Communication is good business

Communication is good business

I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that your staff, your customers and your community know your business's mission, possibly even better than you do.

The bad news is that the mission that is known is not the one behind bullet proof glass near the entry to your shop - it is the one that you demonstrate daily through your interactions with your staff, your customers , your suppliers and the many communities to which you belong.

During this conference you will go on some site visits.  I wonder if you will get to see the dry cleaners shop near where I used to live.  I can't say how good a cleaner they are, because of the impression that was created on my first and only visit.  The counter was cluttered, the windows were dirty and there was some caramel coloured concoction spilled on the floor.  I figured that if they couldn't keep their own premises clean - something they owned - then I was not going to let them care for my clothes - something that didn't own.

I may have been wrong - they may be the most efficient and effective dry cleaners in the city, but I will never know.  The image that they projected to me said as much as I wanted to hear.

That is how communication works.

Many small business operators believe that the key to increasing customer numbers is advertising, perhaps issuing incentive vouchers.  This has its place, but communication is much more than merely enticing people to your shop.  The successful operators know that it is the whole experience that a customer remembers.

That customer service experience relies on the way that communicate with a number of other people.  Do your staff understand your mission?  Do your suppliers?  Do you?

This is the communication challenge.

How do you send the right message to all of the people who are listening to you?

You need your staff to understand your priorities, so that when you are not there, there will not be a change in the level of service offered.

You need your customers to understand the services that you can provide, so that they will seek you out first when they have a need that you can satisfy.

You need your suppliers to understand your objectives, so that they can provide you with the resources that you require.

You need job seekers to have an accurate impression of what working in your business entails, so that the right ones will apply to fill your vacancies.

You need to send messages to a large number of communities, so that local government, environmentalists, taxing authorities, power supply utilities and a host of others are working with you, not against you.

Yet this is only half of the communication story.  You need to know the needs of those that you are communicating with, so that common ground is emphasised and differences can be resolved.

The first step is clarifying your message.

If you haven't succumbed to the black suited consultants who will gladly charge you a week's profits to write your mission statement for you, then let me tell you a simple way to work out your mission statement.  Imagine a mid winter's day.  You are affected by the early stages of the flu.  This is supported by a seedy feeling because of the trade show that you attended last night.  You discover that you are out of milk to put on your breakfast cereal, you cannot find your keys, and when you finally do get to your car you notice that the rear tyre is flat.

At some point on that morning you will ask yourself, why do I do this day after day?  The answer that you come up with then is your mission statement.

Perhaps it will be because "I really like my staff.  They need the jobs, or more importantly the money, so I do it for them."  Is that you?

Maybe it is because you want your children to have a superb education at the best schools, so that they can become consultants who write mission statements for small business operators.

Well perhaps it is because of the warm feeling you get when an elderly client lifts the plastic bag and sniffs the freshness of the garments that you have so lovingly restored, and bursts into a smile.

I don't know what your reason for being in business is.  Even if the mission statement displayed above your counter mentions staff, profits and or customers, I am not all that sure that I could tell which of the above scenarios would fit you.  But I bet your staff can.  So can your suppliers.  So can your regular customers.

You cannot not communicate

And the messages that you send to your staff and your customers are far more likely to be remembered than any fancy slogan on your discount coupons or your cash register dockets.

As dry cleaners and / or laundry operators you need to communicate at two levels.  The first is at the global level, the second is to individuals.

You need to tell the world that clean clothes are good.  That professionally cared for garments look better, last longer, project a positive image.  This is the challenge that you and all of your competitors need to co-operate on.

At the individual level, you need to convince people, one at a time, that your shop offers the sort of service that they want.  And having persuaded them of that you need to prove it on every occasion by giving better service than they expect.

Dry cleaning can be a commodity - you get the same product no matter where you go, or it can be a niche product.

What message are you communicating?

Are you just one of many? If so then you need to compete on price, opening hours and location.

Do you serve a niche market?  What is that niche?  If you have selected well and penetrated that market then you can charge a premium.

Some of the niches may be:

• rapid turn around - one hour service;
• heavy and bulky items;
• home delivery;
• greasy overalls.

I am not here today to tell you what your business should be, but simply to remind you of what you already know, but perhaps have forgotten.  There is  a reason that you are in business, and that reason should be readily communicated to your staff, to your customers, to your suppliers and to your community.

 How do you handle complaints?

I understand that dry cleaning had its origins in a mistake.  In aristocratic France, a noble renowned for the quality of his parties had a rather clumsy servant.  While cleaning up after the festivities, the servant knocked over a table lamp.  The fuel in the lamp lifted the stains from the table cloth, and a new industry was born.

How would that servant have fared if she had worked for you?

Would you have seen the mistake as a problem or an opportunity?

Are you communicating optimism or pessimism?

Do you recognise complaints as customer feedback?

Is each complaint the springboard for improvement.  Or do you believe that this would be a great business to be in if we didn't have to deal with customers?

 Change is unavoidable, progress is optional

How do you staff feel about dry cleaning?  If they see an article in one of the many magazines that read, that may have an impact on your business do they draw it to your attention?  Simple mathematics decrees that if you count your staff and multiply it by two you will come close to the number of eyes that could be scanning Readers Digest, Playboy, local newspapers and the yellow pages.  When they come across an article that could have some future impact on the way your business is run do they read it, or say "I don't want to know about that - forty hours a week is more than enough laundering for me."

If they do bring it to you what reaction do they get.  "I know that, already!" whether you do or not, or "Thanks - I must follow that up!" whether you already have or not.

If you are a pessimist, someone that believes it cannot be done, you are in good company.

Consider these pessimistic predictions from people who were quite respected in their field, and the inaccuracy of their predictions:

• “Television won’t matter in your lifetime or mine.” - Radio Times editor Rex Lambert, 1936.
• “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” - director of the US Patent Office, 1899.
• “Forget it. No Civil War picture ever made a nickel.” - MGM executive, advising against investing in Gone With The Wind.
• “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” - A film company’s verdict on Fred Astaire’s 1928 screen test.
• “Very interesting, Whittle, my boy, but it will never work.” - Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Cambridge, shown Frank Whittle’s plan for the jet engine.
• "The atom bomb will never go off - and I speak as an expert in explosives.” - U.S. Admiral William Leahy in 1945.
• “You ought to go back to driving a truck.” - Concert manager, firing Elvis Presley in 1954.

On the other hand, consider how an optimist observes and develops:

• Cats eyes in the road were suggested by an engineer who narrowly missed a stray animal during a night drive.
• Clarence Birdseye took a vacation in Canada and tasted salmon that has been naturally frozen by the winter chill.  He was surprised how fresh they tasted, and borrowed the idea to create the frozen food industry.
• Post-it notes were developed when a choir member went looking for a glue that didn't stick - a failure among 3M's research and development projects.  He wanted something that he could mark the hymn book pages with, that would stay in position, but would not destroy the paper.  He found it, and the outcome is a legend.

Are you projecting an optimism that encourages people to bring suggestions and problems to your attention?  Are you communicating the message that questions are welcome?

What gets rewarded gets repeated.

If you react positively to suggestions, mistakes and complaints - they are the same things, by the way - then they will keep coming.  If you are scornful of suggestions, critical of mistakes and dismissive of complaints then they will stop coming to your attention.  That doesn't mean that will go away - just that you will not hear about the ideas, the errors or the problems.

If it had been your table cloth that had lamp fuel spilt on it, would you have recognised the potential value of solvent based cleaning?

What messages are you sending to the community?

The poster for the swimming club trials in your window may be an important message of community involvement.  The thank you certificate from the local high school for your involvement in the work experience program will send a message - provided that they are both current and local.  Involvement in your son's distant boarding school may send some wrong messages.

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Armed with all of this new insight, imagine the impact that you are going to have on those communicate with.  Ooops!.

Just because you have undergone the secular equivalent of a religious conversion, don't expect immediate results.

If, overnight, you change from Grumpy to Mr Nice Guy, people will notice, but they may not know what to do about it.  Ignore questions about whether your medication is only available only on prescription.  Instead accept the suspicion as a compliment, and carry on in your .new mode.