photo credit: Misserion

Last week, I walked past the door of a just-closed business – one I often used for both business and personal services.

It was a shock, particularly since it was a franchisee of a very large business – one I’ve *never* seen close before.

Then I remembered what I’d seen there during every recent visit over the past month or two: the front desk staffer was never behind the front desk when I walked in. Instead of being behind the counter, they were in the retail space playing a Facebook game called “Farmville” – on a computer intended for customer use.

While there are legitimate uses for Facebook, Twitter (etc) at local businesses, this isn’t one of them.

When I entered the store, the employee would get up and go behind the counter and provide acceptable service.

I noticed a change in this place right after the holidays. The enthusiastic, eager-to-please employees (2 in particular) disappeared and were replaced with “average/meets typical expectations”.

Maybe that enthusiastic person was the owner and they were filling in during the Christmas rush, no matter what, their departure definitely impacted their service.

The real source of this problem

Yes, I’m talking about the owner/manager.

Sitting around playing games isn’t all the employee’s fault. It’s primarily an indicator of a management problem, particularly since someone, somewhere had to know that the business was close to dying.

So why is the Farmville-fest the owner’s problem?

Because the person playing the game couldn’t have had enough measurable work to perform.

If there isn’t enough business coming in, that person could have been tasked with putting together mailing, calling existing customers (I know *I* never got one) to see if they could help with any current projects, emailing existing customers, or worst case – dusting the place.

You get the idea.

Failing to Plan

Without such tasks to perform, you don’t have enough work to do, and at this point, anything would be better than leaving your staff with nothing to do but play Farmville.

A strategically designed marketing plan would produce work from both new and existing clients. Even in the worst of all possible situations, working the plan would produce *some* work of its own.

Then the Farmville farmer would have something more productive to do – and it’d be measurable so you’d know if anything was getting done without having to hover over them.

Having meaningful work for your staff to perform is ultimately your responsibility.

If you don’t give your staff substantive, profit-generating work to perform when retail customers aren’t standing in front of them – you’re get to pay twice: once for their wages and once for the lost revenue / lost customers.

Can you afford that?

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photo credit: matticgn

Yesterday, we talked about David Lee Roth’s M&Ms trick and how it acted somewhat like a canary in the coal mine.

It probably looked like a silly “diva clause” to everyone but Roth. A little, unimportant detail.

These little details that your competitors ignore or see as unimportant might be the one thing that customers view as an indicator of additional, more serious problems.

They’ll stick out even more when you take care of them, as if you pointed a laser beam at the very things they never wanted anyone to notice.

Don’t let those little things undermine your customer relationships. Use them.

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photo credit: Alex E. Proimos

A combination of events over the last couple of months has had me thinking more about the expectations we have for ourselves, our kids, our employees and holy moly, even our politicians.

First, Jim Rohn passed away.

Jim talked a lot about expectations and how delivery of them is on one person – you. I highly recommend Rohn’s stuff. While you can buy his books, videos, audio etc online, quite a lot can be found at no cost on his site and on YouTube.

Next, four of my Scouts attained the rank of Eagle on the same day, after progressing together in Scouting since the second grade.

Three of them had been Life Scouts (the last rank prior to Eagle) for over three years. They needed a little prodding to finish the last item or two on their checklist, but they all assumed they’d get it done. If nothing else, they figured their parents would pressure them to get it done. Note: They were right.

A tall, steep mountain

But a year ago, one of them just didn’t think he could get there. Not because he isn’t confident (he is), but because the mountain in front of him was so very tall.

A year ago, he was a Star Scout (and had been for some time). That means that he needed several merit badges in addition to finishing the requirements for the Life Scout rank, then he needed to spend six months actively providing senior leadership to the troop,  and finally had to come up with and complete an Eagle Scout service project.

All of that had to happen in about a year, and with a dose of reality, it had to happen in an environment that includes a job, his senior year of high school, cars, girls, school, skiing, hunting, a summer of fun (including traveling for a team sport) and everything else teenagers do these days.

The size of the mountain doesn’t matter much

One thing that I’ve found with folks young and not so young is that the size of the mountain in front of them rarely has anything to do with their ability to climb it.

What’s far more important is whether or not they THINK they can climb it.

Yeah, I know…I’m teetering into the land of the touchy-feely. However, what folks think they can make happen clearly has a huge impact on what they accomplish.

For that one young man, it was easy to seem like Eagle wasn’t reachable because it was so far away.

All he needed was to see that *I* completely believed he could do it if he applied himself. I didn’t do the work, I didn’t give him any shortcuts, and I sure don’t deserve the credit, but that little tiny bump in the road could have kept him from getting there.

Once he believed he could get over it, he simply had to chip away at it till he was done.

You can’t do that

I wonder how many of those little bumps and “You can’t do that” comments employees, business owners and entrepreneurs run into and what accomplishments they prevent.

Some people would see a comment like that as a challenge. They’ll swing for the fences and complete the task with a flourish (think “Ricky Henderson“) as a way to say “Oh yeah? Take THAT. I *could* do it.”

Most business owners and entrepreneurs probably steamroll past that stuff or they wouldn’t be in those positions.

But… not everyone is built that way. It might take a success or two to show some that they really can kick butt and take names.

I spend a lot of time with kids due to Scouts, swim team and other things I’m involved in. I sometimes see kids who are told they *are* great (whether they are or not) rather than encouraging them to *be* great (or even better) and accomplish great things.

More kids need to be encouraged to BE great, whether they want to be a rocket scientist, a millwright or a statesman (“statesperson” sounds a little weird for me). We could use a few (hundred) *great* statesmen of both genders, in fact.

Just telling them they are great isn’t enough. They need mentors, like anyone else.

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photo credit: Peter Kaminski

Today’s guest post is from Pragmatic Marketing and asks the question…

If you could say one thing to your company president without fear of reprisal, what would you say?

Here are the results.

The question is, what would your folks say to you…and are you big enough to let them do so?

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photo credit: eschipul

Today’s guest post is from the guys over at Lateral Action and is all about seeming busy while not being productive.

Or more accurately, it’s about being more productive and efficient but at the wrong things.

Are you productive where it counts – at the right things?

Make quick work of the post at the above link and see if you’re reading about yourself. If you are, put some tools in place to help you focus on the right stuff.

A paper notebook / checklist is fine – as long as you USE it.

Paper doesn’t work for me. It creates clutter and makes things worse.

I need an automated solution that nags me a little – and I use the GTD system by David Allen to make stuff happen. Fortunately, there’s software that supports GTD. If you use Windows, the GettingThingsDone add-in for Microsoft Outlook is a strong tool. On the Mac side of things, OmniFocus uses Getting Things Done principles to help you stay on track. I’ve used both of these tools and find them incredibly helpful.

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photo credit: Robert S. Donovan

Ever hear the term BSOD?

It’s an acronym for “Blue Screen of Death”, which is what you get when Windows barfs all over itself.

In my experience, you get that rare (for me) “I’m a PC” explosion when hardware is failing (and sometimes when you seriously, royally messed up).

Last week after a litany of BSODs on a 30 month old laptop (6 months longer than the typical lifespan in my use – thanks HP), I decided I needed to deal with this issue sooner rather than later.

Because I like The 3/50 Project, I called a local authorized retailer of the brand of laptop I had my eye on. I asked if they had any one of the standard models (a very common one) in stock.

“No, but we can order it for you.”

I replied “Sorry, I was looking to buy from a local company.”

Remembering why you have a storefront

You have a retail storefront. You’ve paid the manufacturer to become an authorized retailer (and continue to pay for co-op advertising, ongoing training, and so on). Yet…you don’t stock the product and you suggest that the service you can provide after all that investment in time and money will be to order one for me?

I can find Amazon.com (or whatever) on my own, thanks.

Retailers have complained incessantly about unfair competition from e-commerce stores, but not enough have done something about it. Many retail store failures have been blamed on online buying, while few get blamed on the owner / management / employees.

E-commerce succeeds because goods and services can be shopped for 24 hours a day, from any location,  in “any” store from anywhere.

Why do some retailers still try to make shopping right here in town *harder* than shopping online? I just don’t get it.

Instant gratification goes both ways

People say e-commerce is all about instant gratification. That people can buy online and immediately feel the rush of a successful purchase.

Horse hockey. Instant gratification (or close enough) happens when I can drive 18 minutes, walk into the store, plop down my Bert and Ernie-branded Mastercard and walk out with a product under my arm after being helped by a salesperson or clerk who acts like it matters that I walked into their store.

Ecommerce makes me wait at least until tomorrow. Where’s the instant gratification in that?

Retail stores often fail because they don’t exist to serve the customer, or they don’t recognize that the reason for getting a sale is to get a new customer.

This local store lost a $2000 sale in a two minute phone call – and may also have lost a long-term customer, which is even worse from my perspective.

I called a Montana-based chain store who deals in the same product and they had them in stock. But they’re “just” a retailer. They don’t do consulting or offer anything of that nature like the other business does – so it doesn’t matter all that much to them whether I’m a long-time customer or not, at least from the perspective of that purchase.

What should have happened?

What should the first guy should have done when I told him I wanted to make a local purchase? He should referred me to the other local dealer and offered to help if I needed it (since it’s obvious to *anyone* that the other store doesn’t do that sort of thing).

You want more customers. Do what’s in *their* best interest and it’ll come back to you. Remember, I came to you to ask for help. Instead of solving my problem, you offered to do what I can do from my La-Z-Boy.

Call it karma if you wish. Call it good business. Regardless, think of what the customer is trying to accomplish and help them do so. Next time, they might think of you again – and you might actually have the item they need in stock.

Tomorrow, we’ll address that stock issue.

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photo credit: Meanest Indian

Yesterday, we talked about fierce competition from other places and other businesses, as well as doing your homework.

At the end of the day, all things pointed to a single bottom line: What has happened to our business(es) and thus to our communities is JUST NOT FAIR.

If Pittsburgh’s businesses have better internet or manufacturing facilities than your town: That’s not fair.

If businesses in Mumbai only have to pay their workers $10 an hour while you have to pay $42 an hour: That’s not fair.

You get the idea. In fact, I’m sure you could reel off other examples that are meaningful to your business, but ultimately, we’ve gotta find someone to BLAME. So let’s get to it.

Assigning blame

Let’s call the union bosses and blame them for not protecting our jobs. Let’s call the politicians and blame them for raising taxes. Let’s blame engineers, programmers and their employers for creating the technology and automation that’s stealing work from us.

And let’s most definitely blame those danged “foreigners” because they don’t want another generation of their kids living in a disgusting slum and drinking from a stream that 4000 of their neighbors pee into.

They have a lot of nerve, don’t they? We deserve that work.

Let’s blame Microsoft for changing their software too quickly (or too slowly). Let’s blame Apple for putting out a “phone” that made everyone rethink what mobile could really do for us.

Wait, I’ve got it… we’ll say these companies are “ANTI-COMPETITIVE”.

We can get our politicians to put them out of business, or at least make things fair. Maybe we can get the Feds to hobble them somehow.

But let’s not spend any time or money investing in ourselves and improving our business, our people, and our products and services. Let’s not totally rethink the market we serve and how we serve it.

That’s what those other people do.

We’ll continue the discussion tomorrow. I think you see where we’re headed.

In the meantime, I’m curious: What does “anti-competitive” mean to you?

PS: The girl in the photo has a lot of nerve helping her brother and sister with their homework using a small chalkboard while sitting on a piece of slate on the dirt floor or her parents’ shack, don’t you think? It just isn’t fair that her parents aren’t paying school taxes or private school tuition. In fact, she probably isn’t even following the approved government-mandated curriculum. If that’s not anti-competitive…

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photo credit: jared

Today’s guest post from the Washington Post is about a football player turned law enforcement officer from small town Louisiana.

If you don’t read anything else, catch 2 of his last comments on page 4: “I know the margin between being in the NFL and being out of the NFL is so small. You can’t get comfortable with yourself. You can’t be satisfied.”

Would’ve been easy for him to give up. And while some (especially Dallas fans) would say that Washington doesn’t actually have a pro team, they’d be missing the message.

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photo credit: cmaccubbin

Amid the turkey sandwiches and (making it right now) turkey pot pie, I’m also serving up a guest post about innovation.

You may not be aware that Google “gives” their employees “20% time“.

20% time is effectively 1 day a week to work on the pet projects, things of interest or just curiosities. Results have varied, but some of them have turned into Google’s products.

They promote and encourage, if not demand, that their staff “work” on feeding their ability to innovate.  In addition to being a great way to keep employees, it’s obviously a way to encourage the best and most innovative to join Google.

Innovation, not price, is what sets you apart for the long term. Here are “5 secrets” to innovation.

PS: You may not be thinking so hard about attracting talent right now…but you should be.

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photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

Something amazing happened to me during my trip to Vegas late last month: An airline exceeded my expectations.

“Exceeded” is a bit of a misnomer because my expectations are so low with airlines in general, but the fact is that they treated me like I would expect to be treated.

These days, that’s exceeding expectations.

I was flying Alaska Airlines from Vegas to Seattle and we had a terrible headwind that made us 45 minutes late.  Normally, I wouldn’t care but I had a 55 minute layover and had to change terminals.

After waiting an interminable amount of time for the late plane to unload, bypassing every restroom in the airport (time’s a wasting) as I ran through the airport like OJ (hey – it was running like OJ to me) to barely make the little automated tram to the next terminal, then doing the OJ again from the tram to my gate…I arrived.

Most of the lights in the terminal where I ended up were out as all the other gates were closed. When I finally arrived, there were two people in that part of the terminal: Me and the Alaska gate agent.

She waved me toward the open gate exit and said “We’d almost given up on you.”

In 25+ years of traveling, I’ve never had someone hold a plane for me. Maybe it was because it was the end of the day. Maybe it was because they didn’t want to pay for a hotel for the night, much less the aggravation of dealing with rebooking me.

No matter what it was, it would have been easy to let that plane go.

But they didn’t.

The agent could have called it a night – it was quite clear that they were done for the day – it was after 9pm in this very sleepy corner of SeaTac.

But she didn’t. I doubt she held that plane because of an extensive management training course. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s simply the right kind of person for that job.

What do you do to figure out whether someone is the right kind of person for a customer-facing job?

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photo credit: cerulean5000

Vegas is always an entertaining trip, and in one way or another, it always comes with lessons.

This time: 4 cab drivers, 4 completely different experiences.

First, the guy who picked me up from the airport. Very courteous, asked me how I wanted to get where I was going – and then proceeded to take the long way. While he was a good conversationalist, taking the long way did not impress.

Second, the guy who picked us up to haul us to another hotel. Courteous, long-time Las Vegas resident, helpful, chatty but not too chatty and even took us in the short way to enter the hotel. A good experience, even though it was short.

Third, an amazing experience. Not good, but amazing. A foul-mouthed cabbie who drove like Mario Andretti (in a Jeep?), wound around through back streets past every strip joint in Vegas, and even managed to offer us a coupon for a hooker. Stunning.

Finally, number four.

He came to us after several other cabbies declined to take our group of 4 and our big load of baggage and trade show gear.

He pulled up, hopped out and asked why no one else was taking us. The cab guy from the hotel told him about our gear – rather than turning away, he reached into his trunk, pulled out a bungee cord and proceeded to cram that big pile of stuff into the trunk, bungee it securely and said “Let’s go”.

Four different people, doing the same job and providing four different types of experiences.

Which one do you hire?

And how do you know which type of experience they’re providing to your customers?

How many of cabbie (employee…) number 1 or 2 would it take to run off your customers?

What steps are you taking to figure out which group your staffers belong to?

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photo credit: Alex E. Proimos

In the days before 9/11, our local airport (Glacier International aka FCA) had a mix of mostly Boeing 737/727, prop and regional jet traffic.

Since 9/11, most of our traffic other than flights to Minneapolis are regional jets or props. When I fly Delta to Salt Lake, for example, I’m usually flying some Delta Skywest regional jet (typically a Canadair model) that is codeshared with Delta.

Before much of the economy cratered over the last year, it wasn’t unusual to see two pilots in the cockpit of these regional jets that looked young enough to have just finished Rush Week at a local university.

Now, I don’t mean to put them down – after all, we always flew safely, never had an unprofessional effort by the pilots and the overall quality of the flight itself appeared no different than any other trip with more experienced pilots – still, there was always a comment or two by passengers when they saw a flight crew that looked like they had been shaving for less than 10 years (in the case of a male crewmembers).

With all the shakeup in the economy and airline industry, these regional jets are now being captained by what appear to be very experienced, mostly white-haired guys who are probably old enough to have flown combat in Vietnam.  As the airlines downsize the number of flights, experienced pilots get pushed down the system to the regional jets.

The smart thing that the airlines are doing – at least SkyWest – is pairing these experienced pilots with the younger pilots who were already flying with them. The ability to let these experienced folks mentor the younger pilots is huge – and it wasn’t something the airlines appeared to be doing prior to changes in the economy.

I talked with several passengers about this during my recent trip to Vegas and all of them found it not only smart business – but comforting to have 30+ years of experience in the cockpit instead of the assumption of 5 or 10 years – even if the younger pilot was doing the flying.

How does this relate to your business?

• How are your new staff members learning the ropes? How are they getting “co-pilot” experience with the equivalent of your white-haired, experienced pilots?
• Looking up into the cockpit and seeing a 50-ish white-haired guy brings confidence in the delivery of air travel without saying a word. For all we know, that guy had no more experience than the co-pilot, or came out of a 20 year retirement due to losses in the stock market and might have fewer regional jet flight hours than the young co-pilot. Didn’t matter, at least until we had the chance to find out more. What gives your customers’ confidence about your business’ ability to deliver with safety and high quality? What are you doing to show them the “white hair” or whatever it takes in your line of work?

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Download audio file (KingForADayVerizon.mp3)

photo credit: Sister72

I‘d like to introduce a new series called “King for a Day“. For the acronym-challenged, you might see me refer to it as KFAD now and then, so don’t assume I’m talking about a local radio station.

King for a Day is a series that will discuss some steps I’d take or issues I’d address if I was to become what else… “King (of a particular business) for a Day”.

The idea is to use big companies that many are familiar with and allow you to extrapolate from there to your business – whether its a good or bad thing they’re doing.

You should expect the discussion to center around the consumer for what I hope are obvious reasons.

If you’d like to nominate a business, add a comment and I’ll add your suggestion to the list.

I’ll be publishing KFAD on the first Friday of the month, so stay tuned for future episodes. Because these posts might get a little long, I will also podcast them. You might find a little bonus content in the podcast, so subscribe via iTunes, Google Reader or whatever you use to listen online.

One last thing to repeat before we start this exercise. This is not really about the companies that we discuss. All of this is just another way to get a point across that it’s about you, your company and most importantly, your clientele.

When reading the stories in KFAD, you should expect to:

• Search for parallels in your business
• Identify takeaways.
• Implement change for the good of your clientele – which will bring good things to you.

So let’s get started …

Focusing on the wrong thing

While it would be easy to start this out by being the King of the Airlines, I’ll mellow on that just long enough to give Verizon the treatment. The reality is that most of my comments would fit any cellular carrier, but Verizon is the one I’ve used for the last 5-7 years and thus am most familiar with.

Negative consequences

When I find a business in trouble, or simply annoying the heck out of me, it almost always seems to come down to them focusing on the wrong things.

For example, Verizon recently announced they would double their termination fee. How does this help their customers? Is it about punishing the customer? That simply won’t work.

Focusing on negative consequences completely ignores the customers who stay – and aren’t they the really important ones?

In fact, it marginalizes these customers because you’re clearly focusing on things they aren’t even doing. You’re focused on things you don’t want to happen instead of the things you *do* want to happen.

So not only do you tick them off, but your business is focused on the wrong, wrong, wrong thing – which doesn’t serve your customers.

Engage me in a Cinnabon-inspired lovefest

If I’ve made up my mind to leave you for an iPhone, a $300 termination fee isn’t going to stop me. In fact, it’s likely to tick me off and incentivize me to ramp up the goodness that I plan to milk from my new strategic communications device (no, it’s not just a phone).

Think about it: If *I’m* willing to put up with AT&T, I must have a *really* good reason to do so.

Instead of threatening me with doubled cancellation fees, you should be giving me a reason to stay. Give me lots of compelling ones, in fact. Give me things that make me want to write long, lilting caramel-covered blog posts about you that are as sickeningly sweet as a slightly under-cooked airport Cinnabon with extra frosting.  Hint: A good start would be to make it possible for me to buy a Verizon-compatible iPhone.

Focus on making changes that make your service so valuable that I *cannot* leave you. Don’t focus on things that cause you to waste management and technology resources – such as new ways to punish people who are likely leaving you anyway.

A man’s got to know his limitations

I have a 400 minute call plan. Rarely do I go over, but over the last 2 months, I’ve gone way over. I didn’t find out that little tidbit until the $400 bill arrived.

Any cell company that was interested in keeping their clients happy would tell me before that happened.

Any cell company that really cares would do what is reasonable (or do MORE than is reasonable) to see that their customers don’t make mistakes using their product. Common sense says that providing good customer care includes telling your clients when they are approaching an overage. Even banks do that.

Need a revenue source focus for this conversation? It’s a great opportunity to ask someone to upgrade their plan, even if only temporarily. Imagine that, getting paid for taking proper care of your customers.

Perhaps you might have a 3 day/week/month “Bump” plan that gives you an extra 100 minutes a week for when you’re out of town unexpectedly. Perhaps you could turn it on by dialing “*bump” and then go about your business.

When you do this, Verizon would automatically add the charge and 100 minutes per week (month, whatever) to your plan. Likewise, it would automatically terminate it after the 3 weeks/month/days or whatever.

No doubt, someone might say “we don’t have the ability to upgrade your plan, or sell temporary “bumps”, because our systems don’t allow for that”. I say – that’s an easily solvable problem in your billing system.

Same idea for text and data plans that near overage points.  (apologies to Clint for the heading)

Data plans (required)

Recently I took my 17 year old to the Verizon store to get him a new phone. His last one met with an unfortunate end of life scenario and this time, he was buying the phone himself.

Unfortunately, out of 20-30-40 phones (however many they had), only TWO could be activated without a data plan.

Now tell me, what 17 year old really *needs* a data plan? Can you justify $30 0r $60 a month additional for that? The salesperson’s line is that they aren’t allowed to sell the phone without a data plan.

For an iPhone, I get that. For a smart phone that is designed to be totally integrated with email such as a Blackberry, I get that. For a regular old cell phone, whether it has lame web capabilities or not, the customer should have the ability to get service without requiring an additional $400-$700 a year data plan – particularly for a teenager.

The iPhone (the official line vs reality)

Every time I go into the local corporate Verizon store, I ask when they are getting the iPhone.

I do it mostly to see what kind of response I get. Clearly they’ve been indoctrinated by corporate, because I get the same response every time. It’s something along the lines of “We don’t want the iPhone. It’s putting AT&T out of business and making their network too busy. Have you seen AT&T’s stock lately?”

Yeah, whatever. Have you seen AT&T’s churn rate lately? It isn’t because they offer the best service and customer care in the business.

Advice to whoever is training these folks: Get over yourself. You *want* your network to be hammered. Sure, you want it responsive, but you want more, more, more demand. You want the problem AT&T has, ie: “How much capacity can I build this year?” The more demand, the less likely you’ll ever lose them.

The source of the “Why would we want the iPhone?” attitude might be Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg himself. In 2008, Seidenberg’s childish response to iPhone question included calling the iPhone’s success a “conspiracy”.

Late in October 2009, it seems that 2 billion app store downloads and a 1% AT&T churn rate might have tempered Seidenberg’s attitude a little, as he responded to questions about Verizon selling the iPhone by noting that they were certainly interested and that it was “exclusively up to Apple“.

Disabled GPS chips

With the exception of the Storm and the (new) Droid, Verizon disables API (programming) access to the GPS chips in phones – *except* for their extra services/products. For example, you can’t use certain Google’s Mobile Maps features because Google can’t get to the GPS chip to say “Hey, where am I?”  How is that customer friendly?

It isn’t. You should be.

You get the idea by now I hope: It isn’t about you, your products or your services. It’s about all the things those products and services can do to benefit your customers.

Update: Karmically enough, the same day I post this, Apple Insider reports that a Verizon iPhone is on the way. That would keep me on Verizon.

Update: More on the topic from Digital Daily, including a reaction from Verizon.

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photo credit: paintMonkey

Yesterday, we went over the first 50 items on the NY Times’ “100 things restaurant staffers should never do”, and mentioned a few other folks that might also use those things even if they don’t own a restaurant.

Today, the NYT published the next 50, and once again – they might be focused on a restaurant staffer’s duties but you have similar, little tiny, insignificant things in your business that matter JUST AS MUCH.

Hopefully this list from a restaurant will help you find them in your place and do what makes sense for the customer.

What I hope you don’t do is discard the entire list because you disagree with one of them. We’ve all had a waiter do something little that bothered us, grossed us out, or whatever. Your staff does little things that have the same impact on your customers.

For example, do you have a counter service person who licks their index finger while flipping through papers? Do they then hand the paper over to the client? Normally, maybe a minor thing. In the days of H1N1 (swine flu), it may or may not be a way to transmit the flu but it will still cause concern.

Just a little thing…like the difference between the way water behaves at 211 degrees F vs. 212 degrees F.

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photo credit: goldsardine

If you don’t own a restaurant, the temptation might be to turn the page and blow past part one of the NY Times’ “100 things restaurant staffers should never do” story.

Or maybe you’d read it like a diner, thinking “Yeah, #2, 13 and 34 really annoy me”.

Don’t waste it like that.

The list is all about whatever *you* do, no matter what that is.

I guarantee that your oil change store, dry cleaning store, clothing store, bar, coffee shop, software business or consulting firm can adapt most of these for your business.

You don’t have to agree with all fifty. For example, I *prefer* to know the waiter’s name. It’s more… personal. But you knew I’d say that.

Even if you don’t agree with all of them, use the list to your advantage.

Update: Here’s part 2 of the NY Times “100 things” list, along with my comments.

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How much is it worth to get recognized in public just for being thoughtful?

Hard to say. On the other hand, what’s it worth to know that a TV personality (or for that matter, *any* customer) will use your company’s service forever (or until you blow it)?

In my mind, a lot.

Since specifics are nice, consider that person might rent a car twice a year for just one day. I figure that might be $80-200 depending on the rental. Multiply that times 20, 30 or 40 years and it adds up.

Now imagine that it happens because just one of your staff members is helpful, thoughtful and does something that really costs you *nothing*. The ROI on thoughtful is pretty good.

Christopher Elliott gave Alamo Rent-a-Car a great testimonial on a major media not long ago because someone at Alamo upgraded his car without him asking, for no cost, simply because of where he was going.

What was *that* testimonial worth? When I walk by Alamo this week in Kalispell, Las Vegas, Seattle and Salt Lake – you can bet I’ll remember it. I wonder how many other viewers will remember…

Quite a strategy that counter person had, thinking about their customers’ welfare and the experience they might have while using their company’s product.

Imagine if it had gone the other way. If he’d gotten stuck, been late, had car trouble that was no fault of the car or Alamo, but simply had troubles because he didn’t rent “enough” vehicle.

Which way do your people think while helping a customer? Is that what you’d want if your grandmother was your customer?

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photo credit: FreeWine

In four minutes. On a Sunday morning.

Something like that can be hard to find these days, but that’s exactly what Chris Matyszczy found when he contacted Amazon recently.

Sunday morning aside, is your staff providing 9am Monday morning service all week long?

Even at 4:45pm on a Friday?

Think about this – where will he buy his next book, or perhaps, the majority of books in the future?

Now you have a reason to provide service like this, if you didn’t already. If you need motivation for providing this kind of service (you shouldn’t, if you think about it): ask yourself this question…

Why should they buy from you instead of everyone else who sells what you do?

If you own the local bookstore in Chris’ town, what do you have to do to keep him from going to Amazon, Books a Million, Borders, Barnes and Noble, Powells and any of their online counterparts?

That’s a question on the minds of customers who haven’t been given a reason to want to spend their $ in only one place.

At least not yet.

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photo credit: orangeacid

Yes, I know that is going to rile some folks up, but you probably need to be riled up anyhow.

What exactly do I mean by “give them the fish”? Let me back up a little.

You’ve undoubtedly heard the saying: “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.”

I used to agree. It used to seem that teaching someone to fish was sufficient, but human nature is a powerful teacher.

Not anymore.

First, a couple of examples from the Rotary world:

• Do you think that Rotary should just airdrop polio vaccine (and instructions) over Africa and let those folks take care of vaccinating themselves?
• What about the hand-operated wells that Rotarians regularly donate and install in third world communities? I’m talking about the wells that eliminate a mother’s 6 mile daily walk for water. Before you think “So what?”, think about how long it takes a mother to walk 6 miles, then walk 6 miles back carrying 5 gallons of probably not-so-clean water. If you’re taking care of a couple of infants, consider how that impacts your child-rearing and your ability to make a living. Now suddenly you’re taking clean water out of a well right in your village. Impactful.

But…I didn’t start this conversation to talk about Rotary. Their polio and water efforts just make the point easy to illustrate.

Personal Inertia

All of this is really building up to some comments about personal inertia.

Inertia is a big obstacle for an 80,000 lb 18 wheel truck or a jumbo jet, but a person’s personal inertia makes their inertia pale in comparison.

Powered by daily routines and daily “crises”, as I referred to yesterday when quoting Mr. Rohn, it’s bigger than most people realize.

While everybody can do what so and so does to be successful, reach a goal, get out of a mess, change some aspect of their lives, or market their product; but not everybody will.

Why Personal Inertia happens

A lot of the reason for this is that people just aren’t used to taking NEW actions. Sure, they get up for work in the morning (even if they work for themselves) and they go about their business, but they struggle to make new things happen.

Rather than making things happen, they often watch things happen (or worse, wonder what happened).

That’s why you have to give them the fish. Change is tough. Sometimes scary. Sometimes, just different enough that your routine just doesn’t seem to allow for them.

And that’s where the fish comes in.

Sometimes you have to give them the fish to prime the pump. To make the impression necessary to show that the learning is worthwhile.

What IS The Fish?

The fish is what you do for others. Maybe a service, maybe something you teach or something you create for them if they can’t or won’t do it themselves.

I know you can teach them to fish (whatever your fish is), but they have to WANT to learn to fish or your time will be wasted.

Yep, WASTED.

More than likely, whatever you do is the fish your client needs (or is related to it).

Again, giving them the fish primes the pump and helps make that action part of their routine.

Until it’s routine, it’s unlikely to happen.

Before you give them the fish, before they “get it”, they might not have the vision you have.

The fish might be necessary to make the impression (produce the results?) necessary to show that learning to fish is worthwhile in the first place.

Give, then teach

Once the lesson, the results, the vision/buy in are there, learning to fish seems like a good idea.

Their idea. Your gift made it so.

When eyes light up, budgets appear and/or time opens up, it’s time to teach.

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photo credit: maessive

Today is about setting expectations.

When you go into a doctor’s office, most people figure they’ll wait 10-15 minutes whether it makes any sense or not.

If that doctor’s office happens to be an OBGYN, you can reasonably expect that it might be 10 minutes or 3 hours, which goes with the OB part of the territory.

The leg, again

So yesterday, I went back to the doc to get that spider bite thing looked at (again, I’ll spare you the photos). After waiting 10-15 minutes to get the standard temp/bp and probing questions, I somehow managed to find a way to wait for 30 minutes before seeing a doc.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore, I had to poke my head out and ask where ye old doc was.

Why, he’s right outside my door, finishing up some paperwork from the prior client. He looks up, smiles and says “Sorry, had a little crisis, but I’ll be in to see you in just a moment.”

Had Blood Pressure Boy (sorry, don’t recall his name) stuck his head in the door and said “hey, we’ve got a little crisis down the hall, it might be 20-30 minutes before the doc can see you”, expectations are set and reasonably so. I’d sit there and watch “History of the electric light bulb” on the History Channel and be all mellow and such.

Silence, on the other hand, just has me sitting there stewing as I stare at a swollen, red leg wondering if everyone went out for happy hour or over to Costco to taste a few samples.

15 seconds: the time it would have taken for someone to poke their head in and set expectations.

Power to the people

Over the weekend, we had a bunch of wind push over a tree onto the power poles just down the road. 1 pole got creamed, which put tension on the one in front of my drive. It ended up badly cracked. 6 hours without power.

When telephone poles get creamed by falling trees on my road, I expect the power to go out…just not randomly for 3 to 6 hours each day for 4 days.

Yesterday, I walked out to see if they were going to change both poles that day (not sure) and they volunteered that the power would be out for several hours in the afternoon. That allowed me to schedule around the power situation without a loss of time, productivity and so on.

Today, they showed up again. One of the trucks is parked on the road in front of my place.

It might have taken 2 minutes to walk down the drive, knock on the door and say “hey, we’re taking the power down in about 10 minutes and it’ll be down for several hours”.

But that didn’t happen.

Mid-morning, the power went out without warning.

Now, I knew that it was going to go out sometime during the day,  but not when. The effort to share that tidbit would have saved me no time (due to short-term UPS batteries protecting my gear), but it would have let me prepare my schedule around it.

The slight edge, again

It’s not a huge deal, but it’s one of those slight edge things that great businesses do for their customers.

• “Hey, we’ve got a crisis in room 11. It might be 30 minutes before the doc can see you. Would you like a cup of water or something?”
• “Hey, we’re cutting the power in 10 minutes and it’ll be down for several hours, just a heads up in case you need to shut down computers or something.”
• “Hey, it’ll be 2 weeks before I can get to your mower, will you need it before then? If so, stop by and I’ll give you a loaner.”
• “Hey, there’s a rebate on that item, better take this form with you. May as well save a few bucks where you can.”
• “Did you know that our clients who sell this item sell 20% more if they present it this way? Might give it a try if you can.”

You get the idea.

Expectations can change in a mere 15 seconds. So can your entire relationship with a client.

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I had to stop in at Wells Fargo over lunch.

Among other things, I cashed a check. They require that you give them your driver’s license or other photo ID so that they have some vague idea that you are who you are.

When I got my receipt, license etc back, instead of the normal “Have a nice weekend” or something else that makes you think they say the same thing to everyone, I got a far more personal farewell.

Have a nice weekend – and enjoy your birthday next week.

Now how hard was that? Didn’t cost a thing.

Is your staff paying attention to the little details?

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