BETTE R BUSI N ESS
May 2019
Will we be Should the financial planning profession be worried about the impact of lower cost, technology-driven solutions? Not if you keep the focus on great client service stresses Brett Davidson of FP Advance
H
ow many businesses do you interact with where the service is total rubbish? If you’re like me, then the answer is “far too many”. Let me give you some examples:
My big local hardware chain store, selling hardware supplies for the garden and outdoors, is appalling. Finding a member of staff to help is almost impossible, and those I’ve spoken to are unenthusiastic and know very little about the ten million products that they stock. I don’t blame the individual staff for this, by the way; a fish always stinks from the head. It’s so bad I’ll do anything to avoid going there. The only time I do go is when I can find something I know and understand myself (like a light bulb). I’ve written before about restaurants and eateries that have a ‘Wait Here to be Seated’ sign at the door, only to leave you hanging around there for way too long. It’s a really poor first impression. I also remember one Friday night in a packed bar in London. You can just imagine the scene - seven people across and three deep at the bar – with just two staff trying to serve everybody. Just to rub it in, the bar staff did the fancy dance, juggling bottles and ingredients as it took them five minutes to make one drink. Who could have possibly foreseen that the bar would be busy on a Friday night? Ever thought of opening a beer and wine service area separate to cocktails? I feel so much better for getting all of this off my chest, so thanks for sticking with me. However, there is a very serious point.
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SERVICE STANDARDS The supposed rationale in all of these businesses is that wages are your biggest cost, so keep them low. However, this line of thinking is short sighted in the extreme. Customers walk out the door without buying anything and never come back again, or do buy something but vow never to return. That’s a far bigger cost than a few extra staff, and it never shows up anywhere in the P&L. As one of my old business school lecturers said, “Don’t let the accountants run the company.” I’m sure as a customer you’ve often thought the same thing when you’ve had a poor experience. THE BEST BUY BOOST I recently came across an article in one of my regular emails from Verne Harnish, author of Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It and Why the Rest Don’t. It was about Best Buy, the big consumer electronics group in the US. Hubert Joly, the CEO who has lead a turnaround there, has no retail experience. Best Buy’s stock even fell ten percent the day he was named CEO. However, their stock has quadrupled in the last six years, despite the fact they were supposed to be destroyed by Amazon (like every other retailer). One of the keys to the turnaround has been providing ‘in-home advisers’ who advise on and install the stuff you purchase. Salespeople have been upskilled to focus on consultative selling. In the words of Bryan Bucknell, a self-proclaimed “longtime sales dude” at Best Buy, the sales
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