inside the office

I just wanted to send a quick note out to all of my subscribers to apologize if you receive duplicate copies of previous posts over the next few days. I had a blog-breaking issue last night and am discovering that the recovery process has caused some of my previous posts to be republished. No, I’m not recirculating old content, I promise. Just working out the bugs.

I’ll begin with a confession. I play WoW – World of Warcraft, for those that don’t know. But this isn’t really about me, it’s about my dear hubby. He is an avid WoW player, and has recruited nearly his entire family into playing as well. Talk about a family affair…

During a recent planning meeting for a community program, we were discussing the book by Michelle Drake, From the Kitchen to the Corner Office: Mom’s Wisdom on Leadership, which talks about finding and developing business skills from everyday mommy chores. Now, my dear hubby is going to be getting out of the Navy soon, and is beginning to update his resume and look for life after submarines. It occurred to me the other night that, a la Ms. Drake’s book, hubby’s gaming habits might translate to skill sets valuable in business. Being a guild leader? Team management. Running raids? Resource management. Balancing game and IRL (In Real Life) responsibilities? Time management.

Both Ms. Drake’s books and my musings come around to the same point – that valuable business skills can be developed in some surprising places. Experience gained from running a household, raising children, and planning fundraisers for your kid’s school can translate to running a business, managing employees, and planning events.

Why is it that we often hear of or see people who developed skills in a business setting easily translate those skills to personal application, but not the other way around? The next time you need to assess your skills, be sure to think outside of the box, and the boardroom, and consider which skills you have finely honed in all arenas.

One of the hardest parts of running a business is making sure that your customers are happy with the product or service that you provide. And finding this out isn’t always easy. Try these tips to help ensure your customers are happy. Or, at least, that they’ll tell you when they’re not.

Why customers leave?

Most unsatisfied customers don’t complain, they just go away.

1. 70% leave because of perceived rude or indifferent behavior
2. 20% leave for price or product quality
3. Only 5% dissatisfied customers complain to management
4. 45% complain to front end staff

So how do you keep your customers happy?

• It costs 4 times as much to acquire new customers as it does to retain current customers.
• “Yes, I Can” Attitude
  • A major hotel chain had their employees wear pins proclaiming “Yes, I Can” to illustrate their customer service dedication. When a customer asked if she could have one of the buttons, she was told, “No, I can’t,” stating that hotel policy required them to wear the pins at all times and they didn’t have any extra. What does this say about their customer service dedication?
• Use Satisfaction Surveys
• If a customer has a complaint, follow up to see what can be done to remedy or satisfy the customer.
• Resolving a complaint within 24 hours results in 96% customer retention.
• Each additional day decrease retention rate by 10%
• You can boost profits by 100% by retaining 5% customer base
• Can be useful in helping you spot customer service trends aka bad employee, desired service that you don’t offer

I’m sure I’ve sparked someone’s attention with that post title and while not exactly my intent, it does fit more than anything else.

I was inducted today as a member of the Southeastern Connecticut Women’s Network and had the opportunity to give my elevator speech to a room full of business women at once. What an opportunity! Fortunately, I’ve practiced how to say what I love about my career as succinctly as possible.

After the speaker’s presentation, a woman came up to me to ask for my card. She said that while she wasn’t in a position to hire me right now, she was planning to hire someone in the near future. In her words, her business is “her passion” but the administrative stuff is what she “endures.’ (Does the title make sense now?) When I heard this, I immediately thought – Finally, two great action verbs to describe what I do. This is something that I know a lot of virtual assistants have struggled with. So, while I now have to reword my elevator speech a little, I have two very descriptive and attention-getting words to talk about how I help business owners and entrepreneurs.

No, I’m not talking about texting on your phone. What I’d actually like to discuss is text vs. HTML eNewsletters.

Being the web designer aficionado that I am, my tendency was to stick with HTML eNewsletters. But I’ve had a revelation of sorts recently.

Every evening, I snuggle into bed and use my Blackberry to tick my way through the days’ emails that I didn’t get to, usually eNewsletters, to see what pearls of wisdom the world has for me. What I’ve noticed is that trying to read HTML-based eNewsletters on my BB can be a pain in the butt after wading through all of the coding. And while I generally prefer to work in the code of an HTML page, this is not that enjoyable on a small screen. Because of this, I’m now leaning more towards text-based eNewsletters. Sure, they may not be as pretty, but are definitely more functional and available to a wider audience.

Maybe the right answer lies somewhere in between, with using alternative CSS stylesheets for small screen browsers. But I’m curious – what’s your opinion and/or preference?

One of my favorite horoscopes went something like this:

If an infinite number of rednecks shot an infinite number of shotguns at an infinite number of stop signs, you would eventually have the entire works of Shakespeare in Braille.

While I have always enjoyed this horoscope, and chose to interpret it “if you persevere, you will succeed.” And though I still agree with that, I’ve got another take on it – Why not just buy the works of Shakespeare? This alternative method would be less costly, less dangerous, and require less cleanup.

Cater to your strengths. Managing a cache of rednecks and shotguns isn’t my forte, but the bookstore? Yeah, that I can navigate. In business, I know that certain things are not among my strengths, and I chose to outsource them to more qualified people who can accomplish the same tasks insignificantly less time.

Now, your homework. Take a look at the business actions that you perform daily, weekly, monthly. Which of those are not your strengths or are not helping you to generate income? Now go and find someone who is more skilled to handle those actions for you. Have I mentioned that I know a great virtual assistant?

What are you going to outsource?