Reflections for New Years Day

I guess New Year's Day brings out the thoughtful side of me because I've been reflecting about a lot of things today, including my business.

I started LABEShops 13 years ago now (wow!) when I launched SensualElegance.com in 2001. It's been a long, often bumpy road, but honestly, owning your own business is truly awesome - headaches and all.  Things haven't been perfect - especially the last 2 years with sites hacked and still being rebuilt - but I am persevering when I've seen other businesses (including some of my suppliers) fold up shop.



Learning has always been important to me and I've learned a heck of a lot over the years from more about bookkeeping than I ever wanted to know to how little customers actually read what you write on a website. I still have a lot to learn which is why I've been absorbing a ton of webinars, websites, and books trying to move my business to the next level.

At the same time, I know I need to refocus on some of the basics like customer service. This one is always hard for me because, as a 1 person company, I find it getting more and more difficult to keep up on things. Just yesterday I had a customer ask for a tracking number and realized I hadn't gotten it from the warehouse even though I sent them the order more than 3 weeks ago. I should have caught that and followed up on it before the customer ever asked, but just got so busy with everything else, I didn't notice.  A poor excuse I know and I need to do better.

So today I have decided that SCS - Superior Customer Service - will be my goal for 2014. Tony Robbins says that "to decide is to cut off from all other possibilites" and that is why this is a decision. I am totally committed to making it happen.

Back in the early days of the stores I could tell you every customers name and what they ordered from memory, but as the volume of orders have grown (which of course they need to or I cannot pay the mortgage!), more and more things have slipped thru the cracks like not noticing I didn't have a tracking number for that previously mentioned order. I've been trying to compensate with better software and programs, but not everything is in place yet and some things that are in place I realize I have not been utilizing to their fullest potential.  And things like my return system still need a major overhaul to be really helpful.

A planned software update on the stores hasn't happened yet - those of you who tried to visit them December 29 & 30th noticed the "Closed for Maintenance" message. We finally had to abort the attempt and restore the previous version. Hopefully sometime this month the update will be figured out as several great new features would really be helpful.  Thankfully I have a great webhost now that really knows the software I use so they are working on figuring out the issue and why what should have been a very easy transition thru us for a loop!

I also ordered a new phone system so hopefully voice mail will stop being stupid! (Right now, my message does not say "leave a message" because more than half the time when I try to play one back it sounds like gibberish and is totally garbled so I cannot understand it!) Once I get the new phones and voice mail, I should be able to actually return messages rather than just telling you to "please try again later".

So it's going to be a year of growth, SCS, and greatness! Because I have decided it will be, dang nab it!