Customer Crossroads

A tale of two managers: what message are you sending

In the previous post, I posted two vignettes about bank managers I used to work with.

• Manager # 1 spent spare moments recycling paper into notepads to save money.

• Manager #2 made tea every morning for the tellers.

Neither one of these things seems remotely related to their job description.

My take

I was a trainee in Manager1's branch, and I asked the guy I was training with about this strange behavior. He thought it was kind of a waste of time, since notepads didn't cost much money. The manager thought he was setting a good example. However, thinking about this years later, here's what is so obvious to me:

When your shop is that busy, you can do one more deal every day and more than make up for the expense of a notepad or two.

This was a busy location. Staff had trouble keeping up. What on earth was the lead guy doing fussing with stationery? He could certainly have asked other people to do this, but probably thought he shouldn't waste the time of expensive staff. So instead, he wasted his own time.

I was the area manager for Manager #2 (i.e. her boss). So I asked her about the tea. She told me that one teller invariably disappeared at the start of the shift to make tea for everyone, meaning she didn't have everyone rolling when the doors opened. She had thought about making it an issue, but decided that she wanted to save those kinds of disputes for something truly important. Like sales and service results.

The message here was clear, actually. First, that having everyone working when the doors open is important enough that the manager will spend a few minutes making sure it happens. And second, that making the staff happy was important. Servant leadership.

Everyday life calls for these decisions

Whether you are leading a group of volunteers or a staff of hundreds, understand that every action you take sends a message. Where you spend your time. Where you spend money. Where you don't spend time. Where you don't spend money.

What message are you sending these days?

 

 

A tale of two managers: the challenge of leading in an experience world

We don't talk about it a lot, but the customer experience has a lot to do with the people at the front.

The people doing the work, and the people leading or managing them.

I was thinking recently about some of the things good leaders do, and the things poor leaders do. And this put me in mind of some bank managers I used to know.

So herewith, stories of two managers. Both doing something very hands-on, roll-up-your-sleeves stuff. Opinions welcome. In the next post, I'll share my views on these situations.

Manager # 1

This branch was in a busy shopping mall, and I worked there as a trainee for a while. We were busy enough that I got in trouble for booking too many appointments for the loans officer I was training with. He reminded me that we needed to take a break for lunch, or we wouldn't get to eat. An important lesson.

The manager there, like all branch managers, was under constant pressure about managing discretionary expenses. From time to time I would see this guy in the stationery room using something called "padding compound" to make up scratch pads from paper recycling to avoid the need to buy them. I'd never seen this stuff before, and I thought it was pretty interesting.

Manager #2

This branch was in a busy plaza, right beside a major grocery store in a commuter community. It had long opening hours, both evenings and weekends, so they ran three schedules. The manager used to make tea every morning for the tellers about 15 minutes before the doors would open.

I found this out because I was there once in the morning before the doors opened, and the manager said we needed to stop our meeting for a few minutes to go make tea. I found out that this was a regular part of the manager's daily routine.

Your views?

So... what do you think? Both stories are about how a leader chose to spend a few minutes of time on a regular basis. And everything a manager does is observed by staff, whether you know it or not.

The New Experience Economy virtual conference - free and interesting

ClickFox sponsored a webcast presentation on Nov 10 that provides free access to 19 great thinkers on customer experience (and me).More details about the event, the sponsor and the speakers are here.

Registration is free, and the video is very good (thanks Skype)!

Some of the remarks that caught my attention:

- Beth Smits from BestBuy talked about not letting metrics and measurement take over as the only way you think of success. She believes that every customer interaction needs to create loyalty, not necessarily revenue.It's a balancing act for business to find, and stay, in this sweet spot.

- B. Joseph Pine II talked about how we must not get too stuck on innovating the products, because innovation in services is the cutting edge of differentiation

- Kerry Bodine from Forrester talked about the emergence of experience as the way to dominate markets in the current decade, and put this in context of trends of the past, where the best distribution or information led to market dominance

- I pay homage to Steve Jobs by reminding us all that "not sucking" is not enough -- we need to strive for much more than that (around minute 13 in the main video)

Really interesting approach, and I look forward to seeing more of this kind of information.

Thanks Tom Huston of ThoughtLead for the invitation to participate!

 

 

Going global in a small way with no help from the bank

I have a couple of trusted suppliers that are in the USA, while my business is located in Canada. This seems so easy so much of the time that it always comes as a shock when it isn't.

Such as today, when we wanted to send a small payment.

Good electronic options are few and far between.

• A check/cheque -- well yes, I guess so, but we would need to open a US dollar account, and it doesn't come up that often. Plus it goes by mail, and cross-border mail is always slow now (security measures perhaps?).
• A bank draft -- also seemed kind of slow, so we were looking for an electronic option.
• Electronic e-mail money transfer? Nope, only available within the domestic banking system.
• A wire transfer -- what we did today, but it cost $30 and took the better part of half an hour to execute. Then the bank told us it would take 3-5 business days. (Seriously). 
• PayPal -- probably what we should try next time.

This is frankly pitiful. I know that large organizations have better options than this.

The rest of us anxiously await the 21st century to arrive for small enterprises.

The future of computing according to Microsoft: too much StarTrek, too little reality

Future of computing according to Microsoft video

I was reading @techrepublic's take on Microsoft's video of the future of computing, which was interesting, but left me incredulous about a couple of things. 

All of this cool information at people's fingertips -- no reference at all to the creation of content, just the usage of it. When I looked at all this information that businesspeople were manipulating, totally absent were the folks slaving away to create all these awesome graphics. Also absent were the links to information gathering that would need to be present in day to day operating systems of all sorts that would gather this in-the-moment useful data.

Where's the advertising?

More to the point, from the marketer's perspective, none of these applications had any obvious commercial involvement, such as sponsorships or advertising. People in this video search and find with no spam, just useful and well-formatted information organized in highly logical ways. Like the recipes, for example. If only.

So, this version of the future is kind of the StarTrek future -- remember how money never seemed to be an issue for anyone at all? No advertising present anywhere. No intrusive interruptions with sales calls or unwanted messages. Consumer culture had disappeared.

What about biometrics?

Another major trend that is missing for me is the biometric connection. A lot of people are tracking their own biometrics, and there are apps and online communities dedicated to this topic. I would have thought I would see some evidence of my devices helping me track these things automatically -- such as the woman travelling being reminded about her jet-lag strategy, or something like that.

What about smart films?

The see-through refrigerator door was nice (especially when your fridge is as tidy as theirs!), but not as interesting to me as window film that can be adjusted as to opacity (not there). Smart films are something that we would expect to be seeing a lot more of soon, but not present in this world.

So for me, it was all about "what your handheld and tablets might look like". [Okay, those looked like smart films, maybe] Sad to see that keyboards and the accompanying ergonomic strains are not expected to improve.

Antiseptic

Is the future of computing really going to be this antiseptic? I sure hope not. [Except for maybe the translating-enhanced-reality glasses, which were pretty cool.]

If you really want to see the future of computing, I think you would be better off checking out some of the best scifi and speculative fiction. It's still way more out there than this video.

Co-creation strikes again: Everyone wants their own charity now

I have been noticing a trend of people launching their own charities and aid foundations lately. 

The narrative goes like this. It starts with a story about someone who has just returned from a trip to [pick one: Africa | Nepal | India | Middle East] and discovered people there who could benefit from some aid.

They then announce that existing aid organizations don't seem to be working, for whatever reason, and so they are starting a new one.

This story is followed by a letter to the editor of the [pick one: newspaper | magazine] decrying the launch of yet another charity by a celebrity or otherwise noteable individual, who should instead be working with existing charities. Said letter is often from a director of an existing charity.

Here's what I think is going on.

• Existing charities want your money, not your ideas
• People want to contribute more than money
• They particularly want to feel connected in a personal way, to make a personal impact
• When faced with personal knowledge of problems and a compelling need to help, their efforts to become directly involved through existing channels lead nowhere
• So they launch their own organization

Net result is a fragmentation of aid efforts that is likely to continue. The number of new private foundations is skyrocketing.

Here's a good example: socks for Japan. A more serious effort is Room to Read  New ones are popping up constantly.Selena Gomez wants to start her own charity. Christina Applegate launched one. We could probably come up with about 50 similar organizations without too much effort, right?

There are now programs to teach you how to do this, such as this one offered by Global Volunteer Network. You too can "be the change" and "become a social entrepreneur".

A few organizations seem to have found ways to engage people more directly without losing effectiveness. Habitat for Humanity is one -- they actively engage donors in real activities beyond the chequebook.

Political parties, by the way, appear to be having the same problem -- no one wants to just give money. People want to be heard, have influence, be part of creating the ideas. But few organizations are set up for that, and probably most don't really want to be that collaborative.

Co-creation. It's not going away, it's spreading.

Image: The image above is Colin Glassco, who started his own charity.