The term “compliance” gets a bad rap. Immediately the term suggests rules, regulations, inspections, audits and punitive outcomes for those outside of the rules. We immediately think of the financial industry or maybe the manufacturing sector and health and safety compliance. Rarely do we correlate compliance to customer satisfaction. This is something I do daily when I talk about Action Card.
Brand Standards
As a software development company, Volano Solutions understands systems well and the importance of clarity and definition in the daily work of employees. Franchises, multi-location companies and organizations who have a well-defined model have staked and scaled their growth based on consistency and adherence to the fundamentals that made that system successful. In this regard, compliance to those tenets is necessary not just for health, safety or legal reasons but to delight customers and drive revenue. Whether these are brand standards or best practices, we have learned that there are a few key success traits that good business managers demonstrate in the world of standards consistency and performance. Below are a few common denominators.
1.) Good standards are always directly related to the customer experience. Cleanliness, customer service and product quality are the core standards being reviewed
2.) Standards are objective, measurable and reviewed freqently
3.) Training of brand standards and communiation is ongoing
4.) Owners measure compliance and can correlate it to performance
The core attribute is consistency. The company Questback wrote a great piece to this point in regard to creating customers who love your brand and more importantly, will recommend it to others . They state that “providing a high quality, consistent service leads to good customer experience and increases the likelihood that your product will be recommended to others. Never, ever underestimate the power of consistency to generate loyalty and referral from your customers. Get this right and your satisfied promoters will be legion.”
Compliance Reviews and Revenue
Everybody in business understands the power of customer referrals. We all generally get that customer advocacy stems from the emotional response triggered from your product and service; their experience with every aspect of your sales process. The bridge that needs to be made has to do with vision and tactics. If consistency leads to revenue, we must be mindful of what is occurring regularly. I consistently slice the golf ball when I tee off on the two tragic days of the year that I play. So consistency is a negative here. Therefore before you manage adherence to your standards, you better make sure they are the right standards. What is your organization’s vision for delighting customers? What standards, if put in place and followed, will directly relate to your customer’s level of satisfaction with every part of the buying process? This is the vision. Once you have that, a system needs to be put in place to ensure that there us absolute clarity and buy-in that vision and reviews are being done consistently to ensure they are being followed.
January 19, 2021
Software development is a team-based endeavor because of the complexity involved in launching a new system. Gone are the days when one developer can be point on the whole back-office software stack. It now takes multiple specialized roles to (appropriately) fulfill the software delivery lifecycle. A typical software project requires: Leadership Product management Project management […]
January 13, 2021
One definition of rot is the process of deterioration. Something that decays over time. By this standard – software rots like food in the Nebraska heat. It’s true. If your software isn’t regularly updated, it deteriorates and breaks down. Consider this – software is written to work at a moment in time…but time marches on. […]
January 4, 2021
OMAHA, NE, January 4, 2021 – In late 2020, Volano Solutions announced it has changed its name to Volano Software and launched a new website: www.volanosoftware.com. The name change was made to more accurately reflect what the company does, and the website was designed to be more informative and user-friendly to clients and prospective clients […]
June 2, 2020
According to LinkedIn technology (software) has a higher overall turnover rate than retail. With that, it isn’t a matter of if, but a matter of when. Volano has engineered a culture of “by developers, for developers” and this helps our retention. In fact, most of the folks that work at Volano have been here +5 […]
June 2, 2020
It is hard enough to build a successful business, and few want to invest time and resources into worrying about an Intellectual Property Assignment. But alas, you must do your homework. Fortunately, we make it easy for Volano customers. When asked – “Who owns the software and IP for my project?” – it is an […]
May 28, 2020
Many of us remember the grade school game Telephone. It was funny to see how a simple message would get garbled as it was passed along from person to person. But it’s not as funny when that message is a critical business requirement that will be turned into software that will power your business. Yet, […]