The Millionaire Fastlane (44 page)

Complaints of Void
Complaints of void are when your customer continually requests something and you simply don't have it. Complaints of void are extremely valuable, as they expose unmet needs.

Early in my lead generation days, one of the most common complaints I received from limousine service providers was, “I don't do weddings!” Customers would request limousines for weddings and some providers didn't offer wedding service. Likewise, many providers didn't do airport transfers. The complaints piled in and a pattern emerged. I added a Web site feature that allowed providers to specify the type of services they offered-problem solved. By fixing the issue, I raised the value of my leads. Higher value equals greater magnitude, higher profits, and growing asset values.

Complaints of void are goldmines of opportunity
. People freely tell you exactly what they want and you don't have to pay for it! Unmet needs are served up on a silver platter.

Complaints of Fraud
In March 2005, a woman entered a Wendy's restaurant and claimed that a dismembered human finger was in her bowl of chili. Her intent was not only to complain but also to sue. Fortunately, the fraudulent complaint was thwarted after the woman's litigious past was exposed. The following month, Las Vegas police arrested the woman for grand larceny.

At the bottom of the barrel are fraudulent complaints. Ask any business owner and they'll confirm fraudulent complaints are the most disheartening because they reflect the worst of society: Illegitimate complaints designed to exploit the business owner.

I had to deal with fraudulent complaints almost weekly. A customer typos a price and some idiot thinks that they are entitled to a limo for $5.00 an hour versus the $50.00 per hour. “You owe me or I will contact my attorney and sue!” Yes, I'm sure you have an attorney. Good luck with that, champ. You're going to pay a lawyer $250 an hour to fight over a typographical error amounting to 45 bucks? Do you know what kind of idiot you sound like?

Unfortunately, when you deal with millions of customers, you will encounter hundreds of Sidewalkers determined to get theirs. Yes, it can make you cynical because complainers intending to exploit are low-class frauds. When you drop a fly in your soup hoping to get a free meal, sorry, you're a crook. How do you deal with exploitive complainers? You respond once with grace, explain your position, and move on.

Pick Your Battles

Bill Cosby once said, “I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” I started my business with an overzealous passion to keep everyone happy. That soon proved to be insanity. Complaints need to be managed with a balance, which is why I kept records. I wanted to identify patterns that would enhance the value of my service. I knew better products produce better customers, and better customers pay well.

Nowadays it's easy to follow the complaints for your business. Twitter.com offers owners the ability to keep track of what customers say. Google alerts can notify you when a Web site mentions your company name. Keeping track of the feedback is getting easier, but deciphering the noise is getting more difficult. “I don't want to pay for your service.” Some complaints need to be ignored. If you try to make everyone happy, you'll drive yourself nuts. Pick your battles. Solve complaints that add the most value while helping the most. As a business owner you must remember that, while you don't have a boss, the person who pays your mortgage is your customer and they always should be heard-but sometimes ignored.

Use “Sucks” to Your Advantage

No need to sugarcoat it. Customer service in the modern age sucks. We have become so swamped by poor customer experiences from the businesses in our life that we now accept crappy customer service as a standard of expectation. Have you ever called a computer manufacturer for support? Or called your big national bank? Or called your health insurance provider? Sucks. Sucks. And double-sucks. Customer service today has become a lost art. Our expectation of service with businesses has become so pathetic that we've become numbed to expect nothing but disinterest.

Down the block from my home, there is a strip mall with a corner restaurant that changes ownership every six months. Since I've lived in the neighborhood, four restaurants have opened and four have closed. While I can't comment on the first three failures, and I can on the last. When I dined at the latest incarnation of the restaurant, the food was decent but the service was deplorable. Drinks went unfilled. The silverware was dingy. The waitress was arrogant, as if our patronage was an inconvenience. After leaving, I thought, “That place ain't gonna last,” and sure enough, a few months later the sign went up: “For Lease.”

While bad customer service is frustrating while playing our consumer role, it gives us entrepreneurs a great opportunity. Where customer service lacks unearths great opportunity. You see, the beauty of expectation is that it works in reverse. While complaints of expectation are about the violation of expectations negatively, customer service that S-U-C-S is about violating expectations positively.

Exchange “Sucks” for “S-U-C-S”

You can explode your business into the stratosphere by deploying a customer service strategy that exceeds expectations: I call it SUCS, or “Superior Unexpected Customer Service.”

We all expect a certain level of suckage when it comes to customer service. This is an advantage for Fastlaners. For example, if I discover a $10,000 fraudulent withdrawal on my bank statement, my first instinct is to freak out. My second instinct is to call the bank to resolve the problem. At that point, my brain immediately creates a smorgasbord of expectations for the bank call. Here is my “expectation profile,” or what I expect:

• I expect to hear a recorded message or an automated attendant.
  
• I expect to press a never-ending menu of buttons: press 1 for this, press 2 for that, press 3 for something else.
  
• I expect to be shuttled from one person to the next.
  
• I expect to speak with someone not fluent in English named “Steve” but sounding more like a Pradeep or Sanjay.
  

These are my expectations. No doubt, my customer service expectation isn't that favorable. My bank, and hundreds of other banks like it, gets away with crappy service because it is now our expectation. However, let's flip the scenario on its rear. What if I call the bank and instead of the voicemail rat-maze, my call is immediately answered by an English-speaking person. No voice mail, no press 1, press 2, no automated attendant. I get a REAL PERSON answering the phone, like you answer your phone. After five minutes of speaking to the customer service rep, my problem is addressed and resolved-and heck, I wasn't even transferred to another agent. I'd be like, “Holy Mother of God! Wow!”

This is a SUCS event: a Superior Unexpected Customer Service event. It is a transformation from customer service that naturally sucks, to SUCS. You see, when you violate your client's customer service expectation profile positively, you turn your customers into loyal, repeat buyers, and ultimately, disciples of your business.

Leverage Free Human Resource Systems

One passive income system is human resource systems-good old-fashioned people. Except that employees aren't cheap, so human resource systems typically need management. Wouldn't it be great if you could deploy a human resource system for free? You can when you create disciples for your business.

Customer service that SUCS, service that violates your customer's low-expectation profile positively, turns customers into lifelong clients, and disciples of your business. They provide a never-ending stream of free advertising. Word of mouth is a powerful advertising tool because it's FREE and reaps infinite return on investment (ROI).

Your customer service strategy will influence your company's growth. Satisfaction implies expectations being met. To create raving customers, you must exceed satisfaction.

When I negotiated with potential buyers for my company, I was asked frequently: “How much do you spend to recruit advertisers?” My unexpected answer? Zero. Incredulity and skepticism followed. Sure, I did it the old-fashioned way when I started: prospecting, marketing, advertising, and cold calling. But after awhile, my advertiser acquisition cost disappeared because my advertisers did it for me … for FREE! When your clients love your business, they become disciples and advertise for you. They become unpaid human resource systems, evangelists who drop your name wherever necessary.

How do you create disciples for your business? Provide customer service that SUCS-Superior Unexpected Customer Service. When you send an email to a corporation, how long does it take to get a real, human response? A day? Week? At my company, I answered my customer emails within minutes, not hours, days, or weeks. People would email us just to test our response rate. I was in business to violate my customer's expectation profile, and it paid dividends.

I followed this up with live customer service. A call to my company got a real person that worked for the real company. No press 1, press 2. Support wasn't outsourced because I didn't want service outsourced.

Customer discipleship grows businesses exponentially because human resource systems talk. For example, my Web-hosting provider is Liquid Web. The first time I contacted Liquid Web for technical support, I submitted a ticket and my expectation profile formed … I speculated it'd be a day or two before I heard back. I was wrong. Within ten minutes, Liquid Web Support responded and fixed my issue within 20 minutes. They provided customer service that S-U-C-S and violated expectations.

The result? I'm a disciple of Liquid Web. When someone asks me, “What hosting do you recommend?” I confidently respond with “Liquid Web.” I am an evangelic customer. I pay Liquid Web in two forms of currency: 1) My money and ) My frequent recommendation of their service. The effective value of this latter currency is priceless because I am now their FREE human resource system selling their product. Imagine the potency when you have not just one raving customer, but 10,000. Will your business grow 2% in one year? Or 200%?

To provide great customer service and explode your business, determine your customers' expectation profile. What are their expectations when they deal with your business? How do they relate to competitors and similar businesses in your industry? Make a subjective call on how your customers expect service. Then VIOLATE IT.

Any time you violate your customer's expectations to the positive, you get a dual benefit. First, they buy from you again. Second, raving customers become liaisons and disciples for your business and unpaid human resource systems. Both build speed. Speed builds wealth.

Great customer service costs more to provide, but the benefits should outweigh the costs. If more money were spent on pleasing existing clients rather than trying to find new ones, the average business would survive longer than five years. Unfortunately, business owners who seek money first and needs last often spend their advertising wad on the pursuit of new customers who aren't familiar with their uninspired and sucky customer service. It becomes a constant battle, like emptying a leaky boat with a bucket: Replace the old disgruntled customers with newer, oblivious ones. Violate customer's expectations. Create evangelists. Create human resource systems that will work for you, for free. Attract money.

Where Are Your Loyalties?

The greatest myth of business ownership is “be your own boss.” Owners who live by that mantra eventually find themselves bosses of nothing-dead, bankrupted businesses. Success in business comes from making your customer the boss and the No. 1 stakeholder to your business.

A stakeholder is defined as “Person, group, or organization that has direct or indirect stake in an organization because it can affect or be affected by the organization's actions, objectives, and policies.” Long-term business suicide occurs when you are your own selfish stakeholder and forsake your customer. Want to really know why customer service sucks? It's because business owners place their customers at the bottom of the stakeholder chain. Public companies are the worst offenders, as shareholders come first, Wall Street second, and executives third. Guess who sits at the bottom? You and I.

My repeated, and often preached, motto to my employees was, “The customer pays your paycheck, not me-keep them happy.” You see, my stakeholder wasn't my selfish desires for fast cars and big houses. It was my customer, because I knew they had the power. My loyalty was with my customer. Yes, I had a boss, and the boss had the keys to everything I selfishly wanted.

Look Big, Act Small

During Mr. Miller's gym class in my sophomore year of high school, I became aware of Mark Cegraves-except there was no such student. Mr. Miller had a knack for butchering the simplest of names: Henderson became Hankerson, Seagroves became Cegraves, and Rickson became Rakesh. No matter what your name was, Mr. Miller would shred it. I don't know if he was illiterate or just old.

So fast-forward more than a decade, and who is listed on my Web site as my chief technology officer? Mark Cegraves. Oh, and look who's my web developer-Gretchen Hankerson! Wow, so did I hire my friends from high school? No, I didn't, especially since their names were just mere illusions of the real people. None of these people worked for me. Yet if you visited my Web site's “Contact” or “About Us” page, they were listed as employees in high profile positions: CTO, business development, or Web producer. These people weren't employees, but it looked like my staff was big, and growing.

I admit that this started off as a harmless "inside joke" with my employees, but I eventually realized it had a benefit: it branded my business to look big. Dominating. Well-funded. Growing. Of course, I'm not sure if butchered names from a 1987 gym class serving as employee apparitions was ethical, but the mirage was unexpectedly powerful: My company violated expectations by looking big while acting small.