Rushing To Wait

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Jan 272012
 

Our doctors’ practice has recently combined forces with another practice and moved to a huge, purpose built, ultra modern building. The two practices continue to operate separately so each has its own waiting area. Ours occupies a very large and spacious area with dozens of seats. But why? With an appointment system, why do you need such an extravagant use of space.

When this building was at the planning stage, why didn’t someone take a look at the reason that they end up with a full waiting room. I can think of two reasons only:

  1. The doctors don’t start their surgeries on time. Not hard to fix!
  2. Consultations take longer than the allocated time. OK, so make the slots 12 minutes say, rather than ten. Or leave a catch up ‘blank’ appointment every so often.

These simple expedients could have saved a huge investment in unnecessary waiting space and reduced the frustration of appointment times having no relationship with the actual time of the consultation. Surely this is a classic case of devising a solution before/without considering the problem and its causes. A missed opportunity.

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300

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Dec 202011
 

I do not believe it! (Victor Meldrew) Since drafting this post, Seth Godin has blogged about the 4,300 items he’s written since starting his blog, originally in email format back in 1991. I think I’ve been trumped! Oh well, for what it’s worth, here’s my offering.

I’m going to bore you with a little history! This is the 300th post since this blog started in its original guise as The Watercooler. Some of the early posts were written by friends before I stopped nagging them and took full responsibility for what appears in print. However, my wandering mind first started dumping its thought in written form on the 26th April 2006 when Random Ramblings first appeared on my original website. Then, with the advent of my second website, RR became a monthly emailed newsletter. With this, my third website iteration, I started the Watercooler blog and for some while ran RR as a separate entity. But it seemed a bit unfair to inflict quite so much waffle on the world and so a few months back I merged the streams so now the monthly emailed Ramble is a collation of what appears in the blog, with a some mild editing.

Anyone who writes as much as I have over the years is either very creative or they nick ideas from elesewhere. I fall into the latter category. One of my key influencers is Seth Godin. I was rather taken with an eclectic list of a dozen pieces of advice Seth published recently. My favourites are:

  1. Borrow money to buy things that go up in value, but never to get something that decays over time. (If only the world had taken note!)
  2. It’s almost never necessary to use a semicolon. (He’s completely wrong on this!!!)
  3. Backup your hard drive. (Well reminded.)
  4. Taking your dog for a walk is usually better than whatever alternative use of your time you were considering. (Hmm, no dog.)

And just to finish off, here are three thoughts I’ve borrowed from elsewhere:

  1. A pessimist is never disappointed. (Eddie Kiely, a work colleague from many years back.)
  2. Smile – it confuses people. (Scott Adams – American humourist.)
  3. Strategies are okayed in boardrooms that even a child would say are bound to fail. The problem is there is never a child in the boardroom. (Victor Palmieri, US corporate turnaround specialist.)

Happy Christmas!

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It’s Cold Outside!

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Oct 102011
 

The skies are grimly grey. The wind is giving the trees a workout. A jogger goes past wearing a woolly hat. It’s cold outside. Wrong! The visual clues communicate cold weather, and although it isn’t exactly balmy, it isn’t really cold. A classic case of perception v. reality.

First impressions count. You’ve heard it dozens of times I’m sure. And they do. They are the foundations of our perceptions. But as we have already seen, perception and reality are often significantly different. Shiny on the outside doesn’t always equate to a great experience once we progress beyond the glitz. And a shabby exterior can often mask a great customer experience. But it’s more complicated than that.

A shiny exterior – shop, website, whatever it might be – can give off different signals. Or to be more accurate, we can perceive different things. (1) It looks posh, therefore it must be expensive; (2) It looks inviting, I want to go in.  If we perceive it to be expensive, we may be attracted because we think good service will be on offer, or we may be deterred because we think we can’t afford it. I told you it was complex!

It’s a bit simpler if the exterior looks uncared for. We won’t venture any further. That is unless something/someone has told us not to be put off by the exterior.

You may have perceived that I am talking about buildings, websites, organisations; after all those are the clues I’ve given you. But what about people? If you are interviewing someone for a job or considering hiring them to do some work for you, you are likely to make the same judgements, which may or may not be correct.

So what is the answer?  How should we present ourselves? You could try tossing a coin. Or you could think about your target customers and ask yourself what they might expect to find. And remember that it is usually wise to be slightly over-dressed rather than under-dressed. Which can apply to buildings as much as to people. But maybe most of all you should be you. The real person/business that the customer will experience. After all, they’ll find out eventually, so why not be consistent from the outset?

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Simply You

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Sep 232011
 

I finally got round to start reading Dee Blick’s splendid ‘The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Book‘ while on holiday … well, the weather wasn’t very good! Most of us probably know that we should address our business offerings from the customers’ perspective rather than our own. But sometimes it can be a little difficult to change ‘I‘ to ‘you‘ in our communications to prospective customers. I love the simplicity of this example from Dee’s book:

‘We have 50 years’ experience combined experience and believe we deliver more for our customers than any other company.’

becomes:

‘The team looking after you has over 50 years’ combined experience in delivering results for businesses like yours.‘

Simple common sense … when someone points it out!

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Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

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Sep 202011
 

I have recently returned from holiday in France. We rented a house in the Loire Valley. The owners (English) who lived opposite greeted us. I say greeted rather than welcomed. “Would we ensure we turned off the downstairs lights at night?” Er, yes, why wouldn’t we? “Would we make sure we shut the windows if it rained or if we went out, in case it rained?” ”Just call us if there’s anything you need.” Well, as there are three of us, more than two wine glasses would be good. “Huff and puff.” I could go on with a list of things that would have been nice – for example, enough cutlery so that we could use the dishwasher rather than having to wash knives and forks after every meal. The pictures must have come from a car boot sale – none was relevant to a holiday cottage in France. The whole place looked like it had been set up on a miser’s budget and the attitude of the owners rather confirmed that. It is customary in France to find a welcoming bottle of wine. You’ve guessed!

Chenonceaux (not the house we rented!)

A look at the visitors’ book was revealing. Usually you see entries from people on second or third visits. Not in this one. So these owners saved themselves a few euros on equipping the house and a few centimes on saved electricity from the one person in a hundred* who might leave the lights on. But they lost hundreds on potential repeat business because of their miserable attitude. Penny wise and pound foolish indeed. Or should that be euro wise and centime foolish?

* 67.35% of statistics are made up.

PS – If you plan to rent a house in the Loire Valley I can tell you where not to go!

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