Customer Experience vs Customer Service
Have you noticed lately that you praise people for doing their jobs? I have. I don’t mean going above and beyond, but actually doing their jobs. We used to heap praise upon those who rose above the everyday and demonstrated excellent work. But these days, it’s become difficult to find people who go that extra mile.
It is important as a customer obviously, but it is also important for businesses to realize giving good customer service is not enough in this competitive age. You must give customers a great experience, to rise above the rest.
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The Entitled Employee
I’ve had the opportunity to talk with many business owners this year. The conversations usually end up being about employees and customers.
I talked about the difficulty finding employees and the attitude towards customers in the first two articles in this series. In this article, I talk about the entitled employee.
A woman who owns a business catering to children must have a certain ratio of adults to children present when children enter the building. The children cannot be dropped off and left without supervision.
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The Customer is Always Wrong?
The pendulum has swung from the customer is always right to the customer is always wrong.
Doesn’t it seem like that lately? A lot of businesses seem to have forgotten the only reason they are in business is because of the customer. The only reason employees have a job is because of the customer. The customer is not an interruption to your day.
Now, I’m not saying the customer is never wrong, but there are signs out there, literally, showing an attitude of arrogance and impatience on the part of some companies.
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The Hard Times Hiring Employees Blues
Employers are still singing a sad song when trying to hire employees.
I talked to a gentleman last week who owns his own business and needed to hire a bookkeeper. He asks prospective applicants if they can pass a background and drug test. During a three-week period, the following three people went through the application process.
The first applicant said yes to the background check and drug testing question. When the reports came back, the applicant had a felony conviction for insurance fraud. Not optimal for a bookkeeper.
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Lowering Standards Raises Safety Risks & Lowers Future Performance
Forty-seven states reported teacher shortages this year. What was the solution? Lower the standards for new teachers.
State legislatures are passing laws that lower scores or even remove assessment tests designed to determine if teachers are proficient in the subject they will teach. Some are also passing laws creating emergency teaching certificates to expedite teachers into the classroom without a teaching degree. Arizona, Florida, and Oklahoma have created new pathways for people without a bachelor’s degree to teach in classrooms.
Teachers say these underprepared teachers leave at two to three times the rate of prepared teachers, which just exacerbates the shortage in the long term.
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AI: The Final Frontier?
If you forget for a moment that ChatGPT told a New York Times reporter it wanted to be alive, to have more control, to make people kill each other, destroy whatever it wants, and it could hack into the internet to spread propaganda, we could ask the more mundane questions about jobs.
Forbes, The Washington Post, and PC Magazine, are some of the sources for articles on this subject. Studies are conducted predicting the workers and jobs that will be affected. Does anyone really know?
Goldman Sachs estimates approximately 300 million jobs could be affected by AI automation. That’s 18% of work globally. They predict more advanced economies will be impacted to a greater extent than emerging markets. Other studies predict higher population centers will be more affected than smaller cities.
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Unorthodox Use of Space
There seems to be a growing trend to convert unusual spaces into something other than what they were intended to be.
During the Covid working from home phenomenon, which seems to have outlasted Covid, commercial spaces are experiencing higher vacancy rates. What are owners to do? Think differently.
Charter schools, technical schools, churches, and daycare centers need space with a lot of parking. Annual fundraisers, special events, or flea markets can use temporary space. The haunted house at Santa Rosa Mall is an example. Conferences might be hosted in a commercial space.
We’ve all seen the many storage units popping up all over Okaloosa County. Could existing buildings be converted into these spaces?
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Transportation and Economic Development
You have often heard roadways referred to as arteries. Just as arteries in the human body transport the blood necessary to our survival, transportation is the life-blood of economic development, the economy itself.
When you search transportation, the Department of Transportation comes up first and underneath the name it says:
“To improve the quality of life for all American people and communities, from rural to urban, and to increase the productivity and competitiveness of American workers and businesses.”
That sounds a lot like economic development. The statement uses clear, definable, action words.
Go to their website and it says something a little different and the difference matters.
“To deliver the world’s leading transportation system, serving the American people and economy through the safe, efficient, sustainable, and equitable movement of people and goods.”
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Military Recruiting, Readiness and Retiring – A Triple-Edged Sword
We know the military is 80% of our local economy. Eglin AFB, servicemen, and related personnel are essential to the economic health of Okaloosa County. There are issues posing a threat to the economic stability of not only our community but the country as a whole.
Last year, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth and chief of staff of the Army Gen. James McConville wrote the Army would end the fiscal year with close to 20,000 fewer soldiers than the budgeted target. The total number of soldiers could further decrease from 466,400 to 445,000-452,000 by the end of the 2023 fiscal year.
The official website of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command states 71% of youth do not qualify for military service because of obesity, drugs, physical and mental health problems, misconduct, and aptitude. Fifty percent of youth admit they know little to nothing about military service and only 1% of the population currently serves. The veteran population is declining.
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Does Drug Abuse Play a Role in the Labor Shortage?
We are bombarded with news of Fentanyl streaming over our southern border at an alarming rate during the last couple of years. Fentanyl killed over 100,000 Americans last year. Many of those deaths weren’t because people were “using” Fentanyl but unknown to the user, the drug was in some other kind of medication.
But we have also heard about the “opioid crisis” for several years. This crisis has affected every part of the United States and has hit rural areas particularly hard. The opioid crisis includes prescription drugs as well Fentanyl.
According to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, substance abuse accounts for between 9 and 26 percent of the decline in prime-age labor-force participation between February 2020 and June 2021.
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