Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Customer Care

Spring Cleaning For Small Business? Yes! In December!

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Whether it’s a year where something we once knew as “normal” was part of our reality, or during an unprecedented and unimaginable year of a global pandemic, the abiding management question for all small business owners is always valid: “What’s the best use of my time right now?” And at no other time of the year are we more time-management challenged than in December.

The twelfth calendar month is the only one where two powerful imperatives converge against a hard stop, each demanding a full measure of your time, attention, and resources:

  1. The perennial push to close out the sales year as strongly as possible, while
  2. Simultaneously taking steps to set the business up for a fast and clean start when the New Year dawns on January 1.

Pardon the football metaphor, but in the marketplace game your business plays all year, December is the two-minute drill of your fourth quarter. And in this tight transition period, that fierce competition for precious time and resources requires discipline and devotion to fundamentals.

Our grandmothers practiced the fundamental of spring cleaning when the weather broke warm. In the marketplace, in order to kick off the New Year right, your spring cleaning should happen before then. There are many targets for a business’s December cleaning, but here are five important ones to get you started. [Continue Reading]

“Customers from Hell” and the #1 Business Fundamental

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“This is for one of those customers from hell.”

That’s what a small business owner said to me during one of my road trips across the country to check on how things are going out on Main Street.

“Ann” was responding to my query about her business. Her full answer was closer to, “Business has been good. But now I’ve got to spend most of the day dealing with this customer from hell.”

Turns out, what caused this customer’s alleged domicile to be mentioned is because they required a lot of extra attention – they wanted things the way they wanted them. Like Ann, you might be surprised at my response, which is our next “Business Fundamental.”

“You should never have a customer from hell.” [Continue Reading]

“No Problem,” The Vuvuzela Of Customer Service

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“No problem.”

That’s exactly what the young man on the phone at the bank said after thanking him for not being able to answer my question.

He didn’t say, “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be of more assistance,” or “I’ll be happy to take a message.” Instead, he slouched into the verbal scourge of the 21st-century marketplace: when an employee serving a customer says, “No problem.”

In addition to the sound being harmonically dissonant to a customer’s ear, “No problem” is also cognitively dissonant to the Universe because of its misuse in the following two service scenarios, both inappropriate and unprofessional: [Continue Reading]

Stardate 10920: The Force is with the customer

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– Earth, Stardate 8511 (The Age of the Seller)

Once upon a time, in a galaxy that today must seem far, far away, sellers controlled all information about their products, services, and innovations. Consequently, customers learned what they needed to know from salespeople, who traveled far and wide dispensing information to, and collecting sales from, grateful and beholden customers.

If one had observed such a meeting, the customer would have nodded his head in wonderment as the salesperson revealed the virtual magic that was his product.

And in this land, the Force – control and availability of information – was with the seller.

– Earth, Stardate 10920 (The Age of the Customer) [Continue Reading]

When The UGC Says “Nu-uh,” You’ve Gotta Problem

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Once upon a time, but not that long ago, a brand message could be successful even if it was close to a work of fiction. 

Created by Madison Avenue wordsmiths, copy for an ad or brochure was crafted to manipulate and motivate using puffery, a legal term referring to acceptable marketing exaggeration. And most of the time it worked. In fact, generations of consumers allowed themselves to be manipulated by puffery that became part of the soundtrack of our lives. Here are three Memory Lane examples:

“Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is.”

“Put a tiger in your tank.”

“The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.”

Here’s a local example: “Largest inventory in the tri-state area.”

Since the release of the Internet for commercial use in 1993, the 10,000-year-old Age of the Seller paradigm has shifted in favor of the Age of the Customer. The primary differentiator between the two Ages is control of the information, which your customer now co-owns, including the truth about your products, services, and marketplace behavior. This customer control is derived in part from something called User-Generated Content, or UGC. [Continue Reading]

A Solid Gold Gift From Customers: “Follow Me Home”

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First, let’s establish two maxims: one classic, one new.

Classic: The cardinal rule of customer acquisition – it’s not your customer’s job to keep your business top-of-mind, it’s yours.

New: Every year your online footprint – website, social media, etc. – become less of a destination and more of a distribution center. As a small business, you have to develop a strategy that doesn’t depend upon prospects and customers returning to your locations every time they need/want something from you.

It’s easier to keep a customer than find a new one – everybody knows that. The bad news is, with all of the mega-corp algorithms, online competitors, and cyber-clutter, keeping the attention of even our most loyal patrons is getting harder every day. But here’s the good news: For every example of how technology makes business more complicated, there is a corresponding tool or application that increases efficiency and productivity. Even for small businesses. [Continue Reading]

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