6 customer service clichés deconstructed.

6 customer service clichés deconstructed.

Apr 11, 2018 | Customers, Marketing

It seems that every time I pony up for another insurance bill, I get one of those customer satisfaction surveys emailed within 24 hours, asking a few inane questions about my ‘experience’ and the level of service I received.

There is no room to say it was at best nondescript, often crap, that insurance is a cost I resent, am  suspicious of, and just hope that I never have to find out (again) if the after the disaster facts are actually as the advertising blurb promises.

Customer satisfaction indeed.

Normally I just ignore them, as responding only seems to encourage. (a bit like voting)

However, a recent emailed questionnaire got me thinking about what customer satisfaction really is, and how we go about creating and retaining such an ephemeral and personal idea.

Is it enough that we ‘satisfy’ our customers, and if so, what does that actually mean?

‘Delight our customers’ is a phrase that seems to have made it onto a few mission statements over the recent past. Is that one better than ‘satisfy’ or just more hyperbole?

Jeff Bezos famously demands that there be an empty chair in every meeting, a reminder that everything Amazon does is aimed at customer satisfaction. Reed Hastings has built Netflix from a minor irritation to Blockbuster into a digital entertainment behemoth by being ‘customer obsessed.’

If we are to be truly customer focussed, what should all  the common clichés really mean?

‘We listen to what our customers tell us’

Really? I listen to what my aging mother tells me, but do I follow the advice? Rarely these days. It should mean that we understand not just the words, but  the intent, and we use the information to test, and retest the delivery of our value proposition.

‘We obsess about customer satisfaction’

Most obsessions I have seen are all about the obsessor, rather than the obsessee. (are they really words?). It makes some feel better to tell ourselves we are obsessed with customer satisfaction, it justifies those long workshop sessions in a nice location. Most times when I go out and ask customers what they think of the level of service they receive, it falls short of satisfactory, let alone obsessional, and is markedly lower than the score businesses give themselves when asked the same question. It is easy to pass this off as delusional, but the reality is that customers rarely think about service until they experience it, and then only when it fails them. By contrast, companies are genuinely thinking about service consistently because it is important to them, but in an abstract way.

‘We understand what the customer expects of us’.

That is great, but also a bit unusual, as different customers almost always are looking for different things. In B2B businesses, it is essential that you understand the detail of a customer, and potential customers business processes so that you can really tailor your offering. A bit harder in B2C, but it is still true that individuals are seeking a range of different things that add up to ‘satisfaction’ in their minds. The real task is to create a situation where the customer sticks with you through thick and thin, simply because they believe you are better than any alternative.

‘We put customers in front of profits’

This gets trotted out regularly, without any understanding of the implications. The reason we have customers is ultimately, to make profits, and without profits, there will be no customer service at all. There has to be a balance, but it is true that satisfied customers lead to higher profits, it is a hard balance to get right.

‘The customer is always right’

The old perennial, and it has always been nonsense. However, treating customers with respect, humility and giving them the opportunity to be right is a great strategy. The most common example used is the retail  chain Nordstroms in the US. As the story goes, take a car tyre into Nordstroms and demand your money back because it was not up to expectations, and they will give it to you, despite not selling tyres. Perhaps it should be ‘The right customer is always right,’ to reflect the reality that there are some customers who are more trouble than they are worth, and you hope they go to your opposition.

‘The quality of our products speaks for itself’

No it does not! You need to speak for it. The base expectation of any customer is that the product you provide will deliver the outcome you promise. That is quality. A Hyundai will get you reliably from point A to Point B, does that mean it is the same quality as a Bentley, which will also get you reliably from A to B?. The answer to that question will most often be ‘No’  but then defining the ‘Value’ delivered by the extra few hundred grand to buy the Bentley becomes a different conversation entirely, with different customers.

Creating great experiences for customers brings them back for more, delivering revenue at much a reduced cost  than if you had to find a new customer. Share of Wallet and Lifetime Customer Value are the most undervalued measures of sales effectiveness, and also the most effective.

Is your mentor asking you these 8 key questions?

Is your mentor asking you these 8 key questions?

Apr 9, 2018 | Governance, Leadership, Uncategorized

Successful people can always point to one, or a few people who over the years have contributed to their success. A great mentor does not tell you what to do, or how to do it, rather they examine motivations, objectives and options to help you determine which path you will follow, then provide feedback and suggested options for consideration.

The tool of an effective mentor is searching, challenging, and enlightening questions.

What does success look like?

This is a question that adapts itself from the little tactical things, to the big strategic challenges that need to be defined and faced. Creating a conversation where the goals are articulated by the mentee  creates ownership in their minds. ‘Owning’ a challenging  goal is the first essential step in achieving it.

What do you want to be different in 3 years?

This question is a follow up and supporting question to  the first one, and it gives a time frame, a powerful motivator to action, as it requires commitment. Together these two questions add up to what I call ‘hindsight planning‘.

What are the major obstacles being faced.

The obstacles we face are a mix of personal, and commercial, identifying the shape of them is the first step to developing strategies to overcome them. Like any problem, and obstacle undefined is never addressed in an optimum manner.

How do we measure progress?

Having defined what success looks like, and identified the major roadblocks, you have to at some point act, and measure progress towards the goal. Fine words without the actions to achieve them are just hot air.

What can you control, and what is outside your control?

Focused effort on leveraging the variables under your control that deliver the outcomes you want,  is essential. However, ignoring the things you cannot control, is a huge mistake. The best you can do is see, and have a deep understanding of how these uncontrollable factors may impact on the performance of your businesses and achievement of key objectives. Then you should  plan to enable the leveraging of potential opportunities that may emerge, while mitigating the potential negatives.

What are the options available?.

Encouraging wide and analytical thinking is necessary in the face of complex problems. This is a question to be asked every day, in relation to every action. Dealing with any uncertainty is always helped by understanding the options available, and only committing when they have been analysed, and then only when you need to progress. The danger of course is that there is an over-consideration, which becomes procrastination.

What would you do next time?

Explicitly learning from experience separates the successful from the rest.  Conducting a formal ‘After Action review’, a term that evolved from  the US army learning processes is common in large businesses after a capital expenditure project is completed. Critical review of actual outcomes compared to the plan is far less common in non-financial areas than it should be. The discipline is a crucial one, from the major strategic decisions to the tactical and team based projects on a shop floor. Those familiar with process improvement often use the term  ‘Plan Do Check Act’ which is a core discipline of process improvement.

Tell me more.

This is always a question to apply in any situation where you are trying to uncover the motivations, cause and effect, and implications inherent in any situation. The simple act of asking the question  ensures that the one being questioned has another look at their preconceptions, and barriers.

When you think you might benefit from this kind of collaborative performance management, give me a call. After 40 years of doing it, I have learned a bit that may be of value yo you.

Am I (as accused) just a cranky old curmudgeon?

Am I (as accused) just a cranky old curmudgeon?

Apr 3, 2018 | Governance, Leadership

SME network meetings can be very useful, and sometimes amusing, as well as being a considerable consumer of time and patience. They often seem to be infested with ‘life coaches’ and various brands of ‘personal coach’.

Coaching plays a crucial role in all our lives, our parents give it to us, those around us at work give it to us, our boss gives it to us, and if we are very lucky, we find at some point, or points in our lives, a mentor who is able to lift our performance significantly. Even Roger Federer, the greatest tennis player I have ever seen, has a coach.

However, at a network meeting I attended, I found myself chatting to someone who had a business in ‘corporate wellness’ who doubled as a ‘personal coach’ in everything from physical training, to it seemed, marriage counselling.

When asked, he was not able to define what a ‘Wellness coach’ did, and did not even have an elevator pitch that made any sense. It seemed he was there to make peoples life easy, help  them deal with stress, to anticipate stress and encourage practises that would help when stress came around again. It seems that he is doing OK, nicely dressed, a  nice car, but who knows, perhaps his mum gave them to him.

Maybe it is just me, but I failed to understand what he did, and why someone would pay him to do it.

When he finally asked me what I did, after blanketing me with fluffy bullshit for 10 minutes, I told him it was the same thing he did, but I had only two tools:

Communication and Transparency.

Communication.

Encourage and coach the leadership of businesses to ensure they have a coherent, well thought out strategy, along with the plans to implement and adjust as they manage their business across all the functional areas in as close to real time as possible. In addition, they have to accommodate the pressures from outside over which they have no control, but which will influence performance.  Then they need to communicate all that to everyone in the business, from top to bottom, so all know it, and understand it, relate,  and live to it.

Transparency

Transparency leads to accountability, due diligence and honesty, all of which adds up to trust.  It leads to understanding of what good performance of the business, their work groups and themselves specifically means, and what the impact of their performance has on others.

Easy.

Do all that and the need  for corporate wellness coaching goes away, as stress is managed and shared.

Recently I labelled myself a cranky old curmudgeon to a long term mate in a conversation after a ‘sherbet’ or two. He clarified by pointing out I had also been a cranky young curmudgeon. A bit harsh, although perhaps true, but I would prefer to call it ‘leadership’.

 

 

 

The formula for trust, and how to lose it.

The formula for trust, and how to lose it.

Mar 26, 2018 | Governance, Leadership

Building trust is a process, long term, incremental, and very fragile.

Trust given has always been earned, it is never just ‘given’. Sometimes trust applies to institutions.  We expect anyone holding office in an institution to act in particular ways that reflect the trust earned by those who have gone before.

This is why we no longer trust politicians, and many others in various forms of public life. Individuals have tainted the trust we have in the institution by their individual actions, and it affects all who are associated.

Reflecting yesterday on the disgraceful efforts of the so called leadership group of the Australian test team,  I felt personally let down, even somewhat soiled. Cricket seemed to be one of the last bastions of the  Australian ethos of tough, competitive fairness, and looking after your mates.

No longer. It is just another bunch of overpaid, self-interested ego driven dopes who do not deserve to wear the ‘baggy green,’ a symbol of what has gone before.

There is a formula for trust that I have applied to those with whom I work, encouraging them to think deeply about the components, then behave as the formula demands, every day.

Trust = credibility + reliability +Authenticity     divided by perceptions of self-interest.

Apply that formula to the current bunch and they fail, badly.

It is reasonable to think that the pressure of the moment got the better of their judgement, that deep down they are better than that, but then apply the formula, and the result tells a different story.

Steve Smith, perhaps the best batsman in a generation, will forever be remembered for this piece of stupidity, no matter what he has done, or will do, the decision to cheat will forever be an indelible stain on his reputation and credibility.

How can we trust him to lead an Australian icon.

Does he even deserve to remain in the team, irrespective of his prowess at the crease.

He is no longer a leader who we can trust, therefore he is no longer a leader, at best, just an incumbent.

The Kiwis, still smarting after the underarm bowling incident in 1981 will be laughing at us, and muttering ‘Told you so’

Cambridge Analytica and Facebook stretch the boundaries of digital privacy.. Further…Again

Cambridge Analytica and Facebook stretch the boundaries of digital privacy.. Further…Again

Mar 22, 2018 | Change, Governance, Strategy

The Channel 4 expose of Cambridge Analytica last week has started a firestorm of commentary.

Rightly so, but  is it not ironic that the tools CA used to swing the US presidential election are now being used against them after the tactics were revealed?

Facebook, and all the other digital platforms are just wholesalers of eyeballs, in business to collect then monetise their access to personal information, freely given. This how they make their money, exchanging access to the very detailed personal information they collect on their platform users, to advertisers for money.

I wonder if any of us should be surprised at the revelations? This is what they do with our cooperation. The problem in this case is that 50 million of the people whose data was skimmed did not know it was happening and had not given permission for it to happen.The tensions inside Facebook, and the other platforms, between those whose job it is to generate the revenue, and those charged with the responsibility for data security must make for some pretty lively conversations!

The access to the a wider set of eyeballs, via the downloading Apps, games, surveys, and the rest with ‘Friends permission‘ such as the popular game ‘Farmville’ enables access to the personal data of friends of those who are engaged. This Friends access allows ‘thousands of layers of personal information on millions of accounts‘ to be collected. That data was then analysed by Dr. Aleksandr Kogan using the principles developed by  the Psychometrics Centre at Cambridge University. Dr Kogan analysed the data collected for Cambridge Analytica, that had the objective of developing and delivering messages specifically targeted at an individual in order to move their voting behaviour.

Truly scary stuff, science fiction just a few years ago.

Facebook has since suspended Cambridge Analytica and associate SCL (Strategic Communication Laboratories) from facebook, while defending their own actions claiming ‘Protecting peoples information is at the heart of everything we do‘. Suspension is apparently, the ultimate sanction. I guess that we should all be grateful they are looking after our privacy so well, and not going out hawking it in the local bar.

Facebook is really under the regulatory gun in all this, coming as it does on top of the revelations about Russian troll farms and the possible influence they had on the US Presidential election results. However, they should not be the only ones under scrutiny for the use of personal data for profit. That is simply the business model that has evolved in front of us as we all use social platforms of all types and names. Facebook just happens to be the biggest, and best suited to electoral ‘management’ if not fraud.

While the personal information zealots cry about making potentially life saving medical records available on line, and politicians of all colours bleat about how important information privacy is, a hard argument to beat, we all continue to give it away happily for access to ‘cat porn’ and the menu of the local pizza shop.

The debate should be a wider one.

How much power do we want concentrated in the hands of so few providers of digital tools, and how will we  regulate them to ensure they play a constructive role in the development of our communities and society. The follow up question is I suppose, do we have the political machinery with the skills and balls to do anything about the obvious answer.

 

Header cartoon credit: Partial ‘First dog on the moon’  cartoon The Guardian 21/3/18.

Update: March 23

Mark Zuckerberg has released a statement that acknowledges the problem, gives a timeline of what Facebook has done to secure information, but goes nowhere near an apology. I suspect there will be some flurries meant to make Facebook look better, and as a salve to those calling for regulatory action, but little if anything of any consequence will change.

Second update March 24.

I just stumbled across this editorial by Mitch Joel, to my mind one of the interesting and informed thinkers in this space, that really gives some added context to the conversation. It supports the view that none of us should be surprised, we have willingly participated in the end of privacy, and besides, use of social data to manage (code for swing) electoral outcomes in this way is well known.

 

Third update April 16. 

I was sent this very useful explanatory video produced by the NY Times, describing the sequence of events. Thanks Geoff!

Fourth update May 24.

Aleksandr Kogan, the data scientist behind SCL has his say in an interview with Buzzfeed.