What could be the world’s first complaint about shoddy service is on a clay tablet that was first sent about 3,800 [BCE; they forgot to add 2,018 CE years to the total–ed] years ago in southern Mesopotamia from the city of Ur…
Here is an excerpt from it.
Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message:
When you came, you said to me as follows: “I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots.” You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: “If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!”
What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt? (…) Take cognizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any copper from you that is not of fine quality. I shall (from now on) select and take the ingots individually in my own yard, and I shall exercise against you my right of rejection because you have treated me with contempt.
What I found most interesting is that the complaint wasn’t limited to the shoddy product or the initial lies in service of making the sale.
It sounded angriest at being “treated with contempt.”
Update the product and delivery method and it could be a template for almost any 21st Century customer unhappy with a product or service.
Decades ago rotten customer service was more a function of little-to-no training and draconian scripts, but the advent of technology raised rotten customer service to new heights — think Ma Bell and Comcast.
And it was tech companies that added contempt to the rotten customer service recipe in ever larger doses.
If contempt is yin, then arrogance is its yang.
And there is no question that tech companies excel at arrogance.
It’s amazing to me, but looking back at more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.
In case you didn’t know, today is the start of Customer Service Week, focusing on “the importance of great customer experiences to the success of the organization and reinforce a customer-focused culture.” “Customer” typically refers to the people who buy your product, but they aren’t your only customers, especially if you’re a manager. That’s why today’s Golden Oldies includes two posts, with several links to additional, valuable information on the subject of customers and how to keep them. One new link seems worth including; it explains why, unlike other fields, the constant practice involved in active customer service can seriously reduce empathy — an absolute requirement of great customer service.
Customer service is a major topic these days (more on that tomorrow); as is employee retention, but do they really have anything in common?
Absolutely.
Every manager, from team leader to CEO, is also a customer service manager, because your people are your customers.
That’s right, customers.
More accurately, that makes you an ESM—employee service manager.
Why do you service your people? To
help them achieve their full potential;
assure high productivity;
lower turnover; and
create an environment that’s a talent magnet.
How do you service your people? By
cultivating the kind of MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) that truly values people and understands how important it is to manifest that;
offering high-grade professional challenges to all your people and making sure that they have the resources and all the information necessary to achieve success;
fostering fairness so that people know they are evaluated on their merits and favoritism plays no part; and
always walking your talk and living up to your commitments.
What’s in it for you?
Better reviews, promotions and raises;
increased professional development;
less turnover and easier staffing; and
what goes around comes around—everything that you give your people will come back to you ten-fold!
Flickr image credit: Angela Archer
Employee Retention: Not Rocket Science
Yesterday we looked at how a new IBM analytics tool that analyzes tweets found that customer loyalty was severely impacted by employee turnover.
A decade ago research by Frederick Reichheld found that a 5% improvement in employee retention translated to a 25%-100% gain in earnings.
2015 Global Human Capital Trends report, their annual comprehensive study of HR, leadership, and talent challenges, the top ten talent challenges reported for 2015 are: culture and engagement, leadership, learning and development, reinventing HR, workforce on demand, performance management, HR and people analytics, simplification of work, machines as talent, and people data everywhere.
The first three are nothing new; the terms have changed over the years, although not the meaning behind them or their ranking as top concerns.
In a major employee retention push, companies are turning to algorithms and analytics to mine a raft of data, identify which employees are most likely to leave and then try to change their minds.
But some things never seem to change and until they do companies won’t make much headway.
At Credit Suisse, managers’ performance and team size turn out to be surprisingly powerful influences (emphasis added –ed.), with a spike in attrition among employees working on large teams with low-rated managers.
With decades of research saying the same thing, it makes one wonder why the finding was “surprising.”
In fact, nothing will change until companies, bosses and the media stop being surprised every time a survey shows that talent acquisition and retention is most influenced by
“Corporation, n. an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.” — Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911
Bierce’s words ring truer today than any time since he first wrote them; as shown most recently by Wells Fargo CEO John G. Stumpf.
But Mr. Stumpf — whom the members of the House committee personally blamed for the persistent and widespread misdeeds — stuck to the same script he has used throughout the crisis. The problem, he explained, was an ethical lapse among the 5,300 employees, most of them low-level bankers and tellers, who had been fired for their actions since 2011.
But he again rejected lawmakers’ attempts to cast the scandal as a consequence of broader failings in Wells Fargo’s leadership and corporate culture.
A rejection that is the purest bull poop I’ve heard recently.
Having been a customer long before Norwest acquired it in 1998 (acquired, although it was called a merger) I can honestly say that Wells attitude towards customers hasn’t changed — they are a necessary evil with no other purpose than to enrich Wells coffers.
At that time, Wells was known for its cutting-edge technology and lousy customer relations, while Norwest was famous for its customer-centric culture. Analysts predicted that as the acquirer Norwest’s culture would be ascendant.
So much for those predictions.
In case you think I’m exaggerating, there are $10 billion in recent fines to prove I’m not.
As Mr. Stumpf testified, a video screen on the hearing room’s wall displayed a scroll of more than a dozen fines Wells Fargo has paid in recent years, totaling more than $10 billion. The list included penalties for subprime loan abuses, discriminating against African-American and Hispanic mortgage borrowers, and foreclosure violations, among others.
Mr. Hensarling asked whether such fines are simply the “cost of doing business.”
Mr. Stumpf answered no, adding, “I don’t want our culture to be defined by these mistakes.”
Then how else should the culture for which Stumpf is responsible be defined?
Obviously, Stumpf doesn’t have the same sign on his desk as President Truman had on his, let alone buy into its meaning.
Back in June, when money got tight and investors started focusing on profits, instead of the emperor’s clothes, we considered why freemium isn’t an enterprise play.
Cheap doesn’t work, either.
Competing on price means keeping costs down.
Keeping costs down typically means skimping on headcount.
That skimping often happens in customer service/support.
Cheaper customer service frequently means online help or offshore outsourcing.
Neither option is known to keep enterprise users happy.
And while inertia may retain consumers, enterprise is quick to walk.
Like the man said, good ain’t cheap and cheap ain’t good.
Now a Carmine Gallo, a much bigger name than me, has written The Storyteller’s Secret, highlighting the importance of story from building a culture to building a brand or entire company.
Vinod Khosla, billionaire venture capitalist here in Silicon Valley, where I live, tells me that the biggest problem he sees is that people are fact-telling when they pitch him. They’re giving facts and information and he says, “that’s not enough, Carmine. They have to do storytelling.”
When Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, another big venture capital firm, tells me the most underrated skill is storytelling, or when Richard Branson, who I interviewed, said, “entrepreneurs who cannot tell a story will never be successful”
Of course, what can you expect from generations that don’t read much and think communication is an email or, worse yet, texting?
Every day at the Ritz-Carlton there is a brief morning meeting of housekeeping.
And they ask the question of the employees: “Is there a great customer experience that you’ve been a part of, that you can share with the rest of us? (…)They start sharing stories with one another, and then they start competing for who has better stories. They get recognized publicly.”
Southwest’s success is the result of a masterful storytelling culture.
So they created what’s called a storytelling culture, where every week the HR teams go out, and they take videos of real passengers who have had a struggle, or have maybe almost missed a funeral or a birth, or a life-changing event, and stuff like that. But they were able to do it because of Southwest.
Apple is a giant at storytelling, as is Microsoft and Zappos.
So is Whole Foods, KPMG, every farm-to-table restaurant and even ugly food.
Just don’t kid yourself about why the stories work.
The work because they are real, true, authentic or any other adjective you care to use.
The stories are based on/backed by employee actions, which is what makes them resonate.
That means the CEO and all the executive team not only believes in the importance of customer experience, but also knows that the experience is created and facilitated by their people at all levels — especially the front-line people.
Last month, United personnel once again stuck their foot in it when they first refused to provide hot food to an autistic teen, although they finally relented.
The girl was fine, but the idiot pilot called for an emergency landing, called the paramedics and the cops.
When the officers started to leave, the captain stepped out of the cockpit and said something to them, Beegle said. They then asked her family to leave, she said.
“He said, ‘The captain has asked us to ask you to step off the plane.'” Beegle said. “I said, ‘She didn’t do anything’ … But the captain said he’s not comfortable flying on to Portland with [Juliette] on the plane.”
All of this with the full support of management.
United said its “crew made the best decision for the safety and comfort of all of our customers and elected to divert to Salt Lake City after the situation became disruptive.”
Passengers who witnessed the whole thing and posted videos said it was total bunk.
Of course, what UAL did to this child was far worse than breaking a guitar, but it goes to show their motto is still “the customer is always wrong, no matter what.”
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
Have you ever been taken aback by the dichotomy between a company’s excellent product and its amateurish website or product sheets?
If you have, you are face-to-fact with an immature company.
And while important for consumer sales, M&S maturity is absolutely critical when selling to business — no matter the size of the enterprise.
This immaturity has nothing to do with years in business and everything to do with an immature business process with regards to sales and marketing.
If a potential customer meets something that’s immature, i.e., incompetent, in M&S, they will jump to the conclusion that the company is also incompetent in other areas.
That’s why look & feel are so important — we Americans, unlike most other countries, have grown up in a society where marketing is central, so in many ways looks are more important than substance.
Young companies are often immature; they hire sales people, but turn a blind eye to the need for doing the product marketing work first.
The shrug off lead generation/creation, lead nurturing, sales process, sales collateral that fit the process, key selling points against competitors, target user profile, target influencer profile, etc., and, worst of all, customer service.
These are the real underpinnings for success.
A lot to cover; a lot to do, but the payoff is significant.
After all, you don’t want your target customers to dismiss you because you look immature, do you?
When Riot Games was founded in 2006 by Brandon Beck, and Marc Merrill it was done out of frustration. They wanted a game that would embrace fans desire to engage in that game, rather than being forced to dump it for a new version.
League of Legends was launched three years later; it was launched ignoring prevailing wisdom about how to make a game pay, i.e., no hardware, free download, players couldn’t buy extra power or skill for their avatars and time to grow organically.
“People told us when we started that if you don’t charge up front, or if you’re not selling extra power or stats, it won’t work,” Mr. Merrill said. “But that fails to account for the coolness factor. If you’re really into cars, you don’t mind spending $50,000 to soup up your Honda. That’s the player we’re tapping into.”
Riot now has 1500 employees and is on target to break the billion dollar revenue mark.
The company says there are now 67 million active monthly players around the world, and in August alone this crowd spent $122 million, according to SuperData.
Riot Games doesn’t have advertising on its site; it focuses totally on its users believing that if they are happy revenues will come.
“Whenever I talk to executives at Riot, it’s like a mantra: ‘Revenue is second, the player experience is first,’ ” said Joost van Dreunen, chief executive of SuperData. “The paradox is that by putting revenue second, League will be one of the very few games to bring in $1 billion in 2014.”
Moreover, although it isn’t paying off immediately, Riot Games is working diligently to build LoL into a major e-sports presence.
Dozens of those players are now in Seoul, at the fourth world championship. On Oct. 19, the finals will be held in a stadium built for soccer’s World Cup, with 40,000 fans expected and many times that number watching online. Last year, Riot Games says, 32 million people around the world saw a South Korean team win the Summoner’s Cup, along with a grand prize of $1 million, in the Staples Center in Los Angeles. That’s an audience larger than the one that tuned in to the last game of the N.B.A. finals that year.
And while most of Riot Games’ 1500 employees are in Santa Monica, the bulk of its players are in Asia.
I thought I had registered for Software Pricing’s 4-hour seminar with Jim Geisman, an expert in how to price software products, both SaaS, on-premise, embedded and other models. Apparently I hadn’t, since I wasn’t on the list, but In spite of that I was allowed to participate.
The session was intimate and excellent and Jim provided a lot of deep information and practical advice for how to think around the price-setting challenge. The audience was comprised of CEOs, CFOs, VPs of Marketing and Sales from large companies and startups alike. It was exceedingly interesting to see how pricing is a problem across several different sizes of companies and industry segments.
There is no question that Jim and his partner Chris Mele are the most knowledgeable people with regards to software pricing I’ve come across after more than two decades building software companies. The importance of pricing optimally—setting the price in a way that entices the highest number of customers without leaving money on the table—is a discipline that I’ll definitely pay more attention to in the future and I’m sure to use Jim’s services to ensure we don’t make any mistakes in this important area as we go to market.
SIIA’s Rhianna Collier and her team from the software division put together tremendous networking opportunities with both arranged meetings and speed dating sessions. It was some of the best networking I’ve experienced, yielding several additional companies to round out a set of initial test users for the system we’re launching in September. This is very exciting, as finding initial customers is one of the most challenging parts of releasing an enterprise product.
When selling to organizations, the challenge is to have managers and executives allocate their and their teams’ time and resources to iron out the wrinkles in a new product. This is not a trivial challenge for a startup.
The networking was valuable not only for me, but also for people from companies such as HP, InformationBuilders and SAP, with whom I spoke.
I’ll end with a story that proves once again just how small the world really is. As I was standing in the first part of the arranged networking I started speaking to Shannon Murray from Totango who was surprised when I knew of the company. It’s a small series B company that just raised 15.5m and are in an interesting space called Customer Success software.
I explained that I followed their blog, as probably thousands of others do. The blog is written by Ellis Luk who, together with their CEO Guy Nirpaz, has created a company blog that is helpful and instructive by enabling their customers to speak about their problems and how they are dealing with the challenges around enabling their customers. This is crucial for a SaaS business to get right as renewals are completely dependent on this.
The first day was very good and I’m looking forward to the following two.
Internet companies aren’t known for great customer service—they’re known for not having any.
The only way to reach most of them is by email or their contact form.
Assuming you actually get a response, it’s most often a form note that sends you to Help; Facebook even claims people prefer that approach.
Mr. Wolens said that Facebook believes that its users prefer “self-remediation” — basically, online solutions they find without help — to dealing with Facebook employees.
Comments like this make me wonder if Internet companes have any understanding of humans at all.
Do they (you?) really believe that the majority of people having problems using a product/service/whatever-you-call-it like digging through crappy descriptions of problems that never quite address theirs?
Enterprise, the car rental company has done a lot of quantitative work on the effect of customer service based on a customer rating system that goes from one to five.
“In my discussion with Enterprise, they said that people who give a ‘five’ are three times more likely to return than those who give a ‘four,’” Hoplamazian noted. “And the people who give a ‘four’ are twice as likely [to come back] than [those who give lower numbers]. Below a ‘four,’ and you might as well forget it. The only thing that matters is customer satisfaction.”
I’ll bet similar stats hold true for Internet companies; not just for returning, but for recommending.
It is too-big-to-fail arrogance, such as you find at Facebook and Google, that result in no customer service.
And that attitude trickles down to the entrepreneurs who emulate them.
(My apologies for not posting yesterday.)
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Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Who is Your Customer?
Employee Retention: Not Rocket Science
Bierce’s words ring truer today than any time since he first wrote them; as shown most recently by 
Have you ever been taken aback by the dichotomy between a company’s excellent product and its amateurish website or product sheets?
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts 
