Tuesday 23 May 2017

Sorry, She's New...

I was at a dinner for two people’s joint birthday celebration recently.  We had a private room in a restaurant known for its food and service.  This time, however, things didn’t go as well as they should have.  The food was excellent, but the young lady serving our party didn’t take down the complete order (omitting at least one dish) and the service was extremely slow.  When we finally commented, we were told “Sorry, she’s new.”, as if that excused the generally disappointing service.

The restaurant made a simple error of judgement in allocating a new member of the service staff to serve a large party of people in a private room where she couldn’t be properly supervised.  This was a special occasion as well, so the “birthday girls” in the party must have felt let-down, although they didn't show it.

We could also have helped by asking for our order to be repeated (we didn't), so the evening ended up with the restaurant “captain: serving our party and embarrassment all round.

It was unfair both to our party and to the young lady serving us – she simply didn't have the experience or training to handle such a large group.

It made me wonder how often we may all be guilty of the same thing.  Do we delegate tasks to team members who aren't fully trained for them (except, perhaps, when we want to “stretch” them)?  Do we fail to make sure that we keep an eye on them and are there to support them when they run into difficulty?

We can be so busy just “keeping things going” that we forget that others may not have our knowledge, skill or understanding of the situation.  What may seem “easy” to us may seem daunting to a new team member until they’ve had time to settle in and understand how things work. 

Different people learn at different speeds and in different ways.  We need to remember that.  Hopefully, the restaurant will remember not to “throw someone in at the deep end” next time…


I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world  running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management.  I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.  For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.

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Wednesday 10 May 2017

Hanging on The Telephone

Hanging On The Telephone

The singer Blondie (aka Debbie Harry) enjoyed a hit in the 70s with her song “Hanging On The Telephone” about a girl desperately wanting to speak to her (we assume) boyfriend.  At times, it can feel like this when we call “Customer Service” or the “Hotline” of a business only to be greeted by an automated answering system.  From there, the experience goes downhill, except in a very few cases.

Humans are naturally social animals and don’t take easily to dealing with automated systems.  This is especially true when someone is ringing to make a complaint or to obtain an answer to an urgent question.  Stress levels are already high in these situations and to be put on “hold” whilst bland music is played and we’re assured that “your call is important to us” does not help when we finally get through to a human being.  In worst-case scenarios, the latter goes through a checklist of proof-of-identity questions (increasing stress levels even more) before putting us on hold (again) to contact the “right” agent to transfer us to.  The “right” agent then asks for the same information that we just gave the previous one…

Before you ask, yes, I’ve been in this situation. 

The telephone is such an integral part of our daily lives.  We think so little about how much we accomplish through a simple voice interaction, that when we encounter a situation where things don't work out, we automatically go into “fight or flight” mode.  We’re not getting what we want and our reaction only risks making the situation worse.

That’s what happens on the caller’s side.  As for the receiver, the usual problem is that it’s “expensive” to have too many “real people” dedicated to answering phones all the time.  Automated answering systems are designed (in theory) to sort callers out by need and then direct them to the appropriate agent.  I suspect (without any real evidence) that well over 95% of calls can be handled this way.  Even if it were 99%, that still leaves 1% not handled correctly.  If our business receives 1,000 calls/day, 10 callers won’t be happy.  Over a week, that’s 50 callers (assuming we work Monday-Friday only). 

50 unhappy callers/day (or 2,600/year) can do an awful lot of damage to our reputation over social media these days…  Do we really want that many people criticising our business out there in the face of competition?  Excuses such as “Well, we handle 99% of calls successfully” tend to fall on deaf ears in these situations.  It’s the 1% who are doing the damage.

The solution?  Ideally, have lots of well-informed staff to take calls.  Reality check: this is expensive.  Outsourcing is another possibility, but we hear horror stories of “Call Centres” all over the world and their poor handling of customers.

Ideally, we need to eliminate one of the main reasons for calls: complaints.  If the product or service doesn't do “what it says on the tin”, people complain.  If it does, they don’t.  There will always be a few problems, but what luxury to be able to dedicate call centre staff to selling more perfect product rather than sorting out problems.

We also need to ask where else we could eliminate the need for follow-up calls.  If we rely on this to sell other services, then we still need people.


In all, I’d rather have a product that worked as described, rather than a “service hotline” that leaves me literally “hanging on the telephone”.



I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world  running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management.  I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.  For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.

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