Managing Customer Expectations for your Small Business – SBS 74

The Small business show at businessshow co. Episode number 74 for Wednesday, July 6, 2016. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show by, for and about small business owners here at BusinessShow co. And I am Dave Hamilton here in Durham, New Hampshire.

And I am Shannon Jean in Lafayette, California. Hey, you know, one of the best things about this show is every time we start, I have a smile on my face.

Oh, same. Yeah.

And that's really a good thing. I love it. And no matter how stressed I am, about like, you know, half hour before we start, I'm like, okay, what are we gonna talk about? Nobody wants to hear what I have to say. You know, that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

But when we sit down and chat for a couple minutes and get rolling, it's. And usually when I, when we end, I have a smile. So that's. That's a plus. And that's really good enough for me to.

To.

To keep doing it as long as we can do it.

As long as we can do it. I totally agree. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll turn this into a business, though, I mean.

Oh, yeah.

We'll start earning money and doing all the things that businesses do.

Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll talk about that next week, too. I've. I've got some. We've been laying some plans for a new business that. Based on what I've learned here, I always say that, you know, I've learned the most here on this show. So we're going to talk about that next week's show.

Awesome, man. Now I'm. Now I'm looking forward, folks. You might just want to jump right ahead to 75. That's right. That's right.

But this week, I'm ready to rant. You know, we have this kind of rule. Well, it's not kind of, but it's rule. We don't swear in the show. But the experience that I've had today in the past couple of days dealing with a couple of entities would definitely cause me to want to break that rule. Okay.

We can always flip the switch in WordPress. If it goes south, man, it's fine. We've got to switch for it.

So that's pretty good. That might be important. Yeah. So, you know, as I was going through these. Both of these experiences with two completely different entities, it. It just keep coming to my. To my head. This is about managing customer expectations.

Oh, the Scotty principle.

I don't. What is that?

Oh, I always. I always thought Scotty on Star Trek, man, was the best because he would tell the captain, oh, we can't do it. The DM crystal. And then it would. He would. He would make it sou. Impossible. And then it'd be like, yes, give me 30 minutes, you know.

Yeah.

And get it done. Over promise, under promise, over deliver.

That's right. And that's, you know, exactly right. And you can avoid so much frustration on the part of your customers or your clients or whoever you're dealing with just by understanding and managing that expectation so they're not beating their head against the wall when something happens that they're just not prepared for. And let's. Let's talk about the first example. So I've said it here, and for all the bankers out there or people in the banking industry, let me apologize right now. But I can't stand dealing with the bank. I just can't stand it. And I mean, it's just it. And maybe that's why I love, like, alternative payment, you know, stuff better and all this stuff.

Like now an email that I got from you a few days ago makes a whole lot more sense. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is good.

Yeah.

And, you know, the thing about it is, so. So I don't like banks. The people at the bank are usually very friendly. Wonderful. If you have to. God forbid you have to go into the bank, which is just the absolute worst in my opinion. I just can't stand it. Lovely people. But there is. There is no sense of urgency. And, you know, we talk a lot about living a charmed life. Well, I definitely do. But I'm running and hustling at a high velocity to be able to do that. And when I go in the bank, I mean. Anyway, I don't want to digress.

No. One of my credit cards was compromised earlier this morning. I got a text message. You know, no problem. I could call the bank. And I had to do this show, but I had something else I needed to do before we recorded this show. And I'm on the phone with them going through their process, and I'm like, look, you know, I need these cards right away. Because, folks, we're pre recording these shows while I'm traveling. I'm traveling in like two days, and I'm planning on using that card that you just canceled.

And you need a card. Yes. Yeah.

And it's the same one my kids use. They have one in their names. And this woman. And so I. I have to do this today. And this woman is so nice and so painstakingly slow about her process. Finally I said, look, I Appreciate all the pleasantries. I. I have 90 more seconds I can spend on the phone with you, and then I have to do something else. So we really just got to cut to the chase here. And you can be rude to me and just, you know, direct, and we're good. She's like, got it. And she went through. It was great. But, yeah, I mean, I feel you.

Yeah. So I've been. I have a. You know, I have a local bank because, you know, we have. We have several of them, but for. For this particular business venture that we have this local bank, and they're, again, wonderful people. So it's always a bad sign. This is a bank. It's in a very great neighborhood and everything. But they have one of those doors where only one person at a time can enter the bank. Have you ever seen those?

Oh, yes.

Okay.

So it's crazy, but it is.

So we're talking about slowing you down before you're even in the bank. And, you know, I'd never seen one before until this. This bank opened a branch there. So I have been having problems. This particular business that we run, we typically have to send a wire transfer out to various suppliers at least once a week. Could be more, could be, you know, several times. And there's all. You know, wire transfers are pretty straightforward, but there's lots of rules about, you know, cutoff times and this kind of thing or when you can send it East Coast, west coast and stuff. So, long story short, I decide that this local bank cannot handle the way we need to process these wire transfers. Okay.

Okay.

So I look online, I'm like, okay, what am I going to do? What's the best thing? I got to get an online bank that I can. That's just, like, fast, and it can handle this stuff for me. So I do a tremendous amount of due diligence research, read every single thing I could possibly find, reviews, all this kind of stuff. Read like. And mainly just focusing on wire transfers because all I need is a savings account or a check or whatever they want to do, but I have to be able to send quick wire transfers because we. This is a business. We bid on things often, and when you get them, they want payment. Like, basically yesterday.

Right.

Of course they want to get paid. And the fact that we can pay them so quick is one of the reasons they like doing business with us.

They continue to work with you?

Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. It comes in. It's tremendously powerful. You don't drag your feet. They pay more attention to you.

Yeah, well, I mean, like, like anybody, I'll give somebody a discount if they're a longtime customer. Not because, not only because they're a longtime customer, but because I know I don't have to chase them down for money.

You got it right.

And if they are someone that I, that I know I have to chase down for money, then I'm not going to give them a discount and I'm going to tell them why.

It changes things.

Yeah, it changes things.

That's right, it changes things. Yeah. So anyway, I finally find this online bank. I'm not going to use any names, but this bank looks great.

Unfortunately, as you're telling us that you've done all this research, I'm thinking, awesome. I can't wait to find out the name of this awesome bank that you have.

Okay, so it's Ally Bank. It used to be gmac. It used to be the auto finance part of GM that they sold off when they had some problems a few years back. And they have an auto division, but they have a regular bank division. Huge bank, been around since the 30s, yada, yada. But strictly online now, they offer. I mean, it's pathetic to get excited about one getting 1% on your savings account, but that's kind of where we're at right now.

That's right.

And yet you do it. So again, I talk to them, I use their chat, I get on the phone, I ask the same questions over and over and over, trying to find the person that says, oh, that won't work. You know, we're not set up to handle this wire transfer thing the way you need to do it. No, I didn't hear anything. So I transfer a rather substantial amount of money to this new account, open it up about a month ago, and slowly start to use it a little at a time to try to ease myself in. Because, you know, we've talked, we've talked about this before with PayPal or Square or whoever you use. If you open a brand new account and the next day you want to do, you know, $50,000 transactions or $100,000 transactions, they're gonna freak out.

They're gonna freak out a little bit.

Yeah, they freak out. So you have to start building up some, you know, history with these guys. So I call like, hey, you got the money? Great, I'm gonna send a wire probably next week. That. Okay, great, no problem. So I start to send the wire, you know, do some wires and first couple go through, no problem. All of a sudden I start like every time. One thing I noticed is every time I Send a wire, they would call me. And I said, oh, they're calling me back just to confirm it's a new account.

Sure.

Turns out no matter what here, I fill out this information online, quick and easy. Send this wire transfer, trying to meet this cutoff. So they have a 3pm Eastern time cutoff. Okay, okay, I can deal with that. But I send the wire at, let's say, 01:00 Eastern Time, expecting that wire to go out so my supplier can get it. I don't get a phone call to confirm the wire until after 3pm oh, it's very bad. So it doesn't sound like. And again, I wanted to ask you, if I sound unreasonable, you need to tell me. So I'm trying to be really nice. The second time it's happened, happened today and it really screws me up because not only does my, it doesn't seem like a big deal, but now the supplier, who's a huge, huge company, is going, I'm going to tell them, oh, you're not going to get the wire now until tomorrow. And because they're so big, it takes their accounting department 24 hours to alert this division.

Right.

They got the payment, which now means they can't ship that order before I, you know, because I need the order shipped out quickly and it's going to bump me into the holiday now. So the whole process gets backlogged and everything. And so I finally, I get a supervisor on the phone. I'm trying to be really nice. I said, look, let's talk. This is me lecturing this giant, enormous bank. Let's talk about my expectation. Can you show me where in any documentation or any sort of thing that, that I could read that would tell me if you send a wire at, you know, noon Eastern time, we may not call you back for two to three hours to confirm it. And that could delay the wire for an entire day.

Yeah, like if you want to have a wire go out today, you need to get it into us by X time.

Tell me it's got to be in by 9am Whatever it is. Whatever it is. Yeah, Nowhere. And it, you know, so frustrated and not, not the least of all because my cell phone signal kept dropping out and as I was having this conversation with them.

But I had the same problem when I was talking to the, to the bank with the credit card. I had to call him three times. Yep. Oh, that. Gosh. It's that really, that just smooths out the whole experience.

It makes it, it makes it much better. So it got me to Thinking is any. Anytime I interact with businesses, large or small, you know, I'm always thinking of, okay, well, how could this be better? And one of my big complaints, if you're around me long enough, and maybe if you've listened to the show enough, you. You may have picked this up. But it seems like these larger companies don't. The expectation is that they don't have to provide the kinds of. The level of services that we, as small businesses, at a minimum, must provide. Yeah, you know, things like not calling you back. That was the other entity I've been dealing with for a week and a half. You know, things like, you know, today. So they called me to confirm this wire, and I basically have to do the entire wire again on the telephone.

That's how you go through the whole. It's a very pedantic process. Yeah.

So I tell you, I say, why can't I just call you?

Why am I skip the wait?

Of course. Why do we have this wait? Can I just call your wire department and, you know, give you the information? You can ask me all these confirmation questions and we'll go from there. And that'll speed everything up. She says, oh, that's just, you know, that's not very efficient. That was. That was her answer.

Seriously?

Yeah. So I held my phone and did not slam it on the table as hard as I possibly could. And I took a deep breath and I said, you know what? I know this is not your fault, you know, Right.

You, personal fault.

That's not her personal fault. You don't set these policies, this kind of thing, but, you know, when you're setting up your business, one of the simplest things you can do to avoid headaches for not only your customers, but yourself and your employees is managing expectations. And I'm going to just, you know, I'm going to come back to it over and over again as a theme over time. Because, you know, if you, if you. Or if your employee tells somebody something's going to be done in an hour, you know, you. That's your. That you need to do that if.

You think you gotta get it done in 45 minutes.

Yes. If you need an hour, tell them an hour and a half.

Yeah.

You know, if it's gonna cost them, you know, $500 to get something done and they want an estimate, you know, tell them it's gonna be 5 to 750 or whatever, so they're happy when they get the 5.

Yeah.

Don't. Don't tell them it's gonna be 3 to 500 and when you're planning on billing them 500, you know that you will become a hero. And Dave, you made the comment, I think, I don't know if we were even recording yet, but under promising and over delivering. Oh, yeah, that's is one of the secrets, I believe, to small business success and making people happy. And if you want to read results of that, go look at good reviews of businesses on Yelp or Google or those kinds of things. You'll see time and time again that theme. Oh, they said it was going to be, you know, $100 and it was only 75. They said it was going to take two hours and they got it done in an hour. I mean, those kinds of things are fantastic. On a similar, you know, you know, front, I would say there's certain words in your business vocabulary that you should not use and they're related to this things like should.

Should is a word you should never use.

Yes, that's correct. Because you know, should is like, well, are you or are you not? You know, it should only be this. It should take this much time because you're, you're immediately setting yourself them or at least your customers. Well, that, you know, if you said it should be done, why isn't it not? You know, yes, it will be done in this time.

Yeah.

Another big one is might. It might be, you know, you got to get those out of your vocabulary when you're talking to your customers. And I'm sure there's a whole nother laundry list of, of those kind of words, but those wishy washy, vague kind of things. And so I guess so. Let me ask you, Dave, do you think that I'm being unreasonable with being frustrated with Ally bank about this process?

No, I don't think so. I mean, it, you, it makes for a good story here. Obviously, you know, you can't let it consume you because it is not something that you can change. Right.

Why I changed my behavior.

You can change. Right. You can't change their behavior.

No.

Sometimes if it's a really small business, sometimes you can change their behavior. It's worth having the phone call that you've had. Right? Like that.

Yeah.

Listen, you know, this is my expectation. I apologize if I, you know, if I misread what you were promising. Here's what I need. Can you. And that, you know, I mean, this is like Psychology 101. Right. But turning that conversation into an I need not you should. Right. I need. Because now you're the customer. Right. And so it's, here's what I need out of, out of this business relationship. Can you deliver that? And, you know, with a large company, you can often make the assumption the answer is no, but sometimes you'll be pleasantly surprised. Sure. You know, but with a small company, sometimes they can, you know, modify things because they, because they're nimble, as small companies usually are.

Yeah.

So changing it to that not only makes that conversation with, with your vendors smoother by, by putting the, the blame on you. Right. You know, I need this. You just can't provide it for me. So, you know, it's not you, it's me. Right?

Yeah. And if you can't, if you can't, that's perfectly, that's okay.

Just, you got to tell me.

Yeah, but I don't want to go through all the, you know, work to, to get it set up, to start the relationship, to do all these things and then find things out.

And sometimes you have to go through this lesson because for the next bank, you at least know one more question to ask.

Yeah, you're right.

But you don't know all the questions.

No.

Right. You know, I, I have, I, I have gone through this, as I'm sure you have. You know, this process funnily. Funnily enough with a, a form of banker with or form of banks is getting mortgages. Right. For my homes. And the first one, you know, they would just, they ran roughshod all over me. It was, you know, the day before the closing, and they're like, well, we need this paperwork and we need that paperwork. And, you know, I'm driving all I had to, like, you know, take the day off of work, you know, and run all over creation getting these people what they needed. And I thought, well, never again, you know. And the next time I went into doing a mortgage, it was like, okay, you know, is there. How can we avoid these things at the end? Oh, it won't be a problem. No problem. And sure enough, it was a problem. Okay, the third one, I drew a line in the sand. I said, here you go. I want a mortgage from your bank. You've approved me, but now you're going to need some due diligence, whatever that, you know, is for that particular relationship. We close on, say, the 30th. Today is the first. You have until the 10th to ask me for anything that you want. And if by the 10th, you don't have everything you're going to need, tell me and I will find another bank. And if on the 11th, you decide if you, if on the 10th, you tell me Nope. We have everything we need. And on the 11th, you decide you don't have everything you need, all you need to do is call me and tell me you cannot write the loan. That is the only thing you may call me and tell me is we cannot write the Note. Loan. Not Mr. Hamilton, we need one more piece. Nope, we're drawing the line. And running that hard line with banks has been great. And I had one four days before the clip. We need some paperwork from you. Nope, we're done.

That's nice. I like it.

And I started to walk away and they said, oh no, we don't actually need that. Like, okay, that's fine. But again, it's me. Right? I needed to learn the process and to manage that relationship. Now as a small business owner, it's insane to me that other businesses don't treat their customers. I mean if I treated my customers like that, like, oh yeah, we're going to sell you some advertising. This is great. Here's everything we need from you. And your ad will start Monday. Great. On Thursday they give it to me. Friday at 4:00', clock, I call them and say, oh, I'm going to need these four other things from you in order to start your ad. It's like, wait a minute, they're, they're paying me money and you know, they're my customer and I'm, I'm not being straight with them. It's crazy. It's crazy.

You'd be out of business.

I'd be out of business. So it drives me crazy when I deal with these well regulated businesses that, you know, have a higher barrier to entry. Like you and I couldn't just start a bank tomorrow. We could start a bank, but it requires small one. A small one. Yeah. Well, you know, that's fine, but we could start a bank. But it would, it would require going through a lot of hoops. Right. There's a high barrier to entry simply because it's a well regulated business. And so. But once they're there, they tend to get complacent as they grow.

Very, very. Yeah. And I think there is a lot of disruption in the banking industry right now. Totally. Yeah. And I think, you know, as we see traditional banking and local branches disappearing and those kinds of things, you know, maybe they'll get. No, they won't. You know, I can, I can only dream that they're not going to get better. But it's, it's just very frustrating to have to deal with that. And I have, you know, like today for example, I have One of our cars getting new tires, getting ready to drive up to tahoe for the 4th of July and need to get them in there. Okay. Tires are going to be what time? They don't have the tires. We have to get them in. But they'll be here tomorrow at 2 o'. Clock. Okay, well at 11 o' clock I get a phone call, says hey, the tires are here. So you know, awesome. You're already beating my ex. What my expectations are.

An expectation that they set by the way. They are able to control your expectations. And the lesson to us as business owners is we are able to control our customers expectations up to a point.

Yeah. Well, what happens with like I will tell you at Tech Restore, what happens is you want that customer, right. Or whoever's checking them in. If it's a local customer, if it's somebody that's sending in something or you know, customer buying a part, whatever it is you want to do, whatever they're asking you.

Yeah.

And you have to be so careful and you have to be confident enough to say no. Oh, I can't do that. And if the customer says okay, then I have to go buy it's elsewhere, have to repair it elsewhere. That's okay. Yep, you want that. What you don't want is the guy that calls at 4pm and says, can you get this out overnight? And it's a huge order and you want to promise because you want that, you know, thousand dollar sale and you're gonna, you're gonna disrupt everything and FedEx is gonna come and you may not get it out, you know, and, and so you have to be careful. And, and I think one of the things you have to also that doesn't work. And this is why we have very non, let's see how to say this. Non lawyerly, you know, non legalese terms and conditions. Because number one, you know, most of your customers are never going to read your terms and conditions. And despite what you put in there, if you pull out those terms and conditions to try to explain away something or that, oh, by, by scheduling your, you know, thing with us or by buying this product, you agreed to this thing, which nobody reads. Nobody reads, you're gonna have a bad time.

Yeah.

I mean, your customer's not gonna be happy. No, they're, you know, you just have to stand. I mean, just don't bury it in there. Tell them up front. I mean, we have a thing at Tech Restore for local, you know, repair, but even all of them when the repairs come in with touch id because there's you know, if they've damaged their touch ID sensor in any way, it doesn't matter what we do there. If, when that cable is replaced, it doesn't matter if it's a original OEM part which we use, their touch ID will never work again because that cable and the chipset, the IC on the cable and the secure enclave on the chip and the board are synced together.

Actually, that's really good. I mean, it's totally separate from the constraints of this show. As a geek, that's really good to know. Oh, yeah, it means that Apple has done. They're crazy about security. Clearly they've put a stake in the ground about this. But, wow, that's awesome. Except it's not awesome if it's my phone and you have to fix it.

I mean, that's where. So that's right. So instead of burying, oh, this touch id, you know, we're not, we're not liable for this in your terms and conditions. We just, we have a form that they read. It's, it's very brief. It's, you know, a couple of paragraphs. It just kind of, it says what we, what we're telling them. Hey, you know, if you're. In the event that your touch ID sensor, your cable, your button is, is damaged, it. There is no way to, you know, we can put a new one in, but your touch ID won't work. Your home button will work, but the.

Only way you could do it, for you to do it, would be to replace the entire motherboard and touch ID sensor from another phone. That's one set, right?

And that's not going to happen at that point. So you're giving them that data up front and we have people that say, oh, I'm not signing this, and they leave. And that's fine. Because, you know that the opposite experience, when they, you know, they're not aware of it and you have to have a supervisor walk up front and say, oh, by the way, once we opened your phone up, we found that your touch ID sensor was damaged when you dropped your phone. That's a bad experience for everybody and your customer. You're not managing your customer expectation. You're better off giving it to them up front in very straightforward language. You know, in the case of that, we get their signature, so we have it on file, and then we just keep it on file. And if they bring in stuff in the future, they go, yeah, I've got that on. You know, I'm aware of that, that issue, because we are not going to be replacing phones because of this. And. Right. It's just you can't bury that stuff and expect it to excuse you because it actually does more damage when you pull out a 10 page terms and conditions. And people are like, what? You know, I just saw that little button. I didn't know what I was agreeing to. So that, that's my rant. I think there's a lot to be said. And, you know, you can just be a hero to your customers and they will respect you so much more. And your employees, not only your employees, your customers will respect your employees. Your employees will respect you as a business owner.

Totally.

Because. Because you're looking out for them too.

You're not trying to do that. You're making their lives. We did something similar. You know, when, when people buy ads from us, there's various types of ads they can buy. And each one of those we need something different from the customer. And I mean, it's, you know, like, don't send us flash ads. And because, you know, the iPhone and the Mac, you're going to waste your money if you're doing podcast ads. Here's what we need from you. But we've made it. We had it overly verbose. Right. And we shortened it all up to one page. It goes out with every insertion order we send, and it's part of the insertion order and it's all written in very human English with a little bit of, you know, confident humor in there.

Yeah, I like that. We do too.

We've done this a really long time. If you have any questions, just ask, you know, but that kind of thing. And yeah, not only do the customers like it better, but my salespeople love it because.

Yeah, that's great.

Because they're not sending something to people that they're like, oh, they're gonna hate this, you know?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

That's not what you want.

Yeah. You don't want them to cringe when they have that conversation or slide that document across the table.

You know, I need you to. My boss says you have.

Yeah.

No way. No, no.

Yeah. And we've talked before. We've had some episodes in the past. We've talked about, you know, not only are your customers your customers, but your employees are really your customers.

Right.

I mean, you're, you're, you're. They have to be, believe. Right. They have to champion and feel confident in what they're doing, and they have to believe in it to really to be the best. And so your job as a business owner is to bring those Things, you know, out for them to where they feel good, they feel comfortable, and they know you have their back.

So here's. Here's a. Here's a bit of homework for everyone listening, including the two of us talking. Ask your employees what part of their day or what part of their job makes them cringe. That's good, right? Because that's honestly how this particular thing for us came together. It was like, all right, things are going well. We don't have anything to do, so let me start picking up rocks and see if I can find snakes under them.

Yeah, that's right.

It's like, tell me what you don't like. And like, well, you know, this. Okay. 20 minutes later, we had that document rewritten.

Yeah.

You know, this isn't. But it existed for a year and a half, and it's in the form that it was in because nobody said anything. They're like, wow, you know, it's not that important.

Like, okay, but they don't want it. They don't want to say it to you. Right. They don't want to. You think you're the most approachable guy.

On the planet, you have to ask the question. You can be. Yeah. But you have to make your. You have to be actively approachable. That's. Yeah, that's the. That's the. That's proactively. Proactively.

Proactively. Because the minute you sign somebody's paycheck, you are not as approachable as their buddy or their. Whatever.

It's just not going to happen if you're like me. And sometimes when you're really busy and somebody asks you a question, you get a little frustrated with them, which. What? Well, sometimes it's the wrong time for that question, but it sends a mess, and it's awful to do to people, especially when you're the one that signs their check, because they're like, well, okay, I better just back away.

Yeah, that's good. We'll post that up in the show notes, too, and maybe we'll do a little survey or something, try to get some folks their feedback. We'd like to know. And maybe even some point we could get people to share their terms and conditions. That would be a really good thing to look at.

We can post a copy of ours.

Yeah, we can do us. We can do us, too. So anyway, thanks for listening to me, folks. Share your story about managing customer expectations, that kind of stuff. We'd love to hear it. Feedbackusshow co. And I'm always looking for that text number.

Oh, you're always.

Yeah, I know. 401 Yep. 401-472-4249 is the text line. Send us a text or leave us a voicemail and share your stories. Help us learn more.

Thanks so much. This was a fun one. Shannon, I'm glad you brought this. Your experience today, this was fun.

Thanks, man.

It's good.

I feel better. Take care, everybody. Sam.