Most people that know me, know that I’m truly passionate about customer service. I always try to focus on the customer experience in anything I do, in all my business and personal interactions with people. Everybody is my customer.

But it surprises me how many people and organizations are just not customer-friendly. In fact, it not only surprises me, it down right annoys me. I try not to let it get to me, but sometimes I find myself scratching my head in bewilderment, wondering how these guys can stay in business, given that they have competitors right next door, or around the corner, just dying to ’steal’ their customer.

But then it hits me, that even their competition (if they have any) aren’t that impressive.

Why is this? Why do so many businesses give lip service to customer service? And why are they still in business? Are we as consumers too polite? Have we been “trained” by these companies to accept a lower standard of service?

I know that I certainly could be guilty of this. In my busy life, I don’t always have the time to complain. A wise man once said that you have to choose your battles…. but is that approach the downfall of our customer service expectations? It’s like a downward spiral.

For example, last month, my Canadian mobile phone provider inadvertently charged me an extra $2.47 for a call received while I was allegedly roaming “internationally”. In reality, I was on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and received a call on my Canadian mobile phone. I assume that the close proximity to the US border led to my signal being picked up by a US cell tower and thus the assumption that I was roaming.

Of course I don’t want to pay for something that I didn’t use… nobody wants to do that. So I call my carrier to see about getting this charge reversed. But after being on hold for 20 minutes, I decide it’s just not worth my time. So I feel ripped off and feel that I have no recourse. Unless of course I wait on hold for god knows how long but just cause I eventually get through to somebody, will they really be a person I can speak to and if so, will they really have the power to do the right thing?

I’m sure this happens all the time to a number of people. But if you think about the company, not only do they have a pissed off customer, my call on hold must’ve cost them someething as I tied up their phone line for 20 mins… maybe their cost on a phone line is 1 cent per minute? Multiply that by the number of calls they get, how many are abandonded, etc.

For a large mobile carrier, I’m sure these numbers add up to a lot… and these are things that directly impact their bottom line! But I digress.

So here I am, pissed off because I have to pay $2.47 for something I don’t think I should’ve been charged with. Not that its a lot of money, and I’m sure I’ll soon forget about it and it’ll be water under the bridge. But the fact that I couldn’t speak to somebody about it, pisses me off even more, and that’s something I won’t forget for a long time.

Boy I wish we had more choice for GSM carriers in Canada… imagine how the world would be if there were competition? Oh wait, we had 2 GSM carriers in Canada before but 1 of them didn’t like the idea of competition so they bought the other. Now they have a license to rip people off and provide poor service.

Hmmm, anybody want to startup a GSM carrier in Canada? Oops, sorry. Just realized, you wouldn’t be allowed to compete against the incumbent monopoly carrier.

A lot of people ask me what the steps to starting a successful business are and I thought I’d try to articulate some of my thoughts here. Of course, this could end up going in to a lot of detail, so for the purposes of brevity and to make this information easy to consume, I’ve decided to split it up in to a number of posts.

In this initial post, I’ll focus on outlining the high-level ’steps’ and then go in to more detail on each one in subsequent posts. Hopefully at the end, I’ll have compiled a mini treatise that can be read in short spurts or all at once, depending on the reader’s time and of course willingness to invest that time to learn.

Keep in mind that I have a passion for food and technology…. after all, I’m a restaurateur and technologist. So my perspective is naturally slanted towards these areas. Therefore, what I have to say, may or may not be applicable to all businesses or all industries.

The keys to starting a successful business:

1. Identify a problem

2. Articulate a solution

3. Develop the solution

4. Test the solution

5. Sell the solution

6. Refine the solution

7. Enhance the solution

I’m sure most of this seems simple and of course logical… and if that’s what you think, you’re right. After all, this is not rocket science.

But the real work comes in the execution… and of course, the details of each one of these ’steps’.

Stay tuned as I try to dive deeper in to each one of these over the next little while.

Every now and then you come across a smart entrepreneur… one that understands that you need to be focused on your business, not on ways of spending money. After all, money is the root of all evil, isn’t it?

Jason Goldberg, founder of Jobster and Social Median, posted an interesting video on keeping it small, lessons learned as startup ceo. Its an interesting video with some good insight for startups.

Jason learned through Jobster that having too much money means you have the temptation to spend more than you actually need to.

Some other good takeaways:

1. Focus on the product

2. Get your hands dirty

I’ve long been an advocate of keeping it small and bootstrapping your startup. This, I believe, is the best way of building value and focusing on doing the right thing. When you don’t have enough money, everything becomes a big decision. And, you don’t spend money on things like Herman Miller chairs :-)

I’ve spoken to a lot of people that are building their own startup, and the majority of them say they need a couple of million dollars… some as much as 5 or 10 million. But none of them has any idea on what they would do with that money. Most just read about other companies that raised millions of dollars and think they should be able to also.

Bottom line, spend as little as possible to prove your concept, get customers, and service them to the max. Oh, and raise as little money as possible. You’ll thank me in the long run :-)