A Simple Business TestWritten by Bruce McCurtain
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"best case" scenario comes true. Look at your numbers. Would you want to give up your day job, risk your home, savings and sanity for amount of money your best case scenario brings in? Being in business is far more complicated than just this test. But you can decide whether risk has any potential for success using this simple exercise. If best case scenario doesn't provide enough cash for you to live on idea either needs to be scrapped or wrapped in with other ideas for a more complete business. You can practice this by analyzing businesses that you patronize. What's overhead? Employees, leases, rents, cost of goods sold, debt service, etc. What's likely income per day? Week? Month? Is what appears to be left over worth it? Learn to analyze on a "best case" scenario and you'll find many business ideas are indentured servitude in disguise. As long as you're going to be a wage slave, you might as well let someone else take risks!
Bruce McCurtain has owned, operated or partnered in ski areas, marinas, campgrounds, title insurance, hotels, land development, restaurants, and many other businesses. He spends most of his time working on the new frontiers, whether that is in business development or reorganization of existing operations
| | Are You Satisfying Your Customers?Written by Rosanne Dausilio, Ph.D.
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Second, according to third National Complaints Culture Survey unhappy customers are growing increasingly frustrated with way their complaints are being handled, and hard-pressed call center staff are being hindered by a lack of training and support from their employers. Since calls coming into a center are escalated before they’re even answered—if I could successfully find my answers through website, self service, VRU, IVR, etc. I wouldn’t need to talk to a human—agents need more tools than ever before to diffuse what is being presented to them such that they can move customer onto a more productive interaction, and close call. Where will they find these tools? The simple answer is with customer centric training. Off shelf, generic, or outdated training is like trying to put a round peg in a square hole. Today’s training modules must be customized to customer, not statistics, and training must be presented ongoingly. Remember, training is a process, not an event.
ROSANNE D'AUSILIO, Ph.D., industrial psychologist/President, Human Technologies Global, (www.human-technologies.com) provides needs analyses and customer service trainings. She authors Wake Up Your Call Center: Humanize Your Interaction Hub, Customer Service and The Human Experience, and Lay Your Cards on the Table: 52 Ways to Stack Your Personal Deck. Subscribe to Human Tech Tips at www.HumanTechTips.com.
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