Mine Your Own Business

The Dirty Truth - A Personal Testimonial

 

 I’m a big fan of testimonials.  It’s pretty easy to find good things to say about a product when you are writing an ad.  It‘s much more meaningful to have someone else use your product and then be willing to share their thoughts.

My personal testimonial has to do with cleaning carpets.  We have been in our house for five years and so I decided that the white carpeting throughout could stand to be cleaned.  (There are only two of us in the house and the entire first floor has wood floors, so the five years is not quite as bad as it sounds.)  Frankly, I like to clean carpets or, more correctly, I like to dump the dirty water.  There is such a sense of accomplishment to watch that filthy water go down the drain. 

In the past, I have rented a Rug Doctor from the local grocery store.  Knowing that our Riccar and Simplicity divisions were introducing a new, rental carpet extractor made by our Tornado division in Chicago, I decided to give the machine a try.  I’m sure glad I did.

 

In its simplest form, a carpet extractor puts down soapy water and then pulls it back up.  Many extractors also offer some form of agitation (hopefully of the carpet, not the user).  The results obtained depend on how well the machine does each of these things.  Since it was designed for commercial use, the Riccar / Simplicity unit has a commercial quality pump and vacuum motor.  These did an excellent job of spraying cleaning solution across the entire width of the machine and then of vacuuming up the solution to allow for fast drying. 

However, the biggest advantage of our machine seemed to come from the machine‘s brush agitator used to clean the carpet.  It’s much like your upright vacuum brush roll and did wonders getting dirt out of the carpet.  Both on the wall to wall plush carpets and thinner area rugs, the results were easy to see (even if you didn’t see the dirty water).

Is there anything I would change?  Well, it is heavier than the Rug Doctor because it is made for commercial use.  No lightweight plastic used here.  However, I did lift it into and out of my car without hurting my back and it was not at all heavy to use. 

Overall impression:  I’m proud to know that our associates build this great product right here in the USA and confident that people using this product will be pleased with the results.         

Quality, not Quantity

Here it is, almost 5:00 in the afternoon in the Midwest.  Nothing special about that.  It happens every day at just about the same time.  But, today's different.  I've been watching the usual sources all day.  Twitter tweets.  Blog posts.  Emails.  FaceBook.  LinkedIn.....NOTHING!

I haven't come across a single thing today that I think is worth sharing with you.  And I never want to waste your time by posting something just for the sake of posting.

 So have a great Thursday evening!  I'll keep looking and I promise I'll have some good content for you tomorrow.

Get It Right the First Time

Thanks to Donna Popacosta for pointing out this story from the Chronical for Higher Education.  It seems that Princeton University Press is recalling 4,000 copies of a book called "Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District", by Peter Moskos.

"Why would they do that?", you ask.  Well it seems that the 245 page book has more than ninety (90) spelling and grammatical errors.  Did I mention that the publisher is Princeton University Press?  They promise to have the corrected books on store shelves before the end of the month.  Although the errors slipped by Princeton's proof readers, Moskos' friends and family noticed the mistakes.

This is obviously an expensive and embarrassing episode for the publisher and we can all learn from it.  As the old saying goes, "There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over."  Mistakes happen, but it always pays to check and double check our work before handing it to the customer, or sending it to the printer, or hitting the "send" button.  Some mistakes are more costly than others, but this one is a doozy.  A publishing company bearing the name of one of our country's most prestigious universities shouldn't let something like this happen.

Minor Annoyances

They (whoever "they" are) say "don't sweat the small stuff".  And that's good advice.  But wouldn't it be a great day if there wasn't any small stuff to worry about?  Wouldn't it be great to know that we didn't do anything, no matter how small, that gets on our customers' nerves?

The trouble is we don't usually get the credit for making our customers lives a little easier when we eliminate the annoyances from their lives.  Case in point:  As you might imagine, I get a lot of magazines.  Most of them are free, but there are a couple that I pay for.  Of course, they all have to be renewed occasionally.

I don't get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I fill out the subscription paperwork and it fits nicely into the postage-paid envelope.  That's expected.  But this morning I filled out the paperwork for one of the paid subscription magazines and it didn't fit into the envelope.  The freebies all get it right, but the one that actually costs money (a lot of money, in fact) sends me an envelope that's too small!

Here's the thing.  Mismatching the form and the envelope isn't a big enough deal to complain about.  I'm not going to write a letter to the other couple of dozen magazines praising them for their consideration.  But shouldn't somebody at the magazine have thought of this?  They must send out thousands and thousands of these subscription forms every month.  Who dropped the ball?

We all have our favorite examples of minor annoyances:

• Hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of twelve
• "Some assembly required" items that require a special tool that only Bob Vila would have in his tool box.
• "Batteries not included"
• Knives and scissors in clam shell packaging that you can only open with a knife or scissors.

Of course, the point is for you to ask yourself, "Is there anything that I do, no matter how small, that aggravates my customers?"  "If so, how can I make it better?"

Competition today is fierce.  You need every possible advantage.  Making our customers lives easier is something that we can do at little or no cost.  And a lot of little things can add up to some big sales.

How about you?  What gets on your nerves?  Let us know.

Delivering the Promise

There was an interesting feature this week on AOL about frozen entrees.  The article compares the picture on the box with the contents of the box of twenty different frozen dinners.  I'm not sure anyone really expects the "Savory Beef with Cheesy Broccoli" to look as good as it is on the box, but some items scored better than others.

Most of us baby boomers remember the first frozen "TV Dinners".  They were pretty awful.  The mashed potatoes had a consistency that's hard to describe, kind of like hot salty pudding.  The meat was usually rubbery.  And the peas were a color that doesn't actually occur in nature.  It always seemed like the "desert" would escape from its cubicle and ooze all over the rest of the meal.  Maybe the younger generation has higher expectations.

The whole idea of customers' expectations certainly applies to retailing.  Most consumers are smart enough to know that when they shop at one of the "Marts" or "Depots" they're going to get little, if any, service.  But they go there anyway.

But what does the customer expect when she shops at an independent retailer?  The expectations are definitely higher.  The question is, Does the experience of shopping in your store exceed her expectations?  If it doesn't, there's a chance she may not come back.  If she's expecting Salisbury steak and you're delivering rubber meat, you're disappointing her and cheating yourself.

If she knows that she can return an item to Wal*Mart and get her money back and your store has a gigantic sign that says "NO REFUNDS!!!", you're not delivering the promise.  If she expects knowledgeable sales assistance and your best salesperson is talking on the phone and ignoring her, you're not delivering the promise.  If your display models are dirty and don't work properly, you're not delivering the promise.  If you don't take checks, or if you won't accept her credit or debit card, you're not delivering the promise.  If you don't deliver the best shopping experience the customer has ever had, you're not using your competitive advantage.

Let's be honest.  You can't compete with the box stores on price, but you can kill them with service.   They can't deliver the level of service and quality that you can.  Even if they could, their employees aren't motivated or trained to do it.  You're the expert.  You have a stake in the business.  You have to deliver the promise every single time to every single customer.

What steps do you take in your store to ensure that you deliver the promise?

Benchmarking

Benchmarking.  Isn't that something that just applies to big companies? How can I get useful information from my competitors?  They're not public companies that share their operating information with the public?  I don't think it will work for me.

These are reasonable statements.  Each of them holds a grain of truth.  But DHL (yes, that DHL) has a great website, their Business Resource Center,  with some interesting information for small businesses.  For example, "Benchmarking:  How You Stack Up Against the Competition" puts some of the misconceptions about benchmarking to rest.  in particular the article provides links to two on-line benchmarking sites.  One, BizMiner offers detailed information on a number of industries.  Unfortunately, there isn't much coverage of retail.  And, the site charges for its information.

Another site, BizStats provides less detailed information but it has two advantages.  One, it does include retail businesses and two, it's free.  While the information is somewhat generic, for example you won't find specific categories like sewing machine retailers, or vacuum cleaner retailers, or lighting showrooms, you will find more broad classifications like Retailing-Furniture and Home Furnishings. 

BizStats has a lot of interesting information including sales per square foot, profitability, and safest and riskiest businesses. 

The second article, Building Business Benchmarks gets a little more into the "how to" of benchmarking.  For example, don't get hung up on finding businesses that match yours exactly.  There is plenty to be learned from other industries.  As the article points out, an airline benchmarked an Indy 500 pit crew to learn about fast turnaround and hospitals benchmark pizza delivery companies to improve their response times and the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain to improve customer satisfaction.  One hospital system that I'm familiar with drastically improved their system of ordering and distributing medical supplies by studying a major retailer.

Another source for good benchmarking information is the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award web site and the sites of the various state and local quality awards.  Winners are obliged to share their application information (except for confidential items).  Many of the winners have been small businesses.

No matter where you get your information, you can waste a lot of time reinventing the wheel.  By drawing on the experience of other successful businesses, you can improve your business without going through the pain of a trial-and-error approach.

Puttin' on the Ritz

"Whenever I enter a Ritz-Carlton hotel, I know 'I’m not in Mediocreville anymore!'”  That's how Bill Kalmar begins his Quality Digest article on the Ritz-Carlton Hotels.  Kalmar's article describes the "love fest" between him and the upscale hotel chain.  Of course, there's no question that "the Ritz" sets the standard for quality service.  Even the name itself brings luxury to mind.  The phrase "put on the ritz" means to live in elegance and luxury.  (Dictionary.com).  But it takes more than just a "ritzy" name to create a "ritzy" experience in more than 60 hotels with more than 40,000 employees.  How do they do it?  The Ritz has a system in place that allows each of those 40,000 employees to duplicate the experience in each of those 60 hotels.  The system is very much the same in every single location yet it allows each employee the freedom to make sure that each guest is treated exactly the way they want to be treated. The Ritz has won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award twice, in 1992 and 1999.  More important, they use the Baldrige criteria as the basis for their quality system and use the feedback from the Baldrige examiners as a blueprint for improvement. How do we know it works?  One way is to take a look at what it costs to stay in a Ritz-Carlton Hotel compared to the competition.  A rate comparison of the R-C in St. Louis, MO with the  competition shows that the least expensive rack rate (for a "quality room") is $279.00 for one night, July 16, 2007. A deluxe room at the five star Chase Park Plaza Hotel is $189.00 for the same one night.  While the Ritz is located near the St. Louis County Government Center, The Chase is across the street from St. Louis' Forest Park and convenient to downtown.  There must be a reason why travelers are willing to spend $90 more per night at the Ritz. Personally, I've never stayed at either hotel (too rich for my blood), but I have attended events at both and there's a certain customer-first attitude that's present at the Ritz from every staff member that you meet.  (They refer to their associates as their "ladies and gentlemen".) You might think that it's easy to be good when you're charging an extra $90 per night per room.  But I like to think the reverse.  It's easy to charge an extra $90 when you're that good.  The R-C is so good, in fact, that you can attend a session at their Leadership Center where they'll teach you how they do it.  A one day session will set you back between $1,400 and $1,700 per day.  The price does include a continental breakfast and lunch. If those prices scare you, you can get an idea of how the Ritz does things by reading their 1999 Baldrige Application Summary.  It's available from the Baldrige web site. But, to boil it down to just its simplest points, the Ritz-Carlton system focuses on satisfied customers, no matter what it takes, and empowered employees who are trained to make the customer happy, no matter what.  They use what's called the CLASS database to keep a record of what the customer likes and doesn't like.  Once you've stayed at the Ritz and mentioned to the housekeeper that you like an extra feather pillow on your bed, every time you stay at one of their hotels in the future, that extra pillow will be waiting for you when you arrive.  And every employee has the ability to make entries in the database. We can all take a lesson from this high-end hotel chain.  Customers like to be pampered.  They're flattered when you remember what they like and don't like.  They're loyal to businesses who take care of them the way they want to be taken care of.  And they don't mind paying for it. There are a number of tools on the Baldrige web site that you can use to evaluate and improve your own business.  Check them out.   

Tags: Ritz-Carlton Hotels, Baldrige Quality Award, Customer Service, Small Business

Self-Evaluation

First a disclaimer: If you’re interested in trophies, the one at the left can be bought online from Dinn Brothers for $72.00. A Baldrige Award will cost you many, many times that amount. If you want to improve your business, increase your profits, make your customers and employees happy, and get more enjoyment out of life, read on. If you want a trophy, save yourself some time and expense and check out Dinn Brothers’ web site.

Yesterday, we talked about some of the self-evaluation tools available from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Baldrige Award people. Today, I’d like to introduce you to the “Criteria for Performance Excellence”.

First, there’s no magic in the criteria book. It’s basically a series of questions, covering seven categories of business management. When you answer the questions, you paint a picture of your business. If you apply for either a local award or the Baldrige itself, you will receive feedback from experts in business excellence that you can use to improve. It’s the feedback, not the award, that gives the program its value.

But, even if you never apply for an award, the process of asking and answering the questions will give you more insight into your company than anything you will ever do, short of hiring a professional consultant and spending thousands of dollars.

 The seven Baldrige categories are:

• Leadership
• Strategic Planning
• Customer and Market Focus
• Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management
• Workforce Focus
• Process Management
• Results

In scoring for the award, the Results category is worth 450 out of a total 1,000 points, so obviously results are very important, especially to you.

It’s important to mention that the Baldrige process, either at the national or local level, doesn’t tell you how to run your business. They don’t care what your process is, they just want to know that you have a process.

It takes time to look at your total business and identify the processes, but once you do, improvements should come easily. Quality isn’t something that you do. It’s not something extra added to your daily task list. In fact, good processes save time and money and deliver a better product or service.

 The Organizational Profile

The first section of the Baldrige criteria is called “Preface: Organizational Profile”. If you looked at the E-Baldrige Organizational Profile mentioned in yesterday’s post, then you know the questions asked in the profile. In broad terms, the Organizational Profile asks “What are your key organizational characteristics?”  and “What are your key challenges?” If you can answer these two questions, you’ll have a pretty good handle on your business. If you can’t answer them, then finding the answers will be an education all by itself.

If you haven't already, download a copy of the Criteria for Performance Excellence from the Baldrige web site.  Print out the Organizational Profile section  and the  associated instructions.  Read them  while you're at lunch, or in the evening while you watch TV.  Can you answer the questions?   If not,  where can you get the answers?   Some questions you'll be able to answer off the top of your head.  Some may take some research.  Ask you staff for help.  Make it a fun project. 

If you can answer every question,  you will know more about  your business than  the majority of  business owners in the United States and you'll have a huge advantage over your competition.   

And, it won't cost you a dime.

 

Improving Your Game

Every weekend, millions of people watch professional golf on television. The number of people who compete in the pro tours is incredibly small and the number who actually ever win a tournament is even smaller. Recently, on the men’s tour, the number has been just one.

If you do a book search on Amazon.com for the term “golf instruction”, you will find 1,058 titles. If so few people ever win anything, why all the interest in instruction? The answer is simple. People want to improve their game. They want to be the best that they can be.

I was thinking about this because I recently received the 2007 edition of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria. The Baldrige Award, and the forty-four state programs modeled after it, recognizes the best businesses in the United States. Like pro golfers, Baldrige winners are the best of the best. Since the program began in 1988, there have been just 68 winners out of 1,139 applicants. 

In spite of this small number of winners, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the agency that administers the Baldrige program, has distributed more than 2 million copies of the award criteria since 1988.  It's estimated that, on average, each book is copied once, and the criteria can be downloaded from the NIST web site.  Obviously there are millions of companies using the criteria for self-improvement with no intention of ever applying for the award.

Award winners are chosen because they can serve as role-models for others. In fact, one of the requirements for applying is that the winners must be willing to share their expertise. Copies of winners applications are available for download.  The goal of the program isn’t to hand out awards, the goal is to improve American business. Since you’re paying for the program(s) with your tax dollars, it makes sense to take a look at what they have to offer.

NIST offers a number of no-charge materials on its web site that can be very helpful in improving any business. The first, and easiest to do is the E-Baldrige Organizational Profile. It’s just 22 questions to identify what you know about your business. You answer the questions online and immediately receive a simple break-down of how you compare to other businesses.

A second tool is a questionnaire called “Are We Making Progress”. It’s a questionnaire for your employees that helps identify strengths and areas for improvement. It’s available from NIST in either paper or electronic format. Again, the questions are easy to answer and will help you understand what your employees are thinking. You may be surprised!

Next time, we’ll take a look at the actual criteria and how you can begin to use them in your business. For now, you can learn more by visiting the Baldrige web site. Download a copy of their “Getting Started” booklet or a copy of the complete criteria.  You can check this list of state and local programs to see what your state has to offer. Many state programs offer individualized help for companies who want to improve their performance either free or at a nominal fee.  If you have any questions, you can email me.