Okay, we all know about the recession. I have decided not to focus on the problems but the opportunities (old P&G training kicking in!). So what are the opportunities that we can leverage? For starters, focus on motivating and inspiring your teams. Here are a few things that you can do tomorrow, for little or no money, which will have a positive impact on your business results.

Set a positive tone: It’s easy to blame the economy. Customers are buying less, expecting more. But using the economy as the catch-all excuse for poor performance sends a dangerous message. It implies that the situation is completely out of the company’s hands. This raises anxiety levels and enables complacency. While the competition is bemoaning the economy remember, high achievers never complain, they just get on with it. They look for ways to get a bigger piece of the pie by adding value.

Communicate: An e-mail from the CEO doesn’t accomplish much. Give people frequent opportunities to openly discuss and ask questions about the business situation the company is facing. Speak to employees in small groups and be as candid as possible. Give them what they deserve: honest explanations and plans to move forward. Schedule brown-bag lunches or other informal venues to talk to employees about their findings and where they might be hitting roadblocks. This is also a good time to address any rumours.

Leverage the expertise of your team: Motivate and engage your team by including them in the problem-solving process. Form groups of employees to identify what’s slowing down business. Often the best place to start is to look for processes and bureaucracies that annoy the team. No one knows the issues better than those who are dealing with them daily. It’s a great time for people to realize that they can play an important role in discovering opportunities for the company. (TIP: Cross-pollinate with people who have different areas of expertise. Often fresh eyes offer an innovative new solution.)

Feed your top performers: It’s easy to believe that employees are grateful to have jobs at all. But layoffs and budget cuts cause good people to look for better opportunities. Give them a reason to stay by advancing their careers. If promotions or raises aren’t possible, give top performers the opportunity to grow, even if it’s a lateral move that challenges them in a new way or to take on a special assignment. (TIP: Also, keep an eye out for great talent that other companies have shed for cost cutting measures. This is a great time to recruit future stars.)

Focus on the future: Don’t sugar-coat it! Surviving through the downturn might not be easy, but by emphasizing the opportunities and developing a plan together you will emerge even stronger than before.

Performance Excelerator™ | Leadership Expert| Professional Speaker

Bill is recognized as the Performance Excelerator™ because of his uncanny ability to create profound change and deliver extraordinary results with the most demanding organizations. He works with senior leaders to inspire and develop high-performance teams that deliver exceptional customer service, higher productivity and improve profits.

Bill is passionate about results and works only with clients who share that passion — ready to take steps to achieve immediate, significant and continuous improvement. Whether working with boards or operations teams and employees, his no-excuse approach breaks down the silos and gains consensus and clarity throughout the organization.

Bill Hogg provides dynamic keynote presentations, transformative workshops, and world class executive consulting.

© Copyright 2008 – Bill Hogg & Associates All Rights Reserved

Despite the doom and gloom of today’s economic downturn, smart leaders look to history for learning. History tells us that now is not the time to cut important foundational programs, but to leverage current conditions for competitive advantage so they emerge from this economic downturn better positioned for success. One area that seems to be under pressure is workforce size and employee engagement.

Many firms will cut back in this area; some will see this as an opportunity to strengthen their teams through strategic hiring, downsizing and internal communications. In these times of uncertainty, it is especially important to go above and beyond to strengthen employee engagement. Leaders may set the direction, but employees make things happen, including building and maintaining competitive advantage. Happy, engaged employees aligned with your corporate values, goals and strategy produce amazing results.

A culture of pride of ownership permeates the entire organization and results in better products, better customer service and better business results. The first step (and arguably the most important) is communicate, communicate, communicate. Don’t sit in your office and send out e-mails; walk around and reach out to folks personally, and coach your managers to follow your lead.

Really talk to employees about what is going on – and listen to what they say; it’s amazing what you can learn from them. If you don’t already regularly survey your employees, it’s a good idea to have a confidential employee survey program to get the feedback you can’t get in person. These can be set up easily using free online survey tools. However, to be effective, you must act on the results and communicate early and often that you plan to do so. And remember that this is not a once-and-done process. Your customers and distributors also need reassurance in these difficult times. Making an effort to connect with them now will pay dividends over the long term.

Brand loyalty leads to competitive advantage, and customer loyalty boils down to excellent customer service, which enables trust and confidence. Now is the time to reach out and communicate. Leverage technology tools to enhance regular ongoing communication. Electronic newsletters, wikis and blogs are powerful ways to regularly update your employees, customers and distributors and get their feedback. Streaming video and podcast updates about how you are weathering the storm also are excellent tools. Look for quick wins that will serve customers and stimulate sales in the current economy. Are there new products with lower pricing you could offer? Would a review of their current services to ensure they are maximizing any discounts or product combinations make sense? These initiatives demonstrate you appreciate their situation and the lower margin pain you feel now will be rewarded when customers come back for your products and services when things turn around. Plus they are a great opportunity to talk to your customers and potentially identify issues before they consider moving their business elsewhere.

Also, make sure your employees are ready to respond with a higher level of empathy and support for the customer. Now is not the time to offer bad customer service, as emotions are running high and customers will vote with their feet.

Times may be difficult, but regular, meaningful ongoing communication will ensure everyone is focused on the goals of the organization and working in the same direction.

Performance Excelerator™ | Leadership Expert| Professional Speaker

Bill is recognized as the Performance Excelerator™ because of his uncanny ability to create profound change and deliver extraordinary results with the most demanding organizations. He works with senior leaders to inspire and develop high-performance teams that deliver exceptional customer service, higher productivity and improve profits.

Bill is passionate about results and works only with clients who share that passion — ready to take steps to achieve immediate, significant and continuous improvement. Whether working with boards or operations teams and employees, his no-excuse approach breaks down the silos and gains consensus and clarity throughout the organization.

Bill Hogg provides dynamic keynote presentations, transformative workshops, and world class executive consulting.

© Copyright 2008 – Bill Hogg & Associates All Rights Reserved

Every business claims they focus on customer service and offer the best to their clients. However, how many really do? If you want to be able to stand out from the crowd and offer truly great customer service instead of just empty promises, here are ten great tips that will help.

1. There are two ways to fix every problem. The immediate solution is to take care of the customer, leave him or her happy, and go on with your day. However, there’s a reason this problem happened. You need to consider how to prevent it from happening again. Your business will be more efficient and you’ll have happier customers overall.

2. Treat your customers like human beings. That means treating them with dignity and not being annoyed at them for interrupting your day. This also means expecting them to act like responsible adults. Too many businesses believe that good customer service means bowing to the whims of every customer with a complaint. That solves the immediate problem of an angry customer, but sometimes it’s not for the best. Know when there’s a real problem that needs fixing and fix it well, but don’t let people walk all over you.

3. Go beyond the minimum to make your customers love you. If there’s a real problem, and you can do just a little more to make a customer’s day, he or she is going to remember it. You’ll get a lot more repeat business and word of mouth advertising if you over deliver.

4. Don’t make excuses. If it’s your fault, say so. Don’t try to blame it on the customer, the circumstances, another vendor, or the position of the moon in the sky. It’s amazing what a difference it can make if you just say “An error has been made, but I will make it right”. Your customer will see you a lot differently if you don’t make excuses.

5. Don’t take it personally! This one’s easy to forget because the customer is directing their frustration at you. However, the customer is angry about the situation, not angry at you, specifically. Taking things personally just introduces anger into the situation and makes it harder to fix the problem.

6. Listen to your customers. Don’t assume you know what they want. They may have some good things to say, even if they’re not experts.

7. Think about what you’re promising. It’s easy to get carried away and offer more than you can easily deliver. If your business is racing from one project to the next, you can’t offer true quality of service. Don’t let this happen. Always pay close attention to what you’re promising, and don’t let a customer talk you into the impossible.

8. Allow the customer to feel like a priority. Don’t answer the phone while filling out a spreadsheet – you’ll sound distracted. Spend the few minutes it takes to really pay attention. Your customers will know the difference and the results will be worth it.

9. Get to problems right away. No one wants to deal with something unpleasant, but if you let a complaint sit, it’s not going to get any better on its own.

10. Follow up! Call after a problem’s been dealt with, or after a customer has received a particularly big order, to find out how things went. Don’t try to sell anything during this call or email. Just find out what you need to know and wish your customer a good day.

Performance Excelerator™ | Leadership Expert| Professional Speaker

Bill is recognized as the Performance Excelerator™ because of his uncanny ability to create profound change and deliver extraordinary results with the most demanding organizations. He works with senior leaders to inspire and develop high-performance teams that deliver exceptional customer service, higher productivity and improve profits.

Bill is passionate about results and works only with clients who share that passion — ready to take steps to achieve immediate, significant and continuous improvement. Whether working with boards or operations teams and employees, his no-excuse approach breaks down the silos and gains consensus and clarity throughout the organization.

Bill Hogg provides dynamic keynote presentations, transformative workshops, and world class executive consulting.

© Copyright 2009 – Bill Hogg & Associates All Rights Reserved

Providing good customer service just isn’t enough anymore, not with companies the world over clamouring for the dwindling dollars consumers spend. And heaven forbid your customer service should be classified average! That could, literally, be the death of a company if it’s not turned around quickly.

Encourage your team to take customer service from bland and boring to knock-your-socks-off spectacular, however, and you can stand back and watch the amazing results achieved!

1. Engage your customers. Step into their shoes. Understand where they’re coming from. Listen. Empathize. Often customers only want to be heard. They may not even expect a problem to be solved, but they want to know that an employee cares about their problem. When your employees do that, you’ve taken a long stride in turning customers into raving fans who’ll return to your company often and encourage others to do the same.

2. Create a positive, lasting customer experience. Walk through your company to see how customers perceive their experience in dealing with you from start to finish. Did their phone call get answered promptly and courteously? Were they greeted with a smile and a friendly hello when they walked in the door? If an employee didn’t have an answer to a question or a need, were they quick to search for an answer?

Consider every aspect of the relationship a customer experiences when doing business with you, then work to build a positive experience that meets them at the door and walks them through their entire visit and beyond. Chose 1 or 2 specific elements and do them better than anyone else. They will become your point of differentiation.

3. Get out of the proverbial box. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is one definition of insanity. Customers love to be surprised and the best way to do that is do things a little differently. Do something unusual and extra-ordinary. Your customers will keep coming back just to see what you’ll do next.

4. Indulge your customers. Live the adage that “the customer is always right” in your company. Let them know that you’ll go out of your way to ensure there are “wowed”!. Offer a little more than the “other guy”. Your customers will notice. Wouldn’t you?

5. Get excited! Customers thrill at customer service delivered with excitement and enthusiasm. They’ll rave about how much fun it is to do business with your company. And who will they be raving to? Friends, family and anyone else who’ll listen. Employees who are excited about serving customers create customers who feel appreciated. In turn, they’ll reward your company with continued business and extravagant praise for everything you do.

Customer service goes far beyond a one-time visit or experience. Customer service that turns average, ho-hum customers into raving fans can only be accomplished by a team full of customer-oriented, customer-focused employees driven to impress and inspire customers with their level of concern. Build such a team in your company, and you’ll amaze yourselves at the level of customer loyalty you create!

Performance Excelerator™ | Leadership Expert| Professional Speaker

Bill is recognized as the Performance Excelerator™ because of his uncanny ability to create profound change and deliver extraordinary results with the most demanding organizations. He works with senior leaders to inspire and develop high-performance teams that deliver exceptional customer service, higher productivity and improve profits.

Bill is passionate about results and works only with clients who share that passion — ready to take steps to achieve immediate, significant and continuous improvement. Whether working with boards or operations teams and employees, his no-excuse approach breaks down the silos and gains consensus and clarity throughout the organization.

Bill Hogg provides dynamic keynote presentations, transformative workshops, and world class executive consulting.

© Copyright 2009 – Bill Hogg & Associates All Rights Reserved

Developing loyal customers begins with developing a team who understand the importance of customer-focused service and care about the total customer experience.

A key building block of developing high performance employees is recognizing the behaviours that you want repeated — those that ultimately create loyalty with your customer.

Employees who receive regular recognition are happier in their jobs, they stay with the company longer, and they are more productive. Ultimately, recognizing employees encourages them to provide superior service because their attitudes about their workplace are improved. Recognition is the ultimate performance excelerator.

1. Identify the appropriate level and type of recognition that individual employee’s value. Before you decide on how to recognize desired behaviours, you first need to realize that not all employees are motivated by the same things. Importantly, employee recognition need not be extravagant or expensive — recognition is a much broader activity than reward, which is simply one aspect of recognition.
2. Knowing when to recognize an employee is as important as knowing how. There are times when recognizing an entire team is most valuable and other times recognition will work best when given individually. Too much group recognition leads high-performers to lower their performance to the lowest common denominator since low performers get the same recognition anyway. The ideal is to blend the 2 types based on your specific situation and team.
3. Timing is everything. In every case, timeliness is critical. Recognition long after the event has occurred loses all value. The time after the event should reflect the event. If it is for a specific behaviour, it should be within 24 hours. However, if the recognition is for a longer term initiative it can be sometime after the event — for example at a formal presentation.
4. Use a variety of recognition techniques. Like timing, recognition must be aligned with the behaviour being recognized. Make sure the significance of the recognition reflects the activity being recognized. A heartfelt thank you for handling a difficult customer or staying to finish a project one night might be exactly right, but would be woefully inadequate if someone stayed late for 2 weeks in a row to get a special assignment completed. If everything sounds the same, it doesn’t feel sincere and over time your program will lose its effectiveness.
5. Consider a company picnic, retreat, catered dinner, seasonal party, or other social event. Spend time in conversation, laughing, talking with employees and just having fun. Get to know a little bit about each person — use this time to better understand what motivates each person. One of the most powerful forms of recognition is letting employees know that leadership is concerned about them as individuals, not simply workers. A great lead-in question is “What do they like to do during their time off?”
6. Money is not the ultimate motivator, but cash is still a good incentive. A cash bonus, a gift card, or a pay raise often work well as employee recognition. However, consider other, non-monetary options — possibly a day off with pay or more flexible work time to allow for more family time.
7. Offer opportunities to improve skills and utilize new knowledge. Seminars, workshops and other specialized training are powerful motivators to high performing employees who are interested in improving their performance and expertise. Follow this up with the opportunity to apply these new skills in a useful way for the organization.
8. Provide software upgrades and enhanced tools and equipment. A better computer, an updated phone system, or even a coffee pot with added features let employees know you understand their need for a quality work environment.
9. Throw a little competition into the mix by holding employee performance contests. Increased sales, customer recommendations or other monitors can create a fun, yet competitive atmosphere for recognizing excellence and achievement.
10. Show appreciation to employees in front of their peers — where it matters most. Some employees are impacted most by public recognition. For them, consider a trophy or plaque with their name imprinted on it, or a story about them in the company newsletter. Be aware, some employees may find this public display very uncomfortable, so make sure you are sensitive to these feelings when providing public accolades.
11. Highlight the team member who shows the best job performance. Create an “Employee of the Month”. Even something as simple as a certificate or a parking place near the door can motivate performance. Post their photos and names on the employee bulletin board, or announce their achievements over the PA system. This also provides a great opportunity to reinforce the desired behaviours as part of the presentation to the employee that wins each month.
12. Say thank you. Often these two little words mean more when creating loyal employees than anything else you can do. Use them often and let your team members know you value their efforts.
13. Start slow. If this isn’t usual behaviour or if recognition is currently an under-utilized technique, a sudden change will raise eyebrows and potential suspicion. So build up. Make a personal commitment to start with a small moment of recognition daily and build from there. Employees will see this as more genuine and will recognize you for your efforts to make a personal change in behaviour. And commit to the long term, otherwise a sudden burst will increase cynicism for any future initiative.
14. Ask your employees for their input. Leverage their creativity about what type of program they would find most meaningful to establish a recognition program that works best for them.
15. Make sure you recognize desired behaviours. Don’t simply have a recognition program for anything that goes well. Every time you provide recognition make sure it is linked to a specific value, principle or behaviour that you want to see repeated.

By implementing these and other ideas, you let your team know how grateful you are for their contribution. You will develop a loyal team who feel appreciated and important. Such an effort is guaranteed to enhance your customer service.