The Competitive Advantage

July 9, 2014

To create a better customer experience… make it ‘easy’

We invoice all of our clients monthly… but recently took on a new client that wanted to pay with a credit card. No problem. I called the credit card processing company we had used in the past to make sure that we could accept AMEX, to go over the monthly amount and to let them know we’d be processing the card manually.

You would have thought I asked for nuclear missile launch codes! I was going to have to send in an exception request every month, talk to the “limits department” and so on. What a ridiculous pain-in-the-a**!

Coincidentally, I had coffee with my bookkeeper that same afternoon and told her the story. She suggested I look into Square.com – the company that provides that little device that merchants use to take credit cards with their iPhones, etc.

Holy cow! What a difference.

June 11, 2014

Great business quotes #2 – on relationships

Yeah, I know… we all live in a web-of-all-things, socially-connected, technology-driven world. There’s no getting around it. But even with all those bits and bytes whirling around in the cloud, regardless of what we do for a living, we are still in the “people business.” And because people are the decision-makers and the key drivers of success, the following saying becomes even more relevant…

All things being equal… people do business with people they like. All things NOT being equal, people STILL do business with people they like.

May 6, 2014

Get out from behind your desk!

As I write this, I’m flying home from several days in Southern California, after working with a couple of clients. In both cases, there were just a few people sitting around a table, collaborating and working toward a common goal.  We did some planning, talked strategy, bounced ideas off of each other and, in the end, left with To-Do’s for each of us as we move forward together.

But more importantly… we also shared a meal, laughed, talked about families and discussed summer vacations. It was real human-to-human interaction.

March 26, 2014

Do you have a favorite client?

I’ll bet you do.

But have you ever thought about WHY they’re your favorite client?

Interestingly, it’s almost never the size of the client.  Bigger isn’t always better.  And it isn’t always those clients that have the employees you connect with on a personal level – though that’s surely part of the equation.

More often, it’s defined by the ‘relationship’… and specifically, by the collaborative nature of it:

March 5, 2014

Ever mess up a client’s project? How’d you handle it?

First, you get excited that you picked up a new client.  Then you find yourself really fortunate when that client comes back to you again and again.

And then it happens.  You drop the ball… a detail falls through the crack… the research gods stop smiling on you – and a project goes badly.

What do you do?

January 22, 2014

Are your clients ALWAYS right?

When I first got started in business, I used to say that “the client is always right.”

Once I got a little time under my belt, that morphed into “the client is always right, but they aren’t always correct.”

Now, after three decades in business, it’s “the client is often right, but when they aren’t… it’s time to talk.”

Here are the 3 times when you must have a “direct” conversation with your clients…

January 15, 2014

The Customer Experience: Make it Easy to do Business with your Firm

My wife and I had to run to the mall this past weekend… one of the stops was Banana Republic to pay a credit card bill that was almost due.  On the way over, my wife mentioned to me that she really liked Banana Republic – that it was one of her favorite stores.

Spoiler alert… those feelings were about to come to an end!

January 8, 2014

The 3 Basic Principles of the Customer Experience

My wife and I just finished going through the process of deciding which health insurance we wanted for 2014.  Believe it or not, even with all of the “stuff” going on right now related to health insurance, the process actually started out just fine.  And then the wheels fell off.