Malcolm Says

I look after events for IoD Berkshire and we spend a lot of time asking members what works for them. The best category is events that draw repeat attendees. A good example are certain types of breakfast clubs. The benefit comes from being able to build the relationship over time and staying in peoples mind by repeat contact. There is no specific format such as informal networking, speakers or topics that always works the best. However, the event has to provide the opportunity for attendees to easily get engaged in conversations with several different people. Of course the event has to be interesting to get people to attend in the first place.

My advice is to find an event that repeats several times a year that you feel comfortable at and keep going to it. Personally I think that weekly meetings only work for certain types of businesses. Going to the odd event and hoping to get lucky in finding a lead or good contact is increasingly unlikely.

Malcolm Says

I start from the premise that customers expectations are never unrealistic.  We may think they are but with the odd exceptions customer are reasonable and believe that their expectations are realistic.  The challenge for companies is to understand the specific expectations of their customers and ensure that where it makes business sense those needs are met. 

One of the myths is that meeting customer expectations or proving a better customer experience means spending lots of money.  In a lot of situations it costs very little or even nothing. It’s not untypical for me to make at least three or four recommendations to a client that have a high positive impact on customers at zero cost them.  (I have specific examples for anyone who is interested to know more).

The second major point that many companies miss is that improved customer experience leads to better customer retention. We’ve seen many different surveys that claim that 50% - 70% of customers leave due to how they have been treated by their supplier or their by staff.  I use this information to do a very simple ROI for clients to demonstrate the value of investing in improving customer experience.  In several cases the ROI based on improved customer retention was in excess of 50%.

There are a few articles on my web site that give a bit more background to my thinking and some example of what customers really care about rather than what we think they care about.   http://www.simpleplans.co.uk/7.HTML

In some circumstances people just buy on price because the difference between the options is either invisible to them or they just don’t care. In other situations they may buy based on features and perceived benefits.

In most buying decisions, business or personal, neither of these are the first hurdle that has to be crossed. The first step is what I call the RET factor. It stands for Relationship, Expertise and Trust. Many buying decisions are made using a mix of these factors before price is even mentioned. For example I might buy my Life Insurance from Jerry because I’ve known him for years, he’s demonstrated his expertise on many occasions and I trust him. Another vendor is not going to get my business just by offering a lower price.

It’s therefore important to do as much as you can to improve your RET factor rather than just trying to sell features and benefits or just focusing on price. Consider if any sales/marketing activity or business process improves or damages your RET factor with customers.

Knowing what your customer cares about is obviously important. However customers care about far more than just features and benefits and the only way to find out what those things are is to ask them. I’d suggest using surveys and any customer touch point to collect information. What’s important to customer can be illogical, irrational and impossible to work out without asking them but it may be the crucial factor in a buying decision.

There is more information on this topic and some real customer examples on my web site.  www.simpleplans.co.uk

The issue for a number of businesses it that they have already cut the obvious areas of waste but because revenues are weak they need to cut further.  The problem is where and how to cut without damaging the business.

A simple way of evaluating the various options to reduce costs is required. My approach is to look across the business and ask one question. How does this action or task add value to customers? A high level first pass will identify things to cut, things not to cut, things to review and perhaps even some areas to invest more in.  The key point is that it provides a consistent way to make decisions and to explain those decisions to staff and customers. It’s also repeatable as circumstance change either positively or negatively. 

Ideally the results should also be assessed against the plans of the business before final decisions are taken. Unfortunately a surprisingly large number of businesses do not have good plans beyond revenue and profit objectives. Definitely another reason why knee jerk reactions take place.  

I’d suggest looking at the behaviors and features that builds trust in the first place. To me the top 5 are:

1. Honesty
2. Consistency
3. Professionalism
4. Excellent service
5. Great staff
Therefore any action that a company plans to take should be assessed against the impact that it would potentially have on any or all five of the above and features. If the action would result in a negative reaction simply don’t do it because that would damage trust. If you still decide to go ahead with a particular action HOW you plan to carry it out should then be assessed against the top 5 list.

The model for the most trustworthy retailer is always John Lewis and their supermarket chain Waitrose. Interestingly Waitrose are rarely the cheapest and in spite of the John Lewis promise to never be knowingly undersold some of their own products are quite expensive. But, since everyone trusts them on all 5 points price becomes much less relevant.

Malcolm says:

It could represent a big problem but I want to raise a “Not always” flag. What customers want is to be treated consistently. That can be consistently good or consistently bad.

The classic example of a highly successful company that consistently treats its customers “badly” compared to competitors is Ryanair. They are successful while customers know that they are not going to be treated well if anything goes wrong. They accept it as normal and of course like Ryanair prices and other aspects of their services.

Imagine what would happen if Ryanair suddenly started providing excellent customer service. Customer would immediately be thinking what’s going on, where is the catch? Customers want consistency. Of course there is nothing wrong with getting consistently better but make sure that you understand what it important to your customers before you do anything. If you don’t you might just find out that conventional wisdom is wrong.

Malcolm Says

I see a business plan as the touchstone to test all major business decisions and and to ultimately help build the objectives of everyone in the organisation.  It’s therefore more important for it to be simple and easy to communicate than it is to be precise and in detail.  I’m a firm believer in the one page plan and usually create it on a MindMap.  As the model cascades through the business the finer details are added as each part of the organisation builds their supporting plans.

I’d therefore say a key element of a good business plan is that creating it helps management teams discuss and agree plans and subsequently communicating the agreed document helps everyone track and implement those plans.

In tough economic times it’s very tempting to deliberately cut costs. The secret is to ensure that those cuts do not negatively impact your clients. An often bigger issue in tough times is that staff get de-motivated and incapable of delivering the service that they did in the past. Put these two factors together and you end up with the type of bad service scenarios that many of us experience. The net result is often lost customers through poor customer service and lack of attention to detail.

No one wants to be around de-motivated people. The challenge for business is not to nit pick the details of customer service but to ensure that their staff are highly motivated to get things right. That will ensure that customers do not have to complain and they might just recommend them to their friends and stay as customers.

You could sit down and discuss how bad things are or you could grasp this major opportunity to do things differently for your clients. Now is the time to ensure that you fully understand what your clients value rather than what you think they value. Armed with this information it should be possible to reduce costs (headcount and other things) in areas that clients do not care much about. At the same time you must maintain or even improve the quality and standards that your clients do really care about. The worst thing to do is to randomly cut costs or headcount and expect the same levels of service to be delivered. Unless the organisation has been very inefficient customer service levels will fall and can make the situation even worse.

As an example in the hotel business you might discover that it would be quite acceptable to cut the number of options on the menu, use a fast checkout system, cut the wattage of some light fittings or any number of other things. Just be very sure to check with your own clients that these factors are not the key reasons why they choose your hotel over the competition in the first place.

Malcolm Says
Listening to customers and acting on what they say ia easy. Here is the secret of sucess.Step 1 The CEO spends a lot of time going out talking to customers and tells his senior staff team what he has heard and asks them what they are doing about issuses that he’s discovered.Step 2. The senior management team not wanting to be caught out by the boss go out and listen to lots of customers and fix the problems before the CEO finds out about them.Step 3. This process is repeated through all levels of the organisation.

Tesco are the masters of this approach.