Help them help you

Right, It’s been a busy week, let’s get straight into it…

Running a business can be tricky, and this one is more for the folks with an active business, but great for future too.

When we run a business, most of the time is spent doing, it’s creating new graphics, updating the website, new products, customer support, finance etc… all the ‘business’ stuff.

But when we do this, it’s easy to get this work done IN the business, but not ON the business.

Today, I want you to be mindful of your business, spend possibly 15-30 minutes by seeing areas you can improve (and make this habit for continual improvement).

Think of all the tiny areas your business can be more efficient. Where can you save time, remove yourself or make a customers life easier?

My current live example:

At Murgs I get maybe 5-10 emails per week asking where or how to return a product.

I reply, saying:

Here you go, … and if you wouldn’t mind giving me some feedback, how do we make finding returns easier?

Nobody has helped with this mission, so it’s time to fix it myself.

Question: Why can’t people find the returns portal?

My honest answer: because they’re lazy and cant be arsed looking.

The real answer: Because if it’s easier to be lazy than it is to do a job, people will do the lowest difficulty task that leads to the outcome they want.

Look at Spotify, they made listening to music with their app/software MUCH easier than pirating it off the internet, so they came out victorious.

New question: How can I make finding returns easier than emailing me to ask?

Off the top of my head:

1. Ensure returns info/links are prominent on all emails, even the first dispatch one, as sometimes people may only check 1 email, and that’s probably the first or last they’ve had.

2. Make it easier to find the returns in the main menu. Make it bigger, brighter and very obvious that we aren’t hiding it, without making it so blatant people may assume everyone is returning items and it’s in your face.

3. Educate cold, warm and existing customers on the email list how it’s done, and how effortless it is. Make them read the email and go ‘Ah that’s really simple’ and convince them to believe needing help to do a return would be ridiculous.

One area like this may take an hour or two to get done, but if this cuts your emails down by half, you’re saving loads of time and interruptions.

Also, don’t forget, problems scale with your business. If you get 8 emails a week now, if you 10x your sales you’ll likely be getting 80 per week.

Solve this problem now, and potentially reduce it forever.

And that is my common thought process for problems. There’s so many areas you can simply make a customers life easier, and I encourage to do this now and take back more of your time.

Anyway, that’s all for now, it’s time to get back to work,

John

Needing some personalised guidance?

I now offer bespoke 1:1 mentoring to a very small group of 5 people maximum. If there are places available, please contact me for more information, and a discovery call to find out more about your business and if I can be of assistance.

If you do think this could be of use, shoot me an email at [email protected] and I’ll we’ll go from there.

For more information, click here: https://www.johnsbusy.com/c/mentoring