Do you have a small business that is striving to stay ahead of the competition? If so, this article is for you!
Typically, business owners and managers are aware they must do things differently but are so caught up in the day to day running of the business, they don’t have time to take a step back and evaluate how to improve.
Here are few simple ways small businesses can create efficiencies to save time, money and improve the customer experience.
Improvement culture
1. Foster a culture of continuous improvement. As a leader, let your team know you want to develop a culture of continuous improvement. Encourage open and honest conversations. Employees usually know where the problems are. Ask your employees to identify the problems and be part of the solution.
Customer feedback
2. Do you know what your customers are saying? Customer feedback about your products and services are like gold nuggets. Embrace the positive feedback and empathise with the customer when things are not going so well. Showing empathy demonstrates you are understanding how they feel. The best businesses always get back to the customer to close the loop. This is important so they know they haven’t been forgotten. It also improves customer satisfaction if you handle issues well.
Measuring performance
3. Key metrics with targets will be another indicator of how well your business is performing. Setting up a dashboard allows you to track, monitor and analyse metrics and trends over time. Include your team in regular discussions about performance. Usually, you will find a correlation between metrics performance and the problems your employees have identified.
Root cause
4. Understand why problems are occurring. The root cause or the ‘why’ is important so you’re not addressing the symptom of the problem. Keep drilling down and asking why until you have identified the root cause. This enables employees to brainstorm the best solutions to address the problem.
Implementation
5. Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves! Usually, your team will identify a range of solutions. Start by implementing simple changes to uplift customer satisfaction and deliver operational efficiencies such as time saved by reducing defects and rework, better resource allocation and streamlined processes.
Plan what needs to change. Ask yourself if employees need to change how they currently complete tasks. Will they be resistant to change? What do you need to do to overcome this barrier? Design the implementation plan and include tasks such as process documentation updates, retraining, communications to staff and customers.
Conclusion
Utilising continuous improvement strategies can result in customer, employee and financial benefits for small businesses. Consistently striving to improve will enable small businesses to stay ahead of the competition.
