The Hair Shop blog

Kung Fu

Reading a lot of the different info on the Loyalty Ripple Effect and the pebble in the water makes ripples across the ocean. Makes me feel like I am watching an old Kung Fu rerun and someone is trying to snatch a pebble out of a blind guys hand.

Both of these links deal with the ripple effect, but the blog is about employees and the other is on customers. We all here if you treat you customers right and give them good product they will keep coming back. Though this is true and they will probably bring friends with them you cannot forget that your employees are the ones making contact with them. So your employees are the in essence giving the customers the pebbles that will be cast when it comes to how does your business treat people. We have all been to that restaurant with the waiter or waitress that is not happy about what they are doing, and it inevitably turns the dimmer switch down several notches on the experience that we had. Friends of ours may hear about how good the food was but the service was terrible, so if they have a choice of two places that both have good food why choose the one with terrible service.

So remember if you want your customers to cause a good ripple, then your employees need to giving them the correct pebble to toss.

Blog on Ripple

9 Customer-Centric Morals

Life Time Value

A customer’s lifetime value, what a wonderful idea, sometimes I wonder if a few retail establishments even consider the value of a customer at any given time during a sales transaction.

My wife is a cosmetologist and has been cutting hair for many years now, and when one of her clients arrive she will always ask if they want something to drink. On occasion they will and when they do she will buy the drink from the machine for them. When asked why her response is because that person comes in every six weeks and pays me $125 for a service she could get somewhere else. Upon watching several of the other ladies I saw repeated times where a lady asked the same question but when the response came back yes they asked the client for the money. I asked them about this and the response every time was, the soda in the machine is $1 each and that could get expensive. I tried to explain that since word of mouth is their #1 form of advertising that doing the little things along with giving a terrific hair cut could bring in more referrals, and that the $8 dollar per year investment that they made for a return of $945 dollars was well worth it. But the potential of one referral that could net an additional $945 dollars a year was the main reason the $8 investment should be made.

Doing the little things can not only bring people back for more but it can bring their friends and family as well, and you must always consider this before approaching a customer and treat them accordingly.

Referral

Value of Referrals

Eutrepreneur.com

VPC

The Value Profit Chain and Wal-Mart a great example of a company looking for low prices to better serve the consumer. Well yes and no. I know the book talks about the fact that yes they do put some small stores out of business but they employ more people thant he stores that they put out of business so that is good. They do have tremendously low prices and the consumers do benefit from this, but some of the consumers work for the companies that they purchase from and this is where the issue lies.

The large companies that work with Wal-Mart can do well and financially can do so and remain profitable. It comes when a smaller company starts doing business with them that you see the problem. Most small companies that start doing business with them are very happy to do so, even though they had to go into serious dept to buy the self-space for their product. It is when they expand their volume that the small companies can only supply them and when you only have on customer you are at their mercy. Many smaller companies have learned this the hard way. So they are not just driving small retailers out of business but also small manufactures as well, because they cannot compete and supply the product volume or at the set point for cost.

I do like the example of the volume per square foot and the volume per employee, I started using a similar measurement at my work and it has been adapted across the division. We measure pounds per labor hour in order to show true productivity, and this has been a great tool at showing what improvements we are making in the plant.

Like other large companies that use the VPC we advertise it to our customers as to show how we are helping them, but it still all comes down to meeting the company goals on profitability more than doing what is best for the consumers. But that would not sound as good in a commercial now would it.

Value Profit Chain

Harvard

intro mkt450

Hello, I am JeffL

I am a Manufacturing manager attending night school to attain my degree.

I started as a Level 1 shop hand and have worked my way up to Manufacturing, Scheduling and Shiping Manager, with 60 employees reporting to me.

If everything goes well I will have my degree by January 2008, if not then by May 2008.

Currently I am enrolled in Marketing 450 along with 1 other classe this semester.

Part of this class is to start my own blog on marketing.

Hello, I am JeffL

I am a Manufacturing manager attending night school to attain my degree.

I started as a Level 1 shop hand and have worked my way up to Manufacturing, Scheduling and Shiping Manager, with 60 employees reporting to me.

If everything goes well I will have my degree by January 2008, if not then by May 2008.

Currently I am enrolled in Marketing 450 along with 1 other classe this semester.

Part of this class is to start my own blog on marketing.