Solving the Disconnect

Have you ever watched the show, Undercover Boss or the movie, The Intern?

In The Intern, you see Anne Hathaway’s character diving into Customer Support and testing how her products are delivered to customers.

Now, do you remember how when your business was starting, you seem to be in tune with everything?

At the start of your business, you’ve probably done every single thing. You were the CEO, CFO, CMO, COO and all the C’s that you can think of. You were also the Customer Support, Executive Assistant and Bookkeeper of your company.

Then you started to grow and you slowly hired people to fill-in these roles for you.

You delegate and move on to a more focused and singular role.

Things are going great and you business grows further, then it happens - the huge disconnect.

You no longer know what’s going on with your team and your customers. Your policies and product are not people-driven anymore.

Don’t get me wrong - growth is good. Growth is great.

However, from time to time, it’s a great idea to get out of your “corner office” and dive into the different roles in your company.

Want to know what your people are dealing with?

Go work for a few hours in Operations,

do a sales call,

handle Customer Support,

do 1 to 2 things that you would normally hand over to your Assistant.

Be a customer of your own business.

Try your own product and services.

You don’t need to do all these again. Just do them from time to time and you’ll see how your policies are actually affecting your team and your customers. Ask these questions:

• Do the people that work in my company have a great working environment? Or am I driving them insane?

• Is your team exhausted?

• Does your team believe in what you do? Or are they just there until a better opportunity comes along?

• What are the common complaints that your customer support handles? Why do these keep happening?

• What is the entire customer experience? Are they happy with your product or service?

From here, you’ll be able to see problems that may seem small but in reality can snowball into a huge one.