Keep Promise – Page 6 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

January 12, 2022

The stories we tell others

If you visit a National Trust property, every person you meet is likely to be a volunteer. An individual providing this service in their spare time, for nothing. Yet the experience is remarkably similar across hundreds of houses and thousands of volunteers.

How do they achieve this? There are no scripts. Nothing is prescribed, apart from some simple Covid-19 distancing notices. Every volunteer performance is unique.

What every National Trust building does have is a story. The story of the building and the people associated with it – usually the famous one who commissioned it, built it or lived in it.

Every volunteer (whether they are a room guide, a shop assistant or a gardener) is expected to know this story, to research around it and to tell it. But they can do all of that in their own way, including details and providing context as they see fit, tailored to the visitors in front of them, in their own personal style.

The most basic ‘customer experience score’ is the story everyone can tell. For a business it’s the story of how you make and keep your promise to the client.

What’s your story?

Can everyone in your business tell it?

How do you help new people learn it?

January 11, 2022

What is innovation for?

I’ve been through a lot of hoovers in my life, from a massive ‘wet and dry’ suitable for builders through Dyson and any number of supposedly ‘handy’ machines. Many of which have not lasted long.

The GTech AirRam I inherited from my mum is the only one that’s made hoovering almost enjoyable, and yesterday, it looked like it was about to turn into another relic.

Fortunately, I found on the support site that I can replace virtually every part individually.

That means that unlike every other hoover I’ve owned, I can keep most of this one going indefinitely.

For a long time, hoover innovation was simply about creating new demand – ‘new’ models that superseded the old, so you had to buy all over again if you wanted the status of having the latest.

The trouble with that was that with a proliferation of models, a consumer was just as likely to buy someone else’s new model as yours.

Now it seems that innovation is about creating brand loyalty by making it easier to repair the existing. Allowing the consumer to preserve their original investment (in my case emotional rather than financial), and send less material to landfill.

What all this tells me is that the purpose of innovation is to change behaviour.

We’re going to need a lot of that to cope with what’s coming.

Get your thinking hats on.

December 2, 2021

Saying it better than I can

This post from Seth is so good, I have to give it to you in full:

“Customer service is free

Most large organizations would disagree.

They hire cheap labor to answer the phone. They install recordings to mollify people who are on hold for hours. They measure the cost of the call center and put loopholes in the warranty.

When you see customer service as a cost center, all of these steps make sense. Any money spent lowering costs seems to raise profits.

But customer service is actually a profit center, for four reasons:

First, because the customer who calls you or shows up at the adjustments window is fully enrolled. Unlike just about every other moment you’ve had with them, in this moment, they are paying attention, leaning into the situation and on high alert. Everything you do here, unlike just about every other marketing interaction you have, will go on your permanent record.

Second, because your competitors have foolishly decided to treat this interaction as a cost, the chances that you can dramatically overdeliver are pretty good. You can’t make a car that’s ten times better, but you can easily produce customer service for your car customers that’s ten times better than what most manufacturers deliver.

And third, because in our industrialized economy, people love to tell stories about service. And so the word spreads (or doesn’t) based on what you’re about to do.

Finally, it’s been demonstrated again and again that the most valuable customers are the loyal ones. While your promotional team is out there making noise to get you new customers, you’d be much better off turning your existing customers into repeat customers and ambassadors.

And so, the money you spend on customer service isn’t simply free. It actually repays you many times over.”

Customer service is an opportunity to play a different game, an infinite game of connection.

The irony is that when it’s genuine, it leads to more profit, not less.

PS it’s not so different when governments spend money on people at the bottom of the pile instead of the top. They get more back than they spend. And their people flourish.

November 29, 2021

I knew that would happen

“I knew that would happen.”

If you knew, why didn’t you do something to prevent it?

Probably because while you knew it was possible or even likely, you hoped it wouldn’t happen.

It would be much better to have a process that deals not only with the 80% of cases where nothing untoward happens, but also with the 20% of cases that don’t work like that. Or even better, one that pre-empts their occurrence.

Let’s say you’re a coffee roaster. You sell beans to lots of small independent coffee shops. It bugs you that they never plan their orders properly, often ringing up to ask for an urgent delivery at a timescale that’s impossible for you to make money on. You’ve made things clear – ‘Order before 6pm for next-day delivery’ – but still they ring at 8pm for an urgent delivery by 8am the next day. What should be exceptional is turning into the norm.

How could you pre-empt this?

You could accept that’s how they work, and find a way to deliver coffee overnight as your default. That might involve putting prices up of course, which might annoy the more forward-thinking of your customers.

You could make them order more each time, so they never run out. That would cost them more of course, and might end up in a stockpile they don’t want to carry.

You could put re-order prompts in or on your packaging, or give them the means to prompt themselves – stickers, or ‘re-order now’ cards.

You could recognise that the people using the coffee may not be the people ordering it, and make it easy for them to start an order – with a QR code on a bag, for instance – that gets confirmed with the person responsible before it’s sent out.

You could find ways to prompt them to re-order, based on how they work. That would involve asking them how they work (or even observing them as a mystery shopper?). That would cost you more up -front, but might make for a closer relationship. There probably aren’t that many different ways to run a coffee-shop, so you would quickly identify most cases. Then you could offer ordering options to new clients, knowing you have a process for dealing with them smoothly

There isn’t a right answer here, except that whenever you say “I knew that would happen”, realise that what you’ve identified isn’t just a pain for you. It’s an opportunity to cement your relationships and differentate yourself from your competitors, just by making your client’s life easier.

November 24, 2021

Transactions

Transactions are meant to be purely functional and impersonal. We don’t have to worry about how the person on the other side feels – or even whether they are a person. They don’t have to worry about us either. We both do our business and move on.

All very convenient, but not terribly satisfying.

We humans crave connection and recognition. We love to be seen by others, and we know that the only way to be seen is to see. We’re constantly trying to turn transactions into relationships, however brief (did you speak to the person who gave you your COVID-19 vaccine? I expect so), and especially around the things we value.

I’m happy to pay my car tax through a faceless, characterless portal and my council tax via direct debit, but I prefer to buy my groceries in person, having a chat at the checkout as I do. I buy my books online, from a small independent bookshop. We are both very aware that there are people on the other side of the transaction, and often go out of our way to remind ourselves of that.

Transactions are exchanges that take place between strangers. Or between people who want to treat each other as if they are strangers.

The danger is that by treating each other as strangers, we become strangers. Blind to the needs of others. Blind even to our own need to be valued as a human being. Sublimating that need into a desire for things, or even selling our data in return for a taste of it.

We can’t escape transactions. Our society is increasingly built around them. But as businesses, we can do our best to deliver the relationships our clients really want.

On top of the transaction, as a bonus.

As a gift.

November 9, 2021

Standards

I’m not sure the plumber appreciated me hanging around to watch. Not to begin with anyway.

But by the end of the afternoon, he was glad of it. Because by then I’d seen for myself how everything went wrong, and more importantly, I knew he was not to blame.

It wasn’t his fault the ducting wouldn’t go through the hole. That was my fault for buying the wrong size – to fit the cooker hood, but not a ‘standard’ hole. Although to be fair I didn’t know that a) there was a standard hole size and b) that my cooker hood had been built to a different standard.

It wasn’t the plumber’s fault that the old tap was so hard to remove. That was because for some reason the old tap fixings couldn’t accommodate a standard worktop depth, so the previous fitting had been slightly bodged.

It wasn’t his fault that the new tap would have to be slightly bodged in the same way, since it was identical, and it certainly wasn’t his fault that the lever came off in his hand as soon as he tested it. That was down to tap manufacturers observing no quality standards at all.

So all in all, what should have been a straightforward job, turned into a bit of a nightmare, involving the purchase of yet another (different) tap, some new hose, plus additional reducers and fixings, and of course more of the plumber’s time and skill (not least that of being a contortionist).

Will, the plumber, is only young, but even he complained that ‘in the old days’, everything was manufactured or imported to a British standard, which meant you could rely on the fact that one thing would work seamlessly with another. You could get most jobs done easily, only the really unusual was tricky.

That’s what standards are for. To make the usual easy, so you can have imagination and energy to spare to deal with the unusual.

Having a choice of standards opens up different possibilities. That’s great, as long as everyone states which standard(s) they are working to at any one time. Otherwise, all you’ve done is turn the usual into the unusual.

No wonder we have a productivity problem.

November 8, 2021

A market of one

I’ve been known to wax lyrical (or just go on about) about how your Promise of Value drives the way you design your business, so that it can’t help but deliver on the Promises you make.

But what does that actually mean in practice? How do you actually do that?

Let’s follow a thread of an example.

Your Promise of Value contains 3 sets of qualities – behaviours (the way you do things, which shades into your values), what you do (what you do to deliver benefit to your clients) and what you are (the relationship that is created between you and a client as a result).

Let’s say that one of your behaviours is ‘honest’. Among other things, that might mean that you always tell the truth. That has implications for your Share Promise process. For example, you may decide to never make claims you can’t substantiate. That might mean that for you ‘Showing Up’ is essentially about presenting the substantiation. Your 60-seconds is a story of a happy client, or your social media feed is full of testimonials, or that your website contains a live feed showing the positive impact you’re having. Or maybe the negative impact, reducing?

Always telling the truth has implications for your Keep Promise process too. It affects how you deal with a complaint, or the advice you give a client. It implies that before either of these situations arises, you must have a process for gathering as much ‘truth’ as you can. That might translate into a separate process each time (receive a complaint, research it, then get back to them), or it may mean building a process for continuously recording data you might need, as a side effect of doing the job.

Your Promise of Value isn’t just for prospects and clients, it also drives how you design your Improve Process – how you organise or re-organise the resources you have to serve your people better. How you design your measurement systems, your appraisal systems and your recruitment systems. For example, how could you test that a potential team member is ‘honest’? How would you build ‘always telling the truth’ into feedback mechanisms?

There will be other options. The form your processes take depends on other aspects of your Promise of Value – not everything all at once, but the behaviours that are most important to you and the people you serve. How does your business combine a behaviour like ‘honest’ with ‘kind’, or ‘professional’ or ‘cutting-edge’?

By embedding your Promise of Value into what you do and how you do it, your prospects, clients, employees, suppliers – all your stakeholders – experience who you are, and what you are here to do in a very concrete way. You’re showing, not telling. What you are, is what they get. And what you are is unique. You’re now in a market of one.

October 25, 2021

Our greatest tool

Following nicely on from the last post, I recommend this series of posts from my friend Mary Jane Copps – The Phone Lady.

You’re probably familiar with the idea that as humans we are wired to look for stories, which means that telling them is a great form of marketing.

What Mary Jane makes us realise is that before you can tell your own story effectively, you have to first find the story of the person you are talking to. Not the story of the avatar you’ve created to ‘represent’ them, but the actual story of the actual person you are speaking to right now.

Why?

Because “It’s within their story that your value takes root.“

That means that whatever your process for communicating one-to-one with prospects or clients is, it must have room for curiosity, and enough flex to accommodate the learning you gain by exercising that curiosity.

October 7, 2021

Cheating on your best clients

Turning clients into fans, champions and advocates of your business is brilliant. And not without ongoing cost. If you want to keep them as fans, you have to pay more attention to them than you might think.

For example if your loyal clients have been among the first to buy your ‘one-off, limited edition, short-run, never-to-be-repeated’ thing, don’t give them a free copy in the goody-bag at the next live event they attend. And certainly don’t repeat that mistake at the next one.

As you know, I’m a big fan of consistency, but consistency doesn’t have to mean treating everyone the same. If you have the data – who bought the thing, who’s attending previous events, who’s attending this one, it doesn’t take much effort to find the intersections and tailor your goody-bags accordingly. In fact, giving everyone a named goody-bag only makes things better.

Another example. It’s good to repackage and repurpose content to reach a slightly different segment of your community. Perhaps not so good to sell it to everyone, including those who’ve seen it before. Removing them from your mailout is not hard. Creating an experience that rhymes and reinforces is an even better solution.

Loving your loyal clients back has to be genuine, or the illusion perfectly maintained.

Otherwise, your best fans will feel cheated. And that doesn’t end well for the cheater.

September 30, 2021

Communication, not control

Yesterday evening I watched ‘the very long and very beautiful history of technical drawing’ on the #Railnatter podcast.

Boulton and Watt’s industry disrupting atmospheric engines were the size of a house. They couldn’t be factory built and transported, there was no railway then.

Instead, the firm sent technical drawings to the customer so that local engineers could build the engine on site.

The same technical drawings enabled later, different engineers to maintain, repair, relocate and upgrade these engines. Or, back at Boulton and Watt, to design new, better engines – on paper, cheaply.

Even later, they’ve enabled modern engineers to recreate these engines for our edification and delight.

Technical drawings aren’t even only for techies. They were often used to explain complex ideas and processes to clients, funders and the wider public.

In other words, technical drawings, like musical scores, building plans and other tools we use to collaborate around are about communication, not control. The kind of communication across space and time that allows a business to scale across space and time.

How about your business? What would your technical drawings look like? Do you have them, or are they only in your (or someone else’s) head?

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Keep Promise