I Yell At Phones

Yes, I do, I really do yell at phones.  I am just going to put it out there: I HATE AUTO ATTENDANTS.

Honestly,  I would rather have a phone go to voicemail and leave a message than go into the dreaded directory search black hole or the auto attendant round about.  Personally I believe a real person should answer the phone.  More on that later.

I recently had an experience with Microsoft.  We purchased a $150 annual support plan. I honestly don't even remember what it was called.  When I went to login to use it, it said I didn't have that plan.  I had an email receipt and am getting emails about the great features of the programs.

So... what is a girl to do?  You call Microsoft.  Here is the process.

 5 Auto Attendant Prompts in order to be put on hold for the next representative

• Spell my name to someone that doesn't speak English.  Have them spell it back to me
• Explain to them my problem (most of them didn't even know what the plan was that I purchased)
• Have them put me on hold
• Have them tell me a phone number to dial for assistance on this issue
• Have them put me through to that number
• Wash, rinse, repeat.  

I went through this process 7 times in over 2 hours.  By the time the 7th lady began asking me the questions I said, "You are the 7th person that I have been forwarded to with the same process.  I am not going to give you my name, spell it, have you put me on hold and then put me back to the auto attendant to find someone else to help me.  I will just have American Express cancel my purchase, that you can't find, but charged me for and get my money back."  Yes - I hung up.  Yes American Express refunded our money.  Will I ever buy a product or a service like that from Microsoft again?  No!  

Once when I got an auto attendant for an insurance company I was sent round and round and round.  I just wanted to talk to a person about my bill.  I kept pushing buttons, saying representative and couldn't get through.  I am not proud, but yes, I was yelling at the auto attendant.  There were possibly some inappropriate words used.  Yes, I do realize how ridiculous it is to yell at the phone.

But here is the REALLY funny part.  The voice recognition software forwarded me to their mental health care line.  It is actually pretty genius if it was intentional.  :)

Yes I do realize that it is not feasible for Microsoft to personally answer every call that they receive.  If you must have an auto attendant, have it direct people to the right department and then hire skilled workers and empower them to help the person on the phone!  In my experience, it was clearly, 'I don't know what to do with this woman's problem so I am going to send her back into the queue.'

I have said it before I prefer to do business with small business every day.  We own a small business so of course I would support small business.  Unfortunately it is not always possible.  

When you find a great small business, and there are many, you have the opportunity to get real customer service.  Honestly, customer service is not dead.  Search for it.  Support small business.  Boost the local economy and job force.  When you buy from us, you help us create more jobs in our small business.  You support people, not a company that spends money on more technology to eliminate more skilled workers.  Read - AUTO ATTENDANTS.  

The resolution of my computer problem?  I went to a local business that has real people, a service department you can call or visit and got my computer fixed.  And, I purchased two new computers for the staff we have added to our company this year.  While I was there I met the general manager of the store.  He thanked me for my business.  What a novel concept!

SUPPORT SMALL BUSINESS

~End Rant

The Small Business Advantage

I believe in small business.  We own a small business.  We eat, sleep, breathe small business.  There are huge benefits to working with a small business.  I want to highlight a couple of recent stories one personal and one in our business.  I will focus on the personal story today.

We bought a couple of ceiling fans for our children's rooms.  They were $50 or so each.  Not a bad investment to help cool upstairs rooms during the summer.  So we went to the internet to find an electrician.  I honestly don't know where my husband found the company but I should have known right away that it was a bad idea.  The company name was Mr. Sparky.   Seriously?  Mr Sparky? But I digress.

We called to schedule the service.  They asked what time of the day we would prefer.  So my husband said, earlier in the day would be better.  He was told there was a $79 service call fee.  They asked if that was ok?  And he said yes.

They arrived quite promptly.  He came in and looked at the project.  He got has paperwork out and started writing up the order.  He asked a couple of questions.  One of those was what kind of switch we wanted on the wall.  We could have a switch on the wall that would control the lights and the fan.  I said we didn't need that we could just control with the chains on the fan. He told me that the chains on fans broke quite easily. I asked if it would add significant cost. His answer was no not significant.  (Great up-sell dude).  I even joked with him because at the top of his pricing sheet it showed items at $1,400 and I said I certainly hoped that it wasn't going to be that high.

Well boy was I wrong.  He told me that the price to install the fans and the switch would be over $1,700.  Ok, maybe I don't have any concept of what this should cost but that seemed incredibly ridiculous to me.  AND to make matters worse, even if I went with this price to get them installed they didn't take the service fee off the total.  You paid that no matter what.  Oh and wait - the service fee was actually over $87 when you added some other $8 fee that we weren't told about.    I told the electrician that it was ridiculous and now I was paying $87 for him to walk in our house, look upstairs and write up some paperwork.


The electrician was polite considering that I was quite annoyed.  But honestly he was a little condescending.  He kept asking, "what did you expect to pay"?  I honestly don't know the answer to that but I didn't expect it to be $1,700.  I told him that we own a business and setting customer expectations was incredibly important to customer service.  He argued with me that they couldn't even give a price range over the phone.  He was actually quite condescending.

To add insult to injury he proceeded to tell me that we "chose" a 2 hour service window.  I asked him what the other options were.  4 hour service window for $59 or so and an 8 hour service window that was $29 or so.  DUH we weren't even given the option for the other two service windows.  Talk about a bait and switch.

I placed a call to another local electrician.  I explained my situation.  He said he had heard many similar comments and complaints about Mr. Sparky.  The national company had actually tried to get him to convert his independent business to a Mr. Sparky service.  We talked through what we had.  He asked some questions and said he could do it for about $400.   The fancy switch that I was paying $300 a piece for from Mr. Sparky?  He said, I could go get a switch at home depot and he would install it for me.

So why do I really tell you about this.  This is a national company.  I know there are good large companies out there.  But my experience is the level of service and communication you get from smaller companies is much higher.   We have had similar experiences with big name horrible experiences with furnaces and air conditioners too.

It takes time to find and keep a customer.  It takes seconds to lose one.

What happens when you lose a customer because of your service?

• You Lose A Client
• You Lose Referrals
• You Lose Repeat Business

Here are the important lessons I think are to be learned from this.

1. Relationship.  Build a relationship early in the sales cycle.
2. Set realistic expectations with the prospect.  This will help you avoid frustration and unrealistic expectations.
3. Don't be pushy on the up-sell.  No one likes a "used car salesperson"  If you were to give them options and explain the options, they will most likely take your recommendations.
4. Don't be greedy.  Companies that are all about money are spotted quickly and trust is lost.
5. Earn someone's trust.  Stand behind your product or your service and make it right when someone is unhappy.
6. Trust and service turns into customer loyalty.

Give small business owners a chance.  Chances are you will get a higher level of service.  Win - win right?  

Here is another article on this item.  http://smallbiztrends.com/2014/05/ups-survey-buying-from-small-businesses-important.html

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SMALL BUSINESS

Lori Hanken
Total Displays
www.totaldisplays.com
952-941-4511

Essential Oils and Trade Shows

Ok, what in the world do essential oils and trade shows have in common?  I recently made a discovery that I thought I would share.

Many of you know that I am quite passionate about the use of essential oils.  We use them for many things.  Most of those things, the FDA won't let me tell you about because we are not classified as a drug.  Therefore I can't even use any words like allergies, arthritis, asthma or anything else in relation to the oils.  I do love to learn about, try and share information about the oils.  I teach many classes and workshops so that others can learn too.

The first "ah-ha" moment for me is with our showroom.  We have a large showroom in our Trade Show exhibit and event company.  When we moved in we had a cherry picker to hang the large overhead in our showroom.  While hanging the sign the cherry picker leaked oil or transmission fluid on our gray carpet in our 20 x 20.  This is an area where all our prospects come to see our showroom and visit with us.  The stain on the carpet always bothered me.  It was clearly noticeable and honestly embarrassed me when clients and prospects came in.

One day I had a revelation.  I had heard so much about lemon oil being great for cleaning.  We have used orange oil mixture to eliminate pet urine smells and were amazed!  You can read about that here if you want.  All Natural Pet Odor Removal.  So I decided to try some lemon oil.

Seriously I dropped about 12 drops of lemon oil on the stain and got a rag.  I rubbed a little bit and the stain started disappearing.  I was honestly surprised.  So you ask again, what does this have to do with trade shows?

1. Do you ever find stains on graphics or on your flooring?
2. Do you try to clean it and it looks worse?
3. Do you decide to leave it behind and just spend more money on new flooring for the next show?
4. Do you try to cover it up with furniture or a reception counter?

Be sure to spot test it on things like graphics before you try it.  I have not yet tried it on dye sub graphics.

My hope is that this tip makes you look great and saves you some money.  I would be happy to sell you new flooring, but would feel badly if I didn't share my trick for cleaning this up!  We were going to throw this away and get new carpet when we redo our showroom this summer.  This little bottle saved us a bunch of money!  Essential oils are all natural and contain no harsh chemicals like traditional cleaning products.

Add a little bottle of Young Living Lemon Essential Oil to your trade show kit!  You won't be sorry.  It smells really fresh and wonderful too, like a little bottle of sunshine while we are trapped in convention halls for hours on end.  I always have one in my office if you want to stop by and sample it!

www.totaldisplays.com

www.wholehealth.vibrantscents.com

A 30 Year Vendor Relationship That Wasn't Worth $1500

We sell trade show exhibits.  This is not a blog trying to get you to do business with us but a little background is necessary.  Total Displays has been in business for over 30 years.  My husband and I have owned the business for 11 years as of this writing.

As a company we look for partners, long term partners.  We are not the kind of company that goes out to partner with just any company to say that we offer absolutely every product out there.   When looking for partners we are looking for companies that have the following attributes:

1. They sell to re-sellers or distributors only.  I have no need to compete directly with any of my manufacturers.
2. They understand small business.  This can be a little trial and error.  I talk to people in the industry to find out about their reputation.
3. I do like to be courted a little bit.  If I have to chase the partner, chances are they are not going to support me very well.
4. I need to be able to make money.  That seems self evident but when someone wants you to sell their product and you ask them what your margins will be and they can't answer?  Run, run very fast and very far.  I will post more on this issue another day.

Once we have found a partner, we will make every effort to represent their product and their brand well while integrating it into our offerings.  These products are not such hard products but include services.  We also want these relationships to be long term.  We truly partner with companies.  Their success is our success and vice versa.  We don't expect a partner to be perfect, but to make things right when they are not.

Now on to the story.  One of the services we provide is freight and logistics.  Of course we don't have a fleet of trucks so we partner with companies that are experts in this field.   So here is what happened.  We have had a long time relationship with ABC Shipping Company.  They have been a good partner.  We have spent a lot of money (at least by our standards) with them over the years.  We referred three of our largest clients with the most shows.   They set up direct accounts with ABC Shipping Company.  They move a lot of trade show products throughout the year.

They shipped a booth for one of these clients, XYZ Company.  This was a brand new booth.  It had never been set up.  It was shipping directly to the show.  This booth was valued at 65,000.  We get the email from the carrier saying the following:

"Please take a look at how your freight arrived into San Diego our carrier did not handle this  crate very good. I am working with them to see how this happened. David and I thought you would need this information in case you rec’d a call. My agent could not get this crate out of their trailer being it was falling apart and could not be salvaged or repaired. They did a great job at regrouping the freight inside the crate. I will send them in the next email. One of the concerns we have is the transportation back to you. I am thinking we can have our agent skid, band, and bubble wrap for the trip to MN. Please let us know your thoughts. This freight was delivered at 1030 today signed for by Susie Showmaker.  I am very sorry that your freight did not arrive as it was shipped."

They were unwilling to pay to replace the crate.  Luckily the booth was not damaged and went up just fine.  Here is my issue.  I know that their procedures and policies would require us to insure the booth at a cost of an additional $500 per trip for any replacement cost.  Also the terms on the replacement cost were very vague and subject to interpretation.  What became clear is that they were unwilling to stand behind their service.  This may be standard policy for shipping companies.

Where is the principal in the matter, where is the service?  As a result, we have pulled all business, and told our clients that we are no longer recommending ABC Shipping Company.

Personally if it were my business, I would have done the right thing and offered the client SOMETHING.  Half of the value?  Anything would have been better than this.  Remember that key word partnership.

From www.meriam-webster.com

Full Definition of PARTNERSHIP

1

:  the state of being a partner :  participation

2

a :  a legal relation existing between two or more persons contractually associated as joint principals in a business

b :  the persons joined together in a partnership

3

:  a relationship resembling a legal partnership and usually involving close cooperation between parties having specified and joint rights and responsibilities

Partnership implies two companies in a relationship working together.  I am sure I will ruffle some feathers with this one.  But sometimes you have to throw away policies and do the right thing by your client.  FYI, we have already paid for the new crate for our client.

What did that $1,500 actually cost them?  A LOT.  

What would you have done?

Can CRM Help You Retain Customers?

CRM, Customer Relationship Management?

When I speak about CRM best practices one of the first questions I ask is, "Do you have customers?"  The follow up question is, "Do you want to keep those customers?"

CRM systems are not just for new sales.  Traditional thought process on CRM is new business, sales funnel, opportunity management, etc.  All throughout your organization you touch your relationship with those clients.  Here are some areas where a customer can be "touched".

• Customer Service
• Service & Repair
• Credit & Collections

Let's say you go to make a sales call to a long time customer.  They have had some difficulties and were slow to pay a couple of invoices.  You call them up to ask for more business and you get slammed because your credit and collection rep has been hounding them for the last two weeks and has completely alienated them.   Another day we will discuss how to turn credit and collections into a customer service and sales tool!

Tracking those customer touches is vitally important to your overall relationship with your client.  Maintaining a strong relationship with the client makes them come back for more!

Customer Relationship Ownership

This is something that is often over looked by Sales Managers or owners of companies.   Often a company's biggest asset is their customer list.  Without that customer list it wouldn't matter how much inventory you had, you would not have any sales and any repeat sales without customers.

If your sales reps are keeping all their sales notes and or conversations on paper, you do not have access to a very valuable part of that customer relationship.  How many times have you heard the stories where a sales rep leaves, takes a copy of the proprietary customer list and all their notes and calls on them from their new company.  We all know how hard it is to truly enforce non-competes right?  As a business owner, you own that customer relationship and all the data that goes with it.

If you want to make the job easier for the next rep for that account, be certain that your reps are utilizing CRM to track their conversations.  There are some great tools and tricks to be sure that happens.  We will cover that in another post too!

Of course the same holds true for sales leads but we are talking about customers today.

Customer Turnover/Churn

Customer retention is incredibly important to any business.   The cost to acquire a new account vs. keeping and nurturing an existing account is significant.  Here is a great article to read on the true cost of acquiring a new customer.

Customer Acquisition Cost

 There is nothing worse for a sales rep to call a customer that hasn't bought from you for a while to find that they are now buying from someone else?  Do you know how many of those customers you have lost?

Or what about the customer where your contact leaves for a new job?  Will you build a relationship with the new person?  Will you know that there is a new person? Will you call on your former contact at his new job to see if they may be a prospect?

A good solid usage of CRM with a defined universal process within your organization can help with these issues.

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Lori Allaman Hanken has spent over 25 years working with various CRM packages.  She was part of a development and design team for a nationally released CRM product in the wholesale distribution market.  Ms. Hanken has been featured as a national speaker and has helped many clients create best practices procedures and documentation while consulting on CRM usage.  She has implemented hundreds of CRM installations.

To Blog Or Not To Blog Is That The Question?

I have been writing business blog posts in my head for about 7 years now.  I must think I have a lot to share?  I should have a lot of content then right?

Writing a blog is really putting yourself out there.  It is exposing yourself, opening yourself up to criticism and much more.  So is it really worth it?

What does blogging do for a company?  Here are some of the things I have gathered through my research and reading.

Competitive Positioning

Part of our company mission is to keep on top of trade show industry trends.  Keeping our clients educated helps make them look the best and get the most out of their trade show experience and money.  Blogs provide an efficient, a relatively easy way to allow your company to be a thought leader in your field and to differentiate you from your competitors.

Establishing Your Business As An Expert

Customers need to know and trust that the company that they choose is an expert in their field.  Blogging can provide you the medium to show your customers your knowledge and add value to them.  

Customer Relations

Repeat business is critical to success.You need to keep in regular touch with your clients and add value in order for them to want to continue to do business with you.  Blogs allow you to do that while not always calling customers to see if they are ready to buy again!     In the trade show business some of your clients only use your products 1 or 2 times a year.  If you are not in regular communication with them and adding value you can lose them!    Interacting with your clients in this type of environment will strengthen those relationships.  Total Displays prides itself on long term relationships with out clients and hope that we are continually providing value to them.  

Search Engine Marketing

Blogs are an effective way to improve your rankings on search engines such as Google and Yahoo!   Of course you can spend money to buy top advertising space.  Google anything and see the ads at the top and in the right hand panel.   My understanding is that the top search engines index sites based on content.  If you have a blog, and you publish frequently you can boost your relevancy and get higher up in the search results.  

Brand Building

Blogs are a great tool to get your brand out there.  Do you know what your value proposition truly is?  Is it price, quality, service?  If you don't know and don't clearly market that in your blog you could be wasting your time.  It is important that while promoting your brand you add value for the reader.

Am I an expert?  No.  Do I have years of experience to share?  Yes.  I am going to take a run at this business blogging thing and see how it goes.

Be gentle dear readers.