meetings in the city, consider putting your kids into the play zone for a couple of hours – the kids love it and you can focus completely on business for a while
•Plan your work and work your plan and above all, enjoy the time with the kids!
Happy Holidays!
Conny Millard, Principal of Millard Consulting Group inc. www.mcgbusiness.com
Who Is Your TARGET?
As I wrote about last week, some friends and I started a 5 week business venture advertising campaign. One of the first decisions we made together was deciding upon our target market. As the advertising was going out to new university students and families in Victoria, we decided our target market would be grocery stores, recreation centers, local restaurants, and malls. Breaking our target market into these four categories was very useful as there are 4 people in our business, each person would be tackle one category. In order to better serve our target market, we studied their ideal customer – figuring out the average income, age, number of people in the household, purchasing power, and hobbies or leisure activities. With so much information in our back pocket regarding our target market’s ideal customer, we were better able to answer questions and offer information. Here is an article from Entrepreneur Magazine that discusses different target markets and how to appraoch them.
The Mompreneur Tip of the Week – That Little Voice
The Ghost CEO had a booth on Saturday at the Enterprising Moms Network Summit Event. Lots was going on with many women exhibiting as well as some great guest speakers.
Claire Newell was one of the Mompreneurs who had been invited to speak. A woman in her thirties with three children and a thriving travel business. She has published a book, volunteers on her vacation to help deprived countries together with her family and has created a major media buzz around her brand.
She is just about to launch her own line of travel items that she created with the former CEO of Walmart.
I think one thing that I really took away from listening to her speak, was that she was modest about her achievements, very down to earth as well as personable. And although she admitted that when she set out, she had that “Little voice of doubt’ that we all know far too well, she decided not to pay too much attention to it.
Instead she has managed to schedule her life so that she can enjoy a thriving career, loving and tender moments with her family and still has the approachable personality of the ‘Mom next door’.
So girls, lets decide today not to give that little voice too much power anymore. We can acknowledge that it is there but as Claire is proving to every mother in the country – it can be done!
So lets find our mentor and stay strong in our beliefs that we can do it, too!
Until next week!
Conny Millard, Principal of Millard Consulting Group Inc. www.mcgbusiness.com
Cold Call in Person vs. on the Phone
As some friends and I have recently started a five week bsuiness venture advertising campaign, we decided that cold calling would be the most effective means to find advertisers. After being hung up on and being told ‘no’ countless times over the phone, I decided to physically go into businesses and present my sales pitch – and this change has made a world of difference! Because going into businesses in person is much more time consuming, I’ve really had to narrow in on which businesses will be more likely to advertise with our company. I can’t exactly pin point why physically going into businesses has been more successful – maybe because it is harder for businesses to say ‘no’ in person, or we can have a more ‘human’ conversation in person where I can bargain and the advertiser can ask more questions, or maybe because it looks like I’ve put more ‘effort’ into making the trip. I found this interesting blog article about cold calling in person versus on the phone that helps to answer some questions. Which type of cold calling have you found to work in your business?
Are You Kidding Me?
Woke up on Saturday morning and the oven wasn’t working. We had dinner guests coming so we needed a solution. The oven (Kenmore) is relatively new, so I phone the Sears appliance repair line to get it fixed. Only to be told the EARLIEST they can send out a repair person is 21 days from now. (I am not kidding.) Not 21 hours, 21 DAYS. Note to self: don’t buy any more appliances from Sears.
OK – onto Plan B. Phoned 3 appliance repair services that promised 24 hour service, left a message and am still waiting to hear back from them 4 days later. The fourth phone call got us a lovely man who runs a small repair service, who responded within the hour and fixed the stove.
There’s a recession on, right?
