Why 80/20?
What does a long-dead Italian economist have to do with your business?
The 80/20 Principle, also called the Pareto Principle, is one of the most powerful concepts in business today. Identified in 1896 by Vilfredo Pareto, it has the power to transform how you think about customer service.
The principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Pareto noticed that 20% of the plants in his garden produced 80% of the peas.
He went on to discover similar relationships in all areas of life, most interestingly in economics and business.
And sometimes the ratios are even more extreme. 85/15, 90/10, or even 99/1.
What does this mean for your business?
It means that some of the things you do have a much greater impact than others.
It means that you should focus on these top 20% activities.
This also brings up an uncomfortable realization…
Much of what you spend your time, energy, and money on is producing ALMOST NO VALUE.
We tend to assume that these things are linear, but they absolutely aren’t. (If you want to go really deep into this stuff, read this book.)
This information isn’t new…
You’ve probably heard of this idea before. But despite that, most businesses still provide TERRIBLE service. They do too many of the wrong things (80% activities.) They don’t do nearly enough of the important (20%) things.
Conventional customer service is broken.
It seems that at least 80% of efforts go towards things that don’t improve things at all. Often, they’re actively making it worse.
Mark Toole took over a brand new customer service department at Choose Yourself Media. It was very early, but things were already starting to go wrong.
Like so many other businesses, they assumed that customer service would always be a cost to the business. They never even considered that it could pay for itself. Or that it could become a source of actual profits.
But that was exactly the goal Mark set (and accomplished) for the department.
And it wasn’t an easy thing to do. There was a lot of trial and error. Mark knew that doing things the usual way wasn’t going to cut it.
Doing what everyone else does was only going to get them the results everyone got. That was unacceptable.
Through a trial and error approach, Mark identified the 20% of things that made the biggest difference for the business.
And there were a LOT of things that didn’t matter at all. Things the company no longer needed to spend time or money on.
As a result…
- Expenses went down
- Revenues went up
- Customers were happier
- Employees enjoyed their jobs more
- Management time went down to almost zero
This stuff works.
Now, for the first time ever, the same opportunities are available to your business…
Click here for more about how Mark can help you take your customer service effectiveness (and profits) to the next level…