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Youth Soccer Coaching – Lessons Learned

Today’s youth sports marketplace is flooded with all kinds of opportunities and in most cases if your kids want to play competitive sports – it’s gonna cost ya. At least that’s been our experience in the last five years.

In our case we’ve expended thousands and thousands of dollars to have our children play youth sports and have had mixed experiences with both club and youth sports organizations.

In our most recent series of episodes (that almost read like a tv soap opera), the spring season has wound down and the SS Minnow (the other club) has been beached and is awaiting for Gilligan and the Skipper (our club) to save the day.

Now I know this reference to the old TV sitcom may or may not make sense, but basically the Minnow has been run up on the beach of a deserted island and the people on the island need to figure out how to save themselves.

So the final season has wound down and our daughter has been picked up by another youth soccer club. This came after much discussion, debate as we made the move, went with our gut and fortunately it turned out to be the right decision.

The funny thing was that after we had made the decision we finally heard from our daughter’s coach. This call came as quite the surprise since we had never spoken with him on the phone and he chose not to interact much with us parents during the entire time that he coached our kids. He had been interacting with our daughter for 10 months but had never personally contacted or connected with us once. The problem was that his decision to connect with us came after the door was closed and locked.

The club director did realize there was an issue and even brought it to our attention, but he never addressed it by communicating or holding a parent meeting. He just didn’t understand the key to building bridges and I believe this eventually hurt the club since they decided to merge with a competing organization.

Our experience has been with youth soccer coaching is that the club soccer coaches who coach the ‘b teams’ are just not as committed, because the majority of the kids just aren’t that serious. This has been the case with five different coaches so I’m not giving a one-sided view. We tested four organizations over a three year period and the results were always the same.

My point here is that if the coach had more interaction with the parents, even an occasional hello, it would have made a difference. Instead he chose to call after the door was closed and locked. He never connected.

The director, associate director and club trainer were fantastic and that’s what kept us around. These three individuals connected with us thus making the overall experience a good one, even though the coach was in the background.

The coach can be a promoter and help move the club forward or be an introvert that collects a check. The coach can be a communicator who builds bridges with players and parents or simply chooses to stand alone not allowing anyone in his or her space.

It has been our experience that parents like communication and don’t like to be left out of the loop or on the side of the road.

What does all this youth sports and soccer talk have to do with your small business?

Here it is:

If you are going to retain customers then you best have a program or process in place that  gets the job done. Otherwise you might find a revolving door with customers(or players) coming and going on a continual basis.

This means that you need to cultivate, connect and continue to communicate with your customers(players) and subscribers (if you are marketing via email or direct mail) before, during and after each and every transaction.

Build bridges, make connections and constantly communicate with each and every customer (player and parent). It’s easier than you think and simple to manage, especially if you use an email auto responder and social media to do the heavy lifting.

So if you find your business needs a little help to better communicate, connect and develop long term relationships with clients, customers and subscribers – get in touch with the SmallBiz Mechanic. He May be able to help you build bridges and better connections.

Dave Krygier
Publisher

Customer Satisfaction – Your Ticket to Ongoing Revenue

Customer satisfaction and retention should be one of the most important areas in any small business, yet the tide seems to be turning in the wrong direction.

In all the years that I’ve been around small business I’ve never seen customer service slipping so much. It almost feels like you have to pull teeth to have someone treat you like a human being – let alone speak with a human being or even connect with one.

More and more I see companies letting their customer service slip which ultimately kills customer retention. And then you have those businesses that implement what they call customer relationship management policies and practices that makes you wonder if anyone really understands the customer?

There’s a disconnect and I believe that until the owner or CEO takes a stand and determines that retaining customers is a top priority, then nothing will change. Because customer service shouldn’t be like the price oil and fluctuate all the time.

In order to have customer satisfaction you need satisfied customers and in order to have satisfied customers you need to have whoever is handling the sale understand what your objectives are. And implement the objectives the way you want them, not the way your workers see it.

Time and time again I experience customer service that speaks of people who don’t care.

Is your business like this? Do your staff or outsourced workers understand what customer satisfaction is? Have you defined what customer satisfaction is in your small business and built your business around satisfying your customers?  Or is your model a revolving door with ‘one sale sam’ written all over it?

I mean you can be an online business owner with a small enterprise that is up and coming and the great thing is that you can provide better customer service than larger competitors. But you needs to satisfy dose customers. (I know my grammar and spelling are sometimes quirky on purpose) – dot, dot, dot. :0)

So get on the right right track and create a simple plan for your staff to follow and make sure to create an outline for both online and offline. More on this in a future post.

In the book “The Five Love Languages”, acts of service is one of the five areas that the author writes about. This is a secret that you may be able to use in your customer retention strategy.

What you do is during the survey process (and yes you should have one) – ask your new customer what is most important to him or her. Ask specifically and dig deep. Why – because this is how you find out what it is that your customer really wants, needs and desires. Call it survey to success and watch what happens after you do this for a few weeks to a month.

It really works – and customers will respond if you ask genuine questions and offer solutions.

So the ticket to ongoing revenue is to satisfy and retain your customers. Be real, add value and be available.

Stay tuned and glued to this channel and dial in to Secrets of the TIny Store to find out how a little know business from the Puget Sound region of Washington State – rocked the search engines for 6 years straight. And provided good to great customer service for 18 years…

Dave Krygier
Publisher