As a small business owner there may be times when you have to find ways to cut costs and save money in order to stay in business. It is seldom fun but it can be necessary. The challenge, of course, is to find ways to save a few dollars while still keeping your customers coming back.
Since employee overhead is often one of the largest expenses in a business many owners choose to cut employee hours first. Having less staff working can save you money but if those extra employees performed critical tasks you're going to feel the negative effects of their absence very quickly. That's why many owners choose to reduce customer service personnel instead. The idea is that everyone can pull together to cover the missing employee's duties and your customers won't even notice. The reality is that, unless your employee's are 100% on board with the new strategy, that may not happen. Most will continue to do their own job but they won't jump right in and pick up the slack from the missing employees.
Here's why reducing customer services is a bad idea.
- Self-service only works in some instances. There are certain tasks that customers would be happy to perform themselves. Scoop your own ice cream? Fill your own plate of fries? Sure! You could pile it as high as you'd like. Sounds great, doesn't it? What about bagging your own groceries? Not as much fun. Climbing the shelves to get an item that is out of reach? Down right dangerous. There are certain things that customers don't want to do on their own and they shouldn't have to.
- Customer service can have a greater affect on customer satisfaction than product availability. Of course, your customers hope that you have what they need in stock when they need it, but if you don't they probably won't go tell all their friends. Let them have an unpleasant employee encounter and you better believe they are going to share the bad news with everyone they know. The reason? Personal interactions elicit emotional responses. People don't usually get emotional over an out of stock situation but they definitely do when someone makes them feel bad in some way. Poor customer service can very quickly cause your customer's to have hard feelings regarding your business.
- You get the blame. If a customer has to serve themselves and something goes wrong they are still going to blame you since they shouldn't have had to do it themselves in the first place. It's human nature, if I get home and find my bread squashed it's got to be the bag boy's fault. If I bagged my own groceries it's still the store's fault for not having a bag boy there to do it right. Fair? Not really. If I put the bread in the bag it really is my fault but few people will actually admit that, even to themselves. Since you can't control how well your customers do things you're opening yourself up to be blamed for all sorts of things.
Cutting costs is often an unpleasant challenge. If you do have to reduce employee hours to keep your business profitable talk with your staff. Explain the challenge that the business is facing and explain how important it is for everyone to work together to minimize the impact on your customers. If you can make it through the lean times and get back to normal operating procedures you should offer some sort of compensation for those employees who helped you make it through. You can't afford to lose customers or your downward spiral will continue and you may find yourself out of business before the next fiscal year. While you don't want to be all gloom and doom when talking with your staff sometimes it doesn't hurt to give them a dose of reality. If they are longtime loyal employees chances are they will rise to the challenge because they have a vested interest in your company's continued success. Need more customer service tips? Check out this previous post.
Better Customer Service Begins with Employees
Cut Costs Without Cutting Customer Service | Stockpile Simple Inventory Solution
Another way to cut costs and save money is effective inventory management. Stockpile simple inventory solution can help. With Stockpile you can easily track inventory within a single location or across multiple locations. Adding items is quick and easy and item records are fully customizable, allowing you to add the fields that make the most sense for your business application. You can even include a photo in your item record for easier identification. Plus, Stockpile simple inventory solution is mobile compatible so that you can access your records anytime from anywhere. When you know exactly what you have and where to find it you can save time and money on inventory. Stockpile takes the headache out of inventory management issues. Try Stockpile today!
