Keep Promise – Page 11 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

October 21, 2019

Three strangers walked into a bar

On Friday I went to a meetup with total strangers.

Even though we had never met each other before, online or off, I knew it was worth the risk, because we are all alumni of at least one Seth Godin course, and I knew that would mean attendees would be curious about others, open to sharing ideas and information, willing to help each other and have a very interesting story behind them.

I was right. We left the bar feeling like friends. We took selfies, swapped podcasts and arranged to do it again for Christmas, and encourage others to come along too.

All we had in common was that we are customers of a particular brand, living in a particular location.

Can your brand do this?

October 15, 2019

Missing You

For over 30 years I did almost all my shopping at my local big-name supermarket.

Recently, I stopped. The trigger was the self-checkouts – they finally brought it home to me that in spite of all the personal ‘offers’, I am not a person for them, I am merely a consumer. A number on a loyalty card.

Do they miss me? I doubt it.

Now I buy from street markets, WI markets, farm shops and sail cargo. I shop around. Not for the lowest price, but for the best price/experience combination.

I want to do business with people that will miss me when I’m gone.

Don’t we all?

October 9, 2019

Shopping

Yesterday evening I picked up my second ever online grocery order from Greenwich Pier. It was more expensive than buying the same stuff from Ocado, but not eye-wateringly so.

What I bought:

Coffee beans, chocolate, olives with lemon, olives with garlic, almonds and honey.
A contribution to the restoration of the Raybel – a historic Thames barge that will be used in future drop-offs along the Thames.
Support for small, organic growers and producers across Europe and in South America, so they can carry on treating their land, their crops and their people right.
A contribution to another income stream for the schooner Gallant and other ships like her, so that more people can enjoy sailing in her, and more people can buy goods shipped by her.
Support for New Dawn Traders and the Sail Cargo Alliance they are part of.
A contribution to another way of doing things.

We waited, in the open air for a good 10 minutes before my shopping arrived – far longer than I’ve ever waited at my favourite bugbear, the supermarket checkout – but I didn’t mind. Funny that.

We never buy ‘just stuff’. We buy what we think it means for us. Sometimes what we think it means and what it actually does are the same thing.

And that makes us ‘consumers’ more powerful than we realise.

October 4, 2019

Unscripted

Too often we think that treating customers the same way means putting them through the same mechanical process. In doing so we mistake customers for widgets. We also mistake our staff for widgets.

Much better to exploit the possibilities offered by human beings to create processes that are consistent without being mechanical.

The trick is to think about what must be covered as part of the process, then find a way to help the human being running that process to remember that, while giving them freedom as to how they cover it.

Take a phone call for example. Rather than scripting a sales or customer service call, why not create a simple prompt sheet, that lets the person making the call remember what must be covered, while letting them cover it as part of a natural conversation with whoever is on the other end of the phone. I’ve written an e-book showing you how.

Both sides of the conversation will feel more natural, and that makes both sides much happier to make and receive your calls.

October 3, 2019

Consistency

Good Services principle number 9: A good service is consistent. I like this principle particularly, because consistent doesn’t mean uniform. Your services

October 1, 2019

Not just for customers

Your Promise of Value encompasses how you behave as a business, the benefits you offer prospects and deliver to customers, and the relationships you create with customers over time. In a way, it represents “what the business is here to do”.

As such, it is isn’t only for prospects and customers. A Promise of Value also describes how the founders and their team have decided to fulfill some of their own needs for agency, mastery, autonomy, purpose and community. And as such, it creates a framework around which people who work in it as employees can fit their own fulfillment of those needs.

The ideal for a business is to kill two birds with one stone – so that making and keeping it’s promises to customers simultaneously delivers fulfillment for the people who work in it. But that is hard to achieve (and may not be desirable – where would change come from?)

So as a business you have to accept that not all employees will want the same thing. Some employees will want all these needs fulfilled by work. Others will use what work gives them (perhaps money, mastery) to fulfill other needs (perhaps purpose, community, agency) outside work. That means that offering multiple opportunities for fulfillment that are consistent with your Promise of Value is the key to creating an engaged workforce.

In other words, your Promise of Value is not just for your customers, it’s for your employees too. And both promises need to be kept if you want to succeed as a business.

September 16, 2019

Taking chances

It’s impossible to predict every possible scenario. So instead of trying to plan for every eventuality, it’s much better to simply keep your options open.

The trick is to minimise the possible downside, while allowing the upside to take care of itself. So, if you can protect your restaurant from the worst effects of a storm, you can stay open, when others around you don’t. If everyone is evacuated (including you), you’re no worse off than if you had closed anyway. If they aren’t, you’re going to be popular.

This is what it means to be antifragile – the downside won’t kill you, while the upside benefits you significantly.

The beauty of this idea is that it makes dealing with risk much simpler. All you really need is to understand what might kill you, and mitigate the effects of that – creating a floor, below which nothing can go, while leaving the ceiling open to the sky.

You can do this with business processes too. Specify “the least that should happen”, and let humans beings find new ways to add the delight.

Then ratchet up the floor.

September 12, 2019

Good design is honest

“It does not make a product appear more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.” Dieter Rams, design principle number 6.

Enough said.

September 5, 2019

Good design is long-lasting

“It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.” Dieter Rams Design Principle number 7.

When a service process captures the ‘what has to happen’ without getting too bogged down in the ‘how it happens now’, it lasts. It stays meaningful, and as a result stays useful, and used.

This is possible because human beings are very good at grasping an overall structure, and very good at flexing themselves around it to deal with a specific situation.

So let them. In a service business, variation is information.

September 4, 2019

Buying Customers

Acquisition is a common form of expansion. Especially where customers buy regularly and repeatedly. As the buyer, you add a whole bunch of new customers in one go, in bulk. As the seller you get to cash in on all those years of hard work.

So far, so good.

For employees, takeover or merger often leads to culture shock, as two distinct (and probably inarticulate) Promises of Value clash in the new business. This is a recognised issue that gets attention and effort from the buyer.

But what about customers?

Often, they don’t even know until after the event, when they call for support and find the rules have changed on them, or see the size of their next bill.

What do you think they feel when they find out?

Perhaps they don’t care, as long as there is no difference in the service they get or the fees they have to pay. They didn’t have a relationship with the previous company and they don’t with the new one either. These customers will stay until a significantly better offer comes along, as sooner or later it will.

Perhaps they are delighted – because the new rules make things easier for them, and efficiencies or economies of scale make their bills lower. These customers will stay, and tell everyone why.

Or perhaps they feel belittled, betrayed and angry. They had a relationship with the previous company. They had chosen it because of its values and ethos. They had bought in to its Promise of Value. This company and the way it worked had become part of their life, and now you’ve taken that away. Worse still, you’ve treated them as a commodity. These customers will leave, and tell everyone why.

What’s the answer?

Aim for delighted, every time.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Category: Keep Promise