systems Archives - Excellerate Associates

Processes, Systems, and Dealing with Breakdowns in Customer Service

February 22, 2024 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

If you’ve been part of our Excellerate Associates Community for a while, then you know we emphasize the importance of understanding how people and processes interconnect. Processes serve as the backbone of an organization, guiding its operations, streamlining workflows, and ensuring your company’s success. Among the many crucial aspects of effective processes, testing, training, monitoring, and how you respond to breakdowns stand out as pillars that uphold accuracy, reliability, and effectiveness.

Testing

Testing is the cornerstone of quality assurance in any system or process. Whether it’s software applications, manufacturing procedures, or service protocols, thorough testing is essential to identify defects, vulnerabilities, or areas for improvement.

Through testing, organizations can proactively address potential issues before they escalate, thereby minimizing risks and optimizing performance. From beta tests conducted during development to comprehensive system-wide evaluations, each stage of testing contributes to enhancing the overall reliability and functionality of processes.

Training

Employees need to be equipped with the knowledge, skills, and resources required to execute processes effectively and efficiently. Comprehensive training programs not only familiarize individuals with established protocols but also empower them to adapt to evolving requirements and leverage new technologies.

Training is not a one and done. Investing in ongoing training ensures that teams remain competent, confident, and capable of delivering high-quality outcomes, thereby reinforcing the reliability and consistency of organizational processes.

Checking Systems for Accuracy and Reliability

Regular checks and audits are indispensable for maintaining the integrity and performance of systems. These assessments serve multiple purposes, including verifying compliance with regulatory standards, detecting deviations from expected norms, and identifying opportunities for optimization.

If you haven’t conducted periodic reviews and evaluations of your systems and processes, you should. You can safeguard against errors, mitigate risks, and bolster stakeholder confidence. Additionally, feedback obtained from checks enables continuous refinement and enhancement of processes, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.

Monitoring

In addition to testing the technical aspects of processes, it’s equally critical to monitor how employees and customers interact with these systems. Employee and customer engagement and satisfaction directly impact productivity and service quality, making it essential to evaluate the user experience from an internal perspective.

By gathering feedback, observing user behavior, and soliciting suggestions from frontline staff, leaders can identify pain points, inefficiencies, or areas for improvement in the workflow so you can make a course correction or retrain. Monitoring employee and customer interactions with systems not only fosters a culture of continuous improvement but also ensures that processes remain adaptive and customer-centric.

Responding to Customer Complaints

Moreover, assessing customer interactions provides invaluable insights into their preferences, challenges, and overall satisfaction with the products or services offered. If you’re finding out a customer was dissatisfied when they post their dissatisfaction on social media, you might be missing a step in your process. While you may not be able to satisfy everyone, a proactive step to ensure you address your customer’s concerns is paramount to preserving your brand’s reputation.

Nevertheless, you can follow your processes and still get a disgruntled customer or employee. It’s helpful to have a process in place to provide a guideline on how your company will handle it. It’s not that there’s a negative review, it’s how you handle it that matters.

It’s important to:

-Acknowledge their feedback and respond as soon as possible offering to discuss their concerns privately.

-Remedy the Situation. If it’s a disgruntled customer and your product or service fell short, acknowledge what you’re doing to remedy the situation, (training, retraining, or product replacement).

-Keep your composure, clarify the feedback, and offer solution(s). It may be tempting to blame the customer but don’t do it. If you’re a CEO of a fitness training company and your client didn’t work out or fulfill on their own promises to their fitness so they blamed your trainers for their lack of results, it won’t accomplish anything to shame them in your response. Intead, focus on your training lessons or signature program. Rather than blaming or shaming them, encourage them. “We know workouts can be time consuming, that’s why we recommend incorporating exercise into your day, even if it is means implementing jumping jacks for 10 minutes every day.”

Processes are the lifeblood of organizational operations, providing structure, efficiency, and scalability. However, their effectiveness hinges on the meticulous attention given to testing, training, responding professionally, and ongoing checks for accuracy and reliability. By prioritizing these elements, organizations can mitigate risks, ensure compliance and cultivate a culture of excellence and adaptability. In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, embracing these principles is not just advantageous—it’s essential for sustained success.

For assistance in aligning your systems and developing your Business Blueprint to scale, join us on April 22-23, 2024 for the Wake Up Profitable Boot Camp for Business Owners or call 734-223-3938.

The Crucial Role of Setting Up Systems and Processes in Business

February 15, 2024 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

In the dynamic landscape of modern business, success hinges on more than just having a great product or service. While innovation and quality undoubtedly play pivotal roles, the efficiency and effectiveness with which a business operates are equally crucial. This is where the establishment of robust and aligned systems and processes comes into play.

Why are Systems and Processes Important?

Consistency: Systems and processes ensure consistency in operations. Whether it’s delivering a product or service, handling customer inquiries, or managing finances, having well-defined procedures in place ensures that every task is performed consistently, regardless of who is executing it.
Efficiency: By streamlining workflows and eliminating redundant steps, systems and processes enhance efficiency. This not only saves time but also reduces costs by minimizing waste of resources, including time, money, and materials.
Quality Control: Standardized processes facilitate quality control measures. By following predefined steps, businesses can identify and rectify errors early in the process, ensuring that products or services meet desired quality standards before reaching customers.
Scalability: As businesses grow, they need to scale their operations efficiently. Systems and processes provide a framework for scalability, allowing organizations to replicate successful workflows and expand their operations without compromising quality or efficiency. These systems allow the CEO or leader to pass on their knowledge in a replicable system that frees them to work on the strategy not just the operations.
Decision Making: Well-established systems generate valuable data that can inform decision-making processes. By tracking key performance indicators and analyzing trends, businesses can make informed decisions to optimize their operations and drive strategic growth.

The Consequences of Neglecting Systems and Processes

Failure to implement effective systems and processes can have serious repercussions for a business, potentially leading to:

Inconsistency: Without standardized procedures, teams struggle to deliver consistent results. This inconsistency erodes customer trust and loyalty, leading to a loss of revenue and reputation damage.
Wasted Resources: Inefficient workflows result in wasted resources, including time, money, and effort. Inefficiencies erode profitability and hinder a business’s ability to compete effectively in the market.
Poor Quality Hits Brand Reputation: Without proper quality control measures in place, products or services may fail to meet customer expectations. Poor quality leads to increased returns, customer complaints, and damage to the brand’s reputation.
Limited Growth: A lack of scalable systems and processes can hinder a business’s ability to expand its operations. Without the infrastructure to support growth, businesses struggle to capitalize on opportunities and remain competitive in the market.
Decision-Making Challenges: Without access to reliable data and insights, decision-making processes are often based on guesswork rather than empirical evidence. Guesswork leads to misguided strategies and missed opportunities for improvement.

Example: The Cost of Neglecting Systems and Processes

Consider a small e-commerce startup that experiences rapid growth due to the popularity of its unique products. Initially, the founders manage most aspects of the business manually, from order processing to customer support. However, as sales increase, they struggle to keep up with demand, leading to delays in order fulfillment and a rise in customer complaints.

Without proper systems and processes in place to manage inventory, orders, and customer inquiries, the business quickly becomes overwhelmed. As a result, order accuracy declines, shipping times increase, and customer satisfaction plummets. Negative reviews begin to accumulate, tarnishing the brand’s reputation and eroding consumer trust.

Unable to cope with the escalating demands of the business, the founders find themselves trapped in a cycle of firefighting, unable to focus on strategic growth initiatives. Ultimately, the lack of scalable systems and processes stifles the company’s potential, preventing it from capitalizing on its early success and ultimately leading to its downfall.

The importance of setting up systems and processes in business cannot be overstated. By establishing and aligning standardized workflows, businesses can enhance consistency, efficiency, and quality control while facilitating scalability and informed decision-making.

Failure to prioritize systems and processes can have dire consequences, including decreased productivity, wasted resources, and limited growth potential. Therefore, investing in the development and implementation of robust systems and processes is essential for long-term success and sustainability in today’s competitive business environment.

Excellerate Associates Assignment

Start by listing the systems and/or processes that would give you the most leverage, save the most resources, and are critical to the operations. Intentionally build a process to address each system, making sure that the processes take into consideration how they are interconnected to one another.

For Assistance

For assistance in aligning your systems and developing your Business Blueprint to scale, join us April 22-23, 2024 for the Wake Up Profitable Boot Camp or call 734-223-3938.

Something Magical Happens When You Take A Break

April 14, 2022 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

There’s something magical that happens when you take a break, interrupt your usual routine, or step off the treadmill of life and be fully present.

You attract new things into your life. The new thing, the new idea, or the new way was just waiting for you to stop long enough to notice.

Next Thursday and Friday, April 21-22, 2022, a cohort of business owners will take a break from their routine to work on their business at the Wake Up Profitable Boot Camp for Business Owners.

As they experience the Entrepreneurial Edge System they will see solutions, create ideas for revenue streams, and expand their capacity to grow without working harder. They expand their capacity to grow because they will see connections that they haven’t seen until now, not because they haven’t tried, but because their thinking gets changed. They will approach scaling their business with a fresh mindset, approach, and way. They will see how each area of their business is interconnected.

If you are inspired to build a scalable, resilient business, outline your ideal team needed to support your scaled business, map out how your clients experience your products and services to increase the lifetime value of each client, and systematize your sales and marketing plan, I invite you to register by Friday, April 15, 2022 which is the last day to register to secure your seat at the April 21-22, 2022 cohort for the Wake Up Profitable Boot Camp. Join us online or onsite.

Business Management Processes: What You Don’t Have Could Cost You Dearly

December 22, 2016 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

business-management-processes-they-cost-you-dearly-when-you-dont-have-them-and-eliminate-inefficiencies-when-you-do You know you need them.

It pays to have them.

It costs you when you don’t maintain them.

What are they?

Business systems and processes.

Good systems eliminate inefficiencies from your business. They even provide solutions to inconsistent cash flow, employee turnover, and customer dissatisfaction.

A systems approach to building a company looks at how each system is interrelated. Most importantly, a systems approach replaces shoot-from-the-hip operations with performance standards, procedures and accountability.

Systems don’t have to be complicated to be effective. A business systems can be as simple as a checklist created to ensure customer satisfaction or more complex, like a CRM or accounting system. Like anything that is built, you’ll want to make sure that it is maintained.

We’ve all been there. You are caught by surprise because you didn’t have a system to monitor or to maintain a business process.

This point reminds me of the story of Tom, a CEO of a growing business. Tom was thrilled to have gotten out of the day-to-day accounting processing and into what he loved most, creating strategic relationships that scaled his business. He got focused on the sales that were generated, but didn’t have a process in place to keep an eye on the expenses.

At the end of the year, he was surprised at the additional overhead, labor and supply expenses. He learned a pricey lesson.

As you move out of the day-to-day activities, remember to develop processes to keep an eye on not only what’s coming into the business, but any waste or inefficiencies that eat away at your profits.

Better yet, create a regular process to ask your team what they could implement, improve, or eliminate. You might just be surprised at what you find.

From Old-School to Head of the Class – The Tale of Two Customer Experiences

August 18, 2016 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

class Recently, a colleague called me to see if I knew a vet that could assist her. I gave her one of the businesses in my network.

Several weeks later, she called me to let me know that she had tried to follow up with the gentleman I referred to her both by phone and email. She even went to his website to see if she could schedule an appointment online. After numerous attempts to try to connect, she simply had to move on to a different vendor.

In a second scenario, I received a post card notice to schedule my dental appointment. A few weeks later, I received a phone call reminder and then a text the following week. With each message, they gave me the option of scheduling my appointment online. At my convenience, I was able to book an appointment and get on the calendar.

Simple. Convenient. Handled.

In the first case, a business owner lost business. In the second case, he retained my business.

What was the difference? Systems.

Not just any system but systems that made for a convenient customer experience. A system that created both leverage for the business owner and efficiencies for the customer.

You may be busy, but you also may be losing clients or customers because you don’t make it easy for them to schedule an appointment with you. It’s time to ask: Are you losing business or falling behind in scheduling because you’re running your business old school?

If the answer is yes, you’ll want to get your systems tightened up before you go out of business. Something as simple as a scheduling software, like TimeTrade, can empower your customers to schedule appointments with you through the phone, email and website.

Once scheduled, the system then automatically sends reminders. This frees up your team to focus on the meaningful parts of providing service rather than making reminder calls.