Hiccups are seriously annoying! You try and try…and try, and sometimes they just don’t seem to stop. No matter what you do. No matter how much water you drink, breath you hold, or times you stand on your head, they just don’t go away. The same thing can happen with your client experience. There’s always a hiccup. No matter who your client is, what the project is, whatever jig you dance, there’s always a darn hiccup. What to do?
Thankfully, unlike finding a remedy for actual hiccups, which work 60% of the time every time, you can find a real remedy for your business hiccups. How? Do a little research. Look back on your most recent projects, the last 10 or so, and find out when there was a hiccup, and what it was.
If there were multiple, start with the first one. And then trace that hiccup back to its source – was a product delivered late because the vendor was slow in their communication? was a product ordered incorrectly because a client’s email regarding changes was lost in a messy inbox? were clients resisting paying their first fee because the initial conversation regarding fees was unclear? Do this for every hiccup you had over at least the last 10 projects.
Once you find the source of your hiccups, code them according to type, and you’ll begin to see a pattern. What is your most frequent type of problem? And what is the source? Messy inbox? Not enough staff? Unclear contracts? But don’t stop too soon. Your actual source of the problem may be farther back than you think.
For example, you may think that you’re having trouble converting prospective customers to new customers because of high fees. But, investigate and see if that’s the real problem. Maybe it’s something else? After you some digging, you realize that you lose customers who pay by credit card but not by check. How? Maybe because they don’t pay immediately after you’ve sold them on the design, and have to call in the next day to give their card number? But, if they pay by check you can take it immediately?
Maybe, or, maybe the person who picks up the phone to take their credit card is rude, or careless, or not attentive? And the customer decides then and there to stop the whole deal because if someone who is taking their money is that rude, imagine what they’ll be like after they already have the money?! The answer isn’t always a direct one.
It’s worth it though to look back at your most recent hiccups, and continually dig until you’re sure you’ve found the source of the problem. And then, solve that problem. Do that for every problem you typically have. Over and over. It may be work, and it may be tedious, but it’s worth it.
Imagine if you could spend more of your time finding more customers, the right products, and doing what you love, designing. And spend less time trying to remedy yet another hiccup. Of course you will always have hiccups in any business, but doing what you can to reduce the amount you have on a typical basis frees you up to do the work that you were made to do, create beautiful, jaw-dropping homes.
If you’d like help investigating and remedying your own hiccups, learn more about how I can do just that here!
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