Episode #193: HOW TO UNCOVER 1% IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES

What would companies look like if the C-Suite personnel engaged in the routine duties of every employee position? The annual figures are about the same for start-up companies compared to businesses that shut their doors. After watching transactional behaviors for over 30 years, I can comfortably claim that many of these dead enterprises died on the “Experience Economy” battlefield. Quite frankly, many of these companies went to the boneyard because they routinely delivered dissatisfying experiences to customers. This show looks at how executives can discover small revelations, improvements, and corrections wrapped up in customer-centricity. These 1% changes can really add up, and quite possibly, change the trajectory of a company. Have a GREAT July 4th America!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

All right , Mr . Simple Biz Skyla Guide to show.

Speaker 2: 0:09

Hello everybody. Happy summer. Thank you for tuning into Simple Bizz 360 podcast. My name is Jeff Mason and I'm your host on this adventure. We're now found on Rumble tv. In addition to YouTube, I gtv Gab tv and 28 listening platforms. Thanks for tuning in today. And the first thing I'd like to just say is we're gonna do a, a cool little six, eight week stretch of , uh, caps and t-shirts. Man, it's summer, you know, get outside, get the short sleeves on, you know, get a little sun and let's have some fun. So , uh, first things I want to do today is you're gonna see on my t-shirt, if you're watching this show, it says, o you are , that stands for Operation Underground Railroad. And the reason I'm wearing that shirt is July 4th. There is a movie that debuts that's called The Sound of Freedom, and it stars Jim Cavel from the Passion for the Christ. And Jim plays Tim Ballard, the founder of O U R . You can find their URL at O u r rescue.org. Again, o u r rescue.org. And this is a very, very important story. You don't hear mainstream media talking about it. You don't hear celebrities talking about it or tweeting about it or doing anything about it or with it cuz it's about human and child trafficking. You need to know what's going on out there. You have to know what's going on out there. And so this movie is a great , um, just a great piece to, to introduce everybody to really the depths and things that are happening out there. It's been actually in the can for three years. They finally found Angel Studios to take it on. So it's coming out this weekend, by the way, happy July 4th , uh, to all the Americans out there who are listening and let's get into the show so that today the show is how to uncover 1% improvement opportunities. And this is a message for the executive tier and the executive community. First thing I would say is, guys and gals, why don't you get into some jeans and some , uh, some, you know, old clothing and go down to the distribution center and open up boxes that are intended for customers. I read about the Digital Equipment Corporation back in the eighties that did this in the computer industry and it once a year, the executive tier had to go and uncover boxes. And I can tell you as a young executive , uh, I was saddled and, and, and, and challenged with a lot of different things as well. And I actually at one point , uh, dealt with a , with a frustrated customer. Uh , day before Thanksgiving, I went down to their warehouse. I opened up 42 packages that we sent, and six of them were riddled with errors . So I learned firsthand some of the things we were doing wrong and right. And , you know, some of the, the typing on the packing slip, they couldn't read it under certain light. It was dark in a distribution center. They were having problems. So that was just one thing I uncovered amongst a lot of other things . So that's the first thing. The second thing is pick up the phones, work, the CSR phones. I will tell you as an executive, I I, you know, I wanted to get to know my company a little closer when I went on the team. And so at lunch I would take over one of the phones. I had nine CSRs that reported to me and we had 3,100 dealers and a lot of activity. And so I learned a ton by grabbing the phones and, you know, working the computer and, and actually , um, processing customer orders or requests or questions. And it actually, I learned so much that I, that I realized we were mis misinterpreting a lot of things. It was costing us a lot of money and incorrect shipments product we had to take back under ra. And, you know, I ended up putting a test together for my CSR a hundred , uh, question tests , multiple choice. And only one of my nine CSRs scored out of the sixties. Uh , so really we uncovered a lot of things that we were doing wrong in the interpretation , uh, area, and we, we fixed them and we got to, to take care of that. And the third thing is just, you know, executives, you need to get down to the, the worker level and administration and customer service. Get into the keyboard, get into the mechanics of what your people are doing because it is there. You will un uncover many, many dozens of little pebbles that really equate to a 1% of your business. And you can change, you can pick up these pebbles and change them. You can wash 'em off, clean 'em up and re re um, you know, package 'em and, and make the experience for your customers different because it's the emails, it's the dialogue, it's the way the teams are doing things. It's the way things are written, the way your catalogs are, the way your , uh, website's set up. And , and just these email exchanges, there's a lot of tasks and you'll see that graphics behind me. The task challenge, there's a lot of tasks that we get wrong. I call them weight-bearing loads. And you're , we , we as companies are transferring a lot of silly, very time consuming weight-bearing loads to the company, companies and customers that we're dealing with because it makes life easier for us, but it makes life harder for them. No, that should be inverted. We should make it easier for the customer and we should make it harder for us. So look at your weight-bearing loads and challenge yourself. What can we do differently? So those are the three tips for today . And you know, as always, we love to end every one of our episodes with a lost in the shuffle track. And that track actually appears if you're watching the screen, it'll appear up in the upper right hand corner as a little card 30 seconds before the show ends. You'll see this little thing that says lost in the shuffle. Click it on. That takes you to the YouTube experience. We don't play the song here. And today's song is the Holly's 1969. He ain't heavy. He's my brother. Yeah, the customers are paying our invoices, they are making our companies tick. They're our brother in business, brothers and sisters. So don't make the experience heavy for them. We will see you next week in a 168 hours. Thank you .