As the holiday season winds down, small & medium sized customer driven businesses see a slowdown in traffic during the first month of the new year. This downtime for business is an excellent opportunity to thoroughly analyze and inspect all facets of the operation. A detailed look at how the business runs could identify opportunities that could drive profitability and control costs. In the current era of economic uncertainty, small & medium sized businesses must maximize every potential opportunity and find ways to improve efficiency to positively impact the bottom line.
Focus On People During Business Downtime
Some operations perform reviews near the anniversary of the employee but January’s post holiday slow down could be a more practical time to give attention to the human assets of the business. Organizations that depend on customers for revenue should always incorporate seasonal performance when doing reviews making the start of 2024 the ideal window to give frontline staff feedback and performance results. Updating skills and training based on those reviews during business downtime will get teams ready sooner rather than later for upcoming busy seasons.
Was It A Good Christmas?
Downtime in business gives managers and supervisors a chance to look back at the season in detail. Looking in detail at both financial and operation results, opportunities for improvement could be revealed:
- Was inventory and backroom management efficient and accurate for retail operations?
- Were customers fully taken care of and were interaction opportunities maximized?
- Did merchandising plans for retail organizations work this season?
- Could scripting be optimized for contact center environments?
Inspecting performance from a season specific angle could pinpoint areas that could easily be improved through training, quick skills development or process optimization, potentially driving profitability and reducing costs for the next season.
Reduced Traffic Does Not Equal Reduced Opportunities
The post Christmas slowdown means less traffic for businesses that work in customer service and reduced opportunities to sell means maximizing each customer that does walk through the door. Quickly upgrading customer service skills with min-training will increase chances of bigger transactions from each customer. Excellent customer interactions also increase brand loyalty and word of mouth marketing. Business downtime offers a great opportunity to look at the organization’s ‘customer experience’ and discover ways to improve and exceed each individual customer interaction. Keeping frontline staff involved with skills upgrading and customer service processes can have positive impacts on morale and productivity in other areas.
The Bottom Line
January and February are usually slower traffic months for customer driven small & medium sized businesses. Business downtime can be extremely productive by focusing on elements of the business that could use improvement. Business slowdowns are a perfect window to improve training and skills of the frontline team. Focusing on each customer during slower traffic times is an excellent opportunity to improve and optimize the customer experience. Downtimes can also afford managers the time to examine processes and find ways to make operations more efficient and productive. Small & medium sized business owners and managers can easily capitalize on slower times by diverting attention and resources to making the business itself better.