Are you competing on price or quality? If you have to track what your competitors’ offer, and constantly react to their improvements and promotions, you risk playing catch-up and appearing to be the second choice in the market.
Why not truly excel at something (not everything) and stand out by standing for something. In a word, why not be remarkable?
- If you could reduce the time it takes to develop new products, you’d be ahead of the rest of the market. You’d be seen as an innovator.
- If you could add services to support your products, you’d create deeper relationships with your customers and increase your revenues. You’d be seen as a partner.
- If you could solve your customer problems in half the time you did last year, you’d become the go-to company for your customers. You’d be seen as the experts.
- If you could transform customer complaints into customer success stories, you’d destroy the ‘bad reviews’ people leave online, and create word-of-mouth advocates. You’d be trusted to put the customer first.
Marketing won’t make you remarkable; it’s about what you do at the heart of your company, your values and your purpose. A great website might help your customers order from you, but it’s what happens after the sale that creates your reputation, your brand. Potential customers will perceive your values based on your company’s actions, and that comes down to your employees’ behaviours.
People
Assuming you’ve got the best people working with you, it’s time you supported their most valuable behaviours (the ones that make your company remarkable) and streamlined all the low-value administrative tasks they’re burdened with.
Process
Companies of a certain size rely on a Quality Management System to direct their continuous improvement. If you have such a QMS, it probably dictates that communication and collaboration systems have to be ‘fit for purpose’. A modern intranet, even a small one, can be an integral part of your QMS, helping people follow processes and adhere to standards.
If you haven’t adopted a formal QMS, simply organising your procedures and policy library (and review processes) to make them easy to refer to is the first step to focusing on the quality of your working practices. Content management and knowledge management go hand-in-hand within a modern intranet, helping you develop your ways of working for maximum effectiveness.
Being remarkable isn’t simply about streamlining your processes though; it’s about how your people support your company goals to delight customers.
- Download the Interact Small Business Intranet Guide that I wrote, for more about how an intranet can benefit the smaller organisation. Or talk to me today; perhaps I can delight you.
Sort out the admin and make you small business remarkable: http://t.co/Q0xJL82fLN Customer service, #engagement, #intranet
— Wedge ⬛️ (@Wedge) October 27, 2014
Photo credit: Startup Stock Photos
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Make your small business remarkable – http://d.pr/1je9B #intranet – by @Wedge