Customer Relationship Management

In today's business, establishing good relationships with customers are very crucial for business success in this competitive globalised environment. Having good relationship with our customers mean knowing them well and satisfying their need by service with the smile.

Customers include internal as well as external. Internal customers include our staffs and stakeholders whereas external customers include direct and indirect customers and suppliers. Apart from our product/service with continuous innovation and pricing strategies, customers are key entities and variables that affect our business.

There are three value points in our business - the what and the how. The what includes our pricing and product/service and the how is the service delivery and mindset. Various studies have shown that service delivery/mindset is the main factor that put our customer at risk. However, this is the blind spot to many business enterprises. They tend to oversee the importance of service delivery. Typical example is the IVR system that put customers to voice machine used by many big corporation. 10 out of 10 customers don't like the system but they still proceed with this "cheaper" option instead of proper call center. They tend to blind fold themselves in this case instead of investing on it. Well, losing a customer is easy but to get one will take a long while if lucky.

In the nutshell, personal touch is very crucial for our business success. If we take care of our customers, our customers will take care of our business. Therefore, establishing and managing good relationships with our customers and also good service delivery is a must for business excellent.

Lets Your Hands Do The Talking

Lets Your Hands Do The Talking - 10-Hours Sign Language Workshop was held on Dec 6-7, 2008 (9am-2pm) venue at KDU. It was jointly organized by Leo Clubs of KL Unity & KDU to train a group of youth particularly the Leos to enable them to serve the needy Deaf community. Click on the following video to see the snapshots of the workshop:

Seven Steps to Greater Personal Freedom

In business we always talk about bottomline and sustainable growth. We as an individual also face similar distiny but we have limited life spend as compared with businesses that are renewable through replacement of resources. Therefore, it is important for us to plan our life toward ultimate freedom within our life time and it is recommended to start as early as possible. There are seven steps to greater personal freedom:

1. Save Money. In average, we have a solid 30 years to acquire wealth and living expenditure before our retirement. In young age, we are relatively healthy, energetic and refreshing with lower income, limited or no acquired assets, and relative lower need for medical expenses. As time goes and we get older, our earning ability goes up together with our commitments, inflation and rising children education, and our own medical expenses. At time when we grow older, toward retirement age, our earning ability has reduced tremendously but our medical bills keep going high due to old age. Therefore, it is important to practice consistent money saving, be cost consciousness, minimise our liability, live within our mean and not wasting money. As a practice, put aside 10-20% of our monthly grossed income and put the money into low risk investment to bit the inflation and/or to receive higher return, to build up our reserves. Let money works for us.

2. Building our education and skills. This is important toward personal freedom because they can open up a wider range of professional opportunities and overcome obsolescence. Knowledge is a tangible asset, quite often the most important tool in our work. The more marketable knowledge we possess the freer we are, for it can't be taken away from us - it is a tool we carry around in our head.

3. Keeping our honor clean. To maintain freedom, we should reduce personal frailties, for these make us vulnerable. It is still true that an upright man is more likely to dare to speak the truth. There are cases like corruption, cheating, immoral acts, dubious or foolish acts that destroy the integrity of a person, such as Chua SL case, Zakaria case and Lingam case, have proven that these will haunt us than they would have in yesteryears.

4. Keeping our private life private. Privacy is at the heart of our concept of freedom. It is the first thing to disappear when freedom disappears. And privacy is in danger today. We must preserve the privacy that remains to us.

5. Don't give our life to one organization - unless it can be given wholeheartedly. Today, most of us work within vast organisations that we don't personally control, and one of the sad spectacles of our time is the large number of people who feel that they have been swallowed up or absorbed by such organizations. The many layers of authority surrounding us may leave us feeling insignificant. Therefore, we should think of ourselves and our future. Our talent and competencies enable us to keep our option open whether to contribute to current organization or to change jobs. We have our choice to choose and live happily.

6. Building our web of influence. By reaching our and sharing our concerns with others. And by making certain that they are well-informed and well-balanced concerns! If we keep informed and cultivate a sense of good judgement, our views are bound to influence others. And as others come to respect our views, our gather strength.

7. Developing a passion for personal responsibility. The sovereign way to personal freedom is to help determine the forces that determine us. Be active! take on responsibility! This means not merely voting, but working for the things we believe in. If we don't, we are surrendering our fate to others who do act.

These seven steps will surely make our life long journey more exciting and meaningful. We must preserve our freedom in good course. Exercising our social responsibility with our full heart is a must to help the needie and unfortunate one. These are noble things to do. Like the Old says "Givings with sincerity and unconditional, the returns are always be unlimited in due time." These should be our ultimate aim that we should achieve in our life time. The return is priceless - Loving Kindness. We will live happily, peaceful and satisfactory.