Catching people and organisations doing it right

The other day I was a having a conversation with a retailer over a latte about customer satisfaction surveys and it got me thinking.

As a nation it is often said that we Brits don’t like to complain. But all that is changing, and mostly for the better, if you disregard the proliferation of the litigious culture fuelled by the so called ambulance chasers and claims management companies.

The retail sector leads on capturing customer comments and encourages us to give feedback by giving us a website address on our till receipt to rate our experience. So as we get braver we use our newly found confidence to rightly hold organisations to account when the service they give us is below what we expect. In fact it has never been easier to complain or rate our experience.

But how often do we devote the same amount of time, energy and passion to the process of recording our satisfaction when we have a truly great experience. It’s all too easy to focus on negatives but we need to recognise and respond when organisations do things well. Because, after all, if all the feedback that organisations get is around poor service then they won’t ever get to hear about the great experiences. Which means that Joe at Caffe Nero won’t get to hear about how his cheery disposition and manner, whilst making our double espresso, brightened up our morning. Which means that Caffe Nero Head Office won’t get to know that the training, the type of recruitment they are doing and the type of person they’ve recruited is giving a great experience for their customers. So we need to tell them. From a business perspective when that great experience is replicated across the store network this translates to more happy customers, which means more repeat visits which means that the “bean counters” (excuse the pun) will be happy.

So next time you get a great experience remember to grab a comments card or provide some feedback via the “tell us how we are doing” weblink. If we want more great experiences then it falls upon us to tell the organisations when they are doing it right, so that they continue to do those things that delight us.

So as a call action, next time you are wowed by an organisation or an individual: tell them about it.

The customer is bothering you right ?

Regretting the decision not to purchase a bamboo style in-tray in a large UK Supermarket store a few weeks before, I decided to have a look online. After searching on a few retail sites I eventually found what I had been looking for at Rymans. I duly ordered so I could collect the item in store as it was close to where I was working at the time

A few days later, I found myself quite close to the store and even though I hadn’t heard anything, I thought I’d enquire to see if my item had arrived.

I approached the desk and was greeted courteously by the assistant. I was explaining the reason for my visit when, a lady verbally cut across rudely saying “deliveries don’t come in until Thursday”. That was me told and clearly this lady (the Store Manager) couldn’t wait to get me out of the store as she clearly had something more important to do than helping customers.

Well, I had a choice I suppose, I could go home and cancel my order or I could come back on Thursday. I decided to come back on Thursday after I received the email confirmation.

I left work at 5pm on that Thursday and arrived at the store around 5.20 to be greeted with “ the store shuts in 10 minutes”. I was determined to get my item and in the 9 minutes and 50 seconds that remained I made my way to the counter and collected it.

I won’t be using Rymans again based on the interactions in the Cardiff store.

Perhaps someone needs to explain to the staff in this store that if customers stop walking through the door, then the staff will have something more important to do with their time i.e. find a new job.

Your continued business is important to us. That's why the AA wanted to charge me more.

£201 for home start, roadside assistance and relay to renew my AA cover seemed a bit steep to me.

So i went online and found the cover for £134 with the RAC.

I called the AA and was told because I was a loyal customer and they would like to keep me that they would see if there were any special online deals at the moment.

£134 was their best prize which I eagerly snapped up.

The more I reflected on it the more i started to get cross. If I hadn't rang up then my loyalty would have been rewarded by paying £65 more for my cover.

Apathy and customer inertia are not reasons for charging me £201. How does that reward loyalty and make me feel valued?.

Give me the best available price at Renewal. This leaves a nasty taste.

Message to the AA treat existing customers fairly and reward me for loyalty with your best price.

John Lewis, where's your passion gone? Your twitter peeps are robots

I found a suit jacket I loved in john Lewis Cardiff but to my disappointment not a matching pair of, what Paul Hogan would call, strides.

The customer representative in menswear, Dan, proactively offered to look online for me. Customer delight ensued. 

He then rang and put me on to the Southampton store to complete my order. From my postcode they were able to find my address (joined up thinking) more customer delight

So delighted was I, that I bought 3 shirts and two ties (that I hadn't planned to) plus the suit that I had wanted to buy.

As a result of Dan's actions one suit sale achieved /rescued £158 plus an additional £100. Happy Chief Financial Officer.

Absolutely delighted,  I decided to tweet my satisfaction to @johnlewisretail. From a reward and recognition perspective I believe  it is important to catch people doing it  right : and to reward, recognise and positively reinforce the right behaviours. So I make a point of commenting and recognising great experiences because it is all so easy to focus only on what went wrong.

I didn’t tweet my delight for egotistical purposes and to get a retweet but moreover to say well done to John Lewis for having employees who live the brand values.

So i was rather non-plussed by the bland reply of  "thank you we'll pass it on". Surely a bit more delight and passion for Dan's actions from the twitter peep would have been in keeping with my expectations and the cultivated brand image.

I now feel that I have been knowingly undersold. Not what I expected from John Lewis. Has something gone wrong in the recruitment of their twitter peeps.

What do you think ?

 

Yes we know customer service is important but

How many organisations are:

•  reminding staff that customer service is important ?
•  reminding staff that customers have a choice and don’t have to do business with us ?
•  rolling out customer programmes repeating the above and more ?

How many colleagues are saying we know, we get it, tell us something we don’t know ? Giving a great customer experience will ensure that customers come back time and time again, which is good for the business and then surely good for staff ?

So here’s the conundrum – why is it when I go into certain stores, I’m met with at best indifference or at worst a sullen and morose face who can't be bothered ?  Clearly there’s a disconnect between the organisation what it says it stands for and its customer facing staff. Why is that ? 

Could it be that ?

• Staff see management or senior leadership modelling behaviours that are far from customer centric. If they can’t be bothered, why should we they think ?
• Customer facing staff are prevented from giving great service because management ask them to do other things that conflict with them giving great service e.g. in retail sometimes stocking shelves and working stock/delivery is prioritised above serving and helping customers.
• Staff feel let down by management, who have made promises and not kept them.
• Staff feel they have no say in the way their daily tasks are done 
• Employees don’t feel listened to or that their ideas are never given air time 
• Colleagues see the organisation making huge profits but personally feel undervalued in terms of their remuneration.
• There are no perceived  career or personal development opportunites.

What do you think the reasons for the lack of engagement amongst customer facing staff are  ? I would love to hear your thoughts

.

But i'm with Banco Espanol not business banking

To use a catch phrase from  the olden days (as my kids would call it) “I wanna tell you a story”.

Last week I went to my bank’s premises (a former  building society) to pay in a business cheque. I have both my personal account and business account with this institution for simplicity and convenience Hmmm, or so I thought.

I handed over a cheque which I wanted paid into my business bank. “I’m sorry but you will have to pay that in through the ATM machine” was the rather frosty edict from the cashier.

“But I’ve done it over the counter before” I protested.

“ That is only the case when the ATM option is not available” was the next rebuff. 

Quickly followed up by “ We don’t do business banking here in the branch”

As far as I’m concerned there is no difference between Banco Espanol and business banking they are all the same brand irrespective of whether one is for personal banking and the other for business customers.

So what can Banco Espanol learn from this experience. Don’t put up artificial silos because from a customer perspective you are all one Bank irrespective of internal structures. Put yourself in the customers shoes.

Secondly perhaps the cashier could have employed some flexibility and not been such a “job’s worth” The refusal of the cashier to process my cheque meant it took 5 business days to clear.

Keeping up the Iberian theme, what could I have done about the can’t/won’t do mentality I experienced – perhaps grow some large cojones !!

Muchas gracias for reading my pequeno blog,

Linkedin endorsements finger clicking bad

Aren’t I the big star with over 1500 linked connections and numerous endorsements.

Well actually the thing I court the most within Linkedin is the recommendation from a connection. To be able to write a meaningful recommendation that connection has to know me well and either have experienced my work first hand or seen it as an observer.

So when I get endorsements from connections that have never seen me doing my training stuff it means nothing to me. I really only want recommendations because people will have thought about what they write rather than just clicking endorse.

So whilst I may show an abundance of endorsements to anyone checking out my profile, it don’t cut the mustard with me. Call me old fashioned but it doesn’t seem right to be endorsed by people who don’t know me that well and who haven’t been Dell’Armied ! It devalues the endorsements and it’s the lazy person’s way – a bit like a Facebook like.

There maybe some algorithm type thingy going on here with search ranking (which I don’t pretend to understand) which may benefit me but from an authenticity perspective it just doesn’t sit comfortably with me.

Would love to hear what others think.

Would we in learning & development last 5 minutes if we worked for Roman Abramovich ?

As Roberto Di Matteo and many football managers know you are only as good as your last game which for Di Matteo was a 3-0 defeat to Juve. If ever there was a profession that personified the phrase “ it’s a results business” it has to be the fickle yet beautiful game.

This got me thinking ? What if Mr Abramovich decided to employ me as a freelancer or he decided to buy a training company. Would we be able to say well, Sir you spent £x amount on training and this is how it affected the profits of your business.

Maybe this lack of demonstrable value add/ROI is the reason why the first thing to be cut back in times of recession is training.

But equally not investing in training can be devastating to a business as Toyota learnt ,when  the problems that resulted in product recalls in 2011 were down to the fact that proper training hadn’t been carried out.

It strikes me that in times of austerity the only training that gets done is the mandatory stuff.

Why is that ? It comes back to lack of demonstrable value add. Training without application and transfer of learning is entertrainment and we’re not in the entertrainment business. So as professionals we need to be more than simply order takers .

So if we are asked to run a training event we should consider asking some of the following questions:

• What is the issue that the event is trying to solve ?
• How does that issue manifest itself ?
• How much is it costing you currently ?
• How much extra income would you expect to be generated as a result of the training
• What needs to happen (post event) to make sure that the training or new skills learnt on the day are successfully transferred back into the workplace
• How will we know that the training has made a difference ? (measures of success)

So as a profession we need to ask the right questions of our customers in order to be able to show that we’ve made a difference and be able to quantify that difference, then training wont be the first thing to be chopped in difficult times.

Until we start doing this, training will just be seen as a cost by the bean counters.

Sorry George but we don't owe you a bean !

“For more than three decades, Starbucks had a storied history of being a great place to work, of ethically sourcing and roasting the highest quality coffee beans” The above quote comes from the inside cover of  “Onward” by Howard Schultz (Starbucks CEO) . Ethical sourcing and roasting undoubtedly but clearly not ethical enough to pay a single bean of UK Corporation Tax. 

Thanks to the way the business is structured and expenses apportioned (I don’t pretend to understand the mechanics of their accounting and tax avoidance) they have not paid one single penny in UK Corporation Tax. They allege that they made a loss in the UK.

Don’t get me wrong; what Starbucks have done is not illegal ! BUT it is clearly immoral. Add this corporate behaviour to the following examples of how to destroy trust:

·         Banks who rigged the libor rate

·         MPs who fiddled their expenses

·         News of the World journalists who hacked into mobile phones unlawfully.

Organisations exist in society and from a corporate social responsibility point of view should look to give something back which generally Starbucks has been pretty good at. But organisations if they want our trust and custom need to behave ethically and what Starbucks has done falls well short of the standards of acceptable behaviour.

I suggest, that if we as consumers demonstrate our abhorrence to this type of behaviour by taking our patronage elsewhere this will focus the minds of brands on how they should conduct their affairs.

 I could go on roasting Starbucks ….. . This morning I had a business meeting and whilst my tipple was the usual latte the venue wasn’t. You’re going to have to show a lot of contrition and a new behaviour to win my custom back and not become a has bean!

PS I’m not ignoring Google or Amazon who appear to have underpaid UK Corporation Tax allegedly

To communicate to your employees or not, that is the question

How much time should you spend talking and communicating to your people. At a CIPD event I attended the HR director of John Lewis said they spend 60% of their time doing exactly this.

Seems rather a lot – well here’s why you need to keep your people in the loop from a friend's true story

He recounts, how he  was waiting to checkin at Alicante Airport at 5.30 in the morning within a large queue.  No one likes queuing at the best of times but at stupid o’clock tempers can become frayed and patience is severely tested.

“ Probably with my frustration mounting I heard a passenger in front of me (whose Uncle works at my home airport) regaling to several passengers that landing fees were so expensive at my local airport and that the Spanish Airline Vueling would be pulling out. Needless to say I corrected her on several issues.”

My friend continued “ However it does rather beg the question how often are staff (at my local airport) briefed on improvements being made, the new routes coming on-stream and the negative impact of old myths like landing fees, if stories like this are still being  perpetuated”

Employees should be your biggest supporters and ambassadors for your brand and business. Communication is a key driver of employee engagement and successful change.

Still think communication is a waste of time ?

The financial services industry needs to step up to the plate & fulfil its destiny

In an article the Western Mail the CEO of the Monmouthshire Building Society states that creating a better financial services sector in the UK will not be the result of “bank bashing”.

 As someone who considers  themselves something of a financial services veteran (defined as 25 plus years experience),  this got me thinking.

Clearly Financial services has been tainted by behaviour of the banks & the insurers who mis-sold Personal Pensions & mortgage related Endowment policies. Clearly the industry has an image problem & is not trusted by the people who should be its biggest advocates – its customers !

This inherent mistrust of the industry and in some cases the inbuilt complexity, jargon and lack of transparency continue to confuse and confound the problem of lack of protection & security in key areas for consumers. In other words, consumers lack the very basic products that could make a real difference to their financial wellbeing.

So here is a ten point pledge that all providers of financial products should sign up to:

• Treat customers as they would expect to be treated themselves
• Design and manufacture products and services that are easy to understand
• Make essential products affordable and accessible to all
• Write customer communication that customers can understand
• Look after your customers first and  shareholders second
• Create customer experiences that are memorable for the right reasons
• Remember that every enquiry, letter, telephone call, case, claim, policy number is a real person. Focus on the person not the task
• Remember whose money it is that you are collecting and managing
• Offer additional discounts for existing customers on new products
• Scrap all sales targets and get your salesforce to focus on serving the customer first and foremost. Build relationships with customer and play the long game to rebuild trust. 

Do all of the above and financial services can grow up and fulfil its destiny & become the force for good that it should be !

Succession planning at the Principality- that's the way to do it

The big news in the Cardiff business community is that Graeme Yorston is to succeed Peter Griffiths as the CEO of the Principality Building Society #.  Griffiths, led the society for ten years (of which the last four have been incredibly difficult for the industry) and in a style and way that has enabled the Mutual to avoid the problems and bad publicity affecting other financial institutions.

This news, got me thinking . So how do you replace such a capable leader ? What is the process ? Was Yorston the only person to be considered ? Had the resignation of Griffiths forced the board to think of a successor ? Or had the board been proactively thinking about, when this day arrived, who would be stepping into Griffith’s shoes ?  Essentially what these questions are attempting to discover is whether there was a succession plan.

So if you were being proactive and planning for the CEO’s departure how would you go about putting in place such a plan and what would be involved ? Four years ago I wrote my CIPD Management Research Report,  “Future Proofing The Organisation” on  how do you succession plan?

Essentially the steps to follow are:

Create a written succession plan – with the primary goal being the development of internal successors. Additionally emergency succession procedures should be included, to cover  situations such as sudden death or long term sickness of the CEO.

Develop a required set of capabilities -  compare the resulting list against the firm’s senior talent pipeline. Ensure that the board has regular exposure to internal candidates through presentations, field observations and site visits.

Conduct regular in depth reviews – the entire board with the senior HR executive should review the plan twice a year to make sure that it continues to be fit for purpose in the light of the ever evolving business environment and company strategy.

Narrow the field down to two or three contenders – this should occur about two years before transition.

Implement the plan, about a year before the anticipated departure through:

• Indepth competency focused interviews
• 360 degree feedback
• Psychometric Testing

Then finally the board should make it’s decision

And that’s all there is to it ? Did the Principality follow this methodology, my guess is probably yes. Good luck to Yorston in his new role.

# The Principality is 7^th Largest Building society in the UK and in the past 6 months attracted £160M and 28,000 new customers in the first 6 months of this year.

It's a matter of trust

The title of this blog is also the title of the 1986 song by one of my all time heroes Billy Joel. I’ve always been passionate about music but one of my other passions is leadership which brings me on to the subject of this post.

Recent research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development says that only 58% of us trust our leaders. The only surprise for me is that the figure is that high given the scandals of phone hacking, MPs Expenses and more recently the fixing of the LIBOR interest rate by the banks.

The late Stephen Covey in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People writes about how the Character Ethic had been replaced by the Personality Ethic in business.  The character ethic believed success as being down to things like integrity, humility, fidelity, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity and modesty. Covey noted that after the first world war there was a shift from the Character Ethic to what we might call the Personality Ethic. Success became more of a function of public image, of attitudes and behaviours, skills and techniques and a positive mental attitude. The Character Ethic became mostly lip service; the basic thrust was quick-fix influence techniques, power strategies, communication skills and positive attitudes. Jim Collins in “Good to Great” talks about level  five leadership – with modesty being a key component.

So is Covey right ? Was this the shift that has taken business to a point where the culture is toxic and CEO’s either claim not to know or turn a blind eye.

I keep reading of the clamour to return to authentic leadership, I’m not really sure I know what that this is but I do believe the following are pre-requisites of great leaders:

• They keep their promises         
• They respect their customers
•  They don’t ask their employees to do anything they are not prepared to do themselves
• They apologise if they get it wrong
•  They share their past failings with others
•   They do what is right for the organisation and its customers

 There may be behaviours that I have missed off my list in which case I’d love to hear from you about them ?

Bob Diamond won't stay in a travel lodge but Brad Burton does

Yesterday I was on twitter and I noticed a posting by Brad Burton (head of 4N the national & I believe now international networking organisation) including a picture of the Travel lodge he was staying at. So I tweeted 

@BradBurton you might be brad b but you're not so up yourself to stay in a travel lodge. I like that.

The larger than life Northerner justified it on the grounds of it being good value and you can't really argue with that.

In tight economic times, we all have to tighten our belts and that should include leaders.

 If we are really all in this together then I as a leader shouldn’t be asking you to do anything I’m not prepared to do myself. So If I ask people who work in my organisation to reduce costs and look for savings then I should be doing the same. A kind of sharing the corporate pain culture emerges..

So the fact that I as the leader, CEO, etc of that business am prepared to use Travel lodges means that my manage-ment team can’t point fingers and sneer about different rules applying to the CEO.

Leaders should be judged on their behaviours and great leaders set

the right tone and role model the right things.

This small twitter exchange ended with me complementing the larger than life Northerner on his leadership style. 

@BradBurton sets the right tone. Great leadership. Leading by example.

I like that too !

The tweet departing from you will not be answered by Arriva Trains and ATW wont apologise for any inconvenience caused either

Do you know what, if you are on Twitter you need to be on Twitter.  Obvious right ?

You'd think so but @arrivatw haven't quite got the hang of it - yet !

All their tweets are promotional - broadcasting the term is.

When it comes to listening, they don't.

So whilst increased profits were announced recently - don't expect them to reply to your tweets. Their facebook page is pretty much the same - one way traffic.

Someone needs to explain to the marketing department that customer service is an important part of the marketing armoury. 

Anyway here are a selection of tweets missing replies presumed lost in cyberspace ?.

@ArrivaTW My friend lost his wallet on one of your trains, has tried lost property 3 times and no-one has contacted him. Please call him!

Congratulations @arrivaTW for shutting an entrance to a station without any warning to do a bit of painting! In the morning commute!


 @ArrivaTW shame all stuck at heath high level with a train delayed for 20 mins at peak time. hope our ticket seller is cheery


@ArrivaTW So. Your timetable forces passengers to wait 1 hour for 'connection' at Swansea for Llanelli? What kind of service is that?


Not surprising that they came bottom in the @engagemetindex survey of train companies service on Twitter
 It's about time brands were held to account on such matters. 

So you think you can train !

Impact, presence, taking and responding to questions are all essential skills for both the trainer and anyone who is asked to give a presentation.

So clearly there is overlap and synergy in the skills required. But what skills would be required of a trainer rather than a presenter  ? and ...... if you are looking to take on a new trainer how should you design the assessment process to take into account the different skills required by a trainer? Good questions I hear you say and i'll endeavour to answer them in this blog post at a high level..

What skills does a trainer need ? 

• The ability to ask questions & more importantly listen to the answers
• The ability to design training interventions that take into account different learning styles
• The ability to design training materials/aids that enhance the delegate's learning
• The ability to observe the group and respond to non verbal clues
• The ability to control the group and manage challenging delegates
• The ability to train/facilitate learning rather than present
• The ability to draw delegates together to reflect on their the learning from the activities

So - how can we make sure that our new trainer has these skills or the potential to develop them ?

• Test the trainer's ability to conduct a simple training needs analysis (perhaps use a case study)
• Test the trainer's ability to design a training session 
• Test the trainer's ability to deliver that training session 
• Test the trainer's ability on how he/she thinks that the training can be evaluated according to a model like Kirkpatricks.

Would love to hear from fellow trainers or training managers

Brands that pass the Ronseal test - have nothing to fear from social media

In response to the latest UK customer satisfaction index figures customer facing businesses are being urged to give greater attention to social media or risk a widespread proliferation of damage to their brand.

The following quote from KPMG, sums up the state of the nation “ while British customers have often tolerated poor service in the past, the rapid growth of social media platforms have given rise to a consumer more prepared to voice their discontent with goods or services!”

According to Rohit Kapoor, Capgemini BPO Senior Director and Principal, a recent study revealed 86% of respondents indicated they preferred responses via social media platform. As customer service providers it seems logical you would listen to your customers……

 BUT Too many companies prefer to avoid social media, trying to avoid criticism in a public domain.

So organisations need to raise their game to avoid a public flogging by Twitter, by doing the following:

1)   Hire for attitude. Hire people with service in their soul. The technical stuff can be fixed but a sullen and morose employee who doesn’t want to deal with customers and portrays that lack of engagement is a lot harder to turn around.

2)   By empowering their front line staff to solve customer issues during those moments of truth

3)   By ensuring that the systems and processes of the organisation do not get in the way of point 2 above

4)   By dismantling the functional silos that create a poor and fragmented customer experience

5)   Making themselves easy to deal with and contact

6)   By training the whole organisation on customer service

7)   By ensuring that there is an internal customer service culture

8)   By delivering on their promise to their employees so that they deliver on the organisational brand promise

9)   Having leaders who role model customer centric behaviours

 Do all of the above and your organisation will have nothing to fear from social media.

 BTW – when you embrace social media it’s still really important that you listen to what your customers are saying. But that’s a large enough subject for a standalone blog posting 

Calling all brands - If you're on Twitter you need to be on Twitter

Today I tweeted the shocking statistic that 70% of complaints on Twitter are ignored by brands.

This reminded me of a recent story I’d seen in Forbes Magazine. It was about a bad experience some customers were having with a high end department store. (I’ll put a link at the bottom of this posting).  The experience was picked up on in Twitter land and even though the Twitter handle of the Department Store was used several times, so the brand could hear and act on what was being said, not once did they jump in and try and recover the situation.

You might not like what is being said about your brand or your service but you can’t just ignore it. To do nothing is commercial suicide. It beggars belief.

So if you’re on Twitter you need to be on Twitter because the social customer expects instant replies and it isn’t prepared to wait 20 minutes on the phone to speak to a human being ! Brands need to wake up and smell the coffee.

In the UK, the train company First Great Western @FGW is on Twitter. But come 4PM in the afternoon “ I’m signing off for the day, back tomorrow Jo”. Incredible, as the evening commuter trains start to run or not as the case maybe, the person manning the Twitter Feed turns in for the day. Along with the morning rush, this is probably the most critical time for commuters as they try to make their way home after a day’s toil. Brands like #FGW need to re-think this from a customer perspective. Customers trying to get home in the evening would probably like to interact with their transport provider, to be informed of delays etc – yet they can’t because Jo has gone home for the night.

First Great Western @FGW  Signing off for today. See you in the morning - Jo

4:11 PM - 16 Feb 12 via Twitter for iPhone · Details

•  Reply 
•  Retweet 
•  Favorite 
•  Buffer

Customer service is a 24/7 thing and brands like #FGW need to learn that and quickly.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizlange/2012/01/22/hey-brands-if-you-are-on-twitter-be-on-twitter/