Ten years ago it became clear to me that customer satisfaction measurement wasn't working. I felt like I had been part of the problem. I had written pieces and made speeches quoting lines like "if you can't count it you can't control it" and really believed it, having worked in airlines for many years where service was a differentiator that really mattered.

I had spent many hours sat in meetings where we tried to come up with ways of "getting the customer facing staff to deliver a consistent product." The answer we came up with—eighteen years ago—was pretty innovative and it certainly worked. It got the airline back in to profit in just over a year, and produced us our first ever airline service award.

So why doesn't that way of working work anymore? The simple answer is that it might, but the reality is that to make it work, many organisations have designed a strict code of command and control which they enforce with some rigour, having the effect of beating the personality out of service. Losing the personality means you are also in danger of losing your key differentiator and quite likely your best people as well. I have yet to find someone who knows they are doing a good job for the customer, being told to stop doing it like that and do it a new way designed miles away from the customer, but which suits a mechanised process.

One of the agreements I had with my husband when we got married twelve years ago was that we were not going to do "busy." What this meant in practice was giving up watching nonsense on TV, not worrying about what we "should" be doing and think more about what we wanted to do. What we were aiming for was to feel the benefits of life rather than the burdens. It worked really well, (smart readers here will notice the use of the past tense here) but life sort of got in the way. We moved to a bigger house, had a family and our business changed and developed. What was required was a radical shift back to the mantra of "let's get better, not busier." But, how to do this?

In theory we are in the perfect position to make this shift as we have developed a way to help organisations and businesses make just this shift, and have been doing this with them over the last eight years. This includes some big, blue chip names, as well as smaller, dynamic companies and numerous public sector bodies. So what do we do and why?

We found that if an organisation measures transactions, that is the things which it does, then it gets busier.

So the bubble has burst. I reckon this is the best news we have had in a very long time. During the last few years, the bubble of false money and false achievement has meant that many things that have been done caused problems and that things that needed to be done were left aside. In the bubble, the myth of profits and living by what I would call "dodgy numbers" proliferated.

The best description of an optimist I have ever heard is a person who sees what is happening, good or bad, and knows he or she can handle it. Well I am an optimist, and even I have to say that it was very difficult to see things clearly through a bubble. Advising companies and organizations about how to ensure they are sustainable has been difficult in that bubble.

Well-placed trust saves lots of money and creates lots of good will.

If customers buy benefits, why do most businesses spend so much time measuring transactions?

Benefits are the things that are derived from an organization. Transactions are the things that people and organizations do.

Benefits might be the ability to drive your car—the benefit derived from filling up with petrol—or something more prosaic than the obvious. For example, a pension provider's main benefit to those buying the service is confidence that one's financial future is secure. It has nothing to do with how quickly the provider answers the phone, although this might add to the feeling of security but everything to do with maturity values and the integrity of the company.

Have the Customer at the Heart of What You Do and Your Business Will Benefit

2 comments | 2468 reads

Posted on Jun 23, 2008

An organization goes in the direction of its measures, or at least it tries to. That is why it has measures. So for example, if an organization has a target to make a profit, the people in that part of the organization will shape themselves around the need to make that profit. If everyone in the company is focused on that profit target, that will be the staff's primary concern.

However, it often doesn't work like that. The extreme cases like Enron are classic examples of a target driving behavior in a negative way, but there are plenty more.

Say you are a creative business and hire a bunch of creative people to service your creative hungry clients. You, then, focus your creative people on profit. What effect does that have on their creativity? Does it make them more creative, or does it divert their attention away from the creative process and end up giving them creator's block? What has this got to do with giving the customers want they want?

‘Company Y expands to hit its target of 50 vans but, sadly, runs out of money.’

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Make Your Organization Sustainable: Align It to the Benefits Customers Want

2 comments | 4191 reads

Posted on Jun 02, 2008

Wespac, the Australian bank, has introduced a new idea. It is going to make outbound calls to credit card customers who are "exhibiting payment stress issues." The first thought I had when I read about this was that you could have a bit of fun writing the scripts for the outbound callers to use. Something along the lines of "Oi, listen up! You've been spending too much money on beer, mate, and not paying us back on time." But in reality, the people doing the calling are going to need far more skills than merely script reading to pull this idea off.

The concept of early intervention in these cases is a very good one, if the team conducting the calls has enough clout in the business. Then the employees making the calls may well be able to inform the new business process, which could wind up making Wespac a very responsible lender.

I remember our local vicar writing about an altercation he had with his bank when it kept mailing him large loan offers. His point was that anyone at the bank could see what his salary was and that, therefore, he would be unable to pay such loans back. He asked to be taken off the list for those mailers. The customer service representative said that, because he was an account holder and the offers came with his bank statement, it was impossible. He closed his account after 30 years with the same bank.

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We Don't Need Another Hero ...

8 comments | 3234 reads

Posted on Feb 25, 2008

I recently had the chance to meet a group of young customer service professionals. They had been selected for their leading-edge skills and deemed to be best in class for their profession. Each had to present credentials, telling us why they were the best at what they did. Two out of the four had "fire fighting" jobs. They were heroes. They were there to clear up the mess their companies had made because of poor systems.

They told us how much they enjoy customers who were really angry and upset: "The more unhappy they are, the more chance it gives me to make them realize how good I am" was the subtext. When questioned, they said how much they enjoyed working for the company they worked for, as they felt supported and valued. Great! They felt supported and valued. What about the hapless customer whom the company had so badly mistreated?

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