Please welcome a guest blogger for today, Wayne Smallman
There I was, having lunch with a client (he was paying, not me) and being guys, the conversation slipped through sex, painful injuries and violent illnesses and on towards more legitimate business topics, such as word-of-mouth referrals and the power thereof. Or, as the lack, as the case may be…
I was to be regaled with a story of business won and then lost, all because of one stray hair. And this one story has a moral relevance to just about every business there is…
The business of eating
For any business, having a deli close by can be a life saver. Few things are worse than a long walk or an even longer drive at lunch time to find something to eat.
So being less than five minutes away from an eatery was a bonus. On what was probably the first day of his job, my client went to buy a sandwich.
With said bought sandwich, he returned to his office to eat while surfing the web for his lunchtime sports news. As usual, he performed his customary autopsy on the poor unfortunate sandwich to remove the tomato.
But wait! There atop the sandwich was something he hadn’t bargained on or paid for — a single human hair, curled up on top of the slices of ham and cheese. Feeling the colour pour out through the soles of his feet, he simply wrapped the sandwich in the paper it came in and droped it in the trash at the end of his desk.
And there began a ruthless, yet silent and unknowing vendetta against those not-so-fine purveyors of the aforementioned sandwich that went uneaten.
Food for thought
As he chomped away on a selection of fries and onion rings, he quickly began to look back over those seven years which he’d gone out of his way and traveled further afield to find something to eat. Never before realizing just how much effort he’d invested in avoiding eating at that same place again.
He paused as he recalled, his eyes drifting off through the walls of the restaurant and into his distant recollection. Not only had he not bought from them, he’d also gone out of his way to suggest other people not buy any food from there either.
So to compound his abstinence, he’d prompted probably a dozen others to do the same, too! Then his mind was abuzz with numbers — he began to calculate the amount of money he’s likely to have lost the deli in the last seven years.
It’s a sizable number; probably more than £5,000.00 all told. A not inconsiderable amount of money by anyone’s reckoning.
Lost earnings are hard to swallow
There was more than a tinge of guilt, if only fleetingly. He fought to justify his actions and I stressed several times his innocence in the matter. After all, hygiene in food preparation is paramount.
For a small business like a deli, such sums of money could be the difference between one or two weeks holiday a year, a new or second-hand delivery van, or maybe a part-time staffer to help with the lunch time rush.
The distance between success and failure can be but the width of a hair. And if the latter is to be true, it’s likely leave a bad taste in the mouth…
Wayne Smallman is the man behind the Blah, Blah! Technology blog: a focal point of his passion for technology, and a hallmark of his business mentality, writing style, and aptitude for making complex technology issues approachable and accessible. He is the principle founder and managing director of Octane Interactive, a Web design, Web applications development, and Internet marketing agency established in 1999 and based in Yorkshire, U.K.
November 2, 2007 at 4:09 am |
Yep, quality in your work can lead you to success or bury you if you’re a small company. I’m just starting my own company and the main rule is going to be to provide my clients the best solutions they can get.
November 5, 2007 at 6:08 am |
Sometimes the quality of the food is so good you wish the company was business savy enough to find the appropriate location. Too many dream and get their market research wrong, or just dont do any. It’s the “death of a salesman”. I feel sorry sometimes for a few of these quality food places that I fortel the impending doom of, partly because they spend so much on set up costs.
November 5, 2007 at 4:35 pm |
Hi Marko, I hope you succeed, too.
In the beginning, it’s tempting to offer everything you think you’re good at. But over time, what’s core to your business is usually decided for us by our clients and their needs…
November 5, 2007 at 5:31 pm |
Hi K.G, these got the price and position spot on, just not the quality, which is a shame…
November 7, 2007 at 1:01 am |
This article really struck a chord. Findoing out if you’re doing a good job is important.
And not a half-hearted “is everything okay with your meal?” as a de-motivated waiter brushes past your table.
Regardless of your business, you should go out of your way to find out if people are happy. And really, really ask them. Show them you care. Be passionate.
Really dig to find complaints. Use a shovel. If that doesn’t find any, hire a JCB.
And when you find a complaint. Pick it up. Examine it. turn it upside down to see what’s underneath.
What colour is it? What does it smell like?
I’m exaggerating of course because complaints aren’t really things you can touch. But if you treat them like a “thing” and start to define them, you can also start to see what created them.
And because you’ve gone into detail, you’ve found that you lost 12 customers, that’s £60,000, because the people preparing sandwiches aren’t wearing hats so hairs are becoming an unwelcome ingredient in your product.
By rooting out the causes, you can engineer hairs out of your product.
And a wonderful side-effect of digging for complaints is that you are unearthing opportunities.
And if handled well, complainers turn not just back into customers. But they usually become more vocal advocates than clients who had a positive experience.
They say…
“Do you know what, I found a hair in my sandwich, but because the deli I go to emails clients, when I complained they personally visited our office. They delivered two sandwiches as an apology, they said sorry to my face, and they also wrote to say it would never happen again as their staff are now wearing hair-nets and hats to prevent it happening again. Their sandwiches are delicious. you should try them. they’re next to the pub on the high street.”
I did this. But perhaps I;ve taken it to extremes. I make sure we ask every client each month how we did. And we chase them for a reply. If we get anything less than 100% excellent, one of the director’s takes a public forfeit – not the front-line staff, but the people at the top.
Last week, I was videoed being custard-pied as a consequence of getting only 96% satisfaction.
The video and proof was uploaded to our blog and site.
And the 4% of people who had a minor issue are still being investigated and I am mid-thread on sorting issues which even to them appears minor now. In some respects, I think they are shocked at how far we have gone to investigate a minor complaint.
Do you think they will recommend us? I think it’s now more likely than not that they will.
And all because we seek complaints and jump on them.
November 7, 2007 at 4:58 pm |
Hi Ian, I’m glad you agree, and it’s great to see you’re already way ahead of me, too!
Well, maybe not quite, but I could do with following up my clients more, to figure out whether they’re happy with everything.
I have read similar stories of people turning complains into case studies, though I suspect most companies aren’t likely to adopt such a proactive attitude because of the time involved, and that they’re more often acting reactively.
Let’s hope there’s no more custard pies for you!