June 25th, 2008
Do you ever notice the erosion of the
human factor in a business as it grows?
In the beginning or infancy of a business
idea or concept, everyone's engaged, they feel energized, there's enough
help on the floor to maintain the flow and it seems like business just
can't stop getting better.
But then as the business experiences
growth does the human factor begin to slide. The shift then becomes
to maintaining sales and reducing costs. Perhaps customers aren't as
numerous as they once used to be. Perhaps the stock isn't rotating as
quickly. So not it becomes a numbers game, with the people playing the
pawns.
This is where it gets confusing: business
strives to make new profits - they decide to cut staff and reduce the
number of products available to sustain labour and storage costs.
Yet they constantly see sales slide
and can't fathom why. They continue to cut and cut and cut until there's
nothing left to cut and they are left to take a loss because of it.
This is where the customer's human
experience starts to erode: once-vibrant customer service is being replaced
with automated methods. Happy staff are no where to be found. The environment
looks dismal and uninviting. The customers simply move on to other venues
where they will be greeted with friendly and helpful staff and a large
variety of product and/or service selection.
Once the focus turns to money and profits
does the endeavour begin to start the landslide to future trouble.
The question then becomes: why continue
to cut as the less a customer has to purchase or assistance is virtually
stripped bare, the less you'll have sales and/or returning customers?
How can you attract new customers and generate new sales if there's
no product or staff to support this ambition?
If you're operating at below-minimum
as it is, this is simply setting you up so that you shoot yourselves
in the foot, forever stuck as you bleed dry.
When you remove the human
factor from business vision it begins the slide into obscurity, leading
to frustrated staff, management and customers. If you want to gain a
stranglehold on marketshare, reducing stock and staff will definitely
be the antipode to planned success.
Why take the risk?
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