Jim Worrell's blog

Have you ever provided poor service to a customer, such that they were at least somewhat dissatisfied with your service?

If so, you are not alone. It happens to all of us in the service business at one time or another.  What matters is how you handle this. If you are dealing with American sponsors / companies, it can mean the difference between keeping or losing a customer.

A quick story to make my point.

Last week I took my car into the dealer for several repairs. When I came to pick it up several hours later, it was obvious that one of the repairs (a wheel well liner) was not completed. I brought it to the attention of the Service Manager who immediately told me he would make it right, AND he offered to do it at no charge (this was a $230 repair).  In addition, he offered to give an additional repair at no cost.

Quick.... what is Volvo's market position?  Right... safety.

How about BMW?  Performance.    Mecedes?  Engineering and status.

What do customers think of when they think of YOUR brand?

The easiest way to imagine this is what I call the "web site test."  When a visitor goes to your web site, spends a few minutes there, then leaves... what is the ONE thing you want him to remember?

Yes, its a tough economy.  Although things seem to be improving since the first of the year, the economy is still sluggish and money is not flowing like it was 24 months ago.

There are many strategies to help offset this temporary downturn in business (yes, it WILL come back, just as it has for decades and decades).  But one of the most simple strategies is the following:

Call a meeting of your department heads.  Give them one agenda item:

Below is another "spot-on" article from my friend Jill Konrath.  Well worth reading.  I have made that mistake too many times myself.  In fact, I made that mistake last week and my colleague commented that I probably left $5,000 - $10,000 on the table, and worse, did not give my prospect (now a customer) the total service that he really needed. 

Life and business are full of leaning experiences.  Read this article to the end, I think the "car" analogy Jill uses is a good one.

Over 43 million iPhones have been purchased by people around the world, I being one of them.  With this growing market (iTunes download store with over 150,000 different applications available), the iPhone can be used for practically anything - personal or business.  While on my iPhone I can listen to my voice-mail, I can check my eMail, update my Twitter page, contact a new lead on LinkedIn, and add more tasks to my to-do list. 

With the endless list of possibilities on what an iPhone can do, I was shocked to find out their was no capability for a user to send audio, video, pictures and text all in 1 eMail!