March 28, 2024

You’re the Boss Blog: Yes, You Treat Customers Well. But How Do You Treat Employees?

Creating Value

Are you getting the most out of your business?

I’ve been involved in owning and coaching businesses for about 35 years. I have gone from being one of the worst employers I have ever seen to being one that is at least pretty good. The biggest lesson I learned was that if I ever wanted my employees to treat my customers well, I had better treat my employees well. It took me 10 years to learn this lesson, but once I did, our customer service went from O.K. with lots of effort to great with minimal effort.

For me, this starts with personal responsibility. I wanted all of my employees to be personally responsible for what happened in their area. I recently wrote a post about this in which I talked about treating your employees as experts. The problem was that I wasn’t taking responsibility for myself. I wouldn’t accept mistakes, and I would often blame others or, even worse, try to justify my behavior. Finally, one of my employees suggested that I take a look in the mirror and start walking my talk.

This was a very tough lesson for me to learn. Being young and successful doesn’t always encourage humility. I was no different. But I can tell you that once I stopped blaming others I became a much easier person to work with.

Dan Sullivan of the Strategic Coach talks about this all of the time. He is referring to how you treat those outside of your company, but I think it’s even more important to be considered trustworthy by those who work inside. Mr. Sullivan’s four principles are:

  1. Show up on time.
  2. Say please and thank you.
  3. Do what you say.
  4. Finish what you start.

None of these things are hard to do. It just takes awareness that those who work with us have feelings and want to be treated with respect. But how often do we treat employees poorly and then turn on the charm when we’re with a customer? Our employees see this behavior, and they don’t like it. Today, when people I am working with or thinking about working with don’t follow these rules, I get much less excited about the prospect of working with them.

Here’s another way to show respect: Do you respond promptly to e-mails that come from outside your company but take days to respond to those that come from inside? My advice is to make sure you state your e-mail policy publicly. For me, it’s simple: Don’t send me long e-mails, and I won’t send you long e-mails, either. And you can expect a reply within 24 hours. My own rule is that if an e-mail is more than three paragraphs, I’ll pick up the phone and make a call. Yes, I realize I’m a little older than the average business owner, but telephones still work remarkably well when you need to have a complicated conversation.

Of course, you also have to return phone calls promptly. When employees call you, it’s probably about something important — a problem they believe only you can solve. Sometimes, the problem will be something that should not have come across your desk. When that happens it’s important for you to refer the caller to the proper person. And you need to follow up in a day or two to make sure the problem was resolved.

Following up is essential. Your employee took a risk. He or she called the boss with a problem. Don’t take this lightly. Calling back to make sure the problem was handled shows respect and builds trust.

Of course, there will always be times when we blow it. I know that I occasionally fail to get back to people promptly or let something fall through the cracks. I recently had a person I wanted to work with blow me off three times. Finally, he did get back to me and let me know that he had had several deaths in his family. I felt terrible — but at the same time I was annoyed that he had not let me know why my time was not respected.

Your employees have the same issue. They will know if you blow it. So start with an apology and admit your mistake. And then make sure you don’t do it again, at least not for quite a while. When I make a mistake in communication with someone, I consider myself on probation. It doesn’t matter whether the person works for me or not. I have to make sure I don’t do it again. Otherwise, trust will be lost.

At the end of the day, trust is what it’s all about. If we don’t treat our employees the way we treat our best customers, they will stop trusting us. And it’s very difficult to get that trust back.

Josh Patrick is a founder and principal at Stage 2 Planning Partners, where he works with private business owners on creating personal and business value.

Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/yes-you-treat-customers-well-but-how-do-you-treat-employees/?partner=rss&emc=rss

You’re the Boss Blog: Drilling Down: Andrew Sullivan Decides to Start His Own Business

Dashboard

A weekly roundup of small-business developments.

This week’s Dashboard roundup of small-business news includes a link to a news article about Andrew Sullivan’s decision to leave The Daily Beast and move his popular blog, The Dish, to his own, subscription-based site. Mr. Sullivan writes about politics, the economy, business and culture, but is he ready to be a small-business owner? It seems he’s off to a good start, with more than 16,000 subscribers already signed up — delivering almost half a million dollars in revenue almost instantly. We decided to ask him a few questions as he enters the world of entrepreneurship.

Do you have a business plan?

Yes: to make enough money so we can do The Dish without relying on a sugar daddy or ads.
 

How are you financing this business?

The readers and my savings.
 

How many employees will you have?

Five and two interns. We don’t expect to ever go beyond seven.
 

What’s keeping you awake at nights?

Adrenaline and bronchitis: a horrible combination.
 

Are you going to try to do everything: manage the site, produce content and run the business? Can you delegate?

Patrick is in charge of all the administrative, legal, payroll, insurance matters and he is a relentless machine. Chris is in charge of design and technology issues, and he’s a creative insurgent. And yes, I delegate.

Do you have any business mentors?

Matt Drudge.
 

If all your wildest profit dreams come true, will you start voting Republican?

Only if they stop being lunatics.
 
Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. You can follow him on Twitter.

Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/drilling-down-andrew-sullivan-decides-to-start-his-own-business/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Media Decoder Blog: Andrew Sullivan Leaving Daily Beast to Start Subscription Web Site

3:06 p.m. | Updated Andrew Sullivan, the prolific writer who has built up his following for his blog “The Dish” first at the TheAtlantic.com and then at the Daily Beast, announced on Wednesday he is striking out on his own with a Web site dependent entirely on subscription revenue.

Mr. Sullivan said in an announcement posted on “The Dish” that starting on Feb. 1, he plans to charge readers $19.99 a year or whatever they might want to pay to subscribe to his site. He said that he spent the last dozen years blogging and trying to figure out how to make his venture profitable. He tried pledge drives for six years and then shifted to partnering with larger institutions like the Atlantic and the Daily Beast. He said he decided to make this change now since his contract with the Daily Beast was finished at the end of 2012.

“We felt more and more that getting readers to pay a small amount for content was the only truly solid future for online journalism,” Mr. Sullivan wrote. He added “the only completely clear and transparent way to do this, we concluded, was to become totally independent of other media entities and rely entirely on you for our salaries, health insurance, and legal, technological and accounting expenses.”

Mr. Sullivan is starting his new company, Dish Publishing LLC, with his two colleagues and executive editors, Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner. Mr. Sullivan said that he has received the support of Tina Brown, the Daily Beast’s editor in chief, and Barry Diller, its owner, to keep “The Dish” on the Daily Beast Web site through Feb. 1. Then the site will shift to his old address, www.andrewsullivan.com.

Mr. Sullivan said in an e-mail message that he could have remained at the Daily Beast under a new contract. But he said that as he and his two partners started negotiating, they “began to see the overpowering logic of real independence.”

He added that the Dish is going to stay in New York City, where he and his two business partners are based, “for the foreseeable future.” He added, “We need to be together as a group.”

In his announcement, he wrote that the new venture had decided not to depend on advertising for revenue because of “how distracting and intrusive it can be, and how it often slows down the page painfully.” He added that advertisers also require too much effort for a small company. “We’re increasingly struck how advertising is dominated online by huge entities, and how compromising and time-consuming it could be for so few of us to try and lure big corporations to support us,” he wrote.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/andrew-sullivan-leaving-daily-beast-to-start-subscription-web-site/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Bucks Blog: Ways to Make Life Joyful

Paul Sullivan writes in his Wealth Matters column this week about a pursuit mainly for the wealthy — yachting.

While the market for yachts weakened significantly in the wake of the financial crisis, prices seem to have bottomed out and demand is rising again, Mr. Sullivan writes. Still, maintaining a yacht and paying for fuel remain expensive — a fact acknowledged by two owners Mr. Sullivan spoke to.

But both offered similar reasons for owning a yacht — the joy it adds to their lives.

While most of us could only dream of such an indulgence, there are many other ways to make life joyful, and they cost far less. We’ll name a few — a day trip to the ocean, a week away from the office, a roller coaster ride, a meal meant to linger over. But we’d like to hear your suggestions.

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/ways-to-make-life-joyful/?partner=rss&emc=rss