The Day After and Beyond

As 2010 comes to a close and we have memories of the lovely Christmas and holiday time we have had, our thoughts begin to turn to 2011. For myself and many of you, that means looking back at what you did right in 2010, what you did wrong and now what you want to do differently to make 2011 a year to be proud of.

Something happened to me the day after Christmas which reminded me of what we at RealWired!, and I hope you to, continue to do right...take really good care of our existing clients. We all know we have to earn new clients all the time, but often just like those around us that we love; we sometimes forget to take really good care of those that are already in our lives. My experience on the day after Christmas dealing with a company we have done considerable business with for a number of years, brought this point front and center. I called in for tech support. I tried to be as patient as possible while the support person on the other end of line continued to sigh and complain that her headset was not working very well, making me have to repeat myself over and over. I tried to be patient as she told me she had no idea how to quickly find an answer to what seemed to me to be a very simple question about my User Id. I tried to be patient, acknowledging that it was the day after Christmas and, like many companies, this one probably had fewer people than normal on staff, but frankly, I really did not care. I tried to be patient, but finally gave up.

Take this experience and multiply it by a thousand times. During "the day after", this person and all like her will wreck havoc on some of this company's best customers. It is just wrong. And worse, it will not just happen the day after, but it will happen again and again, slowly eating away at any good will and positive experiences the customer may have had in the past.

So as we look into 2011 and write those New Year's resolutions, make sure that one of them - a big one - is to focus on how we treat those who already do business with us. Focus on what you do right in this area and improve that. Research shows that focusing on what we do right (not what we do wrong) is the easiest place to make improvement. While you are at it, make sure to quickly correct the things being done wrong where evident and simple to do so. If someone is an unhappy in their position, move them out of it. If someone does not have the technical skills needed to do the job, make a change. Put your best people together with your clients at every chance you get.

Now apart from my "rant", here are three tips that might also help you. These three always pop up as the top areas to get quick return on the "improvement scale".

Continually test your intuitive beliefs. Just because something has worked one way for you, try something a different way and see if that works better. For instance, take a look at e-mail. Study how you use it and see if it really is making you be a more effective communicator. A good test is to close it for periods of time during the day and see what your results are.

Maybe this can be the year of getting rid of paper, or at least minimizing it greatly. Scan everything you can, not only at work, but at home as well. You can clear up massive amounts of paper giving you more space and just a tidier environment. You will be so pleased at how easy it is to find what you need whenever you need it.

Number 3, but certainly not meant to be last is take steps towards having a great CRM - Customer Relationship Management system. If you are like me, you probably just finished sending holiday greetings and corporate gifts and so you came to realize the accuracy of your database. If you are honest, it is not as current or accurate as you wish it was. Key to this is scheduling time throughout the year to confirm and update the contact information. I hope this is the year you recognize that as wonderful as Outlook is for calendaring and email communication, it is not an appropriate tool for a company wide database which sets you up to treat your customers with the care and attention they deserve.

We are not perfect...but we sure try to be, so if anyone from RealWired! treats you like it is the day after a holiday and we are working with a skeleton crew, I sure hope you will let me know. Better yet, let the person you are interacting with know so the "correction" can be swift!

Happy New Year and I look forward to speaking with you every week in 2011!

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