Coaching Employees

I love the game of baseball. National pastime and all, it is my favorite sport. To completely confess, I am also a New York Yankees fan. Growing up in Connecticut you have a choice: The Red Sox (Satan's demons...) or the Yankees. It was an easy choice.

My baseball diversion was to make note of the fact that in baseball the lead guy is called a manager. In other sports such as basketball and football, they are a coach. In business virtually everyone is called a manager. Very rarely is a leader defined as a coach and if the term is used it is often the front line manager or "lead" that is called a coach. Why the distinction? Who knows? Business needs far more coaches than they do managers. Let me rephrase; they need far more "coaching" than "managing". Leaving baseball behind ( I know the manager "coaches". ), let's focus on the difference between these two terms in a business environment.

1. Coaches make employees better- A coach helps an employee get better and thus helps to increase their performance. At least that is what a good coach does. Coaching is really needed to make one thing happen; change behavior. That is what a great coach does. They help employees change their behavior. That could be an increase in use of skills, attitude, attendance, or simply anything that gets an employee to change a behavior for the better of the employee and betterment of the company. Some coaches do this with high energy, high expectations or simply high involvement. They are active in the process. When employees change behavior in areas that are beneficial to a company you get better productivity, quality and most likely profitability. The more employees impacted by a single coach or a group of coaches that can truly change behavior the better the results. You already know your good coaches. They are easy to pick out and you see the results.

2. Managers "manage"- Yes, this is going to be negative. Managers move resources around. Resources can be people, things, ideas. Unfortunately a bad manager can make a person feel like a thing. Managers by nature do more watching and telling than actual coaching. They often manage problems and reports. As a result they get movement but it is often not sustainable or worse in the wrong direction. When you manage vs. coach you have a tendency to be at the beginning of a process or performance or at the end; you rarely are a participant. As a result most work (sometimes harm) at the front or back of an event or process. Behavior is rarely changed because the manager is not involved with the work product. We are not saying that all leaders need to be actively involved in every step of their employees, simply that if you want behavior change it must be done through coaching and not managing.

Are your supervisors and managers more like the coach above or the manager? If they are like coaches the sky is the limit for you. If you are doing well; keep going. If you need to make changes; no problem. Coaches can change behavior. If on the other hand, they seem more like managers, then if your doing well your managers will be able to tell you. If you are doing poorly, you are at risk because while they can tell you how poorly they are doing, they can rarely help you fix it. Why? Because with employees it is very hard to manage your way to changes in behavior. You need a coach.

Trust

It never ceases to amaze how large a role trust plays in an organization. We have written about it before in this blog yet it will never be enough. As we move our way through any discussion in business, most every catalyst for change is related to a lack of trust. That lack of trust is either implied by outside parties or earned buy those inside the organization. Who do you trust in your organization? Who don't you trust? For those you do not trust, hopefully you are already taking action. For those you do, maybe it is time you checked in and verified your perception.

Recently we did some work for a client with particular focus on improving performance significantly in an area of their business. As the client moved through the process, he came to find out that the "workers" (people on he "trusted" were simply not doing what they were supposed to be doing. That in itself would be troubling however even worse they were lying about what they were doing. The leader was taking the time and energy to follow-up with the employees, ask for updates, encourage changes and actions, etc. The problem was that the employees were flat out lying about what they had been doing. You can imagine the impact of this.

1. It brought into question, the performance of the employee.

2. It brought into question not only this one issue but every other issue that this employee said they had completed, accomplished or were "planning to do".

3. The lies impacted other departments.

4. It now requires a whole new layer of auditing to verify work has been done.

5. It drives you to re-validate if anyone else is lying to you as well.

No manager can spend all their time verifying and validating every move an employee makes. Yes, you need to measure and monitor. This goes without question. Yet you can't watch everyone. Some you have to trust more than others. Otherwise you spend all your time "watching" and never using your leadership to move people forward.

This recognition rocked this managers world. Not because they were unable to make decisions and change, they moved quickly here. What rocked their world was that it made them questions virtually every thing that had been said and reported to them. Was any of it true? Could they ever trust this employee again. It was like entering a different reality.

Do you trust your employees? Go back over them one by one. Yes, use your gut feel along with real and actionable data.

Have you gone back and re-checked even those you would say you trust and consider reputable employees?

If am employee has lied to you on one thing; odds are they will do it again or have in the past.

Most of our discussions have been built around having great employee relationships. When you build them your company will excel. One of the ways you build a great company is to verify on a consistent basis who is "rowing in the same direction you are". Maybe you already know or maybe you need to just re-check to make sure that you really can trust the people you think you can trust.

One at a time...

Face it we are all a little selfish. Unfortunately it all too often starts first with me, myself and I and then we go from there. That singular focus on "ourselves" despite how hard we try to focus on others can be a strength in business. Our success can be changed by the individual actions and changes we make. Whether part of a small team or a large team our individual contributions make a difference. How well we do individually contributes to the team and the larger goals of our organization. Focusing on ourselves and our individual contribution in business is good for everyone.

Ironically when we lead a customer service or sales organization it is one of the first things we forget. We get wrapped up in dashboards, charts, scores and the "big picture". Nothing wrong with that. If you are a leader it is required. What is also required is that we recognize that the "big picture" is made up of "tens-hundreds- thousands" of individuals. Each one can make or break your day. Each one connecting with "tens-hundreds-thousands" of the most valuable asset your company has; your customers. If you run a call center then you live each day knowing that your very worst employee will most likely talk to more customers today, this week and this month than the very best, "top", high "fallutin" sales or marketing person in your company will talk to in a year.

How well prepared are we to deal with the individuals in the organization that make up the "big picture"? We must not only have a strategy and plan. Our ability to "scale" and deal with each individual can be the difference between success and failure.

Your customers can help. Put them to work for you.

Your call will NOT be monitored for quality assurance....

It is a simple change:
Today: Your call may be monitored for quality and training purposes.
Tomorrow: Your call will not be monitored for quality assurance; your opinion and advice is much more valuable than ours.

Let's face it. It is true. We spend our own money, use our own resources and evaluate our own performance knowing full well that there is someone else more credible, reliable and affordable; our customer. We know this yet for many we do nothing about it. We miss one very key component about this "obvious" perspective. What we miss is that our employees believe it as well.

What works better? Advice and direction (especially critique and request for change) from our managers and QA that we pay for or advice and direction from our customer. Not on a report or chart but real feedback and direction from our customers. It's okay; you can admit it because it is not even close. 10 times more valuable; 20 times? Do we hear 50? Our customers are more credible to us and more importantly our front-line employees.

Are you bold enough to change your announcement?

Salesforce figured it out...

A belated update to my salesforce problem. When the account was set up for my upgrade the wrong platform was inserted. As a result, when upgraded it would not take on the attributes required. In other words a very small mistake very early in the process caused the issue.

Once they figured it out, they fixed it right away. They also called me and told me it was fixed (Good job salesforce...)

Recently I contacted Salesforce with a question regarding my account. I own two "group edition" platforms for two separate business's. With that platform comes a standard set of reporting and dashboards. You get the dashboards that are pre-set only. If you want to customize dashboards you must move to a higher offering etc.

Salesforce lists this feature as one of it's key benefits for the platform.
One of my accounts was not showing the dashboards at all. The page that accesses the dashboard was showing a dead page.

I first chose the "chat" service for help. In the chat I stated:" My account does not have a dashboard. I own two accounts that are the same services. One has a dashboard and the other does not. We need help."

There was not chat person available. It kept telling me someone was coming soon. After 40 minutes, I went on to something else. When I returned, there was a " This is John how can I help you (type message) and then a sign off and recommendation to re-engage for help.

I then called and got a service representative on the phone. He had an "accent" so I am not sure if it was this shore or some other shore. I explained my problem. He repeated it and then asked for access to my salesforce live account.  I gave it to him. He verified that we did not have dashboards. He then asked if he could see my other account to see what "that one had set up since it had dashboards..." I informed him that this was a feature that Salesforce had listed as a top benefit of their service offering. This could not be unique. He insisted on seeing the "other account". After opening the other account, he verified that I did in fact have a dashboard ( I told him I did...). He then put me on hold. After three minutes ( we have now been at this 45 minutes...) he came on and told me he talked to his supervisor and although what I was asking for was not supported, he would help me. He then led me into their APPE exchange and found two vendor solutions and neither worked. ( Why Salesforce has a feature offered as a key component and they do not own it or load it ahead of time is another issue here...) I then asked for someone else to help and he told me that he had escalated the problem and someone would call me back in 24 to 48 hours.

After hanging up I sent an email to my sales person. Within 30 minutes my sales person sent me an email telling me that they were no longer my sales person and gave me the new name ( copied her as well). In the letter he stated that because of "growth" I had changed.

30 minutes later my "sales person" sent me a note and told me they were no longer my sales person, due to growth it  was now a new person.  About five hours later, sales person number "two" verified that I was indeed the being supported by sales person number "three" and they would be getting in touch with me.

No response from either the escalation or the "third" sales person.

Some thoughts:
1. It is blatantly obvious when you get someone on the phone for support that does not know what they are doing. He had no clue how to verify the problem let alone fix it. What was so painful was that this is a key feature of the program and he had no clue what it was. Recognizing that every call center has to have new people which means a learning curve there must be a standard to "get on the phone". New and "learning" is okay. Customers are patient and recognize that people can be new at something. In the right situation a new person can build loyalty by trying to solve the problem. In this situation a quick escalation is needed to not lose the customers support.  New and "clueless" is unacceptable. Having to prove they offered the feature was craziness.
2. For the consumer- I stayed on the phone with the guy way too long. My gut told me he did not know what he was doing. I hate to ask for a supervisor/second level too early. Some people just ask immediately, I don't. At the same time, I waited too long and slowly started to get mad at myself for investing my time. (Thus the long blog...)
3. There is a reason that call centers measure first resolution. It makes a difference. When a customer calls with a problem and hangs up with the same problem you have serious dissatisfaction and a loss of confidence. Not getting the answer or outcome they wanted is a different experience then not accomplishing anything. I have the lowest service level at Salesforce so they delay of 24-48 hours can easily be solved by me paying more money for quicker support. No problem there except my"problem" is a standard everyday feature that should not have to wait two days to fix. Hopefully you see the difference. Service people must have the ability ( companies need to have the process) to escalate or "transcend" the standard support terms when the problem is so basic to operations. In other words, they should have escalated me anyway right at that moment with or without a "premier contract".
4. On the selling side, there is just no excuse. I appreciate the "second salesperson" following up however I am still waiting on the 3rd....

I would tell you how it all ended but I still do not have a "dashboard" so the results are still pending....

Say what?

My mortgage is with Litton Loans. I ran into a problem the other day. I needed a statement of my activity. Figured I could get it online and created an online account. I could not figure out how to print a report so I sent the following:

"I have opened an online account and I want to print off my statement. When I click on view my statement, nothing comes up... What do I do?"



This was the first response I received: 


Dear Michael Tamer :

Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding your mortgage loan.  You are a valued customer and we hope to assist you as soon as possible.  Please allow 60 business days for a Customer Service Specialist to properly research and respond to your inquiry.  It is important that you continue making your monthly payments according to your loan agreement.

We appreciate your consideration in this matter.  If we can be of further assistance, please contact our Customer Service Department at 1-800-247-9727.

Sincerely,

Litton Loan Servicing LP


They are going to "assist me as soon as possible" but I should allow 60 days? 
What possible strategy would they have for putting 60 days?
What is crazy is that they sent me an email the very next day and answered my question:


Dear Michael Tamer :

In regards to the inquiry you posted to our website on 26-MAY-11 :

The response to your inquiry is:

Our records reflect your loan is set up on automatic payments.  Therefore Billing Statements are not generated.  A copy of the Detail Transaction History ("History") will be mailed to you under separate cover.  This History documents the transaction dates with an effective backdate, if applicable, brief descriptions, next due date, principal balance, and how the funds were applied.

Should you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact our office. You may call our Customer Service Department at 800-247-9727 or the Default Counseling area at 800-999-8501. If you wish to respond via email, please access our website at http://www.LittonLoan.com and forward a new inquiry through the 'Contact Us' page.

Sincerely,

Litton Loan Servicing LP


I have heard of setting "low expectations" and then exceeding them but this is taking things a little too far.


Some thoughts:


1. Set a target for response that you can meet on a professional and regular basis. I recognize the value in "over-peforming" however this time period is way too long.  When you set such a long period you can expect to immediately get a phone call.
2. Recommended target should be next business day at the latest. 
3. Do not use terms like : "We hope to assist you." This implies that you might not be capable of assisting (as in competent) or maybe even in worse; " we are not sure we have enough people".  


I appreciate the next day response. 

Customers at work....

One of our clients, recently asked a question of their customer in response to a customer service interaction they had just completed. The question was; "What should "Tom" be proud of from your conversation?" Here is what that customer wrote:

"His attitude. He even answered the phone like he liked his job. How someone says hello to me seems to really affect how I feel for the rest of my dealings with that person. It is amazing how problems get solved quicker and more efficiently when you are dealing with someone like him."


How many times do we tell our employees that the tone of their voice matters?
How often do we express that how you start a call goes a long way to how well you finish?
How can we keep an employee focused on the fact that for the customer this is their most important issue and not simply one of "50" we will deal with today?

This customer communicated this information to "Tom" directly and with passion.  Tom's behavior will be affected by this comment.  Tom will remember this comment.

Will you?

www.tamerpartners.com

A Belated Happy New Year & Year End Reviews

Only nine days behind schedule on wishing you a Happy New Year. "Having done that...". let's talk about 2011 and the opportunity in front of us.

At the end of December I had the privilege to watch one of our clients working through reviews. A laborious task for the Supervisor and really nerve wracking for the employee that receives it. What was fascinating is that the manager was doing a whole bunch of cutting and pasting of direct customer comments in to each review question. The supervisor had figured out that the employees were much more receptive to comments from customers than they were from the supervisor throughout the year. The year end review was not going to be any different. On average over 50% of the supervisors comments about the employees performance were directly from the customers.

Even more impressive was that when the supervisor directed the employees to areas of improvement for the coming year, they also targeted the customers to "watch and coach these areas". It sounded something like this.

"George it is clear from this past year that your biggest area of improvement needs to be improving your empathy with your customers- Customer One: George did a good job but I did not feel he really cared about me or my problem. He helped me but it did not seem like he really wanted to help. Customer Two: I had to repeat myself three times. Don't get me wrong, he heard me; I could just never get him to see my problem...

In 2011, George we are going to instruct the customers to look specifically for you to show empathy and express care and concern for their problems. We will also provide you with a review of material....

Customers actively involved in finding the problems, verifying the behavior and then part of changing the behavior. One more thing, the customers were not paid for this direct involvement. They did it because they care.

Almost like empathy....
www.tamerpartners.com

Words vs. Numbers

Here is the test. Which would you rather have for customer experience feedback?

A. On a scale of 1 to 5 how would you rate our customer service? Score: 4.7

B. Customer response:" I like your company and you did a great job with our service. Your service representative George took some extra time and fixed my information so it would be easier to purchase again.

Most people would choose B.

How about this one?

A. On a scale of 1 to 5 how would you rate our customer service? ( 5,000 responses) Score: 4.7

B. Customer Response (1): Your representative George did a good job. He was typing while I was talking so I had to repeat myself a couple of times. Your competitor ABC Corporation is now offering a change in their services for a much shorter delivery time. I wish you folks would offer that.

Now which one would you pick? Which one is best for George?

Words as you know are powerful. Most executives want numbers. They "role up" much better than customer comments and words. For your front-line representatives, they want words. Words truly change behavior. Numbers are valuable but there are too many for a front-line representative. If you want behavior change, look for words from your customers.

www.tamerpartners.com

Award Ceremony in San Diego California

This week on Monday the North Texas Toll Authority won the "Presidents Award" from the IBTTA (International Tolling) for their Customer Driven Management program. The Chairman of the Board; Paul Wageman accepted the award on behalf of the NTTA.

The NTTA won an award because 1000's of their customers have chosen to participate in coaching, encouraging and giving advice to NTTA's front-line customer service and sales folks.

When was the last time your company won an award for being truly Customer Driven?

www.tamerpartners.com

PS: San Diego is amazing.

www.tamerpartners.com

Saving Money with Your Customers Help

If you are not focused on finding ways to save money then you must be working for a company on another planet. The economy stinks for most industries and the pressure is on to find ways to save money. Here is a unique concept, let you customers help you out.

Using Customer Driven Management, your customers can help do the work for you that either A. You do not have the time or resources to do it they way you really want it done or B. You do not have the time or resources to do it at all.

Customers not only can help but they want to help as well.

Here are some areas where you can reduce costs in your customer sales and service areas with CDM:

1. Customers can help you coach employees. You can raise the Supervisor to Employee ratios by adding the customers into the coaching process. You end up with more coaching for less cost. How much does a supervisor cost at your organization? If you could go from 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 or maybe 1 to 20 to 1 to 30, how much could you save?

2. Quality Monitoring- Let you customers into the QM process. At worst case you will still have to do compliance monitoring. Your customers can do everything else. How many QM people do you have? What if you only had to QM compliance issues? What could you save?

3. Focus groups and marketing research- Don't pay an organization to conduct expensive focus group work, use your customers. They are passionate, accurate, credible and infinite. How much do you spend in focus groups and customer experience research?

4. Mystery shopping- Use your own customers for mystery shopping. What better way to increase loyalty than to have your customers help you get better. Do you have a mystery shopping line item in your budget?

The North Texas Tollway Authority did all of they and won an award. On June 10, 2010, the NTTA put out the following press release in this link: June 10, 2010

Interested in winning an award and saving money? What value would that bring your company? What value would that bring your career?

Congratulations American Airlines!

Well done! American Airlines did it right. They made a mistake and they corrected it. I have been remiss in following up on my last blog. No excuses. American Airlines did the right thing. If you read my other blog, you can figure out what the problem was.

American Airlines changed their policy, gave me my money back and changed the airline ticket for me. Not only that they did it professionally. They wrote, they called (more than once...) and they stuck with it till it was done the right way.

Well done.

How you treat your customers matters. You know it and I know it. Our challenge is that we all think it but very few follow through and do something about it. The reason usually is we do not have enough time or money to really make any significant change. As a result, we wait, we settle, and we do not get any better.

Help is here.

We are embarking on a new program called the CDM Challenge. We partner with your customers to help you win the challenge. We take your toughest employees and put your customers to work helping them get better. That's right. Your toughest customer service employees, coached and trained by your customers. How do you win? Your employees get better! No additional hiring, no training just your most valuable asset: your customers helping you get better.

Want more information? Go to www.tpcdm.com/uwulhdl2krxc7avb

Customer Disconnect-American Airlines

Recently I had a very unfortunate experience with American Airlines. I purchased a ticket for my daughter and son-in law to fly to Dallas. Cost of ticket $110. I made the mistake of putting the wrong last name on my daughters ticket. Recently married and all, I put the wrong name. Being a Platinum member, I called in to the Platinum call center. After explaining my story I was told it would cost $150 to make a name change. Since the ticket was $119 dollars and I felt I had some "juice" because of my frequent flier status, I asked to speak to a supervisor. The rep put me on hold and came back and said the "supervisor will do it for a $100." Told her that this was not what I wanted and I wanted to speak to the supervisor. She came back with another bargain price of "$50". I told her this was not a used car sale and I wanted to actually speak to the supervisor.

He came online, I gave him my story. Told him I appreciated "getting on the plane first etc." yet this was an opportunity to help me out. It was after all a simple mistake and the same person. He read me the contract that allowed him to charge $150, offered to do it now for $25 and then lectured me on my responsibility to the airline and that I needed to step up to the plate and take responsibility for my actions. I paid the fine with a final thank you for helping me to "understand that I needed to take responsibility for my actions." I also took his name and number.

Needless to say I wrote a nice long letter to the SVP of the Airline and had it delivered to her office. This letter detailed my frustration over the issue, my complaint over being "taught a lesson by the supervisor", my complete lack of understanding of their customer strategy with their top frequent fliers and finally my burning desire to find someway to get some sort of expanded satisfaction for my $25 lesson they taught me in customer responsibility. (Note: I have had delusions of spending my next $10,000 in travel with other airlines, asking at least 200 people to purposely pick another airline for their next flight, see if I could get another Airline to give me elite status, changing my credit card mileage, making a commitment to myself to check Travelocity or someone else first rather than checking American first as I do now.)

Five days later I received an email response (not from the SVP's office) but from customer relations. It was a fast return but not pretty.

The email used three different fonts. It had a description of the contract with the airline, and a listing of the benefits of being a frequent flier. They actually told me the fee was a benefit because they give me many opportunities while buying the ticket to make sure I have no mistakes. The letter also expressed that they were sorry I had expected more from my preferred Platinum status.

Do you think that was the type of letter the SVP wanted to send? I hope not. She could not possibly have read it. As a matter of fact I will bet you all the money in my pocket that this was the last thing they wanted to send to a customer. Problem is that large companies because of their mere size get way too many of these types of complaints and because of the volume it must delegated most likely to a call center that responds. The bigger problem is that in virtually every call center the poorest employee will speak to more customers in one day than a SVP might speak to in a month or a year. The result is customers that get hacked off over $25 not because of the $25 but because they were treated poorly. Here are some of the factors that were missed:

1. I sent the letter to the SVP. Send it back from the SVP's office. SVP customer relations would have been okay.

2. Figure out how to use the same font. Just incredibly unprofessional. It was clear they were cut and pasting answers in. At least fake it better.

3. Show some form of empathy. Actually show ANY form of empathy. If they had said" Listen we understand. We could have charged $150 but we gave you the biggest break we give anyone... or the same thing we offer Executive Platinum...." I would not have liked it but it would have given me some pause.

4. Do not under any circumstances, remind a customer of their responsibility to you. They are not your children. Anger at an unfair situation in a business to consumer environment is nothing compared to furthering that aggravation by having not one but two employees teaching you a lesson.

5. Never negotiate through a lower level employee unless you are a car dealership where the customer expects it. Either empower the front line employee or just transfer the call.

6. Make your response match up to the customers complaints. We have enough people around us each day that do not listen to us. We expect business's that we give money will actually listen to us. They did not answer any of my real questions.

Ironically, I love American Airlines. This transaction flat out stunk. The question is how many other times has it happened? The real question for you is what happens when you have a customer problem? Do you really know what is being sent out to customers? If not, you better figure it out.

Customer Driven Management: Outsourcing

If you want to lower cost in todays sales and service world one of your first options is outsourcing. Whether within the USA or to some other country around the world outsourcing can lower your cost. In fact, lowering your cost is the number one reason to outsource. This is followed closely by a desire to "leave the work to the professionals", focus on our core competencies, global/seasonal support issues and last but not least an expectation for better customer satisfaction and sales/profits. Not every company is willing to outsource. Many choose to retain sales and service as an offering directly from their employees.

Customer Driven Management is the "outsourcing" of your coaching, advice, instruction, feedback and encouragement to your customers. This form of outsourcing is open to companies who have chosen to outsource their operations and to those that have kept services in house.

Let's look at Customer Driven Management is through the lens of outsourcing results. In CDM:

1. We don't outsource to another company; we outsource to our customers.

2. We don't decrease our cost by paying another company less than it costs to do ourselves; we reduce our cost by enabling customer resources to perform functions we pay our employees to do for us today.

3. We do "leave the work to professionals; the professionals are our customers.

4. We do "focus on our core competencies"; we learn and change from the voice of our customers.

5. We do outsource for "global/seasonal issues; we engage customers everywhere and round the clock.

6. We expect better customer satisfaction and higher profits; we are closer and more connected to our customers. CDM impacts first call resolution, customer loyalty, employee turnover and customer experience. All of these areas increase customer satisfaction and impact the bottom line profitability of the organization.

The negatives of outsourcing ( We respect and appreciate professional outsourcing of all types. A well thought out decision to outsource combined with a professional delivery benefits customers and companies. It does have strengths and weaknesses.) are loss of control, risk of alienating pre-agitated customers with delivery of service from outside the company (international or domestic), and loss of connectivity with customers. Done right outsourcing can be spectacular. Done wrong and it is a nightmare. There are also many companies that would never outsource because they feel that the core competency of delivering sales and service is not something they are willing to give up or have reside outside of their company.

With CDM, there are no similar negatives to outsourcing to your customers:

1. Customers provide advice, instruction, feedback and encouragement. Each one of these increases company perspective and most important employee perspective. Customer advice received by an employee is credible and valued.

2. Only customers that seek to provide you with advice participate. There is no risk of agitating customers that do not want to participate.

3. This is the "ultimate" connection with your customers. They connect directly with your employees. Customers that are involved are more loyal and more likely to stay your customers. Customers providing input develop a vested interest in your company and your people.

Outsourcing your coaching to your customers is a win-win-win. Customers, employees and the company all win.

Customer Driven Management

CRM- You see this term everywhere. It stands for Customer Relationship Management. It often means technology, process and measurement. The process of "relating" to Customers. Kind of simple and maybe even woefully inadequate as a definition but for this blog, let's go with it. We "relate" with customers using technology to help be efficient and effective with those precious customer relationships. The technology helps our employees have the right information, tools, and answers for the customers. The customer wins because they get better service, product and support. The company wins because they deliver products and services by maximizing their resources (people, process and goods) and hopefully increasing profits and revenues. The term is well known, the industry has accepted it and most companies are either "doing it" or considering "doing it". As with most technologies some do it very well and others not so well. Some are "all-in" and some are just getting started. This blog segment is intended to introduce a new term. This term is called Customer Driven Management.

CDM changes the relationship between your customers and your companies more specifically between your customers and your employees. The "relationship" as we know it; changes dramatically. The customers drive your employees, coach your employees, encourage your employees, train your employees, help you with their year end reviews and simply help you; help them get better at their job. The company gets passionate, credible, reliable, cost effective and in some cases infinite resources to help them coach and improve their employees. Customers get the opportunity to enhance and improve the very service and support they depend on to meet the needs of the products or services they buy. The relationship as we know it is "driven" to new areas. It enhances CRM by bringing customers closer to your company and your process.

We are not talking about being a "customer driven company". That means we listen to our customers and try to react and respond to their needs and wants. This customer driven management is just that; customers "managing" employees. Customers working directly with our employees to make them better.

The result? Higher profit, higher quality, lower cost, lower turnover, higher customer satisfaction and experience; you get the picture. In the coming blogs we will pursue each one of these above and see how your customers can impact your organization.

Coaching Employees

Tonight the world series begins, Yankees vs. Phillies. I grew up a Yankee fan and I confess I also am an Arod fan as well. I like excellence. I like watching the best in the world and like even more watching the potential "best of all time". Like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning, AROD just might end up being the greatest that ever played.

My baseball diversion was to make note of the fact that in baseball the lead guy is called a manager. In other sports such as basketball and football, they are a coach. In business virtually everyone is called a manager. Very rarely is a leader defined as a coach and if the term is used it is often the front line manager or "lead" that is called a coach. Why the distinction? Who knows? Business needs far more coaches than they do managers. Let me rephrase; they need far more "coaching" than "managing". Leaving baseball behind ( I know the manager "coaches". ), let's focus on the difference between these two terms in a business environment.

1. Coaches make employees better- A coach helps an employee get better and thus helps to increase their performance. At least that is what a good coach does. Coaching is really needed to make one thing happen; change behavior. That is what a great coach does. They help employees change their behavior. That could be an increase in use of skills, attitude, attendance, or simply anything that gets an employee to change a behavior for the better of the employee and betterment of the company. Some coaches do this with high energy, high expectations or simply high involvement. They are active in the process. When employees change behavior in areas that are beneficial to a company you get better productivity, quality and most likely profitability. The more employees impacted by a single coach or a group of coaches that can truly change behavior the better the results. You already know your good coaches. They are easy to pick out and you see the results.

2. Managers "manage"- Yes, this is going to be negative. Managers move resources around. Resources can be people, things, ideas. Unfortunately a bad manager can make a person feel like a thing. Managers by nature do more watching and telling than actual coaching. They often manage problems and reports. As a result they get movement but it is often not sustainable or worse in the wrong direction. When you manage vs. coach you have a tendency to be at the beginning of a process or performance or at the end; you rarely are a participant. As a result most work (sometimes harm) at the front or back of an event or process. Behavior is rarely changed because the manager is not involved with the work product. We are not saying that all leaders need to be actively involved in every step of their employees, simply that if you want behavior change it must be done through coaching and not managing.

Are your supervisors and managers more like the coach above or the manager? If they are like coaches the sky is the limit for you. If you are doing well; keep going. If you need to make changes; no problem. Coaches can change behavior. If on the other hand, they seem more like managers, then if your doing well your managers will be able to tell you. If you are doing poorly, you are at risk because while they can tell you how poorly they are doing, they can rarely help you fix it. Why? Because with employees it is very hard to manage your way to changes in behavior. You need a coach.

Next up: Using your customers as coaches.

Emotional Perspective

Over the past year, I have become actively involved with my family in a business that serves the wedding and events industry www.piazzainthevillage.com. The business services families that have a wedding and reception along with business meetings, training, parties etc. We built a 15,000 square foot facility that has a wedding chapel, courtyard and an events/ballroom center for the wedding reception and business event.

The business is fascinating on many levels. For this corporate perspective, I wanted to focus on the "emotional decision" that a bride and her family goes through. This "emotional decision" happens a lot in business but my guess is that we miss it. We miss the emotional decisions made by employees, customers, board members, vendors and even the ones we make ourselves. We shouldn't miss them anymore.

A bride and her family comes to make a decision on where they are going to have the most important day of their life. The bride has been thinking about it since she was a very little girl. The mom has been thinking about it longer than the bride existed. Sometimes she has thought about it since the very day she chose to make her future daughters wedding day different than her own. The father has either been trying to figure out how he would pay for it (weddings are the second largest savings for a daughter after college), wondered about who the guy would be or how he was going to hold it together walking down the aisle. For now we will just leave out of the equation: the grandparents, siblings, groom, grooms parents, etc.

The decisions to be made are multiple (location, photographer, flowers, date, video, dress, tux, gifts, hotels, honeymoon, etc., etc.)and they need to be made far in advance. What makes these decisions even more complex is how much emotion is tied to them. Everyone is emotional and not always completely rational. Everyone has a different reason and a different perspective. Sometimes the smallest thing sets off behavior or reactions that just were not expected or planned for. With all this pressure and stress they still find a way to make it happen, make it turn out how they had "dreamed" and have their perfect day even with all the emotion.

Brides make it happen with the emotion because they have the following:

1, Brides have vision- They know what they want. They have "seen it" over and over again in their heads.
2. Brides work hard (mothers included here...)- Brides get engaged and they get focused. They have lists, expectations and plans. They are purposed and they get to it.
3. Brides seek out experts and references- Brides look to other brides, professionals and all resources that help them find the right solution. They use other peoples expeience to help them.
4. Brides follow their heart- When all is said and done (yes, they must be able to afford it.) a bride just knows that it is the right fit for her, groom and family. She knows it because she has lived and breathed it for so long; she just knows this is her selection.

Our employees make decisions every day about how they are going to work and support our companies and our customers. Front-line management makes decisions every day on leading their teams and their response to customers and upper management. Everyone at every level is making decisions. The reality is that far more of these decisions are wrought with emotion that we fail to see or we were not able to see. It might be problems at home (divorce, sick kids or parents, etc.), politics at work, health issues, past employment experiences, the economy, fear of layoffs, fear of failure to just name a few.

While we might expect an emotional bride; we are often blindsided by an emotional employee or what seems like a irrational decision. The next time it just does not look "right" to you; take a closer look at the emotion surrounding the decisions or behavior. For many unions do not seem remotely rational. Nor do some of the behaviors or decisions made. Maybe is is simply the "emotion" getting in the way.

Take a "bridal view" as shown above. Get vision, Get focused, Get professional help, Get right with your "gut or heat".

If brides can make their perfect day through the emotion; your business can as well.

Nike was wrong

Times are tough. Does not take a rocket scientist to figure that out. When times are tough we have a tendency to cut corners. We need to cut costs, utilize our employees to their fullest yet we always need to do it "right".

Here is an exerpt from The Four Minute Customer:

Truth 10: Nike Was Wrong: Losers “Just Do It” Winners “Do It Right.”

Who am I to argue with a 100 million dollar advertising campaign? They’re Nike; after all!

In sales and service, there is a tendency to participate or survive rather than pursue excellence and flourish. Doing it right may sound obvious but we often miss it. Many organizations have a “just do it” kind of attitude. This does not mean they are careless, lack focus or are not professional. It means that they are surviving (see earlier chapter) vs. trying to pursue excellence. Doing it right in sales and service means having a clear plan or strategy, installing an operating system, pursuing excellence, measuring the results, making changes and starting the process all over again. The pursuit of excellence sounds like a sports slogan. “Natural” service and sales people who were born to be great can often overtake this part of our business. They see a situation and they react. While it is wonderful to have these people, we must be able to build an organization of people that can respond professionally to customer situations whether sales or service.

How to measure?

1. Is my organization on purpose about achieving excellence not simply results? (In other words, how we do it not just did we succeed?)
2. Do we measure the accomplishments that lead to the results (i.e., the number of cold calls made in a sales environment rather than just the end sales numbers.)
3. Do we have a plan and an operating system for customers and employees? Is it in writing?
4. Are we serious about competing for employees?
5. Do we pursue customer experience and synchronize that with our services and sales offerings?
6. Do we invest in our front-line management team?

You need lots of yes’s in order to be going in the right direction. Any no’s and there is work to be done.

Do it right and you will not only survive but you will prosper as well.

Perspective

This past week I had the privilege to participate in a group of meetings focused on the newspaper industry. If you have not read the "papers"-no pun intended- the newspaper business is in a state of turmoil. Readership is down, large papers are going out of business and as you would expect much of the decline is the result of the internet.

The group was friendly and professional. You could feel the malaise that was surrounding their industry and business. I kept wondering who their real competition was. Almost all of them were one paper towns, no competitor doing what they did. They were all active on the web as well. It leads to a discussion of competing. One of my favorite subjects.

When you compete; you need to have a game plan and execute it. If you listen to a newspaper talk it is confusing to figure out who their real competition is. Who do they compete against? Who is the "bad guy" in their scenario. If you are not careful you might pick the "internet" as their competitor. That would be a mistake. You can't compete with something that has no real owner nor can you compete with something that is so big you could not possibly come up with a strategy to overcome it an finally each one of them is already invested in the internet as well.

You need to know who your competition is and what your plan is. Maybe its a union when it comes to the EFCA. Maybe it is your congressman that is voting for it. Maybe it is a call center down the street that is stealing your people. Maybe it is a couple of employees that are steering the rest of your employees to be organized.

Do you have a list of who you compete against? You compete for your employees everyday. You compete against advertisements in the very newspapers we are talking about here. You compete for their focus with texting, emails, web browsing, etc. You compete for your customers everyday with the other companies they connect with by phone, web, in person each day. Don't think that your customers are comparing you against other firms like you. They compare you against the bank, the cable company, the retailer or whoever they do business with that day, week or month. Don't miss this. You are not competing only against the company you think you are.

Being able to know who your competitor is helps you to focus and make a plan. Without one you will fail.

Stop here if you could care less about newspapers.

So who does the newspaper industry compete with? In my humble opinino it is the following;
1. The truth- The internet is "great" yet we have no idea whether any of it is true at all. Newspapers have built a history of telling the truth. One of the reasons that they are slow is because they get it right. I would be pitching;" News you can depend on to be right and researched."Make your business and personal decisions based on what we tell you; you can count on it."
2. Speed of information- News has turned into a speed deal. Who can report it first becomes more important than what is reported. Headlines of newspapers should shift from being about what happened last night and more about what is important to people for a longer period of time.
3. Personalities and familiarity counts- Individual make a difference on the web and they do in newspapers as well. Columnists often make news. Columnists in your paper should have less access on the web. At worst case, slow down access. In Texas, I will read Randy Galloway a sports reporter for the Fort Worth Star telegram. Today, I can read him on the web at the same time I can read him in the newspaper. If it took a day to read him on line, I might be more pre-disposed to read him in the paper first. Speed can work against you as well. Newspapers will never be faster than the web but they can be faster with their own information.
4. Local is okay. The web has driven us to get as much access as we can as quick as we can. In other words what we say locally can effectively be broadcast to the world almost immediately. Who cares? If we have local information that is valuable locally. Hold onto it. Make it come out when you are ready after you have gained value from it. Then release it. In reality who cares if the rest of the world knows anyway.
5. Change the name,- Just the fact that it says news-paper is bad enough. On my Kindle, I can get the Austin American statesman. Very cool.

Clark Kent would be proud.