Performia Australia – How Do You Penalize Your Customers??

Amazingly, some businesses seem to take pleasure in administering penalties to their customers.

When it comes to building a successful business there are many things to be accounted for: finance, sales, marketing, the product itself and production.

One thing stands above everything else and you would think would be the priority of every business is customer  service.

I read an article when I was at Uni that highlighted a point to me that every time a customer/ client interacts with your business then that interaction is the business in the eyes of that customer.

TWO EXAMPLES

I regularly fly around the country and would like to use two local airlines as examples to highlight my point and how it works:

1)      The airline I fly most is Richard Branson’s.  Out of the hundreds of flights I have had with them I have only had a very small amount of problems and these have usually been rectified straight away.

When I think of the flights I have had I often recall more likely times such as when we came to land in Sydney one time and the lead hostess asked “How can you tell the difference between the ground crew and the flights crew?…..the flight crew are better looking”

The crew; always seem to have fun and you feel like they actually want you on their plane.  The end result is that I have asked a lot of people who they prefer to fly and most have said they prefer to fly with this airline.

2)      The other airline on the other hand is the newest domestic carrier in Australia and is distinguished by its big cat logo.  Last week, our personnel department doing the right thing wanted to save some money so flew our trainer back from Sydney on this airline.

When he checked in, he was told that he hadn’t checked in on line so had to pay another $25.  When asked how this could be he was simply told that he should have looked at the terms and conditions –and then made feel really wrong when they told him that he wouldn’t have bought a car without looking at the terms and conditions!  He asked why their terms and conditions would be different to all the other airlines and was told by the Manager that they were not like Virgin or Qantas, or even Jetstar – they were a low cost airline and if he had booked online check- in would have been $20 but as he had not it was now $25 plus a credit card fee of $6.60.  Ironically even the $20 would have meant that they were more expensive than Jetstar and Virgin for the same flight.

Performia spends tens of thousands just on domestic flights and I can say is that this airline is probably not going to have any more business from us, our staff or any of our friends we speak to about this and similar experiences we have had with this airline.

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

If your staff represent your organization and what it is, then there are some steps that you should do to ensure that they represent you in the way that you want:

1)      Have a purpose for your business – the best businesses have a reason for existing and a result they are seeking to achieve.  Know what your purpose is and what the result that you are providing your customers with that will create your future.

2)      Hire the right people in the first place – we talk a lot about this at Performia Australia, but if you have people that are productive and want the best for your business then they are going to create better results in the short and long term.  Contact us to find out more about how we can help you Build Your Team with the most productive and trustworthy staff to work with.

3)      Train your staff – make sure that they definitely know the purpose of the business and the result you are trying to achieve, make sure that they know how to do their jobs competently.  Keep in mind that if you train your best staff they will become the managers and leaders of your business in the future.

4)      Measure the results – measure the results, reward the people that are getting the results that you want and correct the mistakes of the people who are not doing it the way you want it done.

If you follow these steps like I am sure most of you already are, then you will have an organization that has a purpose that the customer will relate to and provided it is a purpose that people need and is helpful, your business will expand.

No matter what business you are creating Performia can assist you to Build Your Team and I trust these tops are helpful.

Greg Paul
Business Development Executive
Performia Australia
greg@performia.com.au
Ph: 1800 603 023

 

©2010 Performia Australia Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Performia Australia is part of an international business that are experts on helping business owners and managers know how to get the best results from their staff as well as recruit the most productive people to  business. Learn the right way to Build Your Team.

Performia Australia sends a weekly email newsletter with tips about how to improve your business.  Send your name, email, phone number and the name of your business to info@performia.com.au to register for the newsletter.

 

Performia Australia – Is Education Necessary?

IS EDUCATION NECESSARY?

In our current business environment education is promoted as an important ingredient to create success.

Many people advertise jobs insisting on a degree or some sort of qualification to be able to get the job.

It sounds like a nice thing to have the person qualified for the job , as it might mean you won’t have to spend so much time training them and you would then expect to have someone ready to do the job from the first day.

In this article I want to look at two aspects of this argument though, 1) what is the real value of education to the workforce and 2) how important is education to the job you are advertising, is it the most important thing; in fact is it actually irrelevant.

1)      A couple of months ago I was sent an article by James Thomson who did some interesting research into the most successful business people in Australia and looked at their educational history  and found the following points of interest;

1. Of the top 30 rich people in Australia only 16 completed University.
2. Out of the sixteen that completed University degrees he points out that four of those went onto success in completely unrelated fields.
3. For example Billionaires James Packer, Kerry Stokes and Lindsay Fox not only did not attend University of the three only James Packer completed High School.
4. Kerry Packer famously remarked about sending James to University; “Why would he want to go there?  To learn to smoke marijuana?”

Before people write and comment in defence of education I should point out that I myself have a University degree and learnt a lot from it that I apply, and certainly the other fourteen were successful in the fields that they studied and like me probably found a lot of value in the effort.

My simple observation though is that whilst it helps some people become successful a degree or advanced education alone is not a recipe to success.

2)      Throughout the world we have noticed that a lot of jobs are advertised with the educational requirements of the job included in the “job advertisement” as a prerequisite to apply.  Obviously it would be nice to have someone come along qualified to start the job straight away but we have seen above that education is no sure-fire requisite to success in the role.  In fact I am sure that you have met educated people who were lazy, unproductive and possibly didn’t even really understand what they had studied.  Then what is important in finding the right person for the job; Productivity – someone who is going to get a lot of work done that is valuable to you as a business owner or manager – yes there are some jobs that require a certain level of education to be able to do the job at all such as a lawyer or a commercial pilot.  If you really look at the job that you are advertising though you will often find if you examine the person’s results in the past and find the most productive person to be able to do the job that the qualifications that you need are easily obtained in a few days or maybe a few short weeks::

1. For example the main financial planning certification required in Australia for a financial planner required about two to three weeks of full time study.
2. Full training on Quicken or MYOB – the main accounting software packages used in Australia can be done in two to three days for someone with no experience, and just a short correspondence course to be approved to submit GST compliance to the tax office.
3. A couple of weeks will train someone fully in Microsoft Office as an expert.

SO WHAT DO YOU DO?

Well, put simply, when you look at hiring someone there are four factors that we would recommend as the important ones to base building your team on;

1)      Productivity – Can you clearly see that the candidate has been able to add value to the organisations they have worked for in the past?

2)      Personality – Does the person fit, will they stay and how will they get along with others?

3)      Motivation – Is the person motivated by the challenge of the job or are they mostly motivated by the pay, conditions and status?

4)      Knowledge – Does the person actually knowledge that leads to increasing their value to the organization, or do they have education that just makes their resume and interview skills look better?

Productivity is the key to selecting who you should bring into your organisation, and if the first three points above are good, the fourth, knowledge, can usually, as we have seen, be easily picked up by the productive and willing new employee.  With knowledge though the best thing to do is ask the person questions about the job that will give you an idea of whether they know what they are talking about or not.  Especially questions about doing the job are a lot more valuable than whether the person has an education or not.

Greg Paul
Business Development Executive
Performia Australia
greg@performia.com.au
Ph: 1800 603 023

©2010 Performia Australia Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Performia Australia is part of an international business that are experts on helping business owners and managers know how to get the best results from their staff as well as recruit the most productive people to  business. Learn the right way to Build Your Team.

Performia Australia sends a weekly email newsletter with tips about how to improve your business.  Send your name, email, phone number and the name of your business to info@performia.com.au to register for the newsletter.

PERFORMIA AUSTRALIA – HOW YOU CAN TELL WHO IS HELPING

Recently, one of our articles talked about the “Most Important Question in a Recruitment Interview” and the fact that you must discover what and how much value they have added to the organizations they worked for in their past jobs.  For example, if you are hiring a salesman, the most important thing you want to know is how much they sold, and fully understand how much value this added, or did not add, to their past employers.  This is before you would go into asking about personality, motivation, knowledge, experience, education etc.

The point was made in that article that these other things are important but not as important as the person’s past results.  These other things become interesting after the person can show that they have added value to their past organisations.

I received some interesting replies from people pointing out that sometimes you can have someone who is personally productive but when they are part of your organization the business does worse.  This is then a question of such things as personality.  But how do you know what to do in an interview?

THE FOUR TYPES OF PEOPLE;

At Performia we know that there are certain people who create results and others that create destruction.  Our founder Marten Runow even uses the analogy of a balloon when he describes people.  He says that they have a certain amount of helium that pushes up and gets a result and a certain amount of sand that holds the person down.  (See the video at http://www.youtube.com/user/PerformiaAustralia#p/u/2/zyoHx7ahEYo)

So how does this work in our business.  I know that there are a lot of advanced ways of looking at personality such as psychometric testing (personality tests etc.) and we even have our own and quite advanced training on how to understand people.  For you the business owner the question is simple.  When this person is in your business what are the results they achieve;

1)      Personally

2)      For the business as a whole.

For example when this person is in your business, you need to look at what they are producing and then how the results go up or down in that area of the business as a whole.

One of the biggest mistakes business owners and managers make is listening to what is happening.  The result of this is the person who makes the most noise and plays the right politics wins.  When you look at the actual results, you can see who is adding value and quickly see who is not.  This is the only measure and the way to grow your business.

We also observe with many of our new clients that staff that are productive and at the same time causing unrest or issues in other parts of the business are caused more by mismanagement rather than the employee.  It only stands to reason that the more managers and executives understand people, the less issues there will be to handle, and the more time and effort can go into ensuring ever increased results.

This is our specialty at Performia Australia.  We have the tools and products to ensure that you only let those that will add value to your organisation join your team, and give you the knowledge to know exactly what to do in any staff situation to ensure your team comes out more prosperous.

Stay Productive

Greg Paul

Business Devlopment Executive

Performia Australia

greg.paul@performia.com.au

Ph: 1800 603 023

Performia Australia is part if an international business that focused on helping our clients build productive teams by getting the best out of their staff as well as hiring the most productive people for their businesses.

Performia Australia sends a weekly email newsletter.  Register for the newsletter by sending your name, email and phone number to greg.paul@performia.com.au

(C) 2010 Performia Australia Pty Ltd All Rights Reserved.

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