Why It Matters That You're Always Improving
Sandra C. Finn, President
When I met Sandra (Sandi) Finn at a conference a few years back, I was struck by how smart and driven she is. Her company, Cross Country Home Services (CCHS), offers home warranties and maintenance plans directly to consumers and through a list of industry partners.
If you’re a customer and something major in your house needs repair, you call and her people come and fix it.
It’s a tough business and I wondered how she succeeds at it. So I called to ask. After talking to her a while, I realized that her key idea sounds like a modern business version of Émile Coué’s famous personal mantra from 90 years ago: “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”
She told me that most important aspect of her business is how long it takes from initial claim to completed repair. When you think about it, that’s pretty obvious. Most great ideas are. Your hot water heater breaks, you want it fixed asap. Here in Miami, if your AC goes down in July, you want it fixed 10 minutes ago. I know from too many unfortunate personal experiences that competent speed in getting things fixed is rare.
Unless you’re a customer of Cross Country Home Services.
Sandi Finn and her people spent a lot of time figuring out what slows the claim-to-repair processes. Then they fixed those processes and customer satisfaction rates rose. For instance, the usual reason air conditioning repair took too long is the good old “waiting for a part” excuse. CCHS fixed that by sourcing parts ahead of time.
She regularly asks customers what she can do to make them happier with the company. Again, the answer is almost predictable; customers say they like to be treated as people. As you probably know, repairmen (they’re mostly men) can be a little gruff. So CCHS takes steps to smooth the rough edges with one-on-one coaching of the service people. Instead of stomping grumpily into someone’s home, they now act more like doctors – professional, courteous and, most of all, listening politely.
Something about all this reminded me of my mother. The electric stove in her Miami Beach apartment was new when LBJ was still president. It worked fine through the Nixon administration but by the time Gerald Ford was in office, the repairman came nearly as often as the paper boy. Alas, the stove had to go. The new one was a technological marvel that worked flawlessly. My mother didn’t like it because she missed the repairman’s visits. She liked the guy.
CCHS helps retired veterans
As CCHS implements each new program, they keep asking their customers the hard questions. They learned, for instance, that if a customer says she is “satisfied”, that means she is thinking of getting rid of the service. Getting to “very satisfied” took a lot of work but it was worth it. When customers were asked if they’d recommend the company, nearly all of them answered with an enthusiastic “Yes!”
Along the way, Sandi’s employees developed their own corporate values and stuck to them. Business started getting better and better. “Every day in every way …” Émile Coué would have beamed.
CCHS’s surveys include questions most companies would never think of. One of my favorites is quite topical: “What repair cost would push you over your personal ‘fiscal cliff?” $2,000 was the most common answer. This is invaluable information when you’re looking for new customers for home warranties and maintenance plans.
How do they get new customers? As you’d expect, Word of Mouth is their best “medium” followed by targeted direct mail efforts.
The bottom line is that @CrossCountryHS is doing very well:
Double digit growth in the last 5 years (amazing in this economy)
Renewals are up
Expanding relationships with the current customers
Once I have a chat with our condo association’s service company, I’m going to apply Sandi Finn’s constant-improvement ideas to my own business. You might want to think about it, too:
Develop your own program to improve your business all the time (remember Émile Coué). Ms. Finn had a “master” Black Belt come into their company and teach Six Sigma.
Make sure your employees know where your company is moving, and understand its core values
Remind everyone to go “the extra mile” for your customers.
They have a monthly “Lunch and Learn” session on improving management techniques, enhancing performance.
Invest in courses in-house. Recently they had a university professor teach them “Accounting for Non-professionals”.
Last year, Sandi Finn was number two on the list of most prominent female executives in Florida’s Women-Led Business Study, conducted annually by The Commonwealth Institute. It’s her seventh time in a row making the list’s top five.
You can create these programs in your business too! If you start, let me know how you’re doing. I’d love to hear from you.