You just don’t know what you don’t know.

Emma Fryer — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:29:07 +0000

Well you don’t do you. The statement sounds a bit philosophical doesn’t it. But actually it is pretty logical. If you don’t know about something, then you simply just don’t know about it.

So what don’t you know?

Did you know that your height is equivalent to the distance between your two longest fingers? See you didn’t know, that you didn’t know that, before you read that did you?
[Of course there will be the odd smarty pants who did know that]

I bet you don’t know how many phone calls you might miss throughout the course of a normal day. Could you even guess? Does it occur to you those that hang up before voicemail kicks in, those who hang up when they get an engaged tone. Ok so you don’t know the answer to that and actually it would be very challenging if not impossible to really work that out. But all the same now you know that they are there.

What you probably know.

However you do probably know what an average sale for your business is worth. You probably also know what your conversion rate on telephone enquiries to sales is.

Would you like to know?

So would you like to get an idea of what calls you might be missing? Would you like to know about potential sales that are going directly to a competitor as your customer couldn’t reach you by telephone? Even more importantly would you like to capture those missed calls and have the opportunity to convert them to sales?

If you would then why not take advantage of a free trial with us at Answer-it and find out exactly what you didn’t know that you didn’t know. Call 01954 253770 or Email us today.

Perfection

Emma Fryer — Thu, 20 May 2010 15:15:40 +0000

What is perfection, and how do we achieve it?

Being or aspiring to be perfect seems to be very important to some people, including me. I was happily Tweeting away when I caught sight of a tweet from a very wise lady in response to someone else I follow. (She knows who she is!)

It literally stopped me in my tracks and made me think. If I am striving for perfection, whose perfection am I striving for? If it is my ‘perfect’ who is to say that my ‘perfect’ lives up to someone else’s perfect. On the other hand if I am striving for someone else’s perfect how on earth do I know what that is, and again this might not be anyone else’s ‘perfect’ (With me so far?)

The thought process continued, directly relating to the Twitter post. What actual difference would any of these forms of perfection have on my business? Would it increase the bottom line? Would it make our clients happier than they already are? Reviewing our testimonials and case studies and thinking about everyone’s differing perceptions of perfection I kept arriving at a resounding; ‘Nothing and No’ answers to both questions.

Perfection, Customer need and Expectation.

On balance then, it seems the realisation is that the service we provide or the item we supply or manufacture needs to be only ‘just’ good enough, to satisfy the customer need and indeed expectation. If there has been extra effort made, you have gone the extra mile and this means the service or product was more expensive to produce, but in reality is little or no different from your competitor who sells at the same price. Is there a benefit? Or is it at the detriment to your bottom line.

Perfection and Consistency?

Surely it is better for your business and your clients to achieve a consistent realistic result time and again, rather than swinging wildly from ‘Outstanding to Disappointing.’

Ultimately I know that my team and I can’t please everyone all the time. BUT we can do our best and strive to exceed our client expectations, at little or no extra cost to the business. At Answer it we have a number of ways of doing this. What do you do to achieve this? Could this be achieved simply by making sure that every time someone telephones your business, the phone is answered efficiently by someone who cares, can take an order, check your diary, give information, forward a call or if required pass on a message?

Emma Fryer » Competitor