eKourier July 2013

FEATURES

Recording Every Enquiry - “Why it Matters” T he capturing and recording of our storage enquiries has been a practice at KSS since the early 1990’s. Early on

we recognised the enormous value on something as simple as enquiry volumes, providing many meaningful insights into the business.

Insights which have a significant impact on:

- Potential marketing opportunities

- Possible coaching and skills development

- Major investment decisions

- Actions for improving performance

Reliable recording of enquiries can help us pin point ways to improve our business, and understand successful locations and teams. It is a very important piece of data that our business depends on! “ Enquiry volume is important because it illustrates basic demand strength in each market, and possible opportunities to be addressed ” Accurate measuring of enquires remains a huge challenge for us. It’s a manual process that relies on a human action and discipline to capture the data. No one is infallible, and can forget, or misenter informa- tion or in some cases perhaps not bother considering the enquiry was unimportant or not legitimate. Some Team Members have curiously not entered enquiries as they believe it made them look better, “by having a higher conversion rate”, even though there are no rewards attached to the number of enquiries. We emphasise the importance of

recording enquiries and collate the data in the monthly reports. This information is reviewed, considered in the context of what action may be required, or what we might learn. Enquiry volume is important because it illustrates basic demand strength in each market, and possible opportunities to be addressed. The data is only useful if it’s credible. Credible data means recording every single enquiry, even the imperfect ones. - Record the box enquiry that morphs into a storage enquiry - Record a walk-in that rents instantly as an enquiry first - Record the request for a second unit by a customer Do not double count. That’s the only exception – do not count an enquiry that’s already captured. We are seeking to capture all the relevant data. Accurate enquiry data provides credible conversion rates. True conversion rates can high light training So yes; - Record the aggressive price shopper

needs. This gives us the ability to develop and improve the skills of individuals across the company. Improving conver- sion rates will encourage better business performance. Our business is dependent on the successful handling of customer enquiries. To understand how successful we are we must first understand how many, so that we can accurately understand where the opportunities exist. It’s critical that every enquiry be recorded with as much information as you can gather, regardless of how little or legiti- mate you consider the enquiry to be “it is important and it does matter”. Darren Marshall General Manager This years 2013 Achievement Dinner is fast approaching, time to dust of those suit coats and shine your shoes. This years Achievement Dinner is Saturday August 3rd. See you there!

Kennards Kourier July 2013

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