Let's Talk About Consistency

Understanding the Little Blue Penguin Values: A Focus on Consistency

For anyone reading this who's not familiar with the Little Blue Penguin Values, they encompass Calmness, Consistency, Confidence, Closeness and Curiosity. Today, I'm going to delve into consistency from a marketing and business standpoint.

The Relationship Between Consistency and Customer Service

If you read yesterday's post about the six different businesses I spent money in, you probably picked up on the theme that I'm passionate about customer service. I'm going to take a step back today and present my thoughts on the steps before a customer interacts with your business.

Understanding the Difference: Consistency vs Excellence

It's important to note early on that consistency, excellence and quality are all different things. For example, everyone knows that McDonald's don't make the best hamburger in the world. But without doubt, they have the best system in the world for making burgers. They've nailed consistency (pretty much, I mean nothing is perfect) whilst operating thousands of restaurants around the world and producing more or less the same Big Mac - you've got to be impressed by that! PS: if you haven't seen the film about the story of Ray Kroc, it's on Netflix and I highly, highly recommend it!

The Underappreciated Value of Consistency in Business

Back to consistency though, I feel it's an underappreciated or unrecognised skill or focal point for many businesses. Having operated alt. for the last three and a bit years and talking to dozens, if not hundreds of business owners about marketing, many of them, especially the underperforming or struggling ones, are looking for some magic marketing bullet when they really just needed to be more consistent. Consistent with their service delivery, consistent with their sales process, consistent with invoicing. All of these things are often overlooked in lieu of some miracle marketing tactic that's going to solve your consistency problems, but it's not - it's just going to add fuel to the fire. Say, for example, some magic marketing strategy did exist and leads were able to be provided, those leads would just overextend the poor performing systems, they'd get put off, bad reviews would follow and it would cause more harm than good.

Real-World Examples of Consistency in Action

Another good example of consistency is Pak n Save. Their marketing is simplistic and to the point. Their stores are basic and they're not trying to promote great customer service - they're promoting low prices, and they deliver on those. At least probably with some loss-leading deals, but that's another story. The point is it all lines up. Their marketing, the store experience, the promise of low prices - they follow the recipe.

The Impact of Market Size on Business Standards

One thing I like about larger cities and economies is that because of the level of competition and higher leases and costs, anything mediocre or haphazard or inconsistent generally gets crushed quite quickly. The standards are generally higher. Whereas in smaller and tiny communities, I guess loyalty is possibly more important than consistency; people will stick with existing vendors because they've been dealing with Fred for years...

Evaluating Your Business Through a Customer's Eyes

The point of today is to get you to look at your business, if you've got one, and think of it from a customer approaching you for the first time. Do you impress them from the start? Do you respond quickly or do you leave that enquiry for a few days? What about if you're in a brick-and-mortar business - do you make customers feel welcome and do you think that the online content for your business aligns with what a new customer will experience walking into your store?

I went to a 'Gastro Pub' the other day for the first time; their website made it look really cool, funky and interesting, but upon arrival, it was definitely more pub than gastro pub. Not that I even know what gastro pub means? The point is they were presenting one thing and selling another.

Only three more days of the blog challenge after today, so check back tomorrow for a really epic post!