The Impact of Inconsistency

This week, Troy Hazard provides us with a personal story of how the lack of consistency in a business can impact its sales and service success even in ONE DAY! One bad experience can steamroll into a loss of business more quickly than ever before.  We all know that the stats used to be that the average consumer would tell 7 to 8 people about a negative experience, now with the extraordinary power of social media, they can immediately tell 7 to 8 hundred – or more!  Read on for Troy’s insights on…

The Impact of Inconsistency

I'm the world’s worst consumer. I don’t buy much myself and I don’t spend any time shopping for fun, because for me it's not fun, so when I do shop, I take notice, and that truly does make me the worst consumer.

This means I have high expectations. And I expect ‘things’ to happen all the time, every time. Because if this, I thought I would share a story with you about the value of consistency, and the impact it has on your sales, both directly and indirectly.

Consistency in business affects all of us every day in some way. It’s just that we usually call it something else, like service or poor product or something other than the fact that we compare one visit to the next.

But consider this.

If your doctor gives you an incorrect diagnosis, is it poor service?

If you go to your usual restaurant and the food is bad, is it poor product?

If your favorite dry cleaner suddenly damages one of your garments, is it poor product knowledge?

In all cases the answer would be yes—on that occasion, at least. However, it may have been just a once-off event. They were having a bad day, a product was tainted, a new employee made a mistake, whatever. In short, they were inconsistent, that's all, and they slipped up, once.

With that in mind, consider this…

Would you go back to the Doctor when he's playing with your life?

Would you risk taking some friends to the restaurant again when you don't really know if it’s going to be OK, leaving you to look silly?

Would you risk the new suit you bought at the dry cleaners again on the off chance they make the same mistake twice?

You see, service, product, location, value, and all of the things we have learned in business are important. BUT if all of these things are not present in your business EVERY DAY, then you are losing customers EVERY DAY that they don't appear.

So what if it doesn't appear EVERY DAY, how do you combat that?

First, you put performance indicators in your business to make sure you have a checklist of some kind that these things are present, something with which you can gauge the effectiveness of the elements of your business that directly affect your customers.

Second, make sure you have a plan in place to help you out if something does go wrong. If you do have a day when the wheels fall off, make sure you know how to 'make good' and at least, AT LEAST, salvage the situation. If you don't you have not only lost that customer, you have lost the 10 potential customers your unhappy guest will tell about their negative experience.  They will broadcast your lack of consistency via their social media networks.  In today’s social and global marketplace that can easily be a reach of hundreds, if not thousands, of potential customers.

Which leads me to my story…

I spend half of my life away from home. After a decade of travelling the world, I have a

pattern. I know what I like, and I know what I like Registrer deg i dag du ogsa, fa med deg en solid bonus, og spill pa eksklusive norske som det nevnte kronespillet. to expect.

Recently I stayed in my usual hotel in Sydney. With one exception, this time it was an unusual disaster!

The air conditioning in my room was intermittent, and then nonexistent. The phones for the whole building went out for a half day. The drain in the sink in the bathroom didn't drain, and to make it worse the reception did

n’t really have any answers as to when all of this was going to be fixed other than, ‘we’re working to have it fixed as soon as possible’. Disappointingly for me, the hotel was booked out with a convention in the venue so they could not change my room, and to be frank, I was just too tired when I got in to be bothered finding another hotel.

So I stayed the night, and in the absence of a real solution or timeline to a solution, checked out the next day to another hotel.

I decided to make a case of the experience to the hotel management. I sent back a note to the (new) manager explaining the events. To his credit, the duty manager did ring back to offer me an apology for the event, and a complementary meal next time I was staying in the hotel.

For me, given the amount of money I spend in their hotels around the world, that was not enough pain for him.

I wrote another note back offering him two options.

1. To make himself a hero and give me free night’s accommodation in compensation of the disaster I just experienced so we could continue our relationship.
2. He could stick to his guns on his offer. 

He chose option two.

Not only did this guy offer me ONE inconsistent event to turn me away, he pushed me out the door and didn't mind if it hit me on the backside on the way out!

His reason, there was no record of my complaint in the diary. Hmmmmm…

A classic example of the impact of inconsistency.

Not only has he lost me as a customer in every city, he has effectively given me a great story to tell my friends, which is not a good look for him considering that in an average month I speak to up to 2,000 people at various conferences, workshops and seminars.

The sad part about this story is that it was not this fellow’s fault that I had a bad weekend. But for him to think that makes a difference in my opinion of his is establishment, he is seriously overestimating my care factor.

So what has all of this got to do with you? Well, as a business person dealing with the public it has everything to do with you as you will come across these sorts of issues every day, it’s just that you only get to hear about the bad ones. If that's how easy it is for one business to lose a considerable amount of business then how easy is it for any business to do the same thing, relative to your average customer value?

Are you consistent in your business, and if you are, are you consistently good or consistently inconsistent?

As a business owner you are in the business of selling, so you can be sure to expect consistency in your sales results if you are consistent in the way you seek your sales.

Think about it.

Troy Hazard, CSP, is one of our most in-demand franchise speakers.  He has been a franchisee twice, a franchisor, and a franchise consultant to over 400 brands, many of them global.  Troy carefully crafts each presentation based on the desired outcomes identified by our franchisor clients.  Troy not only typically earns standing ovations from our audiences; he’s an absolute delight to work with in every way.  Don’t take my word for it; check out this testimonial that just came in …

“Troy is a GREAT speaker! I have hired many speakers in my career and Troy Hazard was one of the most polished and professional I have ever worked with.  His presentation was a direct hit in regards to the message we wanted delivered and our franchisees are already giving him rave reviews on our post-event survey.  One of the things that made working with Troy such a pleasure is that he made it easy for us every step of the way — I appreciate his professionalism and the simple way he took care of what he needed without burdening our staff in any way.  He’s a real class act and I look forward to continuing to work with him in the future!” 

Kathleen Huntsman, VP Operations
Doctors Express Franchising, LLC

I’d love to brainstorm some creative ways that Troy can help you support your field team, your home-office team and your franchisees. Give me a call at 720-304-371 or email me directly at Katrina@franchisespeakers.com.  Looking forward to hearing from you.

More soon!

Katrina