Talking About Your Business

We Love to Fly -- Well, We Used To

Many of my friends in the speaking business and I have something in common this week. We have been inconvenienced by flight cancellations. I'm not blaming American Airlines (Their CEO has publicly taken the blame) or the FAA (Can you say government over reacting?) or even my travel agent (Actually, they have been very helpful to many of us in this situation) for the past few days of inconvenience. Our lives have been affected and business has been lost...yet I think there's a bigger picture point to consider here:

The state of health of the airlines.

ATA, Skybus and Aloha Airlines have closed their doors. Frontier Airlines has filed for bankruptcy protection. Delta and Northwest Airlines are closing in on a merger. American Airlines will lose tens of, if not hundredes of millions of dollars because of their cancellations this week.

If you are dependent upon an airplane to get you somewhere for business or pleasure frequently...this is a wake up call for all of us. More change is coming to how we travel across our states, countries and world.

If you've had your travel plans interrupted this week, I'd like to kow what you're thinking about the future of air travel in the United States.

Feel free to get out your crystal balls.

A New Product from Hyatt

By ALL measure I am a devout Hilton customer. I can tell you not one time have I been let down at any of the Hilton properties.

On the flip side I groan when I am forced to stay at a Hyatt. I find them stuffy, pretentious, policy not customer driven, and WAY overpriced.

Well Hyatt has come out with a new product, The Hyatt Place. Six weeks ago I stayed at my first one in Ontario, California and yesterday and today I stayed in my second one in Dallas, Texas. Boy am I impressed. From the moment you drive up it is a different experience. When I walked through the doors there stood a "host" dressed in an earth tone v-neck sweater and matching pants with a sharp looking Hyatt Place logo on it. The front desk is more like a front table low, personable and easy for the host to walk out from behind to greet you. Speaking of the greeting gone is stuffy, snotty, fake, scripted Hyatt line that will come complete with a $300.00/night bill. Instead you get a warm smile and a real hello.

I could go on about the building and rooms but that would take away from the well done website which has pictures you an see that give you a real sense of what you will walk into. The restaurant is simple but fairly priced, fast, and good. The only complaint it is that the food selection is too limited.

Anyone with a big pocket book can build a hotel as nice looking as a Hyatt Place but it took something special to make the massive shift that Hyatt has made from terrible at their first class properties to just outstanding at the Hyatt Place.

Don't worry Hilton, I am a Diamond Hilton member and plan on staying that way but I will tell you for sure that when a Hyatt Place is in play I will take a long look at them!

Ned

Leading from Any Position

On April 1 & 2 I was in Lexington, Ky delivering a 2 day workshop on leadership and management at the Embassy Suites about 3 miles from Keenland Race Track.

Keenland is one of the premier tracks in the  country where you will find the best of the best when it comes to horse racing.

As far as I am concerned the morning workout is the best time to be at the race track. First of all there is nobody there except for the trainers, workout riders, a few owners, and the horses. Second of all it is FREE. Third you can stand right there next to the rail and listen to the pounding of the thoroughbreds as they thunder by and the trainers give instructions to the riders as to what pace to keep, how far to keep it and asking for feedback from the riders as to how the horse is doing.

So on I got up at 5:00 AM and drove out to Keenland and spent a hour just soaking up the sights, smells, and sounds.

There were about 60 horses moving around and waiting their turn to "breeze", when the regulars began to chuckle and starting calling out to one of the riders as he entered the track to start breezing his horse. He then began to sign songs in Spanish as he rode.

 

Here he is on top of a 900 + pound race horse galloping around the track and singing out loud in Spanish. We could hear him coming, getting louder and then blast past and hear him fade away.

You've Got 2 be kidding me:

Here was a guy that does not make a lot of money, gets up at the crack of dawn every morning and literally puts his life on the line to train horses and does the whole thing singing.

This one man was leading everyone there and NONE of them worked for him. His attitude was infectious and it was clear the regulars were delighted when he showed up to start his singing routine.

Leadership can take place from any position.

Ned

Media Melt Down

Are we getting the service we should be getting from the media? We are the customer remember? Well on March 28, 2008 Lou Dobbs in one of his famous rants was making a comment about something Condoleezza Rice said about race in the U.S.

Dobbs began to say how "these cotton..." and then caught himself. It appeared Mr. Dobbs was heading down the path of using a racial slur in response to what Condoleezza Rice said.

What is so distrubing about this is that CNN removed the work "cotton" from the transcript when they posted in on their web site as you can see right here.

BLITZER: Let's check in with Lou. He has a show coming up in an hour. I want to pick his brain on some intriguing comments from Condoleezza Rice involving race in our country.

     You saw what she said. 

LOU DOBBS, HOST, "LOU DOBBS TONIGHT": I saw what she said. That the United States has a birth defect on the issue of race. I think it's really unfortunate that Secretary of State Rice believes as she does. The fact is most Americans don't have a problem talking about race.

What we have is a problem of talking about race without fearing recrimination and distortion and someone using whatever comments are made for their own purposes. Usually political purposes.

The reality is, this is the most socially, ethnically, religiously, racially diverse society on the face of the earth. Wolf, we don't make enough of that in the nation media. We listen to some idiot say you can't talk about race or there ought to be these responses when you talk about race or ethnicity and too often, in fact nearly always, we fail to point out that there is no country on the face of the earth as progressive, as racially and ethnically diverse as our own.

It's something for us to be proud of and if any - and to hear a politician whoever it may be talk about how difficult it is to talk about race, well the heck with them. We're living with the issue of race. We've got to be able to talk about it and I can guarantee you this, not a single one of these just ridiculous politicians should be the moderator on the issue of race. We have to have a far better discussion than that.

     BLITZER:  Lou, we'll see you back here in one hour.  Thanks very much. 

Ok now you look at the video and see for yourself!   

Where we have been let down is that the ONLY place I can find this in the blog world, no major news group as reported on this, at least not much. What great service we are getting from the media!

I would really like to hear from you on this, am I off the mark or should Dobbs and CNN be held accountable on this? Ned

The Call Center: Customer Service Where Nobody Wins

Have you ever worked in a call center? I have...and it's a great experience to LEAVE. I have really enjoyed the blogging of AC in Call Center Purgatory, http://callcenterpurgatory.blogspot.com/ and it reminded me of my call center experiences...and how lucky I was to get out too!

Doing some research on the history of call centers, I found this "Criticisms of Call Centers" information in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_centre

Criticisms of call centers generally follow a number of common themes:

From Callers:

• operators working from a script.
• non-expert operators (call screening).
• incompetent or untrained operators incapable of processing customers' requests effectively.
• overseas location, with language and accent problems.
• automated queuing systems. This sometimes results in excessively long hold times
• complaints that departments of companies do not engage in communication with one another.
• deceit over location of call center (such as allocating overseas workers false English names)

From Staff:

• close scrutiny by management (e.g. frequent random call monitoring).
• low compensation (pay and bonuses).
• restrictive working practices (some operators are required to follow a pre-written script).
• high stress: a common problem associated with front-end jobs where employees deal directly with customers.
• repetitive job task.
• poor working conditions (e.g. poor facilities, poor maintenance and cleaning, cramped working conditions, management interference, lack of privacy and noisy).
• impaired vision and hearing problems

Customers will tell you they don't like dealing with call centers. Employees like AC will tell you that they "hate" working in call centers. So why do they exist? The answer my friends is purely "financial". When I was hired by a Customer Service Outsourcing firm, Teletech, as a Training Supervisor for their UPS call center project in Tampa. UPS (the most bottom-line driven company I know of) saw all the financial benefits of closing their local calling centers and partnering with a company to do their customer service. It looked like a brilliant move at the right time to the company's leaders.

It was a disaster. The call centers opened with pomp and ceremony and the UPS employees back in their local delivery and processing centers fought us every step of the way. My employees would follow UPS protocol, only to find the local level UPS managers sabotaging their decisions, and the partnership at every turn. This was a classic case of 'us and them". Within two years, the local managers had won. The UPS call centers became nothing more than message centers. Our employees had all of their em"power"ment to fix a customer's problems taken away. Even worse, our call center employees simply became punching bags for the unhappy customers. Customers quickly figured out the call centers lack of empowerment, demanding to speak directly with someone who could actually do something for them besides "take another damn message".

Our customers did get clever...coming up with acronyms for UPS's customer service. Two of my favorites were: UPS = U People Said and UPS = Utterly Poor Service.

3 Years into the UPS partnership...the damage to our call center had been done. All the symptoms of misery were visible and measurable:

120% annual turnover rate

Terrible morale and attitudes

Employees burning out in 6 months

Shrinking labor pool -- would you want to work there?

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Coming to work was a horrible way to earn a paycheck for many of the employees. And it was horrible for our UPS customer's. And all of us in management were in a constant state of reactive chaos.

Bottom line: Call centers continue to struggle. Customers are frustrated and unhappy. Employees are miserable, turnover rates are growing to nearly "McDonald's like" numbers.

I know what we can do!!! Let's ship our call center jobs overseas...to...uh...I know...India! Lower costs to the company! Yes..that's the answer. Close those U.S. call centers...they're too expensive, anyway.

Can you say...customer service disaster? I can...and I will. An article in Time magazine reports that the call centers in India are facing grave shortages of employees. Why? Let's just say the call center honeymoon is over.  http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1671982,00.html  Yes, even employees in developing countries can figure out an awful place to work when they see one.

"Young people say it is no longer worthwhile going through sleepless nights serving customers halfway around the world. They have better job opportunities in other fields. The work is tiring and stressful and offers few career advancement opportunities, says Dr. A. Sankara Reddy, head of Sri Venkateswara College in New Delhi. In response to students' complaints, Reddy said the college a few months ago banned call center recruiters from campus. At least a handful of other local colleges over the last few years have made the same decision."

So...I guess the next step for companies is to find a better customer service tool than a call center. Wait! I've got it!!!! Let's try on-line customer service. That way that can't even call us! Let's take away the human contact and call ourselves "Problem Solving Representatives".  I'll save my thoughts on this customer service disaster (and my latest round of frustrating customer service by e-mail with Amazon.com) for a future blog.

Andrew

Big Words or Big Sales?

Our business is measured first by the message we send out. Sometimes we try and send one message but end up sending another. Andrew and I had a really long conversation about the name of this blog and the name of our CD series. It went something like this, "Um what shall we call it?" "Oh I don't know all we did was talk about business." "Yea I guess you are right sounds good to me."

That was it, no high priced branding consultants just a conversation over a beer. Is it any good? Only time will tell but one thing is for sure, it is plain!

Our friend Deborah Chaddock Brown just posted a blog about the readability of your web site/blog/whatever and a web site to run a test on it.

This is a darn good idea, but it goes further than just what level, it also goes to what expectation are you setting up for yourself and your front line staff?

Andrew and I let companies know this everyday.

Some like what they hear and others don't - Oh well we just tell them what we see.

What expectation are you setting up for your customers and do you exceed it?

Ned

Celebrating the Easter Bunny and Customer Service

Did you get a gift from the Easter Bunny this year? Maybe a basket filled with goodies? If you didn't...that's okay. The magic is in the legend and celebration of the Easter Bunny and not some much the chocolate and presents.

What if "everyday" at your business, the customer felt like it was some special ocassion? This would be an experience that I could only describe as "Disney-like". Everyday at their theme parks is designed as a purposeful celebration of some event. And within this well planned and staged day...the customer becomes a part of the celebration by interacting with it.

Disney, Starbuck's and Build-A-Bear (to name just a few "magical" businesses) can teach your business alot about customer "magic" if you would take a field trip to see their businesses in action. And when you're done with your field trip start thinking about ways to celebrate your customers everyday and to interact with them authentically. Yes, even in a call center or in a big business complex...customer magic can happen in every moment of every day.

You need a purpose, a plan and something to celebrate that ties the customer into the business. Tie it into your vison or mission and make sure it represents something that your organization and employees value.

Nintendo Customer Service Rocks!

For my birthday last year I received a cherish gift...my very own Wii! The Wii has changed my mind about gaming, my family especially enjoys Wii Sports and Wii Games.

Dashing in and out of our happiness was a problem with the Wii Console "freezing" when we were playing. At first the occasional glitch was annoying at the worst. But...the problem persisted and actually became more frequent. One time we were playing, the console froze three times within 10 minutes.

Enough! A quick visit to Nintendo.com and I found a help page with information on the freezing problem and what to do. My console's freezing problem wasn't quite the same as the examples listed, so I decided to send an email to their support team. Within a few minutes (Are you listening Airtran!) I received an email message from an employee that acknowledged my problem, suggested I check the help page if I hadn't already done so and gave me the 800 number to their support team if I wanted to call and discuss the issue with someone.

Nintendo had already won my praise and gaming delight with the Wii and this was an opportunity for them to create a loyal customer...or to really blow it. I expect that when I call the 800 number tomorrow the quality of service will be consistent to what I received electronically. I'll let you know if I am wrong!

When things go wrong for the customer...that's when customer service can really shine!

Keeping it Real

I just spent 4 nights at the Hilton Garden Inn on the west side of Sacramento, Ca. Here is what I find at the HGI's which is why I like them. Made to order breakfast, clean rooms, exercise room, free internet, and authentic customer service. Andrew and I are asked all the time, "what is authentic customer service?" It is not fake customer service. The front desk personnel at the HGI engaged in normal conversation, did not say the training and scripted "Mr. Parks" 700 times in one 4 minute check in, and actually laughed  with me. In other words I felt welcome.

This morning I drove from Sacramento to Monterey, Ca. and checked into a rather high end hotel chain. I was called Mr. Parks by the car valet 3 times, the bell captain a record 7 times, the front desk 4 times to include, "Thank you Mr. Parks for being a member of our rewards program. Your loyalty is appreciated Mr. Parks."

Every thing has been in place since I got here and I have no complaints about their service.

But I don't feel welcome.

Ned Parks

What your small business can learn from Governor Spitzer about Self Sabotage

In real estate, it's location...location...location.

In business, especially the small "mom and pop" business, it's reputation...reputation...reputation. Why Governor Spitzer would throw away a political career on prostitutes is an intriguing story, yet I believe that it is a classic case of self sabotage. A few years back when Psychology Today magazine reported that "the fear of success is now greater than the fear of failure in the U.S.", it caused me to think how of small business owners need to wake up to their behaviors and their accompanying consequences.

Owning a small business is hard work and I have alot of respect for people that can open a business and legitimately make it last. Being a business coach, I have witnessed more than a few smart, entreprenuerially driven people ruin themselves and their businesses with the use of drugs and alcohol. These are forms of self sabotage. Prostitution is another. Governor Spitzer's lesson for us all is to have us ask ourselves...What behaviors we are currently involved in that are sabotaging our own success?

It's gut check time! What have you been doing for the past week, month, year or years that is sabotaging your success? How would your life be different if you stopped those behaviors?

Final thought: Whatever it is that you think you are getting away with...you are only fooling yourself. You may not be a big enough target for the media to cover your exploits, but your customers, clients, vendors, family and friends are watching your every move. And that thought alone should be very sobering as your present day behaviors greatly affect their present and future day decsions about you and your business.