Sterling Performance

Call centres are a wonderful way to show how deeply you despise your customers.

Here are the broad principles of how to show your contempt for your customers through your call centre.

• Make it virtually impossible to track down the number of the call centre. Instead, force people through endless pages of internet verbiage in an attempt to deter them from contacting you.
• On no account offer a free phone number. Make sure the pesky customer pays you for the privilege of calling. By this time, the customer’s frustration should be transforming them slowly into an axe-wielding maniac.
• If the customer should get through to the call centre, let them talk to a gushing, enthusiastic computer voice that directs them through as many screens as possible. Make sure the option they are most likely to need comes out last from the last screen. Madness and death are not normally choices given to the customer, although they become increasingly likely outcomes.
• Should the customer finally find the option: “If you would like to talk to one of our agents…”, make sure that your agents do not answer the call for as long as possible. Let the customer listen to a Japanese version of “Greensleeves” 15 in succession. This can be interspersed with messages saying how much the customer’s call is valued. It is valued so much we can not be bothered to answer the call. By now the customer will either have lost the will to live, or grown old and senile and will have forgotten why they called in the first place. Telecoms companies have a particular aversion to answering the phone.
• If an agent accidently responds to the call, make sure that the agent is woefully underpaid, undertrained and under-equipped to deal with any customer service enquiries. Make them work from a long script, which starts by asking the customer to confirm a 15 digit alphanumeric password, plus their product code, plus the correspondence reference number and accurate recall of the first 200 digits of the number pi.

By now even you should have convinced the customer that:

Their time is worth much less than that of you lowest paid employee.
They are an extreme nuisance for calling.
Although “people come first, customers do not count as human beings.

Of course, all of these rules should be ignored completely if the customer wants to buy something. In this case, make sure there is a special hotline which is answered immediately by real human beings, who will commit their entire energy to taking money from the customer. At least, that is the theory. Anyone who has tried buying train tickets over the Web will know that train companies so dislike their customers that they do their best to stop them even buying tickets.

I am tempted to inaugurate the “Rotten Tomato” awards for the worst call centre and customer service providers. But I fear there are not enough rotten tomatoes in the world to do the honours.

(Photo: Malias, CC2.0)

When did that happen? Generation Y’s gone from being entitled and irresponsible to a fully integrated part of the workforce to shell-shocked victims of layoff or desperate graduates in search of a job — in just a few years. “The recession’s a massive punch in the face, and a big wake-up call for graduates,” says entrepreneur Lucian Tarnowski.

Gen Y is “no longer an interesting minority, their numbers make them a vital constituency” and, within a few years, the largest group in the workforce, according to Tammy Erickson. But despite their numbers, they face an uncertain future.

Worldwide job losses have been predicted to exceed 30 million (the worst figures put lost jobs at 51 million) in 2009 and it’s the more junior, usually younger employees who are most vulnerable to redundancies or employment freezes. “Generation Crunch” graduates face prospects so bleak that skills secretary John Denham recently launched a National Internship Scheme to encourage employers to take them on. (RateMyPlacement’s rightly sceptical about its real purpose).

So Tarnowski (in true entrepreneurial style, seeing the silver lining to every cloud) is helping to promote a campaign to give Generation Y a global platform, in what he hopes will become “a youth Kyoto”.

“We’ve got to encourage leadership at a young age, because there are a lot of problems that need tackling,” says Tarnowski, a self-professed youth-leadership evangelist whose social media-style recruitment site, BraveNewTalent, is hosting the launch of the One Young World campaign, which seeks to identify 1,500 global leaders under the age of 26 and is backed by the likes of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Kofi Annan, as well as its founder at ad agency Euro RSCG.

The campaign will select people from 192 countries, with representation in proportion to a country’s size — so China and India will be the most heavily represented — a challenge, given the importance of hierarchical position in Chinese culture, and the potential gaps in Web access across both Asian markets.

In an initiative that’s due to be announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the campaign is using social media to recruit its global participants, who will then take part in a four-day event in London in 2010 and will tackle issues such as the environment, the global economy, politics and terrorism, healthcare and ‘interfaith’ dialogue, as well as the media, its role and power in society.

Tarnowski sees Gen Y as ready and willing to take a lead when it comes to shaping the new business agenda, and wants the OneYoungWorld to become the representative voice of young people worldwide.

“We cannot afford to become defeatist, even in this climate. We need to do something or we’ll become disillusioned.”

You don’t always achieve your goals by focusing on them directly. Sometimes a more indirect route is required to achieve success.

Last week I was working in the US and watched President Obama’s inauguration with some American friends and colleagues. Obama didn’t focus on economic statistics and the level of growth he wanted the US to achieve over the next four years.

Instead, he encouraged US citizens to choose a “better history” for the US and carry forward the gift that “all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to purse their full measure of happiness.”

Echoing Kennedy, Roosevelt and Lincoln, President Obama appealed to Americans’ belief in an enduring set of values. The reaction of my American friends was quite emotional and brought to the surface a real desire to help Obama create a better country and a more prosperous future.

The essence of President Obama’s approach can also be found in some of the world’s most successful companies.

In their book, “Built to Last”, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras discovered that enduring companies had a reason for existing over and above making money. They called this a company’s “Core Purpose”. 3M’s core purpose is described as “to solve unsolved problems innovatively”. WalMart’s declared mission: “Saving people money [so they can] live better.”

Conversely, and paradoxically, those companies that focus exclusively on profit generation and shareholder returns find it more difficult to build a sustainable and profitable business.

Purely financial goals cannot inspire an organisation or provide guidance on future direction or key decisions. Unlike President Obama’s address or 3M and WalMart’s goals, they do not speak to our deeper values or our sense of who we are.

Take our banks. It is clear that a contributory factor to their downfall has been “epic greed” — a disconnection with the impact they have on society and a myopic focus on profit growth.

What’s your core purpose, or the purpose of your team or organisation? The chances are that if it is purely financial you will have less chance of achieving and sustaining your financial goals than if a more indirect goal drives your actions.

In times of financial restraint, conferences are a good way to rack up some frequent flyer miles, get out of the office, perhaps see a new city and get some free food and drink. Unfortunately, there is a heavy price to pay for this. You may be forced to sit in a darkened room while some important people tell you how important they are and how important their important ideas are.

They will then send you into smaller rooms to discuss their important ideas. Back in the plenary session, you will be obliged to feedback the answers you were meant to give: all your flipchart notes will then be gathered in, summarised and completely ignored.

By the end of this exercise the important people will be satisfied that you have now been fully consulted and mobilised. But just to make sure of it, you will hear a motivational speaker telling you that climbing Everest is just like managing well: this normally serves to show why people who climb Everest should never be allowed near managing a business.

There has to be a better way of making use of conferences.

In truth, the plenary and break-out sessions are largely a waste of time. Most plenary sessions can be missed and no-one will notice you are missing. Catch up on emails, sleep or gossip instead. Break-out sessions are smaller, so you will be missed. Endure them positively.

The real action happens in the unscheduled time. This is when all the delegates are mingling around looking and feeling vaguely lost while at the same time desperately trying to exude an air of importance and urgency.

Most people miss this opportunity completely. They mix mainly with people they already know. In a global conference you will find New York office people speaking to New York people and Paris people speaking to Paris people.
In practice, the conference survivalist knows that this is the opportunity to meet people who would normally be very hard to meet. They will have a mental note of half a dozen important or distant people to meet, and agendas to start or to progress with each of them. They will happen to bump into each of their marks during the conference.

This is not the time to make the full pitch. It is the time to put down a quick marker and agree a follow up meeting if necessary. Doing this well will accelerate some agendas by months, as well as creating new ones.

So if you are ever in charge of a conference, be brave. Slash the amount of plenary and break-out time. Create plenty of time where people from different regions, functions and geographies get to meet each other. Then let good things happen. There’s every chance people will enjoy it and it will be productive. You will not even have to hire someone who has just climbed Everest to speak for you.

Managers in charge of a group of professionals face a problem which would be familiar to Alice, in “Alice Through the Looking Glass“. Alice found she had become a pawn in a chess game. All the other pieces were animals which had a habit of getting up and moving around of their own accord. Playing chess when the pieces do their own thing is roughly the same challenge that managers face when managing other professionals. Professionals do not like being managed and have a habit of doing their own thing, if they can.

In the bad old days, bosses bossed and workers worked. Bosses told the workers what to do and if the workers wanted to keep their jobs, they did as they were told.

Today’s workers are no longer semi-educated labourers. They are likely to be smart professionals: doctors, lawyers, accountants and experienced managers. Like Alice’s chess pieces, they all have minds of their own, they trust their own judgement and do their own thing. Managing smart professionals is completely different from traditional notions of management.

Professionals often have low respect for managers, and are likely to think of them as bean counters and bureaucrats. The COO of one global professional firm is referred to by everyone as “chief clerk”, even by the CEO. This is a recipe for conflict between professionals, who want to back their judgement, and managers who need to make things happen.

Fortunately, effective management of professionals often requires less work and delivers better results than traditional management styles. It requires that the manager think and act very differently. There are five things effective managers of professionals do:

1. Shield the professionals from all the corporate garbage that swills around — administrivia, endless and pointless meetings, insane initiatives, relentless reporting and all the other stuff that organisations create with the sole intent of demoralising everyone. A manager who protects his professionals in this way will start to gain their grudging respect.
2. Find the resources the professionals need to succeed. Inevitably, they will want more than you have: but if they see that you are a powerful advocate of their cause, they will trust you more than others. Like dogs, the professionals will be loyal to the person who feeds them.
3. Focus on the annual budget cycle. This is important for two reasons. First, the budget settlement determines how much resource you can allocate to the professionals in your department. Second, it is the one moment when you have real power over your team — this is where you can set and enforce demanding goals for the rest of the year. The professionals will whine that the targets are too tough, but once they are set, their professional pride means that they will be paranoid about missing targets.
4. Set a clear direction and stick to it. Nothing makes professionals more cynical than a manager who is weak, uncertain and lacking direction. But once you have set the direction and goals, do not micro-manage. Be firm on the goals, flexible on the route they use to get there. Again, let their professional pride and paranoia motivate them to achieve the outcome.
5. Manage less. The more you manage professionals, the more they will resist. Let them sweat it out. If they need help they will ask. If they are really overworked, they will tell you. If they need reassurance they will seek it.

Managing professionals is management judo: use the strength of the professionals rather than fighting their strength. If you do this well, they will make all the effort and you will bask in the glory of the results they achieve. But do not expect any gratitude from them. They will still think of you as the chief clerk.

It’s winter and its dark, cold and raining. The recession is getting worse. We are heading for mass unemployment, global climate disaster, nuclear terrorism and my coffee machine has broken down. So, overall, things are pretty good.

As a leader, if I go into the office with a little cloud of gloom, it rapidly spreads into a major depression across the office. If I go in feeling good and looking good, everything seems to be better. After months of trying, I even managed to get a smile from our security guard who is professionally gloomy. (It was a terrifying sight, an unnatural contortion of his face which exposed yellow, broken teeth. I smiled back and hurried on.)

Being British it is dangerous to be cheerful. Enthusiasm is a certifiable mental disorder in many organisations. It may be something to do with loss of Empire. We cannot even win in all the sports we invented — football, rugby and cricket. At least we still hold our own at cheese rolling and Morris dancing.

The tougher times are, the more important it is to find reasons to positive, enthusiastic and energetic. If we are not enthusiastic, we can not expect anyone else to be enthusiastic for us. Having spent seven years hanging out with tribes that lack water, electricity, sanitation, education, health care, takeaway pizzas, iPods and 42” plasma TVs, it is astonishing to find that they are relentlessly cheerful.

I asked Choimaa, an old lady in a wretched tent in the middle of Mongolia if there was anything she wanted. She looked astonished at the thought. “Why would I want anything? I have everything I need: health, family and friends.” When surveying the wreck of the economy and our careers, it is easy to lose sight of what is important.

Compared to tribal living, the hell of our recession is like heaven. I wake up in the morning, go to the bathroom and turn on a tap. Cold water comes out. It is clean and drinkable, and I do not have to go five miles through the bush to collect it. It is a miracle. I turn on another tap and the water is hot. I do not have to collect firewood to heat it. It is another miracle.

When you start the day with two miracles in two minutes you know the day is going to be great. Because I used to ignore such everyday miracles, I used to wake up miserable. I would be worrying about work, trains, the gloomy news. I know which way I prefer to start the day.

Everyone has their own ways of being cheerful or miserable. That is the whole point. We choose how we want to feel. If we want to be miserable, we will find reasons to be miserable. If we want to be cheerful, we will find excuses to be cheerful. Our feelings are our choices and our responsibility. As leaders, we help ourselves and help all our followers if we make the right decision.

(Photo: RogueSun Media, CC2.0)

Can one man bring the US back from the brink?

• Yes, he can, says Investors Chronicle online editor Jonathan Eley.
  Why?
  He has power on Capitol Hill, with Democratic control in both houses.
  His stimulus plan has won approval from the likes of Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, and will invest in rebuilding the US’s “surprisingly dilapidated infrastructure”, rather than just instituting tax cuts.
  His economic team comprises “some of America’s finest minds as advisers, not just a bunch of his Wall Street buddies”.
  The US attitude is more receptive to the public sector post-financial meltdown. “Many Americans now regard big business and Wall Street as greedy and self-serving, and are ready to accept that the public sector may contribute to national prosperity.”
  The feelgood factor. Obama himself’s off-the-charts approval ratings matter, whatever your political leanings. A renewed and energised US could “pull itself out of the mire quicker than many think”.

• No he can’t, says Russ Roberts, professor of economics at George Mason University.
  Why?
  It’s a lovely idea but “Barack Obama has no idea of how to get the economy out of the mess we’re in”.
  If top economists — some Nobel Laureates — have been blindsided by the current economic downturn, why should Obama’s economic team fare better at anticipating and addressing its next shift, however good their intentions?
  The current financial problems are unprecedented. “There is no recipe or manual for getting the economy back on track”.
  The economy is not run by a single person, anyway. The US will emerge from difficulty, and Obama can help — but he could just as well hinder. “Some part of the current mess we’re in is the result of erratic government policy that has added to the uncertainty…”

Who’s right?

Natural and accessible, Barack Obama’s communication style is considered “exemplary”. Leadership consultant John Baldoni offers the following advice on how to mimic the new president’s main tactics to develop your own statesmanlike style:

• Challenge Obama did it with his “Yes We Can” slogan and campaign, a call to action that also told Americans that if they wanted change they would have to pitch in and work for it. He’d lead, but they’d need to support him. Obama’s challenge will be put to the test when he starts making unpopular decisions that alienate some supporters– a situation any leader will understand. Baldoni’s advice: “challenge them as he challenged the status quo”.
• Question As a law professor, Obama “loves to wrestle with ideas” and is not afraid to open up the floor to opposing views. Business leaders can bridge ideology in the same way, bringing different divisions or interests into line behind a single initiative. His listening skills are a major asset — true for any leader.
• Cheerlead The retracing of the train journey Abraham Lincoln took from Philadelphia to Washington DC is a way of getting audiences excited about Obama’s administration and its challenges. “Obama wants to use this sense of hope as political leverage for the tough choices he and his team must make”.
• Be real Obama is open about his interests beyond politics and his love for his family. If his image is not quite that of an ‘ordinary’ man, it’s of one who shares the same concerns as the rest of us. But leaders cannot fake authenticity — it’s just a matter of being genuine.
• Decide He may listen to contrary views, but he has also shown that he knows what he wants and is willing to fight for it — he personally lobbied senators to release the second half of the US financial industry bailout so he’d start office with the resources to take action to stabilise the economy.
• Inspire Obama’s pre-inaugural address appealed “not to our easy instincts but our better angels” and he’s called on American history to demonstrate how the country’s overcome past obstacles through discipline and hard work. In business, high expectations married to realistic and clear guidelines on getting there can be inspirational.
• Assure Baldoni notes that Obama inspires confidence because he appears so composed, even in crisis. This might be a tricky one for business leaders facing the daily onslaught of bad news (if not in their companies or sectors, then in the wider economy). (As a Generation X’er, pragmatism, transparency and accountability will be words Obama understands. The key is to take action — all the soothing words in the world won’t solve your business problems — or president Obama’s.

“If the economy’s good for people from the bottom up, it’s going to be good for everybody.”

Barack Obama’s now famous conversation with “Joe the Plumber” made the Ohio-based small business owner famous, but the time he spends explaining his tax policy says a lot about why he’s so popular in the US and elsewhere.

Expectations are high and Obama’s first 100 days — however arbitrary that timescale — will be pivotal. Beyond US shores, the UK is bound to be affected by any upturn in confidence among American consumers. But Ismail Erturk, a senior lecturer in banking at Manchester Business School, has warned UK business not to expect too much.

“The rest of the world needs the US consumers to spend money and its financial institutions to circulate capital around the world. However Obama’s announced economic policies concentrate on infrastructural investments in energy, technology, education, and health, not on increasing consumer spending or consumer debt,” says Erturk in the Manchester Evening News.

Obama’s got his work cut out for him at home – George W. Bush leaves behind the worst employment growth record of any president since World War II,  according to the latest research, and the financial system has been decimated. His team already has an $850bn stimulus plan in mind that is said to include $275bn in tax cuts (despite his conversation with Joe the Plumber).

But business and economic demands will wait till tomorrow. Today, it’s worldwide “Obamamania” — with live coverage here. 

(Photo: Jetheriot, CC2.0)

Social networking can be a valuable part of a company’s employment strategy. But some businesses are still coming to terms with its darker aspects, with Tesco just the latest to discover how nasty online staff exchanges can become, according to a news posting on Brand Republic.

Tesco staff who set up a Facebook group called “Tesco employees could rule the world” used it to vent about the chain’s customers, who are characterised as pestering, smelly and cheap in a series of complaints.

When being asked by a customer where to find a product, one employee’s instinct was to say: “Give me your shopping list, you senile old cow, and I’ll do your shopping for you. Just leave me alone.”

“I wish these f******s would just stay at home and shop online!” added another member of the group, which carried the gripes of some 60 Tesco employees.

Last year, Virgin Atlantic’s staff had the same urges and 13 found themselves facing the sack after they contributed to a group that speculated as to the airline’s safety record and called passengers “chavs”.

It’s a reminder of how far we have to go when it comes to service in the UK. According to this online complaints test, bad service is one of the top three complaints (among those who’ve done the survey.)

Grumpy, unwelcoming service and (another in the top three) high costs threaten to put visitors off Britain, according to an interview of VisitBritain’s chairman, Christopher Rodrigues.

But according to research by the Institute of Customer Service, customer service is improving across the UK — with retail leading the way. So are the likes of Tesco and Virgin isolated? It’s unlikely.

“This is not the first time a major UK company has been embarrassed by some of its staff on a social networking site, when frustrations with customers have caused offence,” says Duncan Baker of the Institute of Customer Service.

Nor is the first time shop staff — or anyone customer-facing — have ‘gathered’ to have a good old gripe about their customers.

But the problem for Tesco is that its unhappy employees have broadcast their dissatisfaction across the internet. Worse, perhaps, may be the fact that forum contributors are siding with the staff — why shouldn’t they have a rant, asks one, while another points out how “atrocious” some customers can be.

Few people can love their job 24/7, and maybe retail jobs, which are often minimum wage, will always be worthy of a bit more griping. But there seems to be a lot of bile in the Tesco group commentary — is this really “just letting off steam”?

Its employees should’ve known better than to post their frustrations online for all to see. But the retailer, which adapted Kaplan and Norton’s “Balanced Scorecard” to create a service-oriented “Steering Wheel” that specifically encourages employee empowerment, might want to look behind the comments at what’s making its staff so angry.

 (Photo: yummiec00kies, cc2.0)