Devoted to women of color in business

For your business, if you're in leadership, then be a leader: consider in the long run what you stand for, what you will promote, and what investments need to be made now to make sure the company is profitable and will be around in 2010 or 2025 or 2075. Customer satisfaction will help you drive these decisions. "There are only three measures of a healthy enterprise capable of making the crossing: positive cash flow, engaged employees and great customer service. You need engaged employees before you can deliver great customer service. That means effective leadership," said a CEO in a recent panel run by Jack Hardy of the Miami Herald.

Comcastmustdie.com is a great example of poor customer service and its ramifications. The blog, run by Bob Garfield, is an attempt to provide a voice to the Comcast customers who are horrifically unhappy with the service they've received. You may have heard of Mona Shaw, the 75-year-old who took a claw hammer to the company's Manassas office in protest of shoddy service (she claims that the technicians installing "Triple Play" failed to show up on their appointed day, left the job half done, and then cut off all her service).

"I scared the tar out of some people, at least," she said. "It had never occurred to me to take a hammer to a phone company before, but I was just so upset. . . . After I hit the keyboard, I turned to this blonde who had been there the previous Friday, the one who told me to wait for the manager, and I said, ' Now do I have your attention?'"

The company has more than 25 million basic service customers, of which Vice President Beth Bacha says the overwhelming majority are very satistified with their service. However, the company, whose 3Q earnings dropped by half (CMCSA), is dealing with "increasing competition and a softer economy, and as a result a slightly slower growth rate" (by Comcast CEO Brian Roberts). About 65,000 basic subscriber customers left their service this past year, as opposed to a gain of 11,000 a year ago.

All things being equal, your business boils down to choices: a person makes choices on if they're going to buy your service, or if they're going to buy someone else's service, or if they're not going to participate at all.

Comcast is in a position where they may be the only choice available in some markets, but to capture and maintain their eyeballs, be first and foremost in people's minds as a provider, and to be the recipient of glowing review and recommendations, their task at hand is to increase their ability to serve their customers.

When you constantly provide new products, better service, more powerful tools, or increasing value to your customers, you find a way to keep your customers with you. When your customers start badmouthing you (some of the comments on the Comcast blog are from customers who are tremendously angry), your tasks increase to include damage control and reputation rescue, which are inefficient, to say the least.

I have a few examples from my own field, web development.

In our business, we come across a number of clients who are "locked in" or held hostage to either their domain registrar, their hosting provider, or their web designer. In many cases, customer loyalty (which might be just plain inertia) means they are not being treated as a valuable customer but instead being treated as a cash cow by their current provider. I say transfer your domain if it costs you more than $10/year. There are better deals out there! You'll want to revisit the terms of your current contract and switch to a more competitive provider.

We also have clients whose hosting packages are exorbitant, excessive, not suited to their needs, or not competitive enough. I say transfer your hosting! Especially if you are being charged for basic add-ons like extra mailboxes, e-mail forwarding, domain forwarding, and the like.

Finally, a number of our clients come to us because they are sick and tired of paying $40, $70, $150/hour to their web designer to do basic text updates. I say pay a one-time fee, convert to a content management system or database-driven service and then find a data entry person instead. There is no need for someone in-house to become a Dreamweaver or HTML expert if that's not their primary function: their primary function is to add value to the company or organization in their current role: not to become a webmaster.

What are the current complaints that you know about in your business? What are people saying about your company? If you are in business and you care about your customers, you'll start to manage this process, engage your clients and community, provide more transparency in what you offer, and provide something that's valuable to your customer. Once you have a customer, you want to keep that customer for life, right? You want your customer to promote you to all their friends, relatives, and associates. You want your customer to visit with you, or spend money with you, or talk about you, as often as possible. Do this by acting with integrity, being responsive to their needs, and continually finding ways to add value to their lives.