Week # 1: Speed of Services - 8 Extremely Important Business Trends to Prepare for in 2024

In an increasingly fast-paced world, prioritize speed in delivering your products or services. Streamline operations to reduce lead times and meet customer expectations for quick turnaround.? This is no longer a nice to have for potential clients, this is an expectation and illustrates my points, I will leverage the insights gained from a recent presentation I saw by Jay Baer in Chandler, AZ, and from his book “The Time to Win”.? You can learn more at TheTimeToWin.com.

Let me first start off by sharing some very important statistics that were captured from Jay’s research for this book.

• 66% of customers say that speed is as important as price when making a buying decision.
• Approximately 1/3 of customers PREFER to use Chat Bots for communicating, specifically because they prefer the speed of solution.
• Today, we interpret speed as caring.? Being Faster than customers expect creates strong feelings within customers:
• o?? Appreciated - 56%
• o?? Valued - 53%
• o?? Respected - 41%
• 62% of Customers feel disappointed when a business responds slower than they expect.
• 30% of Customers feel disrespected when a business responds slower than they expect.
• Jay created The Urgency Index which measures how often customers in different generations expect businesses to reply.? The result was 4 hours!o?? Now you might assume that it was the younger generations that influenced these results to increase the urgency index, but in reality, it was the Baby Boomer Generation that was the most impatient and Gen Z was the most patient.
• When is speed most important to a customer?
• o?? To find out about a product:???????????????????????? 67%
• o?? When setting an appointment????????????????????? 79%
• o?? When paying for a product or service?????????? 74%
• o?? Getting product delivered???????????????????????????? 76%
• o?? Getting a product question answered????????? 77%
• o?? Getting help with a problem???????????????????????? 83%
• 30% of customers are more loyal when a business responds faster than they expect.
• 35% of customers are less loyal when a business responds slower than they expect.
• 83% of customers expect businesses to be as fast or faster than they were before the pandemic.
• 1 in 4 customers will pay as much as 50% more to never have to wait in line.

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Now, as you review this information and consider the potential implications for your business, first ask yourself how many of these statistics you agree with in your consumer habits.? Which of these are “Pet Peeves” of yours?? Then ask yourself, how does your business measure in these categories?

The implications of the speed of solutions to customers have never been more imperative and likely growing even more so by the year.? And some of the most impacted businesses are the service-based businesses that we find in our neighborhoods every day.

Your local Professionals, Lawyers, Doctors, Dentists, Accountants.? As well as your Painters, Plumbers, Landscapers, Pool Cleaners, and HVAC companies.? Then there are your consumer businesses, restaurants, convenience stores, and service providers.? The list is endless of who is affected by the need to improve our speed of services, and no one is excluded from this need.

As businesses realize the value of offering services that provide quality, value, AND speed of service they will begin to own their categories.? Simple things like objectively assessing your customer experience, providing answers to questions before they ask, and setting clear expectations are HUGE relative to most service providers out there and will provide your business with a significant advantage.

Continuing to review these criteria and recognizing how to continuously improve on the experience will only continue to improve your advantage.? Leveraging things like digitizing and automating deliverables for your client experience will improve your speed of service while providing consistency in the client experience.

Speed of Service will continue to be an ever-increasing influence on consumer demand.? As more companies adopt the technologies available and with the solutions having never been more cost-effective to implement, the race to effectively adopt into your business category is fierce.? Automated scheduling, auto-response messaging, and simply anticipating a client’s needs in advance of their request, will greatly impact your ability to set yourself apart from other providers and stake your claim in this fast-paced race for improving Speed of Service.

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Thanks for reading and make sure to come back next week to learn about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a significant role in disrupting business in 2024 and how to adjust to capitalize for your business.

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Eric T. Whitmoyer

Founder & CEO

MyBizCoaches

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P.S. To learn more about how our team of Coaches can provide more insight into how Speed of Service could be implemented into your business for maximum results, please click here to schedule a call:? https://mybizcoaches.start.page/

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