Teamwork and Problem-Solving

Take a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

The matter of how teams learn has been studied for decades, and nowhere does team problem-solving become more important than in customer service.

A customer is unhappy…often they don’t know exactly what’s wrong with a project or process, but they feel something’s not acceptable and they want the problem fixed. Or they’ve diagnosed the issue, pointed out the perceivable causes, and they want the problem fixed.

Setting aside team dysfunctions such as chronic distrust, finger-pointing, and extended grumbling, let’s consider the dynamics of a team that works well together.

Recognizing patterns. The team has solved complex problems before—in fact, it’s learned from those scenarios, and that knowledge has been faithfully stored in the team’s memory or some sort of company database.

Defined roles and quick responses. The team is so expert at problem-solving, everyone knows and does their part—often with a great deal of skill, so not a lot of time is wasted.

A history of team successes. This sort of team is often analyzed for the ingredients of their effectiveness, praised at association conferences, showered with professional rewards. Thus the team knows its knowledge is solid and unbeatable.

The video illustrates “intentional blindness”—made aware of one task, another facet of the picture was missed.

And therein lies the problem—or problems.

1. “You’re only as good as the problems you fix for us.” Service recovery is one of the few opportunities we get to show our customers what we can really do for them. If anything, customers expect a reputable team to fix problems more quickly and skillfully. Pressure’s on.

2. Misdiagnosis. The team is too quick to diagnose the problem (recognizing patterns) and arrive at a solution. Unfortunately, misdiagnosis is easy when time and money are running short, and customer displeasure is high.

3. Failure is a stranger. The team springs into action but when its efforts are not met with success, a great deal of time is wasted in dismay and growing frustration—“But this worked with the XYZ account…why didn’t it work now?”

Complacency may be the biggest disease in corporate life today, creating forms of “intentional blindness.” We often have to detach from not only the problem but also our usual problem-solving dynamics to fully perceive everything that’s happening in the picture. Next time your team is confounded by a problem, bear in mind—keeping your eyes on the ball may not be the only fix.

Please Specify the Rage of Your Choice

I’m not saying flight attendant Steve Slater isn’t a nice guy. When your mom’s terminally ill and you’ve been a well-respected employee in an industry that’s endured many declines since 9/11/01, and you routinely deal with customers who are rude, self-centered, and demanding…well, you’re bound to hit a snapping point.

The same week that Slater grabbed his beers and slid into folk-hero status, there was a news story about a woman in Toledo, Ohio, who pitched a tantrum at a fast-food drive-through window, punching the employee in the mouth before hurling a bottle through the window and driving away.

And you can Google “sideline rage” to get a complete listing of the parents who freaked out at their children’s sports events, attacking coaches, umpires, and other parents because they disagreed with a call. My home city of Atlanta measures 4.15 on the “road rage” Richter scale (with 5 being extreme rage) for having the most incidents, and of course we also have “workplace rage”—after all, what other nation originated the expression “going postal”?

So what’s my point? The air lines are still a branch of the hospitality business. Sports were intended to challenge our kids, and prepare them for healthy competition. Traffic can be infuriating, but it’s a fact of life for many cities; and work enables us to make money and have our lives and careers. And most Americans readily acknowledge that in a world filled with ethnic cleansing, starvation, poverty, and terrible natural disasters, we’re still the fat, educated, well-spoiled kids with the better schools and toys.

So…praise Mr. Slater as you will, but don’t emulate him. When it comes to customer service and your own mental health, cooler heads have to prevail. And if you’re finding it difficult to cool down, then you need to get help—from a sympathetic spouse, colleague, or manager, a professional therapist, a career coach, and/or a longer walk in the evenings. We have to be more strategic than merely pitching a fit.

Adventures in Cold Calling

I've decided the American workplace is increasingly impenetrable: Lawmakers fret our borders are too porous? Well, they should get corporate policymakers to re-engineer border patrol, because then even American citizens would have trouble gaining re-entry.

Assuming you access an organization that — commendably — doesn't use electronic greetings, what you get is that Darwinian holdout of a dying breed: the human receptionist. And, like the dodo, this animal does not understand it's already in God's waiting room.

Today's adventure went like this:

Me, the cold caller: "Hi, I'd like to speak with John CEO." (Name changed to protect blah blah blah).

Receptionist: "Who?"

Me: "John CEO."

Re: "What department's he in?"

Me: "Erm...he's your CEO."

Re: "Oh. OK. Hold on, let me check. Does he work in this building?"

Me: "If you're the corporate headquarters, I would assume so, yes."

(Muzak version of "I Wanna Know What Love Is")

Re: (returning) "OK, hon, I've done some research and it looks like Mr. CEO does work here, but he's out right now. Would you like to speak to one of his assistants?"

Me: (unstated: "I'll speak to Donald Trump if you've got him in fishnet tights")..."Sure. Who would I be speaking with?"

Re: "Hold on, let me check."

(Muzak: "Mandy"...life is cruel)

Re: (returning) "OK, hon, I'm switching you to Delphine Admin. She'll help you."

Me: "Thanks."

Re: "You have a nice (yawn) day."

Me: "Thanks."

Next: (voicemail) "Hello. This is Paul Backwater of the Employee Picnics department. I'm sorry I can't take your call right now, but...."

Me: (ringing again) "Ma'am? I was supposed to connect with your CEO's office but got your Picnics department instead. Can we try again for Delphine Admin?"

Re: "Who?!"

A Legendary Strategy: Celebrating Citizens of the World

Recently I posted something about the forces reshaping our customers’ worlds* and, to illustrate, let’s consider a consumer product that’s penetrated a global market and kept its brand alive on every front.

Think about Moleskines—“the legendary notebook”—now ubiquitous to nearly every bookstore and gift shop, and their online counterparts.

Moleskine offers a good durable product but it’s not the only black notebook on the market, yet it may be to blank books what Kleenex is to tissues.

Moleskine’s publisher Modo & Modo resurrected the black notebook with an internationally flavored mystique, but they didn’t restrict it to an elite. Instead they opened it up to the world so the notebooks can be used by anyone who enjoys keeping a well-bound pile of paper around. Consequently everyone could feel like an artist and adventurer. (Hey, Hemingway and Picasso used Moleskines! Maybe Indiana Jones had one too.)

Then, instead of getting tetchy over the way Moleskine owners altered the black covers with their own designs, they went on to celebrate how citizens of the world use the notebooks—featuring saturated, customer-submitted Moleskines on their web site, blogs, online galleries, and in traveling “Detour” exhibits that go from London across Europe to Tokyo. Life hackers and bloggers routinely show their pages online. Just search keyword “Moleskine” on Flickr and you’ll see how extensive it is.

Moleskine hit all four bull’s eyes: creating international pedigree and appeal, then opening it up to world markets (globalization); diversifying the product line to fit heterogeneous needs (demographics); not merely accepting but celebrating a rich customer base (complexity); and showcasing the unique ways a global village of customers are using the product (customization). Why is this so remarkable?

You could ask for “Moleskine” anywhere in the world and chances are very good the shopkeeper will know exactly what you mean.

* Why It's No Longer Your Daddy's Customer Service

Customer Labels

Customer. Client. Constituent. Donor. Stakeholder. Patient.

As much as labels tell us what is, they also tell us what isn’t—and therein lies the rub, especially in customer relations.

Plenty of organizations make this mistake: they’ll allocate best resources to serve important customers, at the same time forgetting the value of each and every customer. Taking it a step further, for many organizations, their suppliers and employees are also customers. (How often have I seen on consumer complaint web sites, “I may have to work for these bozos, but I’ll never spend my money on their products or services!”)

Here’s another fact of life: organizations who habitually deceive and mistreat their employees suffer the worst customer relations—because degraded, unhappy employees will, consciously or not, spread the misery around.

So what do you do?

First, get in the habit of treating everyone as a customer. Don’t differentiate: close the gap between customer and co-worker (or supplier). Hopefully this will mean a reduction in phony cordialities, and an increase in spreading a habit of trust and respect.

Second, expect to be surprised. Unfailingly, human beings manage to do better in life, so that delivery man coming through your service door may be working his way through school and could one day become a client.

It’s a matter of trust and treatment. Nobody does business with organizations for whom every transaction requires a leap of faith. Without trust, nothing of importance gets done.  And we may forget the things ever said to us, but we never forget the way we were treated.

Do Your Employees Know What to Do?

It’s easy to tell which organizations put a premium on customer service and on their employees by how the latter responds to conflict—particularly conflict with customers.

Case in point: Last week I was somewhat irked by a drive-through bank teller who interrupted my transactions to have a lengthy chat with a customer in another lane. I understood her intentions were good (be friendly), but her chat took up my time, and later I realized she’d made a large mistake in logging a deposit amount (to my disadvantage!). When I returned the next day to have the error fixed, I pointed out this behavior to the bank manager.

Today I drove through again, and the usually friendly teller was noticeably more frosty—which I found interesting.

A well-trained employee would’ve known: (1) not to personalize the complaint; and (2) said something along the lines of, “Good morning, Ms. Ke! Listen, I talked with my manager about last week’s mistake and wanted to thank you for catching it. I’m sorry you had to come back again, but I promise it won’t happen again.”

“Oh puh-lease,” you might say, “she’s human, she clearly has a right to be annoyed with you for complaining to her boss about her.”

Well, sure, but think about the messages being conveyed to the customer. By being curt, she comes off as petty, self-involved, and defensive. (Can such individuals be trusted with customer deposits?) If she’d tried option 2, she’d have radiated professionalism, warmth, and concern for the customer’s time.

I don’t like spending all my time in bank lines, so this individual had become a single point of contact for me where my bank is concerned—to me, she is the bank.

It could be a bank teller, a drycleaning clerk, a receptionist, or a parking booth attendant. When conflict comes up, do your employees know how to react so you don’t wind up alienating customers?

Right, Wrong, or Customer Service

One of the first mistakes most people make when responding to customer complaints is to get overly mired in determining right or wrong.

            “Of course,” you say, “that’s a no-brainer. The customer’s always right. Everybody knows that.”

            Unfortunately, not everyone does, because a great many customer grievances are not so cut and dry. How do you address a customer’s ire over your late delivery of a project when he himself was late getting essential information to you? How do you explain to her that her abrasive behaviors have been upsetting your staff?

            Here’s the key: Don’t think in terms of right or wrong. First, get inside the customer’s head to comprehend how they’re perceiving the problem. Usually you’ll find it has less to do with right or wrong, more to do with other issues that have cropped up to ruin their day—the customer may be feeling new stressors at work or need help doing some incidental face-saving.

            But don’t get into the trap of determining right or wrong: you’ll only earn your customer’s resentment. After all, who died and made you judge and jury?

Take the time to fully understand how your customer’s experiencing the stated problem, and you’ll be more than halfway there to solving it. Along the way, you may also gain crucial insights on your customer’s work environment.

The Technology of Listening

In the comedy “Last Holiday,” Queen Latifah’s character becomes so frustrated by her boss’s preoccupation with his cell phone, she winds up smashing it as a prelude to quitting.

Why is that funny? Why are handhelds used as symbols of arrogance? Obviously, it struck a chord because audiences cheered and laughed when Queen Latifah finally demolished her boss’ phone.

Ever worked with a bad listener? Ever worked for a bad listener who also derived a sense of personal importance from being “always on,” constantly texting and responding to cell phone calls when others are trying to speak? In her book Seven: The Number for Happiness, Love, and Success, former Reader’s Digest editor Jacqueline Leo remarks, “Our own conceit becomes one of the reasons people can’t put their machines down. They make us feel too important.”

Not being heard is frustrating and draining, and can usually mean business gets done ineffectively, with needless errors, or not at all. Relationships also suffer from the lack of courtesy.

Regardless of technological advances, being heard is a basic human need.

We’re so preoccupied by “digital traffic” we forget how important it is to listen, and to develop those skills. What’s more, we’ve forgotten the value of the listener in routine human contact. Being listened to has a transformative effect on human beings—they feel valued and revitalized—better information is exchanged, and relationships deepen and strengthen.

So bear this in mind the next time you put someone off because you’ve just got to get that text across: these devices are intended to help communication, not hinder them.

Why It's No Longer Your Daddy's Customer Service

Jeff De Cagna (Principled Innovation LLC) describes it as “the recalibration of society.” What does that mean?

Four forces are changing our world, another page in the story of man (ie, don’t try to fight this).

1. Globalization. What does it mean in human terms? Adult learning expert Elliott Masie illustrates with an anecdote: “I had dinner last night with colleagues from Europe. Most of them spoke four to six languages and most of them did business in many countries. I mentioned a price, and they could very quickly, in their head, translate it into euros, and two or three other currencies. Americans can’t.” Bottom line: Professionals must become truly global executives, not U.S. executives playing on a global stage.

2. Demographic changes. Over 15 years ago Atlanta became a stop for many of the world’s refugees, and I predicted an Ethiopian business coalition would soon become reality. And it has. As refugees and immigrants become entrepreneurs, and technology puts us in touch across barriers of time and space, so have markets changed around us. Bottom line: Serving a local homogeneous customer base is locking yourself out of significant economic opportunities. Local is global.

3. Complexity. Inevitable to pluralistic populations are bouts of turbulence as communities struggle to adjust to one another. One example is the need to learn quickly about other cultural norms and protocols for smoother business transactions: this involves suspending judgment and developing tolerance for ambiguities. Bottom line: Customer service will require alert employees operating under guidelines from a savvy management focus. It’s no longer enough to merely advise, “The customer’s always right.”

4. Customization. Recent TV commercials for consumer products speak to this. Everything from autos to auto insurance is modular, geared for personal customization. Bottom line: The belief that “one size will fit all” is, at the least, very complacent.

This is a time for learning and adaptability. It will only help your bottom line.

Don't Overlook Your Human Capital

Most businesses are so intensely focused on developing new revenues, leaders and managers typically overlook a hidden corrosive that will cost plenty if left unaddressed.

Aggression is valued in sales teams—and why not? Sales really isn’t for “sissies” or the faint-hearted; it’s demanding, vigorous work.

But there’s a danger in becoming a workplace culture so reverent of aggression that it tips into tolerating or even encouraging uncivil behaviors.

Low-intensity incivility ranges from stealing someone’s food out of the break-room fridge to leaving shared work areas untidy and depleted of supplies. High-intensity acts include sending nasty e-mails, hogging credit, or yelling at and publicly humiliating colleagues and subordinates.

Intentional or not, incivility exacts a huge toll: authors Christine Pearson and Christine Porath (The Costs of Bad Behavior) state rudeness is on the rise and estimate the tab at $300 billion/year for U.S. employers in expenses related to lost time, lowered morale/productivity, and employees fleeing a toxic workplace.

Fact: Chronic offenders will alienate other employees. Teams need trust (“psychological safety”) in order to learn and to reach peak collaborative skills, and offenders kill this, especially if they’re team leaders. Coping behaviors can include avoiding the offender; withholding effort, help, or information; or sabotaging the organization for tolerating the offender.

Fact: Witnesses to rude behavior register the same physiological stress reactions as targets, and few customers will continue to do business with an organization that permits rude behaviors, even from their high achievers.

Fact: Employees who are habitually targeted by rude behaviors will leave, and the costs of replacing them are high, to say nothing of the relationships and networks that leave with them. Pearson & Porath’s formula for quantifying this: 150% the annual salary of a low-ranking employee; 250% the salary of middle management; and as high as 400% the salary of upper management.

Customer Service Does Not Mean No Service

Few things in life are as fascinating as the denial suffered by humans who’ve invested in technology, and how they insist it will work despite problems cited by customers.

In recent years, for example, commercial printers have invested in FTP sites to enable clients to upload project files. FTP stands for “File Transfer Protocol” — such a site allows the printers’ clients to upload large files via the Internet quickly and securely. This means a project can be delivered to the printer 24/7, without transportation costs, particularly at the clients’ convenience. And yet I’ve only known a handful of FTP sites to work smoothly. Why? The reasons are spectacularly human.

Printers would change their upload procedure without notifying their clients about it: in other words, it took a failed upload to make that clear. When an upload was successful, seldom is an email automatically sent to the client confirming it.

Even more staggering, if an upload wasn’t successful, it meant the client had to persist in calling to ask, “Did my files come through?” only to receive that half-blank, “I don’t think so...let me check...no, they didn’t come through...can you resend?” The last part of that conversation could take hours to resolve. I’ve wondered how this made the printer look to their customers, about their commitment to service after the sale.

I’ve experienced upload complications that took up so much time, a courier could’ve been sent to pick up a disk for less money than was consumed by wasted time. I’ve also encountered technical people who wanted me to run through a variety of upload alternatives, without considering the impact on my time. Why is this important? The point is to get the work, not mire your customers in your technological wonders.

Put your ear to the ground and assess if your technology may in fact be annoying your customers.

The Waiter Rule

The word “context” is frequently used by those in the helping professions, to suggest that care be taken to understand an individual in a bigger-picture way—in the full context of his life, and not merely via a single aspect, such business identity. Western cultures tend to be “low-context,” preferring to focus in on specific aspects. In contrast, certain Asian cultures are “high-context,” believing it’s important to comprehend the character of the whole person, so it would not be impolite to ask a new business associate where she is in birth order, a bit about family history, and how or why she chose her career.

As emotional intelligence and soft skills gain importance in how we conduct business, we’re going to see a more intuitive, high-context approach to selecting candidates for jobs and suppliers for business relationships. This will require a more articulated, well-defined customer service attitude—ie, zero-tolerance for abrasive jerks.

For example, many leaders take cues from “the Waiter Rule.” Recently one of my clients took a new supplier to lunch to discuss a potential business relationship. Up until the lunch, the supplier had been genial, friendly, and alert. Things looked promising. But at the restaurant, the supplier let down his guard and was rude and condescending to a waitress who’d gotten his order wrong.

My client was startled by the change in behavior and, needless to say, the guy didn’t win the account.

Or, to quote CEO Bill Swanson of Raytheon: Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can switch the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they're interacting with. Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles.