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Thanksgiving = turkey + family + friends + and…?

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…saying “thanks!”

(Wow, what a great idea! Where did that one come from?)

As easy as it sounds, being thankful is easy to forget. We get trapped in planning, cooking, traveling, seeing our relatives, and eating. In the middle of it all, here’s a small challenge for you:

Whether you’re a business owner, manager, or employee, go out this week and thank as many people as you can. Don’t just do lip service by saying “thanks,” give a sincere reason why you are thanking them — even if you think it’s for something small or insignificant.

You’ll be surprised at the reactions you get. Very surprised.

It’s easy to forget to do this, everyone (including me!) should do it more often. Sincere gratitude is powerful.

Never underestimate the power of appreciation.

Do your prospects say this phrase to you, or your competition?

“It’s almost like [your competitors] don’t even care.” -XNet Prospect

This summer, a potential customer walked in to meet with us and tour our facilities. They commented on how other data centers they had visited had boxes strewn throughout and machines in disarray … and that evidence of personal service was sparse. While these comments were a huge compliment to us and validated our efforts, they were also a sad commentary on our industry.

Does your industry resemble this picture? Do you take pains to partner with your customers and give service because you care and you take pride in delivering value … only to see others in your industry coasting and resting on their laurels? Maybe they rely on empty buzzwords. Whatever they do, it leaves you wondering “Where’s the beef?”

Wherever you are in the marketplace, people and companies like this exist.

Our industry has become a commodity in many ways. Data center marketing focuses on hyping baseline requirements such as redundant Internet connectivity, power, cooling, etc. Those things are all very necessary for mission-critical systems, but features alone don’t define the customer experience. It’s reducing data center marketing to a playground call, “My data center is redundanter than your data center!” In the process of chicken-chesting, they leave off all of the value they could bring to customers by getting to know them and their business and servicing them personally.

Why did that prospect say that?

Our guest walked in and saw that we were accessible and friendly, unlike many larger facilities. They also saw the care we put into our Critical Computing Facility firsthand by how clean and orderly we keep it. Contrasted to others they visited, they concluded that we “actually care,” where the others didn’t. Our facility is completely redundant like the others they saw, but it was the details that put them over the top.

How do you get your prospects to say the same?

Maybe you take pride in delivering an excellent product. Or, perhaps you set yourself apart by pricing your services fairly in an over-inflated industry. Being honest.

Here are some of our suggestions to gain this compliment:

• Pick up the phone. Be accessible and be responsive, even when you don’t feel you have to.
• Tell the truth. If your service isn’t a fit for them, be up front about it. People will appreciate the honestly and remember you. They’ll be back when they need you, or they’ll become a great referral source.
• Be proactive. When a customer T1 line goes down, we often call them first, before they notice and call us. Line outages are mostly outside of our control as the phone companies maintain the physical line. Part of the service we provide is dealing with phone company headaches and service issues so they don’t have to. We show the customer we care by being on top of it.
• Be about the details. If you’re in a commodity industry or margins are tight, this goes even more to your benefit. Customers know they can shop elsewhere, so give them a reason to buy from you.

What are you doing right now to set yourself apart and show clients and prospects you care?

Please tell us below. We’d like to know, so we can grow from your experiences too.

Do your customers trust you?

While going through the inbox on my desk, where mostly trade pubs and “things to read later” collect, I uncovered this gem of an article from Forbes.com published in late May–the title reads simply “Do your customers trust you?” Even though the article is written towards financial advisers, we can generalize this to all service providers. The most poignant bit is where the author discusses vendor and customer perceptions of the services provided:

The State Street/Wharton survey found that while trust was clearly important to both advisers and their clients, each side had a different take on the building blocks of that trust. Nearly three quarters of both groups cited trust as the most important characteristic of a financial adviser, but the big discrepancies were in performance and cost-per-service. Just 4% of the advisers thought performance was the most important selection criteria, compared with 10% of the clients; only 5% of the advisers voted for cost, versus 12% for clients.

Those differences may have had something to do with the two sides’ perceptions of overall satisfaction. Advisers clearly have a higher opinion of their services than customers do. A whopping 56% of the advisers felt that their clients were “very satisfied,” while only 24% of clients concurred; meanwhile, 6% of advisers felt that clients were “somewhat satisfied,” a far cry from the 28% of clients who felt that way.

Obviously we skew perceptions to favor our position (it’s called Confirmation Bias). We, whatever our role–vendor, client, spouse, friend, student, etc–want to confirm what we believe, or want to believe, about our relationships. What vendor doesn’t want to believe customers love their product or service?

At XNet, though we’ve enjoyed tremendous customer goodwill over our company history, we haven’t been as conscientious as we could be in soliciting customer feedback. So, for all of the XNet customers reading this–do you trust us? Why, or why not? Let us know. And if you aren’t an XNet customer, try asking this of your customer base; if you don’t hear what you want to hear, take it as valuable feedback to help grow your business and an opportunity to deepen client relationships.