What Does It Take?

I’m always telling myself to have courage, to be stronger today than I was yesterday, not because anything bad is happening, but because the present can be so beguiling, so quiet and flat and innocent. And yet tomorrow begins today. I don’t want to cope with life by becoming an unconscious person who destroys things and moves on heedlessly.

I wrote that as my status post on Facebook a couple weeks ago, then was surprised by the reaction it got: friends “stole” it for their own status posts and later their friends reposted it as well.

But why?

Life requires courage—not always the adrenaline-pumping sort where you rush into a burning building to save a client’s project, but the extra nudges it takes to face the phone yet again (cold calling), to sort through complex questions (client may be unhappy), and to build solutions at work (too many deadlines looming), often with people you may not even like working with, who may whine and bellyache every step of the way.

Tomorrow does start today. A history buff, I like considering the influences of the past on our lives today, but to get things done—to be productive—we have to appreciate how actions today set up results tomorrow. If you don’t cold call today, it’ll be even harder to start tomorrow—and tomorrow may be when you need the new revenue. Got a problem with a colleague? Talk bad about them behind their back? Tomorrow you may have to account for yourself. Be ready.

The point to life is to become a more conscious person, to outgrow narcissism, to realize we may rationalize well, but in the end a hurtful action here and now will have a painful reaction there and later, even if the one you hurt is too proud or savvy to show how they’ve been damaged. There’s no getting around it: if you live and work heedless of anyone’s interests but your own, sooner or later you’ll have to understand what you did, and it could be a very difficult reckoning.

Next week: OK, so what?

The Best Crisis Handling Solution is Prevention

Every organization will face a crisis at least once every three to five years. Its cause may be internal (lapsed judgment), or external (natural forces), but the best way to handle a crisis is to first anticipate it as fully as possible.

A naïve, passive, or myopic organizational culture will believe nothing bad can happen to it, because so far nothing has. Many organizations simply regard preventive measures with distaste, as if envisioning calamity is equal to inviting it.

But then look at what happened with the BP oil crisis. One of the dismaying aspects was public realization that BP had no “Plan B.” As oil gushed like blood from a wound, it became clear nobody at BP really knew how to respond, and that fueled public disgust with BP’s leadership. We need and expect leadership to know what to do when things hit the fan—but even more, to know how to anticipate and prevent such things from occurring.

The point of crisis handling is prevention, not to ask, “What could possibly happen?” but rather “What would be the consequences to this organization and its constituents if the worst possible thing did happen?”

For starters, posing a question like that gets brains at the table thinking about what those worst-case scenarios might even be. And from there you can block out crisis preparedness plans, and their corresponding messages to the public.

To avoid that analysis on the superstition that it would only invite trouble is . . . well, foolish, to say the least, and the last thing you want is to have your customers assume the role of warning alarms.

Post-incident, as company spokespeople waited on lawyers to vet hastily constructed messaging from PR professionals, plenty of customers have stood in front of TV mikes telling the public, “I warned them over and over again, it was a disaster waiting to happen!”

Customer Service or Bust

Years before the Great Recession, I was alarmed to see a change in behaviors: as if a strange malaise had overtaken the working world, most organizations were becoming indifferent and even punitive toward their customers. Incivility marked the way work was handled between internal customers.

During economic lean times, it’s easy to take an “every man for himself” attitude but a couple generations of consumers were altered by the recession. My prediction? Recession-weary consumers would become exacting and more demanding about how they’re treated by their suppliers. This has come to pass.

“Relationship” and customer loyalty will be more important than ever. Your granddaddy’s “the customer is always right” has evolved—thanks to the Internet, social media, and m-commerce options—into questions like: How consistent is our branding? Do we have the right interaction mix so customers can easily find and stay engaged with us? Will our call center folks respond knowledgeably when queried by a customer who’s just pulled info off our Web site? 

Ask not how to make the customer more accountable to you; ask how you can be more accountable to your customer. How easily can your employees see a profile of each customer they’re talking with? An associate told me he stayed with his mobility provider because even after he’d called to explain why payment would be late, they were understanding and never failed to thank him for 15 years of patronage. How well have we been using analytics to understand our customers’ values and purchasing behaviors?

Do you have a strategy for becoming a preferred supplier? Just getting enough work to make revenue goals is not enough. Customers are shopping for relationship now more than ever, and it takes a whole different set of ideas and behaviors to garner preferred supplier status than to merely “make nice” with one’s customers. How good’s our ability to give our customers an intelligent, customized response?

Rules, Policies, & Disruption

Every industry needs rules for the greater good. Fond as I am of regulations prohibiting pilots and brain surgeons from drinking on the job, I often ask clients of other service industries:

“Are your policies in place to make life easier for you or your customers?”

Netflix customers may never speak to a service rep, but given Netflix’s customer-centric protocols, it’s easier to get a movie from them than dealing with a clerk at one of their competitors’ outlets, especially if you get one who relishes reciting homegrown policies about late returns or, as in the 1990s, rewind fees.

“When a customer makes an honest mistake and breaks one of your rules, do your employees know how to come up with solutions that will delight rather than punish the customer?”

I have an affection for market innovators, ones who shun the rules put forth as “conventional wisdom,” instead creating protocols that actually make life easier for their customers. Why?

Media futurist Gerd Leonhard advises against “meaningless disruptions” such as advertising a product/service simply to put out the hype but then see it fail to make life easier for consumers. It’s not that “consumers are getting smarter” but that they always were smart—and smart people know how to find alternatives.

Advertising must contain meaningful content. Disrupting consumers’ lives with multi-channel ads and promo offers must result in lasting customer engagement because, more and more, consumers are saying, “I can decide for myself, thank you!” 

Beware the Blurts

Good intentions often make us say things we shouldn’t, especially when the pressure’s on and the customer’s complaining. Here are some common mistakes—no, here are some deal killers:

Denying the customer’s right to his experience. A common mistake is to blurt out variations along the lines of, “Oh, that’s not true!”… “I’m sure our employee didn’t mean it that way!” … or “No one’s ever complained about that before!”

• What the customer hears: “You better prove you have a case before I believe you enough to help you.”

• What’s better? Listen. Your job at that moment is to fully understand the customer’s experience of the problem.

Blaming the customer. This can happen subtly, an accusation made via implication or nonverbals, but just because it may be inferred or unspoken does not mean the customer hasn’t picked up on it. “Well, we could’ve gotten this done on time, but we didn’t get your content until a week after it was promised to us.”

            • What the customer hears: “It’s all your fault.”

• What’s better? Alert the customer to budget or timing concerns before they become issues, and remember you’re in the business of providing solutions. You’re not there to ward off imagined litigations by assigning blame.

Typecasting the customer. This happens in the most egregious circumstances, when the workplace culture has become so politicized that an adversarial “us-them” attitude has developed. Customers are outsiders, therefore they’re “idiots”… “crazy” … “ill-informed”….

• What the customer hears: They don’t need to hear anything. Sooner or later, that attitude of condescension or resentment seeps through employee pores and taints interactions with your customers.

• What’s better? Workplace culture attitude adjustment. Better make it quick too.

The value of story

Human beings love stories, and we’re natural storytellers as well.

And one of the first things a fiction writer learns is “Show, don’t tell.”

Instead of saying “Harry was a busy, impatient man,” it’s more evocative to say “As his wife described her day,  Harry drummed the table with his fingers until she glared at him.” That says a lot about Harry, his wife, and the possible state of their marriage.

            And here’s how stories fit in with work life.

            • Don’t sell the product or service; tell a story. Instead of praising the new capabilities you’ve just invested in, tell the prospect a story about a client who had a particular problem and how your team and this new capability solved the problem.

            • Praise in detail, not generalities of business-speak. Got a great employee? Don’t just say “Susan consistently demonstrates professional skill” but “Susan returns client calls within 24 hours, tries to regularly meet with each and every customer, and endeavors to keep them informed of new trends and technology.”

            • Customers tell stories too. That’s the power of word-of-mouth: free advertising! The best stories anyone could ever tell about your company arises from complaint resolution: “This vendor made a small mistake on our project but when we pointed it out to them, they didn’t get defensive. They thanked us for catching it, made the improvements, and took care of us immediately. I’d recommend them without hesitation. Heck, everyone makes mistakes.” (What could’ve happened: “Oh my God, we caught a mistake they’d made and you would not believe the hassle we experienced trying to get this little error resolved. First, they got huffy and hinted we’d caused the problem. Next they apologized, which somehow didn’t make it better because by then we were desperate to just get it done on time. Hire them with caution!”)

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?!"

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.

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.