Phil's Customer Service blog

It’s really hard to tell sometimes, don’t you find?

NEW CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT SELF-DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM: I have just made this new book available as a ‘print on demand’ book. You order it online, it’s printed and sent to you. Take a look if you are interested:
Take One A Day For Customers…January

It’s a tip-a-day work book. Should take your people five minutes a day to fill in. The tips stimulate self-led continuous improvement for organizations that want their frontline people to take the initiative and improve customer service daily.

If you run a call centre or customer service department or have a network of branches containing frontline people I’ve priced this continuous improvement development system cheaply enough for you to dip into your training budget to buy everyone a copy as their personal daily action development programme – five minutes a day to stimulate regular self-directed collaborative improvements.

Well, have a great festive season.

I hope to have a new downloadable book of customer tips available for you in January. Will report here in a week or two on that. In the meantime, here is some great advice from Forrest Gump to help you focus on what’s important in 2007:

“Don’t lead no humdrum life.”

Hmmm, looks like this brand wasn’t designed to travel well in the new global economy.

I heard this customer service announcement on the London Underground myself while running to catch a tube train at Westminster Station, so I know it’s true, as opposed to the ones that circulate in emails. Ah, the power of CCTV:

“Will the gentleman on the eastbound District Line platform stay exactly where you are. Yes, we can see you. We’re rushing a mop and bucket down to you right now and you can clean that up yourself”.

No, it wasn’t me.

We all know the power of sticking a senior executive in front of a customer and letting them absorb how the customer feels. It’s how you bring them down from whatever ivory tower they are in and get them to ‘confront reality’ as Bossidy & Charan put it in their book of the same name.

Here’s an example, from Renee Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim. Mauborgne was impressive at last week’s Leaders in London conference. So, I dug this example out of my research notes for the 60 Second Leader book that I am supposed to be finishing off right this minute (manuscript submission deadline Friday week. Gulp…). It’s an example of how to try and trigger an epiphany in people so they suddenly stand in their customer’s shoes and see things the way they really are – from the customer’s standpoint:

“Philips Lighting North America was a very proud company. So proud that the sales force were convinced they were doing a first-class job even though they weren’t gaining market share and General Electric dominated the industry.

“That’s when the new business head had his sales force listen in on a phone conversation between himself and Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, the largest retail customer in the US lighting industry.” On this occasion, the cognitive ‘kingpin’ the head of sales was looking to hit was the entrenched assumption by the sales force that they were better than they actually were.

‘So, Bernie,’ he said, ‘How is our sales force doing?’ Marcus replied: ‘Your sales force?’ (His voice rose to a near-shout). ‘They never follow through with what they commit to, deliveries are late, quantities and styles are wrong. It’s a disaster. There are only excuses, no corrective action.’

A dramatic attitudinal and behavioural turnaround occurred fast, as there was no place left for the sales force to hide.”

SOURCE: Renee Mauborgne & W. Chan Kim, authors of the best-selling Blue Ocean Strategy, writing on how to achieve ‘Tipping Point Leadership’ – making big change happen despite few resources. You can find the full texts in their article Tipped For The Top, People Management magazine, April 2003 and the INSEAD Quarterly, 2004.