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Yesterday I facilitated a workshop on market research for a group of farmers seeking to diversify into new businesses related to conventional farming. At the end of the session – we were discussing evaluation forms. One of the participants said “I hate those bloody forms!”. I asked him to continue.

Interestingly, he didn’t talk about the content of the forms. It was more the context within which they were used. His experience was that they were treated flippantly – that they were “thrown in a box”. He also spoke about how they’re typically a “rush job” – being handed out when people are on their way out. His impression of them was that the facilitating organisation often was just paying “lip-service” to the evaluation process. He was fairly animated about this – and other heads around the table were nodding in agreement.

If you ask your members, customers or any group of stakeholders for their opinions, be courteous and be mindful of their time & schedule. If you’d like advice or help in this area please get in touch!

Are you available to your customers? Can they reach you by phone? Can they expect a return call within a reasonable timeframe?

Or are you like companies such as Google, Facebook or Twitter who make it notoriously difficult to talk to a human being? (There’s a great article on those companies’ approaches here.)

Now if you’re big enough you might be able to get away with it. Or if you’re like Ryanair and you’re overtly marketing on price then you may get away with it. But most of us are not in a position to effectively say “Deal with it” to people that are trying to talk to us.

I was reminded of this recently when I tried calling my bank at the unearthly hour of 09:55. Nope. No way. They only open at 10:00. This was on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Unbelievable! And ironically this was a bank here in Ireland that is in majority state ownership. You’d think that might serve to focus their mind on providing a better service?

If you are unavailable to your customers, and if they have an alternative to consider buying from, the only thing that might stop them from dropping you like lead will be their own inertia. And do you want to be at the whim of your dissatisfied customers’ inertia?

If you feel you could do with some help in this area then get in touch.

Do you ask your customers how you’re doing? If not then that might be something for you to think about! Even if you do though ask for their assessment of your company’s performance – do you hear what they’re saying? Or do you ignore what they say, congratulate yourself that you’ve ticked that box and move on? If you do hear what they say do you really listen? Be humble and look at things from their perspective? Avoid being defensive and see if there’s anything in what they’re saying that you can use?

There is real value in such listening. You may get some positive news stories that you can use for PR purposes. You may learn of needs that your customers have that you didn’t know about and which you are (or can be) well positioned to satisfy. You may learn of issues that need to be rectified. There are many such positives. And then of course there is the more intangible one of them knowing that they are being listened to. So ask, hear and listen. But it’s also important to avoid neglecting the final stage – ACTION. Take action (within resource constraints of course) on what you learn. Otherwise it’s all a waste.

I was having a coffee recently with a colleague and we got around to talking about the causes of business failure. Obviously the environment is severe – with customers buying less and with credit harder to come by. But another reason for business failure is that some businesses were never viable to begin with. The owners started these businesses without assessing viability – without carrying out market research. My colleague then used a turn of phrase that stuck with me – he said that the “whole country is a monument to the absence of market research”. (Our country is Ireland by the way.) He was referring to our property collapse where prices have halved since their peak. Nationwide we have tens of thousands of new but empty apartments and houses. What drove such insane property development? Greed? Lenders being too loose with credit? Speculation?

There were obviously a number of factors. One of them was that some people never stopped to ask : Who’s going to buy these homes we’re building?” “How many can I reasonably expect to sell each year?” “What price will the market pay?” “Is there enough of a margin in this for me?” Now it’s easy in hindsight to criticise people who were perpetuating a property bubble. A lot of people who benefited from the early and safer stage of that bubble were simply lucky in terms of their timing. It remains true though that, had more people paused to conduct market research, a lot of money and anguish would have been saved.

This past week or so, as I log into Skype, it’s asking me if I want to upgrade. That’s it – not one iota of context is given! There’s no detail on security concerns that the new version might address. Neither is there any mention of additional benefits that might accrue from the upgrade. But I thought this morning that I might as well upgrade because I love Skype and expect to be using it for years to come. So I clicked through an initial screen and was then presented with a message saying : “Fur future updates, Skype may automatically install the latest version to your computer without you having to do anything”. I looked around for an option to decline such automatic updates but there was none. Now I’d expect the new version, once installed, to perhaps have an option within it to de-select automatic updates. But that’s beside the point. Skype’s customer service here is lacking on a number of fronts – they’re taking too much control from their customers and failing to look at things from the perspective of their customer. Are you ever guilty of this with your customers? Would you even know if you were? Your company will benefit from listening to the voice of your customer and, where feasible, from trying to make their life easier. And perhaps the first step along that road is genuine curiosity on your part!

Earlier this month Adobe published a study that claimed to be a “global benchmark study on attitudes and beliefs about creativity at work, school and home”. It makes interesting and accessible reading – including nice pie charts and bar charts and attractively presented text. You can see it here. The problem is that it’s not global. Only five countries were included – US, UK, Germany, France and Japan. The study’s five countries have a total population of well under one billion, indeed closer to half a billion. So that represents less than 10% of the world’s population. They also exclude the BRIC emergent economies (Brazil, Russia, India & China) which together account for over three billion people. Actually South America is entirely missing. As is Australia. The lesson? Beware of over-selling the results of your research. Your research may have produced helpful insights and interpretations of skilfully analysed data. Don’t lessen the report’s impact by over-selling it! What do you think? Get in touch if you want to discuss how I can help you with report writing.

I support Leeds United Football Club. They’re having a mediocre season – currently languishing in 12th position in England’s second tier Championship – 8 points adrift of the playoff positions. In February they fired their manager Simon Grayson when they were in 10th position – 3 points adrift of the playoffs. You can do the maths – their position has deteriorated under their new manager Neil Warnock. So – what’s Warnock’s reaction? Humility? Accepting a degree of responsibility? Resolve? Not quite – after a recent defeat he said : “It showed why I got the job. A major overhaul is needed…”.

He comes in, fails to improve the situation, actually oversees a deterioration, and then lapses into self-justification. He may think he can’t lose. If he improves things he can pat himself on the back. If things go downhill he can fault the previous incumbent or the environment or his inability to recruit or lack of belief among his players or …

Could it be the same for some business-owners? Circumstances are definitely challenging – and many good business people are doing their best but are still struggling. But there is always one thing you can control – and that’s your attitude. It’s up to us to take responsibility. Are you taking a good hard look at the mirror? What can you do better? Can you deliver better customer service? Can you get more out of your employees? Can you improve your own effectiveness? Get in touch and let’s see what we can do!

We were in a hotel yesterday for lunch – breaking the journey for the kids on a long road-trip to visit my wife’s Aunt. It was shortly after noon – and the carvery lunch had just opened. In typical fashion our two boys chose sausages and chips which were quickly served up. While I waited for my wife’s and my own meals to arrive, I stole a couple of chips off the boys’ plates. I expected to have to hold them between my teeth to gauge temperature – but they were lukewarm. Back at our table a few minutes later, when my son generously offered me a piece of one of his sausages, I discovered that the sausage was too dry and not hot enough. On one hand I was an irritated customer. But on another hand though I found myself thinking of the hotel – very quiet on what should have been a busy bank holiday Monday and geographically positioned in an area of Ireland that is struggling economically. Hotels like that can ill-afford dissatisfied customers.

So – how are your “sausages and chips”? Are they hot enough? Juicy enough? Fresh enough? Cared for enough? Your customers know the answers to these questions. And they are telling others. Do you know the answers? Because if you cannot answer these questions you are missing a lot of feedback – a tremendous amount of information that is losing you money, referrals and potential clients.

I can show you how you can not only gather this information easily but also apply it to your business to save you time, make you money and bring in clients. So get in touch and let’s find out what you’re missing!

I was chatting yesterday with a friend about his plans for the weekend. He was planning to fly early this morning to Liverpool with his wife and two sons to see a soccer game. The game was to be between his and his sons’ favourite football team – Everton FC and West Brom – two teams in England’s soccer Premiership. And it was a birthday treat for one of his sons – one of those birthday treats that Dads love as well!

Some weeks ago he had booked four tickets online in Everton’s family enclosure. To his surprise Everton contacted him afterwards wondering why he had booked four adult tickets. Someone at Everton was wondering why four adults would go to the family enclosure. Having clarified that two of the four “adults” were actually minors, Everton provide a refund of twice the difference between adult and minor tickets. Great initiative by Everton – and also high integrity.

Impressive eh? But it doesn’t stop there. They also asked the name of the boy having the birthday – and said that they’d send him birthday greetings over the public address system 15 minutes before kickoff. And to cap it all they asked my friend to send them a digital photo of his son so that they could try and incorporate something into the programme.

Fantastic eh? Perhaps this was just someone being nice. But this sort of customer service is also in the provider’s rational self-interest. My friend will tell lots of people this story. He agreed to letting me blog about it so you the reader has now heard it. And there’s one happy boy who I suspect will still be telling people about this when he’s middle-aged like his Dad and me. Hats off to Everton! And the result? Everton 2 – 0 West Brom.

Get in touch if you want help improving your own levels of customer service.

Imagine if you asked your customers what else they would like you to provide that you’re not currently offering. They might suggest things that are crazy, or that would blow your budget, or which are a bad fit, etc. But there’s a finite chance that they will come up with something that you think has merit. Companies can definitely get worthwhile ideas from listening to customers – see yesterday’s post for more on this. And these can include ideas for new products and services that you can offer. So the voice of the customer is important – but your own company should also be striving to innovate. As Sir Stuart Rose, former CEO of Marks and Spencer put it, “Good business leaders should be half a step ahead of what customers want, ie they don’t actually quite know they want it. That’s what innovation’s about”. So yes – listen regularly, openly and humbly to the voice of your customers – but combine that with an internal focus on innovation.