a serious Biz lesson from a bunch of guys with their legs crossed:
(Time to read this Blog is about 4 minutes)
Before we get to the main topic, here are a few things to get you thinking or smiling:
- My Biz Quote of the week:
“Creating world-class operating efficiency is important…but it’s your extraordinary customer experiences that keep customers coming back.”
…Donald Cooper.
- Quick Biz Tip:
It’s time for a mid-year business check-up.
We’ve just passed the half-way mark for 2026. Have you done a mid-year check-up on your business or department?
Are you on track with sales, expenses, profitability, staffing, training, product or service innovation, customer service commitments, environmental commitments, systems improvement, commitments to your Team, inventory management, marketing & promotion?
Whatever it is that needed to get done in the first six months, did it happen? If not…why not? Who or what is really holding you back…and what are you doing to fix that?
There are only 5 ½ months left in 2026. Will you achieve your commitments by the end of the year, or will you end up on December 31st creating excuses for what didn’t happen?
- Fun Fact: For the first time ever, the people of France are drinking more beer than wine.
- Canadian Universities are falling behind. In the annual ‘World University Rankings’ 37 of the 38 Canadian university fell in the rankings this year. The University of Toronto, which is Canada’s top-ranked school at No. 23, globally, was the only university to hold its position.
The decline reflects years of inadequate funding. For years, money coming in from international students allowed schools to grow their programs and bring in top researchers without added government funding or domestic tuition hikes. Now that the program has been curtailed, many universities and colleges have had to lay off workers, freeze new hires, and cut programs.
Canadian universities and colleges were forced to limit foreign students because the federal government introduced strict caps to alleviate pressure on the housing market and public infrastructure. This measure also aimed to curb “bad actors” and private colleges from exploiting students through predatory practices and low-quality education.
Down the road we’ll pay a big price for this decline in the quality of higher education and the important research that universities do.
- The high cost of weddings. June is a big month for weddings. The average cost of a Canadian wedding is about $42,000. A large (100 to 150 people) traditional wedding can cost $100,000.
23% of Canadians opt for a common-law relationship. That’s the highest percentage in all G7 countries. The money they save goes a long way to making a downpayment on a home.
Destination weddings are also very popular. Technically, City Hall is a destination!
- AI Update: AI-powered systems are revolutionizing urban building inspections by utilizing drones, computer vision, and machine learning to analyze structural integrity, facades, and construction compliance at significantly faster speeds than traditional manual methods.
These solutions can detect issues like cracks, water leaks and corrosion in seconds, reducing inspection timelines from months to hours.
Now, to this week’s important topic:
Doing the ‘math’ of customer service…
a serious Biz lesson from a bunch of guys with their legs crossed:
Whoever designed the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto simply didn’t take the time to understand their customers…or they suck at math. This 20-year-old performance venue was built specifically for opera and ballet…but not for peeing.
At intermission recently, the line-up for both the men’s and ladies Restrooms stretched clear across the lower lobby. I didn’t check the ladies washroom, but here’s the inside scoop on the ‘Gents’…5 urinals for an 850 seat theatre. Somebody didn’t think it through. Here’s the math, as I see it. Pay attention, there is an important business point here.
- Number of seats in the theatre…850.
- Estimated ratio of men to women at any given performance is 40% males = 340 males.
- Estimated percent of older adult males (remember, it’s an Opera and Ballet venue, so there’s a preponderance of ‘older’ males) who will need to use the washroom at intermission = 75%, or 255 males who need to pee.
- Assuming it takes men one minute to pee, this means 255 minutes of total ‘peeing time’ is required.
- Number of urinals in the main washroom of this 850-seat theatre = 5.
- To accommodate 255 ‘peeing minutes’ with only 5 urinals would require an intermission of 51 minutes.
- But the time available to pee during a standard 20-minute intermission, allowing 5 minutes to get from your seat to the lobby and back to your seat, is 15 minutes.
So, if anyone had done the simple ‘customer service’ math here, they’d have known that 20 urinals are actually required…not 5. This is not even a near miss. How can architects and engineers be this bad at math…or do they just not care?
I know financial advisors who promise every client that they’ll give them 12 to 14 hours a year of analysis, planning and face time…and they have 370 clients. Do the math; this is 4,810 hours a year. If they bust their behind, the most time they could have for client-focused work is about 2,000 hours.
So, here’s the business point…have you done the customer service math in your business? Do you have the phone lines, the staff, the cash desks, the shipping bays, the production capacity, the hours in the day, the ‘whatever is required’ to keep your service promise, differentiate you from your competitors and delight your target customers? Do the math!
That’s it for this week…
Live brilliantly and be kind to each other!
Donald Cooper
Donald Cooper speaks and coaches internationally on management, marketing, and profitability. He can be reached by email at donald@donaldcooper.com in Toronto, Canada.
