The Spectrum of Customer Service

Is there anyone that thinks that customer service is not important? There are certainly people and organizations that do not treat customer service as important. Customer service is integral to financial performance, reputation, referrals, and of course, repeat sales.

I have had a range of experiences of customer service this week, ranging from far exceeding expectations to mediocre and beyond.

On the outstanding end, is Nordstrom's. Now, they generally have a great reputation for customer service -- but let me tell you MY story. I bought a pair of Brighton slip-on loafers at Nordstrom's some time (i.e., several years) ago. I don't wear them frequently, but they are fantastic for cold, wet weather because of the rubber sole and chunky heel. Recently, I put them on and noticed that the microfiber fabric that covered part of the shoe was fraying. I no longer live in a town with a Nordstrom's (much to my chagrin and my husband's relief), so I packed up the shoes in the box (with the Nordstrom sticker, but no receipt) and a letter and sent them to the nearest store. In the letter, I asked for replacements or store credit. You could see the rest of the shoes were in great condition, but that the fabric was irreparable.

Well, let me tell you, I received a call within the week. It was a voicemail, asking me to call. I girded myself for a conflict, only to find out that they were crediting MY CREDIT CARD for the FULL AMOUNT. Do you think that makes me a loyal customer? You bet! In fact, I drove all the way to that store location and spent an equivalent amount at the store, just because I was so grateful.

On the other end of the spectrum, I needed a halogen light bulb for my desk lamp. I visited several stores, but none of them stocked the particular size I needed. I ended up going to a distributor in town who caters to contractors. I ordered the part, paid for it, and was going to get a call when it was in next week. That was last November. After several visits and calls on my part, I have asked for a refund. Oh, by the way, it was Lowe Electronic Supply Company.

I have a measure for the spectrum of customer service, based on the glass half full/half empty premise. If you think about having a glass of water in a restaurant, on one end you have someone topping off your water within seconds of you having a sip. On the other end, you can't find the waiter to ask to refill your empty glass.

So, instead of stars, I rate customer service from full glass, half full, half empty, or empty.

Bottoms up!

To Resolve or Not To Resolve -- That is the Question

It's the second week of 2010, and if the accounts I've read are accurate, most New Year's resolutions have already been broken.

That sounds like a process failure to me.

A "resolution," is a firm commitment to a course of action. If you already know that you're not going to keep the commitment -- then don't call it a resolution, call it a "wish." But assuming that you are truly intent on keeping your resolution, you need to have a specific idea of the course of action. Think of it as a process of change. If a process is unclear, or vague, it cannot be followed consistently.

So, if you are resolving to do something differently (e.g., lose weight, eat better, network more, etc.), I suggest that you define the process you are going to follow. What should the definition specify? Target behaviors, undesirable behaviors, environmental supports and distractors, and specifically when you are going to do the target behavior. I also like to build in rewards for good behavior!

Let's say that you want to eat more healthfully. To eat more healthfully, you are going to have to make time to go to the grocery store. Block that time in your calendar every week. It is time consuming to plan, purchase, and prepare healthful foods. Set yourself up so that it is convenient to reach into the refrigerator and munch on some sliced vegetables. (That would be an environmental support.) If you're hungry, are you going to take the time to cut up the broccoli, or are you going to reach into the pantry for a handful of...?

You are also going to have to avoid environmental cues that encourage you to eat poorly. That may mean: packing your lunch for work, avoiding movie theaters because you can't go to the theater without eating popcorn, avoiding television at night, and cleaning out the pantry of foods you cannot resist. It also helps if you plan ahead so that you can make good choices. If you are going out to eat, pick a place that does not serve your favorite fried chicken!

Build in rewards. It is better if the reward is not the undesirable behavior, as in the case of, "I've eaten so well all week, I'm going out for a double scoop of ice cream." Reward yourself at specific, measurable points.

Be fanatical for the first three weeks. I believe it takes generally about twenty days to engrain a new habit or behavior.

I used food as an example, because that is something we can all relate to. Perhaps your resolution is to stop using profanity. I have one friend who suggests that you "pay the pig" for each transgression (e.g., cr#p might cost a quarter, but the f-bomb is two dollars). Perhaps you will need to avoid people or movies that use a lot of profanity, to help you break the habit.

I have resolved to blog weekly and have blocked time on Wednesday mornings to do so. To make a supportive environment, I have my blog as my home page when I open my browser. And if I blog thirteen weeks in a row, I get a new car as a reward (just kidding, honey!).

If you are going to have resolutions, then be resolute with scheduled commitment, clear action, supportive environment, and rewarded milestones. Let me know how it works for you.

Another hard thing

Last time, I mentioned how hard it is to stop something when you've been doing it for a while. Well, it's also hard to start something, when you've stopped it for a while. Newton's Law about inertia (an object in motion will stay in motion, while an object at rest will stay at rest -- in the absence of other forces) seems to apply to human behavior as well as the realm of physics.

So, even though I don't have a specific topic in mind for this blog, I wanted to get moving and start the year off better than I ended the last one. I had tried to blog every Tuesday, more or less, and let a panoply of obstacles distract me. I can do better, and will do better, this year.

As I reflect on last year, I am thankful for many blessings -- one of which is a more grateful spirit. In fact, it has become a bit of a mental exercise for me, when I'm inclined to complain about something, to figure out how to be grateful for that very thing. For example, as a regular migraine sufferer, I get tired of being laid up with these painful and nauseating episodes. I have learned, however, to be grateful for the rest they provide. When my husband and I walk our dogs, and he complains about how the grass becomes yellow as it goes dormant in the cold weather, I am grateful that it is not snow that we are seeing on the ground. When I am hitting eight and my ball isn't even on the green, I'm thankful to be outdoors and have the opportunity (if not the ability) to play golf. When I think about our teenage son breaking away, little by little, I am grateful for the time we have had together, and for how special he is. Being grateful for moving into a new season of life has been difficult (calling it an "empty nest" does not help), but having a grateful heart does keep me mindful of how small our troubles are.

In the new year, I have many goals. Largely, they center around embracing this new season in my life and being truly grateful for it: polishing my classes until they shine, finishing my book to my publisher's and my satisfaction, being more connected to my social network and resuming my consulting practice. On the personal side, I plan on savoring each moment with my family, playing team tennis with gusto, improving my golf game with patience, and investing in community service with passion.

"For everything there is a season, and a time for very purpose under heaven: 2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7 a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace." Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, American Standard Version.

Best wishes to all for 2010!

A Tough Decision

One of the hardest things for organizations -- and often, individuals -- to do is to stop doing something. Examples that come to mind are canceling a project, breaking a tradition, and changing a process.

There are many explanations for this phenomenon. On an individual level, a person might be loathe to stop doing something for fear of disappointing other people. Organizationally, it might be impolitic to acknowledge that something is failing and should be stopped. It can also be problematic when no one feels ownership of the issue. And then there is always the challenge of inertia -- an object in motion stays in motion.

Successful people and organizations challenge the status quo mindset and step up to the tough decisions required to stop doing something. To continue doing it wastes resources and complicates operations.

My church's leadership is trying to become a "Simple Church" (Rainer and Geiger, 2006, The Simple Church, B & H Publishing), to reduce the complications and increase the focus of the staff and congregation on discipleship. Many organizations are working on becoming "lean," i.e., reducing wasted effort by following the "Toyota Way" (Liker, 2003, The Toyota Way, McGraw-Hill). Both types of initiatives require the courage to stop doing things that have been done before.

What brought this all to mind is the change to Eastern Standard Time. I do not like it, and think it is an outdated tradition. The idea is credited to Ben Franklin and certainly made sense in an agrarian, un-electrified country. As I understand it, different regions would adjust in different ways, not necessarily in one-hour increments. The time changes became standardized because of the trans-continental railroad's need for a sensible timetable. Some states, e.g., Indiana and Arizona, no longer follow this tradition.

Think about how much time is wasted... changing clocks!

A Surprising Illustration of Process Management

Today I attended a luncheon meeting of the Career Women's Network. Our guest speaker, the Honorable Trip Self, superior court judge, was the guest speaker. It turns out that he is also an official for college football. He managed to enthrall 75 women by talking about football, if you can believe it.

First he described the selection process for becoming an official, and the way one moves through the hierarchy of different divisions and regions. Who knew it was such a difficult thing to achieve?

Then he talked about how often he hears variations on "how could you not see that?" Besides trying to see around 22 200-300 lb. men in gear, things happen incredibly fast. I didn't take notes, so don't hold me to these numbers (because we know how my memory is getting!):

• 8 seconds to place the ball from the completion of the last play
• 25 seconds to make sure there aren't too many people on the field and that players are not positioned incorrectly and communicate that to the referee
• 15 seconds for a play to unfold.

Within the 25 seconds, each of the seven officials on the field has a specific thing or things to check for, some of which are amazingly detailed. For example, the line official has to evaluate a potential receiver who is not on the line, but is in the neutral zone (which I think is the area between the ball and the quarterback), to make sure he doesn't catch the ball within 10 yards from the line of scrimmage.

What I really enjoyed hearing about though was the amazing process of quality control they have in place, for officials, even at the college level. There is an observer at every game who gives the team feedback immediately after the game. Then there is a league supervisor for the officials, who reviews the games and EVERY call for every game in the league. The officials are graded on EVERY play, whether a call is good, bad or questionable. They may also hear from the head coaches. And if that wasn't enough feedback, the team of officials gets together Friday night before the next game and reviews the tape on last week's game themselves. They are on one-year contracts, so too many bad calls by an official may mean his contract will not be reviewed.

In addition, they spend one weekend in training each year, take two tests on the rules each year, and review the rules before every game. (It's a good thing he's a judge; that's a lot of... ruling?)

Part of me is amazed at how much care and attention is placed on these games -- they're just games, right? But college football is really a business, and the quality of the officials is an integral part of the integrity of the ... game. There can be a lot of money at stake, whether it's for television broadcasts, bowl games, or alumni donations.

I will never watch a football game the same way again.

Life Cycle Assessments

My training and education as an industrial engineer taught me to be a systems thinker, i.e., someone who can see the whole and the parts and how they work together. In my opinion, this is a fundamental skill for effective management. At a minimum, for my classes, I teach that:

* a system is a purposeful collection of components,
* a business system can transcend organizational boundaries,
* a system's environment consists of factors outside its control but can affect its operation, and
* good management systems have measured and actionable feedback loops.

One of the reasons it is important have a systems perspective is to understand how changes in one part of the system can affect the other. Optimizing one part of the system may be suboptimal for the system as a whole.

This comes to mind because I have been reading Daniel Goleman's Ecological Intelligence. Understanding the environmental and social impact of products we produce and purchase extends the system perspective to include the dimension of time. He describes life cycle assessment (LCA) as "a method that allows us to systematically tear apart any manufactured item into its components and their subsidiary industrial processes, and measure with near-surgical precision their impact on nature from the beginning of their production through their final disposal" (p. 14). The complexity is staggering.

One example he gives is glass packaging (pp. 18): "The basics for making glass have changed little since the time of ancient Rome. Today, natural gas-powered furnances... melt sand into glass... But there's far more to it than that. A chart showing the thirteen most important processes deployed to make glass jars revealed a system stitching together 1,959 distinct "unit processes." Each unit process... represents an aggregate of innumerable subsidiary processes, themselves the outcome of hundred of others, in what can appear an infinite regression."

Producing a glass jar requires the use of hundreds of substances (and 659 different ingredients) throughout the jar's supply chain. According to Goleman (p. 18), around one hundred substances [are] released into water and fifty or so into soil along the way... [with] 220 different kinds of emissions into the air." In addition to these ecological concerns, the LCA examines the energy use and health risks, such as carcinogens, in the product and its various unit processes. Incorporating recycled glass saves hundreds of gallons of water and mitigates carbon dioxide emissions, so the LCA incorporates negative as well as positive effects.

Increasingly, consumers and environmental advocates are pressing manufacturers to disclose such information. With the Internet and social networking tools, it is easy to build a groundswell of support for -- or against -- a particular product for its impact. Independent information providers, also known as "infomediaries," are compiling this vast array of information and developing summarized and simplified indices. Manufacturers and retailers are gradually recognizing the need to be more transparent. The NYTimes published an interesting article describing this trend earlier this summer.

I find this trend to be heartening, yet overwhelming at the same time. I'm still not sure if "paper or plastic?" is the best option when I don't have my reusable grocery bags. Or what kind of light bulb I should buy. Flourescent bulbs use less energy to illuminate, but if you consider the production process and hazardous materials, are florescent better than incandescent bulbs?

I don't know -- I guess I'll sit in the dark and think about it.

Clarity in Communications - Not!

In my Leadership class yesterday, we were covering Andy Stanley's suggestions for the necessary characteristics for leaders in his book, The Next Generation Leaders. When we covered "Clarity," I explained that this meant not only did a leader need to communicate clearly, but that s/he must have clarity in the vision of what is to be done. As Stanley explains, it's uncertainty that creates the need for leadership. With certainty, the actions needed are clear.

To protect one's credibility -- and ability to be an effective leader and provide clarity -- it is important to be honest and forthcoming with people. It is much better to say, "I don't know the answer to that, but I'll look into it," than to bluff your way through a situation. People will see through you, pretty quickly.

You can also undermine your credibility by being vague. "Vagueness sands the clarity off of vision," says Stanley. Having plenty of scratched reading glasses, I like the metaphor.

So, here I am in class, trying to think of a story to illustrate the point, and was really coming up blank. There wasn't even something on the "tip of my tongue!" (4:00 in the afternoon is NOT my sharpest time to teach.) Grasping at straws, I said, "what if there had been several cases of swine flu detected on campus?"

"Here's a situation in which people would be uncertain of what to do. Being honest and forthcoming doesn't mean shouting, "We've got swine flu on campus!" and encouraging people to panic. But it also doesn't mean to say something vague, like "A few students have reported flu-like symptoms. I encourage everyone to take special precautions." A leader in this situation would have to be very clear about what precautions to take (e.g., quarantine, class cancellations, extended health services), and very deliberate about how to get the correct information out and how to get it updated. Communicating clearly usually requires repeated messages over a variety of pathways."

As an example, it was ok, something the students could relate to in their life experience. But a few of my students apparently missed the part where I said "what if," and thought that there really were cases of swine flu on campus. (There aren't, as far as I know.)

There's an irony in being misunderstood when talking about clarity in communications.