This document discusses how to hire an effective team to ensure customer consistency when the business owner is away. It emphasizes that a consistent customer experience across all interactions builds satisfaction, trust and loyalty. The key is to have a unified view of customers, communications model, and knowledge/data accessible to all employees. Business owners should communicate schedules to clients in advance, define roles and responsibilities, and have confidence that standard practices and a clear mission will allow the business to function without them. Hiring the right people and implementing systems is necessary to take vacations without worrying.

1. PART 3

3. Part 3:
Hire An Amazing Team:
Ensuring Customer Consistency
When You’re Away
In Part 1, we talked about mastering the basics of business to be
able to take a vacation and actually enjoy it without worrying if it’s
going to fail before you return.
In Part 2, we talked about how to create and leverage systems and
KPIs to ensure your business becomes a well-oiled machine that
works without you.
In Part 3, we are going to talk about how to hire and effectively
communicate with employees to ensure customer consistency when
you’re away from the business.

4. A study of 27,000 American consumers by McKinsey & Company has
found that a consistent customer experience across the entire
customer journey will increase customer satisfaction, build trust and
boost loyalty.
Team consistency is the key to customer satisfaction.
As a business owner or marketing manager, you must build a team
that supports your foundation and delivers consistent customer
satisfaction.
• Owner supports the team by giving direction, giving leadership,
paying bills, staying profitable, paying wages, giving
encouragement, building systems, etc. etc.
• Team supports the customer with great sales skills, great service,
great quality and great consistency.
• Customers support the business by coming back more often,
spending more on each visit and telling their friends about you.
• And in the turn the business supports the owner through profits and
over time less hours worked.
The biggest and most important result of a high performing and
motivated team is a consistent customer experience.

5. It’s well understood that companies must continually work to provide
customers with superior service, with each area of the business having
clear policies, rules, and supporting mechanisms to ensure consistency
during each interaction. However, few companies can deliver consistently
across customer journeys, even in meeting basic needs.
Assess yourself and your business by considering these questions:
• Do I trust my employees to maintain my business while I am away?
• Do I have the manpower to make a vacation or business trip possible?
• Will my clients receive the attention they need while I’m gone?
Coauthors of Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of
Your Business, Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine, say:
“Companies that want to produce a high-quality
customer experience also need to routinely
perform a set of sound, standard practices.”

6. Three fundamental elements are needed to
deliver a consistent customer experience across
all communication channels:
1. A unified view of the customer. Each agent needs to have a full
view of all interactions that a customer has had over all supported
communication channels so that the agent can build on the information and
experience that has already been communicated to the customer.
Customers further expect that each interaction with a company adds value to
their prior interactions so that, for example, they do not have to repeat
themselves to you when you, or another customer service agent, leaves for
vacation.
2. A unified communications model. Companies need to queue,
route, and work on every interaction over all communication channels in the
same manner, following the company business processes that uphold its brand.
3. A unified knowledge and data. Agents need to have access to the
same knowledge and the same data across all communication channels so that
they can communicate the same story to their customers.
Unless you have these in place, building a business that thrives when you are
away is extremely difficult.
It’s not just customers that need consistency.
You teammates and employees need a consistent work environment to be at
their best. Will your employees carry on as usual when you’re away? Do they
have the motivation to stay productive? Do they have the resources? The skill?

7. Communicate with clients ahead of
time.
If you have long-term clients, you'll want to brief
them on your vacation schedule well in advance.
Try to give them your schedule before the summer
starts, and then send out a reminder two weeks
before your vacation. At this point, set realistic
expectations for your accessibility (will you be
checking email/text/voicemail and how often?), as
well as let them know if there's a point of contact in
your absence.
You’re not likely to enjoy your vacation if your absence
leaves critical tasks undone.
Thankfully, most of your own responsibilities can be
fulfilled by different members of your senior staff,
so long as you’ve given them both the information
and the authority to perform the needed tasks. This
isn’t a task to be undertaken a couple of weeks
before you depart, but should be a core element in
your business philosophy. Train your people ahead
of time, and let them know that they have your trust
and support, and the vast majority of those little
fires you always have to put out will be taken care
of, even in your absence.

8. Figure out who is in charge of what at
all times.
The entire team should know their individual roles,
as well as if and how that differs while you’re away.
Part of being a leader is being able to let go of the
reigns. Your vacation is a perfect opportunity to
give your staff a chance to step up their game and
take on more responsibilities. Over time you'll
come back to a team that is more capable,
independent, and confident.
• Does each team members have position
descriptions?
• Do you have an organizational chart that tells
them who to report to and who they can
delegate work to?
• Do you have a 90- action plan?
• A 30-day action plan? How about daily priority
tasks?
"A company should limit its growth based on its ability
to attract enough of the right people."
-Jim Collins

9. Going into vacation mode is more than just
putting your business on autopilot. It’s
about being confident that your business
will effectively function without you around.
Think back to Part 1. Do you have a
well-defined mission, vision and company
culture? Are they effectively communicated
to your team and employees? Do you have
core values?
Think back to Part 2. Do you know
how to hire people? Do you have systems
in place to get out of your own way and let
your business and your team operate
without you? Do you have KPIs to
measure performance?
Remember, hiring an amazing team
can make or break your customer
experience. And when you have sound,
standard practices and a mission to rally
their purpose, consistency will follow.

10. Conclusion
The question should not be if you’re able to take a vacation. It
should be how effective is your business going to run without
you present.
Again, the purpose of this white paper is to give you a
blueprint on how to build a business that runs without you, so
you can take that much needed time away.
If you hit roadblocks to creating or developing any of the
above, or if you want to chat about how to make your
business more efficient, give us a call at 702-582-7301 or
visit smithdurant.com to schedule a complementary
business consultation.

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