COSE Small Biz Conference Lacks Customer Service

Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on May 20, 2009 under Customer Moments | 2 Comments to Read

COSE (Council of Smaller Enterprises) is an amazing organization – one of the largest of its kind supporting small business entrepreneurs in the country.  I am proud to be a member and have attended many of the great workshops, coffee conversations and seminars offered through COSE. 

One of the reasons I joined was so that I could submit an application to be one of the over 50 presenters sharing their knowledge at the annual COSE Small Business Conference held each October.  Recently I received the thoroughly explained application via email.  I opened the instructions with great anticipation.

The website included a link to a PDF file that outlined the over 50 workshops they’ve identified.  Your task; should you decide to under take it – is to find the workshop that comes the closest to a presentation you have already successfully given.  The topics included cover such important areas as:

  • Human Resources
  • Money
  • Technology for Small Business
  • Sales and Marketing
  • Personal and Professional Development
  • Sustainability

All great topics.  I offer speeches on a few of those topics - in particular Social Media, marketing for small business and making the most of your online presence – however, I am striving to brand myself as the Customer Service speaker – with a focus on building customer relationships and earning customer loyalty.  I read through the topics.  Three times.  I couldn’t find a single session – not one in all of the over 50 suggested – that focused on the customer.  Oh, there is a class on CRM (software packages for customer communication marketing) but nothing on handling irate customers, exceeding customer expectations, earning customer loyalty, building customer relationships, or even basic customer service in a down economy. 

Am I just behind the times?  Is customer service old news?  Is customer loyalty last year’s topic?  Is building customer relationships a thing of the past? 

Guess so – because every day I encounter more examples of BAD customer service than I do associates who exceed or even meet expectations. 

Sales are down – customers are even more careful with their spending dollars – shouldn’t at least one topic focus on winning customers for life? 

What do you think?  Should we just focus on driving traffic in the door and forget about the importance of how to treat them once we have them?

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  • Steve Millard said,

    Deborah — thanks for the post about the conference.

    We used a task team of small business owners (about 20 or so) and the resulting list of topics were the most important to them. However, you make a great point about the need for a focus on customer service for small business at the conference. We definitely shouldn’t be ignoring the issue and I know we’d welcome your proposal to do a workshop on the topic–we often get proposals outside of the topics we are seeking and would be pleased to take a look at a workshop proposal for it. (I think the website at http://www.cosespeaker.com invites additional topic ideas — maybe that’s not visible enough!)

    In addition (and speaking of customer service) this year, we are going to open the conference with John Dijulius of John Roberts Spas (http://www.johndijulius.com) who will specifically address customer service and customer experiences and I think he’ll be doing a workshop session as well in addition to his keynote.

    I hope you’ll propose something that can help small businesses in this area for this year’s COSE Small Business Conference!

    If you’ve got questions, feel free to contact me or Megan Kim…I am at smillard at cose.org or 216 592-2417 or Megan is at mkim at cose.org ot (216) 592-2356.

    Thanks!

    Steve Millard
    COSE

  • Deborah Chaddock Brown said,

    Steve,

    Thanks so much for your comment and explanation of the process. I was not aware John was presenting – he is an amazing force in the customer service arena and highly respected. I thank you for the opportunity to propose a topic other than one of the many great topics listed. I remember that as an option last year but didn’t see that as an available option this year.

    I do look forwrad to the conference as I know from years past that it is highly anticipated and well attended and a great place to network and learn new ways to approach small business.

    Thanks again!

    Deborah

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