Pulling Down the Big Bucks

On average, CEO pay increased some 32% from this time last year. That's going to hurt a few people when they read that.

Are these guys worth it? I mean, as a customer, when was the last time you got visited or called by a CEO of one your suppliers? When did they last even get visibility of your complaint let alone help with it?

Instead, low paid, often offshore staff get the blunt end of the customer wrath when things go wrong and all they are equipped with is a few scripts to handle supposedly every situation. Not one of them is empowered to make a decision and none of them are allowed to escalate something beyond a local supervisor. You want to speak to a Director? Oh dear, they don't take calls, I'm afraid, sir.

Hearing that makes me so angry.

So what precisely do Directors and CEOs do while these poor wretches have to deal with unreasonable people like me who don't take their fob-offs?

Let me give you three examples that occurred to me recently.

1) The Good

Step up Virgin Media. OK we got off to a bad start as they took my order to change from Sky and then found out their records were wrong and my house was not served by fibre. I complained and some offshore chap said a new installation would be arranged. The engineer came and reaffirmed that no fibre came to the house. The cable pit was 5 metres from my front gate but a small private road was in-between. So no go. That's it - no services and you can go and re-order Sky, pal.

Never to take things lying down, I Googled CEO email addresses and there is a super site that gives you them. The CEO at Virgin Media is Neil Birkett. I dare say he did not personally handle my case but I got an email of apology back immediately and within a few weeks the road was dug up and I was cabled up too.

Damn good job, Mr Birkett. You deserve every penny you earn in my book for responding to customer needs and realising when mistakes are made they need to be rectified. For the cost of digging up a road he will probably get a lifetime's loyalty and some.

2) The Bad

I fell for it. I bought one of those cheap and nasty Apps on my iPad that tells you they can make the thing print on any WiFi printer. Like heck they do.

So I emailed support as phones do not exist on this App world. Someone responded soon enough and told me to install something called 'WePrint' on my PC and this would solve it. Err, not as such. Now my iPad recognises my printer is there but the signal gets lost in the ether somewhere and WePrint sits there doing naff all.

It's not a great deal of money at stake but, frankly, if something doesn't do something it should do then do not have the gall to charge, I say. Not so, Print Central was a waste of a few quid and nobody was happy to refund me. Now EuroSmartz Ltd the software writers can suffer by having their name mentioned negatively in a user's blog. The software was rubbish and the support was hopeless. And you had the cheek to keep my money.

Shame on you. Where was the CEO when I asked for them? They don't get involved in such trivia. Ah well, my mistake.

3) The Ugly

There had to be a humdinger. Step up Charles Dunstone and his Carphone Warehouse crew. Let me explain, I have been a customer of theirs via a single number my wife uses for over 12 years, always upgrading and spending £thousands with them over time.

The love affair ended abruptly last year, sadly. My wife took an upgrade and got a Sony Ericsson phone - nice too. Within a year the thing could no longer be charged up. It still worked fine, just the external copper connecters had a short on one of the prongs and would no longer accept charge. So we took it for repair to the CPW shop in St Albans and my wife, as she runs her entire business from her mobile in terms of contacts etc, explicitly pointed out that the phone worked fine and that the data on the phone should be preserved, i.e. do not zap it. This was typed onto the Work Docket and signed by my wife.

Two weeks later the phone came back. It still worked but all the data had been zapped off it. With it came a diagram with an arrow pointing to the charging connector saying it had shorted. The genius engineer stated that 'water damage' had caused this and therefore it invalidated the warranty and the phone was now 'Beyond Economic Repair' (BER in their parlance).

The kid in the shop said the only remedy now was to buy a new phone at £350+. At this point, I must admit, I lost my customary cool. To all the questions about why it had been zapped when we asked for this not to be done, why can't the connector be replaced, why can't we pay for the repair if no warranty, what does the manufacturer say was 'like it or lump it' in so many words.

I subsequently got the phone repaired for less than £40 at a shop around the corner. CPW somehow kept our memory card which they did return eventually but perhaps not before some enterprising person might have taken a peak as to what was on it as was revealed in a recent court case which CPW lost involving Chris de Burgh's daughter. I would never say such a thing but you wonder, don't you?

Some weeks and a verbal admission of blame by an engineering manager later which was subsequently denied, I got through to the 'Office of Charles Dunstone' no less. This is an elite team of 'fixers' who act in his name to remedy customer problems. Don't believe it.

By this time I had cancelled our remaining contract with CPW which happened to be with O2. I was charged the outstanding amount. So when I contacted Dunstone's office all I wanted really was my £40 and remaining contract money back - after all they had agreed not to zap the data and the phone could have been repaired. There was no need to try and scare us into buying a new phone and part with all that cash.

No way. A Neil Rosen actually called me a blackmailer over the phone for asking for my money back. It was as if I was extorting him by holding his family at gunpoint when I had paid them £135 for no service.

What possesses people to say such slanderous things to customers is beyond me - what did he hope to gain by doing so? Did he not know that it as actually something for which he or his company could be sued for? I even consulted a lawyer who said to take them to the Small Claims Court. But guess what? I didn't. Why? Because I could not be bothered even though it would have cost me nothing to do so. I simply did not have the time and energy. Dunstone won.

In the end, I lost the will to live. But I marked down this. To my mind Charles Dunstone and his Carphone Warehouse team tried to extort money out of me for a new phone when the one I had was less than a year old and still working save being able to be charged up. For the price of a new copper connector, the thing could have been repaired and I would still be customer today and set fair for another 12 years of coughing up money to them.

Instead, here I am blogging and tweeting about a bunch of nasties who even had the audacity to accuse one of their customers of 'blackmail' when raising a problem.

So there are CEO's and there are CEOs. Neil Birkett and Virgin Media could not get higher praise from me and they deserve any recommendations I can give.

Carphone Warehouse - don't touch them with a barge pole is my advice and the CEO is full of hot air in pretending to be involved in customer care. Count yourselves lucky you did not get a case raised for slander.

Blackmail, my backside. It was my money - perhaps we should look up the definition in the dictionary.

The Point

All these situations can be avoided. Empowering front line employees is a brave act but giving them the power to make on the spot decisions that even cost money will save loads in the long run.

If you don't believe me, just try and it and see. Customer loyalty doesn't cost that much when you do it right. Do it wrong and it costs a bomb.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Google Samples Reality

A friend and former colleague had a good adage about free products - 'They are free and worth every penny'.

It used to be my mantra when selling web and videoconferencing against the likes of Microsoft who allegedly (despite making over 40% net profits at the time) gave NetMeeting away free. Sure enough they stopped developing the product but it scuppered many a sale for me.

And so Google, the masters of 'selling' free products and services, finally stepped up and brought us a touch of reality - their version of a SmartPhone, the Nexus One. Sold either as a separate item or as an airtime bundle with T-Mobile in the US it is not cheap but it is meant to be an alternative to the immensely popular Apple iPhone. In the UK, it will be sold via Vodafone or Google direct.

The trouble is that Google has always offered support of its product via anonymous email - why expect more as their products are free, after all? Not so with the Nexus One - you pay serious money to get in on the act and Google were set to make handsome profits. But the real world intervened. Phones can go wrong and customers in the US are furious - filling bulletin boards and forums with complaints about lack of service and finger pointing by Google as neither they or their airtime provider can agree who should be taking the calls to service complaining customers - and Google do not have a line you can call.

Google must have watched Microsoft, who over the years have made lack of customer service an art form. Microsoft products are not cheap - a full MS Office suite for a home user, small business or even a Corporate User sets you back a pretty big sum. But try getting some support on the product and you have the delight of being referred to your PC supplier if it was bought pre-loaded or just sit and wait for hours if you bought it direct from Microsoft. And it's not as if Microsoft products are bug-free - some of the bugs actually were put in the very first versions and reside there today like antique quirks.

Google are vying to topple the likes of Microsoft and become standard applications in the world of Cloud Computing. To do so it has to learn a lesson that customers are fed up with the arrogance of the likes of Microsoft when it comes to ropey products and poor support. To make us all change, the alternative not only has to be 'fresh and cool' but reliable and well supported.

I hope Google get it right for the UK launch.

The Congestion Charge Racket

To start, hands up, my wife and I are not great at remembering to pay, which is one of my beefs about the Congestion Charge for London.

But it's way more than that - it's getting like a racket - a licence to print money and the abuse of people's rights is getting silly.

First up - it's an unfair system. My wife only ever goes into the zone for minutes on any day she goes to London and always with another passenger in the car. Yet she is charged the full £8 just the same as a driver-only vehicle who may drive around for the full congestion charge period for the same charge - polluting and contributing to jams the whole day. That's just plain stupid and we should all make a stand to Boris Johnson on this - there is nothing 'green' about the system and it's wholly unfair in terms of usage.

It's not as if the technology does not exist to collect charges at source and dramatically reduce the amount of Penalty Charge Notices (PCN) which are sent out. My wife has an account with a debit mandate attached to it and if she remembers to text in then it debits her account. But we have two cars and so she repeatedly texts for the wrong car which has happened again. She has paid £8 but for the wrong vehicle. Transport for London (TfL) happily takes the wrongly paid £8 and will not refund the money in any circumstance - it's the only authority or company I know which has the right totally abuse the consumer rights law yet it is operated by a private company. It is an absolute licence to print money.

The technology for number plate recognition has been there since the day it was launched and the debit mandates are there for individual accounts - yet the payment system is 'rigged' to make sure you have to trigger something to pay even though TfL can actually do it for you. It's absolutely ludicrous that it should not be done this way.

Here's the new thing. Congestion Charge is neither a traffic offence or is it a consumer purchase so it operates in a middle ground but is protected by the laws of traffic transgression. Yet if you speed, the fine notification has to be sent out within 14 days of the offence occurring - any time after actually transgresses your right to defend yourself and so as 'Mr. Loophole', the famous lawyer who gets rich people off, exploits you do not have to pay and you cannot be convicted. Congestion Charge does not have the same rule, they can send out a PCN at ANY time after the offence has occurred - but technically it's not an offence and so despite the fact you have a right to defend yourself as each week passes it becomes progressively more difficult to get facts. TfL has now sent out the last two PCNs my wife has received, despite her paying £8 in both instances, fully seven weeks after the alleged offences took place. As the first was when she used my car, I called to complain and I was threatened that if I did not pay then the charge would be doubled and I would be prosecuted for non-payment.

The best part is that they are not even Londoners on the end of the line - they are Capita people based in Coventry - fat lot they know or care about London.

So, Boris Johnson, if you bother to listen to your public, listen to this. The Congestion Charge system needs to be properly positioned - and do what it says. If cars only enter the zone for minutes in a day then surely they should pay less for the little they pollute and congest within the charging hours. Surely, if not only as a matter of courtesy, PCNs should be sent out promptly and within a few days, maximum 14 days, of a penalty being incurred so that people can exercise their rights to defend themselves properly. People should have individual accounts and pay for any car on the same mandate just list the cars they may use. It is a simple process which is called customer service. And put the call centre in London - manned by courteous Londoners rather than people who have no knowledge of the City or zero care about Londoners.

Ken Livinsgtone famously had a referendum to see if West Londoners wanted the charging zone extended and in democratic process at its best he ignored the huge majority of 'No's' and went ahead anyway. It makes you think more was at stake than just trying to de-congest or de-pollute London.

So, define whether this is a service we buy or whether it is a transgression system. Like clamping and parking, the Congestion Charge is degenerating into a way for private companies to print money by effectively running it as a racket.

And finally, put the money made back into London rather than giving handsome profits to the private companies who run this - why should they profit so much from it?

The whole system was set up wrong in the first place and makes you wonder how many people associated with TfL had shares in Capita? I wonder if anyone checked as they are the only people benefiting from a service gone wrong.

The Cost of Bad Service

Happy Boxing Day everyone. I hope Santa was good to you and you had a lovely Christmas.

I hate to pick on a sour note but something triggered my mind this Christmas to how poor service kills the experience of either buying things or at minimum using a service. Typically if things aren't going according to plan, our only recourse as customers or users is to call the company in question and either clarify or complain. We hit the dreaded call centre and the world of scripted customer experience, designed, no doubt, by hard nose managers who have neither ever answered a customer call nor really ever had to use their own service.

Once, at the Ralph Lauren Outlet shop in Bicester, a gentleman's credit card required some extra authorisation as a standard security check. The queue looked on in anger as the poor shop assistant went through some questions and it appeared that things were not happening for some reason - the call centre was in some foreign location and language was clearly an issue. The customer smiled enigmatically and asked for the phone as he was worked as a bank manager of the credit card company in question. He apologised to the queue generally before turning to the phone, explained who he was and then tried to clear up the situation. After several minutes of talking he suddenly lost his rag and started shouting down the phone trying to explain he was a manager and why that made a difference. The call ended a full 10 minutes later and he withdrew his card, left his purchases and stormed out of the shop as people muttered at him, 'Now you know what it's like, mate.'

But generally managers don't know. In the UK, on average, senior executives are paid around six times more than lower level staff - in the US this gap is over ten times. The closer you are to the customer, the reality is that the less you are paid. Meanwhile, the farther away you are, the more you are paid by a massive difference. It is also true that the closer you are to the customer, the less decision making power you have - stands to reason as you are less paid therefore have less responsibility.

Wrong. The closer you are to the customer the more influence you have over the company's service, brand and reputation - and therefore - it's profitability.

How many times have you called companies to complain and all you get is the euphemistically called 'Customer Service Engineer' or similarly exotic title. If your question goes beyond a scripted answer, you naturally ask to speak to their manager, or heaven forbid, a director who is responsible for the whole service. Forget it. They are not paid all that money to merely listen to customers, deal with problems or understand how their service is performing. They have graphs and reporting lines for that. As long as the colours look pretty - the business is fine.

I have mentioned this before, at Genesys Conferencing some years ago we came up with a radical idea as customer 'incidents' were increasing and, in general, people were getting angrier. For once, we looked beyond the graph and listened - I don't know what possessed us to do it. It seemed that customers who had more incidents subsequently spent less with us and some even left us - all resulting in lower profits from that customer. Often, the incidents were over minor losses to the service or billing mistakes (like continuing to bill an account after a person had left, which on the face of it should be the customer's fault for not closing the account and making sure no one used that service on that account again). So we decided to give discretionary powers to the customer service 'engineers' to actually give refunds for the service to the value of the incident that went wrong or up to £1,000, usually by offering a credit to be consumed as they carried on using.

The effect was astonishing. Instead of getting customers leave us, they stayed. As MD, I would get calls praising our customer service team and account managers who helped solve problems but at the financial end, we lost less profit. This seems daft as surely we were giving some away. It turned out that not all customers rang with the purpose to get a credit so when offered it they felt it was not required but at least someone had listened and done something about it. While for others, by giving a small credit instantaneously, we never felt any further losses from less usage or customer churn. Better still, by understanding what caused the problems rather than simply turning people away, we got procedures in and looked at technical faults more closely which fixed the base problems causing the incidents. By listening and acting we were able to find the real problems more easily and fix them. Eureka!

This was not rocket science. Recently, my wife used my car and drove into London. She entered the Congestion Charge Zone for approximately 5 minutes before parking and then left after charging had stopped. She used her account to text her charge of £8 that day but mistakenly paid for our other car which was being used in Basingstoke by me for the day. It was the second time we had made that same mistake. This was on 5 November this year. On 12 December, we received a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN), which had been issued on 7 December and took 5 days to arrive even though they have our email addresses.

I called to complain that this delay was unreasonable as I had not used the car that day and my wife assured me she had paid and even had the text response to say she had. The menu service at Transport for London - TfL -(or CC London) on the call handling device clearly says 'if you want to complain, press X' and I did so. The customer service person said they only handle complaints in writing - I pointed out the taped call handling said differently and they said to write to complain about that too. As you only have 14 days after the date of issue to challenge the PCN, I wrote via the website complaint email service and explained what had happened the same day. I got a telephone message on 21 December from a lady who gave a number that did not exist to respond to which curtly said they had reviewed my case and tough - no explanation.

I called again on 21 Dec to the customer service line which did answer and asked to speak to the lady in question, who was unavailable but the person said they could handle it. I explained I thought it unreasonable to be sent a notice after 4 weeks on an incident and it made investigating at my end difficult - tough was the answer as there are NO LIMITS on the length of time that a PCN can be sent out after an incident. TfL can send them out as long as they liked after. The person did offer that a system upgrade had caused delays but that was that. I explained that was not my problem, I surely had a right to defend myself as clearly we had paid £8 for something and we wanted an explanation, not realising the mistake was ours. I explained I was in our other car that day and gave the registration number but they would not check if that car had been paid for - it was irrelevant.

As the call ended, the lady then said, 'Do you want to pay now?' Haughtily, I said I had until 23 Dec according to the PCN and she said, nope - I had 14 days from the date of issue, 7 Dec and so 21 Dec was the limit. It was now a point of order - the PCN clearly stated that I had until 23 Dec, she said she did not have access to the PCN and she doubted if that's what it said, and, in her own words - 'I don't care'. If I did not pay that day, I would be charged the full amount.

I paid there and then. But it was a classic example of rubbish systems, not joined up and little attention to the customer experience. Capita, who operate the service for TfL assume this is a penalty or tax service and so these are fines - punishment and so customer service is not required. The onus of paying the charge or fine is on the customer even though account details and direct debit mandates are in place and number plate recognition has been available from the start. In our case we have two accounts, one for each car but with one payment method - surely we could operate as one account? The final point of principle is that we HAD paid £8 that day for the right to drive a car in the Congestion Zone and if we got the wrong car, surely we had the right to get at least a credit for the one wrongly paid for?

It seems CC London has the right to steal money and impose unreasonable fines plus have an indefinite period to impose the fines making defence of such fines as impossible as it can. But it is the glee with which the customer service people take in telling you there is absolutely no way that you can get relief on a charge and no matter what happened it is your fault and your responsibility and crap service is not an excuse.

CC London is law unto itself. But poor customer service and stupidly imposed systems by highly paid management makes matters far, far worse. It is derived from the first principle that the customer must not be refunded no matter what. If that is challenged, pull down the 'Iron Curtain' that says managers and directors do not take calls and that will frustrate the hell out of people and in the end they will give up.

Utilities are classic for this and only recently have we got enough choice to change suppliers as you should do in the real competitive world but CC London has a monopoly to impose whatever it likes as you have zero choice in the matter. It is a licence to print money and they do so with complete impunity.

No wonder the mangers get paid so much more than the people on the phone - they are clever bunnies. If Boris Johnson had a real brain, he would put out to tender the running of the service - and the first stipulation should be that the call centre should be located in London and run by Londoners rather than Coventry as they should know what they are talking about having used the service at minimum. Secondly, he should combine cars and accounts so that people can pay for any car with one text. Thirdly, he should review the fairness of the system as a flat £8 charge is imposed even if you drive around polluting and congesting all day or enter for only a few moments.

Come the revolution! Make Customer Service mean what it says - remember we are customers after all.

Customer Billing Service?

It was comforting to hear the patronising tones of British Gas CEO, Bob Bentley, on the radio this morning sounding as if he has had an epiphany when it comes to billing customers. Bless him, he finds the bills his company issues complicated to read and therefore has some empathy with his customers.

Rather nicely of him, he has now decided that 'Estimated Bills' should be done away with. Instead, customers can call in or text their latest readings with only the odd spot check to keep them on the straight and narrow. How very thoughtful of him.

It sounds like this is an enormous innovation in customer service but it hardly moves the needle in reality. Sure, we can now get more accurate monthly or quarterly bills and so smooth the payments better and not have those shocking bills periodically when the utility company gets around to read the meters they own and run, but are these companies providing a real service?

True, they provide gas and electricity to homes - thanks. But in most cases, like the phone company or milkman, they do not provide accurate billing regularly and without customer intervention. The onus, in most usual instances, is on the company providing the service to provide an accurate record and bill of the customer usage and to make payments easy. The meter is provided by them and for them to read, so life could not be much easier for the utility companies really. In fact, these meters have not changed in tens of years despite all these utilities posting nice profits; the billing technology and base mechanisms have not been updated for ages and the onus is right back on the customers to intervene and question bills, estimated or otherwise. And when you do so, boy, are you are in for problems as they do not believe a word you say - the subject of an earlier blog.

It is remarkable in these modern times that at least an upgrade cannot be fitted or new meters put in which negate the need for them to be read by humans at all. It may cost money but I am sure the long term return would be there if they charged just a tiny amount per quarter for the new meter. It isn't rocket science - it's actually, in my opinion, their responsibility to do so and the racketeering we have seen on utility bills over the years has, I am sure, caused customers to pay significantly over the odds for their utility bills. I know that is likely to be the case as it happened to me.

And here's the best of the new billing companies - Transport for London (TFL). Yes, they introduced the Congestion Charge for Central London with a state of the art billing system that required the customer to pay and it was strictly cash on the day or now up to 24 hours later - you miss, your responsibility even though you never asked for the whole thing. It is important also to draw a distinction here - the Congestion Charge is not a service, it's a straight local tax which is entirely incumbent on the individual to pay. If you were a sporadic user of the roads in London or, heaven forbid, a visitor then you were basically stuffed. The onus was on you to know exactly where the limits of the zones were and how to pay - and it isn't that simple. Until recently, the website had an issue with the latest version of Windows - which they denied - that stopped you paying online. But if you made a simple mistake or forgot for 24 hours, the penalties are unforgiving and more than those for assaulting people.

It's draconian and stupid. The technology was put in there from day one to capture images and number plate recognition. They have always had the capability to set up automated billing and it is an absolute crime that they did not implement this from the start.

It is the basic premise - you want to bill people for using roads, then you set up the system for them to pay without even having to think about it. It's a tax in all but name and, boy, do we know the taxman likes to make sure he or she gets her money without the hindrance of human intervention. For TFL, it was always the case to be able to get as many penalty charges in as possible and Capita, the system designers and operators, are superb at making money for old rope.

The day will come when all companies who want to charge for their services set up billing systems which make it simple, easy and automated for customers to pay. I think it's a basic responsibility for being in business.

Power At The Speed Of Light

Yesterday afternoon I was sifting the internet and reading the referenced article on the future of energy prices. The news was bad - Ofgem are predicting steep rises anywhere up to 60% over the next 7 years.

To my surprise the doorbell rang as I was reading the very article and once I had calmed the dogs down I found a clean cut, nicely suited young man brandishing an identity card as if he was from the FBI. It turned out he was from npower. I suspiciously looked back toward my PC thinking the worst of conspiracy theories, how could he have got here so fast?

'Hi, I'm from npower and this is my identity card,' he said with a pleasant smile. 'And how are you this cold day? Winter is on its way, isn't it?'

I have read that the power of suggestion is remarkable and an involuntary shiver ran down my spine to confirm it. The coincidence, if it was such, was suspicious.

'What are you doing here?' I asked warily.

'To save you money on your energy bills, as I have done for....' he reeled off the names of all my neighbours, even the two people I knew were away in Majorca and Ireland respectively. It made me fear the worst and I envisaged them tied up in their lounges, gagged and unable to call for help having been forced to sign a new power deal. Either that or he was lying about speaking to them.

'Prices are set to rise,' he continued. 'You probably would want to protect yourself against such rises and by signing up with npower you can not only protect yourself from those rises but we guarantee a saving on your current bill. You couldn't refuse an offer like that, could you?'

The last bit was delivered with a smile but it sounded a mixture of mafia-style threat and the suggestion I must be stupid if I refused. I panicked.

'I'm only the janitor,' I blurted out. The chap looked bemused.

'This is this address,' he said pointing to his clipboard. I nodded it was pointless lying, he knew everything - he even had the number of my gas and electric meters down there. 'You are Nigel Dunn, aren't you?' It was an obvious threat - deny it and I would disappear like my hapless neighbours. I caved in, bowing to his superb interrogatory techniques.

'I am,' I said.

'Good, got that sorted,' he smiled again. 'A lot of people think we are trying to sell something and so fib. But I am not selling you anything.'

'What would you call it then?' I asked. It just came out, I don't know why I said it. His face seemed to darken for a second.

'No, people only think we are salespeople,' he smiled, his teeth slightly more clenched. 'But we are energy consultants. We are here to help you save money. There is a difference, you know.'

Clearly the debate was over. 'To qualify for the savings now and to lower your current bills and then protect yourself from future rises, all you need to do is sign here,' he continued, pointing to a line next to my name which was currently blank.

'Don't you want to see my bills first and check you can get be lower?' I asked. 'That's what the last guy wanted.' He laughed.

'Of course, but it's just a formality,' he said. 'We know we are cheaper than your current supplier, Eon.' It was the last throw of the dice of a desperate man on my part. Then I remembered.

'Wait a minute, we are on a 10 year price capped deal,' I said excitedly. 'I have already signed one of these daft contracts and I am already protected against future rises.'

He suddenly recoiled and almost held up his hands as a vampire might do at the sight of a cross. He shrank back into the shadows and said something about that would be OK then, I had already taken precautions. He did not say goodbye, I just caught a glimpse of him scuttling across the courtyard. I closed the door with a smile, for once I had one over on a door to door salesman. I waited but there was no sound of a car engine and when I looked out, he had gone.

The energy scams are a softer sell than they used to be. Having been persuaded by Eon some time ago to put both gas and electricity with them, I signed a ten year price cap deal. Some quarters later I saw a man wandering around the courtyard with a clipboard and identity tag around his neck but he did come near my house. A few days later I got a shock as Eon had claimed to read my meter and after several estimated bills previously they found I now owed them a lot of money - hundreds of pounds which they were going to charge me for.

I noticed that the estimates carried back to beyond when I signed up and there was something strange about the sudden rise in the number. I went outside and checked the meter and the number I saw on the gas meter was far, far lower. I called and they said that they had read the meter and we checked the dates which appeared to be the day I saw the chap wandering the courtyard. It was meant to be the guy who had read the meter. Even though it was now patently obvious he had not read the meter, they then said that legally they were required to read it only once every two years and in between it was my responsibility to check the estimates were right or wrong. I pointed out that the estimates went back to before when I swapped over and they said that was still my responsibility.

Call Centres are a dreadful invention. You ask for an escalation of the problem and you are stonewalled and if you are very lucky you get to speak to the daily supervisor who repeats the same message in more firm tones, being careful to speak exactly when you speak to drown you and then accuse you of talking over them, then ending the call as they did not need to take that kind of attitude or abuse even though you had not said anything. In most cases, the matter ends there as there are no obvious ways of raising this to management. Customer Services may be a number on the bill but you end up in the same place and if you are very lucky, someone who may take a few days to get back to you and then say exactly the same thing again. It happened here and it made me more annoyed. I felt I had been sold a pup as when I told them that I was on a 10 year capped deal and on the bill it said my prices were rising, they outright denied I had signed anything of the sort.

My only recourse was to write in and make my complaint official. I did so and to my horror, for some reason they raised the bill again with some excuse about the readings. At this point the red mist descended. I rang and asked to speak to someone with a title of Director. No chance, such people in many companies today never, ever take calls from customers. It's in their contracts and they are defended by an army of call centre operatives, customer support goons and highly trained receptionists who are automatons who simply say, 'Directors do not take calls.' Not even from their spouses, I suspect.

Years of sales experience kicked in. If there is one thing a salesperson can do, it is to get around gatekeepers as we call them. The first step is to do your research and the internet is so handy for that. Take a look at their website or Companies House and get the Board Directors' names. Then use several permutations of nomenclature of potential email addresses and send a well written email, without anger but with a slight implied threat. The threat I used was 'misselling' and Ofgem were mentioned too.

I got a reply from the CEO's PA within a day. Profuse apologies, they were a special task team who handled complaints to the CEO and my case was being reviewed. I called and spoke to the lady and she wanted to turn it back on me. Then I told her the exact date I had signed the 10 year deal and she suddenly went quiet. The 10 year deal and misselling apparently have some kind of link - it was the magic word. Suddenly all that I had said took on real meaning. Eon should have checked my meter at the start of the contract, that was their responsibility, they should have had a proper reading within 2 years and the chap who came should have done it - of course, she claimed he was an untrustworthy third party worker not Eon. My prices should not have fluctuated and I was not liable to changes in the period I had been with them. In fact, when they read the meter again and sent a new bill - THEY OWED ME MONEY. Further, they even paid me a small sum in compensation - basically hush-money as it was fairly clear they had over-charged badly, not implemented the capping plan, failed to read the meters when they should and there was just a glimmer of a whiff of misselling of the 10 year deal.

I have found such an approach to call centres the only way. I have also had issues with O2 Broadband for business and when I got poor technical service, they moaned it could not be them. Eventually, I did the same and got a reaction form the CEO's PA who personally saw to it the problem was rectified with engineers coming from BT who informed me the practice by broadband suppliers to tell customers to dismantle the sockets to plug the ADSL wire into the ADSL test socket is effectively the exact wrong thing to do and invalidates anything BT does. Thankfully, the guy put it right and my broadband speeds are now acceptable. Again, O2 gave me several free months to compensate when really they did not have to.

My advice, take your complaints to the top. It's the only way you get action. It also serves a purpose and service to these suppliers, as Directors should not be shielded from the real problems in their business and these Directors should take responsibility for poor service.

That's their job.

However, a small amount of empowerment at the Call Centre Operative level would actually remedy most situations without huge cost. That's really worth thinking about for these organisations.

Beware of The Glossy Adverts

I love a good advert and my bank uses the one with a small child saying goodbye to its pet iguana or something as the family has to move - then sees the same pet in the new house in San Francisco or somewhere. Details are hazy but you know the one.

HSBC. Don't get me wrong, 90% of the time they are fine. In fact I run 90% of my business banking on the internet and so I rarely have to speak to anyone and only go to the Bank to get cash. The HSBC Internet Banking service is pretty good - I can set up new suppliers and pay them easily and I can transfer money to my private account for wages and expenses instantly. It isn't as reliable as it should be and there have been several times of late, annoyingly at month end, when the portal has been down. But, again, 90% of the time it's fine and meets my expectations.

As so often is the case, it is when you have to deal with human beings when things start to go wrong. Last month I was on a business trip to Valencia (lovely city by the way) and I had stayed at a Hilton Hotel there. So I checked out and paid my bill with my business card and then met a potential client in the restaurant for lunch. I tried to pay the bill and my business card was refused. The lady thought there may be a fault with the machine and so I counted out the last of my cash and paid. It was a very unimpressive sight for my potential client who has since declined to do business with me although it would be a stretch to say because of that incident but it certainly gave no real confidence that he was dealing with a guy from the UK with sound backing. The hammer blow came as we walked through reception as the cashier told me there was a problem with my bill payment. I bade farewell to my potential client, who by this time probably thought I was a serial crook, and tried to sort things out. It appeared that my bank had tried to take the money on the card twice. They ascertained that the bill looked as it was paid and all was well.

A short while later, I tried to fill up the hire car with fuel and pay with my card. Again it was refused. This time I had to use a private card as I had no cash left. Meanwhile, the hotel had tried to call me again and had left a message on my mobile that they were not sure if the bill was paid correctly and suddenly I was panicking. I was in a foreign country, my business card had failed and I had a very big hotel bill outstanding, no cash and only a private card left which was close to its limit.

That's when the fight started, so they say. I called the HSBC customer support line and was routed to somewhere very foreign and to someone who got completely the wrong end of the stick. They thought this was a private card and could not relate it to my business, firstly. Secondly, they told me that they had put me on security hold as the Hilton Hotel had tried to take the payment twice and so looked fraudulent. We had an esoteric discussion of who Hilton Hotels were and how hotels take a pre-authorisation for the approximate amount beforehand, and whether this constituted fraudulent behaviour. I also pointed out that I had stayed at the exact same hotel some weeks earlier and spent a similar amount of money. I had bought air tickets and car hire in Valencia before. As they wanted me to 'heads up' where I am going on business, I told them if they observed my account they would have noticed that I had travelled to Spain at least 5 times in the last few months, Sweden twice, Italy 3 times, France 5 times, Denmark, and Germany. The pattern of my spending would have indicated that I was likely to be on business again and so the Hilton transaction would have made sense.

But sense and logic does not come into it. The block was finally removed and I asked for a manager to call me so that we could understand each other. No such call came although my 'Personal Banking Relationship Manager' did try to call on my home phone in business hours when I was in Sweden and quite how she was involved, I don't know.

The whole thing seemed to have subsided. Then a week or so before the end of June, I got several notices from online suppliers that my card details were due to expire - fairly important suppliers for my online back up, web hosting, email hosting, business travel booking and anti-virus software, all of which were due to be renewed in the final month of my fiscal year, July. I checked the card and it was due to expire at the end of July so I thought I would check this was ok. I went to my HSBC branch and had a short meeting with a Business Banking executive who called card services and everyone reassured me that my card was good for all July and the new one would be sent at the end of July. I also asked about why a manager had not contacted me and they said it would be looked into. No call has been received since.

Inevitably, the card was refused on 1 July by my online suppliers and I had the nasty situation of online backups stopping, and my web services about to be withdrawn. I called HSBC who said all the suppliers were wrong which I informed them did not actually help resolve the situation. The new card was due at the end of the month and that was that.

Business Cards are vital for cashflow in my small business. I book all my travel through Expedia who also indicated my card was dead, and many of my suppliers are paid that way as they do not give me a credit account - my card becomes that credit line. So to be denied it when I had a business strip to Sweden, South Africa and Germany coming up, was crippling as well as for other suppliers - I could be defaulting on payments which would look very bad on a small business.

So I got angry. I made my first futile gesture - I tried to call a manager. Managers at HSBC, like many firms to be fair, do not take calls. That is what the call centre does. Escalation is via email and managers do not speak to customers. I have no idea whether the HSBC CEO, Paul Thurston, thinks that is good business practice but he ought to try talking to a call centre when he gets involved with a supplier letting his business down. Of course, it is different for small businesses - if I were a sprawling corporation I would have an account manager, golf days and rugby tickets plus a bat phone to someone who gives a damn.

But small businesses are nobodies, just profit machines as we pay for everything we use.

So having been thwarted by the lunacy of invisible, deaf and dumb managers, I had to listen to the pathetic attempts to put things right. The one thing everyone agreed upon was to not issue a new card and cancel the card about to be sent as this would automatically cancel the current card which could still be used in retail outlets. So my only recourse was to wait for the new card and somehow manage my suppliers in my final month of the year.

Then I took a potential new client to lunch last week and my card was refused. I tried to make light of the situation but his comment floored me as he said, 'I am sure times are hard for small businesses.' It was bye, bye to a £50k project as he subsequently went with a larger firm for his services.

I called HSBC to find why they had done the one thing they had said they would NOT do, which was to send out a new card immediately and cancel the current one. They even compounded it all by lying - they said the new card had been sent the week before. Spookily, it never arrived, so what had actually happened was that someone simply cancelled the old card.

Where that leaves me is with a mass of suppliers awaiting their payment, no ability to book travel and run my expenses unless I do it on my private card and have another battle with HMRC as to whether my expenses are for private consumption or business and lose out.

HSBC, still no sign of any manager to speak to, called and even offered a derisory £100 as a 'goodwill' gesture to stop me taking this to the Banking Ombudsman. They warned that the Banking Ombudsman does not recognise the time I have lost in trying to sort this out when I cannot do billable work for clients and so will offer nothing for it.

And there's the rub. Until banks get hurt by their stupidity in the real world, then they will never do anything about it.

HSBC has a lot going for it - it is a good bank for most things. But when it lets customers down, there must be a way to get things done properly, quickly and without all this rubbish about call centres. Managers must get involved and get mobilised, make calls and really own issues and do the things that not only solve the problems but reassure the customers that a) they care and b) they have access, should they need it, to people who can get problems solved.

Banks and so many other companies employ this whole defence mechanism which shields managers from the real issues businesses face and it is because they are more interested in the make -believe profits of the investment world rather than the bread and butter customers who yield the only sustainable profits they make. That's why when they cut jobs after making billions of losses in the investment sector it is always at the customer facing end.

I don't know if I have the time and inclination to either fight HSBC on this or to take it to the Banking Ombudsman but it really galls me that banks have so little focus on customer service.

Understanding Your Customers

At a talk I made before Christmas, I had an over-lunch conversation with a company director who revealed that not only had his business just had a record year but that his best customer, who had bought over £300,000 of services would never stop buying as his personal relationship with the key man was so strong; they boozy-lunched together regularly, went to football games, played golf, knew each other's spouses and children - the sorts of things that meant they were friends as well as business acquaintances.

Recently, I happened to bump into the same director and I asked how the business was going. He was pretty down about it. Sales had fallen off a cliff during the first quarter and he had made over 50% of his staff redundant and was now fighting several claims for grievances. When I asked about his top customer, he was even more downcast. Out of the blue, in January, his 'friend' had invited him out for a lunch and given him the bad news. Due to cut backs, the Board had decided that the sorts of services his firm provided were no longer required and that as of immediate effect, no more business would be placed for the forseeable future. Most of the work would be done in-house, as and when required.

The director was absolutely shell-shocked and could not understand how he had been let down by such a great customer and friend. We chatted a while on how this loss had affected his company profoundly before I asked why he thought that his customer would never have stopped buying and he replied simply, 'Because we had a superb relationship, we were doing a great job and I did not think he would let a mate down.'

I did not say it at the time but what my company director friend had done was confuse business logic with human logic. In tough times, numbers do the talking, not people - stark business facts are unavoidable and relationships are only an emotive issue that can get in the way of practical judgement.

No businessman WANTS to look into someone's eye and tell them they are redundant or do they want to tell a friend they can no longer buy from them. But I tell you what, I would rather do the latter with less of a tax on my conscience than the former. In a recession you often have to do both.

It also illustrates the lack of planning and understanding of how a recession can affect your business - this was a case of hubris in the face of stark facts. It was also a case of not understanding the worth or value of what my friend's company was delivering to their customer's business. These are not good business attributes at the best of times but in a recession - it can break a company.

Knowing Your Customer

The story above illustrates many powerful points in business - some of which only really come to light when the markets downturn. While my company director friend had a very strong personal relationship with the main purchasing contact who was very senior, the obvious thought was that his contact was clearly not senior enough. But there was another issue in play - while his customer's business was going well in good market conditions, his contact was effectively running the company. But now the markets had changed and the customer's business had decreased suddenly and fairly dramatically, the contact was no longer calling the shots. He had abdicated that responsibility to his Finance Director (FD), who had run a large knife through the business and cut out all but essential services, staff and suppliers.

My company director friend's company was not on the essential list - it was that simple.

The particular company director in question had not heeded the advice I had given in the talk when we had first met. I had basically said that in a recession, your current customers are the first people you think about - you need to throw a 'Blanket of Value' over them to ensure that you do not lose their custom. There's a lot that can be done but the first thing to do is to truly understand your customers and their business.

When I say know your customer, I mean a complete understanding. It happened that my company director's major customer was a networking supplier whose main customers were telecom companies - in the run up to Christmas many telecom firms had announced severe cutbacks and sure enough this had hit my friend's customer very hard. My company director friend had not looked beyond his order book and relationship to understand how his customer's market could affect his own business. If he had bothered to understand his customer's actual business and who they sold, where and how much, then he would have realised by just reading the business news that the moment the telecom market wobbled, his customer would wobble too. It happened that the biggest telecom wobbler was also my friend's customer's largest customer too - an unhappy coincidence along the chain of events.

An important lesson for my friend is that it is pointless getting super friendly with a single major contact if you ignore the rest of the decision making team. Again, all is fine in the good times, but when the going gets tough, decisions are made in different ways and for different reasons. Having a strong relationship with one person can actually play against you - it could be seen by the cost-cutting team as an unhealthy relationship not based on sound business value and in this case, this was indeed the logic used. Apparently, my compant director friend had suffered because the FD had always questioned the prices at which the particular services were being bought in at - they were clearly not benchmarked against others and he knew there was scope for savings. But my friend's contact, during the good times, effectively had his way. The recession changed that, and the FD immediately applied business logic and stopped the line of supply completely, naming an alternative supplier from a set of three quotes he had received for ad hoc work should they need it.

Company Politics

What clearly had been going on in this case was that the FD had a simmering resentment to his colleague and how he had effectively run purchasing certain services based on human rather than business logic. When recession had struck and the FD stepped up to take over the company reins, he had simply used business logic to kill the suppliers where human logic had been used. In some respects, the FD was also cutting off his nose to spite his face - old suppliers have plenty of experience in the servicing of specific needs, they can also be very flexible if need be. None of that entered the FD's mind - in fact, the FD had played a major political card. The FD had shown his colleague that all along, business logic should prevail and that's how it would be for the future.

Company politics are normally associated with your current employer but all companies have a political landscape. Knowing your customer well and how all the decision makers, influencers, coaches and ancillary staff play together helps understand how people will react to different conditions - who has pet hates or shows favouritism, who dislikes who and what they might do about it. It means that it is vital to make sure that in the selling process you do not put all your eggs in one basket but make sure there is a strong business relationship with every person involved in making decisions.

Often, if your main contact sits in middle management, it can be hard to go above the person and get to more senior people. This is when your own management becomes important - by arranging a peer-to-peer review of the business relationship periodically, you can ask for higher authorities to be involved to satisfy your own management's needs to have their ego stroked. It's a power thing and it works.

Recording What You Know

Much play is made of CRM systems but the reality is that you need to make sure you capture everything your customer does and says to help build your knowledge base. There are practical reasons for it, of course. It is not enough to be able to retrieve all order, invoice, payment histories but it is also important to have a central repository of all contracts, offers made, phone call conversations, important dates, company organisation charts, personal details - in fact anything.

It's not about being able to out-fox a customer by pulling up an old email and saying 'Ah, but you said on 11 January........', it is about having the ability to draw upon knowledge to help you win more business or keep the customer happy. It also helps augment your personal instincts - you may feel something is an opportunity but the detailed records may tell you the pitfalls or help you realise it.

Most importantly, it helps you to go that extra yard when it is required that may be the difference to keeping or losing a customer. Remember, in my example, my company director's company had supplied services to the customer for some time. In all that time, my friend had only used a CRM package in the last 6 months, beyond that it was tracing email tracks and many of these had been deleted in the interest of saving disk space.

All customer interaction is worth recording and it is worth spending the money to record it. It is also sound business practice and good governance to start when you are small and make it a cornerstone of the business ethic for the future because when you get large, you are going to HAVE to do it.

Good CRM wins more business - that's a fact. In a recession, it can keep you business.

Delivering Value

Perhaps the most fundamental mistake my company director friend made in losing his client is that he confused a strong relationship with delivering value. While he could rightly argue that all his services were well received, delivered well and paid for on time, he had not agreed what the value of the service was to the business generally or to specific areas. Certainly, even if everyone else was aware, the most important person, the FD, was not convinced. In a recession, very often most human logic goes out of the window - what in our eyes is an essential service in finance terms can be a nice-to-have at best and certianly non-essential to the survival of the business.

Every company needs to be absolutely clear what their Value Proposition is not just to new clients but to existing clients. Most companies will rightly believe that they provide valuable products or services to clients and many clients will go along with that in good market conditions. Some clients will drive for savings where they mistake shaving 10% off purchase price as being a saving but if the service then delivers less value then they may well have actually damaged the bottom line.

There is a big difference between value and cost and most purchasers don't get it - you have to make sure that the Value Proposition is sold to the business people as most purchasers buy mainly on price alone. I once did a demonstration on the difference between cost and value - at a company I worked with I showed that a worthless piece of plastic could be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds over a long period. The piece of plastic was the 'Salesperson of the Quarter' award, worth around £30 and for those that won it, they could use it in their CV to justify a better job and more pay, so net themself a great deal of money over time. While the object cost just £30, it's value was far, far greater.

Your products and servives need to address specific needs for customers, and in doing so provide specific and quantifiable value. In a recession, the value needs to be tangible, realisable in short order and be verified by your customer, i.e. not just wishful thinking on your part or based on your own assumptions. You need real data and corroboration from your customers. This Value Proposition needs to be amplified so that all the people involved in decision making clearly understand it and agree with it. Internal promotion of the message is vital and so the messaging has to be precise and easily understood - all your own staff need to be able to expound it flawlessly to be able to communicate the message as well as fundamentally believing in it and delivering on it. It cannot be make believe.

A good example is a service like real time conferencing. People meet all the time and travel costs money. But if you justify savings to the business on travel costs saved you may go up a rat hole because someone may argue that when they travel they can do 2 or 3 meetings at the same time so easily justifying the cost. So my Value Proposition would be to say, with conferencing you can do up to 8 one hour meetings in a different location in a single day, across continents if need be, with multiple people, never leave your desk and still be home to have dinner with your family. The Value Proposition is all about increased productivity and saving time - you can cost an executive's time and ability to be able to address more business issues in shorter time. Let the business put a figure on that rather than you and you will soon see the power of it. An old example was that a drug company could reduce the time to approve packaging of products by a 3 days by using conferencing - not much on a drug that may have taken a few years to develop. But 3 days of sales of a top drug could be worth millions. Ford cited the same on bringing the Mondeo to market as it was designed in several different locations and by using conferencing rather than face to face meetings, they collapsed the design times and got a car to market faster. It also was car of the year and so two or three extra months of sales that they had not catered for meant the car was profitable that much faster.

Your Value Proposition needs to deliver something similar - something of real value to companies that can be measured easily and flow to the bottom line, and in times of recession, fast. In recession, buying criteria change quickly and old logic can go by the wayside. Make sure your Value Proposition is up to date, addresses the the issues posed by the recession and delivers real, measurable value to your customers - and make sure they agree with you.

The Blanket of Value

Having your Value Proposition agreed is one major step. Now you have to remember that for many small firms a single big customer loss can mean the difference between profit and loss overall. In my example it was far bigger. Also, a rule of thumb says it costs roughly 5 times more to find and onboard a new customer than it does to retain an existing one, so losing a customer is a double whammy to profits.

It is easy to get complacent about value and service and make assumptions in good times, but recessions have a habit of posing hard questions. So my strong advice is to engage with your customers early - and I mean talk to them. Go ask them what it is that they value about your service but more importantly what MORE can you be doing. Don't just cut price, offer more value by asking what would make life easier. Ask them about their priorities, if there are any steps you can take away from them that will help reduce their cost because you can do it cheaper. If they are making redundancies, try to look at what tasks may fall down a chasm and that you can pick up for them. Try not charge extra but get agreement on the longevity of your contract as a negotiating point.

Make sure you meet more regularly - put peer-to-peer teams together to actively look for efficiencies in areas like order processing, shipments, logistics, support, invoicing - whatever. By putting teams together it is amazing what can be achieved. Document every new process and the saving that is produced, publicise it, make sure decision makers know and then look for more. It's not just about making courtesy calls this is about proactive teams solving business issues. The more issues you solve with real, tangible outcomes that either decrease costs or increase productivity, the more value you are providing, augmenting your Value Proposition. And of course, what is successful in one customer can be cloned in others.

In a recession, throw a blanket of value over your customers - try not just to be a supplier but a partner in their times of trouble.

Sharing The Pain

Everyone hates seeing business drop or prices go down and so why would you actively go out and try to achieve that same objective? It seems like business suicide.

It can be, but it can also be a powerful weapon in the long term. Imagine one of your suppliers coming to you and saying that they realise that your business is under pressure and there is a need for costs to be cut. Imagine if they said that they would accept a lower price or free shipping for 6 months in return for an extension of the contract for a year or more? Firstly, it may actually acheive what your finance people have just asked of you which is to cut costs, secondly it is one less problem to think about and thirdly, extending the contract costs nothing right now. Further, by accepting lower prices and bargaining for something in retrun, why not ask to pitch for other parts of their custom under the same principle?

Sharing the pain as a supplier is not as daft as it looks. It gets you closer to the client, you become a proactive adviser and trusted member of the team rather than just a supplier and again your value to the organisation rises. Most other suppliers will only decrease costs when asked and then they will try the negotiating tactics but the customer will be making all the running and so the reductions will come on their terms only.

One way to share the pain if you provide services is to defer the profit and base it on results. This is becoming vogue in some sectors like legal services or telephony savings like revenue assurance but you might want to take a part of your fees upfront then defer the rest to be earned quarterly over a period like a year against achieving certain goals which could be performance related like cost savings or increased productivity. If you are confident in your services then there is no fear and it also makes sure that both parties have 'skin in the game' and give you a revenue and profit profile to look forward to that you can take to the bank if required to get some short term borrowing against it.

The bold supplier that is proactive will take the customer by pleasant suprise and, long term, it will bring more profit.

Be Innovative

By knowing your cusromers's business and their pressure points, in times of recession, by being proactive you can also see different opportunities. For instance, if you are proactive in one area, you get exposed to new issues. By innovatively working your products and services you may be able to come up with a solution and create a new business opportunity. Once you are part of the 'trusted team', customers will be more open to tell you what the issues are and maybe even help you design a new service to address it - so confident they are that you are acting in their best interests.

Some banks are doing this now, even when they are largely vilified. NatWest are mobilising their salesforce to get out and meet individuals and talk about how they can help reshape their finances for the future. It's a clever way to win back hearts and minds but it aslo a long term profit winner if they can sell more insurance, savings options, loans and pension plans - it also augments the brand of the bank which has lost so much value via its parent, RBS. Innovation in a recession sows the seeds for the future and often the best new products, services and companies emerge from the worst of times.

Don't underestimate the fact that companies are looking for solutions to problems still - it isn't always about cost savings. Now is the time be creative.

Illustrating progress or value is a key example of how to be creative. Don't just send reports to people on how the business is being serviced, make them available online, offer a customer portal for accessing key indicator information, reports, account statements, shipment tracking, tracking of savings, make contact information available and, above all, make promotions and offers clearly and readily visible. Think about a way that the information can be prominent but not intrusive - ask what platforms your customer use or dashboards and then work out how you can provide relevant information to it as a feed.

Now is the time to think of automating services like ordering. The internet is so powerful to help and adding ecommerce services can be easier than you think. Adding catalogues and stock availability may be harder but many systems now support this. Make sure you take this opportunity to leverage the web in your favour, as well as the customer's.

The procative supplier always delivers more value.

Don't Hide Bad News

It is easy to think and, possibly sensible, that if you are struggling financially then you should keep that fact away from your customers. However, they are not stupid and will soon either see it via the service received, read it in the press or get it from the competition. In fact, should they not receive the news from yourselves but from elsewhere, it will only lessen their opinion of your company. Bad news is a fact of life - so deal with it. I am not a fan of Alistair Campbell-style spin or flannel - facts are the key.

The important thing is to have thought the whole thing through, what the issues may be, how that has affected your company, what have you done to remedy it and what that means to the customer, short and long term. There is no point in lying so if a person has been made redundant who deals in some way with the customer, make sure you have a clear plan as to who will pick up their reponsibilities and what the customer may have to do to help - like educating or similar. The key is to have thought it through and work out how to genuinely minimise the impact on the customer's perceived value while acknowledging there has to be some.

It pays to be proactive, honest and open with customers - they know the market situation and it can be 'There by the grace of God' that they are not having to do the same or, indeed, they are.

Segment Customers

You are clearly going to have big customers, worth more to you than others. In a recession, think in terms of profit and cash and don't get blinded by mere revenue. What may be a major account by revenue may not be in terms of profit or they may be a bad payer and an increasing credit risk.

Make the more profitable customers the target of your increased value activities while actively decrease services to the big but draining customers. Target to get more business from the more profitable ones and don't get too concerned if less profitbale ones go. 'Revenue is vanity and profit is sanity' they say and they are right, particularly now. Everyone is obsessed with growth - it's a consequence of the stock market. Right now the key is to survive and if that means standing still or going backwards in terms f revenue - do so, so long as the rate of decline in profit is not the same. By managing your customers by profitability, you will protect the best ones first and margins will actually improve as a result. This becomes a handy platform on which to build for the future.

I don't like losing any customers but some drain resources for little profit. Don't be afraid of losing that kind of customer - while it may hurt in the short term and even damage egos, you have to realise what is best for the business. It is business logic over human logic.

Review Your Prices and Charges

In the process of segmenting customers it is important to review charges across customers. Like most businesses you will find mistakes and anomalies. Question them, correct them and address them. If a customer has been charged too little, then work out if it is approriate to charge for the missing revenue while correcting the price. If you don't, tell them you have waived it but use it in negotiation and your value statements.

You will generally find that many customers are getting better prices than they should and some worse. You may not want to do anything about it but when looked from the customer segmentation data viewpoint, you may find that less profitable customers are getting the best prices and this can speed up the process of prioritising services and resources to the best customers. The important thing to be is aware of who is getting what and why. You never know, it could mean releasing vitally needed profit and cash in the business.

Profit and Cash

The two major issues faced by firms in a recession are the lack of profit and decrease in cashflow - this has the knock on effects on costs and borrowing. In being innovative with customers the one thing that would be most beneficial is to sell more things and get the cash in quicker.

So there is a challenge to design some services or products which address immediate and important needs but design them with a big incentive for cash payments. Obvious things would be to make more products available online with credit card payment facilities - this can easier than you think. If you have excess or slightly older stock in hand then you may want to turn to brokers and eBay to try and get a quick turn over even if you have to take a loss.

Target your customers who have the best facilities in terms of cash position to make the best offers - make the offers compelling and providing instant results in terms of bottom line impact. It's hard to design something that is applicable to all businesses but think what you have got in your armoury that can be used and be creative and aggressive.

Your Current Customers Are Your Lifeblood

Finding new business is a tough game and even harder in a recession. Money is tight and the world is competitive. The most important thing in tough times is to hang on to what you have with dear life. Protect your customers and make sure they know how much they mean to you and, more importantly, you mean to them. A recession brings into sharp focus whether products and services are delivering real, tangible value to businesses in the short term and so make sure you tailor your offerings to do just that and corroborate it with your customers.

Think creatively - don't stand still or get complacent. This recession is one of the worst experienced by most people and the speed at which it strikes is brutal. Make sure you throw your 'Blanket of Value' over your customers now - preserve and protect them, nurture them and keep them on your side. The relationship will only get stronger as the markets recover.

They will surely help you survive and thrive.

Deal, No Deal

OK, so this is another blog entry about the recession but, before you switch off, it isn't all gloom and doom.

One of the biggest competitors in sales generally is losing out to the 'No Decision' - the idea that your customer weighs up all the factors and competitors and decides whatever it already has will do for now. In a recession, this becomes ever more prevalent. You can sometimes present a cogent and compelling ROI case that even a mathematically challenged mouse could grasp and still your customer chooses to carry on using their old, tried and trusted methods even though they may actually cost more to do so.

You see, in a recession, when people's jobs are on the line, sometimes it pays not to be the guy who makes a bold decision and invites change because the simple reason is that it attracts attention and has the burden of accountability associated with it. It means that one slip up in the implementation, miscalculation in the ROI or delay could cost a lot - including the decision-maker's job. There is every good, but illogical reason to postpone decisions until the organisation is more confident and better off.

No Decision - Sound Business Acumen Or Stupidity?

Very often in recessions people mistake cutting costs and getting value for money. I have fallen into the daft trap many a time like when cutting a few hundred pounds on stopping staff end of month pizzas and sacrificing a piece of goodwill - I found out later that people do not forget and a simple, low cost thank you for their hard work went a long way. When a company goes into cost cutting mode, logic tends to fly out of the window and decisions get postponed or cancelled. After all, why would you increase cost when you are trying to save?

It's why I keep banging the drum about planning for a recession as if you don't plan ahead you put your company into the hands of cost cutters and at that point you rarely are looking beyond the short term. There is a thin line between making cost cuts to save a business to having not enough resources to take advantage for the future.

Compelling Factors

It means in times of recession when selling you have to be both pragmatic and innovative.

1) The first thing you need to do is to look at who you are trying to sell to and their current state. There is zero point wasting time trying to sell to companies who are in high cost cutting mode, look for others where you can achieve your success. A hard, cool-headed review of each salesperson's sales pipeline is the first starting point - make sure their forecast is realistic and that any customer in trouble is removed - don't chase shadows.

2) Take a long hard look at your Value Proposition and what it actually does to companies in terms of saving cost or producing a return. Do not be esoteric or have 'soft dollars' in there and don't make assumptions without foreknowledge - it has to be instantly measurable and applicable to that specific company you are selling to. If it cannot be easily understood then you are on to a losing battle and the essence of it has to be delivered in no more than a few sentences and must trip off the tongue of every employee not just salespeople.

3) Make your Value Proposition your mantra. Your Value Proposition may make sense to you but to customers in 'panic mode' it may just be 'noise'. Test it on people, kick it around, take feedback and adjust your thinking to accommodate. Make sure you cover off the obvious and not so obvious questions and rebuttals. Make sure everyone knows these almost verbatim. Practice delivering the Value Proposition message amongst yourselves until it comes as second nature.

4) Apply innovation. Inevitably customers may be reluctant even to hear common sense, so put yourself in their shoes - ask 'what would make me get off my seat and listen?' Inherently, the issue will be risk - if the customer makes the decision, are all the ROI expectations and assumptions real or just hopeful?

Think about how you can mitigate, alleviate or share the risk.

If your product or service has the capacity, make the cost dependent on the results in some way, perhaps in a performance related model, i.e. charge a certain price now and when the gains are delivered, then you get more of the price paid plus some extra. Get the idea of discount out of your head and think about 'sharing the pain and the gain' where possible.

5) Try to create a 'Compelling Event' as Target Account Selling call it. This is the concept of creating a point in time when there would be a detriment to the customer if they do not take your product or service - the price of inaction. It may be something as simple as for every day they do not implement they are paying £X thousand pounds in costs they should not have to. There are risks to this as there has to be a cost to your solution and the deliverables may not be instant but in many cases they are. If you can pin the Compelling Event as the next Board Meeting or similar you can accurately predict the cost of 'No Decision'. Be wary though, this can backfire if you do not have all the facts. If there are stakes in the ground like legislation coming into play it may be better.

6) Leave no stone unturned.

So often in sales, it is what you don't know rather than what you do know that determines whether you win the sale or not.

Politics, power bases, vested interests, agendas and timing can all play heavily. It is important to poll all the key players in the decision making process and in detail understand their agenda and ensure your solution hits their hot buttons. Leaving things to chance or in the hands of your champion alone may actually play against you if the politics are not right. In a recession, many things can happen quickly and the most obvious is that your coach or sponsor could actually leave through their own accord or by other means. It pays to get round all the stakeholders and sell your solution and its benefits high and wide.

7) Replicate success and analyse failure.

Failure can be your friend - you need to understand why you failed in order to create success.

Make sure you ask your customers for a detailed answer as to why you failed - price is a stupid response because price can be a small factor in an ROI equation so make sure you get the real facts. Then address the reasons for failure and incorporate the answers into your Value Proposition or indeed, if you feel you cannot address the concerns of that type of customer, make sure you do not try to sell to more of the same; keep away from repeating failure. When you find success, make sure you understand why you succeeded and then replicate the success in as many similar customers as you can.

8) Do not stand still.

The worst thing that can happen in a recession is that companies become complacent that things are going ok.

We have seen the frightening speed at which this recession can strike seemingly impregnable household names. All too often when you analyse your business you will find an approximation to an 80-20 rule defining how your current business is generated. If you really understand your business you will know that if 20% of your customers produce 80% of your revenue or profit then it is obvious that even the loss of one major customer could be the difference between surviving or not, and the smaller the company you are the harder such losses hit. It means you have to up your work rate to keep existing customers happier and find more and more new ones.

Recessions are not for the lazy.

9) Talk to people.

Make sure your existing customers know why they buy from you, check if they are happy and are getting enough from you.

If you can, solidify the relationship by getting agreements in concrete or even opening negotiations ahead of schedule. This may sound barmy if you are not far into a new contract but if you are inside 6 months to the contract renewal, you can bet your bottom dollar your customers will be actively looking to reduce costs and so if you are proactive in addressing this it can swing to your favour. Look early to find innovative ways of perhaps offering something for renewing the contract EARLY but in return for LONGER or a crack at more business within the customer. Think ahead.

10) Make sure all your staff are bought in.

Recessions are tough times and innovation and extra activity will mean uncertainty and worry.

Make sure your staff are part of the solution by getting them to contribute ideas and parts of the Value Proposition. If they know the score early, they will be that much more bought in. Your staff are your most precious assets at all times and never more so in a recession - only cost cutters see them as numbers on a spreadsheet, you need to see them as your weapons to survive and thrive.

Recessions are mean old beasts and customers do all sorts of irrational things. Think one step ahead, be innovative, work hard and above all sell smartly.