A Tale of Two Phone Calls

Posted 18 May 2011

Recently my family decided to start a garden in our backyard with some friends of ours. Last fall we sat down and collectively decided what and how much we wanted to grow. Then, each family went on-line and researched the best places to buy the vegetables that we were interested in growing. We both decided that we would order most of our seeds and starter plants from a large national company, figuring that they would be the most reputable. So, when the time came, both of our families called and separately placed our orders.

One nice selling feature that drew us to this company is that they would ship us our starter plants at the time when it is appropriate for them to be planted in our area, which happens to be late May. This means that we wouldn’t have to keep the plants inside our house for three or four weeks, constantly moving them inside and outside depending on the weather, until it is time to put them in the ground.  This seems like a little thing but it can be harder than it sounds to keep plants alive for that amount of time.

You can imagine our surprise when all of our tomato plants showed up on our doorstep the first week of April, eight weeks early! We were confused to say the least.Immediately, my wife called our friends to tell them what had happened and found out that their tomato plants had arrived that day too.

After a brief discussion about what to do, both of them decided to call the company and explain to them the error that had obviously occurred.

My wife called the customer service number that was listed on the website and explained to the person that there was obviously a mix-up and that our tomato plants got shipped eight weeks early for our zone. The customer service representative (CSR) on the other end of the phone stated, as if reading from a paper, "Mam, we ship our plants on the date that is appropriate for your zone."My wife was slightly confused but continued to explain to the person what zone we lived in and that according to their own website, we shouldn’t have gotten our plants for another eight weeks.The response that came back was, “Mam, we ship our plants on the date that is appropriate for your zone.” After much discussion back and forth with the same response coming from the CSR every time, my wife got frustrated and asked for a refund for our plants. The CSR agreed to refund our money. My wife hung up the phone completely frustrated and refusing to ever buy products from that company again.

Meanwhile, our friend called the same customer service line and talked with another CSR. She also explained the situation and described how there must have been an error in the ordering system because she wasn’t supposed to receive her tomatoes for another eight weeks. This CSR was immediately apologetic and asked what she could do to fix the situation. When our friend asked if she could just get tomatoes delivered at the appropriate time, the CSR arranged for her name to go to the top of the list of people to have plants delivered to in late May. Then the CSR continued and asked if there was anything else that she could do to make up for the error.  Our friend declined anything additional and hung up the phone completely satisfied.

Image the surprise when my wife called our friend later that day to discuss how her phone call went.The two conversations couldn’t have been more different.

Now this blog isn’t about buying tomatoes or whether or not to buy stuff from large national companies, it’s about true customer service. True customer service happens when you help a customer accomplish the task that they are trying to do. Both my wife and our friend were trying to get tomato plants delivered at the end of May. Only one of the two “customer service representatives” helped the customer on the other end of the phone accomplish that task.

Being a very large national corporation, I’m sure that this company has many processes and procedures in place to help their customer service representatives handle any number of different situations that may arise when the phone rings. For all I know, they may have even gone through one of those fancy initiatives where they brought in a high priced consulting company to help them standardize their work flows. Based on my wife’s experience, they obviously have a set of canned answers for some of the more common questions that they face. This is an obvious case where the company has implemented a set of tools that they perceive bring value just because they were implemented.The sad reality is that the tools didn’t work because they missed the heart of the issue. The heart of the issue is implementing a mindset, a way of thinking, not a bunch of tools.

Many people concentrate on using tools in a set order to produce an output that they desire. What they forget about, or never even think about, is how key the mindset is while utilizing the tools. The CSR that talked with our friend had a mindset of pleasing the customer. The tools utilized by that CSR were empathy, apology and making amends for a wrong doing. The CSR that talked with my wife had a mindset of using the tools. The tools utilized by that CSR were the process flow and work instructions that were standardized within the department.The later CSR never deviated from the paper that had the work instructions. That CSR read the “correct” response straight from the paper, just like she had been taught to do.

The sad reality is that on paper, in the eyes of the accounting department, the outcome of both conversations will look identical. Both conversations gave away the cost of one order of tomatoes. The monetary loss to the company looks identical. However, the real reality is that the company also lost one customer. That monetary value will not get captured on this year’s balance sheet, but itwill show up over time.

So what is the moral of this story? Focus on the mindset, not just the tools. That is the power of LEO.

Be Wrong to Be Right

Posted 20 April 2011

Wrong is in vogue. A song by Depeche Mode is named “Wrong.” Seth Godin blogged about failure:http://bit.ly/fGNB1kKathryn Schultz presented at a TED Conference about the importance of being wrong. http://bit.ly/gD0kPm

Kathryn said being wrong is the source of our creativity.

In the Optimize Phase of LEO, we try to be wrong. We test variations of our best design concept from the Enrich Phase. We test the variants we expect to be good.  We test other variants we expect to be bad. If the expected good are really bad or if the expected bad are really good – we learn. We even learn if the good are good or the bad are bad in a manner different than what we expected. We learn as long as we’re wrong aboutsomething.

Tom Kelly, the founder of IDEO, once said “Fail early and fail often.”

Failure is the key to creativity.

Design failure into you development process. Assure that many low-cost failures occur before you send your products or services to your customers.

Reward failures during the design & development process.

“Great job, Jim,” say to your employee, “that idea of yours was one huge failure!”

The worst result in the Optimize Phase is to be right. Don’t fear being wrong. Don’t avoid it. Being right is the most dangerous result. We gain no knowledge. We remain ignorant. We happily avoid creativity, invention and insight.

Be wrong to be right.

Wishing we could 'Enrich' political campaigns

Posted 13 April 2011

A few weeks ago Obama began his bid for re-election in 2012. Don’t worry; this won’t turn into a political blog… But when I heard this, it got me thinking. I was reminded of the last elections in 2010. I remember telling my wife during campaign/election season that it was tough to figure out how I wanted to vote in most cases because I didn’t hear much from any candidate on why they should get my vote. Instead I heard a lot about why ‘the other guy’ should not get my vote.

The reasons why I should not vote for ‘the other guy’ ranged from some that were very reasonable to some that could make you think ‘how-could-this-person-even-be-running-for-office?’ In fact, if you go to youTube and search negative campaign ads you can see for yourself. Chances are you’ll see some ads that seem quite absurd. Some are so ridiculous they’ll make you laugh. It’s sad really. The ads are full of partial truths and bits and pieces of someone’s record taken out of context. Most people, I hope, are smart enough to see through this but the ads somehow still work. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be run so often by so many candidates. What does it say about us as the electing population if this is what we respond to?

That question then led me to think what would happen if the same approach was taken in other aspects of our lives. What if companies all treated each other as ruthlessly as these politicians running for office? Can you imagine if some of the auto companies like Ford and Honda played ads featuring a dramatization of speeding, run-a-way Toyotas crashing as accelerator pedals got stuck as it had happened leading up to the 2009 Toyota brake defect/recall? The auto industry is one of the most competitive industries in the world, and even though the other companies tried to capitalize on Toyota’s mistakes and misfortune, an approach like this would not be taken. Think about why that is...

Let’s try another scenario. Let’s say you have an upcoming job interview for a position you really want. And in this case, you even know who else is being considered for the job. What do you think would happen if, when you sit for the interview, you spend 90% of the time telling the panel of interviewers why the other candidates should not be hired? Chances are you wouldn’t get the job. I think the interviewers would even be shocked and appalled by your behavior and they wouldn’t have much respect for you afterward. If you think about it, the campaign season is basically a long, drawn-out job interview. We, the voters, are the panel. Yet, we accept this behavior from people who are running for office, who are up for a job that can impact so many lives. Again, what does this say about us if this is what we respond to?

Whether we’re making decisions about what products to buy or who we should hire for a new position at work, we have a higher standard. We don’t let companies or people get away with insulting our intelligence or treating us (consumers, interviewers, etc) or each other in a disrespectful manner. Why in campaign season does that change? What would it be like if we maintained this higher standard during our elections? Would society be better off?

Service Quality

Posted 06 April 2011

Seth Godin hits the nail on the head. http://bit.ly/fD47JR

But great service designs require more than designers signing their work. Great service designs require a process.

Listen – Observe and understand the customer. Take the time to really understand what the customer wants. Understand the why behind the what. Stop talking. Start listening. Designers must experience their customers first-hand. (No, reading tweets is not first-hand experience!) Empathize with the customer who gets a blast of cold water from the hotel’s shower head.

Enrich – Explore and discover the best alternative. Once you have a rock solid, visceral understanding of customer needs, don’t rush to the first concept that comes to mind. Take the time to explore all the concepts. Invent some new ones! Select (discover) the best design - the best design for your customer at a cost the customer is more than willing to pay.

Optimize – Improve and perfect the discovered design. Once the best design is discovered, improve that design. Break it down to the details. Combine and re-combine until you are certain that you’ve found the best version of the design. Then, take that best version of the best design and sweat every detail. What can go wrong? Play the “what-if” game. Then create a solid counteraction for every problem. Replay the “what-if” game. You’re done when you’re certain the customer will never have a bad experience.

Test your final service design and then provide it to your happy customers.