It might not be your favorite thing about being in business, I know for a fact that it isn’t mine—I might even go as far as to say it is one of my pet peeves. The reality is, however, that we home business owners just cannot get away with NOT having to do a little babysitting and hand-holding of our clients, customers, prospects, etc. now and then…
Sending out reminder notices, having to double-check to make sure that someone follows through, walking a customer or client through a specific process—all of these can take extra time in your business operations and even be a bit aggravating, but it is also part of owning and operating a small business. There are always going to be those individuals who need extra attention—they lose things or cannot keep track of information, they get overwhelmed at following the steps or taking the initiative. It is going to be up to us to swallow that aggravation and do what needs to be done to provide stellar customer service.
This does not mean that we should have sloppy boundaries and let our customers, clients, and prospects walk all over us or take advantage of us. I do think that we can “train” them to a certain extent and shape them into needing less babysitting, but there may just be those people who always need something extra. We do get to decide, however, if their business is worth all of the extra work, babysitting and hand-holding that we have to do. There may also be a way that we can charge them a little something extra for labor or time if it is taking away too much from other aspects of our business. Accepting that there will be those who need the extra coddling, does not mean we need to make our businesses and our bottom lines suffer.
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