Fire proof your office:
Business owners and managers spend a lot of time “putting out fires”. Here is a system to reduce your firefighting time significantly.
Fires are surprises. So we try to employ a no surprise management environment. Surprises tend to come from two sources, your employees or your clients/customers. To reduce and eliminate surprises you need a system to communicate constantly with both, in a confidential and trusting way.
Customers:
Makes sure you have a policy and system to email a survey and call every customer on a regular basis. This should include every level of your company’s management in a rotating time line. Designate A, B and C clients, and set up a schedule of calls and surveys, with reports back to the the President of the company.
Example. You have a three layer management org chart.
A Companies get a survey monthly from the Presidents office and a call every three months in place of the normal lower management level calls.
A companies get a call every month from your director level. Just a :how are we doing type call. This can be replaced with a personal visit.
B companies get surveys every month, and a call every 4 months from the President ( or VP )
B companies get a call or visit from the next level down every 6 weeks.
C companies. Survey every quarter.
Reports on every contact are sent to the Presidents and VP’s office
You will be amazed at what you will hear, and how your fire fighting team becomes less active as you identify challenges before
it becomes a fire.
If you are a small firm, you become the most active level. Call and survey every month or more!
For employees:
Send a post card to every employee with a return address to you ( The President or V.P)
Ask them how it’s going and do they have any suggestions. Put all the returned postcards into a hat and draw
one or two out for monthly prizes. This will encourage participation. Have some one call the employee if they didn’t respond and
remind them to get that post card back for the drawing.
Once again, you will be amazed at the information you will get about your offices, managers and how your customers perceive your service.
Do the same type program of communication for your employees. Have a system that insures the senior level management talks directly to the A and B
employees on a regular bases.
What comes with this is a very important policy of how the senior level communicates bad news or potential problems with the management. It’s
essential that any “surprises” are worked on as a team, and that you never beat up a manager for information received in this system.
Try this and you will be putting away the fire fighting gear far sooner than you would think. You will also be a better customer service organization and most likely find lot’s of lost revenue when speaking with customers.
