The work of their hands

They were giving us furniture. For our church. Beautiful furniture. The kind of furniture you find in hospitals or coffee stores or waiting areas in malls.

It wasn't because we are a church, really, but because five days out of seven they use part of our parking lot. And they have meetings in our building sometimes. And we don't charge. And so the management gave us some furniture.

It wasn't management, however, that brought the furniture across the parking lot. It was three of the people who made the furniture, three of the people who crafted the sofas and chairs.

They carried it in like they cared, like they were proud of what they had made. They looked around, as if they wanted to be sure this would be a good home.

They looked at the furniture already in the room, the furniture being replaced. And then they began to tell us that we could replace the covers on that as well. "Recovery," one of them said. "It can all be reused." It says that on the website, in the promotional material...but he really believed it. "1988," another one said, having turned the chair upside down. "That was some of the first of that kind." She was pleased that it had lasted well.

They laughed with us, helped us see what we could do with the old stuff, talked about how to treat the new stuff.

For these workers from Wieland, this wasn't a commodity, this was their life. They had poured themselves into this furniture. They cared about how it would be used, how it would add value to someone else's life.

They loved the work of their hands. It mattered.

I was humbled that day. And challenged. To care that much.

--------------------------
Jon Swanson is your customer, presenting every day perspectives in a new way. He was a regular contributor to the Great Big Small Business Show podcast, as the Entrepreneurial Chicken. Jon is the author of the best small business post ever.

Discussion: How to offer help and gain a customer

Our friend Bob Sawyer, Pixels and Code, has a great question for discussion. How do you offer to help without offending?

I came across a web site last night that is in dire need of help. This is a landscape supply company. The site was built in 2002. Aside from being poorly coded (the owner even apologizes on the home page to users who experience "text overlapping some images" - they've tried to fix the problem but failed, apparently) - the site loads slowly, breaks in some browsers, etc. The order form does not work, and they send users off-site to calculate their own shipping before returning to complete the order process. Lastly, the site is not optimized for search engines.

I could go on. There are problems aplenty and they're all relevant to the success of the company's web presence. My wife and I are actually planning to order from them, but we're going to have to call and place the order over the phone because their web-based order system is so buggy.

So my question is, how do I approach the owner in such a way that I offer my help in fixing his site, without offending him? If you had a web site that you built from scratch yourself, and someone approached you saying, "you know, you've done an OK job here, but it could work so much better, and I can do that for you?" would you be offended?

Now, obviously, I'm not going to call him and say, "Dude, your web site stinks!" But would even the idea that someone called and said, "I'd like to help you improve your web site" and followed with the laundry list of things that could be improved upon make you more or less interested in taking the caller up on their offer?

Thanks for the assist!

Cheers,
Bob

How would you start that discussion? What would you ask, and what would you say?

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Free upgrade

By Jon Swanson

I rented a car on Hotwire. They gave me Avis as the best price. We got to the airport and the counter person said, "would you like a free upgrade to a convertible?" I was still flying and so I hesitated. "The weather will be much nicer this weekend," she said. I agreed.

We walked out to the designated parking space and saw a silver Mustang convertible. "That's not ours, is it?" said Nancy. Her eyes lit up. It was.

I told my dad. He got excited for us.

We went for a drive with the top down the next morning while waiting for friends, listening to birds, smelling trees, looking at an unfamiliar New England town. We got back to our hotel as they showed up. "A convertible? No way!"

He and I drove on I 495 with the top down. After playing at the park, we took the 6 and 8 year old for a ride.

More friends showed up. "A convertible?"

A couple days later, the three guys, not always known for being macho, climbed in the car to get meat for grilling.

Late that evening, a three-year-old got up. She had been sick all afternoon and hadn't been around for the rides. It was dark, but the car was leaving in the morning. So we went for a ride, she and her dad in the back seat.

"The stars are following us," she said softly.

It was a free upgrade, something that cost Avis nothing, and they already had been the lowest price rental agency. But their free upgrade changed lives.

What do you have, what can you offer a customer, what small thoughtful gesture can you make that will delight a three-year-old in Maine...or your town?


Jon Swanson is your customer, presenting every day perspectives in a new way. He was a regular contributor to the Great Big Small Business Show podcast, as the Entrepreneurial Chicken. Jon is the author of the best small business post ever.

[Photo by Jon on Flickr. Used with permission.]

To understand your customers look in the mirror

By Jon Swanson

You wonder about your customers, whey they don't come back, why they choose others. But look at how you function... as a customer.

Not for your business, but for your personal life (and I know, small business owners have no personal life. But just pretend with me for a moment).

When you need gas, how do you choose?
When someone ignores you at a store, how do you feel?
When you walk into a store, do you want help or do you want to find it yourself?

Now that you are thinking about how you are, remember that there are a billion people NOT like you. If you have tailored the shopping experience in your business to match your preferences, there may be some of those 1 billion people who will feel very uncomfortable and will not want to come back.

So as you think through the shopping experience in your business, think about people like you... and people who are the opposite.

Jon Swanson is your customer, presenting every day perspectives in a new way. He was a regular contributor to the Great Big Small Business Show podcast, as the Entrepreneurial Chicken. Jon is the author of the best small business post ever.

How to convert freebies into paying clients

Every small service business gets them: people fishing for free help, or asking twenty questions so they can go off and do it on their own. If you don't have an established way to help them easily and convert them into paying clients, you are missing out on business and going crazy, I'll bet.

Cody Heitschmidt (@codyks) mentioned to me that he gets three or more calls a week from people wanting his free advice so they can do their own websites. What can he do to convert these people to potentially paying clients, without driving himself to distraction and bankruptcy with giving free help?

Educate them on your terms

The basic answer is to offer them the help they need, but in a way that respects your valuable time. Here are two ideas of how to educate people on your own terms.

Create a standard booklet you give to people that want to do it themselves. Invest a few hours in creating a simple how-to booklet, and recoup those hours you would normally spend trying to assist the freebie-seekers. You probably have all the info you need on your blog.

Why not do workshops? Charge a modest fee. Then Do-It-Yourself-ers can be encouraged to take the class. This lets you group up the learners, help them all a certain amount, get paid for it, and allow some of them to see that they really do want professional help. Then the next time you get hit up for more free advice, you can hand out a flyer for your workshop.

The goal is to give them some help, but do it in the least time-intensive way possible. And to make them as likely as possible to come back when they graduate to wanting professional help. The more you give away, the more you get, if you are smart about how you do it.

Cody already teaches classes, and he has plenty of clients. But we all need ways to give good customer service, even before the person becomes a paying customer.

This article is part of the Small Biz 100, a series of 100 practical hands-on posts for small business people and solo entrepreneurs, whether in a small town, the big city, or in between. If you have questions you'd like us to address in this series, leave a comment or send us an email at becky@smallbizsurvival.com. This is a community project!

Get the whole series by subscribing to Small Biz Survival. New here? Take the Guided Tour.

The right way to deal with a complaint

We talk enough about small business mistakes and customer service problems, that I'm always happy to share successes, too. Our friend Mike Gunderloy was kind enough to share this story, after mentioning it on Twitter.

We're having our entire yard redone this year - from sprinklers to new patio to replacing every growing thing on the lot (the previous owners' landscaping just didn't agree with us). As part of the deal, the kids are getting a nice new play area, with a giant play structure in the middle. After poking around a bit, I decided to order one of the high end wooden sets made by Gorilla. A little bit further research on the net led me to WillyGoat, who had the exact set I wanted and beat the price that it would cost me to buy from Gorilla directly.

So, I placed the order, gave them my credit card number, and they had 800 pounds of play structure pieces on a truck headed my way the same day. In consideration of my aging back, I paid the extra $60 to get it delivered by a truck with a liftgate. The boxes showed up today, as promised - on a truck with no liftgate. Fortunately, several of our landscapers' helpers were planting things, so I press-ganged them into helping haul the 200-pound boxes off the truck and into my front yard.

Then I called WillyGoat, expecting to run into a barrage of questions and resistance over refunding that extra $60, probably blaming it all on the trucking company. I was completely surprised. The friendly gal on the phone took the order details and promised to get right back to me. Then, 14 minutes later, my phone rang - with the news that the extra charge had been reversed. No questions, no argument, no fuss; they just did the right thing. And if I need more high end play equipment - or anyone else in my neighborhood full of kids does - I know where I'm heading first.

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Delegating without freaking out your clients

Getting past the point of being a one-person, do-it-all, no-rest-for-the-weary business means helping customers to work with your employees or subcontractors, as well as you. But if every client thinks you need to do every thing, how do you keep them from freaking out when you delegate their work?

This problem is common in reputation industries as diverse as design, consulting, hair styling and professional hunting. Clients feel attached to the person whose name is on the firm and insist on personal service. But that only works for so long, until you have more clients than hours in the day.

Can you just not tell clients that you subcontract? I say no. To not be up front about this could feel like dishonest, or at least misleading, behavior to a client.

Why they can't live without you

First, it helps to understand how this happens. It's part of how that customer was thinking long before they ever called you. Everything you put out into the world starts the process of relationship building. Each piece of information from you adds a layer to the image they have of you and their decision making process.

When they read your blog, follow your tweets, check your about page, see your business card, meet you at a conference, or talk to other clients, it feels like they are building a relationship with you.

You haven't necessarily met or talked at this point, but your future client is building a relationship with you in their mind. That's a required and important part of how people make decisions.

I'm betting that right now, everything you are putting out is leading to them building that mental relationship directly with you.

How you can change it

How can you acclimate clients to your delegating?

1. Let them know you delegate
Starting now, make a conscious effort to mention your helpers, whether they are employees or subcontractors. Talk about team efforts, or how your associate did outstanding work for a client.

Evaluate your About page. If you work with a group of people regularly, should you feature them? Look at your card. Is it just you?

This takes a fundamental shift in thinking for some of us.

2. Let them know you still care and supervise
Reader Bob Sawyer shared his technique for doing this:

As for clients not wanting to work with your subcontractors, I have one of those. I explained it this way to them: "I'm not a god. I can only manage a finite number of tasks, and at this point, I have subcontractors assisting. I will personally oversee the work they perform and ensure that it meets your standards."

How do you ease clients into the idea of delegation? Any great tips to share?

This article is part of the Small Biz 100, a series of 100 practical hands-on posts for small business people and solo entrepreneurs, whether in a small town, the big city, or in between. If you have questions you'd like us to address in this series, leave a comment or send us an email at becky@smallbizsurvival.com. This is a community project!

Get the whole series by subscribing to Small Biz Survival. New here? Take the Guided Tour.

Common Small Biz Mistakes - Blaming the customer

Common small business mistakes have become a regular series here. Today, a couple of examples of blaming the customer.

1. I called the local paper to have an ad pulled. The gal said OK. But it ran again the next day. I called back. The response was, "You didn't call soon enough yesterday." But I knew that she was wrong.


2. I tried to get my liquor sales rep to help me arrange an extra delivery for an item I didn't receive. He said to me, "It's your own fault not getting it ordered correctly." And I knew that he was right.

What do these two examples have in common? Blaming the customer. In one case, it was true, and in one case it wasn't. It didn't matter. In both cases, I was more unhappy after being blamed. That's just human nature. No one likes to be blamed.

Solution

Make a neutral statement or even take the blame on yourself, but don't ever blame the customer, even if it's true.

You may suggest actions that will prevent problems in the future, or explain the procedure the customer.

And just a reminder. Who is your customer? Anyone whose actions affect your results.
Customers, vendors, bankers, employees, and government officials are all customers. Treat them with the same level of respect. (Credit Steve Yastrow for the definition of a customer.)


Do you have examples?
Together, we are going to try to help each other out of these most common, deadly mistakes. You can use real world examples, real small businesses. Write it up, take a picture, or shoot a short video. Take care not to embarrass the offenders! Key point: include suggestions on how to do it right!

New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe. Want more stories? Read our shared stories from all over.

The best channel to communicate with customers

The best channel to communicate with customers is ... the one the customer chooses.

OK, you can stop reading right there, if you'll take that sentence to heart. But for this installment of the Small Biz 100, I'm going to tell you a true story, as well as how to do this right.

My husband emailed five or six product questions to a small business. The email reply was this, and this is the entire reply:

Please call [phone number] and I will be able to answer your questions.

Ouch! You can bet your customer had a good reason for picking this particular method to reach you, and you just stomped all over it.

• If Joe wanted to call, he would have called. Why ignore the customer's preference?
  
• If the customer is deaf or hard of hearing, why turn this into an issue?
  
• If the customer has trouble speaking, why make it harder for them?
  

In this case, the customer would simply prefer to email, rather than call. But now he's looking for a different place to buy.

How do you make sure that you are using the right channels for your customers?

1. Offer many communication methods

Offer people as many ways to communicate with you as you can.

• Text message
• Email
• Online form
• Blog comments
  
• Telephone
• Skype
  
• Fax
• Mail
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Flickr
• SecondLife
  
• Voice and video message widgets
  
• You can add other tools in the comments, since you'll remember ones I missed.
  

Of course, not every business needs all of these. My liquor store uses phone, email, blog comments, Facebook, and mail. I'll add new tools as it seems reasonable and discard those that don't help customers reach us. You may use more, or less. Let us know in the comments.

Try to list as many of your open channels as possible on your website, printed materials, social network profiles, etc. Make it easy for people to quickly find the tool they prefer to talk to you.

2. Set notifications to come via your preferred channel

Almost all social networks allow you to choose from different notification methods, including text message, email, or RSS. So rather than bounce all over checking messages at each different network all day, set up the system to come to you.

3. Respond in the same channel as the customer

This is the key. Answer customers in the same way as they reach out to you. If Facebook sent you a text because a customer sent a message, go back to Facebook to answer.

Don't tell callers to check the website. Don't ask emailers to call in. Don't require online forms be printed out and mailed or faxed! (No, really, I actually still see this done!)

4. Be considerate if you change methods in mid-conversation

Sometimes, you will be better able to serve the customer if you can switch channels. But do it in two steps:

1. Answer as much as you can in the customer's channel of choice.
2. Then ask permission to switch to the better channel by explaining why it helps.
   

How do you converse with your customers?

Share in the comments.

This article is part of the Small Biz 100, a series of 100 practical hands-on posts for small business people and solo entrepreneurs, whether in a small town, the big city, or in between. If you have questions you'd like us to address in this series, leave a comment or send us an email at becky@smallbizsurvival.com. This is a community project!

Get the whole series by subscribing to Small Biz Survival. New here? Take the Guided Tour.

The old definition of interactive experience

While we talk about interactive web 2.0 type tools, there's an older definition of an interactive experience.

Michael McMillan told this story on the Harvey House listserv group, shared by Sandie Olson to Angie Koehn to me.

My wife and I were crusing the Mother Road [Route 66] up in Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle 2 weekends ago and happened to stumble into the "Sand Hills Curiosity Shop" in Erick, not knowing what we were getting into. That stop was quite a unique adventure -- Harley and Annabelle know how to put the "Kicks" in Route 66 way more than anything else we saw!
...
When thinking over the Harley and Annabelle, "Mediocre Music Makers" experience, the word "interactive" kept coming to mind. People go to museums with so-called "interactive" exhibits, which are nothing but canned computer programs that respond when you push a button. But Harley and Annabelle give an *old/traditional* meaning to the word, glad to entertain a single person who wanders in. I've never run into anything like it. It wasn't exactly the antique store we were expecting when we walked in, just so you'll be prepared, in case you're ever in Erick, Okla.
[emphasis added]

How are you making your business truly interactive?


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Best small business post ever

Jon Swanson, formerly the Entrepreneurial Chicken, is writing about small business again. He helped again this year with a training event for a small retail cooperative.

What I heard today made me more optimistic about the presentations in any time in the past 6 years of doing this.

Today, one of the groups said, “We want to be the information source for ___”. Another group said, “we could take laptops with __ software out to the customers and design right on the spot.” Another person said, “We won’t do television advertising, but we can take pictures of our customers working and put them on our website.” Another group spent the bulk of their time talking about the people side of the solution, the staffing changes that would need to be part of the solution for the company in the case study.

Here were mostly department managers from comparatively small business saying that what can make them successful is moving out of the product business into the information and relationship business. They aren’t selling hammers and nails, they are selling houses and homes and lives.

I did my best to encourage them, within the confines of my role. I wanted to say, “YES!!!” In taking on big, you can try to undercut their margins which will fail. You can try to duplicate their advertising budget, which will fail. You can try to out program them, which will fail. Or you can try to outlove them. (I know, it’s business, but at the core of relationship marketing must be relationship, which, at some level, has to be about love.) And the big boxes, whatever their industry: food, church, hardware, furniture, departments, are not fundamentally about outloving anyone.

For the rest of the story about art and crayons and Small is the New Big, visit Jon at Levite Chronicles.

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Customer service in a small town

Customer service is just as important to the small town government as to the small town business. John Fiscus, a former mayor of Waynoka, Oklahoma, population 993, wrote this statement:

The City of Waynoka is committed to its mission of meeting the needs of our citizens, both now and in the future. We want to become better at what we are here for, serving and meeting your needs. City Hall doesn't exist in and of itself and to meet its own needs. How to better serve and meet the needs of each and every member of our community is what we want our council and employees to focus on. And to help us keep focused, we've recently develop a long term plan in one, five and ten year increments dealing with all the areas of service that are provided and places that are supported and maintained. This continuing effort will only be a part of all we do to help build a better community.

But providing quality services and good employees at City Hall doesn't make a better community and place to live. It takes more. Community building takes a unified effort from many groups to be successful. Yes, groups of people, not individuals. And yes, unified, working together.

Those words remain on the city website, though attributed to the current mayor.

The attitude of customer service belongs in every small town government, every organization, every small business, and every big business. This statement goes further, making the connection to the larger goal of community building. Have you considered how your organization plays a role in building your community?

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Common Small Business Mistakes - Breaking your promises

Common mistakes can kill your small business, but most of them can be easily corrected or avoided.

Today's Bad Example: Breaking your promises to customers
I asked for some examples of small biz mistakes on Twitter, and you answered! This time, let's combine two real-world examples of mistakes:

BarbaraKB Not "call me back" in the 24 hours that they promised. If it will be 48 hours, then just say that. ;-)

jnswanson smilingly give great directions to another location... but with the wrong highway number.

In both cases, the person representing the company broke a promise to a customer by providing bad information.

Right now you are probably thinking that you don't do this, that you give only good information, and that you don't break promises. Think again. During your every day conversations with customers, you will inevitably make a mistake, or circumstances will change and keep you from doing what you promised. It will happen, and it probably happens more than you think.

Solutions
This is squarely under the customer service heading. I can't claim a magic knowledge of your business and your customers, so I recommend a few favorite sites that consistently share good advice on serving your customers.

• Zane Safrit, Conference Calls Unlimited CEO
• Customers Are Always
• Flooring the Consumer
  

Once again, Zane will probably come up with some better advice than I did on this one!

Your Assignment
Together, we are going to try to help each other out of these most common, deadly mistakes. You can use real world examples, real small businesses. Write it up, take a picture, or shoot a short video. Take care not to embarrass the offenders! Key point: include suggestions on how to do it right!



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Common Small Biz Mistakes - Missing the customers' perspective

Common mistakes can kill your small business, but most of them can be easily corrected or avoided.

Today's Bad Example: Missing your customers' perspective

This postcard mailed to my liquor store is a symptom of missing your customers' perspective. What if I was convinced to order the book? How do I do it? Look at the very bottom line of tiny print. That's the ordering info. It is, in fact, so bad, that at the last minute, they decided to add a stick-on label to the back with the phone number. Sad. Marketing materials, of all things, must incorporate the customers' needs.

Everyday, I'm sure you see other examples of business people failing to take their customers' view, making their own lives easier while they make the customers' lives harder.

The bigger the company, the more this becomes an epidemic, but smaller companies and solo entrepreneurs can be just as guilty.

Update: Zane Safrit explains why this happens in small companies.

"Wearing too many hats, the owners and members of a small company get blinded. All hat and no cowboy becomes All hats and no customer."

Solutions
Walk into your business with new eyes. Ask a friend or adviser to take a hard look from a customer's view point. Think about your customers. Obsess about providing what they need. Review every piece of printed materials while pretending you are a customer.

Or to put it like Zane did, "take off all your hats but that of customer-champion and see how that fits."

Your Assignment
Together, we are going to try to help each other out of these most common, deadly mistakes. You can use real world examples, real small businesses. Write it up, take a picture, or shoot a short video. Take care not to embarrass the offenders! Key point: include suggestions on how to do it right!

New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe. Want more stories? Read our shared stories from all over.

Need demographic information?

Here's a nifty site. It will reveal all kinds of great, useful demographic information with only the input of a 5 digit zip code.

Want to know how many folks have a high school diploma? How about the rate of unemployment? Here it is. Whatever has been reported for a zip code seems to be here.

There is more information than I knew what to do with.

Rule No. 1 of Customer Service

"Rule No. 1: Use your own good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules."

--Bruce, Jim and John Nordstrom, co-presidents of Nordstrom department store, in the employee handbook

Quoted at Customers Are Always

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What do customers want?

Customers want what's best for them, for their lives, for their goals. Give it to them; they stay. Don't; they don't.
Zane Safrit

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Video: Helping customers pick a product

Click to Play

In a product based business, it can be tough to pull together items from many different manufacturers. To help customers make easier buying decisions, Becky McCray recommends three tips:

• Simplify
• Standardize
• Add ratings

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Two truths about your customers

Two truths about your customers and your business:

1. It's not a popularity contest. The organization that actually motivates people to act positively wins. Read more of the story at the Donor Power Blog.

2. Happy customers reward you. Our Friend Zane Safrit boils it all down to just that. Go read how those happy customers reward you.

Both authors eschew traditional advertising in favor of the quiet influence of happy customers.

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People like to be asked

People like to be asked.

Sometimes we order the people we work with, or drop tasks on them.

We send out leads, "This will help you."

We tell customers "I have this."

We email direct orders "check this out."

But, people like to be asked.


Music by Frenz, from Pod Safe Audio.

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