Businesses can thrive or die on how they treat their customers. Reputation is a huge thing within the business world. Whether you’re a plumber, cafe owner or corporate business manager, the fundamentals of business stays the same. You might struggle and continuously ask yourself how to offer an excellent client experience but the key to it is implementing a strategic workflow.
Workflow is so important. Everyone within the company needs to be on the same page with it. One chink in the workflow armour, as it were, will dethrone the entire operation, fall the walls of the kingdom. So how do you introduce and maintain said workflow? Let’s take a cafe for example, as we mentioned above.
A customer arrives at your establishment and you are busy trying to empty dirty tables. They have to wait in the foyer where there aren’t any seats to make themselves comfortable on. When a table is clear and you ask them to take a seat, there is no menu. Your waitress takes 10 minutes after the customer sits down to make first contact. They then take down the order incorrectly and the drink ordered arrives wrong. The re-made drink then arrives but the food takes a long time to come out from the kitchen. It is cold. Your customer is less than impressed. You try and make up for things with a free dessert but the damage is already done. You have failed to make a good first impression. What is the likelihood that said customer will return? Probably somewhere in the realms of slim to zero, I’d expect.
Creating this first impression is paramount in any business. Set the standard and your clients will be impressed. Fail to hit the mark and they will sing anything but your praises. If the workflow is in place and operating properly, you have nothing to worry about. Similarly, if you have workflows in place throughout your business, everything runs smoothly, allowing you time to focus on perhaps expanding the business or upping your game to provide an even better customer experience.
One of these areas is your finances. If you have a workflow for your accounts, everything should work out well. Fail to have this in place and you’ll be searching the office drawers for receipts, have to deal with unimpressed employees when their pay cheques haven’t arrived in their bank accounts and you could mess up the important tax returns, landing you in trouble, possibly facing fines.
Invest in professional bookkeeping so you can be sure this is dealt with in a timely and efficient manner. Find a service you can trust like Bruton Young Bookkeeping and you can focus on the rest of your business, safe in the knowledge that the finance part of it is taken care of. Utilising modern day technology such as Xero or Quickbooks can help streamline the approach.
By implementing workflows throughout your business you can ensure that you don’t need to rely on freebies to cover your mistakes. You’re safe in the knowledge that you’ve created that perfect first impression and the sky is the limit from here on in.
