He suggests customer service has taken on a whole new meaning with the rise of Web sites like Angie’s List and Yelp, which provide unfiltered reviews of services and products.
Have you Googled your company lately to see what’s being said about it on the Internet? Or have you looked on Facebook or YouTube for comments on your company? Never underestimate the power of YouTube and Facebook groups and their potential effect on your business.
When was the last time you undertook a top-to-bottom evaluation of your company? Examine your return policies, the authority given to your employees who deal directly with the public, your follow-up process after a sale or service, and even more importantly, after an issue has been resolved to make sure the customer is satisfied with the outcome. Have you ever surveyed your customers and given them a chance to rate your service. It’s an inexpensive way for you to learn about ways to improve your customer service and your business’s image in your community.
Excellent customer service is paramount to your success, even in the age of the Internet.
I love the following quote by the great American poet Robert Frost: “The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment it gets up in the morning and doesn’t stop until it gets to the office.” I just can’t figure out whose brain he’s referring to.
I just spent a week or so in a part of the United States where the snow on the ground was two- to five-feet deep, and had been that way for months. I flew home this past weekend, and I was never so glad to see grass, even if it was brown. At least it wasn’t white.
But from the misery and beauty of deep snow comes the sweet sale of snow throwers by the dozen! I hope you and your business benefited greatly from all the falling snow and cold weather in your part of the country.
I did learn a few things about driving where the snowfall is extremely heavy and never melts in the winter. First, the roads were spotless. Very narrow lanes for sure, but absolutely spotless. The plowed or thrown snow, along all the roads and in all the yards, was higher than my SUV. I would pull up to a residential intersection and couldn’t see past the snow wall in either direction. I could create the same effect in my town by pulling up to an intersection, closing my eyes, and then slowly begin pulling out into traffic. Yikes! Either way, it makes driving really interesting for an old southern redneck used to seeing sand dunes, not snow dunes!
Now that I’m home again, the high temperature today will be in the low 70s. And I won’t be worrying about snowbanks taller than my car.
Many U.S. companies are now choosing to bring back production and jobs previously sent to China, Mexico and other low cost production locations. The cost of operations in China, particularly wages, is rising dramatically while shipping costs have surged. Shoddy products and the theft of intellectual property are two additional growing problems. Often, a company has to give up its most sensitive trade and technological secrets in order to get in the Chinese door. Then, once a company sets up shop in China, it soon sees products nearly identical to its own, marketed by Chinese competitors. Meanwhile, drug cartel violence across Mexico has led hundreds of American firms to reconsider doing business south of the border.
While many of the jobs moved overseas will never return, I’ve read that over 90 percent of manufacturers report having difficulty in finding skilled production workers. Plus, with the average U.S. manufacturing worker being 50 years old, a large share of the manufacturing workforce will retire sooner rather than later. It’s not a pretty picture.
Tony Dungy, the former NFL coach, had a great line about success in his book Quiet Strength: “The truth is that most people have a better chance to be successful by effort than by natural gifts. Anyone could give that effort in his or her chosen endeavor, but the typical person doesn’t, choosing to do only enough to get by.”
The thing that separates the great from the average isn’t God-given talent most of the time. It’s effort. I like to think of it this way: If Michael Jordan’s basketball talents were handed to him on a silver platter, why did he get cut from his eighth-grade basketball team?
Are you doing just enough to get by? If that’s all the effort you are expending, don’t expect much in the way of success or rewards or admiration. Don’t forget the old adage: The harder you work, the luckier you become! It’s never been truer.
