The Thriving Small Business

7 Tips for Your Benchmarking Efforts

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Learning from others is how we all improve.

Organizations use benchmarking to compare themselves to others and learn.

Benchmarking is the process of going outside an organization to look at how high performers are doing things in other industries.  The concept is to identify and learn from best practices.

Organizations use benchmarking as part of their Quality Management System in an effort to gain insight into ways to improve what they do. Read the Full Article →

5 Barriers to Achieving Business Goals

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Organizations use strategy and goals to move a business forward.

However, this is all dependent on how well goals are achieved.

Organizations need to have a structured performance management process to ensure business goals maintain priority until they are achieved.

Well written SMART goals lay out the framework and accountability for goal completion to support managing employee performance. Read the Full Article →

Did You Know That There Are 5 Levels of Customer Satisfaction?

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Customer retention is the result of an organization’s ability to create customer loyalty.

This is done by providing the systems, processes and support, to not only keep a customer happy, but to transition them into an advocate for the organization – who is not only loyal but also recruits others. Read the Full Article →

4 Ways to Keep Focused on Your Goals

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I don’t know about you but I am in a constant battle with trying to get the day to day tasks accomplished and accomplishing my goals for the year!

Anyone who manages a business understands the challenges of keeping the vision, strategy and business goals moving forward.

The day-to-day management issues associated with people, processes, facilities, equipment, etc. Read the Full Article →

The 5 Step Process of Strategic Planning

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Strategic plans help identify what an organization is striving to become and maps out the necessary steps needed to get there. It used to be that strategic plans would go out for ten years but organizations today typically look 2-3 years down the road – some industries just plan year by year. Read the Full Article →

How to Turn Customer Satisfaction into Customer Loyalty

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Organizations that understand the importance of happy customers, need to think strategically in order to build a loyal customer base.

Successful organizations have learned that there is a difference between attracting customers, keeping customers and developing loyal customers.

Devoted customers are not only loyal to the organization, but also serve as advocates and help to solicit new customers by sharing their positive experiences. Read the Full Article →

12 Steps to Implementing a Quality Management System

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Successful organizations have figured out that customer satisfaction has a direct impact on the bottom line. Creating an environment which supports a quality culture requires a structured, systematic process.  Following are steps to implementing a quality management system that will help to bring the process full circle.

Let’s begin by defining the word quality. Read the Full Article →

5 Reasons You Should Welcome Customer Complaints!

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The sad fact is only about 4% of dissatisfied customers complain. If a customer does not complain and has an issue that is not resolved, they are likely to go to the competition.

The worst part about this is that the organization isn’t even aware that there was an issue. The other sad fact is that a dissatisfied customer is more comfortable telling their friends about a bad experience than the organization. Read the Full Article →

Read This Before Donating to That Charity

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It seems that there is a natural disaster happening all the time. I’m originally from the St. Louis area which has been hit pretty hard by recent flooding.

These disaster situations solicit cries for help from flood ravaged home owners and small businesses. This hits home for me as my daughter was a victim of the flood. Read the Full Article →

Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire Template

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Customer satisfaction is paramount to the success of any business. Understanding who your customers are, what they want and having systems and processes in place to not only meet their needs but exceed their expectations is what sets the successful apart from the rest.  Soliciting and monitoring customer feedback should be part of an organization’s overall strategy. Read the Full Article →

13 Tips For Improving Job Satisfaction

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According to a Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Report by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 86% of US employees reported overall satisfaction with their current job in 2014.  This number is up by five points since 2013.  The purpose of the survey was to identify those factors that contribute to employee satisfaction in the workplace. Read the Full Article →

9 Inhibitors to Business Growth

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Why is it that some companies are birthed and grow very quickly – seemingly overnight?

While other organizations putter along at the same stagnant pace for years or die a slow death. There are several fundamental things that influence growth and when businesses neglect these business basics it hinders growth.

Many things need to go on behind the scenes for an organization to be successful. Read the Full Article →