I think its been a great exercise for me. It has really reinforced my conviction that how you say what you’re going to say is really critical. If every word is an effort, then you pay very strict attention to what each of those words is, and what impact it is going to have. Is it exactly the right word for the situation? Is it going to convey my meaning precisely without requiring a forced, painful explanation as follow up?

Wouldn’t our professional communication really benefit from that kind of review? To say what needs to be said as clearly and concisely as possible. To make sure your message is conveyed exactly as you wished, for maximum comprehension, the very first time it goes out to your customers? How much thought are you giving to that part of your sales process?

In our world of instantaneous communication, I think we could all benefit from a short period of silence to think about what we’re saying, and how we’re saying it.

But its been 3 weeks now, and I’m really, very ready to go back to talking.

When trying to build your LinkedIn network, the very best thing you can do is type over that pithy generic default message that comes up. Just highlight it and type over it! Then take a few seconds to remind me who you are, and why you think we should connect. Are we friends with many of the same people? Did we meet at a networking function? Are you my second cousin twice removed? Who are you?

LinkedIn is about building business connections and relationships. They should be based on something other than you saw my name in someone else’s list.

If I can’t figure out who you are, then I probably won’t connect with you. I’m not that kind of a girl.

It was very productive.

I had the opportunity to learn so many new things and be exposed to so much new information in 2010 that my head was spinning. Much of what I learned and realized is well captured by this talk by Simon Sinek, How Great Leaders Inspire Action, as part of the Better Off TED, Ideas Worth Spreading project. He says, among many other things that really resonated with me “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

My winter break gave me an opportunity to slow down and think things through. I realized I wasn’t going in the right direction for me. I wasn’t inspired enough. I wasn’t excited enough. So I did what I always do when I get confused. I googled.

One of the great questions I found was “What would you do anyway, if you weren’t getting paid.” I thought about that for a long time. Then I asked some friends. “When you call me for help or an opinion, what are you calling me about.”

The answer was pretty clear. Writing.

When people ask me to look something over for them, its always about the writing. How can they say what they said, only better. I love to make words better. I hate things that are unclear or badly expressed.

If I’m going to do that kind of work anyway, which I definitely am, then perhaps that should be the work I do as my business. Because I love it. I’m passionate about it.

And I’m good at it. If I weren’t, people wouldn’t be calling me for help, now would they?

My new business is In Your Voice.

This blog is inspired by an article I read today in an online news journal. The author suggested that we “search for visual queues” in a dark room. That would seem to be very odd advice, to search a dark room for a line of people waiting for something. Then I realized we probably were actually looking for ‘cues’.

I’m not perfect. I’m sure my blog has mistakes. But there are levels of care that need to be taken that vary depending on the publication and distribution of a piece of writing. Your Facebook status? The odd typo is no big deal. Most people are typing from a smart phone keyboard of 2.5 inches, we almost expect errors. A blog? Well, its nice when you get all the words right, but if you don’t, your audience is likely to be forgiving, depending on your readership following.

If you’re publishing something that calls itself a Business Magazine? I don’t care if you’re all online all the time or not. That is no excuse for not having someone on staff who reads things before they are published to catch the most egregious of errors.

But for some reason, the expense I’m certain, editing has fallen out of fashion. I’m a voracious reader and the more recently a book was published, the more likely it is that there will be some fairly serious mistakes in word usage or placement or maybe that the story just plain needed some tightening up.

Self publishing is no excuse. There are plenty of people in the world perfectly capable of doing a freelance editing job for you. I’m on my second book with the 3rd sitting in my dropbox waiting for my schedule to open up.

So please, if you’re publishing anything more serious than a blog, or if your blog has a readership of more than 100 people on a regular basis, for pity’s sake, please have someone, anyone literate really, read it before it goes public. Your spouse, your buddy, your kid, just anyone.

Because no matter how interesting your subject, your badly structured sentences and your incomprehensible grammar is going to get in the way of me caring.

‘Are’ going to get in the way. See what I mean?

I had a day like that today.

I organize things professionally because its who I am. I organize, I sort. Pity my poor husband. Its not something I learned to do as a profession. Like so many other solopreneurs, its something that I do naturally that I turned into a business. Homes, offices, its about the mindset, not the space for me.

Today I remembered what I love to organize more than anything, and that is words.

Words?

I know, its a little odd to think of writing and copy editing as ‘organizing’ words, but to me that’s what it is. Is this word doing the proper job here? Or should it be some other word? Does this paragraph enhance the flow of the idea here? Wouldn’t it work better two pages down? I know this anecdote is lovely and fun but its cluttering up your idea, I’m afraid it will have to go.

To me, that’s organizing. And its almost play.

How lucky, to get to earn a living doing things I’d really do anyway.

It wasn’t really about flies.

My last post was about a problem I had and what to keep in mind when fixing things for your customers. Considering how surprised the nice customer service rep was that I wasn’t irate and screaming, I thought a few tips for the customer side of things were in order.

1. Don’t yell at people who can’t help you.

If you’re angry about a situation, chances are excellent that the first person you get on the phone doesn’t know anything and can’t help you. Wait until you reach the right pay grade.

2. Be clear on what your problem is, and when appropriate, what you’d like the resolution to be.

‘I’m really unhappy’ is not a good complaint. Give them a chance to actually help by providing clear details. Have your paperwork handy.

3. Don’t assume everyone is out to get you.

Business don’t stay in business by intending to deliver a shoddy product. (I don’t want to talk about government departments right now.) Approach each problem with the assumption that it was an honest mistake and they’d like to fix it for you. There’s plenty of time to get irate later if its necessary.

4. Control your temper.

Even when losing your temper is appropriate, don’t. Either the person on the other end of the phone really wants to help you, or they don’t. Screaming about it isn’t going to change them one way or the other. Honestly, when I’m pleasant and restrained most customer service reps I deal with are so shocked that they’re happy to bend over backwards just because I’m nice.

5. If you need to escalate, go right ahead, but don’t assume.

Everyone wants to talk to a supervisor or the manager. That isn’t always necessary. Often anyone in customer service can help you. You’ll always have to wait for a manager, and when you summon one specifically, they’re already on the defensive. Of course, if you get someone who isn’t competent, your issue is complicated, or you’re not getting anywhere, then don’t hesitate to ask for a supervisor, and then let the supervisor know you tried to handle it at the lower level, but it wasn’t working for you.

Mostly, I think a generous application of Calm Down would improve most customer service issues immeasurably.

What’s critical to your business is how you fix the problem.

Today I got my order from my food delivery service. It was not at all what I was expecting. A number of critical items were reduced or missing. Apparently when I was placing my order I went well over the ‘points’ I’m allotted by the system. While I was on hold to fix the problem I reviewed the order placed and can see that there was definitely too much stuff.

What went wrong:

So the first problem was the original order. I suppose I should have paid more attention, but really, I don’t have the point system in front of me. I assumed that it was the job of the guy on the phone to pay attention to that and they’ve always done an excellent job in the past. So that’s their first mistake.

The real big mistake was, when the error was discovered, they did not contact me to ask me how I’d like my order adjusted to fix the differences, and by the way apologize for not paying attention. They just made some assumptions, all of which were completely wrong. This just sets up their customer service department for dealing with irate customers. Not a nice thing to do to your coworkers. This is the mistake that lingers and could encourage me to talk badly about their company for months.

What went right:

The delivery driver (who is a great guy by the way, always pleasant. Always someone I’m perfectly willing to have in my home) knew what I needed to do. Call the guy I placed the order with and find out what happened. He’d arrived early for my delivery and since he had the time, he didn’t give me any trouble when I insisted he wait until I got a resolution. He played with my cats while I was on hold. Teach your people who is responsible for handling problems.

I asked to be directed to ‘the guy’. When I got his voice mail I went back to the switchboard and said “I have a problem with my order, I need to talk to ‘the guy’ right away before the driver can go.” He was on another call, so Switchboard made the intelligent decision to find someone in customer service who could help me right away. Timely response cuts down on the time your customer has to think about exactly how upset they are.

Right away turned out to be Hannah, who was pleasant, cheerful, apologetic, and apparently shocked that I wasn’t screaming at her. (hmm. I see another post in my future.)Be pleasant and apologetic.

She had all the answers from “send the driver on and you and I’ll will work this out” to “lets look at your account” and “wow, we really messed this up”. So we worked out a fair exchange, and then she threw in some extra stuff as an apology. Know what you can and can’t do to resolve problems. Be proactive with ‘can’.

And then she didn’t rush off but asked me about quality and service and took the time to discuss things with me as long as I wanted. Take the time to add a positive human component to the experience.

Thank you very much Hannah at Town and Country customer service. You did your job excellently today.

People work social media the same way. Some people want to have as many links, fans, or followers as they can possibly manage. My question is, to what purpose? If you aren’t taking a moment to connect with any of these people, to exchange a few words or Tweets about who they are as a person, then it isn’t a connection, its just a crowd. And yelling into a crowded room just isn’t useful. Few people will actually hear you, and only a few of them will actually care. And at least one of them will probably take exception to what you just said!!

So lets back off on the card-ninja approach and take a little time to hear what other people are really saying. If you listen to them, you’ll have a much better chance of them listening to you.

The cameras caught just about everyone participating on that show talking some variation of “400 people!!! I’ve never cooked for 400 people!!!” And they proceeded to run around like headless chickens and ignore that critical part that they didn’t feel they knew how to tackle. Not a single one stopped and thought it through.

The team who made the best food? They lost, because they ran out. You can’t be feeding soldiers and run out of food. seriously.

I’ve never cooked for 400 people either. But I know how to break it down.

I’ve never cooked for 400 people. But I’ve cooked for 10. So I look at those giant pans they use for military cooking and I say ‘If I’m cooking au gratin potatos for 10 people, my pan is so big. How many of those pans fit into this one.” And then its a just matter of math.

That’s really how you have to handle any big scary project. Figure out what you do know, and use those pieces to help you figure out what you don’t know. The more complicated (or the more scary) something is, the smaller you may need to break down the pieces. Often you can figure out the parts that you don’t know either by handling the parts around it, or by breaking it down small enough to figure out who to ask for advice.

Ignoring the parts you don’t understand isn’t a sound strategy.

But its a little more personal than I’d like to be with someone I’ve never met. This week I have gotten no less than 7 friend invitations from people I have never met. Friends of friends. I’m sorry, I know you’ve been told you need to be out here for your business, but it doesn’t work that way.

I read this article this morning, it was interesting, but mostly I liked the subtitle, which is ‘most people don’t do it very well’ and it was referring to networking. It could have been referring to social media as well. There are no short cuts people. Get rich quick on the internet is approximately equal to Lose 20 lbs in 10 days.

Its about reinforcing connections. Its not the right place to make new ones. At least not this week.