Where has the personal service gone?  One-to-one, eye contact, building a relationship, even common courtesy? I recently went into a not-very-busy department store looking for furniture.  The salesperson was filling out paperwork at a desk and didn’t even look up to acknowledge me.  I waited patiently for about 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes, pointedly looking in their direction to will them to notice my presence.  Nothing!  Not a flutter of an eyelid! No interest whatsoever!  So I started walking away.  All of a sudden – action – “May I help you?”  Too late.  I kept on walking.  Now, not everybody is as impatient as I am but still…There is one integral premise in business that people need to get:

The most important asset of your business is not your products or even your service.  It’s your customers.  Without customers you don’t have a business.

You have to appreciate your customers, show you care, understand what they want and when they want it … even just acknowledging them.  Show common courtesy.  And it’s not just up to your customer service staff nor your salespeople.  It applies to all aspects of a business, all people within the business, the whole culture of the business.

It’s a well known fact that it costs 6 to 8 times more to get a new customer than it does to do more business with an existing customer!

I am amazed that restaurants and pubs don’t get that.  How much more money would they get if they actually asked a customer if they’d like another drink?  OK, maybe we drink enough here in Australia, but you get my point don’t you?  When planning an event with a supplier, wouldn’t it be worth them asking a few more questions?

- What’s the occasion? Anniversary?

- Would you like to book a restaurant?

- Would you like a limousine to pick you up?

- Have you bought the gift yet? What kind of jewellery does she like?

- How about a beauty treatment prior? Massage? Hair? Nails? Make-up?

It’s hard to get personal service from an automated phone line or from a website.  Let’s bring ‘service’ back to life and learn how to deal with people.  People like to deal with people.  And those ‘people’ are your customers.  Your most important asset!

Then, who are your customers?

Let’s do an exercise.

There are 4 different components of this definition:

1.       A customer is anyone who uses our products and services.

-              List the products and services your business, team or department provides

2.       To fulfill their needs and wants

-              There is a difference between needs and wants. As a customer, most of our decisions are based on wants.  There are only 4 needs in this world: air, water, shelter, food.

We need food, but do we need gourmet food, do we need to go to a restaurant to eat, do we need organic food, do we need rib eye steak, do we need Krispy Kreme donuts.  No. Most of our decisions are made on wants.

What are the things your customer’s WANT from the products and services of your company? To have fun, ego, status, peace of mind, etc.  You (as an internal customer [employee]) want what the work can give you … (to support your family, a good lifestyle, no politics, no stress, fun, supportive environment, new friends, improved lifestyle, recognition…)

3.       To enable them to be more successful

Let’s define success – imagine that you are 90 years old, sitting by the ocean, reminiscing about your life.  What has made it a successful and fulfilling life? Happiness, friends, family, good health, able to do things and experience things in a way you wanted to, your contribution to society and to other people, financial security, etc.

Do other people have the same ideas of success?  Are they just like you?  Are they ‘customers’?  Are you a ‘customer’?

4.       So who is dependent on you for their success?

So based on this definition, who are your customers?

However, is the luck shared around equally?

Is everyone, irrespective of their circumstances, given a ‘fair go’? Do the disadvantaged, the disabled, the mentally ill, the asylum seekers get a ‘fair go’?  Do the indigenous population – the ‘first people’ of this lucky country – get a ‘fair go’?

What is a ‘fair go’?  Who decides what a ‘fair go’ is?  Compared to what?  Do we have to compare it to the down-trodden, the poor, and the disadvantaged to ensure that we get it right?  Who are our ‘role models’ for the ‘fair go’ in business? I can only think of one: Andrew Forrest, the mining magnate, who owns Fortescue Mining, has a target of 50,000 jobs for the indigenous population of WA.

That’s how we should coach our future leaders, our managers, – in fact every employee – that equality, fairness and justice are an integral part of our culture (or should be) and that all people have a right to learn those values irrespective of their age, gender, or ethnicity.

Let’s set the standards high and be the ones who teach what a ‘fair go’ is!

“Practitioners may find a need to infect tribal clusters with promotable opportunities. But you cannot promote “inspiring” – co-creation and crowdsouring are two way streets of collaboration with your audience with meaningful and authentic conversations. Define and perpetually redefine your messaging strategy, study the best, notice the guerilla granularity of ‘earned media’ and execute across multiple meshes of social networks, media formats and languages. I like to develop and grow user personas to draw flows of better understanding. As you map user peaks and troughs in conversions, working out retweet-worthiness, capture and retention lifecycles.”

I recently found this discussion on LinkedIn on how using social media can improve your business which actually threw me for a loop.  I wondered if I had wandered into another galaxy where a new language had been created that I was not privy to.  Sort of like Avatar.  I am an expert in the field of relationship marketing, CRM, building profitable and sustainable customers through loyalty initiatives, but this made me feel like an alien in my own industry.

Have you ever felt like that?

Hopefully, this is industry speak and when we DO speak to our customers it is without jargon and in a way that makes them comfortable, builds rapport and engenders loyalty.

The main purpose of any business is to find and keep customers.  Without customers you don’t have a business … and you don’t have a job.  The objective is to make your customers become sustainably loyal by offering an arrangement which has long term benefit for the customer… and is profitable for you.

The social media mix is participating in a conversation and is thus a two-way, many-to-many unsanitized dialogue.

What this is basically saying is the right message, delivered the right way, to the right audience will get the desired response.

Follow the successful recognised niche leaders and your industry trend setters to get involved in social media.   @DonPeppers and @travSocialMedia

The key is to start small and focus on innovation freshness and personal messaging style that is authentic and genuine with memorable brand-re-enforcing messages that respond to events and key value propositions customised to your audience.  Speak to them in their language and they will listen.

“Such a simple concept, yet so true: that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny.  Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.”

I think this is wonderful … and yet scary at the same time.  So all my successes I created?  Fabulous!  But wait a minute – if I’m not as successful as I want to be, then I created that too?  Horrors!  And my absolute failures, I created those too?  That’s a worry.

But let’s look at the positive.  We can create our own future.  It’s like The Secret. “What you think about and thank about, you bring about.” And other smart sayings: “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” And the classic Michael Jackson line “I’m starting with the man in the mirror…take a look at yourself, and then make a change.”

We all have that potential to be M.A.D. (to make a Difference).  It starts with deciding what you want, what will make you happy, what’s important to you – and then writing it down.

So that’s Step 1: Write it down, record it, post it, tell someone about your plans.  Commit your dreams to paper (or the worldwide web) and it will become reality.

Step 2: Create stepping stones to get you over the troubled waters and to the other side – break it down into bite-sized pieces, so that you can achieve (and celebrate) small goals along the way.  Measure the steps that you are taking.  I love To-Do lists where I can tick off the things that I have accomplished each day.

Step 3: Ensure that you make your dreams ARE achievable.  After all, you DO want to be able to applaud your effort and not finding that you are depressed by every little obstacle in the river of life that may come your way.

Step 4: Is it possible to be CEO of a company that you just started with within a year?  Probably not! (Although for some Gen Y and Gen Xs that’s exactly what they want … and expect.  But that’s another conversation altogether!) Be realistic about your wants and needs.

Step 5: Put a date on your dreams.  Goals are dreams with a timeline.

Hmmm, seems like I’ve just written down S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting.  Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.

Well then, let’s start to manifest our destiny!

I recently discovered the power of customer service via social media myself while planning a trip to Tasmania. A couple weeks before we were due to leave I needed to organise car hire, so I duly searched through the various well-known car rental companies online trying to compare the prices to get the best value. Through my searches I found an all-in-one car rental company called Vroom Vroom Vroom. This handy site compares all the top car rentals in one spot, most at discounted prices. So I quickly made my choice, put through an online order and was very pleased that another job had been ticked off the holiday-to-do list.

I didn’t think about the car hire again until the day before we were due to leave. After checking though my Inbox several times, I couldn’t seem to find my confirmation email with all the booking details. I was stumped – had I deleted it by accident? Maybe there was some technical hitch I couldn’t think of? What a pain, I’m going to have to go though the hassle of contacting via email or calling up. So I clicked onto Vroom’s Contact Us page on their website, and there, next to the email address link was another link asking you to contact them through their Facebook wall – so I did.

I quickly put up one-liner about my lost confirmation email giving details of when we were picking up the car and, to my surprise, I immediately I got a reply! After a couple of swift interactions on their wall, my confirmation email arrived safe and sound into my Inbox – the whole saga was resolved in less than half an hour with very little work from me. Plus I did it all through my iPhone! What a joy not to have to call up, hanging on the line waiting for ‘the next available operator’ or typing out a long email and waiting up to 24 hours for a reply. My problem was resolved almost instantaneously.

This is the sort of customer service consumers are now expecting. Instant reaction within minutes rather than hours or days. Businesses are very much aware of the public-ness of a company profile and the need to react quickly – especially if there’s a customer complaint.

I wanted to share this experience as it’s a great example of how businesses are engaging quickly and efficiently through social media – basically hanging out where their customers hang out. Good for business – great for customer satisfaction.

Is your business engaging with customers through social media yet? If so, I would love to hear how it’s working for your business – please feel free to reply below.

Experience tells me that there are 2 things that often hold business people back from taking full advantage of referral marketing:

1. The lack of a system – or not having a system that minimises workload and maximises your time, and
2. The presence of fear.  When I say fear, I mean like the fear of being rejected, fear that you will appear to be begging for business, or fear that your existing clients don’t really care about helping you build your business.

If your perception is that your clients will be put off by your desire to involve them in helping you grow your business, those perceptions are wrong. Based on the experience where you gave or received a referral, do you think your experience is any different to your clients?  The key message here is your clients are just like you. They refer for exactly the same reasons and they also don’t refer for the reasons you don’t refer.

One thing to remember: the higher the likely or perceived cost or risk, the more emphasis is placed on personal referral.

So why are you afraid?

People love to give Referrals:

• Who recently got a new doctor or a builder?  How did you choose them? Very few people feel comfortable going to a new doctor or hiring a builder based on a doctor’s or builder’s ad in the Yellow Pages.  When looking for a lawyer, doctor, accountant or any kind of professional … or any kind of business for that matter, most people ask someone they trust for a referral.  Don’t you?
• People like to help – it feels good and makes them feel valued!
• People also like to demonstrate how smart they are.  When clients find a business that provides a solution, makes their life better, or just plain saves them money, they like to talk about it.  They like to tell anyone who will listen how smart they were that they got such a good deal.
• Some people even like to tell others what to do!

So don’t hold back …

Get over it –

Remember, if you provide a service that helps people solve problems and meets their needs, then you are doing a disservice to your clients if you don’t actively seek referrals. And as people love to help, show how smart they are or tell others what to do then why would you not help your client achieve this?

So what happened to the country whose motto was ‘She’ll be right’ or whose working hours were determined by whether the surf was up? Why do workers spend more time in the office rather than at the beach or the backyard barbeque? Is it that they are truly more engaged at work or have they simply expanded the work to fill the time?

Tourism Australia say Australians are so addicted to work that they have accrued 121 million days of annual leave which equates to about $31 billion dollars of unspent revenue. This startling fact spearheaded the launch of their 2009 “No Leave, No Life” program, encouraging more Australians to take their entitlement when it was due. However having a Prime Minister who revels in the nickname ‘Kevin 24/7’ does not help.

As an Executive Coach, I advise that only 40% of my coachee’s time should be dedicated to work. The remaining 60% should be spent on themselves, their families and their community to ensure a better lifestyle balance.

Some of the questions I ask to suggest how a better balance can be maintained include:

- Do you know what you’re expected to deliver? Hazy job descriptions and responsibilities contribute to being busy, but not being effective at work. Do you just stay late to impress the boss?

- Is it really your responsibility? Can you delegate to another person? Or are you worried about a loss of control?

- Are you a morning or afternoon person? When are you at your creative best? Schedule your work in line with your energy levels to maximise your output.

– Meetings for meeting’s sake? As the organiser or attendee of the meeting, make sure the outcomes, actions and responsibilities are clear – otherwise don’t hold or attend the meeting. Find great meeting etiquette tips at http://www.mftrou.com

- Is work a substitute for your social life? There is life outside work. Becoming a volunteer, returning to part time study, taking exercise or learning a new skill are terrific reasons to leave work at a reasonable time. Websites like http://www.getalife.com.au/ provide several ideas to get active.

- Do you have a flexible HR policy? Often employees are not aware of the working options available to them. Career breaks, work from home, part-time are all ways of decreasing stress and helping to reprioritise the competing demands in our lives.

Let us know your tips – how do you manage work-life balance?

LEADERSHIP IN THE WORKPLACE

The hasty and undignified departures of the CEO’s of DJ and HP have a greater story to tell than for the crimes they have been accused of. There is more to it than who did what to whom, how often and where and how high the punitive damages will be.

While the courts will decide the role and fate of the perpetrators and victims and the punishment, the major losers are the employees of the respective companies,numbering in their thousands who now find the reputation of the companies they work for in tatters and the butt of cheap jokes at the water-cooler.

Senior managers in all organisations need to understandthat they have a role beyond the boardroom (not the bedroom) and the balance sheet (not the bed sheets) and that their responsibilities require them to be an authentic role model to their employees and communities.

So who are Australia’s role models?

On recent evidence it cannot be our politicians (cue State and Federal) or our sportsmen (cue golfers and cricketers).It’s a question I ask of all the executives I coach and none identify anyone in their organisation as someone they would wish to emulate (Nelson Mandela is the most popular choice).

It looks like there is an obvious gap in society for role models. Many of our senior managers could benefit from being challenged by value based coaching to see if they have the self-awareness and moral fortitude as well as the business acumen to head their companies.

At least that way, they cannot say that it is lonely at the top and that they have no one to talk to. In conclusion,after the GFC (Global Financial crisis), we now have the GLC (Global Leadership Crisis).Do you know of any captain of industry who has the courage and is the custodian of standards that will leave a legacy of fairness, equality and justice in their organisations long after they are gone?

If so,contact sonny@kona.com.au

Sonny Mathews- Is a highly credible and empathetic asset capable of inspiring individuals at CEO, senior and middle management positions. He has over 25 years of International Business expertise, across a number of wide range of functions, and as a business consultant and coach