Customer Experiences in 2023

This week, I had some thoughts about what I presume almost all of us are experiencing IN SCALE. The rapid decline in customer service and more specifically customer experience.

Our family has been able to save HUGE amounts of money by simply not going out as much. Eating out has become a rare event. Trips to Target and Wal-Mart have declined heavily (that could be a little more).

The way you are treated systemically by a general under-engaged workforce leaves you feeling wildly underappreciated. We don't need to be fawned over but a general appreciation and GRATEFULNESS would be a pleasant return to an earlier era.

Here is where I place some of the blame:

1. Management (or lack thereof) has lost the ability or concern for accountability. Express the core values, procedures, and overall mission. I suppose this could be blamed incredible difficulty in finding replacements. But that cycle delivers the same result. People stop shopping your business, so you won't need new people anyway. Find the right people, train them to be customer focused, hold them accountable and watch customers tell others about the refreshing experience. These become the UNICORNS.
2. Social Media and Mass Media (almost the same now) are poisoning the outlook and general understanding of what it means to be decent and feel good about yourself for helping others.

Those narratives are not supported generally and continue to cause what I fear will be an even deeper dive into mass national depression.

Be Positive

I don't want to be morose but I have NOT given up on this society and certainly not this country !!

I listened to a book by Jeremy S. Adams last year and it not only clearly spelled out exactly what I feel we are seeing, but some context on some things we may be able to do to reverse or at least slow it down.

Link-Hollowed Out: Jeremy s. Adams

Is it possible to care at scale?

After 25 years, I stopped using a certain credit card for business. It was easily millions of dollars worth of transactions over that period. Did anyone at the company notice? Did anyone care?

I still remember losing a client in 1987. Small organizations pay attention and care very much about each and every customer. Verizon and AT&T, on the other hand, don’t even know that you and I exist.

Small family farms have significantly higher yields than neighboring farms that are much bigger. That’s because the individual farmer cares about every single stalk and frond, and the person with a lot of land is more focused on what they think of as the big picture.

But it’s pretty clear that if you add up enough small things, you get to the big one.

Caring at scale can’t be done by the CEO or a VP. But what these folks can do is create a culture that cares. They can hire people who are predisposed to care. They can pay attention to the people who care and measure things that matter instead of chasing the short term.

Large organizations have significant structural advantages. But the real impacts happen when they act like small ones.

Seth Godin

In Other News !

We (my team and I at Restoration Advisers) have been burning the candle at every end we can find on a few huge projects we had set for our ROCKS (ask me about EOS) for Q1.

1. Client On-Boarding signature e-course.
2. A brand new platform that is a membership and library for industry-focused business education and resources. This is called Restoration Nation Academy. More on that soon.
3. We now are analysts and coaches for DISC Assessments. We have always coached using DISC with clients and their teams. We now have a page to make it simpler (and more affordable) for anyone to purchase assessments themselves for current or new hires. Here is that link if you want to better understand your team, how they are wired, and how to better lead them. Restoration Advisers DISC Portal

I will attest to this....You had better know your team well and where they grow uncomfortable when you are trying to do massive things. These are the scary places where things can go south simply because of communications.

That's it for me tonight.