A recent article in the Consumerist tells the story of how Best Buy is instilling customer support as a culture as a way of combating the ever-increasingly troubled economy.

A few of the excerpts from the article:

We must find ways to win with the customers who are coming to us today. Serving our customers better than anyone else is the best way to create value for customers, employees and shareholders alike. We need every employee engaged in serving customers better, and more efficiently.

We could let today’s turmoil distract us from serving customers. Other retailers might do that. But we will not. Instead, we will use these circumstances to redouble our efforts and deepen our commitment to each other, to our company, to our strategy and to the customers we serve. In so doing, we will strengthen and fortify ourselves as a team. A winning team. That’s who we are, and that’s Best Buy.

The spirit of this type of customer care is also very evident in one of our portfolio companies, PBwiki. Their customer support culture, which is spearheaded by customer support manager Rachel Pennig, means that they regularly achieve 90%+ satisfaction levels from their user base.  As Rachel recently said to the PBwiki staff:

(M)oving forward we have a battle to fight against our competitors. But if we focus on keeping our users satisfied in every interaction with PBwiki, we will be able to edge out the competition.

If you are successful, customer service is always your best product.  Is it your best product?

Read his article from the Entrepreneurial Archives to increase your business knowledge.

One of our partners shared some of his wisdom and life knowledge in this post from the Entrepreneurial Archives.

Learn more about our partner’s “McNugget Principle” by clicking here.

This Latin tidbit actually comes from the Hippocratic Oath (the one doctors swear to).  But there is a lesson in there for all of us.  A business’s first goal every day should be to not cause our customers to feel harmed.   It doesn’t matter what your job or role, your real job is to make customers feel loved.  This manifests itself in many ways, but it should always be the centerpiece of your efforts.

Some people have a great deal of direct customer interaction, and some people have jobs where we rarely directly interact with a customer.  But as a rule, customer interaction should be a few things:

1. Clear and concise (i.e. don’t waste their time or confuse them)
2. Prompt (i.e. if a customer or prospect has to wait more than 24 hours for an initial contact, we failed)
3. Follow-up and Follow-through (i.e. if we don’t have answers yet, at least once per day, tell them we are working on it. And if we say we are going to do something, do it and let them know we did it)

Following these simple steps usually means you have very happy customers.  No matter what your role or job is.  Support is not a department, it is a mentality.

Primum non nocere….

-Erskine Bowles

One of our partners wrote an article about what is needed to be a leader, which as noted above, is a very important part of any successful business.  Click here to read this classic from the Entrepreneurial Archives.

In one of the brochures for the hotels, the general manager had a note that every staff member was there to make our stay perfect.  And this statement seemed to be true over and over.  Every single staff person we passed during our stay would say “hello” or “aloha”.  They were always smiling.  They were always willing to give some local advice or direction.  In addition, they paid great attention to detail.  Things were constantly being cleaned and straightened.  Things were always in place and always looked fresh.  Customer service was an obvious focus, and it made us feel like we were important.

As entrepreneurs, it is our goal to make our customers feel as if they are important.  This is how you make customers become ambassadors for your business, just like Hyatt has done with us.

On Kauai, there is the Kauai Cigar Company, which was born out of the Blair Estate Coffee Farm.  According to the marketing brochure for the cigar company, the company is a place where “diversification and expansion are part of the intrinsic spirit.” You can read this to mean that they are an entrepreneurial group of people that run the company/farm.

But what really hit home was a message that you find later in the same brochure: “While it took nearly 6 months to obtain a federal permit to manufacture and sell cigars, the reporting, bi-monthly federal taxes, and whopping nearly 40% Hawaii wholesale tax made it financially impossible to hand make cigars in Hawaii.”  So what did these entrepreneurs do? They found a company in Nicaragua to roll and manufacture the cigars.  While a testament to the fact that the world is flat and that entrepreneurs will not be stopped by government silliness, it also demonstrates the backward thinking of many governments.  Instead of having jobs in the U.S./Hawaii for this work, the Kauai Cigar Company ships their cured tobacco from Hawaii to Nicaragua and then back to the U.S.  While we can congratulate them for their creativity and ability to make their business work, we have to shake our head at the stupidiy of the Hawaiian and U.S. governments.

I am a burger fan.  I absolutely love the great American meal of a hamburger.  And one of the better chain places to get a burger is Fuddruckers.  So, when I was in Logan Airport this past week, my wife and I were hungry and stopped at a Fuddruckers.  My darling wife ordered a Caesar salad, and I ordered a big fat burger with a fried egg on top of it.   Unfortunately, the burger did not live up to my expectations as it was overcooked, undermeated, and generally disappointing.

As my wife and I ate, we discussed the fact that Fuddruckers was living dangerously by having a restaurant like this at an airport.  If I had never eaten at a Fuddruckers, I would think this is what they were all like.   Would I come back?  Doubtful.

In my world, this is branding.  Give your customers a great experience, and they will associate that with your brand.  They will tell their friends, and your success will perpetuate itself.  Branding is not a marketing effort.  It is a whole company effort.  You don’t have to spend money to brand, you just have to deliver a great product and service.

As a new addition to Tales of the Entrepreneur, “classic” articles written by members of our team will be posted in condensed versions with links to the full articles.