How To Send And Receive Less Email

This year most of my email training clients have had the same main request; they want their employees to learn how to email effectively so that they send and receive fewer email. And no wonder since the average business person sends and receives over 100 email every day… many over 300 every day.

Email was once seen as a tool that would increase efficiencies and competitive opportunity. Today email is a great business tool we can’t do without. But more and more we’re using it as a crutch instead of as a catapult.

Email Icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The challenge is that the way we write email is decreasing our efficiencies, easily costing companies $3,000 or more PER employee every year in loss of productivity and opportunity lost… not to mention the loss to their personal and professional reputation.

How much time we spend emailing every day is astonishing. For example: if a person sends and receives 100 email during an 8-hour day (not accounting for lunch, breaks or meetings), they use email every 4.8 minutes.  If they send and receive 300 email they use email every 1.6 minutes. imagine…

Thankfully there are a easy steps we can all learn to use that will reduce email volume and be more efficient at work; here are just a few.

Use The Phone Or Walk Down The Hall

Sometimes even the most professional email is not the right solution. If we’re wondering how to email, the best strategy may be to pick up the phone – especially if there are issues that need to be brainstormed. The bonus is that conversations often build better business relationships and usually take less time.

Consider All Of Your Needs – And All Of Your Readers Needs

Too often we write email as a single thought – not a complete need or objective. Over an extended period of time (and countless email interruptions), we send email messages back and forth until we finally have discussed or shared (perhaps with some frustration), all the important points. When you write email, learn to bottom line your objectives and stick to the important issues – but cover all of them at once.

Write Great Email Subject Lines

Email subject lines are used as a primary resource readers use to determine if they will read your email now, later or never. Subject lines are also the first opportunity for you to make an impression. If you leave the subject line blank – or use a universal word like ‘Sale’ or ‘Meeting’, you risk being overlooked – all the time.

Value Your Values

Employees should know without hesitation the corporate and department values. They should also know how they can use these values to differentiate the company and themselves every time they write email or speak with clients, suppliers or their co-workers.

Conclusion

Email training is a fast and efficient way to turn email back into a catapult for your employees and business. When you know how to email, it’s a powerful business tool and a very sound investment.

Happy communicating.

Bruce Mayhew Consulting is based in Toronto and facilitates business writing, email writing and email etiquette courses.

We are… Strategic   Branded   Relevant

Other Interesting BMC Articles: What Is Communication?, Measure Training Effectiveness, An Email Style Guide; Should Your Company Have One? and Effective Business Email Writing Training.

Give us a call at 416 462 1473. We’ll listen.

www.brucemayhewconsulting.com

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My Business Email (a rhyme – not a poem)

If someone told me yesterday I would be posting a business email rhyme I would have thought that they were off their rocker. Then last night happened.

To be very clear, I am not a poet. However last night I awoke at 11:30 PM with a pile of words rhyming around in my head. I learned long ago sometimes destiny needs to have its own way so I got out of bed and put fingers to keyboard. Soon after I crawled back into bed and was fast asleep having purged the words from my mind.

Long story short… with only a sparse attempt at editing, here is my business email rhyme (out of respect for all poets and poetry readers I refrain from calling it a poem).

My business email
Get to the point
They answer Who, What, Where and When first
Then Why and How last

My business email
Are easy to read
My ‘Action Items’ found easily
For the reader and me

My business email
Use a ‘Subject Line’ that’s clear
There’s no question of purpose
So they’re read first and not… last (at the rear)

My business email
Use To… and Cc… proper
To… means ‘Read This Now Please’
Cc… means ‘This Is Not A Show Stopper’

My business email
Are short not abrupt
Care is important
Email can cause a reader to erupt

My business email
Consider customer service as key
Clients, suppliers and co-workers
Deserve quality attention from me

My business email
Let my values shine through
I remember to do
Everything I can do

My business email
Are used to confirm fact
I use the phone or my feet
When I need to brainstorm or chat

My business email
Know grammar’s a friend
I use bullets and commas
And periods to end

My business email
Use Hello, Please and Thank you
Young family lessons
Are business tools also

My business email
Address people by name
I build trust in my promises
And that trust is my fame

So there you have it my friends and followers. I hope this has brought you a smile… and perhaps an email writing tip. And if you get woken up in the middle of the night by a thought, know you are not alone. I may also be awake. Mine might be the other light that is on down the street.

Happy communicating.

Imagine work being easier. Imagine work being more productive.

Click here to join our priority list of people who receive our latest Business Communication blog posts.

If you enjoyed this post we think you’ll like: Email Writing Training, Core Values and Good Email Bad Email.

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates email writing, email etiquette and customer service courses.

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen.

www.brucemayhewconsulting.com

Communication Skills: How To Write

We work in a communication age where we have remarkable tools that all but guarantee we can communicate with anyone at any time and at any place.

Do you remember when the promise was that these communication tools would improve our productivity so we would have the time to build valuable relationships with our customers? These deep customer relationships would also lead to long-term corporate profitability and employee satisfaction.

How is that working out?

I bet you and your teams are busier and have more pressure at work (and unfortunately frustration), than ever before… and there’s good reason.

At one end of our pressure at work problem is global competition, which is greater than ever (you and I can’t do much about global competition). At the other end of our pressure at work problem is that we have never received training on how to use the technology our employers have invested in (heavily). The result is that most of us are using writing skills we learned to write essays at school to build and manage professional relationships (you and I can easily fix this in as little as four hours).

Lets Look At Two Email Examples.

Instead of building relationships based on mutual trust, understanding and need we default to writing unnecessarily long or surgically short messages that often frustrate and confuse our reader. Also, our messages are interpreted as abrupt and (unfortunately), self-serving.

Original Email Example 1: It’s Surgically Short

Please set an appointment to bring your car in for its Spring Service. We’ll also check your air conditioner. Your cost is only $15.95.

Revised Email Example 1: 

To maintain optimal fuel economy and save money on gas, please set an appointment to bring your car in for its Spring Service next week. This appointment includes an air conditioner test so that we can help you stay cool this summer. Your cost is only $15.95.

Original Email Example 2: It Lacks Important Information

Below are the orders that I need a status on. Please reply as soon as possible. I am trying to prevent the customer from cancelling.

Revised Email Example 2:

I would like your help to prevent the customer cancelling the following 5 orders.
Please confirm today if it’s possible for us to receive all 5 orders at our Galt Ave location by next Wednesday, July 13.
My mobile at 416 617 0462 if you have any questions or if I can help.

Questions:

• Which manages your businesses expectations and makes the receiver feel cared for and respected?
• Which manages the receivers’ expectations and builds long-term relationships?
• Which makes the receiver want to take immediate action?

The Original Email Examples are both accurate – but they are cold and seem to be only about the reader. The Revised Email Examples are about the writer as well as taking care of and / or partnering with the reader.

The Solution

To be successful you have to focus on both a micro and a macro business solution.

It’s important to know your audiences aren’t sitting around. They’re busy trying to get what they need. So when you make contact you have to show them you are looking after their best interests… every time. To do this your messages have to fill their needs first.

Macro: Your marketing and advertising messages have to be honest, up front and uniquely yours. This includes all communication to prospects, customers, suppliers, and to each other. Everyone at your company has to act as a cohesive team and support the corporate brand.

Micro: Your one-on-one conversations (with prospects, customers, suppliers, and each other), have to be honest, personalized and relevant to your readers needs. Nothing fancy – just focused on their needs.

If you clearly care for your readers needs:

• They will be impressed, do what you want and come back… and likely tell all their friends about you, your service and how happy they are.
• Your stress, frustration will decrease. Your workload and email inbox will also decrease as you become more efficient and effective writing better business email.

You can’t just say you are customer focused; you have to live up to your brand promise all the time. You have to think different and act different to be different.

Happy communicating.

Click here to join our priority list of people who receive our latest Business Communication blog posts.

If you enjoyed this post we think you’ll like: Bruce on Canada AM, Build Client Trust and Effective Business Email Writing Training.

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates business writing, email writing and email etiquette courses.

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen.

www.brucemayhewconsulting.com

Related articles

• Be Amazing… At Work. (brucemayhew.wordpress.com)
• Organizational Behaviour; Impact On Customer Retention (brucemayhew.wordpress.com)

An Email Style Guide; Should Your Company Have One?

Since over 90% of most business communication and relationships are managed via email, now might be the right time for you to have an email Style Guide. In other words… create a policy guide that will do many positive things like:

• Establish e-guidelines and expectations that help employees provide consistent professional service
• Empower everyone to demonstrate your company’s unique style, products / services, brand
• Unite your employees in a Team Building exercise
• Support all levels of your company and your customers

And to add even more benefit, an email Style Guide is also a powerful orientation tool to introduce new staff as well as suppliers / contract employees.

As you consider this path, your first few questions will likely be, “What is the process?” and ”What will we end up with?” Well the answer to both questions is quite simple. You can focus on policies that outline:

• “What People Can Do”  Or
• “What People Can Not Do”

Because we live in a judicial society (more stick than carrot), the more common approach is unfortunately the later. My advice as a Toronto based consultant who provides email writing training, is that you choose the flexible approach and create a Style Guide that will be a positive influence and act as a guideline – not a rulebook. By focusing on “What People Can Do” you benefit by empowering your employees to make the right choices in many different situations.

Should Your Company’s Email Style Guide Be Custom?

Another question you might have is “Can I buy an off-the-shelf solution?“

To answer that question you need to look internally. Your products / services are unique. Your customer service is unique. Your mission, vision and values are unique. The way you do business and your unique value proposition is different from your competitors. Your customer mix and their needs are unique. So, should your email Style Guide be unique?

The way I am positioning this you already know I believe your email Style Guide should be unique to your company. Here is more detail why.

Your brand reputation is one of your most valuable assets – and because you and your employees communicate 90% of the time via email, it’s one of the most visible ways to live your brand… every minute of every day.

Using another company’s Style Guide is like moving into a neighbours home. Even in Toronto that just isn’t done. In a business environment, if you use policies that are not your own you force a disconnect between your core competencies, your customer service and your customer expectations. That disconnect will be felt every minute of every day by your employees and your customers… and that will result in you losing both employees and customer from frustration (both of which negatively impact ROI).

With virtually no more work this is also your opportunity to define your companies unique style for all electronic based communication be it email, email marketing, presentations, websites etc. Because they are all in the electronic world – they all pretty much follow the same guidelines.

By building your own email Style Guide you will also get maximum team-building benefit by seeing this process as a unique organization-wide opportunity. The benefit is to let all employees have impact – to allow everyone to join together and build a document that represents all that is best about your company / employees / product / service. That said, most companies will want to establish a design team, (a body of people who will collect and evaluate employee feedback with the corporate culture and corporate mission and vision for the future).

What Should Your Email Style Guide Include?

There is no definitive email style guide rulebook that must be followed to the letter. Every company is unique and as I suggested I believe your email Style Guide should be designed to match the unique corporate culture.

But, it’s nice to have a starting place, so the following offers a sample of email etiquette categories to be addressed.

1. Support The Visual / Readability:

• Agreed upon email signature structure
• Social Media references and graphics
• Agreed upon fonts, colours and layouts

2. How to Support Your Brand:

• Tag line
• Demonstrate corporate values and customer service promise
• How to treat ethnicity, gender, religious or racial references

3. Structure /  Composition:

• When to use To, Cc… and Bcc…
• How to quickly address the essential information (get to the point)
• How to manage multiple topics and / or multiple audiences

Conclusion

As you plan your email Style Guide and who will help you with this important project I offer you this one last tip.

In most cases when someone reads your email they are making a choice to invest their valuable time and talent. In almost every case the decision to read or not read your email is based on your email etiquette and the following:

• Your past email reputation (for being relevant, to the point, well written and polite)
• Your subject line
• What they see within the preview screen  (which is usually only the first few lines of your message). In fact – many people even answer based on those first few lines only

Make sure you create a helpful guide that everyone at your company uses to demonstrate they respect their audiences time as much as they respect their own time. If they do, your employees – and your company will be rewarded with respect, loyalty, better work relationships and greater ROI.

Imagine work being easier. Imagine work being more productive.

Happy communicating.

Click here to join our priority list of people who receive our latest Business Communication blog posts.

If you enjoyed this post we think you’ll like: Email Writing Training, Measure Training Effectiveness and Good Email Bad Email.

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates business writing, email writing and email etiquette courses.

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen.

www.brucemayhewconsulting.com

Words Matter: Two Easy Writing Tips For 2012

Do words matter?

Even though most of us are not great authors we’ll still spend most of our day writing. Why? On average 90% of business communication is done using email or instant message (IM). Not to mention the time we spend writing proposals and reports.

So, do words matter? Sure they do. Two of the most common areas we can improve are:

1. The number of words we use (we use too few or too many)
2. The actual words we use (we often don’t fully describe what we are trying to say)

Let’s discuss these opportunities!

I believe all we need to do to start writing better is to learn to control the ‘Busy Beast.’

What is the ‘Busy Beast‘? It’s what I call the feeling of being so ‘busy’ that our email writing stops informing. We stop managing people’s expectations. We write so briefly our writing loses focus, and when this happens we actually:

• Get less accomplished
• Create more work for ourselves and the people around us
• Become less efficient; costing us time, money and potentially opportunity
• Sound pushy, rude and / or bossy
• Lower our customer service ratings

I believe another reason for our brevity is that we’re becoming so used to 140 characters (Twitters limit), that our meaning – our intent is so “high level” so “50,000 feet”, that the words we do write are virtually meaningless.

Email Example 1: Being Too Brief

If your boss sends the following email to you, what’s your next step?

Are you going to ask your boss:

• What are the priority areas is she most concerned with?
• What behaviour she wants to see from your team?

If you do ask your boss might question your competency even though the real meaning of her request is lost. If you’re like most people you’ll ‘interpret‘ what you think your boss is asking for and what your team needs. You’ll use your experience but be cautious.

Unfortunately, if you don’t ask you risk wasting your time, effort and budget.

This is why words matter. The problem isn’t your competency, it’s the email message. Too few words were used resulting in too little information being shared.

People at all levels of the company write email like this. Not because we hope our readers will fail. In most cases it’s because we’re all so ’busy’ we don’t take 20 extra seconds to ask ourselves “Have I given my readers enough information for them to understand what I am saying or asking for?“

What if we did take an extra 20 seconds to include the information our audience needs to understand our request. In this example, what if the email the boss wrote was this:

We see that words matter because they can help our audience understand what we are thinking, feeling, wanting.

As I mention in my blog post called Increase Productivity By 15% Or More!, if you have to write one more email to 15% of the requests that come to you (because your co-worker didn’t write a clear message for example), you’re wasting 12 days of your valuable time each year (and they’re also wasting their time). There is a very real cost / loss when employees write bad email.

Email Example 2: Being Too Vague

Here’s another of my favourite examples. “I will contact you later.“ What does that mean?

Here are some of the possibilities for:  “I will contact you later.“

What is contact?	What is later?
Phone your office Phone your mobile phone Email Instant Message BlackBerry PIN MAC FaceTime or Skype Come by your office Facebook message	Within the hour When I’m out of my meeting This afternoon On my drive home Today Within the week When I have an answer When ‘X’ gets back to me

We need to give the people we communicate with some help. They don’t live inside our head.

Much of this seems to be commonsense; natural even because it’s what many of us learned when we were young. However, in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives many of these truths have been set aside and we’ve become unaware of our abrupt, abbreviated 140 characters or less impact as we move through our day.

It’s time to slow down – to control the ‘Busy Beast‘. It’s time to become more efficient by no longer wasting our efforts and time and the efforts and time of the people around us.

Most of the time an extra 20 seconds will may go a long way to communicating effectively (the first time), and to building meaningful relationships.

Kind thoughtful words do matter.

Imagine work being easier. Imagine work being more productive.

Happy communicating.

Click here to join our priority list of people who receive our latest Business Communication blog posts.

If you enjoyed this post we think you’ll like: Email Writing Training, Core Values, Measure Training Effectiveness and Good Email Bad Email.

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates business writing, email writing and email etiquette courses.

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen.

www.brucemayhewconsulting.com

What Is Communication?

We’ve been communicating all of our lives – so with that much practice we should be pretty good at it. But the reality is we all struggle with our communication skills – especially at work.

For example, what do the following situations have in common?

• Having an implementation team arrive for an installation at the wrong address.
• Sales not ensuring Product Development know your most profitable client has an emerging ‘must have’ need.
• Sending your sales & product specialists out to a prospect – to find they’re not in their office.
• Building a wall in the wrong place when the architect changed the plans two weeks ago.

The common element is that these examples are all very expensive – but easy-to-make oversights, and given the right tools and training support they are also easily avoidable.

Business communication is critical to being succesful. It’s important everywhere; in Customer Service, Product Development, Graphic Design in large international corporations and small entrepreneurial enterprises.

But we struggle with everyday communication as well as conflict and conflict resolution.

Who’s Responsible?

Most of the time we struggle because we don’t see communication skills as a two-way street that involve many goals and needs.

It’s not our fault we’ve learned bad habits over the years. We’ve become so good at addressing our needs that many of us don’t consider the perspective, needs, goals, timelines or contribution of others.

What would happen if we treated effective communication like a baton that had to be carefully passed? What if I was just as responsible for passing the baton as you were to receive it?

That’s the answer when we ask ‘What is communication?’ In a nutshell, effective communication includes learning how to:

• Provide relevant information:
  • You need /want people to know
  • Your listener needs / wants to know
• Listen without judging the information you ‘think’ you are hearing
• Ask questions
• See questions as empowerment – not weakness

Consider the power of seeing a situation through someone else’s eyes. Even the act of trying will bring you clarity and a perspective you likely would not have otherwise experienced.

First Step

Communication success depends on your personal and your environments’ definition of communication.

Personal Definition of Communication

One of the first things that’s required for successful communication is to understand what definitions you are working with. Is it:

• Getting our own way?
• Avoiding conflict?
• Looking professional and in control?
• Being open and listening to others?
• Not daydreaming – or worse… falling asleep?
• Something else?

Your Environments’ Definition of Communication

Your environment may be a person or a place. Therefore, it may be your co-worker, your team or your company. It may also be a store clerk or each member of your family.

Your personal and environmental definitions will be rooted in your values – and the values you’ve learned to use (workplace values for example). Therefore they may support each other (harmony), or they may be in conflict (opposite) to each other.

Second Step

Communication success depends on your personal and environmental filters

Filters may be a bit more challenging because it’s likely we aren’t even be aware of them. For example:

Personal Filters:

• Life experiences & Education
• Vocabulary (general, sophisticated, ghetto)
• Fears / Defensiveness / Insecurities
• Work / family pressures

Environmental Filters:

• What if you didn’t recognize a client at a conference?
• What if your Smartphone is turned off and you miss an important call?
• What if your SPAM filter blocked an email message?
• What if someone didn’t include you in a distribution list – on purpose or by mistake?

In addition, your audience is going to have the same types of Personal and Environmental filters as you do – and let’s face it – if you can’t define all of your filters you won’t be able to define theirs. In almost every case you’re going to have to guess – at least at some of them unless you incorporate some communication practices like mindfulness communication.

WOW! No wonder we struggle.

Communication is like pouring water into a small glass – some isn’t going to make it in. And in this case – you can’t always blame the pourer or the glass.

Are There Other Concerns?

I’d like to point out two other concerns of effective communication.

• The first is the process we all go through to encode our message and decode what we hear back.
• The second is when you are communicating across generations and / or cultures.

I’ve also discussed this in my blog post called Effective Communication. To understand the severity on each of these all we have to do is consider the game of broken telephone you may have played as children. I can pretty much guarantee – in any communication some of your meaning will be lost AND changed by the listener.

There is a way through this and the benefits of your investment are substantial.

There are many easy techniques you and your team (or family), can adopt to enhance your communication.

Mindfulness communication has at its core the practice of helping people identify what they are needing and to explore and listen in an active, non-judging way of what your audience needs.

The secret is to have a safe space and an agreement with one or more persons that will allow you all to listen and be open to putting yourself in the other person’s shoes – without risk or prejudice.

Happy communicating.

Other Interesting BMC Articles: Unique Value Proposition Definition, Measure Training Effectiveness and Effective Email Writing Training.

Give us a call at 416.617.0462. We’ll listen.

Bruce Mayhew Consulting is based in Toronto and facilitates business writing, email writing and email etiquette courses.

We are… Strategic   Branded   Relevant

www.brucemayhewconsulting.com

Don’t forget to share this blog.

Email Marketing: Direct Marketing In Action

Email is part of an evolution that started in the 1960’s as an inexpensive solution to instantly send messages between networked computers. While email wasn’t designed as a direct marketing tool, email marketing is certainly a natural evolution considering how quickly our lives and communication styles have changed since the 1990’s when email became popular.

It’s no surprise email marketing also has some unique challenges.

Get To The Point

With the widespread adoption of email many of us lost our ability to get to the point. Back when we had to invest in hand writing or phone communication, getting to the point was more natural. Who had the time to hand write a page or two of background or meandering thoughts?

But email helped make typing lots of copy quick and easy. Soon abundance became a common error of email writing as well as web writing, brochure writing and proposal writing. We started to write down everything and hope the reader found a reference to something they liked, related to and/or needed.

Not much changed when businesses started to use email as a marketing tool. Lots of email marketing did… and still does look like a child’s cereal box. The problems were too much detail, too many photos and as much attention grabbing hoopla as possible.

And for a while people paid attention… because email marketing was new. It’s not new anymore.

Email Marketing Is Often An Interruption

Today email marketing is more competitive and our target audiences are jaded from being over stimulated and/or taken advantage of. There’s been so much bad email (even regular business email), that when you get a good message it really stands out. Customers notice.

Remember the Mini Car ad’s when the car re-launched? They stood out – they were fun. They were never seen as an interruption because they were relevant and to-the-point. Even if we didn’t want one we wanted to learn about them.  They were so to-the-point we would read them and instantly know why it would be great for us.

So in the end the Mini Car ads were good for the customer… and good BMW who own the Mini brand.

Strategic   Branded   Relevant

Return To Basics: It’s About Need And Offer

To improve the overall quality of email campaigns, marketers need to return to basic. Businesses need to focus on the ‘What’s In It For Me’ (WIIFM) message for their client. What’s the client need? By creating messages and content that solve their clients’ needs (not pushing only an offer) businesses will also build trusting respected relationships.

Even back in the 1960’s ads showed housewives and husbands ‘What’s In It For Me’.

Being successful in email marketing isn’t about creating a grammatically correct copy with pictures and flashy layouts. It’s also not sending your campaign to everyone you can get access to or by renting your ‘ideal client wish-list’.

A successful in email marketing campaign is about sending a short, clear, relevant message and offer of value to your segmented, targeted audience.

This is especially true when connecting with existing relationships. If you keep sending them mindless irrelevant junk they are very likely going to click the unsubscribe button, or even worse, mark your message as spam… which causes you big problems in the future.

Delivery / Execution

You have a great message and great creative – you’re almost finished.

Now you need a trusted system to deliver your messages. This often means hiring a eMarketing / Digital Communication supplier to help you make sure your campaign gets to the people on your list (and not in a junk folder or identified as SPAM). Professional eMarketing / Digital Communication companies also have easy access to proven tactics they can use which mean further success for your campaign… and ways to measure your success.

Do it yourself is risky to you, your business and your brand reputation. For example, one important step is to notify your email host that you are about to send mass email (which is likely out of character for you). If you don’t do this your host may perceive your sudden spike as SPAM and shut your whole email system down… and I mean all of your email.

Conclusion

Email marketing works because it can drive direct sales to a targeted audience in a controlled manner that builds relationships, loyalty and trust. It’s also a natural fit in a Drip Marketing Program.

So, start thinking how you can get out there and create an awesome package and offer as part of your overall marketing strategy. Go ahead – it can be a great opportunity for you to try something new. Whether you hire a professional or try doing it yourself, you’ll need:

• A relevant offer
• Creative… creative
• A clean organization list (opt in preferably)
• Clear execution that doesn’t look (or act), like SPAM
• To measure your results

Happy communicating.

Other Interesting BMC Articles: Unique Value Proposition Definition, Measure Training Effectiveness and Effective Business Email Writing Training.

Give us a call. We’ll listen.

Are you looking for a training professional to be your training partner? Click Here

Bruce Mayhew Consulting is Strategic Branded Relevant

www.brucemayhewconsulting.com

Don’t forget to share this blog.

Organizational Behaviour; Impact On Customer Retention

If you are worried about customer retention & acquisition, evaluate how you can take better care of your customers - don’t reduce price. Happy, loyal customers will stick around and also recommend your product / service.

The Harvard Business Review suggests the average business loses 50% of their customers every five years. As a strategic marketer I’ve measured client retention and Lifetime Value (LTV), that shows the best clients usually stay only for four years… rarely longer than six. With most leaving within the first two years.

Why Do Customers Leave?

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (sorry to all my Canadian friends):

• 68% leave because they are upset with the treatment they’ve received (Customer Service)
• 14% are dissatisfied with the product or service
• 9% begin doing business with the competition
• 5% seek alternatives or develop other business relationships
• 3% move away
• 1% will pass away

So 82% (68% + 14%), of clients leave because their complaints or misunderstandings were not solved and / or they were made to feel dumb, ignored, disrespected, angry or unimportant. In other words, poor organizational behaviour is pushing clients out the door. They’re not leaving because of the product / service, price or marketing / advertising. How’s that for a reality check?

There are many studies that demonstrate it’s cheaper to satisfy and keep an existing (good), customer than to add a new customer. Customer acquisition can easily cost four to five times more, so what would happen if you put that expense into your training budget? Customer retention?

Adding new customers is important for company growth because there’ll always be attrition. Consumer habits and income do change, and people move or people pass away (as examples). But it’s important to spend time and money wisely by investing in organizational behaviour and organizational development that supports your clients and your brand.

How To Retain Customers Longer

What should you do if you want to help customers refer new business to you? I suggest you start by finding out what your clients love and don’t love about you. Most businesses never ask – I bet your competition doesn’t… which is an advantage for you.

When I start working with a client I recommend we survey their existing clients to find out what they like and don’t like. If possible I also want to survey past clients to find out why they left. If 82% of your customers are leaving because they are upset or dissatisfied with service…. wouldn’t you want to know what to fix? Today a combination of online email surveys and one-on-one phone surveys are:

• Efficient
• VERY informative
• Not expensive

I recommend employees also be included in the research – they often have great ideas. Surveys and brainstorming are great ways to engage employees. But be certain to keep their findings and language separate from your clients.

Surveying clients lets you hear the good and the bad from their point of view and in their language (very important). If you are going to design a marketing or training program you want to use the perspective and language that’s relevant to your clients, not your corporate perspective.

Once you have the perspective and language of your clients you can:

• Measure the gap (to your goals)
• Design programs that fix what’s wrong
• Overlay your goals and organizational values

With this information we’re able to design programs that are strategic for your business, relevant to customers / prospects and branded to your core values. We’ll also be able to support positive organizational behaviour by aligning your customer service training strategies into:

• Sales
• Implementation
• Product Development
• Office Management
• IT
• Finance / Invoicing

Share The Responsibility Of Customer Retention

Make sure everyone at your company knows they are part of the solution.

Show staff how to demonstrate the desired behaviour. Why do you need to show them? Well, we’re all individuals with our own personalities, history, education and life experiences. As an example, it’s not surprising that your idea of “Managing Expectations” is different from mine. Without training to get everyone on the same page, is likely their approach will be quite different. So, work with your employees to discuss how to demonstrate your corporate values and to develop customer service expectations.

Your customers are people, and people are social animals. Yet many of us hide behind our email and website… even sales and customer service people. As customers, we are starved for personal contact and want a chance to feel important.

Customer service is personal – it impacts the individual - it builds relationships that last beyond the transaction, beyond the billing cycle. Personal customer service is what builds customer retention. For the same reason, if you’re treated poorly you’ll not forget it. Never make the customer feel dumb, ignored, disrespected, angry or unimportant. If you do they’ll likely become part of your lost customer statistics.

Personal Case Study 1:

I know I cannot forget the consistently bad attitude I’ve experianced from my doctors receptionist. She is terrible but he is great.

Her latest faux-pas was that she called me to move my appointment. When we found a time and day that fit she just hung up. I was literally left holding the phone. While my first instinct was to call her back, I knew it would do no good to address it directly with her – and likely she could use her power to call and reschedule again.

If they were retail or a business to business relationship I would be long gone… but it’s not easy to find a doctor you trust! But I’m also not referring business.

Personal Case Study 2:

There is a gourmet burger shop at the top of my street. I was enjoying going there and even began to follow them on Twitter.  But, after a particularly rude experience that an employee initiated I have actively boycotted them… and told all my neighbours. Rudeness is not how you reward loyalty.

There are lots of fast food places to eat at.

Conclusion

Every business makes mistakes, and most these things are forgivable if you own up to them and fix them. But good customers will not forgive you for consistently bad customer service. They’ll leave as soon as they can and they won’t forget it.

Happy communicating.

Other Interesting BMC Articles: Increase Productivity by 15% or More, Measure Training Effectiveness and Good Email Bad Email.

Give us a call at 416.617.0462. We’ll listen.

Bruce Mayhew Consulting is based in Toronto and facilitates business writing, email writing and email etiquette courses.

We are… Strategic   Branded   Relevant

bruce@brucemayhewconsulting.com

Don’t forget to Subscribe to this blog (upper right side). Your email address will be confidential and well-respected.

The Banker And The Ex Banker On Communication. Now There’s A Conversation.

Please indulge me. This will not be a typical Bruce Mayhew blog post.

I was walking my dog Lex (my inspiration for Business Lessons I Learned From My Dog), a few nights ago and at the end of the walk I joined a new nieghbour on their front porch.

Like most Torontonians, we were soon talking about work: his is the banking industry. I know that could mean anything, and as an Ex Scotiabanker I understand that. But anyone who has ever worked in the banking industry will tell you that it’s something special.

Soon he’s asking me what I do. So, I told him I’m a marketing consultant and also provide corporate training to improve corporate communications between individuals, teams and most importantly how to speak and send email to clients. In a nutshell, my communication training shows staff how to:

• Get to the point quickly
• Build and protect the corporate brand and reputation
• Create messages that are easy to read, easy to understand and easy to act on
• Stop frustrating, irritating or annoying the people you speak to or email

I’ve heard my new neighbours next words a hundreds of times. ‘Wow, we could use you at the bank.’

Thinking ahead (he’s a cleaver guy), his next question was:‘Do you ever teach people to consider the needs of their audience and to address those needs immediately?’

Clearly, he was remembering the many times when he’s read long email and at the end was confused about:

• What the topic was?
• How it impacted him (WIIFM- What’s In It For Me)?
• Was he expected to do anything? (Did he have an action item?)

Let’s face it – he isn’t alone.

A Plug: How My Training Is Different

Now, as a personal plug, many large organizations like banks and insurance companies offer communication training / email writing / business writing programs. But my competitive research tells me they focus quite a bit on grammar and spelling. I believe nobody over 20 years old wants to sit through hours of training on adverbs, adjectives and pronouns.

As a marketing consultant what I do differently is focus on using ‘needs’ as the primary focus of a communication. Therefore, I help people learn to identify their needs (pretty easy), AND the needs of their audience (not often done when communicating). Then I help them clearly address those needs.

So, What’s The Take Home?

Just by reading this post you have a few pointers on how you can start communicating differently today.

On a larger scale, it’s not just a bank or insurance company problem. Every company needs to help their employees work with each other – at every level of the organization. The beauty is that it’s starting to happen – and it starts by helping employees:

• Know the corporate (or even department) vision and values
• See how to represent that vision and those values – with every conversation, phone call or email
• Spend a moment to consider the needs of your associates, suppliers and most importantly customers
• Spend a moment considering how your associates, suppliers and customers work. How do they do business? Then use that knowledge to meet their needs.

To succeed individually (personal brand), or organizationally (corporate brand), we have to align our goals and act as partners every time we communicate. If we make our top priority our customers’ needs (and then our needs), we’ll actually reach our own goals.

What are the challenges you face with the email or phone messages you receive? Comment to this post or send me an email at bruce@brucemayhewconsulting.com

Happy communicating.

Other Interesting BMC Articles: Unique Value Proposition Definition, Measure Training Effectiveness and Effective Business Email Writing Training.

Give us a call at 416.617.0462. We’ll listen.

Bruce Mayhew Consulting is based in Toronto and facilitates business writing, email writing and email etiquette courses.

We are… Strategic   Branded   Relevant

bruce@brucemayhewconsulting.com

Don’t forget to Subscribe to this blog (upper right side). Your email address will be confidential and well-respected.

Business Etiquette Rules

If you want to be taken seriously you must communicate in a polite, professional and organized manner and follow business etiquette rules.

One of the best ways to show your professionalism and build connection is to use the recipient’s name in a sentence. People like to see and hear their names and, in an email environment it shows you’ve thought about and personalized your message.

But how you address someone (how you use their name), can also create a professional or cultural faux pas that can end a relationship abruptly. The best way to save face is to police yourself and follow some simple manners and business etiquette rules.

Name Etiquette / Business Etiquette rules to live by.

1. Use the correct structure of the person’s name.

Know if they want to be  called Mr. Mayhew or Bruce. If you don’t know them this may be difficult to determine, so go formal if you are in question:

• If they are senior to you or a new relationship, it is safest to default to using their honorific (Mr., Ms, Mrs., Dr., Rabbi, Father), until it becomes clear they want you to be more casual. Note: Ms can or cannot use a period. The general guidelines are to use Ms. if you follow Canadian or USA writing guidelines and to use Ms if you follow UK writing guidelines.
• If they are from a more formal work environment, don’t get too informal too soon. Best practice is to default to using Mr., Ms, Mrs., etc. to demonstrate courtesy and respect. At least do this until told otherwise.
• If you wondering how to address a woman, Ms (either with or without the period), is the default form unless you know positively she wishes to be addressed as Mrs.

2. Be aware of cultural and societal hierarchy.

People from Canada and the United States are often more casual than people from China or India. China or India and many of the other developing countries are very serious about business etiquette and how to demonstrate respect to:

• Elderly
• Wealthy people
• Senior people (work)
• New acquaintances

Without doubt, there are people who believe it’s NEVER proper to call another adult by their first name unless they’ve been invited to do so. They will likely be the most conservative group and / or the most influential group so be careful and go formal to be polite if there is a question.

3. Use the correct pronunciation (at least try), and spelling.

• Last names: I don’t know how many times I’ve received phone calls or mail and have been addressed as Mr. Mathew.  Worse yet – I more often get Mr. Mayhem (I know – that’s funny). I can assure you both situations it clearly demonstrates to me that the person doesn’t know me and/or CARE to know me.
• First names: I have a friend who is Katherine – not Catherine. Believe me, she notices the difference.
• Shortened names: Be careful if you’re in the habit of shortening first names. You may meet someone who is ‘Alan’ who may not mind you calling him by his first name – but try to call him ‘Al’ and he may object fiercely.

Conclusion:

Even since my days working for one of the big banks (not so long ago), business etiquette has changed and Millennials and their informal, over-protecting helicopter parents are helping to speed the change along. This isn’t bad – it just is. However, there are still many people who are annoyed when younger people take the liberty of addressing them by their first name without having been invited to do so.

My suggestion is that if you want to be polite, always use the highest level of formality Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr., etc. in a relationship (especially a business relationship), until your audience invites you to use their first name.

Imagine work being easier. Imagine work being more productive.

Happy communicating.

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If you enjoyed this post we think you’ll like: Email Writing Training, Be Amazing At Work, Measure Training Effectiveness and Good Email Bad Email.

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates business writing, email writing and email etiquette courses.

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen.

www.brucemayhewconsulting.com