THE BUSINESS WE MEANT TO BUILD

How good businesses lose their way

Chapter 8 – Relationships Before Transactions

I have watched businesses grow in ways their founders once only dreamed about, and then watched something important quietly disappear as the dream became larger. In the early days, the owner answered the phone, recognised the customer, remembered the promise and understood that every transaction carried a little piece of the business’s reputation with it. Nobody needed to write a policy instructing the founder to care, because the business was still personal enough for the consequences to arrive directly back at their desk. Growth brought staff, systems, departments, software and an increasingly impressive vocabulary filled with leads, conversions, subscribers, labour costs, lifetime values and revenue opportunities.

None of those measurements is useless, and it would be foolish to suggest otherwise. Numbers allow us to compare performance, allocate resources, identify weaknesses and determine whether the business is producing enough profit to continue. The difficulty begins when we confuse measuring the relationship with actually having one. Somewhere between the customer entering the sales funnel and emerging as a completed transaction, the person themselves can become difficult to find.

Perhaps that is one of the stranger contradictions in modern business. We have never had more technology designed to help us communicate, yet customers often have to work harder to speak to an actual person when something goes wrong. We can automate the welcome, schedule the follow-up, personalise the marketing and record almost every movement a customer makes, but the customer may still have to explain the same problem to three different people. The business congratulates itself because the enquiry was answered within the required response time, while the customer quietly decides never to return.

The numbers may even suggest that everything is working. Leads are increasing, conversions remain acceptable and average transaction values are holding up. What the graph cannot easily show is whether the customer felt heard, whether the promise was kept or whether the person representing the business cared enough to notice that the standard had slipped. Trust rarely appears as a separate line in the accounts, but its absence eventually does.

Peter Merrett’s Wonderlicious caused me to wander a little further along this thought because his idea of wonder is not really about theatrical gestures or turning every business into a luxury hotel. The public description of his work speaks about bringing heart, wonder and hospitality into leadership and service, using many small details to create a much larger emotional impact. It also suggests that mission statements, employee handbooks and key performance indicators cannot, by themselves, create a workplace in which people feel valued enough to give their best. That sits comfortably with what I have observed over more than forty years of watching businesses move from the founder’s hands into increasingly complicated structures. in this context, does not need to mean amazement. It may simply mean that somebody noticed. A customer may remember that the staff member used their name, understood why the delivery mattered or took ownership of the problem rather than passing it to another department. These actions cost very little, yet they communicate something the largest advertising budget cannot guarantee: you mattered enough for us to pay attention.

That is an uncomfortable thought for businesses searching for the next great technological advantage. The answer may not lie in another platform, a more sophisticated customer relationship management system or an artificial intelligence assistant capable of producing a perfectly worded response within seconds. The answer may lie in whether the response deals with the actual concern rather than merely sounding as though it does. Technology can support a relationship, remember its history and make communication easier, but it cannot make the business care.

This is where the first pillar of Banks Consultancy still matters to me: we will speak in your language. It was never intended merely as a promise to avoid accounting jargon, although that was certainly part of it. It meant understanding the business from the owner’s side of the desk and explaining consequences in words connected with cash, time, risk, family and responsibility. The same principle applies to customers because speaking their language requires us to understand what they are trying to achieve rather than merely responding to the words entered into the system.

A customer who rings about a delayed order may not simply be asking where the parcel is. They may have promised it to somebody else, organised staff around its arrival or committed money they cannot easily replace. A client questioning an increased fee may not be accusing the business of dishonesty; they may be frightened that the relationship has changed without anyone bothering to explain it. When the person answering responds only to the data field in front of them, the business may provide a technically correct answer while completely missing the question.

Merrett’s language of hospitality helps here because hospitality is less about the industry in which a business operates than the way another person is received. It asks whether the person felt welcome, understood and important while they were dealing with us. His publicly described service principles include transforming ordinary interactions into memorable experiences, creating heart-led workplaces, recognising people, using thoughtful language and allowing hospitality to become a point of cultural difference. None of that requires a concierge desk, polished silverware or someone tying a ribbon around the invoice, although I suspect Peter could make even the ribbon memorable. rtance lies in the intention behind the detail. A ribbon attached without thought becomes another procedure, and procedures have an unfortunate habit of losing their meaning once everybody has forgotten why they were introduced. A small gesture made because somebody has taken the time to understand the person can strengthen a relationship. The difference is not the ribbon, the handwritten note or the unexpected telephone call; it is the presence of a human being who was paying attention.

This is often what disappears as the founder steps further away from the customer. The founder may have built the business around a standard, a reason for existing and a deeply held belief about how people should be treated. Staff, however capable, do not automatically inherit that belief when they sign an employment agreement. They can be taught the process, shown the software and measured against targets, but unless the purpose behind the work is made real, they may perform the skill without carrying the passion.

That is not a criticism of staff. It is too easy for an owner to stand on the outside, silently screaming that nobody cares as much as they do, while forgetting that nobody else was present when the dream was formed. Employees are not mind readers, and a framed mission statement near the lunchroom does not transfer conviction through the plasterboard. If the owner wants the customer experience to remain consistent, the owner must turn personal instinct into shared understanding without reducing that understanding to a lifeless script.

Perhaps the better question is not whether the staff know what to do, but whether they understand why the business chose to do it that way. Why is the telephone answered by a person rather than buried behind six menu options? Why is a complaint followed through by the person who first received it? Why is the smallest customer treated with the same attention as the largest, even when the immediate dollar value is different? A standard survives growth only when the people carrying it understand the principle beneath it.

This is where leadership becomes part of customer service, even when the leader rarely meets the customer. Merrett’s work places considerable emphasis on leaders becoming examples, making team members feel appreciated and creating workplaces in which people are excited to contribute. The connection is not difficult to see, because staff who feel invisible inside the business are unlikely to make customers feel visible outside it. An owner cannot continually treat people as labour costs and then expect those same people to treat customers as treasured relationships. a tendency in business to dismiss such thinking as soft because it does not fit neatly into a spreadsheet. I have never been particularly impressed by the division between soft skills and hard numbers, because the so-called soft issues have a habit of producing very hard financial consequences. A customer who no longer trusts the business stops buying, a valuable employee who feels unappreciated leaves and a reputation damaged through indifference becomes expensive to rebuild. The numbers eventually arrive; they are simply later to the meeting.

This does not mean staff should be given unlimited freedom or that every customer demand should be met regardless of cost. Heart-led leadership is not the absence of standards, accountability or commercial sense. Staff still need to understand what they can promise, which decisions they can make and when a matter should be escalated. The aim is not to remove structure but to build enough confidence within the structure for a person to respond as a person.

A script may help somebody learn the steps of a conversation, but it should not prevent them from hearing what has actually been said. A service target may encourage prompt action, but it should not reward the closure of a complaint that has not really been resolved. A customer satisfaction score may reveal a pattern, but it cannot replace the conversation that explains why the score moved. Measures should help people see more clearly rather than provide somewhere to hide.

The old expression “see a need, fill a need” remains useful, but only when we remember the person standing in front of us. Business is often described as identifying a market need and developing a scalable solution, which is reasonable until the market becomes so large that the individual need is treated as an inconvenience. The customer did not arrive as a demographic, a segment or a lifetime value calculation. They arrived with a problem they believed the business could solve, and the relationship will often be determined by what happens when solving it becomes slightly difficult.

There is something important in the idea of filling the need for the person in front of us, regardless of the point at which they entered the business. The customer purchasing the smallest product today may be testing whether the business deserves a larger relationship tomorrow. More importantly, the standard attached to the business should not become negotiable according to whether the immediate transaction is impressive enough to attract management’s attention. Founding principles that apply only to profitable customers are not principles; they are pricing strategies.

This is where growth for growth’s sake can begin cutting corners without admitting that anything has been cut. Faster response targets may produce shorter conversations, lower labour costs may produce less experienced staff and automation may remove the very moment in which trust was previously created. None of those choices is automatically wrong, because efficiency matters and businesses cannot provide unlimited service at an unsustainable price. However, the saving needs to be measured against what has been removed, not merely against what has been spent.

The cheapest transaction is not always the least expensive outcome. Reducing three minutes from a conversation may save wages, but it may also leave the customer uncertain enough to telephone again. Removing discretion from staff may reduce the occasional error, but it may force every unusual matter into an expensive management queue. Replacing human contact with automation may process hundreds of straightforward requests efficiently, yet the system must still recognise the moment when the person no longer has a straightforward request.

Loss of trust does not always announce itself with a complaint. Customers often leave politely, or simply stop returning, which allows the business to blame market conditions, competition or changing behaviour. New customers may arrive quickly enough to hide the leakage, particularly when marketing is working harder than service. The business appears to be growing while continually replacing people it should have retained, and the cost is buried across advertising, discounts, staff pressure and lost referrals.

This is one of those moments when What the Accountant Saw becomes relevant because the figures may be telling a different story from the one being repeated inside the business. Revenue may be rising while repeat business falls, transaction numbers may increase while margins weaken and customer acquisition costs may remain tolerable only because the cost of disappointment is not being separately measured. The numbers cannot feel betrayal, but they can often show its footsteps. An accountant acting like a genuine “silent” partner should ask what sits behind the growth rather than merely congratulate the owner for achieving it.

The Little Blue School Book approaches the matter from another direction by asking whose definition of success is driving the business. If the founder’s dream involved building something trusted, useful and worthy of recommendation, scale should strengthen that purpose rather than quietly replace it. There is nothing wrong with wanting more customers, greater profit or a larger operation, but the vehicle carrying the dream must still deliver the experience that made the journey worth beginning. Otherwise, the owner may reach the destination and discover that the business arriving there is no longer the one they intended to build.

Merrett encourages questions such as “What if?”, “What else?” and “What more?”, and I find something useful in the openness of them. They do not assume that the existing answer is wrong, nor do they demand that everything be discarded and reinvented. They simply create enough room for curiosity to enter the conversation. What if the customer’s frustration is telling us something the report has missed, what else could our staff do if they understood the purpose, and what more might be created through attention rather than expenditure? estions align naturally with CANEI, Constant and Never-Ending Improvement, because improvement does not always require something dramatic. A business can refine the way it welcomes people, explains delays, hands problems between departments and thanks customers for their patience. It can give staff better information, greater confidence and clearer authority without launching another transformation program. CANEI cannot become a relentless search for novelty while the customers needed to support the dream are quietly being dropped behind the vehicle.

There is also room here for the Discipline of Boring. Relationships are rarely protected by a grand campaign announcing that customers come first; they are protected by returning calls, keeping notes, explaining changes, fixing mistakes and doing what was promised when nobody is applauding. The wonder in Merrett’s approach does not diminish those ordinary actions but gives them purpose. The memorable experience is often created when boring things are done with enough care that the customer never has to think about them.

That may be the link between wonder and discipline that initially appears easy to miss. Wonder sounds spontaneous, while discipline sounds repetitive, but reliable service needs both. The discipline creates the foundation upon which a thoughtful person can notice an opportunity to do something more. Without the foundation, the unexpected gesture becomes decoration placed over a business that cannot consistently deliver the basics.

I have often wondered how many businesses lose their identity not because the founder stopped caring, but because caring was never translated into something others could carry. The founder may remain the only person who knows why the details matter, while staff are left to interpret a collection of disconnected rules. Speaking in their language matters as much as speaking in the customer’s language because people cannot protect a dream they have never been helped to understand. Leadership is not demanding that employees feel exactly what the founder feels; it is making the purpose clear enough that they can find their own reason to honour it.

A genuine “silent” partner might therefore ask questions that do not fit neatly into the monthly report. Are we losing focus on why the vehicle was built in favour of the speed at which we want it to travel? Have we taught our people the founding principles, or merely handed them procedures and hoped enthusiasm would arrive later? Are our measures encouraging staff to complete transactions, or helping them build confidence in the business?

The “silent” partner might also ask whether the owner is giving staff enough room to create the experience being demanded of them. It is difficult to ask somebody to take ownership while requiring approval for every sensible decision. It is equally difficult to expect warmth from people who are managed entirely through errors, targets and cost controls. The business may need rules, but the people applying them also need to know that judgement, kindness and initiative are not punishable offences.

Business is about numbers and bottom lines, and pretending otherwise does nobody any favours. The dollars matter because they fund the journey, reward the risk and allow the business to continue serving anyone at all. Yet those dollars still come from people willing to part with them because they believe the product, service and experience are worth more than the money they are handing over. That decision may begin with ability, price or convenience, but it is often trust that brings them back.

We do business with people, even when the transaction passes through software, a website or a staff member the founder has never met. Whether the customer deals with me, the owner or the newest person in the business, the experience still carries the name and promise of the organisation behind it. The standard does not need to be theatrical, expensive or endlessly personalised, but it does need to be recognisable and dependable. The question left with the owner is whether the habits, systems, measures and people within the business are still creating an experience worthy of the dream, because relationships are not built by saying that people matter; they are built in the countless ordinary moments when the business has the opportunity to prove it.