Loyalty Is Your Goal

 

Good morning,
Price may get them in (and may even cause some to shop around), but it is the service and experience a customer receives that makes him loyal to you or your brand. We lead such hectic lives it is wonderful to find a brand you can count on to get it right and put YOU first.
How comforting is it to walk into your favorite restaurant where you are known, the food is consistent, and, the service right on? The service provider who is always on time, knowledgeable, and friendly?

Customers have choices – work toward loyalty.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Cheers,

Toby

Team Is Your Goal, Not A Buzzword

This is a note I wrote years ago prepping for an upcoming hockey season; something I sent to parents to set the right expectations.  With all the talk I hear about teamwork, environment, and synergy, I find it so relevant to share today.

While getting together rosters, putting together drills, and thinking about tournaments I started thinking about the big picture. 
The scoreboard shows “Home” and “Guest” not the names of who scored the goal and who made the assist. The scoreboard reflects the performance of the team, not the achievements of its individual members.
The score sheet does not tell the entire story either. It shows who scored, who assisted, and the saves made by the goalie – so much is missing.
When watching your next game look for these things: the backcheck, clearing the puck out of the defensive zone, the hug or high-five of encouragement, the hustle of the weaker player who never gives up.
Herb Brooks said it best: “When you pull on that jersey, you remember one thing, the name on the front it a hell of a lot more important than the one on the back.”

A great project, quarter, or year does not happen because of one person.  There may be someone with a vision or carries most of the load, but true success happens when a team is built, aligns, and works together to reach that common goal.  As a manager, it is your mission to create, inspire, and recognize the part all the members play.

I look forward to your comments.

Cheers,

Toby

Punish Employees for Good Service?

Over the weekend, I visited a large liquor store chain to perform one of my least favorite jobs: can return. This particular store does not want to be seen as a redemption center: rather than self-service machines you load, the customer tells the attendant how many returns he has, the attendant deals with them, and provides a slip to redeem for cash.  After communicating my total, the attendant politely informed me of their return policy, that I was over their return limit, and kindly provided me with a slip for the total amount; lesson learned, no big deal.

I visited the customer service counter to redeem the slip for cash and the manager gruffly asked how was I able to get a slip for this amount: it was $4 over the max.  I said the attendant had explained the policy for my future reference and I was thankful for his great service.  The manager did not look happy and begrudgingly opened the cash drawer and provided payment.

As I walked out of the store, this announcement came over the intercom: “I need to know who authorized the large bottle return payment.” Wow! I understand the importance of rules and polices, but punishing this employee is the wrong thing to do.  He understands the policy, explained it to me without lecture, and most importantly, he provided fine customer service.   A conversation is better than wrist slap: it makes an employee feel valued; a valued employee takes pride in his job and delivers great experiences to customers.

Do you agree?  I look forward to your comments.

Cheers,

Toby

 

Photo credit phillyemploymentlawyer.com

A Community Benefits Your Customers & Your Brand

Online communities are essential no matter your business.  In addition to offering a great customer service solution, I will discuss three additional reasons why you need to create and nurture your own community.

Customer Service:

My graphic above shows why a community is the full-service solution to customer service.  Phone queues are hell for customers to get through and expensive for companies to staff properly.  Videos and knowledge base articles eliminate the queue, but if they do not cover the customer’s specific issue and you do not allow (or respond to) questions, your customer still has a problem.

A community is a perfect solution: fast engagement for customers, easy to staff for the company, answers become a searchable knowledge base, and customers may ask follow-up questions.

Connect With Your Customers:

Customers who care want your brand to succeed and love companies who listen and engage.  Active community participation also shows your brand’s personality and provides faces.  Along with discussion and questions, build focus groups and invite members to participate; receive product ideas and improvement suggestions from the people using your product or service.

Customers Become Advocates:

Potential customers learn about your brand by what is happening in your community.  What is the tone?  Is your brand engaged?  Are your current customers singing your praises?  People come with questions, problems, and stories: the results will set your brand apart from your competition.  Customers who care will sing your praises and even share your community with others; people love to talk about a club they belong to.

SEO:

We are all slaves to The Google Monster.  We spend money and time optimizing websites with keywords and blogs.  Websites become stagnant and although they may have the right keywords, blogs are often too company focused (why we are awesome) & go unread by customers.  What the Monster really loves is keyword-rich content that is always updating; your community members provides this each day, all day.  An addition, because discussions & solutions are customer focused, they are not only consumed, they are SHARED.

So, why have you not built a community?

Please share your comments and questions.

Best,

Toby

Building A Positive Work Culture

My recap of the 11/12017 #Bufferchat hosted by @buffer.  Join the conversation every Wednesday at 12pm EST.  Culture is the backbone of your company; are your employees engaged or are you pushing them out the door?

Q1: What are the benefits of building a positive work culture?

• A positive work culture leads to happy and motivated employees
• Positive work culture drive employee longevity
• Positive and motivated employees pass that great attitude on to their customers

Q2: What is one of the first steps you would take to implement more positivity?

• Positivity and great culture starts from the top – Management must live it lead by example
• Meet regularly with your team
• Create a culture that manages people over spreadsheets
• Along with team communication, don’t let individuals live on islands: let them know how they are contributing
• Just like passing on employees who don’t get it done, remove toxic managers

Q3: Do you think positive work cultures are more productive? Why or why not?

• Positive cultures are the MOST productive: they WANT to come to work and contribute to company goals
• When you know the impact you have on company goals, you are more willing to participate
• A culture of fear destroys productivity and increases turnover

Q4: What can you do to promote or model positive and honest communication?

• Don’t hide in your office – walk the floor and talk to people
• Smile to others
• Say Thank you
• Don’t get defensive when criticized

Q5: How do you prevent “false harmony” when developing this kind of culture?

• “False harmony” is spotted right away – employees know it when they see it
• Don’t say you are pro-customer, then create policies that annoy them
• Just like “Your call is important to us” employees can see when mgmt is not being honest
• If you LIVE the culture / behavior you want, your team will too
• Numbers are easy to manage, people are much harder – train people HOW to manage others
• ASK your employees what environment / culture they seek – report back to them and implement what makes sense

Q6: Are there goals or intentions you can set around positive work culture?

• Improved employee retention rate
• Net promoter score improvement with customers

Thanks for reading – hope to see you at the next #bufferchat and look forward to your comments and questions.

Cheers,

Toby

Run Your Business Like a Rock Band

Good day everyone, I wrote this some time ago, but some lessons need to be remembered.  This piece was inspired by an article from “The Boston Globe:”

What businesses can learn from the Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead provided us with more than memorable summer nights; they showed the way to business success. I will focus on two ideas and how they relate to Community Management and Customer Service.

1. Be Transparent
“The Grateful Dead’s authenticity endeared them to fans and allowed the band to experiment. They found that mistakes are quickly forgiven if a company is transparent about what it’s doing.”

Trust is everything in business and your business will disappear if your customers do not trust you. Come forward and admit to your mistake, apologize and fix the problem or policy. Problems happen, the very companies do not sit back and hope the problem goes away, they take action to fix the issue AND admit they made a mistake.
Transparency is not just about customer service, it relates to your financial accounting too. Enron (and others), lost customer trust and fortunes because of greed and terrible ethics. Don’t keep two sets of books.
Great service and sound ethics are foundations on which you should build your company.

2. Give, and you shall Receive 
“The Grateful Dead removed barriers to their music by allowing fans to tape concerts for free. That brought in new fans and grew sales for concerts, records, and merchandise. They showed that when content is free, more people hear about a company and eventually do business with it.”

Customers are demanding access to knowledge in order to self-solve their problems. Providing an open knowledge base lowers your customer service costs, increases customer satisfaction, and shows your company is a thought leader. The Consortium for Service Innovation has published a paper about how Mathworks has turned knowledge-share upside down by publishing their entire knowledge base within their Community.
I can hear the question now: “But support contracts are a large part of our revenue, we can’t just give away our knowledge.”
Give away the knowledge, not the support. Customers who pay for a service contract are NOT paying for information, they are paying for immediate support and people to solve their problems for them.
Stop funneling your customers into horrible phone queues: listen to them on social media and build them a community where they can interact with you (and other customers) to learn, share knowledge, and solve their problems.

Rock on!

Cheers,
Toby

#Bufferchat: Risks and Experimenation

My recap of the 3/1/2017 #Bufferchat hosted by @buffer.  Join the conversation every Wednesday at 12pm EST.

Q1: If you’re up for sharing, what is a big risk you’ve taken in your life that ended up working out well?

• Getting married and having children

Q2: What was the last time you tried an experiment, or followed through with a new idea, at work?

• Being a Community Manager – every day is something new and full of experiments (& new relationships)
• A risk that paid dividends is handing community keys over to my members; asking for and counting on their help

Q3: What’s your process for starting an experiment (or anything new) at work? What steps do you take?

• Plan / brainstorm – make my case – get buy in – execute – measure – correct as needed
• Ensue it aligns with company goals
• Gather great brains to brainstorm

Q4: How do you know if it’s worth taking a risk at work or in life?

• What does your inner voice tell you

Q5: When you have new ideas, what’s your advice for getting more support from managers/leadership?

• Prove with data how is moves the company forward
• Prove how your idea will make your boss / department look good
• Ask for their opinion or strategy advice

Q6: What do you do if your ideas/experiments aren’t successful?

• Don’t whine or pout – understand why it did not fit into the strategy
• Ask if now is not the time, when would be the time
• Understand how your idea can be improved then make your case again
• DO NOT take it personally

Q7: What has been your biggest learning about risk-taking? Any tips to share?

• There is no reward or sense of personal fulfillment without risk – plan and go for it

Thanks for reading – I look forward to you comments and hope to see you at the next #bufferchat.

Cheers,

Toby

 

My Workstyle – Lead & Inspire

I often get asked: “What makes you tick and how do you motivate others?”  These are my four principals; I would love to discuss them further with you.

Collaborate, Question, Understand

• Ask: Is this the best way and why?
• Remove silos & work towards a common goal
• Understand goals, expectations & what equals success

Manage people not spreadsheets

• Encourage and empower
• Ensure my message is understood
• Numbers are easy to manage, people are not
• Metrics are guardrails that ensure you are on track

Be a customer advocate

• Have a win-win outlook
• Do not hide behind bad policy
• Help them navigate your processes
• Be their partner and make life easier

Engagement over membership

• Rather than 100,000 members, achieve a 90% answer rate
• 75% of content / answers are customer driven
• Without engagement, you have a list, not a community

How do you manage, motivate, and keep your team on track?  I welcome your comments and questions.

Best,

Toby

Honesty, Transparency, and Sunlight

No matter if you are politician, business person, or social media pro, you (should) seek to gain trust and the loyalty it provides.  Trust.  So hard to earn and so easy to lose.

You reach a crossroad and you are not sure which path to take; do I need to defend my brand or organization?  When that time comes, ask yourself and those in the room: will this decision pass the “sunlight test?”  If what you are trying to hide reaches the sunlight, what will people think?  Why would you be hiding this in the first place?

You may need to break a tie or relationship, but you will be right with a clear conscience and respected reputation.

Your comments are welcome.

Best,

Toby