When you’re running a business, customers are your lifeblood.
Whatever a customer means to you, whether that’s a single person buying one product from you, or a client who retains your services for their whole company, their good will is what ensures they not only come back to you, but recommend you to other people.
It’s important to keep your customers
happy, and that’s why it can be so excruciating when they aren’t, whether that’s your fault, theirs, or totally out of anyone’s control. If you’re running a small business without a dedicated customer service team, it can be both difficult and emotionally exhausting to resolve a situation with an upset or dissatisfied customer.
This short guide should give you a few tips to help with the trickiest situations.
Engage
The most important thing is to fully engage with the dissatisfied customer or client. Make eye contact, and stop doing other tasks. If you’re not dealing with them in person, make sure you’re fully listening to the phone call: don’t type in the background except to record information they give you.
Whatever the reason, a customer has been let down by the service you provide. You are no longer reliable in their eyes. Giving them your time and full attention is the first and most important step in turning the situation around and helping them become a happy customer who may yet recommend you to their friends.
Some upset customers simply want an
opportunity to express their dissatisfaction: doing this to a person who is clearly fully engaged and empathetic with them will help them to calm down a lot, and you may find the inciting issue is much smaller and easily solved.
Don’t Blame the Company
It can be tempting, if you’re being empathetic with the customer, to agree with them in blaming the company for the problems they’ve suffered. This should be avoided, before you’ve spoken to your business lawyer about your liabilities in the situation. You don’t want to open yourself or your company to lawsuits.
You can genuinely empathise and apologise to a customer for a bad situation, for the inconvenience they’ve suffered, but do stop short of saying “I’m sorry we caused this”, unless you are completely certain your company is to blame.
Having listened and empathised with a customer, you can then present your best solution to a calmer customer who is ready to hear you.
Tuesday, September 05, 2017
How to Get Into Interim Management
Interim management is a field that’s getting more and more popular. According to the Interim Management Association, use of these specialists has grown by 93% since
2006. It’s not hard to see why: many businesses are facing times of uncertainty and massive change. Specialists in guiding them through this difficult period will naturally be in high demand.
As more people are exposed to the idea, we’re also seeing more entering the profession. It’s an attractive proposition. Rather than becoming a victim to uncertain economic climate, specialise in it, and make it your career!
That said, not everyone is a good fit for the demands of the job, and it can be difficult to get a foot in the door. Today’s guide will help strip away some of the mystery and help you on your journey into Interim Management.
Firstly, do you have the right skills?
You need to be a dedicated and ambitious independent worker: you’ll have no permanent colleagues, and no structure guiding your development but the need to stay at the forefront of knowledge and expertise so you can continue to provide value. This means you need to motivate yourself to keep researching and reading between jobs, and swapping insights with contacts. You also need to be a good communicator: clear but diplomatic, as you’ll often be upending established processes and even recommending redundancies. It’s important to convey your ideas quickly, as you work, by definition, under pressure to deliver, but you also need to be sensitive to the people you’re talking to and achieve change by persuasion rather than force.
Secondly, getting jobs is a challenge. Once you’ve been working for a while, a record of success and endorsements from businesses will help to sell your services, but in the beginning you need more help. Establishing a relationship with a specialised executive search agency is helpful, as they are the first point of call for businesses looking for the service you provide.
It’s vital to point to a previous record of expertise in this area, so if you have previous consultancy work that’s helped a business transition through a difficult period, or have come off a project in a more traditional business where you’ve helped them pivot into a new market, talk about this front and centre. Experience like that is your qualification for work as an Interim Manager, rather than a CV of traditional office work, however impressive.
As more people are exposed to the idea, we’re also seeing more entering the profession. It’s an attractive proposition. Rather than becoming a victim to uncertain economic climate, specialise in it, and make it your career!
That said, not everyone is a good fit for the demands of the job, and it can be difficult to get a foot in the door. Today’s guide will help strip away some of the mystery and help you on your journey into Interim Management.
Firstly, do you have the right skills?
You need to be a dedicated and ambitious independent worker: you’ll have no permanent colleagues, and no structure guiding your development but the need to stay at the forefront of knowledge and expertise so you can continue to provide value. This means you need to motivate yourself to keep researching and reading between jobs, and swapping insights with contacts. You also need to be a good communicator: clear but diplomatic, as you’ll often be upending established processes and even recommending redundancies. It’s important to convey your ideas quickly, as you work, by definition, under pressure to deliver, but you also need to be sensitive to the people you’re talking to and achieve change by persuasion rather than force.
Secondly, getting jobs is a challenge. Once you’ve been working for a while, a record of success and endorsements from businesses will help to sell your services, but in the beginning you need more help. Establishing a relationship with a specialised executive search agency is helpful, as they are the first point of call for businesses looking for the service you provide.
It’s vital to point to a previous record of expertise in this area, so if you have previous consultancy work that’s helped a business transition through a difficult period, or have come off a project in a more traditional business where you’ve helped them pivot into a new market, talk about this front and centre. Experience like that is your qualification for work as an Interim Manager, rather than a CV of traditional office work, however impressive.
Mobile Security Across Africa
Mobile phones are getting more and popular in Africa and it’s not hard to see why. They can be charged from solar panels, so don’t need to rely on power line infrastructure that’s unreliable across much of the continent. Online top up services mean family members who’ve moved away in search of more opportunities can still send credit back to contribute to friends and relative’s lives back home.
Mobile phones have given people in Africa access to information and services that simply would not have been possible ten years ago. As well letting people communicate and coordinate in a way that was previously undreamt of, even simple SMS phones are being to revolutionise lives. mPesa is a mobile banking system that uses text messages to allow people living in rural Africa to access banking facility and begin to move away from a cash in hand existence. This also makes finance options more available for entrepreneurial spirits who previously weren’t able to obtain the money needed to kickstart their business ideas.
Health has also been an important focus for mobile tech developers in Africa. Mobile devices allow doctors to receive test results faster and so put treatments into effect more quickly. SMS programmes for patients suffering from ongoing conditions like AIDS offer regular reminders to take medication correctly and give advice about health, which has been proven to improve the outcomes for these patients.
All this development means that security is a newly important issue for mobile technology in Africa. More and more sensitive information and money is accessed with mobile log ins and is this vulnerable to hackers and indeed simple theft of the device in question.
Developers are clearly aware of the problem. Google’s new ICE 2 phone, aimed at being the first smartphone to crack the African market, is the first to launch with Google’s new Google Play Protect software. This is Google’s best attempt at keeping phones and apps and data totally safe from malign incursions. It also includes a fingerprint scanner to ensure unauthorised people cannot access the phone.
Nigeria’s aware of the problem of stolen phones being ransacked for data and sold on, and his created PhonReg that aims not only to identify stolen phones and remove them from circulation but also make it easier to buy legitimate handsets. With this understanding of the security concerns around mobile tech, it can be no coincidence that Google chose to launch their new smartphone in Nigeria.
Mobile phones have given people in Africa access to information and services that simply would not have been possible ten years ago. As well letting people communicate and coordinate in a way that was previously undreamt of, even simple SMS phones are being to revolutionise lives. mPesa is a mobile banking system that uses text messages to allow people living in rural Africa to access banking facility and begin to move away from a cash in hand existence. This also makes finance options more available for entrepreneurial spirits who previously weren’t able to obtain the money needed to kickstart their business ideas.
Health has also been an important focus for mobile tech developers in Africa. Mobile devices allow doctors to receive test results faster and so put treatments into effect more quickly. SMS programmes for patients suffering from ongoing conditions like AIDS offer regular reminders to take medication correctly and give advice about health, which has been proven to improve the outcomes for these patients.
All this development means that security is a newly important issue for mobile technology in Africa. More and more sensitive information and money is accessed with mobile log ins and is this vulnerable to hackers and indeed simple theft of the device in question.
Developers are clearly aware of the problem. Google’s new ICE 2 phone, aimed at being the first smartphone to crack the African market, is the first to launch with Google’s new Google Play Protect software. This is Google’s best attempt at keeping phones and apps and data totally safe from malign incursions. It also includes a fingerprint scanner to ensure unauthorised people cannot access the phone.
Nigeria’s aware of the problem of stolen phones being ransacked for data and sold on, and his created PhonReg that aims not only to identify stolen phones and remove them from circulation but also make it easier to buy legitimate handsets. With this understanding of the security concerns around mobile tech, it can be no coincidence that Google chose to launch their new smartphone in Nigeria.
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