Archive for the ‘Customer Care’ Category

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No, not yet and nothing at all

March 15, 2012
American Idol Judges

"Not Yet"

Another young hopeful prepares for their huge moment in front of the judges … will they get to Hollywood?

Of course the scene is set with their touching interviews ..this is what they have always dreamt of and if this doesn’t come through for them, their life will be over!

The big performance happens and then they wait for the judges verdict… The scene is set as the music plays in the background to heighten the drama and tension of this make or break moment.

This is American Idol…one by one, Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler give their verdicts.

Expecting to hear a simple “yes” or “no” as we have come to expect from these shows I am surprised to hear Steven Tyler, the Aerosmith legend say “not yet” to the young hopeful.

“Not yet” …I hadn’t heard that language used before on the show and it struck me that it was a really great way of rejecting the young singer in a positive manner, dealing them that dreaded news but in a way that left them feeling encouraged and that the world hadn’t ended.

I guess in the show someone had reflected on the whole Yes/No scenario and decided that there was an option and some sense of responsibility around the cold delivery of rejection – why not do it differently so that it might actually leave people feel ok about themselves and willing to possibly try again next time?

With young vulnerable people there is a particular responsibility to show encouragement even in a negative situation.

In business we all face rejection and at times we also have to do the rejecting …

“No”

“I’m not interested”

“No, it’s not for me”

“Thank you for all your efforts but unfortunately not at this time”

“Sorry, it’s not exactly what we are looking for”

“Unfortunately our budget won’t stretch that far”

– there are so many ways to say no and while it is always tough hearing it ,”not yet” or some sign of appreciation or encouragement always softens the blow.

Worse than “no” has to be the Nothing ..

Feel Good LostMy son, Brendan Canty who is new to the business world and doing really well with his music and film production company, Feel Good Lost shared some of his recent frustrations with me.

He spoke about a recent situation where he had put a fortune of work into a pitch, mocked up sample footage, presented and received encouraging feedback and then hears “nothing” back from the prospect.

He waits, he emails, he texts, he calls and despite his considerable efforts ….nothing. Then you tread a line between being pushy and just wanting some feedback. It drives him nuts, not receiving any feedback. As he says himself, he would prefer to get a clearcut “no” rather than the dreaded “nothing” treatment.

This experience bothered him so he came to me looking for some inspiration or advice … “Brendan, welcome to my world!“.

This happens in business and unfortunately it is just something that you have to live with as some people are either being rude or they just have a huge problem with saying “no”.

Is “No” better than nothing ?

Greg Canty is partner of Fuzion

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Posted in Customer Care, Marketing, Personal development, Positivity, PR, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

What are we teaching our young workers?

February 28, 2012
Young workers

Happy Workers?

My young friend of mine rang me last week all excited – she had been offered a full time job in a sports store in the city.

While she was thrilled she was a little bit upset because she would have to leave her current job, which was also in a sports store. She is a loyal creature, she liked working there, she had made good friends and it had been a real confidence booster for her.

Each week she was one of the best performers in the store, beating her weekly targets consistently and selling well above the other staff members.

So, why was she leaving ?

The store have one of these short sighted recession led policies of restricting  all staff members to just over 20 hours a week so that it would save money – I’m not sure if this was down to saving on breaks or savings due to PRSI class. Either way someone in the organisation set a policy of maximum hours per person to save money.

This money saving was deemed as being better for business than allowing your best people have the most hours – the difference in performance between the different sales staff was thousands of euros consistently each week. Who’s saving money?

Eventually my young friend was left quite demotivated, the penny dropped that no matter how well she performed it would make no difference to her hours or career prospects so she decided to shop for a better position.

Her very last experience with her existing employer was when she handed in her required two weeks notice. True to form she was punished and her hours were slashed in her last two weeks.

I have encouraged her to hold her head up high and to finish off her last days there professionally. Unfortunately she has been left a little disillusioned by one of her earliest work experiences in one of Ireland’s biggest retail chains. I know myself that all of these early experiences play a huge part in forming your attitude towards work and your employers.

What are we teaching our young workers?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion PR

(p.s. I have written to them out of curiosity to see what they have to say)

Update 

This post was actually about my daughter. She started her new job in another sports store and can’t believe the difference it is. They look after their staff really well and from the very first minute she was made feel really welcome and appreciated.  She is lucky to find such an employer and thankfully she is now learning more positive “work lessons”.

I was really annoyed about how she was treated by Lifestyle Sports so I wrote to them hoping for a response but also hoping that they might take the lesson on board. I never received a response to the email that I sent. Maybe this is a reflection of the culture that exists there or maybe it is just a coincidence?

Email to Lifestyle Sports: (career@lifestylesports.com) – see copy below:

Hi ,

I am writing to you to both thank you and express my disappointment with you as an employer.

My daughter has worked with you for nearly two years in a Cork store and despite being one of the top performers in her store with her targets etc she has been held back to the minimum amount of hours each week.

I understand this is a policy to minimise costs – this is a foolish policy when the net result is employees that perform well getting disenchanted as they lose out on hours to other staff. These are foolish savings that are costing your business money and are also demotivating to staff. Too many accountants (I started off life as one) getting their way!

Eventually she managed to secure a full time job with a competitor where she is starting off soon. I was thrilled for her when she was offered the post but she was upset as she had built up a loyalty to Lifestyle Sports.

The last bitter pill was when she handed in her required two weeks’ notice and her store manager “punished” her by slashing her hours..

What kind of spirit are you nurturing? Not only have you really upset her in her last two weeks but you have also upset her colleagues that she works with.

She will freak out when she knows I wrote this as she is frightened she won’t get a good reference.

I trust you will not let this email affect her reference.

As I said at the outset ….. thank you for employing her for the last two years but please, please review your internal policies. You are getting rid of and demotivating performers and undermining the excellent training you give them.

I would like a response to my email.

Regards,

Greg Canty

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Posted in Customer Care, Irish Economy, Personal development, Retailing, Staff training, Teamwork | 23 Comments »

“Live” Testimonials – Who thinks you are great?

February 25, 2012
testimonials

I think you're great !

My poor laptop was starting to fall apart, left mouse button a bit wobbly, battery life of about 2 minutes and a regular dose of crashing and ctrl alt deleting required ..

I just wasn’t up to the trauma of changing, mail system not working, transfer of files and program’s, a few days of frustration …. too busy for all of that!

In the end I was forced to bite the bullet so I rang my buddy Sean Ware from TSG who gave me a really good price on a well spec’d machine and promised to do a painless changeover.

Hmmmm … I wasn’t convinced, it never works out that way!

To be fair to Sean he had convinced us earlier in the year to move to Google Apps for our email service, which not only protected our emails but also made and changeover a lot easier.

A few days after ordering Sean arrived with the new laptop, software installed and even my email was set up. An hour later we were 100% up and running after transferring files and re-installing a few random pieces of software that I use.

I must hand it to him – the transfer was incredibly painless.

I paid him and sincerely thanked him for the great service.

Going out the door Sean winked at me and suggested that if I was really happy with the service I might “tweet” out that I was happy. To be honest he didn’t need to suggest it as I would have done it in any case! I was more than happy to oblige of course.

“Live” Testimonials

This is where social media is absolutely brilliant – you can capture “live testimonials” for you and your business for all to see.

Word of mouth was always the best form of referral and the traditional face to face method was the only way this really travelled. Now with your Facebook page, Twitter account and LinkedIn presence (of these LinkedIn personal recommendations are the most permanent and  powerful) you have an opportunity for anyone that is happy with you and your business to post that positive feedback “live” – what better way to capture that your customers are satisfied with you?

Next time someone tells you that you are great you know what to say to them!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion PR

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Posted in Brand Loyalty, Customer Care, Positivity, PR, Social Media | 4 Comments »

The Promise

February 20, 2012

The Promise

We were conducting a marketing workshop for a client and we did a number of exercises so that we could get a group consensus about their core objective and key messages.

As part of this session we were trying to define their “essence” , their heartbeat , who they are and exactly what they are all about – this was really useful as it helped us to understand them even more and it helped to deliver some extra clarity to their own senior team.

The session was steering it’s way towards a Mission Statement, an outward and inward declaration of intent that they could stand over, which hopefully was going to be a lot more than corporate dribble and something that would actually connect with their audiences.

The problem is I actually hate all of that Mission Statement “stuff” – I guess the original intent was good, but for me it has become a corporate and organisational formula and I have yet to read one that stops me in my tracks and tells me something genuine, honest and emotive about what they actually do and what they believe in.

I wanted to introduce something deeper and more meaningful so I wrote a word on the flip chart – Promise

OK folks..  “What can we promise?”

Initially this question made people shift uneasily in their seats …how can you really promise anything? Is that leaving you open for inevitable failure? Is a promise a little juvenile? We live in a world of broken promises and is using that word even credible any more? What if we don’t live up to our promise?

Once the idea settled a little and the group started to get their heads around it we started to think about “what we could promise“. At this point we had a really incredible conversation that quickly went to the absolute heart of what they were all about and there was now an enthusiasm about making a real promise.

Why was there discomfort initially around using the word “promise”?

Besides making a commitment that was deeper and probably much more personal for everyone concerned it also gives you little scope for failure and sets that bar really high. On the plus side it shows that you are prepared to lay your commitment on the line and be measured by it without that margin for error.

Is it really that risky to make a genuine promise and then stand over it?

What’s your promise?

Greg Canty is a partner of FuzionPR

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Posted in Customer Care, Marketing, Teamwork | 22 Comments »

Twitter and the New Car!

January 15, 2012
Car Salesman

At least this guy was making an effort!

My meeting had gone well, I was in a really positive frame of mind so I decided I would take the first step towards possibly ordering a new car for the start of 2012.

On the way back from my meeting I popped into a car showroom just to get a feel for the prices of the new cars, the second hand cars and of course what I would manage to get as a trade in for the Santa Fe that had served us well since the beginning of 2007 despite the high mileage.

I first spent some time looking at the “premium collection” parked outside, the collection of two and three year old cars all in great condition. Hmmm … not bad at all!

I then dared to venture into the showroom to look at the new models and I must admit feeling excited about the thought of being able to drive one of these beauties at the start of 2012. I was waiting for the approach from the salesman to start a possible conversation that could have resulted in a sale – a few of them were busy at their desks, a few walked past me with folders and a few were chatting to other possible customers.

I looked, I waited, I looked again and I must admit after a while that I was feeling a little deflated as car salesman after car salesman seemed to decide that I was an unworthy customer – did I look broke, did I look like a “tyre kicker”, did I look like another casual browser who was just going to waste their time? In any event I ended up leaving after about 20 minutes having spoken to no one.

Those who know me quite well will not be surprised that how I was feeling at that moment was shared on Twitter … “I must look like I am broke, the car salesmen didn’t come near me” I tweeted.

Jaguar XF

I know .... isn't it a beauty!

About 10 minutes later I received a call from a friend of mine who is in the motor trade who had spotted my tweet – he was initially concerned that this could have been his car showroom and that there was some issue with his customer service. I assured him that it wasn’t and that if my route back from my meeting passed his place I would have definitely have called in. Needless to say the conversation came around to me possibly being in the market for a new car..

I collected it beauty on the 5th January, it’s a beauty..

Who said twitter was a waste of time for business ..?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

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Posted in Customer Care, Marketing, PR, Social Media, Web Marketing | 18 Comments »

Be nice to the elderly woman!

November 14, 2011
Pay it Forward

It pays to be nice!

This week I heard a really simple story by a guy who was participating in one of our training courses. He supplied corporate and domestic cleaning services and at the early stages of  building his business he was desperately trying to get some custom from the biggest hotel in his town. Despite all attempts he realised that he could not shift the incumbent supplier who the hotel were extremely loyal to so he eventually stopped trying.

Some time later he was asked to clean the carpets in this elderly woman’s house, which he did and at the end of a very long and tiring day he finished the job and packed away all of his cleaning gear. The old woman realised that there was another room upstairs that she had forgotten about and she asked him would he look after it.

Even though it was late and it would take an age to unpack and set up all of his cleaning gear again he decided he would go ahead, unload and clean the extra room. The woman thanked him and did acknowledge the extra work and inconvenience that was involved in cleaning the extra room.

Two weeks later he received a call from the hotel to come and clean some of their carpets.

Guess who was related to the elderly woman?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion PR

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Posted in Brand Loyalty, Customer Care, Marketing, Positivity, PR | 11 Comments »

George Michael and Relying on Price

November 6, 2011
George Michael

Where are you sitting guys?

George Michael at the O2 in Dublin was the reason I found myself on the lastminute.com website last Monday – as usual I was lastminute.com when it came to looking for a nice place for us to stay so here I was browsing ..

There is a nice feature on the lastminute.com website whereby you can elect to stay in a “secret” hotel – for those who haven’t used this feature the website gives a general description of the hotel , it gives you a general location description and it gives you the star classification.

My criteria was simple enough, city centre location, handy enough for the O2 and either 4 or 5 star and of course I was hoping for a bargain – maybe a cracking last minute deal in the lap of luxury!

I found a “secret” hotel that seemed to be perfect – “a romantic luxury hotel in an idyllic setting perfect for a couple and just a few minutes from Trinity College, Stephens Green and city centre shopping“.

This gem was available for both of us for only €76 euros. I wondered where could it be and tried to match up the description with my knowledge of city centre hotels.

There were other secret 4 and 5 star hotels and these were €140 and €189 – could we be that lucky that we discovered the perfect romantic hotel in a perfect location at an incredible price? I doubted it but why not.

You have to confirm your booking and then your “secret” hotel is revealed..

The Burlington Hotel .. Hmm not exactly modern, idyllic and romantic and not exactly next to Stephens Green. However I reasoned that you get what you pay for, I should have relied on the price and not be taken in by the description.

A taxi ride later and we arrive at the O2 and produce our very expensive tickets, show them to the usher and wait to be guided to the section where our seats were located. Deirdre is a huge George Michael fan so as soon as the tickets went on sale we deliberately bought the more expensive seats (over €130 each! – I did take a deep breath ..) as she wanted to be as close to George as possible!

We climbed and we climbed and found ourselves two rows back from the very top of the arena waiting to see if the mobile drink seller was also selling binoculars! I honestly thought the seats were terrible but I kept my powder dry not wanting to spoil Dee’s night and also resigning ourselves to the fact that complaining would be quite pointless.

The guy sitting across from us must have been reading my mind and he kicked off with the usher – he deliberately bought the most expensive tickets as a present for his wife and demanded to know where in the auditorium were the cheap seats if these were the expensive ones! The very polite usher quickly found some supervisory person who arrived and tried their best to calm the man down.

Jokingly I was about to whisper to the guy that my tickets were bad value for €30 but again he read my mind, beat me to the punch and told me his were €25. No sooner had our mutual joke finished when a group of ladies who had just been shown to their seats in the row behind us started giving out – guess who had deliberately bought the expensive tickets?

The usher was called and the supervisor made another trip up the heights to try to calm down the situation.

In every stadium there are good seats and not so good seats but you should be able to rely on the price to differentiate these so there is no unnecessary frustration.

Can your customers rely on your prices? ..They need to

By the way, George was great even from 1/2 a mile away!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

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Posted in Customer Care, Entertainment, Marketing | 2 Comments »

When Great Products can mask over Poor Service

October 15, 2011
Butlers Chocolates

Great Coffee - Not so great service

I found myself in the queue of Butlers Chocolate Coffee Shop for about the fifth time in the week for my ritual morning treat and I just decided that I had to leave and search the streets of Cork for another alternative outlet that might serve coffee as good because of what I witnessed the previous day(Cork Coffee Roasters on Bridge Street is a little too far away).

Unfortunately I didn’t find a better cup of coffee anywhere so I just have to try to solve my dilemma by blogging about my experience in the hope that Butlers might notice.

Butlers Chocolate Coffee Shops do great coffee but at times the customer service is just appalling (my social media contacts will have seen a zillion posts about this from me). Some of the staff are very friendly and some are really quite the opposite. I find this incredible – I go in there at least three or four times a week, I buy a few coffees each time and some of the regular staff would neither smile, make small talk or even make eye contact.

There is also a very definite policy of preparing the coffee for the customer and leaving it on the counter and then “shouting” out the order until the customer hears and collects. You could be in there on a quiet day, sitting having a chat while waiting for your coffee , just feet from the counter and the staff will still “shout” your order instead of popping it over to you – I must admit this drives me nuts!

This must be how the staff are trained and I feel it also probably lends itself to a culture whereby a “no smile” scenario is quite acceptable as well. I can see the logic around staff overhead but this policy needs to be applied with some intelligence and “cop on”.

Hilariously they recently introduced a new electronic loyalty card system called a “Happiness” card and for the few weeks around it’s introduction all the staff had t-shirts with “Happiness” written boldly across them. With the card you earn your usual one in ten coffees free but you also earn loyalty points – all designed to have you coming back. Now there’s a good promotional idea!

This week I witnessed the very worst customer service incident, which motivated me to eventually write – A woman with a young kid and a new born baby around her neck in a little sling ordered a low fat latte. She seemed under pressure as she sat down while waiting for her coffee – the “shout” duly followed by the staff member: “low fat latte” to be followed by an even louder and more impatient “low fat latte“.

The poor lady who was sitting down and a little under pressure with her toddler and baby responded “I’ll get it when I am ready“. At this stage practically every customer in the coffee shop had heard the awful interaction and were trying to figure out why none of the three staff on duty could make an exception and walk the few feet over to the woman with her coffee.

I was chatting with a buddy of mine and I was about to collect the coffee from the counter and bring it over to the woman only to be beaten to the punch by another customer.

Incredible!

The product is great so we keep going back but at some point a new coffee shop will open that will know the value of smiling and the even greater the value of bringing coffee down to a customer in extreme or not so extreme situations .. I look forward to it.

If you have a great product be careful not to create an opportunity for poor service to creep in.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

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Posted in Brand Loyalty, Customer Care, Ireland, Marketing, PR, Retailing, Staff training, Uncategorized | 30 Comments »

Is it all about price?

October 9, 2011
Greg Canty Fuzion

Win Win or crush the seller?

I remember when I started my first accountancy industry job in Deasy & Co. one of the early tasks I had was the job of selecting a supplier for all of our stationery requirements.

In those days we went through huge amounts of paper and our bill would have been quite large.

I approached the task diligently as the good accountant that I was – meeting each of the prospective suppliers and impassionately processing their quotes. The best quote won and next time round I did exactly the same thing all over again and put our business out for tender. It didn’t really matter who the supplier was – as long as I achieved the best price and the maximum savings for the company – wasn’t I brilliant?

24 years later and I find ourselves putting quotes together the whole time to hopefully win business and on the other side of the coin we deal with many suppliers.

A few things have I have learnt about pricing since those early days:

  • The clients who hammer us on price because that’s just what they do, I have very little interest in doing business with them again
  • If every piece of work a prospective client has is put out to auction I find myself caring less about this business (unless it is a tender situation where this is what you have to do)
  • I deal with suppliers that I like dealing with as long as their prices are fair – I won’t break them up every time
  • Trust and respect and a genuine interest in each others business is really important
  • The word Loyalty is really important -not blind loyalty
  • You have to leave a Win Win in every single deal that you do (James Caan the successful businessman from Dragons Den talks about learning this valuable lesson from his Dad at an early stage in his career in his excellent book)

For us building a successful business is all about providing excellent services (we don’t always get it right but we will try our best) to our clients in a partnership capacity – they outline their objectives and we do our best to achieve these together.

In the course of our business we use service and product providers that we trust and like doing business with, that ultimately will help us do our job. There is one exception where one of our suppliers just doesn’t care about our business and we are busy looking for a better solution.

The price should be fair and leave a Win Win for everyone.

Do you pay a heavy price when it’s all about price?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

p.s. apologies to those suppliers years ago – I guess we were probably the loser ?

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Posted in Accounting, Brand Loyalty, Customer Care, Marketing | 15 Comments »

Knowing you are the best & saying it

September 25, 2011
Hayfield Manor Hotel

Hayfield Manor Hotel

I was at a recent Chamber event in Cork and they had their usual “soap box” slot whereby a few members are given the opportunity to speak in front of the attendees and briefly tell everyone about their business.

This is quite an awkward moment for those invited to talk – they have about two minutes to inform and impress the listeners and generally try to make an impact with a combination of information, some humour and maybe a “catchy” phrase to finish their mini speech.

At the recent event Ettienne van Verde, General Manager of Hayfield Manor confidently took to the podium and started his speech by informing all of the attendees that they were the best hotel in the area.  At first there were a few quiet sniggers, some glances around the room because “saying you are the best” is generally not something that we say. It might be considered to be a little bit arrogant ..even if you believe it do you say it publically?

Not only did Ettienne state that they were the best hotel but he went on to explain why they were the best. He mentioned the friendly welcome, the free parking, the convenient location, the free wifi, the state of the art function room, the individually designed bedrooms and also the two award winning restaurants.

At the end of his confident two minute talk he was met with a big round of warm applause.For those who have experienced the hotel they would have to agree that Hayfield Manor is pretty good but I suspect the warm round of applause was for someone who proudly and confidently represented their business and wasn’t afraid to say “we are the best”.

If you believe you are best maybe you should start saying it

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

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Posted in Customer Care, Hospitality, Marketing, Positivity | 28 Comments »

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