420: Balancing Data and Intuition when Making Decisions
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How should you use data when making decisions in your business? Data and quantitative information provides invaluable surety when we look to solve problems in our business. However, there are limitations to the accuracy and applicability to the data we collect. Ultimately, we are at the interplay of facts and figures and emotions with our customers. We break down how this impacts making good decisions and practical applications to use today!
Main Topics:
Know your customer
Data has its limitations
Take a balance approach
Practical applications
Main Takeaway: Data and metrics should be used in conjunction with your insight to make well-rounded decisions.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, pet, client, measure, pet sitters, metrics, number, service, surveys, decisions, customers, data, build, good, feedback, customer satisfaction, revenue, lead, referrals, happiness
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:00
Oh, welcome to pet sitter confessional an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you to pet sitters associates and our Patreon members for supporting today's show Patreon members are those who have found value in the over 400 episodes we have now. And if you have found value as well, if you get something out of the episodes, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support, to learn about all the ways that you can help the podcast. As business owners, we tend to talk about the numbers and the analytics and what it means and measuring things and having goals and doing it the smart way the measurable achievable attainable, trackable goals, we tend to build to what we measure. But if what we are measuring is wrong, we will build the wrong thing. Like we can't always measure what we need to build to. So what exactly are we talking about here? You know, we shape our businesses based on the feedback and the data that we get, whether that's from a yearly client survey, or a quarterly employee survey that you send out, we shape our businesses based on that feedback. And that data that we get back, we can, you know, put out a social media post and we get several new inquiries. So we put out more social media posts like that, they say, we say, Hey, this is this is what the people like, we're going to do more of this. And so we get more inquiries. But ultimately, though, we are really at the interplay of facts and figures here and in emotions with our customers as well, because it is hard to measure how happy your services make your people, you know, in time to pet or other similar software's, they have the happiness survey that the client can fill out at the end of the visit and say, Did you do a great job did you not do a great job. But if people don't fill those out, we can't really know what they were thinking or feeling.
Collin 01:48
And even if you do send out a questionnaire, or they do fill out those surveys, it's never really going to capture the impact that it has on their lives. And then honestly, many times we assume people continue to use our services and that they're happy, because they continue to use us. But it could just be that the client can't really be bothered to switch or you're good enough for them.
Meghan 02:11
Yeah, we've talked about that before of the cost of switching to another petsitter is too high that they may not be blown away by your services, but they just don't want to take the time or the money or whatever to switch to somebody else.
02:24
And oftentimes the things that matter are the things that really can't be measured or put into a spreadsheet, like like happiness, genuine happiness for people. Obviously, you have to do your due diligence, you have to be prudent in your decisions. But at the end of the day, you have to know your customer. So well, you have to trust that you know your customers so well, that you can't help but help them every single time that you conduct a service.
Meghan 02:48
Or like peace of mind, we say we're in the peace of mind business. But how do you measure peace of mind? How do you know I have now given Roxy and her owner peace of mind, because I've taken care of them.
Collin 02:59
This is an example of how in our businesses, there are things that can't be measured. And those things are oftentimes the most important that to understand our business. And they're more important than the things that can actually be measured. So again, have that intrinsic understanding of the numbers. But we have to make decisions in areas of uncertainty that come from understanding our clients and their needs. There's the things that they don't say that they want, but that they actually do. And so by you quote unquote, get to them, you understand them, you have that avatar built out so well, that this person your ideal client is like is second nature to you, you know them as well as you would do a spouse or significant other or family member, you can kind of predict their next move through all of your market research all of your understanding of them, your conversations with them and your understanding of how that kind of person operates in the world. Okay, maybe not a spouse, but a really close, okay, that it might be a little creepy, sorry.
Meghan 03:57
A really close friend. But
Collin 03:59
but all of these have a lot of implications that have really important implications for how we run our businesses. Again, this, we're talking about this, we have a desire to measure things, we have a desire for the other feelings and emotions. And we can find ourselves building towards the things that we can measure. But again, those aren't always the most important things, or they're not always the most impactful things to our business. So we end up missing out on this whole other realm of connection and business opportunities, because it doesn't show up in a spreadsheet.
Meghan 04:30
But numbers are important. Metrics are important. So we have we have guidance that we use when making decisions and we guide by metrics. We often rely heavily on the data to guide our decisions to say is this the next step that I should take or not? It could be financial metrics, like revenue and profit margins, it could be customer metric metrics, like the happiness surveys, or it could be operational metrics like production efficiency, or something like route planning. And while these met trips are important, there is a risk there of doing it incorrectly. If we focus on the wrong metrics, ones that don't actually drive our business success, it can lead to poor decisions, and negative outcomes of not happy staff or not happy clients, it can really underscore the importance of selecting what the correct thing is to focus on. And, you know, you continually evaluate the effectiveness of what you have chosen. Like, if you only focus on the number of bookings you get and not where the people are located in your service area, or maybe they're even outside of your service area, you're potentially going to miss running your business efficiently?
05:38
Or is it becoming a business that you don't actually want to be running, if you have a small service radius, and you just judge your business of success based off of the number of bookings per month? Well, you can grow your business exponentially if you continue to take business that is outside of your service radius. But that's not healthy, that doesn't set you up for success. And so you actually aren't running the business that you want to be, but because you picked that metric you think you are. And then even if you've picked the metric, sometimes, as we already mentioned, there are limitations to the data that you can bring into your your business, not everything critical to your success can be measured, and measured accurately. And that's really important to understand that just because you can measure something that you can put a number on something doesn't mean that it was measured accurately. You can think of things like company culture, employee morale, brand, reputation, customer loyalty, how exactly do you measure brand or reputation, you can send out flyers, and you can send out forms for people to fill out. But if you're not asking good questions, if you're not doing it consistently, if you're not hitting in your target market, you're not going to get a good response to that. Again, while all of these can be quantified to some aspects, they're often not done precisely or accurately. And you might need to have some nuances taken into place, or you might miss whole interpretations entirely.
Meghan 06:57
When we focus on the metrics solely, we potentially lose the ability to be agile and adaptable, we need to be these things in order to shift our focus and strategies based on client expectations and where the industry is going as a whole. And if we are measuring the wrong things, we're going to be focusing on the wrong things and end up maybe in pitfalls or pouring our resources, whether it's financial or time into the wrong buckets, where we need to be going.
07:27
Okay, going back to the if you just measure by number of bookings per month, and you find that number growing, you're gonna do the same thing that you did the previous month to jack up your numbers of new bookings. But what you may be missing is that the language that you're using is actually attractive to people who live in a different part of town or live outside of your service area. So you you're not able to adapt and make those changes quickly. Because you don't have any good information coming on. And you're not having to, you're not being able to look at that correctly.
Meghan 07:57
And with being adaptable, we need to also be innovative. And really visionaries, we are the CEOs of our businesses, we need to sit at the top and and guide the ship, direct the ship where it needs to go. And sometimes the metrics cannot capture these innovative ideas or the visionary strategies that we need to set because they are unprecedented. And therefore they can't be measured by existing standards. If we want to go in a completely opposite direction, offer a new service, we don't really have data in order to make that decision. But if we see the tide shifting and going, Oh, this is a new direction that I want my business to go, you can do that. Now you can send out client surveys and ask their opinion on what they would like to see in your company. And you can do something with that data, you can measure that metric. But at the end of the day, if you are charting a new course for your business, if you're doing something you've never done before, there isn't really a whole lot to back that up with. I'm gonna
08:55
go to an example here from the technology realm of places like Microsoft, and really IBM, these these companies would send out surveys and people kept buying their equipment, but but they kept buying them because they were using them. They didn't buy them because they love them. They didn't buy them because they had a new need for them. And what this kept these two companies from doing was it kept them from innovating because their metric was customer satisfaction customer sat. And their customers were really satisfied with all the equipment that they were buying from them. But because they were so satisfied, management was so terrified to change anything to do something new to introduce a new chip or a new port or a new screen technology because they didn't want to upset their customers. And this held these costs these companies back for years and years and prevented them from being able to innovate or accept new technologies into their company, which the customers would have actually loved. They just didn't know about it because the company wasn't able to put it forward. So when we look to our own businesses, when you look at your policies, your procedures, you may feel like your customers really, really love your cancellation. policy, but it's not working for you. If you're only concerned about customer satisfaction and not your personal happiness, then you're going to miss being able to innovate in these policies and end up feeling like you're you're only beholden to your customers. But because they're satisfied, you have to keep doing that. And that's a really toxic relationship that we find ourselves in all because we're data driven, and looking towards our customers.
Meghan 10:23
So it may not mean that we rely solely on the data and the metrics. And we also don't always go with our feelings that there is a happy middle, that we can have a little bit of both and still make wise choices.
10:37
Yeah, really a holistic approach to where we have data, we have metrics, it's used in conjunction, it's used next to it's in in with in concert with our insight, our understanding of our customers, so we have more well rounded decisions so that you still have an opinion about how you run your business, you look at data to either support your opinion, or go against your opinion. And then ultimately, you could still decide to move in a direction that's opposite of your data, because you still feel like it's a good fit. It's, this is really required. Ultimately, this holistic approach is more balanced or nuanced understanding of where data fits in versus our feelings and emotions. It allows you to have a much better, much more robust strategy, and and using have the tools and resources that you have at your disposal. When you make these kinds of decisions. This balanced approach that considers both quantitative and qualitative factors and decision makings leads you to better making better decisions for you and your business.
Meghan 11:36
A great decision is pet sitters associates, as pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. And that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help for over 20 years, they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at Pet sit llc.com. If you would like a discount, you can join when clicking memberships Pet Sitter confessional use the discount code confessional when you go to checkout, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at petsfit llc.com. So far, we've basically been looking at this 30,000 foot view level. So let's break this down into how we can actually apply this into our businesses. How how can we be careful when building to what we measure. And the first one is customer satisfaction. So again, the client surveys that you send out maybe yearly, maybe every six months reviews that you get to the end time to pet and other software's the happiness surveys, you can build that that reputation and for being attentive and responsive to client needs. If they are saying, Oh, I didn't really like when the senator did this, or I didn't really appreciate when this it was something was done this way. You can be responsive to that. And it might encourage repeat business and thus referrals,
12:56
right? So they're not just paying attention to Did they give you a five out of five or a 10 out of 10? How many stars that they give you. But what were the words that were associated with that review, both positive and negative. That's that qualitative nuance that you're able to capture when there are both written aspects and write me on what zero to five stars, that's okay to have. It's okay to know and understand that. But the real power here, the real strength comes from the words that people use, if they start using words like oh, this person is very this person has a lot of integrity. I'm trusting this person, if they use peace of mind you Okay, I did something right with that person. Let me think about what I did, how I on boarded them how my updates were, that could have led to that. So now I can know what to try again for the next client.
Meghan 13:42
Or if you have a really close relationship, you can even ask them. What did I do to provide you with that trust or that peace of mind? What about my service was exceptional in your eyes, when measuring things, we also need to think about operational efficiency, you might measure the number of pets you can handle in a day, or the distance that you can cover for dog walks. But if you don't plan that effectively and efficiently, you're probably going to be off. It's that you know also that route planning that is so critical to what we do.
14:11
Again, if your metric is only number of dog walks a day, but not the number of right dog walks a day, or the number of dog walks within my service area, or the number of talks that I want to do. All of a sudden, all these qualifiers, which we don't always think of immediately. We just think of growth, big numbers, I gotta get this. But then you look at how can I implement this and the implementation, that's where I'm really struggling well, that I need to backup my data and look at my metrics a little bit differently, make sure I'm measuring them correctly.
Meghan 14:38
There's that saying bigger is better. But that's not always true. And in our businesses, that is definitely not always true, because our businesses are so nuanced and that there's so many different pets you could have in different houses and you don't want to be driving everywhere. You really need to make it the most efficient that you can and that's thinking through everything, not just the bigger and the better is going to get me to where I want to be,
15:01
how do we avoid the potential for measuring the wrong thing. And again, this comes back to something like an overemphasis on quantity. This is a really good example. Because again, if you focus too much on increasing the number of pets that you handle daily, without also considering the quality of your service, this whole process could backfire on you. And you might end up with unsatisfied customers, and really stressed out pets, if we build our business towards maximizing the number of pets. What else are we sacrificing along the way? What else are we losing out on in realizing that the data, the quality of service can't really be showing up in a spreadsheet, it's hard to actually do that, because we feel that we see that and our clients experience that. But the numbers tell us oh, we're doing great, because now we've got even more people to serve. And then again, we could also be ignoring our soft metrics, solely focusing on our hard metrics like revenue. And ignoring those soft metrics, like customer satisfaction, or pet well being can lead to you to make decisions that are actually negatively affecting your reputation, and customer loyalty. In the long run. It can be
Meghan 16:06
frustrating, though, because when we can't measure what we need, we don't really understand it's to a morphus to really figure out. So when you get those word of mouth recommendations, they are powerful tools in our industry, and but they're difficult to measure. So when you get those word of mouth recommendations, realize that those really are powerful tools that you can help to on your have on your social media have on your website, they can significantly impact your business.
16:36
And even though they're difficult to measure, when you do hear from somebody who said, Oh, one of your existing clients referred me to you, you know, you're doing something right. You know, you are and that is a good sign for your business. Even better than that. You just got one more client that month, it was how did I get this client this month? Because that's gonna tell me how I'm serving my existing clients.
Meghan 16:55
You mentioned something a minute ago, it was pet happiness. So how do you measure that? You know, the happiness and the well being of the pets are utmost important in this business. And it's not easy to quantify, but it definitely should be a priority. So how do you do that? Is it just oh, that the dog wags its tail at me today and didn't hide in the corner? Oh, that's progress.
17:16
Yeah, it could be or if you measure on the FAS scale, or if you do the fear free approach going, how is this pet behaving and reacting around me today? During this visit? How was it yesterday? How was it the day before? What can I do to impact that level that reaction tomorrow and really never kind of experimenting throughout, which leads
Meghan 17:37
us also to the quality of the interaction that we have with the pets that we come in contact with? It's hard to quantify that to measure it. But it is an important aspect that can lead to client satisfaction. If we say hey, we made this progress today on fluffy the cat. It was it was not huge progress. I couldn't pet fluffy, but she was no longer hiding from under the bed. She came just a little bit closer to me that's progress or could be just
18:03
reflecting on how you feel how do you feel like that interaction went? Do you feel like you were running too fast? Do you feel like you were not paying attention? Do you feel like you or do you feel like you were really focused that you were really in the moment that you were really focusing on what the pet was telling you, that's a level of quality that you can get. But again, that's hard to show up in a spreadsheet and put a score down and do that for every time, it's just kind of again, your your intuition is going to be driving a lot of these measurements, you need to know your quality of interaction, you need to know that happiness, you need to know that word of mouth recommendations. But those are really hard to get out with exact numbers. And then again, understanding if you even if you can put a number to them, it might not be accurate, or it might not be consistent. So we have to reflect a lot on our feelings and emotions and and talk and just have an open conversation with our clients to get to some of this.
Meghan 18:48
But there are actionable things that we can do in our businesses, even when we don't have specific quality metrics that we can go back to, we can have a balanced approach, we can focus on the quantitative, so the number of clients or the revenue or the growth, whatever it is for you. And then the also the qualitative aspects of the customer satisfaction, the pets wellbeing. And when we combine those, we can build a well rounded business saying there is a happy medium here, I don't always have to go with the data 100% of the time. And I also don't always have to go with the whims of my clients if it's not something that's aligning with my mission, vision and values. But if you do notice that a client or a few clients are trending in a specific direction, you can tailor your services to them. You can offer the tailor services based on the unique needs of the pet. Maybe you're finding a lot of the pets that you care for require a specific medication or an insulin shot, you can maybe make a package to tailor to them. It's not always going to capture the standard measurements but it can be a strong selling point. And you can use it in your marketing and your ad copy and your social media of saying I specialize in this area. I specialize in cats and eating slant shots,
20:01
or even to that particular client who has approached you with something that is a little bit outside of the norm, you taking your experience and expertise and crafting something that's specific to them. And one of the ways that you're able to do that is through your training and development, which is a huge aspect of what we do as our, with our businesses, especially when we're trying to balance this data versus this, this quantitative versus qualitative measurements. So invest in your training, invest in your development, for specifically for pet sitters for dog walkers, to ensure that you continually provide a high quality service, even though the benefits of doing this kind of education. And this investment in yourself might not be immediately measurable in terms of revenue, understand that it's still going to benefit you because you can tailor your services because that quality of care goes up, you know, that will eventually impact customer satisfaction, which will impact the number of referrals and your reputation, which will grow your revenue and your bottom line, eventually,
Meghan 21:01
which will also build trust, it's going to build trust with your clients, which is not easily measurable. But it can be a cornerstone for a successful business in this industry, the word of mouth so referrals, the the social media sharing, and the likes and the follows and all of that stuff, it builds the trust that your clients and potential clients can have with you. Just because somebody doesn't use your services doesn't mean that they don't trust you. You can have looky loos on social media that maybe they don't have a pet or maybe they don't live in your service area. But they trust you anyway, because of how you run your business.
21:38
And the last thing that we can do and kind of a big takeaway from all of this is that you should be actively seeking out feedback and making adjustments regularly collect feedback from your clients and make those necessary adjustments based on that feedback. Even if some of it pertains to aspects that are not directly measurable. So it could be timeliness. It could be tone, it could be all sorts of things. But whether you're asking for feedback after every single service, or after every single travel event, or once a month, or whatever it is, whatever however you decide to get that feedback, ask for it. And we have a whole episode about asking for feedback that I'll include in the show notes for how to go about those surveys and some best practices for that. But doing that allows you to get a little bit of insight into people so that you can make those adjustments and and the best time you want to make adjustments is or when they're really small. Instead of having to make huge major shifts and whole turnarounds in your business and redesigning your business from the ground up, making little adjustments, micro adjustments at a time based off of feedback and data that you're so feedback that you're getting from clients based off of the data that you're seeing and revenue, number of visits and all that stuff. And based off of your understanding your interpretation and your what you want in your business, all three of those we have to take into consideration and balance them out from time to time so that we can make those good holistic approaches and decisions in our business.
Meghan 22:59
Yeah, it's measuring the quantitative, the numbers, the metrics, and also going with our gut and trying to make the two work together as best as we can to run a successful pet business. We would love to know how you have done this in your own pet business. You can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com. or look us up on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional. Thank you to pet sitters associates and most of all, thank you for listening. We appreciate you and thank you for taking your time and listening to this. We will talk with you next time. Bye
