Seth Godin has yet another great article on customer service:

No, of course Sumner Redstone can’t answer every single letter sent to Viacom. But…

Shouldn’t every single inbound call be answered in one ring? Shouldn’t there be as much spent on self-service customer support as is spent on the design of the selling part of your website? Shouldn’t you be tracking in the finest detail what people have to say when they call in? Shouldn’t you be rewarding call center operators by how long they keep people on the phone, not how many calls they can handle a minute? Shouldn’t there be an easy, fast and happy way for an operator to instantly upgrade a call to management (not a supervisor, I hate supervisors) who can actually learn something from the caller, not just make them go away?

Customer Service is always a balancing act. You don’t want to spend your entire day on the phone with customers who’ll talk your ear off or complain about the tiniest of issues. However, you also want to make sure you spend time on your phone etiquette, escalation procedures and systems so you can concentrate on your high value clients.  When I call most customer service lines, the quiet subtext of the conversation from the representative is “leave me alone” “I don’t care” and “please go away” when it should be seen as an opportunity to impress me as quickly and efficiently as possible - that’s what I’ll tell other people and that’s what will keep me coming back.

“Anyone can be a genius, if they pick just one specific subject and study it diligently just 15 minutes each day.”   - Albert Einstein

Commentary: Einstein is right. Is there something that you want to become a genius/expert at? If you dedicate just a bit of time everyday to the study of that topic you can be amongst the greatest in the world at that subject.

Which one topic or subject, if you could become an expert at, would make the greatest difference in your life and/or business?

BusinessWeek has an article about starting a one person corporation. The reader’s question is about setting up a corporation instead of an LLC so he can issue stock to employees.

The basics of the article are:

• Setting up a corporation is not as complicated as most think.

• Most states recognize a “1 person corporation” (Editor’s note:  ALL states now recognize 1 person corporations or LLC’s).

• As a 1 person corporation, make sure to issue stock certificates and keep meeting minutes.

• LLC’s can also offer employees equity stakes in the company, though not as straightforward as corporations. The overall simplicity of the LLC makes this option attractive to small businesses.

Of course, none of this is news to us. Our incorporation and LLC formation packages are perfect for one person companies and include the necessary minutes, stock certificates, a handbook and even a checklist for doing the proper startup procedures step-by-step.

“The distance between you and your dreams is often the length of a single idea.”  – Vic Conant

Commentary: Sometimes all it takes is a new idea or thought to make you look at the world differently. One business idea (intelligently acted upon) can change your life. In business, you only need to be successful once and you’re set for life. Always be on the lookout for the idea that could change your life.

As usual, Seth Godin gets it right with a fantastic article about doing things instead of whining about them.

Here’s some of the best excerpts:

Here’s a question that you should clip out and tape to your bathroom mirror. It might save you some angst 15 years from now. The question is, What did you do back when interest rates were at their lowest in 50 years, crime was close to zero, great employees were looking for good jobs, computers made product development and marketing easier than ever, and there was almost no competition for good news about great ideas?

Here’s what some people did while others whined:

• “While your company has been waiting for the economy to rebound, Reebok has launched Travel Trainers, a very cool-looking lightweight sneaker for travelers. They are selling out in Japan — from vending machines in airports!”
• “While Detroit’s car companies have been whining about gas prices and bad publicity for SUVs (SUVs are among their most profitable products), Honda has been busy building cars that look like SUVs but get twice the gas mileage. The Honda Pilot was so popular, it had a waiting list.”
• “While you’ve been wishing for the inspiration to start something great, thousands of entrepreneurs have used the prevailing sense of uncertainty to start truly remarkable companies.”

He concludes with this great line:

So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams. That’s why there has never been a better time for the new. Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can safely invest…

You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every day, in fact. It’s never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. The best thing is that it only takes a moment — just one second — to decide.

“We don’t want to be rich, we just want to be richer that other people” - John Stuart Mill

Commentary: Small business owners tend to focus on money when we should be focussing on lifestyle. Acquiring more and more money is an endless game that never brings satisfaction. The best thing to strive for are the lifestyle of wealth: time-off, family time, not worrying about money, vacations, etc. When you focus on lifestyle, you’ll find that it takes much less money and requires you to focus on making your business run without you rather than requiring your constant attention in the pursuit of more money.

“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” - Peter Drucker

Commentary: Sometimes the planning process goes on forever. Some people are obsessed with planning to a point where actual work never gets started. It is important that planning is effective, but as Peter Drucker states, it is imperative to get to work!

Entrepreneur Magazine has a great article on how to name your business.  Topics include:

• Brainstorming Business Names
• Making up a Business Name (words like “Acura”)
• Trademarks and Trademarking
• Filing your corporation, LLC or DBA paperwork.

Also see our page on picking a business name along with helpful name brainstorming software.

“If people knew how hard I worked to achieve my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.” - Michelangelo

Commentary: One common thing about people who master a skill is that though they may make it look easy, nobody sees the thousands of hours practicing, refining, studying and hard work.

“Don’t worry, be crappy. Revolutionary means you ship and then test… Lots of things made the first Mac in 1984 a piece of crap - but it was a revolutionary piece of crap.” ~ Guy Kawasaki  

Commentary:

I think it is a myth that a new product that will solve problems or fill a need (especially a technology product) must be perfect before you launch it. Modern experience is showing that may not be true - lots of great products were buggy at first, incomplete when first launced: MySpace.com, Google, Xbox 360, etc. The key is to launch but then improve based on user-feedback.