Posts tagged "frustration"

Advice Inspiration

Do you think it will work?

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“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk – and to act.” Andre Malraux

Ask any entrepreneur, brainstorming for the next big idea is constantly on their minds. Maybe we can’t help ourselves, many of us have the knack and ability to see opportunity in every direction we look. Not everyone has the ability to look at a picture of total chaos and make economic sense of it. This is a rare gift some of us have, and use to our benefit, to succeed in the business world. Lock yourself in a room with your team on the development of your business, and get ready for the ride of your life. It doesn’t make a difference if the startup is related to technology or agricultural farming, if the brainstorming is too drawn out you will experience a level of frustration to drive a sane person off the edge. 

However there is no getting away from it , discussions held during brainstorming phases are critical. They not only provide the opportunity for everyone in the team to voice their opinions and concerns, they also give you an insight into whether the team is on the same page. Unfortunately there is no plan which is completely fool proof. Even when you have unlimited resources, you still take a risk of not succeeding. Take Iridium as an example, billions of dollars, the most experienced resources on the planet, yet a truly abysmal result.

If you have been part of a startup for any time, chances are high that you are doing something very different from what you initially set out to do. This is a natural progression because we constantly adapt to feedback we receive to develop business models to correctly serve markets needs. We are in a constant state of flux and must be agile enough as a company to understand what aspects of the business are not performing and what needs to be changed. 

In conclusion, the frustration which is generated during initial brainstorming, can easily be averted by taking small shots at what you actually want to do. If you spend too much time calculating every conceivable outcome, you will suffer from an over-planning syndrome. I am not advocating that the next idea that pops into your mind be immediately executed. Take time to understand the dynamics, and keep moving forward, the minute you stand still, is when frustration takes over.

 

Advice Inspiration

Are you frustrated?

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“Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more, than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things, than when we seem to lack but one thing.” Eric Hoffe

Being human, it is natural for us to feel frustrated sometimes. During the course of the day, I could be frustrated with my windows pc for some hiccup or other, the inability for a colleague to complete an assignment or with myself for not performing at a level I expect of myself. There are many instances where frustration comes into play. When we are frustrated with a particular situation, we tend to think, say or do things which we would not, under normal circumstances.

There have been countless times in the past when this has happened to me, I am sure many can empathize with that. When this behavior is left unchecked, mental triggers are created which can develop into internal barriers. These barriers make it difficult to communicate effectively, work as teams, mentor a subordinate or even enjoy a meal. Imagine if your startup gets clogged by such internal barriers, they can impede growth and ultimately your success. 

I have had some experience with startup organizations over the course of the last couple of years. During this period I have noticed a couple of recurring frustrations that crop up. When left unchecked these become barriers which make working together, growing together and enjoying the ride an extremely challenging task. To halt the development of these barriers we need to identify triggers which cause frustration. Much of the time they are buried in the subconscious and are brought to the fore repeatedly, without our realizing it. Over the course of the week I will identify some major frustrations I have witnessed in the work place during my journey as an entrepreneur. This is the first step of the process. First identification, then suggestions to deal with them effectively .

Trust me, the last thing you want in your startup is a bunch of frustrated individuals. I would like to hear about the frustrations you face or have faced as entrepreneurs on your journey. Look forward to hearing from everyone.

 

Communication Customer Service Sales

Exceeding Expectations

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“There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” Roger Staubach

My first company had the tag line “Exceeding your every expectation”. It was printed on everyone of our name cards and it pushed us to go the extra mile many a time. It is only after some years that I have realized, it does not take much to exceed customer expectation. They do not need elaborate gestures to make them feel special, all they need is to be treated honestly and fairly, to be provided with significant value for their purchase and to have all this done in a convenient and efficient manner.

From personal experience I know that there are many service providers I go to even though they may not be the cheapest, biggest or more convenient in the market. For example, all my computer needs and requirements are dealt with at a small shop I have been visiting for years. You may well ask why anyone would do this, in this day and  age of online ordering and convenience ? It comes down to the relationship I have with the owners of the store. It is good to walk into a store where everyone knows you by name and where you know you will always get that extra attention and exemplary customer service, whenever you walk in and need it.

As part of a startup , you need to identify areas where you can add greater value to your clients. You need to show them that you care about their success as much as they do. These are some of the ways I have used to go that extra mile :

1. Remember your customer’s birthdays and make sure you send out either an ecard or an actual card to show that they matter to your business.

2. Gather as much personal data regarding the customer as possible, such as hobbies, interests, family and  other information that may help you with future conversations as well as personalizing services.

3. Remember to thank the customer at the point of purchase and to follow it up with a note via email or mail, thanking them for their business.

4. Leave extra room for you to exceed their expectations. If you promised 5 days delivery time and deliver in three days, that goes a long way. Remember to leave yourself some wiggle room.

5. Put yourself in the customers shoes and ask yourself what you can do, to make the entire process more personable and enjoyable? Treat your customers the way you would like to be treated.

Going the extra mile is a defining and differentiating factor between good and great companies. Building such a culture from the start will provide you with clear competitive advantages. 

Do you have a special story of how you were wowed by a particular vendor?

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Communication Customer Service Strategy

Learning from Experience

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“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates

We have all been exposed to bad customer experiences. For those of us in the business or corporate world, we have also been on the receiving end when things didn’t work out as expected. That is part of life. Trying to please every customer to their complete satisfaction is a gargantuan and uphill task. However, it is essential to learn deeply from every complaint and put into place systems, which will take care of such incidents in the future. Listed below are a few pointers which should help expedite the learning process:

1. Refrain from pushing the blame onto external circumstances. Sometimes your supply chain gets delayed, it could be a mix up which your delivery system made or bad weather which resulted in your receiving a mouthful from your client. Accept the blame rather than pushing it onto someone else in the organization because that is the last thing an angry customer wants to hear. Once you have accepted the mistake you can go about resolving the issue in a more efficient and effective manner.

2. Extensively document the mistake. This will force you to think and put into a process the actual course of events and why they occurred. I have found the discovery process extremely interesting because you are forced to map out where the entire process started, who was responsible for what, at which stage and most importantly where we need to focus to ensure that the problem doesn’t happen again. It creates ownership in a business and a team constantly striving to deliver their best.

3. Finding the most efficient and effective solution. Once the mistake has been clearly identified the team should reach a collective decision regarding how to avoid a similar issue in the future. Control measures must be put into place and ensuring responsibility for its proper execution is essential. This is a critical step which should be documented and circulated to all team members to show that a decision has been taken.

Such experiences provide a great learning opportunity for the entire team. Once a mistake has been committed there is nothing we can to do to undo it, however , we can set into motion a series of actions which will alter the way we respond to them in the future. With a fanatical focus on ensuring that you cater to your customers every need and make the experience of doing business with you as seamless and comfortable as possible, will garner massive long term benefits.

What was your last customer experience horror story and did your organization do anything about it?

 

Communication Customer Service Technology

Integrate Technology

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“The purpose of a business is to create a mutually beneficial relationship between itself and those that it serves. When it does that well, it will be around tomorrow to do it some more.” John Woods

With escalating costs and the need to constantly maintain bottom line numbers, many companies are switching over to handling customer support services via technology platforms. Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Self Service Kiosks and online knowledge banks have greatly reduced costs for organizations, but, has an over reliance on these technologies resulted in a decrease in overall customer satisfaction?

Like most things in life, balance needs to be kept, so it is with integration of technology into your customer service function. The telco I was dealing with has an IVR service which you need to dial out from your mobile, since my phone was not able to make any outgoing calls the system directed me to another number which did not work either. At this point, I switched to the next logical source for information which was the website. The website did not have any knowledge banks relating to the issue at hand and did not even list the call center number I could call from a land line. In this day and age of web technologies this was disturbing. I ended up having to google several keywords to finally find the number.

The lesson to be learnt is, that focusing all your energy on just one touch point, such as a contact center is not the best of strategies, specially when deploying other web based and self service options are not as expensive. It is true that return on investment is marginal for these strategies, however, they lay the foundation for a much more holistic and comprehensive customer service solution for the future. Leveraging on tools for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) such as Salesforce, ZohoCRM, HighriseHQ can also be effective ways to keep track and even develop metrics around your customer service function.

Either way, as a startup organization you need to develop strategic roadmaps to help you handle customer service requests as you begin to scale. These will involve a number of technology solutions, what needs to be remembered when integrating is:

1. Keep a balance between technology and the human element.

2. Leverage on your website to provide detailed knowledge banks on prior complaints & questions.

3. Develop strategies to store and easily refer to archived customer interactions and data.

4. The ability to escalate complaints which have a higher level of priority.

5. Doing all of this while keeping it simple for the customer.

 

Advice Communication Customer Service Teams

Hiring the Right Individual

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“As far as customers are concerned you are the company. This is not a burden, but the core of your job. You hold in your hands the power to keep customers coming back – perhaps even to make or break the company.” Anonymous

My extensive interaction with the telcos’ customer service department brought to the fore, the job vs responsibility concept which I have talked about briefly in previous posts. The concept is simple . When you are in hiring or partnering, you should look for individuals who are problem solvers and have it in them to go further than just completing the task at hand in a hierarchial manner. Those who willingly take the initiative to do more than is asked of them for the organization.

Customer service revolves around making all the touch points within your organization as simple, reliable and efficient as possible. Most of the time these touch points will result in a direct connection between customers and the employees of the organization. This is a critical connection, one upon which your business relies on heavily. It is therefore essential, when hiring individuals for this function, that you place relevant emphasis on the personality and temperament of these individuals. Bypassing this process because it has a high upfront cost and no apparent tangible return on investment is shortsighted. In the case of this particular telco, it has over 20m subscribers and a massive network of contact centers. At this point, to re-structure their hiring policies and procedures will be prohibitively costly. This is why a culture for superior customer service must be put in place from the start.

In essence if you are looking to develop world class customer service capabilities, you should hire individuals who:

1. Know the difference between a Job vs Responsibility.

2. Are truly passionate about helping others and problem solving .

3. Believe in the service/product that your organization provides.

These qualities may appear to be simple, yet many companies do not even factor them into the hiring process. Hiring the right kind of people for the job will give your organization the competitive advantage to help the customer choose you!

Communication Culture Customer Service

Creating a Culture

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“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” Max DePree

Building an organization where you want exemplary customer service requires senior management to build a culture from the top down. If you are a new startup this should be an area which needs to be emphasized right from the beginning to help you create a culture which will permeate throughout the organization when you scale. So how do you go about creating a culture for customer service?

1. Make customer service as objective and tangible as possible. Place benchmarks on just about everything which relates to the customer from the time it takes for you to reply to an email, send out a quotation to delivering the product. Customer satisfaction surveys should be in place to help you assess how satisfied the customer was with the product/service, how you are doing with trouble shooting over the phone and email and what needs to be done to increase the customer’s level of satisfaction.

2. Once certain procedures and benchmarks are in place, training to optimize the level of customer service must be provided on these processes. This will equip your employees to better understand, perform and serve customers. It also reflects how serious the organization is about this function. A lot of great companies such as Disney, Starbucks and Commerce Bank are prime examples of how intense training from the time you are hired has created a world class customer service culture.

3. Showcase and reward staff who display outstanding customer service. Employee recognition sends a message through the organization and creates personal benchmarks for everyone to achieve. It motivates them to perform at their highest level and this sets a much higher standard in the organization.

4. If you do hire an employee who ends up not sharing the same core values relating to customer service, as senior management, you should let those employees go as soon as possible. This shows how important senior management takes this function and their level of dedication to delivering the highest levels of service.

During the 30 hour period while I was disconnected I probably spoke to approximately 20 representatives at the organization. I went to their office, talked with them on the phone and exchanged emails. All three contact points gave me a completely different experience. I came across different types of individuals some who took their jobs seriously and others who simply couldn’t care less.

Being entrepreneurs and individuals responsible for the direction our companies take we need to establish a culture for superior customer service from the start. This will ensure that when we eventually scale, these values will be deeply embedded and scaled likewise as well.

Communication Customer Service Strategy

Please hold your call is important to us

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“The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.” Peter Drucker 

Those are 8 words I really do not  enjoy hearing from a machine, especially when I am not having the best of days. In this day and age when customer service is a deciding factor in whether a company is successful or not I am continually surprised by the lack of importance given to this function. This blog series was inspired by a nightmarish episode of customer support at one of the largest telco’s in the country. It took them approximately 30 hours to reconnect me with the world.

During this 30 hour period I went through a gamut of emotions ranging from diabolical anger, confusion, disappointment, curiosity, denial to euphoric happiness. I learnt about the intricacies of mammoth call centers, the lack of sufficient support systems, just how insignificant one complaint can be when you process thousands of such queries every hour and how destructive one such incident can be to a company’s reputation. (Lost Laptop = $54m , Bloggers reaction) The internet has transformed the voice of the customer and corporations must definitely factor this into their customer service strategy.

Over the course of this week I will be talking about how to put customer service into your startup strategy from the word go and other topics related to improving and focusing on the customer service department. We have to carefully balance technology with human element to ensure that customer issues are resolved promptly and efficiently. However contrary to common belief, that the customer is always right, this author & blogger has generated a lot of buzz promoting the fact that the customer is ‘not’ always right. What do you think?

What was the worst customer service experience you have been through? How do you think the company could have reacted differently to address your complaints? I look forward to hearing from all of you.

Advice

5 steps to follow when doing business with family or friends

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“It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality.” Harold S. Geneen

Getting into business is like all other major decisions you have to make in life. Like all complicated decisions there are factors which tend to have a more pronounced impact on the decision. Going into business with friends and family is one of those factors. In my experience these tend to be a lot trickier than standard business agreements because they come with their own baggage. Over the years I have been adviced and have learned how to deal effectively with the issues that arise when you go into such a business venture. I hope this will be of some help to you if you are planning on getting into business as well. If there are any other factors which you think should be included in this list please let me know.

  • Business Plan Development: Never fall into the trap of getting started with ‘just’ a business idea. Sure you have a greater level of trust with your business partner but that does not mean you would exclude putting down on paper what it is that you plan on achieving through this business. The process of putting down on paper what your idea is, clarifies it, identifies key areas which you need to work on and possible pitfalls you may face. This is a step which needs to be taken before you start any venture. To read more about business plan development please click here.
  • Commitment Levels: With a business plan in place you will now be able to judge with greater certainty how much money, time and effort is going to be required by the business. You need to put down clear parameters at this stage as to what each partner is supposed to do. This level of commitment needs to be clarified from the start or you will have an unbalanced partnership which leads to a multitude of problems further down the line. To read more about how to set commitment levels please click here.
  • Candor: Establish a culture where candour needs to be an integral part of the venture. The worst thing you can do for yourself and your business would be to keep all the things you want to say to yourself. This will lead to frustration, under performance and morale issues which can jeopardize the success of the business. A culture where you can be open, state your opinions and be comfortable will help you form a considerable competitive advantage and will enable your company to make difficult decisions with a lot more ease. To read more about candor please click here.
  • Noise Levels: When you set to do business with friends/family you need to keep external noise levels under strict controls. Noise levels refers to the interference in the business by members of your family or friends. When we divulge too much information outside the core group it ultimately comes back to the core group in a completely changed form. This could lead to several problems between partners, frustrate the team and affect the overall morale. To learn more about how to keep noise levels at your company please click here.
  • Equity Splits: This is an issue which is at the core of most problems which are faced by all companies but more so in businesses where friends and family are involved. We tend to be a lot more generous just because a business partner is a cousin, friend or relative. You need to correctly assess what the partners contribution will be and then use a simple model to figure out how much the partners stake is actually worth. To read more about the formula to calculate a fair equity split please click here.

Doing business is tough, especially when it involves family and friends. These couple of steps should provide a basis for a solid framework which would help you work through problems in a structured and fair manner. These steps should be taken as a frame of reference and can be adjusted for your actual scenario. If you require any advice or feedback please let me know and I will do my best to see if I could be of any assistance.

Advice

Equity Splits

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“Lets all split it equally”. There are many people who agree with this and quite a few who don’t. I am with the latter group. I have been part and am still part of ventures where equity has been split equally from the word go. If there is one reason why this is done so widely it is, ‘lets not ruffle any feathers’. The other train of thought is that since the company is only an idea right , lets see how it develops. I used to think that way too, until some of the companies I was with got reasonably big or some partners became way too complacent. Thats when I realized this doesn’t work.

Since we are creating a culture of being candid I think it should start from the word go. When looking at splitting equity there are a couple of factors to consider when doing the split:

1. Money to be invested

2. Time to be invested

3. Experience of the partner

So lets take an example:

Three partners are setting up a consultancy. The business requires substantial experience and industry knowledge as well as a large amount of time commitment. Looking at all the factors, they come to the conclusion that each factor should get a certain weightage; Money (18%) Time (48%) Experience (34%). All partners decide that they should split the investment money equally. Time wise the split would be 50/30/20 and experience wise it would be 55/25/20.

Thus you would get:

Partner A ( 6% + 24% + 18.8%) = 48.6%

Partner B ( 6% +14.5% + 8.5%) = 29%

Partner C ( 6% + 9.6% + 6.8%) = 22.4%

Allocating weightage to each of the factors can be mutually decided by all partners to be set equally or using a range of values. I feel this brings more fairness into an equity split and puts pressure on those individuals with greater shares, to deliver more to the team.

There are many permutations which could be added to bring a greater level of equality among the shareholding when time is being spent equally by the partners.

This model should provide a starting point to bring more objectivity into the equity splitting process. If you have any questions please let me know.