Hey Business Owners and Project Managers,
Today, I am going to rant a bit about poor services and disorganized employees, and then show you a solution, so that your business never becomes “that guy”!
Have you ever gone into a business, or called them up, about a problem you need fixed, and the response is “Oh the guy who handles that isn’t here today”! That is a serious case of employee disorganization and bad training on behalf of management. Such a company is leaving money on the table and bleeding customers and clients. And the crazy thing is that they don’t even know it, because they never see that customer again! Who is going to wait? If you need something done, and the first place you contact says ‘The guy who handles that is not here today”, what are you going to do? You will go somewhere else.
(Just for the fun of it, here is another case of bad service: I had to get a tire repaired recently, so I went to a shop near my house. As I approached the counter, the grumpy guy behind it said – before I had even uttered a word, or told him what I needed – “Nobody can help you now, because all my guys are at lunch.” (seriously; this happened!)
Your business certainly never does anything like the two examples I shared, but maybe your clients still have a similar feeling, if some of these other realities exist in your business:
- You cannot locate a document, PDF, or file that a customer is asking for
- Your sales people keep all of their prospects and ‘their’ clients on their own personal laptop, so office staff cannot locate contact information
- Your customers want to know that status of their work, and there is no easy reporting system to find out where it is in the workflow queue.
- You are unable to quickly tell a client how much they owe on one or more invoices
- etc, basically, your team needs quick access to information and you cannot find it.
There are a couple of solutions to these issues, one is a way of thinking, and the other is a way of working.
First, you can solve this by adopting a new way of thinking about work.
We adopted the philosophy of “two sets of eyes on everything”. We never want to be completely dependent on anyone. So we make sure that one primary, and one backup person is assigned to every task. The backup person does not have to do anything, unless called upon, because of the absence of the primary person. So it does not increase our overhead costs, but it does increase our preparedness to address problems quickly.
Second, there is a new way of working this problem.
At HighPower, we believe that “There is a better way of working, and we will help you to find it.” So we build software systems to solve problems like this.
The way to address this is to make sure you have one centralized customized software system that is accessible to everyone on your team. This includes remote workers, people who only have access to cell phones or tablets, sales people out in the field, and those in the office.
There are three parts to this to make it work well for your company:
- Centralized – This means there is only ONE source of truth in your company for data.
Whether you are tracking clients in a CRM, or work projects in an ERP system, there should be only one place to access the data. If everyone keeps there own little silo of information about the status of clients, projects, workflows, jobs, etc, then no one will know what is going on. So it need to be centralized. Also, rather than using a dozen different little programs to run your business, use just one. - Accessible – This means everybody needs to be able to get to it.
I am still surprised at the number of companies that only have their data available to those within their office wifi network. If someone travels, or a sales person is out in the field, then they are out of luck, if they need to check on something for the company. Then they are calling the office, asking them to find things, or look up things, or email something to them that they should already have access to. - Customized – This is software that is customized for YOUR company.
I was just speaking today with a business owner from Scotland. He runs a media hardware rental company. He told me that he has tried some off-the-shelf software made specifically for his industry. But he didn’t like it. He said it was way too rigid and cumbersome. Admittedly, he said, it had all kinds of whiz-bang features; but when it came down to it it forced him to run his business the way somebody else thought it should work. He said that somebody in some office decided the best way to run his type of business, but it didn’t work for him.
So what did he do?
He built his own company software using FileMaker Pro. He has been using it now for many years. The software has grown with his business. Everytime he needed something else, he just built it himself.
Now his business needs have grown to the point that he has neither the time, nor the FileMaker development knowledge to continue building it himself. So he is calling on us to help him with his software.
But the point is that he was able to customize his software for his company, the way he wanted to do business; not the way some suit somewhere decided he should run his business.
So there you have it. Don’t be the company that says, “The guy who handles that is not here today!” Instead, put two sets of eyes on it, and use some custom, accessible, centrlized software which your whole company can use and enjoy.
Best to you and your business,
~William Miller