Rising Expectations

 Lately, I have found when I talk about how the game just got tougher, many businesspeople tell me the problem is really the customer, because their expectations are continually rising. The solution, they say, is to manage down these ‘unrealistic’ expectations.

But attempts to reduce customer expectations are doomed to fail. When I studied at the University of Stockholm nearly 40 years ago, the Swedish government recognised a phenomenon they called ‘rising expectations’. They had learned that whatever they did for their citizens this year was not going to be enough to keep them happy next year. In business we have yet to understand that our customers are always asking themselves, “What has this business done for me lately?”

I

n short, we must dramatically improve the way we look after our customers. Minor improvements will not be enough. The key to making such a step change is to ask yourself these three mind-opening questions:

 •   What would we have to do to delight our customers?

 •   How could we improve the way we look after our customers so in six months we will be embarrassed by what we do now?

 •   Which problems do our customers have that they would just love us to solve but do not expect we will? 

If you do not know the answers, ask your team members and your customers. They’ll tell

you everything you need to know to succeed.

Businesses must dramatically improve the way they look after their customers if they are to succeed.

Customers today are outraged. A recent study suggests two-thirds of New Zealanders are typically unhappy with the service they get. Research by Colmar Brunton found that 52 percent of Kiwi customers getting a bad experience rate their rage at five or more on a scale of one to ten and 26 percent as eight or higher. University of Queensland research suggests customer rage is caused by rude, uncaring or incompetent team members.

Outraged customers progress from shock, to frustration, anger, exhaustion and hurt. Consequently, they make threats, slander the company, look for revenge or even become violent. In England, an angry customer recently drove his car through a plate glass window at Tesco. In Australia, people sent out to cut off electricity have been threatened with being shot and customers whose appliances failed have threatened to blow up the manufacturer. Give your teams a hug each day before they go out into the marketplace or onto the shop floor because they may not come back!

Of course, you may believe your organisation is an exception to the rule. Perhaps you are right – or perhaps you suffer from delusions of adequacy. One study found 75 percent of managers rated their customer service as being between good and excellent. Unfortunately, 57 percent of their customers rated it as being between good and poor.  An American study found 80 percent of managers believed they were doing a good job of looking after their customers but only eight percent of their customers agreed. Why is there such a disconnect? Studies show 67 percent of companies do not measure

customer satisfaction. Many of those that do, ask customers only about what they think is important. Also, often when managers review survey results, they are quick to look for ways to explain away the results.

To make matters worse, many managers do not understand how the quality of their customer care affects their business. An American study found that nearly 70 percent of managers did not know the cost of getting or losing a customer, or the cost of handling a complaint. In New Zealand, Colmar Brunton research found customers having a bad experience tell 13 others and 56 percent recommend the listener avoids that company. On the other hand, when they have a good experience they tell nine others and one-third recommend the company. London School of Economics research found that organisations having a large number of people saying good things about them and very few saying bad grew four times faster.

Most disturbingly, we still do not seem to get it. A newly released PricewaterhouseCoopers study found only 44 percent of 620 New Zealand managers surveyed plans to grow their business next year by improving their ‘customer focus’. Fifty-six percent are planning to grow by cutting costs, which long-term will not grow your business – or by entering new markets, which is the most expensive and difficult way to grow. Ironically, the survey also found the biggest positive impact on business performance over the last year was gained through better customer focus.

Myth Busting 2: It's Not Rocket Science

I often hear managers, who are concerned by the rising level of customer dissatisfaction say, “Why are companies providing such poor service? It’s not rocket science.”  But service excellence is rocket science! There is far more to being able to create a great customer experience than getting team members to smile and be friendly - and much of what needs to be done takes place behind the scenes.

To begin with, for the paying customer to have a great customer experience, you need policies that put the customer first. Many managers are well intended. They understand how important it is to look after their customers but inadvertently create a bad experience because they have policies that put their company first.

For example, last year before Christmas, I went to my local building supply store to buy some outdoor tree lights – not Christmas lights, just plain white ones. They had two boxes on the shelf but I knew two would not be enough so I asked if any more would be coming in. The team member looked in the computer and said there were more on order. “They won’t be in by Christmas,” he advised, “but they will be here early in January.” I said that was fine and purchased the two boxes.

At the end of January, I returned for more lights but found none on the shelf. I asked another team member whether they had come in and been bought by other customers. He checked on the computer and told me they hadn’t arrived yet. I asked when they would be coming in. He said he didn’t know. “That’s not good enough, mate,” I told him. “I’ve been waiting for several weeks already.”

He suggested I put in a special order for the lights. “That way you’ll be sure to get them quickly,” he promised. So, off we went to the special orders counter where I was handed over to yet a third team member. She collected the information needed to raise a special order and asked for a 50% deposit. I refused, saying it was bad enough I had had to wait this length of time. I wasn’t going to give them half the money now as well. “Well, that’s our policy,” she told me.

“That’s a dumb policy,” I said. “I’m not paying.”

“Well, that’s our policy,” she repeated.

“It’s still a dumb policy,” I said. “I’d like to talk to the manager, please.”

The manager came and asked what the problem was. I told him. “Well, that’s our policy, he said.”

“That’s a dumb policy,” I replied.”

“We have to have that policy,” the manager persisted.

“Is that so?” I said. “And just why would that be?”

“Because sometimes people place a special order and then when the goods arrive they don’t want them and we have to sell them.”

“Gosh, that’s really unfair,” I said. “Here you are in retail and you have to sell stuff!” I then pointed out that I wasn’t asking them to bring in something they don’t usually stock. I was only asking they bring in something they should have had on the shelves for the past six weeks. The manager saw my point and agreed to waive the deposit. I thanked him and added, “I’m in business too and the first thing you have to decide when you’re in business is whether you’ll put yourself or the customer first.”

Quick as a flash, without a moment’s hesitation he said, “Obviously you put the customer first.”

“Where have you been for the past 20 minutes,” I asked. “If you really put the customer first, we wouldn’t have had this conversation.”

This is a great example of a manager or company believing it is important to put their customers first but through their policies and processes actually putting themselves first. Now, here’s the kicker. Two months later, I cancelled my special order because the lights had not arrived. I was glad I hadn’t paid the deposit. Imagine the trouble I would have had trying to get it back!

If you believe it is important to put your customers first, review your policies an processes to make sure that is, in fact, what’s happening. If you’re not sure, ask you’re customers. They will tell you everything you need to know to succeed.

Is providing an outstanding customer experience starting to sound a bit more like rocket science?

Myth Busting: It's Just Common Sense

A childhood friend, who has just finished reading my new book, teased me by asking, “Don't you ever feel guilty about making a living from telling people common sense things they already know?” It’s a reaction I get a lot. “But it’s just common sense,” people tell me.

I always reply, “No. It’s not common sense. It makes sense but it’s not common sense. If it was, we wouldn’t live in a world where customers are outraged. We wouldn’t live in a world where every year consumer trust in the companies they deal with declines to an all time low. We wouldn’t find that in 2011 people say they expect better service than they got in 2010 but believe they are getting less.

Looking after your customers so they come back and buy more certainly makes sense. There is a growing body of evidence to show that providing good service is great for your business. One of my clients, a retailer in Australia, has found there is a strong relationship between how customers rate the service in a store and the financial performance of that store. An American study found that companies that put their customers first gained 4% more new customers, retained 4% more existing customers and increased sales to existing customers by 8%. A global study by American Express found that customers in Canada, the USA and Australia who got good service spent up to 13% more. A study by the London School of Economics found that companies that had a lot of people saying good things about them and very few saying bad things grew four times more than other companies.

Do business leaders understand that great service is good business? You probably only need call your local telephone company to find out what makes sense is not common sense.

New Book Coming Out

For those people following my blog: I'm sorry I haven't written for a while. I've been finishing a new book called Believers (www.believers.co.nz). It is a collection of columns I have written over the past five years for New Zealand Business. It will come out in early August. Back to blogging tomorrow as I start my next book called SOLD.

Customer service is a matter of personal choice.

The kind of experience your customers have depends on the choices you make.

Companies do not set out to provide their customers with bad experiences,  but the people running these companies often make choices that result in customers having a bad experience. Senior managers, for example,  make a choice to provide no service rather than customer service (and make no mistake, self-service is no service). They have chosen to reduce the money they spend looking after you and to spend it on advertisements convincing you to spend your money with them. These people have chosen to say, in effect, to their customers, “Do it yourself, mate. We are not hiring people to do it for you.”

The issue is not confined to senior managers, of course. The same applies to front-line team members who choose to say, “I don’t know,” rather than “I’ll find out and get back to you.” Or who choose to make life easy for themselves by doing as little as possible rather than helping their customers by going the extra mile. Or who choose to be unfriendly, or even surly, rather than to act pleasantly. Or who choose to make excuses when something goes wrong rather than say, sorry. Or who choose to disrespect their customers by not saying please or thank you.

 

Customer service is a matter of personal choice.

When you touch your customers, at what Jan Carlsson called moments of truth over 30 years ago, whether your customer has a good or bad experience depends on how you behave and how you behave is based on the choices you make. You choose to look after your customer or you choose to look after yourself. You choose to go the extra mile or to do as little as possible. Whether your customer gets a good or bad experience depends on the choices you make.

What choices are you making and how do these affect your customers?

Now, here’s an interesting thought.

 Imagine there was someone in your life who liked you so much that every month they deposited a sum of money into your bank account that was equal to what you and your partner are currently earning. And imagine if this went on month after month. Eventually, you might start to believe this money would always come in and so you would retire from work and spend all of your time socialising with your friends and enjoying your hobbies.

One day, this person rings you up and says they would be in your neighbourhood the following week and would like to visit you. What would your response be? I don’t imagine you would tell them you were busy next week and, in fact, for the rest of the month so would next month be OK? I don’t even think you say next week would be OK as long as it was Wednesday afternoon because you had things planned for the rest of the week. I think you’d say, “You bet! I’d love to see you. What time would suit you?”

What would you do between the time you’d talked to them on the telephone and when they were due to visit? I suspect you’d clean the house, sweep the paths, mow the lawns and wash the car. On the day of the visit, you’d probably put the kids in the bath tub, scrub them red, towel them dry, dress them in their best clothes and line them up and say, “On your best behaviour or on your bikes!”

When it came time for the person to come, would you be at the other end of the house with the TV cranked up so loud it was hard to hear the doorbell? And when you finally did hear it ring, would you shout out, “Your visit is important to us but we’re kind of busy right now. Please wait, you are No 1 in the queue?”

I don’t think so. I think you’d be right behind the door and when you heard their footsteps on the path, you would open the door before they could ring the bell. There would be a big smile on your face and you’d say, “How nice to see you!” And you would mean it. You would invite them into the house, offer to hang up their coat, suggest they sit in the most comfortable chair in the room and offer them something to eat and drink.

You would ask them how they were and you would be really pleased when they said they were fine because you want the money to continue! You would be very interested in what they had to say and you would show that you were listening. You would ask questions and pay attention to the answers. If they said something you did not agree with, you wouldn’t say, “Well that’s not right!” You would just smile and nod. And if they asked you what you thought, you would be very tactful and polite.

Your customers are your benefactors!

In fact, you would do absolutely everything in your power to give this person a great experience because you know this person is your benefactor. And that’s what customers are. They are your benefactors. They pay your wages and 100% of your company's profits come from your customers. In fact, unless you are losing money, every dollar needed to keep your business going and you in a job comes from your customers.

I wonder what effect it would have on your business if you treated your customers as if they were guests in your home?

The Laws of Customer Retention

Most of us understand The First Law of Customer Retention, which states if you do something that pleases your customers you give them a reason to keep doing business with you. We even understand the First Corollary to this law that says the more we please our customers, the more reasons they have to return. It seems, however, that few of us understand The Second Law of Customer Retention which states if we stop doing something that pleases our customers we do not just remove that reason, we give them a reason to take their business elsewhere. Of course, the more reasons we give them to leave, the less likely it is they will stay. 


Would your customers say your business is following The First Law of Customer Retention or the Second?

Turn Your Customers Into Believers

The aim in business is to have profitable customers who stay with you for a long time. After all, if every one of your customers was profitable to you and they all stayed a very long time, you would have an extremely successful business.

The best way to achieve this goal is to turn your customers into believers. Believers buy. Believers come back. And believers tell others.

Getting your customers to believe in you and your products is not an easy task because trust between customers and the companies they deal with is at an all time low.

Certainly, satisfying your customers is not enough to turn them into believers nor is it enough to make them loyal. When you satisfy a customer, you simply give they what they expect. When people just get what they expect, they are not impressed enough to become believers, loyalists or evangelists. Nearly 20 years ago, Xerox did research showing that “Totally satisfied” customers were six times more likely to re-purchase than customers who were simply “satisfied.”

The best way to turn your customers into believers is to create a customer experience so positive, so powerful and so outstanding your customers believe if they did not do business with you, they would be missing out. Then they will trust you. Then they will be loyal. Then they will be evangelists for your business telling others just how fantastic you are.

Best of all, the one thing they will not worry about is price!

The Power of a Simple Single Idea

What does everyone get at The Warehouse? That’s right, a bargain.

And why does everyone in New Zealand know that? Because we have all been told many times over the past few years. This demonstrates the power of one single, simple, clear message delivered often, in the same way, over a period of time.

There is one single, simple, clear message you should be giving your staff throughout this year to make your business even more successful:

This is the most important message to give your staff because 100% of your profits come from your customers, as does the money to pay their wages. You and your staff need to be thinking about this single, simple, clear idea constantly because without your customers you would have no business and they would have no jobs.

I know all that seems common sense but usually people think about anything but, “Our customers are our business.” For example, lawyers think about laws, cases and documents; builders think about plans and houses; salespeople think about their products; people in local government think about rules and regulations; librarians think about books; and managers think about processes, policies and profits. It is human nature for people to think about what they do and not who they are doing it for. As a result, not enough time is spent asking questions and listening to understand what the customer is going to do with what we are giving them. It also makes it very hard for us to put ourselves in our customer’s shoes.

More Evidence Loyalty Programmes Need Improving

Nearly half (49 percent) of all loyalty program members never or rarely take advantage of the benefits of the programme they belong to when shopping online, and 78 percent said easy access to loyalty memberships would make them more inclined to use those privileges online, according to new research from ACI Worldwide, reported in a recent issue of CRM Magazine.


Many people say they simply don’t have the wallet space to efficiently use rewards cards, says Rob Seward, senior industry marketing manager at ACI. He suggests retailers consider consolidating loyalty programs onto a single device such as a smart card or mobile app.

The study also found 52 percent of American consumers would prefer a single card that could hold all their memberships, 33%s said they would prefer to have a consolidated key chain, while 17 percent advocated a mobile app that could access all their customer retail loyalty programs.

Effective Managers Know the Power of Repetition

Managers who deliberately repeat themselves are more effective at getting things done according to research done by Professors Tsedal Neeley (Harvard Business School) and Paul Leonardi (Northwestern University). Neeley and Leonardi headed a team who followed 13 managers in six companies for more than 250 hours, recording every communication the managers sent and received. The researchers found that managers who sent the same message two or more times moved their projects along faster and more smoothly.

How do your customers react to your actions?

Every human action creates a reaction in the person it touches. Your customer's experience with you is the sum total of their reactions to your actions. To manage your customer experience, map out all the places you touch your customers and then find out how your customers react to these touch points. You will quickly see where you can improve.

Business is the Activity of Creating Value

I know it is easy to believe that your business is different. Perhaps you have an unusual product, or a special process for manufacturing. Perhaps you have a monopoly due to government regulation or you trade with a unique sector of the market. But fundamentally every business is the same because the business of every business is creating value. Customers do not want your products and services, they want what your products and services can do for them. They do not want to know what you have to do to produce those products and services. They are not interested in the features of your products and they do not want service. They want value. Think of it this way, businesses do not so much make products and services as they buy customers by producing things that customers value.

Your Employees Could Sabotage Your Promotions

In the January, 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Utpal Dholakia, Associate professor of business at Rice University, said his research shows that if team members do not support promotional offers, customers have a bad experience and the company gets no long-term benefit from the promotion. Employees may not be happy with the promotion because they do not believe it is a good deal or because of the extra work they have to do as a result of the promotion.

What do you do to make sure team members believe in and actively support your promotions?

New World is New Zealand's Best Supermarket for Customer Servcice

Customers have most positive experiences at New World

New World was the clear winner amongst the country’s supermarkets in the new segment aired recently on the Fair Go-Colmar Brunton Best in Service Poll, which identifies customer service champions for a particular sector each month.

Colmar Brunton spoke to 2,000 Kiwis and asked them if they had a particularly good experience at a supermarket in the past year, or a particularly negative one. Some 42 per cent of shoppers at New World reported a positive experience, outweighing negative experiences (7 per cent) by a ratio of six to one. That leaves the supermarket operator with a Nett Experience Score of 35, compared with a score of 25 for Countdown, 20 for Pak’nSave, 15 for Four Square, 13 for Foodtown and Woolworths with a score of 10.

The slot will identify the best provider of customer service in categories such as banking, airlines, telecommunications, power companies and real estate firms. The next Fair Go-Colmar Brunton Best in Service Poll will focus on home appliance stores; the segment will screen on Wednesday, May 25, on TVOne at 7:30pm.  

Colmar Brunton has conducted, at its own expense, comprehensive customer experience surveys in 2005, 2006 and 2010. The most recent survey showed that the personal customer experience in New Zealand has improved in the past five years, mainly because of a significant reduction in particularly bad customer experiences.

To My Readers

Hi

I don't know whether I have any readers but in case I do, I just wanted to let you know I will be travelling in the USA until May 8 and so I may not get a chance to blog every day.

Cheers

Ian

What Business Are You Really In?

If someone asked you what business you are in, what would you answer? I'd suggest you think of yourself as being in the customer business. Not the customer service business, the customer business. After all, the only way you will succeed in business is to attract, sell to and retain customers. There is no other way. Perhaps you are thinking that anyone who is in business could say that. Well, you'd be right! They could and they should because like you, the only way to succeed is to get customers, make money from them and keep them coming back for more.

If that all sounds a bit crazy, answer this question: What percentage of your profits come from your customers? Or this one: If you are not losing money or borrowing money to expand, what percentage of your total revenue comes from you customers? If you are an employee or team member, ask yourself these three questions: Who pays your wages? Who do you work for? Who's the boss?

Once you've answered those questions, you'll understand why you are in the customer business!

Around the World Customers Expect More But Think They Are Getting Less

A US study done this year found consumers expect more from customer service and their satisfaction with customer service continues to decrease. Says the author of this study: “Generally, customer expectations are rising faster than companies have been able to respond.” Nearly a third of consumers (31 percent) have higher customer service expectations than they did just a year ago and 44 percent) have higher customer service expectations than they did five years ago.

An Australian study dome by AussieHost in 2010 found that just over half of respondents said they were dissatisfied with customer service in Australia, and an even more disturbing trend is that well over half the people surveyed believe it’s getting worse.  Accounting and legal services were rated the best for customer service while insurance companies were given the thumbs down, scoring lower than all other sectors.

A New Zealand survey by Colmar Brunton found personal customer experience in New Zealand has improved in the past five years, mainly because of a significant reduction in negative customer experiences to 59 percent this year from 72 percent in 2006 when the survey was last conducted. On the other hand, A KiwiHost study done in New Zealand found most New Zealanders (58.7%) were either neutral, dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the levels of service and 75% said they would give a company only one or two chances before taking their business elsewhere.

Marketers Don't Understand Women

 Women are not happy with the vast majority of marketing and advertising aimed at them,” says Holly Buchanan, coauthor of The Soccer Mom Myth – Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys. According to She-conomy.com, 59 percent of women feel misunderstood by food marketers; 66 percent feel misunderstood by health care marketers; 74 percent feel misunderstood by automotive marketers; and 84 percent feel misunderstood by investment marketers. In a separate survey, also by She-conomy.com, 91 percent of women said that they don’t think advertisers understand them. What’s causing this disconnect between marketers and female consumers? According to experts, it’s not because of a lack of technological capabilities; the problem stems from a limited understanding of this powerful and influential cohort.

The biggest mistake companies make is to say all women think alike or want the same thing and therefore will respond to the same message. Inevitably when companies think ‘woman,’ they think ‘mom says one industry expert. When appealing to women shoppers, as opposed to their male counterparts, particular common notions do prove to be true, but not without a caveat. The assumption that women care more about aesthetics and the design of a product is absolutely true; a study by BlogHer and Create with Context, titled “Women, the Web, and Their Wallets,” found that 93 percent of participants wanted technology products to be beautiful. However, 63 percent of those women said that the beauty of a product did not override the product benefits, debunking the idea that if a remote control is dipped in pink, a woman won’t bother to compare the features to those of another device.

Word of Mouth Is The Strongest Influence On Where Customers Shop

A recent global study found word of mouth is the source of information people use the most (76 percent) and consider most important (56 percent) when deciding whether to do business with a service provider. A US study done this year found word of mouth remained the source of information respondents use most (76 percent) and also consider the most important (56 percent) when deciding whether to do business with a service provider. Social media has “accelerated” the importance of word of mouth.

A 2010 US study reported in the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer study found that over 90% of Australians surveyed in the recent

say they will tell more than three people about a bad customer service experience. Almost 40% of respondents said they would tell more than ten people about a bad experience, and the frightening reality is that a customer’s perception of good service does not match mainstream business thinking.

US research by the Corporate Executive Board in 2010 found 65% of people said they tell others when they have a bad experience and 48% said they tell 10 or more. On the other hand, only 25% said they told others when they have a good experience and 23% told 10 or more.

Another US study mentioned above found that after having a bad customer service experience in the past year, four out of five (80 percent) U.S. consumers told the people around them, while 17 percent shared their bad experiences via social media. Furthermore, 24 percent of consumers consider negative comments posted on social media sites a strong influence on purchasing decisions.

A 2010 US study reported in the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer found 75% of customers will tell others about a good experience and 59% will talk about a bad experience. Stories about good service carry more weight when considering which company to deal with. Eighty-one percent say they are more likely to stay loyal if they have a good experience and 52% say they defect after a bad experience.

Customer Service More Important Today But Not Getting Better Say Customers

A 2010 Global study reported in the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer found customers in 10 countries say quality customer service is even more important to them in today’s economic environment. Unfortunately, 63% of Americans 71% of Australians, 66% of Germans, 65% of Canadians and 65% of Italians say companies are not getting better or are getting worse.

Make It Easy For Your Customers to Talk To You

Listening to the voice of your customers is far more effective than customer surveys. Research shows that you get better quality and more useful feedback if you let your customers use their own words to tell you what they want to tell you, when they want to tell it.

If you want to make it easy for your customers to talk to you when and how they want to, tell them to Tell Simon. 

If your customers have a compliment. complaint, suggestion or question they want to pass on to you, they can go to Tell Simon (www.tellsimon.co.nz, www.tellsimon.com.au or www.tellsimon.com.) and he will try pass their feedback on to you. 

The more you promote Tell Simon to your customers, the more feedback you will get.

Why make it easy for your customers to talk to you? Because they will tell you everything you need to know to succeed.

The Tell Simon feedback channel is a free service to consumers and businesses alike. See www.tellsimon.biz for more information.

Many Loyalty Programmes Are Ineffective

A recent study of U.S. consumers that shows many retail loyalty programs leave consumers feeling under-appreciated, and many consumers are enrolled in programs they don’t completely understand.

Three out of four Americans are members of at least one retail loyalty program but 85 percent of members report that they haven’t heard a sing...le word from a loyalty program since the day they signed up.

How to Turn a Good Customer Experience into a Great One

How can you turn a good customer experience into a great one? 

 Have a look at my column in New Zealand Business. You can download it here: www.ianbrooks.com/useful-ideas/nzbusiness/201104.pdf

Introduction

Welcome to my blog. 

For those of you who don't know me, I am an author, speaker and businessman based in New Zealand. I have been in business for 35 years and for over 20 years have specialised in the areas of customer care, creating customer value and becoming customer driven. As a former clinical psychologist I am well placed to help people attract, keep and sell more to customers.

I am the author of 15 books on business management and regular columnist  for New Zealand Business. I deliver over 100 speeches and seminars every year in New Zealand, Australia, North America, Brazil, Great Britain and the Middle East. I have consulted to public and private organisations in every industry sector in Australasia and North America, helping them to grow in this competitive market. 

I have considerable experience in retail and am currently Customer Care Advisor to such retail brands as Diva, Bras n Things, Lovisa, Adairs, Sanity Entertainment, Dusk and the Holiday Coast Credit Union. I also have extensive experience in financial services sector. I have been on the board of two brokerages and am a judge for the annual awards of the Insurance Brokers Association of New Zealand. I  have addressed the Million Dollar Round Table in the USA and many Australasian conferences for Financial Advisors. I also wrote a book about Sovereign Assurance, one of New Zealand's largest and most successful insurance companies.

I also have extensive experience in the public sector. I have spoken to numerous conferences in local government and health and has worked with a large number of local authorities including Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Hamilton, Waikato, Northland, Upper Hutt and Porirua councils.

I am a practising business man and am currently managing director of Nahanni Publishing, and chairman of Zeroe Emissions Limited and Tell Simon Limited.

Why read my blog?

Every day I come across research reports and articles from experts in the field of customer service, customer care and business management that make brilliant points we can all learn from. In addition, like you, I am a customer every day of my life and I constantly come across examples of excellent customer service and also very poor service that I think can teach us something. This blog is an attempt to share these with people such as yourself in the hope it can help you to run an even more successful business.

You will also find some excellent articles on my website: www.ianbrooks.com.