New Training Video: Leading a Customer-Centric Culture

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

In August 2013, I traveled to Carpinteria, California for a screen test at the online training video company, Lynda.com.

The test went well and I have gone on to shoot twenty training videos with Lynda, and later, LinkedIn Learning after Lynda was acquired by LinkedIn.

As part of my screen test, I filmed a short, unscripted course called Leading a Customer-Centric Culture. The idea was to capture me talking direct to camera, as if I was having a conversation with a colleague. Little did I realize at the time that the course would become the basis for the bestselling The Service Culture Handbook.

It's funny how things come full-circle.

My latest LinkedIn Learning training video is a new version of Leading a Customer-Centric Culture. This one is based on my book.

Video camera with a green screen background

Course Overview

The training video is a step-by-step guide that shows you how to get employees obsessed with customer service.

It's based extensive research into leading companies and my own work helping clients build service cultures. The course is broken down into short segments to allow you to focus on one step at a time.

There are three key steps in the process:

  1. Create a customer service vision

  2. Engage employees with the vision

  3. Align the organization around the vision

Here's a short video overview:

Resources

You can access the course on LinkedIn Learning if you have a subscription. You can also get a 30-day LinkedIn Learning trial that will give you access to the entire library of training videos.

The video is a great companion to The Service Culture Handbook:

There's also a service culture toolkit you can download here.

Lessons From the Overlook: Sometimes Work Isn’t Fun

Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a monthly update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It's a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. You can find past updates here.

There are times when we have to put in hard work and long hours, and it seems like there's no reward in sight. It's natural to ask yourself, "Why am I doing this?"

I recently experienced one of those times with The Overlook.

My wife, Sally, and I try to visit the cabin every four to six weeks to inspect it, bring supplies, and do routine maintenance. Unfortunately, making that visit this past September was difficult. Sally was traveling extensively and I was frantically working on the launch of my new book before we went on vacation at the end of the month.

So I took a day to drive the two hours from my home to The Overlook, did work for a couple of hours, and then drove the two hours back that same day. It was a long day—especially since I worked on the new book before I left and again when I returned home.

I must admit, I felt a small amount of resentment. Not towards anyone in particular; just the idea of visiting the cabin and not being able to have any fun bothered me!

It was a reminder that you have to have fun when you can.

The kitchen has a new mat, a couple broken glasses were replaced, and everything is ready for our next guests.

The kitchen has a new mat, a couple broken glasses were replaced, and everything is ready for our next guests.

Rediscover Your Purpose

Sally and I originally purchased The Overlook because we wanted a vacation cabin, and making it a rental would help offset the costs. We envisioned it as a place where we could relax while taking in the fresh mountain air, or use it as a home base for hiking and other outdoor adventures.

Our customer service vision for The Overlook reflects both the way we feel about the cabin and then way we hope our guests will feel also:

Welcome to your mountain retreat

I thought about this as I spent the day driving to and from The Overlook.

I realized that part of my frustration came from a short visit in August, where a thunderstorm warning cancelled a hike that I had been planning for a long time. Instead of spending the day hiking in the nearby mountains, I spent that time doing chores at the cabin. Now I was heading back to do more chores without getting a chance to have some fun.

Chances are, you too had a purpose when you started your job.

Maybe the job offered an exciting career opportunity, or you were excited about the chance to develop new skills. It could be you really admired the company or its products and wanted to be part of something cool and interesting. Perhaps you just wanted to help people.

And chances are, you’ve had days like mine when it wasn’t fun.

When that happens, it helps to rediscover your purpose. In some cases, you’ll realize what you are doing has meaning and you’ll feel better about it.

One way to do that is through the Thank You Letter Challenge. This guided activity will help you envision the type of service you'd like to provide to your customers, and then invest <1 minute per day towards making that service a habit. 

So why was I slogging up to Idyllwild on a day when I felt so short on time?

Make Your Vision a Priority

It's easy to put off work if you don't understand the purpose behind it.

If I was honest with myself, I didn't need to visit The Overlook in September. The summer is our slow season, made even slower this year by a terrible fire that mostly spared the town of Idyllwild but scared away many would-be tourists. All of the chores were minor and could have been put off for a month or so.

But our vision kept nagging at me.

We already had several bookings for October, including a week-long stay. There were things I wanted to get done that I knew would make an impression on our guests, such as replacing some worn-out mats in the kitchen and bathrooms and fixing patio furniture cushions that had been torn.

I wanted The Overlook to be a welcoming retreat for our guests, just like it is for Sally and me whenever we visit.

There were some chores left for a future visit that I knew would not impact our guests. For example, we have some items that need to be donated or recycled. But they're all tucked away in storage, so guests won't see them. That can wait.

Think about your vision the next time you feel tempted to avoid work. It's okay to put something off that's not value-added. Just make sure you prioritize work that impacts your vision.

This is also a good time to ask whether what you’re doing is really adding value to your vision. Years ago, as a young nonprofit leader, I cancelled my organization’s biggest fundraiser because it didn’t help our mission. It turned out to be a liberating decision.


Remember to Have Fun

Work is so much better when we can find the joy in it.

Back to our purpose, Sally and I have a trip to The Overlook planned for later this month. I'll have fewer to do on this visit because I did so many chores in September.. Which means I am going to do that big hike I missed out on in August.

I'm really looking forward to it.

Your job has to be fun at some point. There needs to be something to look forward to that can make those frustrating days a little brighter.

Perhaps it’s a project you’re itching to work on. Maybe there’s a goal your team is trying to achieve, and you know there will be a big celebration when you reach it. Or it could be you’re just happiest when you are making an impact on your customers, and you realize you need to fix some problems to allow that to happen more often.

Whatever it is, find the fun or the whole thing will become one big, dreary chore.

Introducing My New Book: Customer Service Tip of the Week

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Thousands of customer service professionals around the world subscribe to the Customer Service Tip of the Week email. Now you can get over 52 of my favorite tips in one book!

Introducing the Customer Service Tip of the Week book. 

It's a sourcebook full of tips and reminders to help keep your skills sharp. Use it to discover new ideas or reinforce the concepts you learned in training.

Cover image of the Customer Service Tip of the Week book.

How to Use the Book

If we're honest with ourselves, there are certain aspects of our service skills that can get a little rusty if we don't work on them.

Bad habits can get formed. Other priorities get in the way of our development. Sometimes, we're all guilty of a little overconfidence.

That's where the weekly tip comes in.

It allows you to stay sharp by focusing on just one simple thing. You can rebuild your skills over the course of the week in that area and then move on to something else the following week.

The book makes finding tips easy.

  • Browse tips by category

  • Find tips by the specific issue you are trying to solve

  • Go in order, starting with #1

Special Features

The Customer Service Tip of the Week book has a few special features.

On the back cover and scattered throughout the book, you'll find quotes from frontline professionals and customer service leaders who use the tips on a regular basis.

Pages 12-13 contain a grid listing 10 service challenges and suggest tips to help solve them. These challenges are the top issues shared by weekly email subscribers.

The book is only available in paperback. I tested an e-book version and couldn't get the user experience right. After all, it's designed to be a quick reference guide that you might keep on your desk.

Obviously, an audio book was out of the question for a quick-reference type of book!

I recognize many customer service teams have limited budgets, so I managed to keep the price point low. The book retails for just $9.95 and quantity discounts can get the price down to just $6.96 per copy when you buy 25 books.


Get It Signed!

You can easily turn your book into a signed copy.

  1. Buy the book

  2. Email your mailing address to me: jeff [at] toistersolutions [dot] com

  3. I will send you an autographed bookplate

Why Some Employees Are Always Late

Many years ago, a coworker and I decided to walk across the street to the deli to grab a quick lunch. It was a hectic day and we both planned to eat at our desks.

”We'll be back in three minutes," she told her assistant.

"No, we won't." I replied. There was no way we were going to be back from the deli that quickly. My colleague insisted we were just walking across the street, ordering sandwiches, and coming right back.

"It will still take longer than that," I replied. She relented a bit and told her assistant we'd be back in five minutes rather than three. 

Being the kind of person who would time that sort of thing, I started my watch. From start to finish, the entire errand took us 15 minutes. This was three times longer than my coworker had promised.

Chances are, you routinely make similar promises or you know someone who does. 

Tardiness can be dangerous in a customer service setting. We might promise to get something done for a customer and then fall short of expectations when we're late. Or employees might be chronically late to work, which puts pressure on coworkers to pick up the slack until they finally arrive.

Here are some reasons why it happens.

Woman holding up a clock, accusing someone of being late.

We're Unrealistic About Time

There are numerous studies showing that people are generally bad at estimating how long a task will take. Here are just a few examples:

  • People underestimated how long it takes to get gas by 51% (Konecni & Ebbesen,1976)

  • Students underestimated how long it would take to complete their honors thesis by 39% (Buehler, Griffin, and Ross, 1994)

  • People underestimated how long it would take to complete their Christmas shopping by 12% (Buehler and Griffin, 2003)

Put these results in everyday customer service contexts and you can see a recipe for disaster. Chronically late employees underestimate:

  • How long it will take to get to work.

  • How long it will take to finish a project for their boss.

  • How long it will take to complete a task for a customer.

Type Bs Are Overly Optimistic

You may have heard of Type A and Type B personalities. Here are the definitions from the American Psychological Association:

Type A: a personality pattern characterized by chronic competitiveness, high levels of achievement motivation, impatience and a distorted sense of time urgency, polyphasic activity [i.e. multitasking], and aggressiveness and hostility.

Type B: a personality pattern characterized by low levels of competitiveness and frustration, an easygoing approach, and a lack of aggressiveness and hostility.

It's easy to imagine that many customer service employees fall closer to Type B on the personality spectrum. There's just one small problem—those people are much more likely to be late.

Studies conducted by psychologist Jeff Conte compared how Type A and B personality types perceived how long it took for one minute to elapse. Type As were pretty spot-on, guessing on average 58 seconds. Type Bs, on average, let 77 seconds go by before they felt one minute was up—33 percent more time than Type As.

This suggests it can take coaching, planning, and a great deal of patience to help some of your customer service employees develop a more realistic sense of time.

We Don’t Plan for the Unexpected

The way we structure our work day often becomes a recipe for tardiness.

Some people are unrealistic about their commute. They might leave their home 30 minutes before work starts because it takes 30 minutes to drive there. But that doesn't take into account a stop at the coffee shop, time spent looking for a parking space, and time walking into the building and to their workstation. 

Back-to-back meetings put pressure on our calendar, especially if the first meeting runs late or we must inevitably answer the call of nature. Most people don’t start dialing into a phone or web conference until the meeting start time, even though it can sometimes take a few minutes to get connected.

Many customer service employees have work schedules that don't allow enough time for essential tasks. For example, a contact center employee might need to document notes after speaking to a customer, but they'll struggle to keep up if they're expected to be immediately available to take another call.

Overcoming Tardiness

There are a few things you can do to overcome chronic tardiness.

Perhaps the biggest change is to decide that being on time is important. People who are chronically late often have a more laid-back approach to deadlines. So there's no incentive to change until they adopt a different attitude about being on time.

I’m a stickler for starting on time whenever I facilitate a meeting or a workshop. This quickly sends the signal that the start time is the start time, and I’ve noticed that people generally arrive on time after that expectation is set.

Another way to improve timeliness is to measure how long tasks actually take, and use that information to plan more realistically in the future. So if you think it takes just five minutes to walk across the street to get a sandwich, but each time you do it actually takes 15 minutes, you can adjust your planning.

You can also avoid disappointing customers by using the right language to set realistic expectations about how long something might take. For example, I like to pad my promised delivery date a bit just in case something unexpected comes up. This provides a bonus of frequently allowing me to get things done earlier than my customers expect.

Interview with Shep Hyken about The Convenience Revolution

NYT bestselling author and customer service expert Shep Hyken has a new book coming out October 2, just in time for Customer Service Week.

It's called The Convenience Revolution.

The book focuses on the next wave of service—making it easier for customers to do business with you. It's chock-full of case studies from top companies, both big and small. The best part is it contains practical ideas that can allow businesses of any size to out-service the competition.

Shep shares six convenience principles and invites readers to decide which principles work best for their business:

  1. Reduce Friction

  2. Self-Service

  3. Technology

  4. Subscription

  5. Delivery

  6. Access

I recently had a chance to interview Shep and discuss his new book.

Shep's always an entertaining interview, and he shared lots of great examples and ideas. You can order the book now.

The Best Time to Provide Service Culture Training

Updated: March 24, 2023

Your service culture initiative will eventually involve training. The big question is, "When?"

Customer service leaders frequently ask me for advice on service culture training. My answer almost invariably surprises them:

“You aren't ready just yet. There are a few steps you should take first."

There is essential pre-work that should be done before any service culture training program. You'll know it's time to train when you've completed these three steps.

Team attending a service culture training session.

Step 1: Define Your Culture

Imagine you decided to invest in new accounting software for your company. There are a lot of different products on the market, so you decide to conduct a search for the best option.

Is that the time to train employees on the new accounting software?

Of course not! You must first decide which software you're going to acquire and then install the software so employees can actually use it before training them.

Service culture is the same way. 

There's no sense sending employees to training until you've defined your culture with a shared definition of outstanding service called a customer service vision. 

The vision should be the basis for your service culture training.

Without one, your training will be generic. “We’re sending everyone to generic training!” isn’t an exciting rallying cry.

You can create a customer service vision in one meeting. It takes just two hours if you follow this step-by-step guide.

Step 2: Create Learning Objectives

Let's go back to the accounting software analogy.

Imagine you've selected a software vendor and installed the new software so it's ready for employees to use. Now is surely the time to train employees, right?

Not so fast!

You must first know exactly what you want employees to do with the software. This might involve mapping out the various tasks employees will perform in the software and then designing a curriculum to teach employees those specific skills.

Service culture training is the same way.

You must start by identifying what you want your employees to know and do after completing the training.

I always advise clients to focus their service culture training program on helping employees answer three questions:

  1. What is the customer service vision?

  2. What does it mean?

  3. How do I personally contribute?

Using these questions as a guide will make your training much more specific and focused.

Helpful tool —> Learning objective worksheet

Step 3: Plan for Sustainability

Okay, let's go back to the accounting software analogy one more time.

Imagine you implement the software and design a training program for your employees. Surely, now it's time to train, right?!

Not necessarily.

You want to time the training so employees learn to use the software right before they start using it. If you do the training too far in advance, employees will inevitably forget what they learned and they'll need to be trained again.

Service culture training works the same way.

Before you train employees, you want to be sure that their work environment will help sustain and reinforce the training.

This means aligning two things with the training program:

  1. The employees' daily work.

  2. Messaging from the employees' boss.

Examples of daily work include policies and procedures, resources, and tools.

Imagine the service culture training encourages employees to go "above and beyond" for customers. Are your employees allowed to go above and beyond? Do they have the resources and tools necessary to exceed expectations?

The training will fall flat if employees aren’t empowered.

Likewise, managers must be aligned with the training as well. A boss who constantly harps on employees to be efficient and control costs will probably override a service culture training program that encourages employees to find ways to "surprise and delight" the people they serve.

Guide —> 7 ways leaders can model great customer service

Take Action

The most customer-focused leaders I see have the patience to commit their organization to the process.

It may feel like slow-going at first, but you'll soon pick up steam and will suddenly be surprised at your momentum!

When you’re ready, The Service Culture Handbook can help guide your journey.

How to Get Customer Feedback Without a Survey

Updated: December 15, 2023

I frequently use subscriber feedback to improve my Customer Service Tip of the Week email newsletter. Yet I've never used a survey.

Customers are inundated with surveys, so think carefully before rolling out yet another one. You can get a lot of useful voice of customer feedback from several alternative sources.

Here are five ways to collect and use customer feedback without a survey.

Business people sitting around a conference table analyzing survey data.

Issue Alerts

Create a process to alert you to issues in real-time.

My weekly email will occasionally have a small issue such as a typo or a broken hyperlink. I try to proofread each email and test all the links, but problems occasionally do happen.

Typos are my kryptonite.

Thankfully, I can count on subscribers to let me know when there is an error. It's usually just a handful of people who email me about the problem, but that's all the feedback I need. Keep in mind most customers won't bother to tell you about small issues, but that doesn't mean they don't notice!

I have a process in place where I can flag a problem and fix it the next time I send out the same tip. In some cases, such as a broken hyperlink, I may re-send the email with the correction, although I try not to do this very often because I don't like swamping people's inboxes with extra emails.

Discussion question: What process do you have in place to allow your frontline agents to resolve or report problems?

 

Investigate Icebergs

A customer service iceberg is an issue that seems small and isolated on the surface, but is actually a sign of a much larger and more dangerous problem that's hidden from view.

Someone recently emailed me to let me know she had tried to sign-up for the Customer Service Tip of the Week email, but never received a confirmation. This was a classic iceberg because it was easy to dismiss the problem as a one-off where maybe she just missed the email or the confirmation wound up in a spam folder. 

I was tempted to just manually subscribe her to my list, but I decided to investigate. 

My research led me to a helpful exchange with a support agent at MailChimp, the company that powers my newsletter. With his help, I identified a technical setting in my account that would make my emails more recognizable to corporate email servers.

Here comes the kicker—my weekly subscription rate instantly doubled!

Some of those extra subscribers undoubtedly came from a marketing campaign I was running. But some of that huge increase was certainly due to this technical issue. I never would have found it if I hadn't investigated the iceberg that came from just one email.

Discussion question: What do frontline employees do when they encounter a strange or unusual problem? Are they trained to search for and identify icebergs?

 

Invite Conversation

There are a few books that have absolutely changed the game for me. One was Kevin Kruse's book, Unlimited Clients.

A key piece of advice in the book was to invite conversation with your customers. The first version of the book had Kevin's phone number and email address right on the cover, and I can tell you from experience he actually responded!

So I took Kevin's advice and added a special invitation to the welcome email I sent to new subscribers. 

Excerpt from Customer Service Tip of the Week welcome email.

Subscribers have always been able to reply to any email and send a message directly to my personal email address. However, this invitation substantially increased the number of people who actually emailed me.

It's not everyone. (Thankfully—I don't know if I could keep up!) But a couple times a day I get an email from a new subscriber who tells me a little about themselves.

It helps me learn more about them and I often try to share something helpful in response. I've also learned those subscribers are more likely to share their feedback as they begin to receive the weekly tips.

Discussion Question: How can you invite individual customers to engage in a one-on-one conversation?

 

Catalog Unstructured Data

Something really amazing happens when you take all those individual conversations you have with customers and categorize them.

I went through hundreds of emails from subscribers and categorized the customer service challenges they shared with me. When I decided to put my weekly tips in a book, I put the top ten challenges in a chart and identified tips that could help with each one.

Going through several hundred emails may seem like a lot of work, but it really doesn't take that much time. I probably spent an hour. 

It goes even faster if you catalog feedback from individual customers as it comes in. A lot of customer service software platforms have a tagging feature that allows agents to do this on the fly. If your technology won't do it, you can have agents use a spreadsheet or even a piece of paper.

Here are some resources for capturing unstructured data:

Discussion Question: How can you capture and analyze unstructured data?

 

Be a Customer

I learn a lot by subscribing to my own email.

This was a trick I learned from working in the catalog industry. Catalog companies would mail themselves a copy of each catalog so they could time how long it took to arrive and could verify each catalog arrived in good condition.

Subscribing to my own email allows me to do something similar.

For example, the Customer Service Tip of the Week goes out each Monday at 8:45 am Pacific time. One week, the email didn't arrive as expected. I double-checked the system and discovered I had set that particular email for 8:45 pm. 

Oops! Fortunately, I was able to quickly change the send time and the email went out only a few minutes later than normal.

Discussion Question: What can you learn from being your own customer?

 

Take Action

Here are all the discussion questions in one spot:

  1. What process do you have in place to allow your frontline agents to resolve or report problems?

  2. What do frontline employees do when they encounter a strange or unusual problem?

  3. How can you invite individual customers to engage in a one-on-one conversation?

  4. How can you capture and analyze unstructured data?

  5. What can you learn from being your own customer?

All of these questions can yield terrific customer feedback without ever resorting to a survey! Best of all, the feedback you get from these sources can often be quickly used to make improvements.

You can get five more survey alternatives from this old post.

And, if you really want to use a survey, my course on LinkedIn Learning can guide you. Here's a short preview.

The First Step to Fix Poor Customer Service

Note: This post originally appeared on LInkedIn.

I've talked to a lot of customer service leaders recently who want to improve customer service, but aren't sure where to start.

One of their biggest challenges is they struggle to articulate exactly what "improve" means. Here are some actual statements I've heard:

  • "We want to deliver world class customer service."

  • "We need to get back to the basics."

  • "Things need to get better around here."

The challenge with all of those statements is they aren't clearly defined. You'll struggle to take action if you can't be specific about what you want to do.

It's helpful to imagine you wanted to go on a road trip. You'd need two data points to plug into your GPS:

  1. Your destination

  2. Your current location

This calculation is exactly the same for improving customer service. You need to know what success looks like (your destination) and you must understand where you are now (your current location).

Here's how to find both.

bizgrowth.jpg

Define Success

This can be done in general terms through a customer service vision, which is a shared definition of outstanding service that points everyone in the same direction.

You'll need to get more specific if you want to improve. Start by thinking about what's concerning you most about your team's current customer service.

  • Is customer satisfaction too low?

  • Is service quality inconsistent?

  • Are you getting too many complaints?

  • Does it take too long to resolve issues?

  • Do customers have to frequently contact your team multiple times?

Whatever the issue, try to focus on something specific and clearly define what success would look like. That includes putting a specific measurement to it.

For example, perhaps you'd like your team's average customer satisfaction rating to be 85 percent on your customer service survey by the end of March. That's a specific, non-ambiguous destination.

You can't skip this step. If you aren't measuring customer service right now, there's no way to improve it. Just like your GPS will be confused if you ask it for directions but don't provide a destination. 

Find something important to your organization and start measuring it to establish a baseline.

 

Identify Your Current Location

Now you need to measure where you are now.

Let's say you want to achieve an 85 percent average on your customer service survey. You can find your current location by simply looking at your current average survey score. 

This step should be relatively simple if you've clearly established your destination. Did you skip that step? Then go back and try again! You need a destination to plan your route.

 

Determine the Gap

The last step is to determine the gap between your destination and your current location.

Let's say your goal is to increase first contact resolution to 95 percent. Your current first contact resolution rate is 82 percent. That makes your gap 13 percentage points.

It may be helpful to express your gap in a SMART goal statement. A SMART goal fits five criteria:

  • Specific

  • Measurable

  • Attainable

  • Relevant (to your customer service vision)

  • Time-Bound

Example: "Improve the average monthly first contact resolution rate from 82 percent to 95 percent by July 31, 2018."

You can use this SMART goal primer to help you. This short video can also provide more instructions on finding your customer service gap.

Looking for the next step? 

Watch the full Quick Fixes for Poor Customer Service course on LinkedIn Learning or download this Quick Fixes worksheet to find solutions for closing the gap and reaching your destination.

Lessons From the Overlook: Know Your Neighbors

Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a monthly update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It's a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. You can find past updates here.

You've probably heard horror stories about bad neighbors. Perhaps you've even been unlucky enough to experience this issue yourself.

It's a particularly thorny issue for vacation rental owners. 

My hometown of San Diego is a popular tourist destination with quite a few vacation rental properties. Many residents have complained about loud parties, rude or even intoxicated guests, vehicles blocking driveways, and other nuisances from people renting a house next door.

The problem has gotten so bad that the San Diego city council recently created extreme regulations that will effectively put many vacation rental owners out of business.

Idyllwild isn't immune to complaints about renters, as you'll see in just a moment. 

While you may not be in the vacation rental business, your company almost certainly has neighbors if you have a physical location. Here's how we learned just how important a good relationship can be.

Guests have sometimes blocked our neighbors' driveways, even though there is room to park four vehicles on the gravel and asphalt areas at The Overlook.

Guests have sometimes blocked our neighbors' driveways, even though there is room to park four vehicles on the gravel and asphalt areas at The Overlook.

Why Good Neighbors Are Good For Business

There are many ways a neighbor can help or harm your business.

A friendly neighbor can keep an eye out on your property and alert you to anything suspicious. This can be very comforting for Sally and me since The Overlook is a two-hour drive away from where we live. We know our property management company is very diligent about watching the property, but it's nice to have an extra set of eyes on things.

During the recent Cranston fire, we relied on updates from people in our neighborhood who stayed behind to keep tabs on the fire. Fortunately, The Overlook was unharmed, but we were very worried as the flames grew closer. The "on-the-ground" intel was extremely helpful.

A unhappy neighbor can also harm your business.

They'll be less likely to look out for your property or help you in an emergency. Complaints from neighbors can draw scrutiny from local authorities and even lead to fines if your business is not compliant with local regulations. 

 

How We Created Relationships

The Overlook has full-time residents living on both sides of us.

When Sally and I first bought the property, we visited both neighbors to introduce ourselves. The Overlook had been a vacation rental before we bought it, but we still wanted to create a good first impression. So we brought over some homemade fudge and a card with our contact information on it.

Our visit turned into a short history lesson when we learned one of our neighbors had helped build an addition to The Overlook many years ago when his sister owned the property! He and his wife's grandson runs a painting business in Idyllwild, and we've used his services for a couple of small projects. 

We told our neighbors we wanted them to feel comfortable calling us if they ever experienced an issue with a guest. It would be much better to hear about something quickly so we could handle it proactively, rather than letting an annoyance fester and create long-term damage to the relationship.

I hadn't heard any complaints at all, so I recently contacted our neighbors just to check in. It was a good thing I did.

Both of our neighbors told me they have had a few issues with guests blocking their driveways. There's plenty of room for four vehicles at The Overlook, so we worked with our property manager to provide clearer parking instructions and even a photo of the parking area.

One of our neighbors also told us about a loud group that clearly had more than the maximum of eight guests that we allow. They had left a lot of trash on both our property and hers (which she graciously cleaned up) and were really annoying.

This same group caused damage and stole some items last December. Had we heard about these issues sooner, we may have been able to proactively address the situation and possibly avoid annoyance for our neighbor and theft and damage for us.

The feedback made me realize that I needed to be more proactive about maintaining relationships with our neighbors. People can be naturally reluctant to complain or raise an issue if they don't feel comfortable. So I'll now be checking in with them more often so they won't hesitate to call us or our property manager when a guest is causing a problem.

 

Take Action

You can apply this lesson in your own business.

Start by identifying the value of having good relationships with your neighbors. Some businesses share a common area or a parking lot. One business I know of shares tools with other neighboring businesses and even allows one company to borrow its forklift!

Here are some action steps you can take once you identify the value of great neighborly relations:

  1. Identify your neighbors.

  2. Proactively make contact to start developing a relationship.

  3. Discuss areas of mutual interest or concern.

And of course, don't forget to maintain the relationship. That valuable lesson could have saved us some theft and damage at The Overlook!