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Many movies have been made about the tragic story of the Titanic. Arrogance and ignorance was definitely present during its maiden voyage, which was Titanic’s last voyage.

Many warnings were given, but unfortunately, the warnings were not taken seriously. On April 14th, 1912 Titanic received six warnings that icebergs were present in their perimeter. On the night of April 14th, Titanic struck an iceberg and ultimately sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

For other entities, what happened to the Titanic does NOT have to happen to them. Many have learned from the mistakes that Titanic had made.

There are several examples that follow and form a parallel to what happened to Titanic and how an entity can learn from Titanic’s mistakes.

1. The Titanic only had 16 lifeboats, which was not nearly enough to save everyone on the ship.

Only about 60% of the entire lifeboats’ capacity was utilized! Does your company have a disaster plan in place? Are your computers, especially your servers, being backed up on a regular basis? Many servers are now being backed up on a daily basis and sometimes on an hourly basis.

When I was working at a Helpdesk, one of our afternoon gals was named the “Backup Queen” because she took EVERY major server backup VERY seriously. The company was very lucky to have the “Backup Queen” because there were several instances where our most critical server had crashed and lost information. Fortunately, information restoration was quick and painless due to the machine being backed up on a regular basis.

We were very lucky to have someone who took the initiative to handle the server backups. Is your company that lucky? Yes, doing backups can be VERY unexciting. However, losing valuable data can be very exciting, but in a negative way.

2. The crewmen in the lookout tower, or the “crow’s nest,” were not issued binoculars to better search for icebergs.

Employees were not given the proper tools to use to do their job. Is your company using the right software for the job? Are you saving money on upgrading your operating system and software, but are losing customers? If you are losing customers, you’re NOT really saving any money at all.

The right equipment can range from the very basic, such as issuing headphones that are compatible with the phone system to customer service representatives, to ensuring that a backup generator can adequately run due to a power outage.
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How would you like to hire someone that is more motivated and more qualified to do the work and costs you less than your average employee? No, I am not talking about hiring someone illegally. You can accomplish this simply by employing a telecommuter. Let’s take a look at 5 very good reasons, why it makes sense for you to consider telecommuting from an employer’s perspective.

1) Less Overhead
How much is all this office space, furniture, computer equipment along with your IT department to maintain them, utility bills etc. costing you? Telecommuters do not require any of the above, which will cut your overhead cost tremendously. Telecommuters use their own office, their own equipment from computers to paperclips; use their own power, phone and Internet connection. If their computer acts up, it’s up to them to get it up and running again.

2) Less Benefits To Pay
Most telecommuters are independent contractors. You do not have to provide for health care, workman’s compensation or paid vacation. Consider the tax benefits as well; there is no employer portion of federal and state tax to pay.

3) Hire Experts When Needed
Do you need someone to write the occasional press release and maybe come up with a revision to your brochure every once in a while? Instead of hiring someone fulltime as your marketing person, consider outsourcing the tasks to a freelance telecommuter. You will pay per project, or hire your freelancer for a few hours per month, instead of creating a marketing position. Freelancers give even small businesses the opportunity to hire an expert for almost any task.

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If you WOW a customer at the Moment of Truth , the average customer will walk away and tell 5 people about the experience.

If you fail to meet the customer’s expectations at the Moment of Truth , customers are very likely to tell 11 people about the problem they had with your company.

If you drop the ball with customers at the Moment of Truth , but rebound with a quick customer recovery, research shows that the customer will tell up to 17 people about your service recovery.

Did you get that? Customers will tell 5 people if you WOW them, BUT if there’s a problem and you quickly fix it, they will tell more than 3 times as many people as they would if no problem had occurred at all.

One of the fastest and easiest ways to grow your bottom line is to equip your front line employees with skills to respond to complaints and problems in such a way that they completely regain goodwill and restore the customer’s confidence.

Read on to find out exactly how to do this.

1. Resolve problems as quickly as possible. The faster the resolution, the better the chances for maintaining loyalty. TARP, Inc. found that ninety-five percent of complaining customers would remain loyal if their complaint was resolved on the first contact. That number dropped to seventy percent when the complaint was not immediately resolved. In fact, the speed of resolution has a greater impact on future loyalty than the resolution itself. Strive to resolve complaints on the first contact and when that isn’t possible, final resolution should occur within 5 – 10 business days in order to maintain and build loyalty.

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Customer security is one of the prime considerations of any retail outlet today. Whilst implementing key marketing strategies in order to promote products and increase sales, retail managers also need to be thinking about how safe their customers feel in-store and ways they can improve the attractiveness of their space for shoppers.

Lighting

Good lighting is a key aspect of the customer experience. Stores require lighting that allows customers to see what they are doing and to ensure that no area of the shop is dimly lit or dark, as this is where thefts or attacks could occur. This is particularly important in fitting room areas and in toilet and baby-change facilities where customers are out of the general flow of the shop and there is a reduced staff presence.

CCTV systems

Customers are comforted by the presence of CCTV systems in retail stores. They know that these systems are designed to prevent crime and automatically feel safer in an environment where cameras provide a deterrent to would-be criminals. A CCTV system also often means at least one member of staff dedicated to security and this also makes customers feel more at ease.

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