I attended a Business Review meeting. It’s a monthly affair. There are lots of slides covering aspects of the business – contact centre, complaints, finance, collections, outbound sales and processing. The meeting takes three hours with each department head given their turn.

The first speaker got three minutes before being interrupted. He was asked an obscure question and didn’t have the answer. There was then an error on a slide. It went downhill from there. Points were repeated and we went off on a tangent. The first speaker didn’t contribute again after his presentation.

I think the meetings are like that every month. It seems to be more to do with the personal (image) agendas of the people who attend than a review of the business.

Here’s a better was to conduct the meeting (courtesy of Nancy Kline: ‘Time to Think’):

• The Chair opens the meeting and gives a brief overview of the successes last month
• The first presenter goes through all of his (short and to the point) presentation (without interruption)
• The Chair asks everyone what was useful in the presentation
• The Chair then asks for questions and time is set aside for discussion (people speak without interruption)
• Actions are agreed on the way forward
• It is then the turn of the next presenter
• At the end of the meeting, the Chair summarises the good points and confirms next actions.

At least then people don’t go out of the room thinking they’re incompetent.

Picture by IHL

The values are pretty standard stuff – people, empowerment, communication, teamwork, customer focus, shareholder value and the like.

There’s enough in the staff survey to suggest things aren’t going to plan. Empowerment, communication and teamwork take a particular hammering.

If managers in the company aren’t working to the organisation’s values what values are they putting into practice instead?

Nancy Kline (‘More Time to Think’) says ‘How much did your organisation
spend figuring out its values? And how much did it cost to get it inscribed in
granite….or at least in a three-colour brochure? See if you can get a refund.’

An interesting follow-up to the staff survey would be to list the organisations values on the left hand side and the values that managers are living in practice (as exhibited by the staff survey) on the right hand side. That would be a good place to start to bridge the gaps.

As Nancy Kline goes on to say, ‘people are furious not so much by the values the leaders are not living, but by the ones they are living instead. And they are furious in the face of the assumptions that drive those other values. The assumptions demean, dishearten, dismiss and discourage people.’

Picture by M Hartford

It’s odd how companies prioritise the money they spend.

I took out a savings plan with an investment company. Now hardly a week goes by without one of their glossy brochures hitting the door mat. Activity is even more intense than usual with the tax year coming to a close. Another 15-page brochure arrived yesterday. They have adverts in all the newspapers.

Try ringing their contact centre. I rang last week as I haven’t had a statement for a while. It took a long time to get through. In discussion the advisor mentioned they were short of staff. He promised to pass the request for a statement to the ‘back-office’ for processing. It has still not arrived. Perhaps they are short of staff also.

Tom Peters tells a story of a store near him where they spent half a million dollars on renovation. The staff attitude was poor before the improvements and remained the same after. (‘The Little Big Things’).

Tom recommends that money is diverted from the capital expenditure budget to the people budget (recruiting, perks, pay, extra staffing and the like).

Perhaps the same should be done with the marketing budget. What’s the point of it? If you are so hard to do business with, no-one in their right mind would buy a second time.

Here’s an idea for my investment company. Why not cut the number of glossy brochures by 50% and increase the staff in your contact centre?

We got to the end of the day and it was clear that there were two very strong candidates.

One of the exercises was to give a presentation to the panel of assessors. A fellow assessor stated that it was hard to pick between the two better candidates. However she felt that one of the candidates should be preferred as he had done excellent flip charts to support his presentation which had been clear and colourful.

The ability to do excellent flip charts wasn’t one of the skills we were testing for the role.

It reminded me of a similar situation a few years ago. An assessor said he thought a candidate should get the role as he was of very smart appearance and would give a professional image of the company.

We could probably have made that judgement five minutes into the morning session and cut out the rest.

Assessment centres as a means of selecting to positions are good in theory – but the practice is sometimes less than scientific.

Picture by Joshua Delaughter

See also – http://www.helium.com/items/1555928-recruitment-process

The receptionist passed him to the manager who explained that he was on three months’ notice. If he didn’t give notice before the 21^st (the day the direct debits go through) he would effectively pay an extra month.

I happened to speak to the gentleman later. He was perplexed by the episode saying that he would end the contract. If there had been the slightest incentive to stay he would have done.

I’m not sure what the customer retention strategy of the gym is. Given that the member pays £60 per month and has been there for 13-years, there must be some financial reason for the gym to keep him active (pardon the pun).

Not all cases are as clear-cut. I remember working for a mobile telephone company some years ago. One of the biggest dilemmas was whether to tell customers that they were coming to the end of their contract. If they remained on their existing contract the margins would be higher (every months rental was profit) than bringing their attention to the availability of an upgrade (where the phone company provided a subsidy towards the new handset).

Times have changed. Customer retention is more of a science for big companies with loyalty tactics in place and retention teams at the ready. Afterall a small reduction in defection rates can make a huge difference to the bottom line. Tom Peters quotes case studies where reductions in defection rates of 5% increased profit by between 25-85% (‘Liberation Management’). It’s all about the lifetime value of customers.

There are, however, many small and medium size companies who are in the same place as my gym. Retention strategies simply aren’t in place or effective. The front-line don’t understand the worth of a loyal customer.

Even in big companies one is left in doubt. I listened to a call at an investment company. A customer was complaining that he had lost £200 due to a delayed money transfer and he was going to move his accounts. He had an investment of £400,000 on which the company was making 1% per year. That’s income of £4000 every year. The investment had 10-years to run. The contact centre advisor adamantly stood his ground as there was doubt on who was to blame for the slow transfer.

Tom writes that ‘managers should know the company’s defection rate, what happens to profit when the rate moves up or down, and why defections occur.’

I’II ask the manager at the gym next time I’m in.

Please also see: http://www.helium.com/items/1591122-customer-service

Team leaders and supervisors play a huge part in any contact centre or customer facing department. However, the amount of effort allocated to develop and support them in their roles is insufficient.

I can’t help thinking that the situation is getting worse.

My suspicions were raised by an article in the ‘Financial Times’ at the start of the year. The article discussed how the Chartered Management Institute are putting more resource into developing the leadership skills of younger people. The initiative was to help fill the 1 million new leadership positions coming up in the UK over the next 10-years. The article implied that effort is needed as organisations have mixed records in supporting leadership development in their own operations.

In some contact centres there is almost an air of desperation among first line supervisory teams. Functions such as human resources, recruitment and project management have been cut. In one company, the Organisational Development team, which worked closely with team leader groups, has been reduced from three to one. At a time when more support is required, the opposite is happening.

Tom Peters writes:

‘Are you, Big Boss a formal student of frontline supervisor behavioural excellence?  Do you have the best training programme in the industry for first-line supervisors? Do you formally and rigorously mentor first-line supervisors?’ (‘The Little Big Things’).

Tom goes on: companies should ‘start down the path to Matchless Supervisory Excellence by creating the best imaginable first-line supervisory training programme ASAP.’

I can’t help thinking though that the issue has gone missing on the radars of many senior executives.

For more on this topic, please see: www.squidoo.com/developing-leaders

Photgraph by Maart Meester

Image via Wikipedia

‘Listening is the ultimate core competence’ says Tom Peters.

The topic must be back in fashion. I’ve read two articles in the last month on listening; as well as the three chapters from Tom in ‘The Little Big Things.’

My readings came to mind a few days ago. A member of staff at a client site joked that ‘the problem with you consultants is that you only tell us what we already know.’

If only that was the case. I suspect most consultants, or professional people, don’t have these skills. It’s quite an art to draw out what the client already knows; to let them think things through and offer an environment for them to do this.

I suppose the difficultly stems from being an expert. The situation has been seen many times before. After all, you’re being paid to tell it as you see it. A colleague once told me the solution in the car on the way to a new client meeting – isn’t that the expertise the client is paying for?

Years ago I read a book by Nancy Kline on listening and not making assumptions. It was a great book. For months I sat in meetings observing people and wondering why people bothered attending if they’d already made their mind up.

In her second book, ‘More Time to Think,’ Kline says that in any client meeting there are two experts. There is the professional person, who may have knowledge that is ‘financial, technical, legal….’ Then there is the client, who knows their company and the issues.

Kline writes that clients ‘want to be asked. They want to be listened to impeccably. They want to think for themselves.’ How easier it would be for consultants to play back what the customer already knows if they create the environment for the client to do this, then listen very carefully and seek to fully understand. It’s not natural though for an expert to do this.

The bottom line is this. Professionals who realise that there are two experts in the room and lead clients to develop their own solutions will be called back again. The reason is that the outcome or plan will have so much more value and commitment.

Kline asks that we read the following check list 5-minutes before a client meeting. It’s valuable advice.

Remember

• Being a Thinking Environment for your client is valuable expertise
• Your client wants your advice – but more than that they want to think for themselves
• They want to be listened to without interruption
• The value you offer your client increases with every minute you listen to them
• Your clients thinking will improve yours
• Your relationship with your client is a partnership, not a performance
• You are both the expert

Do

• Get interested in what your client thinks and will say next
• Don’t interrupt or rush them to speak
• Keep your eyes on their eyes
• Ask them what more they think, or feel, or want to say
• Regard them as your equal.

Source: Nancy Kline: ‘More Time to Think.’

See also – http://bit.ly/rkkWKR

Picture by Freud Gomez

I’d been put off by a guy when I was running a customer service department who told me the answers to my problems when tendering for the work. How did he know? I’d worked there for 2-years and couldn’t see them. He hadn’t taken the time to observe and listen before jumping to conclusions.

It’s the same with managers at all levels – day in, day out.

I was mentoring a senior manager and told him he needed to have a clearer picture of what was going on at grass roots level in his business. The messages he received were distorted as they came up the chain and he hadn’t realised it; spending most days running projects and sitting in meetings.

‘Go into your contact centre, speak to some staff…. then listen.’

He found it very difficult. He interrupted staff as they were giving their views; explaining that senior management had already assessed the ideas…but there was this or that reason they wouldn’t work.

Staff probably learnt more about the workings of the senior management team from him in the sessions than the other way round.

Tom Peters asks ‘are you an 18-second manager?’ The best source of evidence on what is wrong with a patient is what the patient says themselves. Research shows that doctors routinely interrupt patients’ 18-seconds in. They assume and don’t listen.

It’s the same in business. Day in, day out managers interrupt, assume and don’t listen to the people who know.

It’s no wonder that in staff surveys the biggest gripes are: our views aren’t taken into consideration, we are not part of the decision making process round here and managers don’t know what is going on.

Good management consultants have well developed listening skills because they have to ‘scoop’ the story out bit by bit. Chances are if you end up unclear the only thing to do is to ask again and keep asking – and then listen.

Interestingly,when giving presentations to senior management teams, they’re always most interested when you get onto what’s happening grass-roots (they’re normally playing with their smart phones when you’re discussing the strategic vision or IT roadmap).

Tom goes on to say the following:

‘Stop – Quit bloody interrupting – this means YOU (and me) – practice, seek feedback, give feedback after every interaction, use meeting videos to observe yourself – work as a group on this.’

There are lots of books on listening – but it’s hardly ever identified as a core skill, development area or a topic for a company training course.

Managers and consultants could do a lot worse than read Nancy Kline’s great books ‘Time to Think’ and ‘More Time to Think’ to really get to grips with how to listen properly.

For more on leadership please see: www.squidoo.com/developing-leaders

Image by qthomasbower via Flickr

In the eighties I worked for a large bank. An announcement was made that customer calls were to be ‘centralised’ in the newly built call centres.

Local managers weren’t happy and didn’t accept the idea; sales opportunities would be lost as their branch staff would no longer speak to customers who phoned in. Branch staff ‘knew’ their customers and relationships would surely be broken.

The reply was compelling. Call centre staff would have more time and first-class training so no opportunities would be missed. They wouldn’t have to worry about administration and could spend their time providing an excellent service. The customer would still have a knowledgeable and friendly voice at the other end of the phone.

The plan worked for a while. Then pressures mounted and calls had to be completed in three minutes. Occasionally, when things went wrong, messages were played to save customers the trouble of waiting and speaking to an advisor.

I rang a bank the other day. They have a good reputation for customer service and have won awards. Their web-site was down. A female voice welcomed me. She informed me that my call was important. However, most queries are dealt with on the bank’s web-site and I should give it a go. I was held in a queue. The music played but with regular interruptions, imploring me to visit the bank’s web-site to save me waiting.

I wonder about the long-term impact of a customer service strategy that encourages customers to stop calling. Perhaps in the future some companies will only want to speak to the customer to try and save their account from going elsewhere, when notice of closure has been given.

We are moving further and further away from what our nineteen eighties bank manager would accept. Time will tell who is right. Interestingly, the new banks that are being set up in the wake of the financial crisis have a customer service model that highlights the traditional branch approach.

The company has progressed like others. They took on a few staff in the early days to answer phones and do some processing. Before they knew it they had a sizeable customer services team; together with customer retentions and collections.

I met the CEO, bright and early. He explained they’d lost a couple of senior staff recently; the heads of the customer service and collections teams. He was concerned about collections, so he’d moved the deputy in customer services across to run that team. This left a big gap in the senior management of the customer services team (who also had retentions reporting to them).

The CEO admitted he’d been ‘slow off the mark’ in recruiting their replacements. He has a finance background and wasn’t ‘totally clear what he was looking for.’ Moreover, the head of marketing was a ‘people person’ and he’d thought he’d give her responsibility for customer services while they were recruiting.

I spent the rest of the morning listening to calls and doing a short review. It was clear that call answering performance had slipped. There were calls in queue all morning and there seemed a lack of discipline as I observed how people worked. The most worrying observation, however, related to the retentions team. Their performance in recent weeks was very poor. Upon investigation it was clear that spirits had dropped; two team leaders were jostling for position and competing to lead the team.

I spoke to the head of marketing. She admitted being ‘run off her feet,’ particularly given the expectations on her for the Christmas campaigns. She has no experience of running a customer services team and had difficulty finding reliable senior staff in that function who she could rely on.

Later in the day I met the other members of the senior team. The Director of Strategy and Acquisitions had a finance background, having previously been the finance director of a rival company.

I also met the senior finance team. They have a vast amount of experience; having mostly been in post since the early days of the company. It was clear that their biggest concern were the results being produced by the retentions team. Recent figures were adversely impacting projected year-end performance.

Sadly, the situation at this company is not uncommon. The customer services functions can often be ‘the odd ones out’ or the ones that are difficult to fit into the organisational structure. Customer services teams are found reporting to marketing, finance, operations or sales.

The reality is, as with finance, specialist skills are needed to run customer services successfully and the function warrants a seat on the top table. I doubt there are many finance directors reporting into customer services.

Picture by James Cridland