For people making payroll, by people making payroll
For people making payroll, by people making payroll
October 17th, 2009
As a business owner/leader you should always look for ways to positively reinforce your culture.
I ran across a recent issue of Business Week which noted a study by the Nottingham School of Economics on apologies versus cash incentives. In the study, researchers contacted customers who’d filed online complaints about a German wholesaler. They offered a cash incentive to half the unhappy customers if they would remove their complaint. To the other half, they offered a short apology and requested they remove their complaints. Amazingly, 45% of the customers receiving an apology removed their complaints, compared to only 21% of the customers offered cash.
I thought this was a great point and took a minute to comment on it for our staff at Conditioned Air Solutions, partly because it reinforced our philosophy on saying we’re sorry when we mess up.
Do I think we have a problem with regard to this? No, I really don’t. Do I think if I don’t reinforce the critical parts of our culture whenever I see an opportunity, we’ll eventually lose track of why things like this are important, and won’t naturally handle each situation the right way? You bet I do.
I attached a scan of the article to the email to our staff and pointed out how true I thought it was and included a couple of examples of experiences I’d recently had personally.
This example was about how we have to make a judgment call on how to handle each of our mistakes. Unless you run a fairly small company, you can’t make each decision for each customer interaction. But as the founder or owner, you want those decisions to be in line with your intentions. The way to make that happen is to train your people in the way you want it done and then look for opportunities to reinforce that training.
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October 9th, 2009
You can give your customers that little extra personal touch with note cards. Little things like this have surprising power to help you stand out from your competition.
Handwritten notes are uncommon these days, so people notice and remember it favorably when you send one. This is particularly true if you are in sales, consulting, or any personal service business. But really, almost any business is ultimately a “personal service business”, so pay attention!
You should already have a set of postcards for mailing personal notes to customers and friends. Treat note cards as another weapon in your personal touch arsenal. Here’s one of mine:
Attach a note to a something you want to send to a client or colleague:
If I find a local newspaper article on one of my customers, I’ll cut it out, scribble a quick note of congratulations on my note card, and drop it in the mail to them.
It’s more “efficient” to scan and email it, but it’s not nearly as personal. Used judiciously, it’s different enough to get noticed. It says, “I took the time to send this to you,” much more effectively than anything that arrives on your computer (though scanning and emailing may actually take you longer).
Lisa, our bookkeeper at Conditioned Air Solutions, often adds note cards to account statements and overdue invoices during her regular collections process. It adds a personal touch and often gets some attention when other things are tossed.
We also have some blank cards (similar to mine but with no name or email address) that we use around the office for people who need one occasionally, but not often enough to justify printing personalized ones. It’s much better to write on a blank one than have to take someone else’s and scribble out their name and put your own. Note cards are cheap, though, so if you think this is worthwhile, don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Make sure anyone who could profitably use them has some available.
If you want some of your own, any printer to whom you show this article should be able to make yours easily. You can also go to any of a gazillion web sites such as 123PRINT. You have my permission to use mine as a template.
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