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Welcome to Bizland News - Edition 15
 January 2003

Firstly, happy New Year's everyone! I trust you all had a wonderful break and are ready to get back into the swing of things! A little while ago, my colleagues and I watched a video about customer services, presented by 80's business guru, Tom Peters. While it was a rather old, out-of-date video, the principles spoken about still apply today. He used various examples of companies who use customer service to the max, to make the experience positive for all parties, keeping customers coming back over and over again. America is seriously geared up with the "Customer is King" attitude, but South Africa is sadly often lacking in this department.

Just the other day my hubby and I visited a popular, well adverised fast food outlet after some hectic Christmas shopping, only to be greeted by four very uninterested "service ambassadors" who seemed annoyed to have their private conversation interrupted by the many customers waiting to be served. Eventually somebody ambled over to help us, and as we were about to place our order she disappeared to answer her cellphone. Half an hour later we eventually had our food, which in itself was edible but not in the league of rush out and buy it again. This was my first experience at this particular franchise, and was it not for the free vouchers sent to me from head office, probably my last. On the flipside of the coin, I have the personal email address of the

founder of one of South Africa's most popular family steakhouses, and he is only too happy to help me, and any other customer, with any query, and in fact replies personally within an hour - and yes, I keep going back, as this attitude extends to every branch that I have ever been in. Now many South African's are apathetic about complaining in the first place, and rather take the attitude of "I will never go there again", which shows how important first impressions, and in fact all impressions are! (Note: since writing this I redeemed my free voucher and was much more impressed and will now very likely return - which shows that it pays to complain not only from the customer's point of view, but also for the store serving that customer...).

It seemed appropriate to therefore start the new year with a brush up on customer skills - something which should be honed and improved on every single day... customers do, after all, pay our salaries at the end of the day - something that is regularly drummed into us here at the office! Never ever be lax in this department!

Feature Article: Taking Customer Service to the Next Level
by Roxanne Emmerich, CEO, The Emmerich Group

If you think back to the time when you saw your home for the first time, you probably remember seeing things that needed to be fixed: the cracked wall, the crooked light fixture, the kitchen hinge that's just not right. After you moved in, suddenly you were able to walk past all those things without being bothered by them. In fact, you almost forgot about them.

The same thing happens with our customers. Since they aren't walking in the door every day, they notice things that aren't up to par and make judgements about your organisation based on those observations. If your company doesn't have customer service systems and standards that are uniform and based upon customers' expectations, chances are your customers are noticing things about your organisation that aren't acceptable to them.

There's an easy approach to tuning up your customer service and giving it a consistent look so that your customers can expect to always receive high-quality service. This simple five-step system will dramatically improve your service:

Step One
Identify your perception points. Every time a customer encounters anyone or anything from your organisation, he or she forms a perception. It could be good or bad, depending on how well that perception point met the customer's standards. Examples of perception points include telephone conversations, correspondence, greetings, billings - anything that presents an opportunity for the customer to make a judgement about your organisation. Identify all of your company's perception points. Simply ask yourself, At what times are customers given the opportunity to form an impression on us? List them.

Step Two
For each perception point, list your standards of performance. These are the minimum standards that everyone working in your organisation should meet consistently. The standards should be measurable and definable. Since every organisation will have telephone conversations listed as a perception point, let's list some examples of phone standards:

Shoulds:

Should Nots:

Never say:

Step Three
Make sure everyone in your organisation understands and applies all of the standards. Document them and include them with new employee orientation packages.

Step Four
Constantly elevate your standards. Take them to the next level. Customer Services can always be improved on.

Step Five
Apply peer pressure. If someone doesn't meet the standards, it is a reflection on everyone in the organisation. Don't wait for a manager crack down on someone who isn't applying the standard. Ask the person if he or she needs help understanding the standard. If he or she understands the standard but isn't applying it, the person has an attitude problem. Be direct in asking the person to apply the standard consistently.

Never lose your child's eye. When setting your standards, look at all of your approaches and systems as if you were seeing them for the first time. You'll be shocked at what you look at every day but don't see. And, once you have your customer service practices in a state of excellence, you can always go home and fix that crack!

In Brief: Using "To Do" Lists to Manage your Time
by Sally Hetherington, Bizland Webmaster

"To Do" are lists of tasks that you need to do in order to achieve your goal, be it something specific or just daily administration tasks. By placing these tasks in order of importance, you prioritise what needs to be done and manage your time more effieciently.

While the whole concept of a To Do list sounds very simple and even archaic, it is a powerful tool to organise yourself and keep stress levels down. Click here to read on.

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SA-Products.com enables the South African trader to promote their products internationally at a nominal cost. The quality and authenticity of products is strictly controlled. All products advertised on this website are manufactured in South Africa by South Africans. Check it out here.

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Enterprize SME Competition - Enterprize will be launching their annual business plan competition, aimed at stimulating job growth by helping entrepreneurs with good ideas, build strong business plans to start or grow small and medium-sized businesses, in February 2003. Watch this space or see www.enterprize.org.za.

Tax Seminar - Don't forget about our Tax Seminar on 22 January from 5 - 7 pm in Cape Town, at R350 per delegate. Receive important information about the latest amendments to tax laws, understand Capital Gains Tax, learn how to set up your payroll for tax efficiency and discuss your concerns with the experts. Not to be missed! For more information click here!

Free Software Download - Struggling with the right legalese? Try Rapidocs to create your own legal contracts and documents. Click here to download.

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Who Moved My Share Price?
Great wisdom comes from simple stories. This is a parable about diagnosing the health of your business and shows how all employees can learn enough about finance to become first class, effective managers... It will take you less than one hour to find out how!
Click here for more Tep Ten books

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This month's Success Story: Jannie Snyman and the team of Snyman & Van der Vyver - Insuring Success

It was in 1988, on one of Jannie Snyman's many business trips as Marketing General Manager of Sanlam, that he realised that enough was enough. He had spent many days away from his wife and family, travelling locally and abroad, and on hearing his tearful wife in another city lamenting about her loneliness, he decided to make a change and handed in his resignation the following day. It was this life-changing decision that set the cogs in motion to starting one of South Africa's most well respected short term insurance broking companies.

It was around this time that Jannie, while still working for Sanlam was convinced that a key to success was to focus on clearly defined niche markets. The short term insurance Industry was in disarray and together with Joe Van Der Vyver, also previously a General Manager of Sanlam's marketing department, they founded Snyman & Van Der Vyver, offering short term

Directors: (back) Desmond Smith & Inus Marias,
(front) Johan Snyman & Jannie Snyman

insurance to a very defined market segment, namely senior business and professional people.

Snyman & Van Der Vyver's doors were officially opened in January 1989. Four years later, one of their key offerings was a scheme called the "Top 500 Scheme", which aimed to supply a personalised service that nobody could match, whereby the rates of the scheme were determined by the experience of the members alone, with no interference from other factors. So successful was this new scheme that the initial ± 500 clients has grown to over 2500. The company has since expanded to offering motor vehicle insurance schemes, commercial insurance and more specialised products like Fidelity- and Professional Indemnity insurance.

By focussing on this niche market, Snyman & Van der Vyver have been able to minimize rate increases. This year is the first time in nine years that they have had to have a 7% increase, due mainly to the increase of reinsurance rates as a result of the terrorist attacks on America in 2001. The company enforces a strict selection process, only allowing clients who fit their criteria into the scheme. The company has focussed on quality and service and have never been driven by turnover.

All was not always plane sailing, however, and things were tough in the start. Their underwriters, Santam, would not at first grant them a separate scheme until they had built up their client base. This meant that the company had to work that much harder to prevent rate increases. Each year, every single client's policy was recalculated individually and the parameters adjusted to prevent rate increases.

Johan Snyman, a director, who joined the company in 1992, attributes the company's success to one main factor: service. He believes that service should be defined by the client. Good service is meeting or exceeding the customer's expectations. Snyman & Van der Vyver's rule is never to deviate from providing good service. Inus Marias, also a director, believes that sticking to their market segment and what they know best, short-term insurance, has helped the company make a name for itself as the experts in the field. An example of this can be seen by the fact that the company still grows by up to 30% every year without advertising, with a large portion of new business coming through client referrals.

Inus believes that their growth strategy is somewhat unconventional: "We don't have targets or measure growth, which is strange, although it works. We strive for service, and the rest comes with it. We stick to the basics." He believes that as soon as you set quantifiable goals you start pushing to reach them, causing quality to suffer in the process: "Our only goal is to keep up the quality of our service. Maybe that is why we have never lost a client due to a bad service experience."

Johan also believes that competent staff is integral to the business: "We do our utmost to keep staff happy, constantly training them, nurturing an environment of community in our offices. Within the two main sectors (personal- and commercial insurance) the principle of multi-skilled staff is utilised. Clients are therefore able to deal with the same person for different queries." Johan attributes to this nurturing environment the fact that in fifteen years they have had only had two resignations.

Inus goes on to say that the company believes that a hands-on approach is critical, with the directors knowing everything that is going on in the business: "We don't take a back seat. We service our clients personally and keep up to date with the market and its products. We never stop learning, and have to make things more effective all the time. We have earned the respect of our peers, suppliers and clients." The company believes in making the client experience as efficient as possible, with little or no inconvenience to the client.

Jannie concludes by explaining that nothing comes easy for someone starting out: "You have to earn your success - if you want something done, then you need to do it yourself, nobody is going to do it for you. Service is our philosophy, and at the end of the day your clients are your livelihood. If you can give a client continuous satisfaction, then they will have a reason not only to promote you to their peers, but to keep coming back."

Click here to visit Snyman & Van der Vyver's website.

Let us know if there is a success story that you want us to investigate, or if you have a story to share with us. Send your contributions or suggestions to success@bizland.co.za - we look forward to hearing from you.

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"Your competition don't bankrupt you, your customers do" - Allen Ambor, Spur Corporation

Please send us your comments or questions to sallyh@bizland.co.za or post them on our Discussion Board.

Until next time...

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