Consistency – The Way to Success
Lachlan at 1 week ..... cute;-)
I have recently gone through a life changing experience; my first born son arrived this month, there were complications, nothing life threatening and mum and son came through the whole process well, my son Lachlan is feeding sleeping and growing well and my wonderful wife Kirsty is recovering quickly at home. When people ask me how it all went, I can’t say it was entirely awful but I can’t say everything was great, why, because the whole process had so many inconsistencies that it really does detract from the awesome job most of the people did in the hospital.
Why am I writing about this, one I get to put a picture of my wonderful new son on my site; secondly this is typically why so many businesses either fail or never reach their full potential ………… consistency, if you are going to be great, you need to be great EVERY time, if you are all about quality then you better produce quality EVERY time, if you are all about service then you better produce great service EVERY time.
Consistency is what will set you apart from your competitors, remember you are only as good as your last book, your last blog, your last meal cooked, the last widget you sold, the last vehicle you repaired. It does not matter what business you are in if you do not deliver consistently what your clients expect they will not come back and worse they will stop recommending you to others.
Let me go back to my hospital story as an example of how a clients impression of your business can be skewed by inconsistency. Labour has started, our midwife is on hand to help us through the process, the hospital staff are checking in on us, for various reason an epidural has to be administered, this is done, the person how did it explained fully what is supposed to happen and also what may go wrong (expectation set), the procedure goes ahead and all is good, until it wears off on the left side very early, another attempt, it’s a little better, all through the process the professionals are giving Kirsty options and expectations all really good ….. until, the epidural starts to fail completely and this is where the service falls over, there seems to be a bit of organised chaos, forms to be signed (whilst under excruciating pain for Kirsty) before more drugs are given, an emergency C-Section must be performed, Kirsty is taken immediately to theatre where Lachlan is born within 15 minutes. It is during this time the communication stops from the hospital staff to the new parents, because of this confusion and frustration set in because mum can’t see or hold baby, there were valid reasons, none of which were explained …….. leaving a very bad impression with us.
On return to the ward the on duty midwife, provides plenty of support and advice and helps Kirsty whenever she needed it and even after shift change this continued with the next midwife. This continued well into day two until a shift change in the middle of the afternoon, well this midwife was quite frankly awful, she had little or no time for us, did not keep Kirsty’s medication up to date and when asked about several things regarding feeding the baby she could not help!! Come the evening shift again, the previous evenings midwife was back on and she was like a breath of fresh air, she answered Kirsty’s questions regarding feeding Lachlan, had plenty of useful tips for her and helped her through the night when problems occurred.
All through this time nobody picked up the fact that Kirsty had a problem with her stomach until our own midwife came to see us, this lead us to have another night in hospital!!
As you can see a very mixed bag of standards of service, there was some very good work done, help given and advice offered but much of it was lost with the poorer service, lack of communication and in some cases a resistance to help. What does this do to my view of the hospital, I would not rave about it, I would say if you have to go there then do so, otherwise use another birthing centre instead and absolutely find your own midwife rather than relying on the hospital’s midwives.
Relating this back to any other business, it is ultra important to ensure that all aspects of your business is up to speed with what you do, your product must work, your staff must be able to support it and the service given must be consistent to ensure the continued success of any business.
Are you struggling with consistency within your business, want a fresh set of eyes to look at your business to see what can be done to improve the overall consistency, give me a call or contact me through this site, remember my first visit is always free.
