The SimpleBiz360™ Podcast focuses on inspiring continuous improvement. Our content features "One Minute One Question" shorts, interviews, and monologues designed to ignite contemplation, and action.
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Today we break out the coffee as we look at the business concept of creating “wiggle room.”
Is wiggle room good, or bad for business? Join us as we examine both sides of this two-sided, topical coin. The bottom line, as always, is how can “wiggle room” affect the customer experience? This show contains a few, thought-provoking questions that only business owners, operators, managers, and executives can answer! Enjoy the Holidays!
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning into this episode of the Simple Biz 360 Podcast. My name's Jeff Mason, I'm your host on this episode, and you can find us on YouTube Rumble 28 audio platforms. And our home is simple biz three sixty.com , where you can get our book , uh, same name, simple Biz , 360 Timeless Business Tools. There's 255 of them in there so you can get 'em , uh, get the book or audio version Kindle or paperback right through our website, or you can go direct to Amazon. So today we're gonna be asking a question, is wiggle room good for business? So this is a question that you're gonna have to ask yourself and ultimately answer, but what is wiggle room? I'm sure you've been hearing it or heard of it, but it's, you know , for me, I , I'll never forget, A CEO took me into a conference room, lock the door behind us, or close the door behind us and said, Hey, you can't write an email like that, Mason. You, you can't pigeonhole us into a tunnel. You've gotta give us the ability to exit stage left or exit stage right? Or, you know, pivot stage left or pivot stage right? And basically he was saying, in essence, we need , uh, to be able to lie if we have to. So the question is, you know, is wiggle room good for business? And I think there's two sides of the coin that we have to look at. Wiggle room is good sometimes for business and we need to use it, and sometimes it's bad. So let's look at the good first. You know, it gives management opportunities to manage behind the scenes. It does, it gives you the opportunity to let you know progress , um, develop, it lets you gather information. Maybe you don't have all your facts yet, so you've just gotta kind of hedge the customer and tell 'em, listen, you know, we should have everything sewn up. We're gonna try to get it on that truck by Thursday. Today's Monday, we're working like crazy to make it happen. Just stay tuned. I'll , I'll be in touch tomorrow or Wednesday to tell you. So it avoids, you know, a premature doom and gloom message that maybe , um, you know, if you said, no, we're not gonna make that truck Thursday, the person's, you know, gonna do something, maybe cancel the order and all of a sudden you could get it on the truck Thursday. So you , you know, we don't wanna, we don't want to get in a position where we prematurely spread doom and gloom news, you know, but it gives you the ability to save the day by managing the variables behind the scenes. Sometimes we can do that and , and so many of our orders are, are handled that way. We just don't know it. You know, we don't always know that, that that chicken parmesan that we got, that the first cutlet fell on the floor after it was cooked and, you know, the kitchen had to scurry about to make it happen another way. Maybe they took it a platter entree from another customer, maybe they didn't, and sometimes maybe we don't need to know. But bottom line is, it came out with all the other meals and we don't need to know all the details, right? Well, sometimes that wiggle room does, it gives the company an opportunity to figure out a lie or in many cases gives, you know, the company an opportunity to develop a lie, right? And I've been with companies that say, Hey, listen, we're not gonna make that delivery Mason . I don't care what you tell your customer. Just, you know, it's not gonna happen on Thursday. It's gonna happen Monday. So you tell 'em whatever story you want, you know, not always healthy, right? And then it, it, it , you know, in that case, wiggle room, if it's on the negative side of the coin, yeah , we get to skirt some issues. Maybe the customer's been asking us for updates and we just don't wanna pigeonhole ourselves to an answer. So we keep kind of answering questions we wanna ask ourselves rather than the one the customer's asking or the ones the customer is asking. And you know, it also, in that case, on the negative side of the coin, it allows us to em admit , um, you know, potentially costly and negative details that the customer that we don't want the customer to know. Now, a friend of mine one time, crazy story, and this is where I'd love to end on this quick episode, you know, he tells me about a situation he had where samples were finished incorrectly, went out to a big household name. Everyone listening to this podcast would know this customer is went out to the customer, customer was, you know, really upset. Next thing he knows, he needs to kind of regroup. And , uh, you know, a day goes by and the next day, three executives come to him with three printed versions of different lies. Hey, tell the customer this. Hey , no, I got a better one. Tell the customer, wait a second, you might wanna look at this first, or this is a better story. Well, my friend chose the truth, went to the customer, said, you know what, we ha we mishandled this. It was our fault. We made the mistake. Can we have an extra week to re you know, get these samples out to you in the correct finish? And the customer said, fine. You know, and all that rigamarole when in essence, the truth work . So my suggestion is, you know, ask yourself, when is wiggle room good for your business? And you know what, the truth is always an okay direction to go. So we're gonna leave you today with , uh, Leonard Skynyrd , 1975. Am I losing? And you know, what? Are we losing a customer? No, we don't want to. It's too costly to replace a lost customer. And obviously this is, you know, Lynyrd Skynyrd singing about a , a relationship, a friend. But enjoy it. Am I losing 1975 Lynyrd Skynyrd. We will see you in 168 hours.
