Sonia E. Thompson's Blog

Process Is Your Friend

Process is a bad word to some people.  They feel it restricts them.  Confines them.  Holds them back.  But that doesn't have to be the case.  Processes should exist to help you be great, consistently.  If your processes aren't allowing you to be great all the time, take another look at them, and refine as needed until you get the desired result.  If you find that the processes are still not working, then the problem may be user error.

Turnover Bite the Dust

In your business, one of the primary ways in which you are able to create customer loyalty is through your people.  As your customers develop relationships with people on your team, they are able to move beyond the purely transactional relationship to one that is deeper and longer lasting.  The equity that comes along with building mutually beneficial, trusting, and lasting relationships with your customers gets damaged when the people who your customers have built the relationship with are no longer around.

Employee turnover is rarely good for any business.  The business owner has to find someone new to replace the one who is no longer there, and the customer has to deal with a sense of loss to the emotional connection that was a key driver to being loyal to your business in the first place.  Once that connection is lost, the loyalty of the customer is instantly in question.  This happened to me recently.

I have spent a lot of time over the past few weeks in the tile store preparing for my bathroom remodel.  Over that time, I had developed a great relationship with my sales consultant.  He was wonderful.  I called the store yesterday to inquire about a few last pieces of tile that are on backorder (topic for another day), only to find out that my beloved salesperson (Mark) no longer works there.  I was (and still am) quite disappointed about it. Other associates have been trying to help me since, but it's just not the same.  They just aren't as warm and helpful as Mark (not even close).  I'm even considering trying to get my remaining tile elsewhere.

A key driver to your business success will be to keep employee turnover low.  It has often been said that good people are hard to find. If you find that is true for your business, be sure you invest the time to get the right people on board to your team.  And then once you find them, do what's necessary to keep them on your team.  

Also, because the people on your team are such an important part in building lasting relationships with your customers, strive to ensure that your customers are able to have a great relationship with everyone on your team that they interact with.  Then should one person move on (sometimes it's unavoidable), the bond your customers have with other members of your team (you included) will be enough to keep them loyal.

It's (Always) Good to Be the Customer

Last week I received a giant tin of caramel, cheese, and butter flavored popcorn from a vendor.  The popcorn was a great distraction to a chaotic day, and a nice (well, maybe not so nice to my waistline) treat.  Another partner that I work with informed me that she was going to send me personalized stationary.  Another is bringing in lunch. 

It is nice to get all these goodies from vendors and partners at the end of the year.  It shows that the vendor appreciates me as a customer, and they want to send a little delight and cheer my way.  As I thought about it I couldn't help but wonder why some businesses make such an effort to give gifts and to treat customers well during the holiday season.  Why not all year long?  That does not mean that I need them to send me popcorn tins every month, but it would be nice to be appreciated all year.  The appreciation doesn't even have to have monetary value (sometimes it really is just the thought that counts).

If you want your customers to be around all year, show your appreciation all year.  Let them know that it is always a good time to be your customer.

Where Are the Cookies?

A few weeks ago, I was in a store looking for new tile for my bathroom.  As I was looking over the selection, I was distracted by the distinct smell of cookies baking.  Mmmmm, cookies, I thought.  It didn’t matter that it was 10:30 in the morning.  I wanted some and appreciated the thoughtfulness of the store to bake cookies for its customers.  It was such a nice touch!

The next Saturday, I went back again to narrow down my tile selection.  Since it was the same day of the week and the same time of day, I was looking forward to getting some fresh baked cookies.  Alas, there was no aroma and no cookies.  “What, no cookies today?” I asked one of the sales guys.  “Sorry, we made them all yesterday,” he responded.  Bummer.  I was looking forward to them.

When I arrived at the store the following Saturday morning to place the order for my tile, I was certain that there would be cookies.  I was starting to get hungry, so a cookie would have been a nice hold over until lunch (please don’t judge my eating habits).  Alas, there would be no cookies on that trip either.  Again I was bummed (and hungry).  

Consistency is very important.  Once you set a standard with your customers, you absolutely have to maintain it.  Otherwise they will begin to expect that standard every time and if you don’t live up to it they will be disappointed.  I never would have expected to receive cookies in a tile store, but once they delighted me with them the first time, I expected them every time I went to the store.  And when there were no cookies, I was disappointed.  Had there been no cookies on the first trip, I never would have missed them on any of the others. 

Make sure you consistently delight your customers.  Don’t be inconsistent with anything.  It will only leave customers disappointed.  If you can’t be consistent at doing something, you should rethink doing it at all.