The success of good management is avoiding bad management.  So in order to be an outstanding example to your boss, employees,  and more importantly to your own professional credibility, here’s a few don’ts to help you:

1. get aggressive with your employees or customers
2. abuse your employees or customers
3. blame people (see above) – Remember, you are the manager so the problem is yours to resolve!
4. put financial targets before customer relations
5. fall hopelessly in love with the product (become a jobsworth)
6. openly panic
7. mistake action for thought
8. talk more than listen
9. pluck assumptions out of thin air
10. make knee-jerk reactions before knowing the full story (even worse, put in writing and circulate to customers and staff)
11. quote necessity as the reason for all actions
12. fear change
13. STOP LEARNING!

To be a good manager doesn’t require talent or superiority, it’s developed  naturally from life and business experience gathered over the years .

The key element to good management success  is your employees – The performance of your staff greatly reflects on your own management abilities, be it good, or bad.  If you communicate with your employees by  equipping them with  product and customer service training,  terms and conditions and procedures of the product and company, and they can communicate effectively in a customer facing situation, then you are 75% of the way to a productive and non complicated working relationship.  The other 25% should  focus on staff wellbeing; making sure that they are happy in their work by listening to their niggles and their ideas  for role or company development, to be as flexible as you can with the work-life balance  – and most importantly reward them for a job well done.

In my opinion most people will convey to others their unhappy customer service experience than praise the good ones they have.  More often customers won’t complain to the service provider about their problem because they may not like confrontation, or they just can’t be bothered.  So this leaves the service provider unaware that there has been a problem and will not know that their business name might be being slighted.  Unfortunately, for those that do not get the chance to put things right there’s really not much they can do to stop this.  For those who can put it right should make as much recompense to resolve the issue to pre-empt any probability of the consumer naming-and-shaming.   With the buzzing activity of social media , customer dissatisfaction  can get round in no time.

I suppose the question is, is how to ensure that we give the best service that we can, bearing in mind that you will never please all of the people all of the time.  But hey, to stay in business and build a reputable name you have to pull out as many stops as you can – Customer is king!

Since I decided to become self-employed five years ago I have worked in many businesses who do focus on and value their customers, but some not as much as they should.  The implications of poor customer service is make-or -break, as no customers, no business.

I have developed a strategy based on a mystery guest approach, whereby once I have been contracted to a job I will test out the customer experience.  The result,  in some cases can be surprising for the owner, but the information can be a crucial life-line  to saving the business.

If your business is at a stage that growth is non existent or its struggling financially, why not give me a call and arrange a free consultation.   It will cost you nothing, but might save you everything.

Jane.
No problem, just solution!