 Hey guys, Ken Ross here, and I'm a business consultant that specializes in reducing costs for businesses by looking into their essential expenses and today I want to talk to small businesses and the reason I want to talk to small businesses is because I believe You have a great advantage that you can capitalize on today And that's customer service and the reason I say that is this customer service is something that many people really value and And I'm gonna I'm gonna give you the reasons why I think that is there's a recent study in American Express business that says 81% of people think that small businesses provide better service than their larger counterparts now That's something to really take advantage of right if you think about it from a small business owner perspective like hey How do I maximize this this statistic? How do I understand what that really means right? Because my overhead is high right it's gonna cost me more to do business as a small business owner Well, I have some other great news for you and that's seven out of ten people Believe that they should pay more or are willing to pay more up to 13% more Right to have a better customer service experience now This is something to actually take really good note of because honestly right if you don't think that the margin is there It is right to spend at least a little bit more Enhancing the experience so that you are better than your competitors so that you can stay on top And let me let me help you out a little bit further right and let me let me give you a little bit more Understanding of what I'm trying to say I'm actually gonna give you some tips here on how you can increase your customer service Today and understand it today so that you can maximize this potential. Okay, so let's get started the first thing I want to tell you is that Unfortunately, right? Whether you're a big business or you're a smaller business bad customer service Has the opposite effect even greater probably than good customer service or even just average service, right? Bad customer service will put you on a list of people who are willing to tell everyone they know Hey, I never want to shop here again because this was my experience So that's that's true across the board whether you're a big business or a small business There's always going to be people who don't have a Good experience and want to tell other people about it and actually adversely adversely affects your business in that particular instance Because they're gonna raise a stink about they're gonna talk about it So how do you do good service as a small business owner first thing? I want to tell you is that you are a small business So that means you're smaller you have the ability to Change better you can you can pivot to something a lot quicker than larger counterparts, right? And I'm gonna expand a little bit on that and a little bit here But let's talk about some things you can do the first thing you can do is keep track of your technology Understand where technology is going and that's one of the things I really stress on this channel It's why I pick on 5g and telecommunications providers all the time because I really do feel like They're trying to offer you something and you have to weigh that against your service to your customer Is it gonna enhance customer service experience? Is it worth investing in? That's something you have to understand for yourself Something you have to really figure out in your business, but you do want to invest time in so for instance good good example Touchless payments. There's been a huge rise in touchless payments Before COVID and now during COVID now that it's here, right touchless payments is something that almost every business That's really looking at or focusing on their customers is investing in and there are big savings potentials There as well when it comes to what I do Having contactless payments is more secure than any other type of payment out there, right? And it's something that as a small business owner now only will it enhance your customer service experience It will help you save you money because you are doing things more securely. So that's the first thing It's an example something that you can do next thing I want to talk about is phone experience Whether you're on the phone with someone whether you're on hold whether they Go to call and leave a message that experience needs to be personalized It needs to be something that your business spends some time investing in and I have ways and can help you understand ways That you can maximize that as well. I get paid for none of these things that I talk about on this channel I don't spend a whole lot of time Making good new making deep smart deals with people like with kickbacks or anything. I'm a business consultant I specialize in certain areas that help help me help my bottom line, but I also Feel like it's my duty To highlight exceptional businesses that are doing things right that enhance customer service experiences And I know people that do that when it comes to the phone Experience and so I'd love to connect you with them and it would be it'd be a great experience overall for everyone I think it'd be awesome. The next thing is personal interactions and relationships It's something I've invested a lot in in my own business as well as as a small business owner Is something that you have an advantage over your larger counterparts? You do not have to worry about being in a lot of different places, right? Let's think of Apple for instance Apple has hundreds of stores Apple stores all over the world, right? They want their experience to be consistent Across the board. They want their certain they want a certain look and a certain desire You can personalize your experience for each area that you're in and you're a small You're in a smaller footprint. You don't have to do that across hundreds of stores like Applewood, right? Something that you should really invest some time in understanding and Explaining not only to your employees, you know people that that work for you, but to but to the community itself I'm here to serve a community. This is how I'm doing that. This is what I'm doing to do that This is what sets me apart from my competitors because not every competitor not every person in this space Doing business is concerned about their community and really reaching people personally They're also not concerned about when their customers come in What their other problems are right or how they can best serve that person individually They're more concerned about a sale So if you're not focusing on sales as much as really meaning the customer Understanding their needs at that time and then fulfilling what it is you provide because why would anyone want to come to your store? If they weren't interested, right? Or why would anyone want to seek your service or call you if they weren't interested? They have some interest you want to invest in what it is they want and what their needs are personally and if you can do that That's something that bigger businesses don't spend a whole lot of time doing and don't have the time to do It's not something they're looking to do. They're looking to push sales Next thing I want to talk about is social media It's a big thing, right? But you have an opportunity to do something in social media that bigger businesses don't have and that's you can definitely personalize it to your area like I said before and Your customers can have an exceptional experience now. Let's just let's just take an example And I like to pick on Apple and I have been in this video But the CEO of Apple is Tim Cook and I love Apple, right? I love Tim Cook in some sense because he's the CEO of Apple right now Wouldn't it be a great experience for me as a customer to be able to take a selfie with Tim Cook? I think it would be I think it'd be awesome Well as a small business owner if you have an exceptional business you can take a selfie with an owner You could be the owner that says hey, I love what I do for my business For my community. I love what I do for for my customers. I'm willing to be around and I'm available To post to social media and take a selfie with them. How much greater is that? For your business then it would be for Tim Cook right in some sense Tim Cook They make exceptional product sample and they talk about them and people are all all about it But it would be an arduous task for him to do that It's something you can do because you're a smaller business and it would definitely highlight your business to all of those Person's friends. Hey look I went and I met the owner of one of my favorite stores or I met the owner And this is what he's been doing for me. He's an awesome guy, right? That's something you cannot replace in Bigger business you can't make that same experience But you could certainly do that for your customers and it would help you as a business owner something I really feel like smaller businesses should do more of right That's the next thing so the next thing I want to talk about is proper employee training now One might say well, it's hard to train people when I'm in a service business and there's a lot of customers And I have a lot of churn. It's Important that services consistent It's important that your employees are well trained and the reason I say that is because you want consistency You don't want one customer coming in having a different experience because of a different employees understanding of The world or understanding of the business, right? You want that to be consistent So the easiest way I can give you the best advice I can give you is to make a small list and say every employee must know these things right and Push it as a philosophy highlight people doing that Encourage them saying hey look this is how this is supposed to be done do it the way Tim has done it or do it the way Jimmy has done it or do it the way that Shirley has done it or Julie has done it That is something I think will go a long way to showing the consistency And it's something you can do as a smaller business that bigger businesses don't necessarily do or can't do They have big budgets and they spend budgets on training materials and having that consistency there That's how they get consistency with their employees across the larger spaces that they've trained them And every person has to go through these trainings and every manager has to check the checkbox and say yep I you know Jimmy he did all of these things and we're ready to go right and they have to measure that against You know their goals and see that that they're all doing it that way That's the way bigger businesses work But you have the ability as a smaller business to see that in employees and to highlight them as a business owner How how much more encouraging would it be if the owner of the company said hey look So-and-so is doing a great job. You should do it just like them Right that's something I don't think a bigger business can do right It's not something that I mean a manager could certainly do that But they don't own the business They're not the ones they're not the one who who put this all together you are right something that I really do feel like as a as a smaller business You have the ability to do that bigger businesses don't do the last thing I want to talk about is this Being responsive to customer Suggestions right you may have a suggestion box or you may see other people with like hey give me your comments here or whatever right Bigger businesses do take feedback from their customers and they do change those things But it requires a lot more effort and a lot more time to consider these changes Why because they implement those changes across the whole market right Right they're not just going to make changes for one location They're going to make that change at every location because they want that thing to be consistent Everywhere right and it may require an investment in certain things But you as a smaller business owner have the ability to implement those changes a lot quicker To to your customers and you have the ability to train all your employees And if you foster the culture of good employee training and understanding Hey, this is the way we do things This is something that won't be that difficult for them to change to Whereas with a bigger company ah changes come and they hate them And they don't understand why are we doing this? This is ridiculous But we spent a lot of time researching it and this is what we think should be helpful to our customers We're going to start doing it this way Um, it's really hard to manage from a bigger standpoint as a smaller business You don't have that complexity. You're able to pivot faster You're able to listen to feedback and implement it more often than bigger businesses So that's something you should definitely take advantage of and in the end Know that the margins there know that people are willing to pay for better service That's what I have today. We'd love to hear your comments in the comments section below We'd love it if you'd share this video. I I want to hear feedback on this one I really do feel like I spent a lot of time and I do that with all of these videos spend a lot of time Researching and developing this content to to share to you would love to hear your feedback I'm going to post some links to some of the resources that I I used to create this video You should check those things out as well if you want more information on that And subscribe to this channel if you haven't tell your friends to do the same I really want to have a fair exchange and understand business better. I want topics to cover I'd love to hear your feedback on some things that we can cover on this channel because I'm I'm always looking for the For the way to help businesses grow and I really think that for smaller businesses Customer service is the best way for one of one of the best ways for you to grow your business right now If you invest heavily in making that experience the best that it can be You're going to see great returns in your business. You're going to be so so pumped to get up because you know Your customers are happy So with that see me around on different social media platforms I'll be around different places and visit my website. I am ken ross.com and until next time I'll see you around