Take a Customer Service Advocate the Next Time You Go Shopping

The other day I received a voice message from someone I thought was contacting me for information on my consulting services. As I played the message over and over, I realized the caller was contacting me as a last resort and out of total frustration because of a bad customer service experience at her local home improvement store. When I called her back, she was nearly in tears describing how the previous week she went to purchase a large amount of tress for her yard. She went to the store, paid for the trees and they were to be put up for pick-up or delivery the following week. The day she expected the trees to arrive came and went. In the meantime, she had dug the holes in her yard, contacted the electric company to approve the sites prior to digging etc…

Assuming there must have been an oversight, she contacted the store only to be put on eternal hold, and when she finally spoke to a live person, they were unresponsive. She decided to resolve the issue in person. She was told that the person who took the order forgot to put the trees away until delivery, and they had been sold. The employee added they would not be getting anymore in from the nursery this year. She was offered a refund and sent on her way. Not only was she frustrated, she was now disappointed, angry, and felt helpless. That is why she contacted me; she explained the situation and asked if there was anything I could do to help her.

Although my services normally do not include customer advocacy, I felt compelled to help her. I gathered the details, names of the people she spoke to and her history of doing business with this company. Eventually, I escalated the call to the regional manager after attempting to get the issue resolved at the local level, and she finally received the trees.
This experience caused me to think, how many customers just give up because they do not have an advocate willing to fight for them? How do customers navigate through customer service indifference? How many customers feel the business they do with a company has value? How many people would have just taken the refund and left it at that?

I am convinced that customers should know their rights and not be afraid to speak up when they are not receiving a good quality customer service experience. After all, they have a choice on who they do business with.

When Should Common Sense Trump Company Policy?

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about the importance of companies taking care of the people who take care of their customers. Good Morning America's segment on Wal-Mart’s sick policy, “Is It Worth It to Take a Sick Day?” gives an intriguing example of a company going the opposite direction. The topic was specifically related to company policy and the H1N1 Flu. Basically, Wal-Mart has a punitive points system that demerits workers for sick days. Sick pay doesn't kick in until the second day, so employees must take personal or vacation days or just not get paid.
abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=9013984

I completely understand that policies are in place to provide direction and guidance for the employees and to protect the organization, but I also feel businesses must understand that compassion, leadership decision-making, and sometimes plain ol' common sense trump company policies. I listened to the VP, General Manager of Wal-Mart stores respond to a question regarding the company sick policy and the possibility that it may be changed or updated etc. The VP responded with what I consider an absolute no-no in leadership accountability: "That’s just the way our policy is written. That’s our policy.” Just because that is the way things have been done doesn't mean they can't change, especially when it comes to unique circumstances, like the H1N1 Flu. Employees who come to work sick (sometimes referred to as, "Presenteeism") still cost the company. Sometimes we focus on the loss in dollars and forget that sick employees who come to work cost us more in lower productivity and exposure to others, just to name a few.

If there is a situation where there is an employee abusing a policy, (one of the ladies interviewed mentioned she already had 3 occurrences) than management should address that performance issue. But the flu? Give them a break.

Take Care of Your Employees and They Will Take Care of Your Customers

It is a known fact that if we want to keep a customer happy we must value them and consistently provide them with a quality customer service experience that makes them want to come back. Are we putting the same value on the people who serve our customers? I am referring to the frontline staff, support staff and everyone else that helps make the customer experience positive and memorable. I recently came across this article written by Ken Blanchard for Success Magazine and felt it was worth sharing. I am sure you will find this article to be very valuable and insightful. Enjoy!

http://www.successmagazine.com/take-control-of-your-customer-service/PARAMS/article/824

How the Customer Service Experience Counts for Colleges

For the several years that I worked at a community college, my prior background in customer service operations was a big help. It also helped that I had the support of the school’s leadership, which understood that attention to the customer experience enhances enrollment numbers. By customer, I’m mainly referring to students, but also to internal and external customers, the community, and the people I came into in contact with daily.

As we all know, the slow economy has contributed to record enrollment growth at colleges nationwide. The economy will improve, but it is important to look beyond current enrollment numbers to focus on how colleges are going to retain the students that are now coming into schools by the droves.

Here are five tips to enhance the student (that is, the customer) experience, so that he or she will want to stay at the college long after the economy improves.

1. Provide a positive experience at every touch point. Each time a person contacts the college by telephone, mail, fax, or online, they should be confident that they are going to have a great experience every time.
2. Follow up with each student contact. If you are not capturing each contact, you are missing an opportunity to either retain a student or gain a new one.
3. Follow through on all requests in a timely manner—if you are asked to send out information, make sure that you do so quickly. You will rarely have a second chance.
4. Invest in technology that enhances, not replaces, the overall customer experience. Automated systems that cause people to become frustrated lose you business.
5. Engage you students to ensure student success and provide support systems that go beyond registering for classes. Put yourself in the student’s shoes and create relationships that last beyond the first day of classes—remember, your customers may have younger siblings.

Now is the time examine and reevaluate the overall customer experience your students are receiving. You cannot afford to wait until the economy gets better.

Invert the Pyramid and Retain Your Customers

We’ve all seen business organizational charts that show a pyramid hierarchy—you know, the ones that generally show the customers at the bottom?

Every day we hear on the news that companies are paying top dollar to retain talent—it’s an incentive for employees to stay with an organization. But what if companies decided to invert the pyramid, and start to place the highest corporate value on the people at the bottom—the customers? They are the people who can make or break a company. Why aren’t we incentivizing our customers by placing them at the top of the hierarchy?

It’s time to invert the pyramid, add value to the customers experience when they choose to do business with us. It will not only encourage customer loyalty but enhance your ability to retain your customers. Even in the worst economies, price and the cost of your services take a back seat compared to the overall customer satisfaction and service customers yearn for.

So, what are you going to do to invert your business pyramid?

Influential Leadership Lasts a Lifetime

I had an incredible conversation with a former coworker the other day. You know the ones where you connect like you never lost touch? Without going into too many details, I'll share snippets of the conversation with you. He had just visited my Website and watched a video interview where I was discussing "doing the opposite" of what you see bad in others. We talked about leaders who lead by fear or intimidation, the inexperienced leaders who just “happened” to know the right person at the right time, aka, the suck up.

What I liked most was that our conversation wasn't focused on the poor leadership we have worked with, but on the type of leadership that helped shape our careers. During our conversation, my coworker remarked that the most effective leaders he has worked with, and he has worked for big name corporations, were the ones who were successful at influencing others. Influential leaders make a difference in your career long after you or they have left the company. Influential leaders are able to do more than just quote theories from Keirsey and others. They are actually able to understand and apply the principles. Influential leaders can express themselves with passion and conviction, not avoidance and cowardness, and influential leaders are unafraid to speak up and stand up for their people, not cower in a corner.

I am glad my friend called me at that time on that day; it is because of that conversation that I will keep striving to be an influential leader, and in the process, make a positive difference in others' careers.


What are you going to do to make your mark and be remembered?

Can a Bad Boss Make You a Better Leader?

We have all heard the stories about working for a “bad boss,” or endured one ourselves. I've worked for a few over the years; including one who employed the "Dr. Dre philosophy" (check out my past blogs for that explanation). But it is possible for you to become a better leader from experiences with the overbearing, the unprofessional and the outright awful boss--do the opposite.

Would you believe 40 percent of workers in the business world think they work for bad bosses? Those findings are from a Florida State University study. As for what constitutes a bad boss, the study participants gave a variety of answers:

• 39 percent said their managers failed to keep promises.
• 37 percent said their bosses did not give them the credit they deserved.
• 31 percent indicated their supervisor gave them "the silent treatment."
• 27 percent reported negative comments from their management.
• 24 percent claimed their bosses invaded their privacy.
• 23 percent stated that their supervisor blamed them or other workers to cover up personal mistakes.

Source: http://www.management-issues.com/2007/9/11/blog/some-bad-boss-statistics.asp

So, how do you avoid the pitfalls of becoming a “bad boss” statistic? You start by doing the opposite of the bad you see:

• If you are not keeping your commitments, it is time to start.
• If you are taking credit for others' work, it's time to start giving others credit. Remember, we don’t achieve success alone.
• If you are not communicating with your staff, the time to start is now. Not tomorrow, not after the meeting, now.
• If you think constructive criticism and constructive feedback are the same, it's time to change your thinking.
• If you make a mistake, acknowledge it and move on.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that I find it hard to believe someone would wake up and choose to be a bad boss, but the reality is they do exist, and instead of imitating the bad, learn what makes them bad, do the opposite and become a better boss.