The term “hated” was a little misleading. The survey it cited measured customers’ levels of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction as the case may be.) I scanned the companies with the highest percentages of unhappy customers for common denominators.
Frequently cited complaints were unreliable service, incorrect billing, bad customer service, and unexpected extra fees. All of these are simply failures to treat clients or customers the way we all want to be treated. I’ve learned that great customer service is no more complicated that following the old “Golden Rule”—do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
As consumers we want our providers to send us accurate bills, answer our questions when we call with a problem, resolve our complaints with a good attitude and in a timely way. Why would your customers expect less from you?
Regular readers of this blog may remember that my company has an ongoing program that allows Oklahoma businesses to obtain office machines wrapped in the colors of their favorite Oklahoma major college football team. (See here.)
This promotion has been very popular, and on September 3rd, we took it to the next level. On that date, the Oklahoma Sooners faced the Tulsa Golden Hurricane and my company, Standley Systems, was a proud sponsor of the game.
Invited guests attended a pre-game reception with food and drinks, highlighted by a special appearance by OU legend Joe Washington—a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. Our guests were able to obtain a personalized signed football by Joe Washington and have their pictures made with him and their families.
Tim Elliott and son with Joe Washington
We’re a proud Oklahoma company. And this promotion has been a fun and productive way to tap into that Oklahoma pride and serve our customers in an innovative way.
Regular readers know we’re pretty passionate about our home state. It should then come as no surprise that our dedication extends to Oklahoma’s two big state universities—the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University.
Graduates and fans of OU and OSU are fiercely loyal. Partisans of these great schools tend to decorate their cars, their homes, and even their bodies with either OU’s crimson-and-cream or OSU’s trademark orange.
That led us to a discussion about how to help businesses express their loyalties in the office space. What we came up with was our school-logo-branded equipment program. We sought and received the exclusive rights to use the media marks of OU and OSU Athletics to create vinyl wraps for office equipment.
In other words, we decided it was high time to take printers and copiers out of the realm of “boring” and make them exciting again by wrapping them in the colors of Oklahoman’s favorite home teams.
And what about workplaces with fans of both schools? We got that common occurrence covered with our “house divided” versions. They feature both brands!
So far, it has all the makings of a big hit with Sooner and Cowboy fans. You can find out more here.
Here at Standley Systems, we got a wonderful, unsolicited letter of thanks and endorsement the other day. One that actually made me chuckle.
The letter was from Gaytan Broadcasting, LLC, a Tulsa-based company that owns several Spanish-language radio stations. The kind note from Operations Director Allen McLaughlin said, in part (emphasis in original):
Months ago we were approached by Standley Systems regarding our printing needs. Truthfully, I endured the sales call as a courtesy with absolutely no interest in making any type of change.
After reviewing our current printing system and our actual needs, a recommendation was made by Standley Systems. It was well-founded and made solid business sense. More importantly for KXTD it helped solve more than one business problem. Yes, we could save money by using a greatly improved system. And yes, we could save man-hours in the time our staff spent going to buy supplies. But we received much more.
The transition was seamless and, frankly, we are now able to do the type of printing functions that have actually made money for our company.
The reason I take the time to write this recommendation is because of what was not expected in the change. Standley Systems helped us make money.
What busy business owner can’t identify with Allen’s reluctance to listen to what he assumed was going to be another dry sales pitch? What he discovered is that we approach selling consultatively. In other words, we go in as experts in the field of workflow and information/document management and invariably have some insights that will help any business owner willing to listen.
And as Mr. McLaughlin discovered, we can often find multiple ways to add to a business’s bottom line.
Some recent reading in the book of Proverbs put me in remembrance of some key advice for business owners. I came across Proverbs 27:23 which states “Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks and look well to thy herds.”
Proverbs is a wisdom book. And at first blush, a verse seemingly aimed at sheep and goat herders might not appear to hold much relevant wisdom for a 21st Century entrepreneur. But it reminded me of the importance of being diligent as a business owner.
For us, the modern day equivalent of “flocks” and “herds” is our staff, our resources, our growth strategies, and other assets.
The problem is, the busy-ness of life can make it easy to lose a fix on the condition of the things that have been entrusted to you. As business owners we are often pulled in a number of directions.
The demands of family, community, church, and friends all lay a valid claim to our time and attention. But in all of the “good” things we are doing we must keep a diligent eye on our core responsibilities.
I have learned the hard way that it’s easy to confuse being busy with being diligent. Now more than ever, success in business demands the quality of diligence.
Eighty years ago, in the midst of a deep economic crisis, tens of thousands of Oklahomans headed west for California in hopes of improving their quality of life.
Today, something quite the opposite is taking place. Each month since the beginning of the Great Recession in the fall of 2008, thousands of Californians have relocated to Oklahoma or Texas seeking better opportunities and a lower cost for better living.
A recent article in the Daily Oklahoman carrying the headline, “Migration stats indicate reverse ‘Grapes of Wrath’” pointed to this trend:
According to the Internal Revenue Service, Californians relocating to Oklahoma is a growing phenomenon in a sort of reverse “Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck’s Depression-era account of Okies moving from the Dust Bowl to work in the California orchards.
Based roughly on tax return exemptions, the number of Californians moving here outnumbered Sooners moving there by 21,376 from 1999 to 2008, the latest data available.
I’m not surprised. Our pro business climate, affordable housing and lower cost of living make for an appealing quality-of-life proposition.
Here is a map, generated using a special utility built by Forbes.com that graphically shows household moves to and from Oklahoma in 2008.
The graph shows significant movement to Oklahoma from the Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle areas. This trend has only accelerated over the last two years. In fact, an Economic Development Group in which I am a member was recently told by a recruiter that one half of all new private sector jobs last year were created in Texas.
I’m convinced that Oklahoma has many of the same strengths as our neighbor to the south. And that means more and more Californians are going to discover what a lot of us have known for a long time. That is, Oklahoma is a wonderful place to live, work, do business, and raise a family.
Knowing how to delegate routine tasks is a key skill for an executive. It’s one that certain personality types often have difficulty with. Some people feel a compulsion to control everything and remain personally involved in every single detail. Such people quickly turn into a one-man bottleneck and become a main limiting factor in their organization’s growth.
But inversely, there are some things that should never be delegated to underlings.
Administrative assistants are great. But a common mistake is to delegate contact or communication with a peer to an assistant. You can’t delegate relationship. If you’re not talking to your key clients, customers, or vendors, you don’t have a relationship with them. Your assistant does.
Certainly, it’s not harmful to let a peer or client know that you will be asking your executive assistant to follow up with some details or information. It’s simply important to keep in mind that unless that contact is having a regular dialog directly with you, your relationship with them is in the process of deteriorating.
Furthermore, given all the possible channels for communication available to us now—email, mobile-to-mobile text, chat, social media, etc.—it can feel doubly strange for your key contacts to get messages from you via an assistant.
We can’t forget basic business decorum. And we can’t delegate relationships to our assistants. In many instances it is best we do the contacting ourselves.
In the wee hours of February 9, 2011 a huge winter storm hit Oklahoma and North Texas. Oklahoma City itself received nearly a foot of snow as temperatures plunged into the teens.
This was the situation when, at 5:30 that morning, Standley Systems service representative Jeff Watkins was awakened by a phone call from the Oklahoma County Sherriff’s department.
A vital printer at the department had failed and was generating a code that indicated service was required. By 5:45 Jeff was bundled up against the cold and on his way. By 7:35, the sheriffs department’s printer was fully operational.
Jeff’s quick response, dedication and expertise make us proud. And his work is a reflection of Standley’s commitment to matchless service. When we say we’re committed to advancing your workflow 24/7, we mean it.
Over the last few months, we worked with The Journal Record to help recognize the state’s leading executive assistants through this first-of-its-kind statewide contest. See my earlier post on the subject here.
On Thursday, January 13th, Jayna Anderson, Standley Systems’ Senior V.P. of Sales, presented the top honor to Alison Scott, executive assistant with Oklahoma-City based Asset Group Inc., in a special ceremony held at the Skirvin Hilton hotel. The other finalists were Janny Cooper, Office of Gov. Brad Henry; Darlene Drew, Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency; Judie Harris, Francis Tuttle Technology Center; DesJean Jones, Jordan Associates; and Kelly McConnell, Chesapeake Energy Corp.
Congratulations, Alison! And a heartfelt “thank you” to all the outstanding men and women serving in this critical role, and helping Oklahoma’s businesses flourish.
Back in the 1920s an eccentric South Dakota historian named Doane Robinson looked up at the mountains of his native Black Hills region and saw something no one else had. Faces. Huge, granite faces.
They were only there in his imagination and when he shared his idea of carving the faces of great American presidents into the side of a mountain, most people thought he was out of his mind.
Last summer I took my family on a long, wonderful driving vacation through the Badlands of Dakota and to Yellowstone in Wyoming. On the day we visited Mount Rushmore, I couldn’t help but think about the that crazy visionary, and how, more than 80 years later, over two million people come each year to be awed and inspired by his “crazy” idea come to fruition.
Sometime the crazy people are the ones who come up with the winning ideas. Our entire, amazing National Park System was the product of bold, visionary leadership. Courageous, crazy innovators with conviction ultimately persuaded the highest levels of government to set aside short term thinking and create something for future generations.
We could use a little more of that brand of “crazy” in these difficult times.
