Business Owner’s Blog

Here’s a great story by a guy whose company was off-shored out of business. In the process of going out of business he laid off his customer service department before dumping his production department, He found out that customers were happier without the customer service department. [The bigger story is here you may have […]

Right after I tell you that you have a lot of bosses comes this article by Joel Spolsky about Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service. That’s Seth Godin’s definition of Remark-Able: Being so good, people remark.
Takeaways:

Fix every problem two ways - solve it then prevent it from ever happening again.
Have a person answer […]

What a thrill it is when that day finally comes. That is the company founder’s joy. Also the company founder’s deception. Also (potentially) the company’s destruction.
Joy
Well duh! Now you can finally do what you know needs to be done without someone with their own agenda getting in the way. I think we can all relate […]

Probably not. You might even go out of your way to make him happy. It’s amazing to me how many people don’t see customers in that light.
I know customer don’t have the commitment to your success that a boss does - but pleasing them is still the only way to keep your paycheck from bouncing. […]

I saw a commercial last night on TV. A guy was pasting up billboards of women dressed in swanky clothes. As he turned away to get the next poster, the women in the ones he’d already posted winked and waved and moved around. The posters had a single word across the top (I believe it […]

Not all your customers are good to have. Some are great. Some actually cost you money. Some are just so-so. Dharmesh Shah has some good ideas on ranking your customers. His post is geared toward software companies. For other types of companies, I would add things like

do they pay on time
do they haggle
do they refer […]

While we’re on the subject of customer service, let me tell you about my BBQ grill. I got my first Weber at a garage sale. It served me for several years. www.weber.com

When it finally rusted out I decided to buy a new one. I even splurged the extra $5 to get red instead of black. […]

This site is hosted by BlueHost.com. I’ve used them for about 6 months. Never had a problem but that’s not a lot of time to tell. What it is plenty of time to tell is that they have WONDERFUL Customer Support.
I’ve emailed support requests several times. Each time I hear back very quickly and, more […]

The war analogy doesn’t work because business is not a zero sum game. A great business makes the pie bigger for everyone. And in war, you’re focused on the enemy (ie your competition) but in business you’re supposed to focus on the customer.
The sports analogy doesn’t work either. It’s all about getting in the zone […]

Most people don’t think - they just think they think.
Here are some interesting ideas about how decisions are made. (The first three come from a book about web site design by Steve Krug called ‘Don’t Make Me Think‘).

People take the first choice they can find that doesn’t have obvious problems. This means we […]