Grow by Reducing Hate
What do your customers hate about you? If you answer that and find a solution, you’ll likely grow.
Some time ago a story about Elon Musk caught my eye. He saw that there was a complaint on social media about people leaving their Tesla cars at the charging stations longer than required, causing new arrivals to wait and get steamed in the process. He’s smart enough to know that if it’s inconvenient to charge the batteries, people will stop buying his cars. So he instituted a pricing change to punish those who leave their cars beyond the time necessary to fill their battery.
If you don’t have a practice of talking with your customers or a mechanism to get unfiltered information about what they love and hate about doing business with you, you likely have some revenue leaking out of your coffers.
A local restaurant I enjoy has one extremely bad apple as an employee. I don’t go there anymore. I wonder how many others don’t?
I’ve been an Avis President’s Club member for many years, but when I travel to Los Angeles, I see two or three of pretty much every other car rental company bus go by for every Avis bus, so I switched to National. I wonder how many others have?
A local food market I love striped their parking spaces particularly tightly to accommodate more cars (responding to a good problem, being busy!). You’re lucky to get out of a shopping experience without a ding or a scratch — maybe even a fistfight! I still go there, but not as much. I wonder how many others feel the same way? Was there a better solution?
My local Lexus dealer eliminated all the hassles of getting my car serviced. It has loaners, someone will pick you up, and there is an extremely comfortable waiting area with food and drinks. I damn near look forward to getting my oil changed! Guess where I’ll buy my next car?
Whether you service consumers or other businesses, it’d be worth your while to find out who the pissed off customers are. They might be a one-off situation, but they also might be the tip of an iceberg! Find out what they hate and change it. You’ll probably grow your business!
coaches CEOs to higher levels of success. He is a former CEO and has led teams as large as 7,000 people. Todd is the author of, Never Kick a Cow Chip On A Hot Day: Real Lessons for Real CEOs and Those Who Want To Be (Morgan James Publishing).
Connect with Todd on LinkedIn, Twitter, call 303-527-0417 or email [email protected].
Kristin Thielking
12:15 pm January 24, 2017Great perspective and applies to internal customers (read, employees), as well. What do our employees hate about their employment, about working with HR, about the office environment, etc. Listening to your customers (internal or external) and then taking action to respond to what bothers them, will inevitably lead to a more positive interaction all the way around.
Todd Ordal
12:19 pm January 24, 2017Spot on, Kristin! Great comment. Thanks!