Blog Archives

After spending huge amount of time and money on business plan, branding, hiring, set up, marketing, sales and all that is necessary, a company is ready to rock and roll. Let the big bucks roll in.

But often, there’s one critical mistake that many businesses make. They forget about the customers.

They forget about designing a positive customer experience, to provide wow moments of truth. They forget about ensuring that their teams are positive ambassadors for the brand.

No customers = No business

Bad customer experience = giving the customer to others

Long gone are the days when one single company will continue to have a monopoly on services or products. Customers have choice. And when there’s choice, then every single customer interaction is a precious opportunity to create a fan for your business.

Example 1, imagine spending money on digital marketing to create leads. When someone finally calls your company with an enquiry, what would be his or her first impression of your company?  Tip: make a call to your own hotline to assess the customer experience.

Example 2, think of your recent experience at a retail or F&B outlet. What was the experience like? It blows my mind that business owners would invest in $$$$$$$$$ to open shop but can totally forget about the ingredients for creating positive customer experience. Nice looking shop with lousy food/ products and/or surly staff = another new shop taking over the place in time.  Tip: conducting well-designed mystery customer/ shopper audits is a powerful way to affirm or wake up your team.

All successful entrepreneurs will share that placing customers at the core of their business strategy is what makes them successful. 

What about you?

If you are your brand’s customer, would you be a fan?

In my training modules, I often include a sharing on the four stages of learning or competence. It enables the participants to understand their learning process, as well as encourage them to be open to learning new skills. And also for management’s understanding of training dynamics and assessment of training needs.

In this first post in a series of 4, I would like to share on the first stage of Unconscious Incompetence. This is where we are unaware that we lack a certain competency. We often assume that “they should know it” but “they may not even be aware that they do not know it.”

An example is how employers in the service sector assume that their employees can smile and connect with customers. If you have been a customer, you will know that this is certainly not true. Some service teams naturally have brightest smiles, many others often greet you with blank faces and non eye contact.

Another example is the case of a valued employee who excels in his job but when promoted to a manager, fails miserably in leading his team. It is an erroneous assumption of management that this excellent employee knows how to manage a team. But with effective training and coaching of skills, he certainly has the potential to be an effective leader.

By taking nothing for granted and equipping their teams with the necessary skills, management and business owners will be able to build teams who are engaged, joyous, resilient and able to create value in their doing and being.