As a business leader there are so many intricate tangents and sideshows that can divert your attention from the art of managing your business. Make no mistake the details are important they are the finesse to the standards you have carefully shaped and polished to assemble your brand into its best light. Yet sometimes we can get lost in the menagerie of too much detail and become entangled in our own designs.
Take a helicopter view. Stand above the business and see the whole picture. The initial order, the time frame to delivery. How long does the whole process take? What are the percentages of returns, refunds, missed orders and lost deliveries to the rate of success? Review client response and comments. The next stage once you are confident that enquiries are optimised by orders, take a look at the length of service time. Is it what you and your customers expect?
Expectation management relies on the flow of information from what the customer anticipates to what they actually receive. Do you have a robust line of communication that encourages the customer to review their experience and give accurate feedback?
Move forward from this and look at the public domain. Are you doing what you say you do when you said you would do it? As the order comes in from the outside how precise is the service back to the consumer? What’s the X factor that makes it a great experience? Do others in your industry do it better, faster, with greater care and accuracy? What could you do to balance consistency with satisfaction, and how might you move to the glorious position of exceeding expectations?
They ask how’s your staff development doing, is retention an issue and do you really have the best inside your compound? The figures won’t lie. Consider the number of enquiries to the number of orders. Do you know the percentage of completions? What is acceptable to you? Can this one area be focused on and improved? Now you are at the finish line. It’s all in the training can be a great way to raise productivity, efficiency and profitability. It can also be a massive boost to morale, skillsets and motivation.
There is nothing more stimulating in business to see hard-line investment into the staff that you rely on, start to meet their obligations consistently and then begin to exceed them. As you invest in their skills watch the new possibilities open up. But here is the secret key, be the incentive, show you want the best for them, that you are truly one team and that the business is a combined effort. A gallup report done in the USA showed that only 1 in 3 employees are engaged with their position.
That’s a lot of people being paid who are simply not interested in giving their best. That’s just wasting life. The difference that can change this is when an employer does take note and engages sincerely with his team – constantly. The boss who enjoys my successes and supports me through the disappointments is the boss who encourages me to excel. Imagine the difference. When all the facts and figures are jostled and dissected, it’s the simplest of actions that cost so little and yet reap the greatest rewards.