When It Is Your Turn To Assist The Customer?

The Extra Mile Works Well When Customers Need Attention

When you start your business you are the only one who makes things happen.  You do the planning, the organizing and the selling.  You make the goods that you deliver.  You write the sales tickets, run the register and post the accounting.  You are the one who does it all.  That is how most small businesses begin their career.  Ground floor, wear every hat and see to it that everything right gets done on time.  You are off and running, doing it all.

As your small business grows you find you need help.  You get a bookkeeper, a sales clerk and a delivery person.  They help perform some of the tasks you cannot find time to do anymore.  That is how a small business grows up.  You learn some new things about leading employees.  You learn some new things about trust, training and differences of opinions about how things should actually run in your business model.  Not every employee you hire sees the landscape of operations the same way you do.  As a result, some new employment challenges arrive.  Those new challenges rub up against the way you believe things should run.  Now you need to find more time to manage those challenges.  To do that, you must learn how to delegate away some other things you were doing that consumed that time.  This process becomes an interesting test of your leadership character.  Your time chips become a monster management game.  Contrasting issues begin tugging at your sleeves.

Welcome to small business growth.  It brings with it some growing pains.  As time permits and lessons are learned, delegation becomes more important to understand and do.  As the years go by and your small business grows larger a completely different working world commands your time and responsibilities.  You no longer do the same functions that once dominated your daily routine.  What you did at work in the beginning phase of your business development is wholly different than what you do when it grows up larger.  The duties, tasks and functions you now supply are not the same roles you played in the beginning phases.  They are different roles.  They command different respects.

Your customers do not see this picture.  They do not witness the changes you needed to make to address your business growth with different levels of new attention.  Your customers still expect you to handle the cash, write up the ticket and run the register.  They still expect you to walk them to their car and chit chat with them about world matters.  It makes them feel important that they know you, the owner, personally.  That is what they once saw, attached to and loved about doing business with you.  It became a personal thing to them.  They do not see how your business world has changed.

As you grow you business larger and larger try not to forget how this process works.  It can become a real sticky issue with the customers who helped your business become what it grew up to be.  Never forget this quiet responsibility.  They still remember your personal attachment to their friendship roles as a loyal supporter and they only support what they think it is.  They do not see your business world of growth.  They only see their world.

Page two.

The Extra Mile Works Well When Customers Need Attention

The other day I was in a small business that has grown up.  It has grown up nicely.

I listened to the owner of this grown up business describe his level of frustration about how a friend and personal customer selected another business to do some work that this owner typically provides in his business model.  His friend selected the competition to perform some work that was done on his home.  This owner felt slighted by his friend and personal customer.  This owner described this event with a slant of confusion.  He claimed he had done all of that customers work in the past, during the first twenty years of his business development.  He was confused as to why this friend, this personal customer, would select the competition to do this latest work on their home?  It puzzled him.  He was disappointed and shared that position of thought with me.

We began to discuss the event.  During the discussion I noticed how that friend came to this business owner and described to the owner how he was planning to do some new addition work on his home.  They seemed to hit if off like normal.  Then during the discussion of what that friend was planning to do with his home construction project, the business owner introduced his friend to the manager that was hired to help this business owner manage his business affairs more efficiently.  The business had grown to the level that required this kind of activity to become necessary to function more effectively.  A new twist in the way things once used to be done.  Relationships tend to change as the business grows up.  It is one of those unfriendly things that come with growing pains.

These developments are simple crossroads that have come to the normal path of business development.  They arrive without notice and usually without much fanfare.  Whatever the case, they eventually show up.  A fork in the road appears.  This customer was given a choice he had never seen before.  He was asked by this personal friend, his business friend, to go do business with another person he did not know.  He was politely offered to do business with the manager of this business owners model.  He was asked to do business with a stranger.  It quietly shocked his customer.  It quietly sent an unintended message to go somewhere else.

The business owner did not notice it but he actually made the suggestion to this loyal customer to begin doing business with someone other than who they came in to know.  That is no different than going to a competitor, to a person they do not know.  It is the same thing to the mind of the consumer.  That owner missed this event.  He did not recognize the true reason why this friend always selected his business for doing their work at home.  It was that personal relationship that tied the knot.  The years of doing business with this owner was a personal thing to this friend and customer.  It always was.  When that business owner turned him away by passing him off to his trusted manager he severed that relationship.  The owner did not mean to do it that way.  He only wanted to make sure his grown up business remained on track to do this special friend a good job.  The owner recognized how important it would be to stay within the system that has worked so well.  This was the right thing to pay attention to.  It had the makings of being held correctly.  Unfortunately, it had an unintended consequence.  These happen frequently to a growing business model.  Get used to them.

How could this growing pain be avoided?  All that owner needed to do was to go to that customer's home, after work, and pay them a personal visit.  He just needed to go see the work they were planning to do.  At that time he could make the proper connection for his friend to allow this owners 'right hand' manager to head up this most important project of remodel.  A proper transition should have taken place on a more personal platform.  It is personal to the customer.  It is just business mechanics to the owner.  There is a huge difference here.  Try not to permit this gap of misunderstanding to get in the way of taking good care of your most loyal supporters.  They will easily begin doing business somewhere else if they feel slighted in any way.  This understanding is fundamental to growth respect.  Make sure we grow well but at the same time, do not forget how we got there.

Even though we all grow up to face these types of growing pains, we must not forget why some of our most loyal customers do business with us.  They like us.  It is a very personal thing to them.  When we become removed from that personal relationship it will begin to break down.  The original personal bonds our customers develop with us as business owners is a bond that will grow up with time.  Those bonds do not deserve to be taken for granted.  Customers use these bonds to develop their personal patronage patterns.  Every owner should learn how to detect, protect and support these bonds when they become part of who your business is.  Every bond that is built by the personal touch some customers require will not remain in tact if they are casually discarded or passed off to someone else.  We are always expendable.  Be careful.  Know when it is your turn to assist the customer.

Until next time...