inside chon

The Firefighter

I have been in the technology consulting business for about 7 years now. If you count high school, a bit longer but I'm talking serving customers professionally and helping people solve their computer problems to put money in the bank. Over the last year I've grown and added an associate to help me with the volume, and even had an assistant for some time handling the phone calls and scheduling.

The hardest thing about this business is delivering a consistent service level and getting customers to understand that service level. We offer onsite service that can be same day depending on volumes, but our pickup and deliver service is usually a 3-5 day return time (not including the time it takes to receive parts). We typically return sooner than this but its always best to give a worst case scenario to set expectations. The reason we set these return times is because of volume. We may have 5 machines waiting to be serviced and the machine that gets dropped off on Thursday might not get touched until Tuesday (3 business days). I'm contemplating having an up-charge for customers that want to pay to move to the front of the line.

As a consumer, I'm a huge fan of these fees. When I have to pay these fees I love it because typically I'm realizing tremendous value. If I have to pay to overnight a book from Amazon becucase I want to start reading it tomorrow, I feel great. If I have to pay to stay at a hotel onsite at Unviersal because in doing that I'm able to skip the lines all day long at the park I feel like a million bucks. I love instant gradification.

Our pricing structure is going to be modified, I'm sure of that. Most likely with increases as well as higher fees for same day, evening, and weekend appointments and to have your machine "bumped" to the front of the repair queue. If we have to re-arrange our typical operating procedures, we have to charge a premium. That way we aren't always rushing around to put out fires.

growing pains

What a roller coaster the past few days have been! I haven't been writing nearly as much as I'd like to mostly because of time constraints but over the last few months I've experienced incredible growth in my business and learned some lessons along the way too.

The first thing is that almost two months ago I hired an Admin Assistant for Digital Aspire and she has been a phenomenal. If I could go back in time I would have done it years ago. It's an ideal situation for both of us right now. She works from her house answer phone calls and keeping the schedule which allows me to focus on things that drive revenue to the company. Having someone that delivers a professional first impression to customers is key in my mind, and she has been a great asset to the company.

Secondly, I've added a second technician to the company. He has been handling a great deal of the residential service calls that has brought my company along this far. While we are making a real push this year for commercial business I have been looking for a top notch person to help on the residential side and I have definitely found him.

I was scheduled to go to NYC on Wednesday for a course on Microsoft CRM (Customer Relationship Management) but they decided to cancel the course today. So now a trip that was supposed to be business and pleasure is turning into strictly pleasure. I'm sure that I will find a way to work business into it somehow though ;)

thanks

I just wrote a thank you card to a customer that referred someone to me. I used to thank all my customers.

I'd send a thank you note after every service call to thank them for their business. If they said that one of my existing customers referred them, I'd sent that person a note to thank them. I'm not sure what it did but it made me feel good to say thanks.

I'm going to start saying it more often.

Relax, I have blonde highlights.

If you know me, you know that I provide companies and people with technology solutions. I segment my customers as best I can because a different customer type will experience different problems which in turn require different solutions. A business customer of mine that does over 10 million dollars a year in revenue has different problems than your neighbor who wants to turn on the TV and watch a DVD with one remote.

After doing this for many many years I've found out that this business isn't so much about the services you deliver but the experience the customer receives from the second they pick the telephone up to call you. They can call anyone for their technology problems from a friend in the neighborhood to The Geek Squad at Best Buy. Why do they choose my company? Do they see my ad more than the competition? Do they trust a smaller operation more? My marketing is intentionally simple for the residential market. Its a picture of me when I was 15 years old and little else. People laugh and frequently tell me that I need to change my picture (I have high lites in my hair) but I laugh it off and run it again the next month. I'm all for being consistent.

Moving forward I'm going to try to make the experience that I deliver to people different. We will focus on communicating better and more frequently with our customer base. On following up with them after the issue is resolved to make sure that it stays resolved and they aren't having issues.

What are some pain points that you think people experience when they use the services of a technology company?