Kathy and I have frequented a car repair business over the years that has been extremely customer friendly. Recently, however, this business felt different. For efficiency, they began routing our calls to a call center and instituted other new procedures. Also, some of our past contacts are now gone, leaving us feeling disconnected. We later learned that this business is ...
Recently, I was trying to secure a female speaker for our Summit conference. This person told me that she needed to check with her assistant about her schedule. With busy business leaders, it can take weeks before you hear back. In this case, I was amazed when I received a return call 30 minutes later. Although the news was disappointing, ...
Last month, Ryan Brandt, a waitress in Arkansas, received a tip of $4,400! The customer requested that she split the tip with the other waitress that served this group. Brandt’s manager, however, demanded that she share it with the whole staff, counter to the restaurant’s previous practices. The customer learned of the manager’s demand and asked for his tip back ...
Over two thousand years ago, there was a business owner having a good day. With his motel 100% occupied, this entrepreneur even rented out his stable when a pregnant woman and her husband requested a place to stay. Imagine this businessman’s possible thoughts 35 year later when he learned that he had hosted the King of Kings in his stable. ...
In this series, we’re highlighting the enemies of building trust in your business. The final enemy is lack of transparency. Long ago, I went into a men’s clothing store that had no price tags on any of the clothes. While I was shopping, a man asked the owner of the store, “How much are these pants?” The owner quoted him ...
In this series, we’re highlighting the enemies of building trust in your business. The third enemy is omissions. Many businesses had business interruption insurance prior to Covid. Unfortunately, very few companies collected on their policy due to insurance companies refusing to pay for financial losses related to the virus. Many insurance companies lost goodwill with their customers by not communicating ...
In this series, we’re highlighting the enemies of building trust in your business. The second enemy is lies. We were buying a software product for the ministry. It was very important to us that this new software communicate well with another software that we already used daily. Working hard for his commission, the salesperson assured us that they had just ...
In this series, we’re highlighting the enemies of building trust in your business. The first enemy is hyperbole. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines hyperbole as, “language that describes something as better or worse than it really is.” We all want to favorably promote our products or services, but many resort to extreme exaggerations or hyperbole. Customers are savvy enough to know the ...
Trust is the currency of commerce. If you have the choice of doing business with someone you trust versus someone you don’t trust, you’re likely to do business with the person you trust. Trust has been lost in the media, our politicians, and even with our scientific community. As business leaders, we need to be careful to build trust rather ...
Rachel, our operations manager, recently surveyed our team members about their preferred communication methods. As I later told Rachel, when I left banking we only had three communication choices: face-to-face, telephone or by mail. Today, the choices are vast and hard to manage, but the most effective communication approach to move a customer to action is face-to-face. In John 6:3 ...
Equipping Others to Do Work Differently
