Small Business Growing

Customers

Our customers and clients are the lifeblood of our enterprise.  They are one of the prime reasons for business existence.

Much is known about building and sustaining customer relationships, but the application can be more challenging than the theory.

In this part of SBG we discuss customer experience and relationship issues as they relate to the world of small business.

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Why Referral Business Does (or Does Not) Come In

For many small businesses, referral business is golden.

Nothing rivals the potential customer who comes to you with a nice recommendation from someone you previously served.

But the reality is that many small businesses are not anywhere near the volume of referral business they would like.

There are many reasons why we don’t perform at the optimal level of referral business.

We’ll discuss these reasons in future posts, but let’s start with the most important consideration.

Why would a customer be inclined to tell others about us?  The obvious answer is that they had a great experience, especially as they assess the prime deliverable they were expecting to receive from our business. In other words, the prime service or product we provide has to be delivered in such a way that the customer’s prime expectations were satisfied, at least at a level that would incline them to share us with others.

If we come up short in this, the additional; things we do to enhance customer value may have an impact at the margins, but most people will be judging us on the major service or product they expected to receive.

Bottom line:  to earn referral business get the main things delivered with excellence.  And we do this in lots of ways, one of which is to lay out clear, simple, repeatable processes and systems that get it done with consistency and reliability.

There are many ways to build referral business, but if our main deliverable is uneven or poorly executed they all become window dressing around a less that attractive centerpiece.

If you would like a more detailed essay on this topic, do request our free E-Boklet, “The Road to Repeat and Referral Business.”

Repeat and referral business: Three types of “Touchpoints” (4)

We are talking about the dynamics of building repeat and referral customers for your small business.

I invite you to start with the first post and work your way through the series.

“Touchpoints” are places during the flow of customer experience where you can deepen the emotional connections.

All aspects of our customers’ time with us are important because impressions are made throughout the experience, but the concept of touchpoints helps us to look at how we can plan and execute a few strategic moves that will reinforce the overall positive impression we want to make on the heart and mind of our customers.

Here are three types of touchpoints to help you put the idea into some practical and doable form.

First, there is the touchpoint of EASE.  Anything you can do to make the experience of working with you easier for the customer, adds to the emotional value and positive impression you are generating.  As we talked about last time around , your first “repeat and referral” strategy is to enhance your core service by making your processes and systems clear and reliable.  In doing that you will hopefully see ways to make the customer experience easier.

Take a look at points during the transaction where you can do something simple to make the customer experience easier and more seamless.

Second, there is the touchpoint of PLEASANT SURPRISE.  There are a million ways to build in a little pleasant surprise, but because we are creatures of habit those ways may not be readily apparent.  You will have to put the idea in your mind and let you creative imagination start working on it.  For example, pleasant surprise can take the form of some additional service that would not be typical as compared to the competition.  Pleasant surprise can be in the form of a modest gift.  Pleasant surprise can be as simple as a supportive call at some point in the service experience.  Think about it and you will start to see the possibilities.

Third, there is the touchpoint of APPRECIATION.   This one deserves an entire book, but the point is to find ways to express how much you appreciate your customer.  As basic as this is, consider how many businesses you have patronized where the sense of appreciation you have felt was lacking.  Lack of appreciation happens all the time.  Start by taking a careful look at how and when customers are thanked.  The standards and the coaching we give to associates/employees is critical.  We go into more detail on specific appreciation strategies in our free E-Booklet, so do request a copy and we will email one to you.

Repeat and referral business makes your life as a small business owner much easier, but even more, for most of us, this kind of business is so much more enjoyable.  If you’d like to know a bit more about one of our repeat and referral secret weapons, watch this.

Repeat and referral business: the profitability of simple systems (3)

If you want to grow your repeat and referral business by improving customer experience, where do you begin?

Start with your primary systems and processes, and don’t start by tweaking the experience.

Jumping into the finer points of customer experience before doing due diligence on systems and processes is like polishing the car before you made sure the engine was running well.

Great customer experiences begin with a solid set of systems and processes that deliver your primary product and/or service with excellence.

So, before you get deeply into designing something creative and memorable for your customer, do the less exotic but more foundational work of refining your prime business systems.

Small businesses that are known for excellence in what they do have worked diligently to create a lean, simple, repeatable, clarified, and continuously improving set of systems and processes.

Start by naming your primary systems.   A simple example of three typical small business systems would be marketing, customer service, and finance. Depending on the scope and complexity of your business, you may have a four level hierarchy which includes systems, subsystems, processes, and steps within the process.

Many small business systems and processes have been formed more or less organically during the course of growing the business.  They have not been deliberately and critically examined and refined.

My point is that if you want to take your customer experience to its next level, go back and get the system and process foundation in place.  If you don’t spend time keeping your prime systems “lean and clean” they will deteriorate over time.  On the other hand, if you work at making the primary operational systems of your business well designed, they will be much easier to maintain, and less likely to be sources of confusion and wasted effort.

If you pursue system and process building with deliberate and disciplined effort – for example by setting aside a certain amount of time each week to work “on” your systems and not “in” them – you will start to get a momentum going.  Once you have taken one focused and specific part of your business and really organized and clarified it, you may find the experience addictive.  You will want to work through each major aspect of your business in this way.  As you do so you are on the road to a high performance small business, with all of the emotional and financial rewards that come from it.

Bottom line: design and refine excellence into your service delivery systems as a baseline.  With this in place you can consider customer experience enhancements that are built on a firm foundation.

If repeat and referral business is on your mind, do request our free E-Booklet on this subject, and also check out this very inexpensive way to build repeat and referral business.

Repeat and referral business: You are the customer experience “Educator-in-Chief” (2)

If you are a small business owner, know that you don’t need to be a corporate giant to design and deliver exceptional customer experiences that will generate repeat and referral business.

But you do need to be serious about your job as the primary “Educator-in-chief” in creating a customer-centric business.

Many a small business is letting customer experiences “happen” rather them having them be designed, executed, managed, and gradually improved.

Here is the point I’d like you to consider:  your customer experiences won’t rise to the level of exceptional unless you educate and work with your employees to build a true passion and commitment for great customer experiences.

As mentioned in post #1 in this series, you start with “think time” just to get clear on your own commitment, and to reflect on the direction you need to be moving toward.

What I want to share now is the need to design a simple orientation for every new employee – and to take all existing employees/team members through this orientation if you do not already have something like this in place.

Here’s the thing:  we influence and improve the behavior of others first by our own example, and second by our communication and expectations.

If you want steadily improving customer experiences, you must treat your team very well…respectfully and with good leadership practices, and…you must educate and work with them over time to instill a customer-centric  approach.  Some of your team will naturally “get” this.  Others will need more work.  All will need to hear from you, and see your example on the primacy of customer experience, if you want to create a more customer-centric business.

The POINT:  you must educate and work with your people to clearly communicate what customer experiences look like, and the philosophy behind your expectations.

Here are at least four things that I think are critical to communicate during your orientation.

• Some time on your company’s history and “story”…how and why it came into existence.

• Your company’s “point of view” including the non-negotiable values that are the foundation of what your business is about.

• The primary expectations on what good customer interactions look like.  This is where you can get very specific on the behaviors that define excellence with customers.

•  Set expectations on how communication and feedback will happen.  What is the plan or process for how we communicate on day-to-day work issues?

None of these things happen automatically.  All of them require your active leadership.

There are lots of relatively easy things you can do to build great customer experiences, and we’ll talk about them in this series.  We also invite you to learn about a simple customer appreciation tool that greatly improves your way of building lasting relationships with valued customers.  Learn about that here.

Small business and customer experience: start here

As small business owners, at least for most of us, the quality of our customers’ experience is critical to the success of our business.

Even though most small business owners have a deep appreciation for their customers, many don’t know a great deal about the field of customer experience. Not surprising given that the discipline is still being defined and evolving as we speak.  In addition, small business owners already have a thousand things to think about, including just keeping the established processes up and running.

Customer experience is one of the things we talk about here at SmallBusinessGrowing.com and this post kicks off a series of short posts on some fairly easy things you can do to advance your business goals through improved customer experiences.

The best place to start is with yourself.  Like just about everything that results in positive change, you start with a little “think time” and consider where you are as a business, and specifically where you want to go with regard to your customer service.

You don’t need to be a corporate giant to start a customer experience focus that will make a huge difference in the life of your business.  You can – and probably should – start with small, doable steps.  With some persistence and learning your efforts will evolve into something that will add value to your business, and possibly even transform it.

But before you start anywhere, spend some quality time thinking about the current state of your customer experience approach.  As you do so, maybe you will be moved to decide that you are going to start with some specific action to take your customer experience to its next level of enhancement.

As we continue this discussion we’ll talk about simple actions that can open up your customer experience and get you thinking about it from several perspectives.

In the meantime, we invite you to request the free E-Booklet on how to go about creating a business based on repeat and referral customers.  Complete the 10 second sign-up form to get this resource.  Also, I’d encourage you to read through the series on strategy planning for small business, starting right here.  Your customer experience strategies are part of a larger business context, and this series may add to your thinking on the bigger picture of where you want to take your enterprise.

Bottom line for this time:  getting to the point where your customer experience is steadily improving starts with a decision to focus your attention on this part of your business.  Spend some think time on this and make your decision.  The more you learn about how customer experience can be managed and improved, and the more you become attuned to the below-the-surface world of your customer, the more possibilities you will see.

Small Business Owners: What Your Customers Want You To Know

What do you think your customers want to feel above all else, after working with you?

You might argue that your customers most want to feel they got a great price, or superb quality in the product or service, or exceptional value for the money.

These things are of course critical, but you can have these elements in place and still have customers who won’t come back.

Your customers won’t tell you about this need, but it is always there.

It is the need to feel appreciated.

And you can make this happen, and positively impact your repeat and referral business, with an appreciative approach. Taking your customer appreciation to its next level is not about a set of gimmicks.  When it is done well, it is a serious business strategy that takes effort, but also pays you back in a big way.

Where do you begin?  Like everything else in life that leads to someplace good, you start just by paying attention to the whole issue. Let your mind start to raise the important questions about the state of customer appreciation in your business.  Think about what you are doing – and maybe more importantly – what you are not doing currently.  Once you start to direct your attention to this issue you will see things that were not apparent before, and you may find yourself wondering just how much an impact the perception of appreciation is having on your business.

The other easy action you can take is to let us send you a free E-Booklet that deals with this issue in some depth, but not so much that you will get bogged down in unnecessary details.  We have outlined what we think are some very good ideas on how to build a solid customer appreciation approach relatively easily.

You can get a free copy of our E-Booklet “The Road to Repeat and Referral Business“ by completing the email sign-up box on this site.  We discuss where customer appreciation begins and how you can deploy a solid appreciation strategy.  The first thing to know about appreciation that brings your customers back, and encourages them to tell others about you, is that it is real.

Your customers know the difference between authentic appreciation that begins with your values and manifests itself in the customer experience, vs. quick fixes that go nowhere.  That does not mean that effective customer appreciation needs to be complicated or costly.  It just needs to be genuine.  And if you are like most small business owners you already have the appreciation at the “heart” level.  You just need to get it more fully evident at the operational level.

When your customers know they are appreciated, they will view your efforts more favorably, they will “cut you slack” when the inevitable glitch occurs, and they will be more inclined to favorably answer the critical question, “Would you tell or encourage others to use this business?”

We encourage you to take 10 seconds and request our E-Booklet.  It you are serious about growing your repeat and referral business, we’d like you to have these strategies.

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Customer Appreciation Leading to Repeat and Referral Business

How much repeat and referral business are you currently doing?

What portion of your business comes from these two sources?

The amount of repeat and referral business you do comes from the quality of the total customer experience. You can impact the quality of your customer’s experience in lots of creative ways.  One big way is through appreciation.

How do you think about customer appreciation?  That is an important question to think about and answer if you want to reap the rewards that an appreciative approach can bring.

But where do you begin?  If you are a successful business person you likely already have a fair amount of personal appreciation for customers.

To take your appreciation to another level, you have to think about it at another level.  Customer appreciation, when it is authentic, can do just that: take your business to a level beyond where it is now.

Strategies and techniques….things you actually do to build the customer bond….will come after you have done the more fundamental work of thinking through your business philosophy and values.  Start at a more fundamental level, and think through the “ontology” of customer appreciation.  By that I mean start with a little soul searching about the role and priority of customers in your core business philosophy and prime business values.

Here is my point: great customer appreciation strategies start with an examination and clarification of your values and actual practices with regard to just how important customers are in how you do business.

“Professed ” business values and practices often diverge from “actual” practices.  We don’t always practice what we preach.

So begin with a little soul searching.

My point is that a superb customer orientation…one that includes lots of appreciation, and one in which your customers best interests are always front and center when making operational decisions, starts with your beliefs and values.  The techniques and methods come as a result of your commitment.

As you think about this, you will find lots of creative ways to provide more customer value and show more appreciation to your customer base.  Your creative potential on this will surprise you.

But take time to think and reflect before you start changing your operational practices.  Putting customer appreciation strategies in place will come authentically and organically after you do the “heart” work I am suggesting.

If you want to move toward a more fully customer-focused small business, I invite you to read my free E-Booklet.  I am happy to get it to you, and in it I will describe a mindset and a set of practical techniques you can apply to your small business to help grow the volume of repeat and referral business.

Start to work on this now, and imagine where you will be a year from now, with a whole set of customer appreciation strategies in place!

Your repeat and referral business is golden, but in today’s world you do have to be deliberate and strategic in building it.

What your small business can learn from singing legend Tony Bennett

Last night, singing legend Tony Bennett performed at Wolf Trap, and provided a superb concert to a packed house.

Tony has always had a reputation for his timeless style and elegance.  He is a national musical treasure.  Even though Tony has been singing for 60 years, he sounds as vibrant and fresh as ever.

There are a thousand lessons that we as small business owners and associates can take from the way this amazing performer works, but there is one immediate lesson that I’d like to share.

It may be the single most important thing a small business can do for its customers, second only to providing good value and a good experience in the prime product or service.

It is respect and appreciation.  Both go hand in hand, and one leads to the other.  Respect includes a number of intangibles that we communicate (or not) to our  customers.  It reassures them that we have understanding and care about their needs and problems.  It says to them, in lots of little ways, “You are very important to me, and I will do my best to give you my best.”

Appreciation is the tangible expression of respect in which we verbalize our thanks with words, and sometimes more.  Genuine customer appreciation happens when we first actually feel appreciative, and second we clearly communicate it to our customers.  Just feeling it is good, but appreciation must be perceived by our customers for it to have value in the customer experience.  If we feel it but don’t communicate it, our customers never know.  In their mind, we are unappreciative.  This is a big deal.  Fail to communicate authentic appreciation long enough, and it can take your business down and out.

Back to this magical concert.  At several moments throughout the evening Tony communicated his appreciation.  The communication was sincere, and you could feel the reciprocity and chemistry between performer and audience.  The man is a beloved performer not just because he has mastered his art.  He genuinely appreciates the privilege of performing to an audience.  It is a lesson every small business would be well advised to remember.

Our customers need to hear our appreciation.  They choose to give their business to us and when they get little or no expression of our appreciation, some will think twice before returning.

Many small business owners express their appreciation by doing their very best work.  This is wonderful, but if it stops there we will lose customers to someone else who demonstrates and verbalizes their appreciation.

Take a close look at how you show customer appreciation, and how often you show it.  And if it needs work, start simple by just verbally expressing your appreciation, to all customers, but especially those who are responsible for most of your business.

And, take a moment to read about one of the ways we show appreciation: by making an emotional connection.

Remember…it is not about how much appreciation you personally feel.  It is about how much expressed appreciation your customer feels.

It they are unappreciated, sooner or later they will go elsewhere.  No need to let that happen.

Customer Experience Management for Small Business: Asking a few questions can work wonders

Small business owners have an untapped goldmine.

It is the insights that their customers can give them, if only they would ask.

At SmallBusinessGrowing.com we talk about growing and retaining customers. The emerging field of Customer Experience Management (CEM) provides a set of ideas and methods to advance that cause. You don’t have to hire a CEM consultant to begin  – or continue – the process of becoming a more customer centric business.  

There are many places to begin, and one of the best is directly with your customers.

If you do not already have an established way to tap into your customers perceptions, here is a simple way to begin.

You will have to modify the sketch I provide to make it work for the distinctives of your business and history.  But the idea is simple. Start by selecting three to five customers.  The “assignment” is to interview each and ask a set of simple but hopefully revealing questions.   I say “hopefully” because in actual reality doing this kind of customer research does not always give you a set of immediate insights.   You sometimes have to digest the results of your data and then you realize what you want to ask of the next set of customers you interview.  It is a building process in which we often don’t know the best questions until we start listening to the voices of our customers.

What questions should you begin with?  You know your business, but you can start with something simple such as these three questions:   

• What do you like most about doing business with us?

• What do you like least?  Please be honest….you won’t offend me!

• What should we do or not do that would add to the value of your experience with us?

In making this request you want to express appreciation before and after the conversation.  You also want to request and encourage complete candor.  You will have customers who will hold back in their critique of your business.

You may get some gems out of this, and you may get some things that you are well aware of.  The bigger point is taking a first set of steps in moving toward a more customer focused business.  Here is a point I’d like to leave you with this time around.  Many small businesses think they already have a good customer philosophy and indeed they may have.  But the reality of most small business is that the demands of getting all the normal “stuff” done does not leave much time or inclination to go deeper on customer experience.

The businesses that do begin down this road can have a powerful competitive advantage. In fact, getting deeply in touch with your customers perceptions – especially at the level of their genuine emotions – can change your business from top to bottom.

Give this a shot, and please let me know how you are doing. In the meantime, take a quick minute to read this post on making emotional connections and check out the very simple tool that can take care of at least one aspect of your customer strategy.

“Customer Experience” for Small Business: When does it start?

The emerging discipline of Customer Experience Management is all about shaping and delivering exceptionally good customer experiences.

If you are a small business owner, the knowledge from this still developing field has great potential to extend or even transform how you think about the experiences of your customers and clients.

In this post I’d like to talk a little about when the customer experience begins.  You may be thinking it starts when you have some contact with your customer, in  the store, by phone or email, during a one-to-one consultation, or some other form of engagement with them directly.

These are all prime customer experiences, but let’s start at the beginning.  The customer experience actually begins when any potential customer has contact with any aspect of your business persona.  This includes your marketing and all of the representations of your total brand, as well as what others say about the experience of working with your business.

If you want to start to tap into the incredible power of going deep into your customer’s experience, start first with how the business is being presented to the rest of the world.

We’ll come back and talk about the actual up close and personal aspects of customer experience, but let’s start with your total brand.

Here is the core insight as I see it:  a full customer experience strategy starts with how we are presenting our business to the world, even before we get to shaping the actual customer service delivery experience.  Your prospective customers are having an experience each time they see any physical, digital, human, or other representation of your business and its brand.

When they hear about you from someone else, when they hold a booklet that describes your services, when they see an ad or view your website..these are experiences with your company.

There are lots of practical implications to this, but let me mention at least three:

• Get clear on your business Vision, Purpose, and Values

• Communicate that as part of your brand image, even if only in a section of your website

• Work toward a complete unification of all the marketing and other representations of your brand

The physical cues that prospective and actual customers see when they first start to experience your business communicate at many levels.  They can suggest clarity, unity, organization, and attractiveness…or something far less.

Here’s the summary:  Don’t think your customer’s experience starts when they first talk to you or one of your team members.  Get perfectly clear on what you are about as a business, and communicate it in a unified way in both the colors and graphics as well as the spoken or written content of your communication to the world.

If you would like to take a quick look at one very simple tool that will help to significantly upgrade one aspect of your customer experience strategy, check this out.