Waiting in and out

Was at a bank today to settle some personal stuff. Well, as the bank is located at a basement, the queue that started to form up was in a place that is not well ventilated at all. Thus most of the people have to queue up feeling hot and sweaty.

Now would it not be better if the bank had let their customers wait in comfort instead? The bank can still start at the stated opening hours, but when the customers are waiting in comfort, tempers are not that bad, and we know that when a customer is in a bad temper, fury may be unleashed to your front line stuff. Your frontline stuff would then have a good challenge in front to pacify the customer and also offer a level of service that can satisfy customer expectation.

By making the work of your employee easier, it can reduce the turnover rate and it makes the working environment better as well, and how much does it costs your company? Nothing because it is the environment which you had already provided. So practically no costs at all. Think about it. A small gesture of letting your customer to wait in comfort will improve customer experience with you, improve work environment for your employee and reduce (to a certain extent) employee turnover.

Cheers!

Growth & Innovation

Was reading the book that I mentioned in the last posts. It was talking about restraints to growth. From another point of view, restraints are good because we are unlikely to sacrifice long term growth for short term growth if we work within restraints. For example, when we are growing, we need to consume resources in our businesses, so resource constraint to a certain extent will limit our growth. If our growth rate is too far ahead then what we can handle, quality may deteriorate and depending on the product or service that we sell, this could have devastating effect.

But sometime, instead of griping these restraints, sometimes these restraints can be trends that we can tap on to grow or create a bursts of innovation that could either further or create another competitive advantages. For instance in the book, Sam Walton's wife would not move into a big town, so Sam Walton only open his stalls in small towns, thus avoid agitating his rivals who are in the larger towns, and grow to a size that can challenge.

For innovation, challenge the rules, decide if they are outdated or not. Check with your customers, ask them what problems they have encountered using your product or even those of your closest competitors. Yes, do keep in touch with your customers often. Make feedback simple for them. Know their problem and try to solve it with innovation. In the book, they mentioned there was one potato chip company found that their customers like to dip their chips in sauces and they love to eat it with a lot of sauces, so in the end they cut their chips in wavy pattern so that it can scoop more sauces and such a simple innovation has help them secure a lot more customer loyalty.

What lead to faulty thinking by Managers

I am reading this book "Bigger isn't Always Better" by Robert M. Tomasko published by AMACOM. Inside this book there is a section that mentioned why managers may have faulty thinking which I think the readers should know. They are

1) Unrealistic Optimism

Optimism is good because it is an enabler of growth, but too much of it may make people feel too capable, mistakenly think that they can achieve anything, and in the end put in too much money to earn too few profit.

2) Egocentrism

Individuals who come to think that they are the only ones who matter are likely to make many perceptual error. This is one of the traits that Sun Zi mentioned in Chapter 8 of Sun Zi Art of War. Being egocentric, chances are he will only act in ways that will benefit himself, most of the time not knowing how this behavior could impact others.

3) Omniscience

These refer to people who thinks that they already know what needs to be known and do not need to seek advice or more knowledge. These are the people who are most likely to make decision without considering the ramifications of their actions. They are so full of themselves that they are not able to consider more details during planning, compare to one that is always seeking more knowledge and advice.

4) Omnipotence

These are people who thinks they are all so powerful, pushing people through obstacles when actually they can be solved by seeking useful feedback. They think that since they are in a powerful position, they are there permanently and whatever they do will be inconsequential to their position. Assumptions of reality is confused with reality itself.

5) Invulnerability

This is the thinking that one can do anything without being harmed or exposed. Often times leading to underestimation of competitors.

Do you have these people in your companies?

Cheers!

Word of Mouth Marketing II

I am still reading the book that I recommended in my last blog post. I feel this book is really good, because firstly the author is very familiar with how word-of-mouth marketing works. Inside the book, he also tells us how to conduct research on how to find out how it works, and how you can tap this knowledge to your advantage.

To see how word-of-marketing works in your industry, the author recommend you create focus group and in this focus group, there should be a group of enthusiastic users for your products or services and a slightly larger group of non-users. Take not that enthusiastic users should be smaller in number than non-users. Strange it may seem, but after the many experience he had, this is what he has found out. The author also work in retailing through his father’s shop for a long time and has seen how his father created word-of-mouth marketing to work for him and his stores.

So I strongly recommended this book to whoever wants to explore and use this powerful marketing tool.

Another thing I want to share with the readers is a short article I read in Harvard Business Review June 2006 Issue. The article is talking about offering choices to customers. It is found out that there is a number of choices that becomes a tipping point where it will reduce customer's satisfaction. Yes, it does not mean that the greater the number of choices, the higher the customer satisfaction or can capture a larger share of the market. I personally think this is true because, once the number of choice becomes large, I would need help to find one option that can satisfy me. This complicates my purchase decision and at the end of the day, I might just give up either by not purchasing or just choose an option that I initially think is the best but at the end does not fit me at all. And since it does not fit me at all, my satisfaction is lower, and the company would lose a customer.

Food for thoughts? Sure. Cheers!