Success for a business owner is watching a mature business flourish through the processes and people they’ve put in place.
The satisfaction you feel after the effort you’ve put into the growth of your business pays off in a new kind of freedom — you no longer have to do it all.
Imagine the heights you can achieve with everyone working toward common success goals.
Now, imagine the disappointment when a well-funded competitor entices your subscribers to leave and you don’t have the processes in place for your staff to make the decisions to stop them. Or, you miss out on a big opportunity because your team wasn’t prepared to act.
What can you do to empower them to battle your competitors and keep the growth going?
1 – Establish a Metric to Measure Subscriber Satisfaction
It’s more than just delivering great customer service; if you want growth to keep going, establish a system that provides an accurate measure/score of how customers feel about you and your service, along with a system to deliver better service to subscribers who give you subpar scores.
The Net Promoter Score® (NPS) is measured from the results of a two-question survey that is sent to subscribers after any contact with you or your staff to measure their satisfaction.
They’re asked to score the interaction between 1 to 10, and the accumulated score of all returned surveys contributes to the overall score, which is considered one of the most important measurements to determine a business’ health1. You can learn more about how to execute NPS here.
Once you have a survey process in place, create ways your staff can elevate a subpar score or create goodwill to take the edge off a tense or uncomfortable interaction. That may include a follow-up call to see if the customer is okay — or providing a small credit for a few days of low-quality broadband.
2 – Train Staff to Go For Low-Hanging Fruit
After a business is running on all cylinders (autonomous systems, steady revenue, healthy balance sheet, etc.) it’s logical to empower employees to take actions that will bring you the best results with the least amount of risk2.
When it comes to low-risk, high-reward marketing tactics, Word-of-Mouth (WOMM) is golden. It leverages the trust among friends and family and your employees can get it going and keep the income flowing.
Not convinced WOMM can grow a business? Don’t take our word for it — Slack, the online collaboration platform used it to grow from 8,000 users in 2013 to one million in 20153. In 2014, Slack founder Steward Butterfield credited WOMM, “The growth has been insane and almost entirely on word of mouth. In fact, we just hired our first marketing person, but he doesn’t begin until next week.”
Encourage your staff to be visible in the community and ask them to wear shirts and hats with your logo on them. When they hear customers say good things about your WISP, train them to ask the subscriber to post it online. These simple things pay off big.
3 – Make Business Decisions Based on Values
Many sources, including the Harvard Business Review say the “Profit at All Costs” model of doing business doesn’t deliver long-term success4. Instead, research outlined in the book by Porras and Collins, Built to Last, shows businesses that create value are the ones that endure for 50 years or more.
A core set of values provides companies with a sense of purpose and how they create value for customers.
When it’s time for employees to move up and make decisions to manage the business, company values guide them to make the best decisions for your subscribers and WISP.
If one of your values is “Enriching our community,” define community — subscribers, neighbors, peers and the WISP are part of the community. If a subscriber is asking for an exception to their service that doesn’t add profit, but it won’t impact the WISP’s operation or other subscribers — like an alternate due date — then your staff can grant the request if you have an automated billing system that allows for alternate due dates.
If you want to breakthrough to a higher level and experience consistent growth, empower key employees to participate in your WISP’s success. And, make sure you check in with the WISP Success Blog every week to find technical and business information that’s designed with your success in mind.
1 SatMetrix, Bain & Company, Reichheld, F; Net Promoter Score; https://www.netpromoter.com/know/
2 McFarland, K. former CEO and author of The Breakthrough Company, as quoted in Inc.’s 2019 article How to Develop a Business Growth Plan; by Dahl, D.
3Patel, S; 4 Growth Strategies Used by the Most Successful Companies; 2019 ;https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/growth-strategy
4Taneja, H; Chenault, K; Building a Startup that will Last; 2019, https://hbr.org/2019/07/building-a-startup-that-will-last
Thank you to Austin Distel for providing the picture for this post. You can find more of Austin’s work at Unsplash.com.
