Salami-Slicing Service
One of the key tenets of any organisations service standards should be that customers are as well informed as possible about what services are available, how they are delivered and their price. Some call this “transparency”.
To make this work, we need to train thoroughly all customer facing staff (whether face-to-face or on the phone). Even product development staff need to understand the impact of their actions on customers. What product manager/developers may see as a “minor tweak” may actually be a major inconvenience to customers. Think of when your local supermarket rearranges its product shelves…
There’s nothing more annoying for a customer to be told one thing, make a decision only to be given another bit of information, make a decision and then receive another sliver of information which invalidates the first decision and so on (we’ve all been there).
Sometimes this situation comes about due to new staff coming onto the team without proper training or encountering a new situation for the first time. There’s no excuse, however, for not being fully informed about all the “regular” products and services.
The other reason could be lack of communication, as when one department changes something without informing others. Whatever the cause, continuous small changes, “updates”, “upgrades” and so on (salami slicing”) can drive customers to despair as a well-loved product or service that met their needs morphs into a chimaera with no Bellerephon to save them.
These days, customers are more aware and more demanding than ever. Unless our organisation offers a specific product or service that is unobtainable anywhere else, it’s easy enough for customers to switch to another provider. With the ever-increasing channels offered by social media, it’s also a moment’s work to publish unflattering stories about such and such an organisation’s poor service.
Whilst training budgets are often the first to be cut in hard times, there are plenty of businesses out there who will attest that it’s more expensive to repair a damaged reputation after an example of poor service/poor communication from lack of training than it is to give that training or have that communication in the first place.
This is where smaller businesses with flatter organisation structures and fewer employees have the upper hand over their larger competitors and their “internal processes”. Small businesses tend to have better communications as everyone may even work in the same room, making it easy to overhear conversations or have an impromptu “team meeting”.
For larger organisations, the constant “trimming” or “updating” of services (the “salami-slicing” of the title of this article) is what can finally drive once-loyal customers to desert after the point of no return reached. We can only “update” services or products so much before they no longer meet customers’ needs, obliging them to look elsewhere.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience 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.
Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Selling
No Reply @...
Has anyone ever noticed how often they receive emails from a service or product provider with an email address containing the words “no reply”?
One of the most telling aspects about the way many organisations serve their customers is the proliferation of “no reply” email addresses. Suppose the customer has a question about the message they have received? What do they do then?
One potential answer would be to call their relationship manager (if they have one). They may also be lucky enough to have contact details for a “friendly” member of staff who has helped them out in the past. Why is this necessary though? The effect will be that staff who have other things to do now find themselves engaged in dealing with queries arising from unclear messages from some nameless, faceless source.
The reply from the provider would almost certainly be along the lines of “use our Customer Helpline/Service Desk, or look in our FAQ directory”. Organisations that complain of lack of customer engagement are often the guiltiest of not facilitating two-way communication.
Similar to those whose customer “helpline” plays continuous recordings of, “Your call is important, please wait and the next available agent will answer you as soon as possible,” the “no reply” email address seems like a convoluted attempt to limit the very engagement organisations say they want.
One of the risks of dealing with others is that they will, inevitably, have questions when you send them a message advising of an imminent change. If they can’t reply to the source of the message, they will get annoyed and start complaining which is exactly what we don’t want.
One answer to this is, where an advisory message comes from a “no reply” address, the message contains a link to a source of further information if so needed.
Doubtless someone will come up with the response that that all knowing Fountain of Wisdom (AI) will soon be able to take over many of these tasks. Don’t let’s forget, however, that humans are social animals and will very quickly work out if they are dealing with a “robot”. This can only make the service or product provider look worse in their eyes.
Dealing with people is never easy, but are we compounding our problems by using “no reply” as an easy way out?
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience 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.
Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Selling, Teamwork
AI – A Downside
A news article(that appeared in July, I think) reminded me of something I posted on artificial intelligence (AI) earlier this year, and whether it was a good or bad thing.
In the article, social media companies were using AI to remove postings that might contain offensive, harmful or indecent material. The problem was, the AI couldn’t distinguish between content that was harmful, offensive or indecent and content which showed war crimes or acts that violated human rights being committed.
This is one of the cases we find of “the law of unintended consequences.” Social media companies have been under the spotlight for allowing posts that contain hate speech or other content likely to be considered offensive. The fact that a lot seem to get through still is neither here nor there.
In response to the pressure to moderate effectively content posted, social media has naturally turned to one of the newest tools in the proverbial toolbox. Given the millions of postings every day on the likes on Facebook, “X”, Instagram, Snapchat, and goodness knows how many others, we have to accept that no human being or group of human beings (unless numbering in the millions) can successfully moderate content, removing that which is gratuitously and unnecessarily offensive or harmful whilst still leaving in place content which can be used in evidence in war crimes or human rights abuse trials.
One answer is simple. If someone is a witness to an event that might constitute a war, crime or abuse of human rights and photographs or films it, they need to have a site to which it can be sent. Rather than the “standard” social media sites, they may need to store it on their own personal cloud, Dropbox or whatever personal storage, they may have already.
The results of one particular war crimes content posting being removed was that a refugee applying for political asylum and giving danger to his own life as a reason for doing so lost his proof as, unfortunately, the video footage that showed him in the place where the incident took place had been erased by AI.
We are only just beginning to come to terms with AI’s strengths and weaknesses. Like many other aspects of life which we now take for granted (e.g. cars, trains, aircraft, broadband internet and others) it will be a case of time showing us what needs to be done. However hard people may try, they cannot legislate for everything all at once.
At best, they can look at the lessons of the past and decide where to apply them in the case of AI.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience 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.
Labels: Crisis Management, Customer Care, Productivity, Risk, Strategy
Zoom Recalls Staff to Office
People may find it ironic that Zoom – the company synonymous with the Work-From-Home phenomenon that enabled the world to talk whilst COVID raged - has now recalled its staff to the office.
There’s more to this than meets the eye. Zoom is merely asking its staff to come in for two days a week if they live within 50 miles of their place of work. No great hardship, surely?
Much has been written about the WFH phenomenon (including by me) as a new way of motivating and retaining staff, as well as providing them with an improved work/life balance. The advantages to employers are happier, more productive staff, reduced rental costs and (with luck) increased profitability arising therefrom.
The advantages to workers are a better work/life balance, improved health, reduced expenses and the knowledge that they have an employer who cares. Contrast this with business owners in “downtown areas” who have seen their business suffer due to lack of footfall. Many have adapted and take their businesses online where they can. Others have reduced staff numbers as there is no longer the demand.
According to another article that appeared in the BBC, at least 4 out of 10 Londoners have switched to “hybrid” working. For them of course, this is easier as they generally live closer to their workplace than might others. When I commuted to London, I had a 1 1/2-hour door-to-door journey so WFH for me would have been a boon.
Experts in real estate now feel that a business that wants its staff to come in to work needs to “buy the commute” by offering something that workers can’t get at home. Of course, they can simply threaten reduced salaries or the sack, but in the end that would be counterproductive.
That said, it will be necessary to come into the office for meetings, to update software or hardware and to meet one’s colleagues face-to-face. The “virtual team” is all very well and, where members are dispersed over different continents, continues to be a fact of life.
However, if you live a short distance from your physical place of work, there should be little harm in turning up two days a week (this still leaves you free on which days you can WFH).
We are still getting used to “the new normal” after the COVID pandemic. People will necessarily experiment with different ways of working and dealing with each other. The potential from working from home is enormous, but we can’t simply abandon the value of face-to-face contact.
The WFH debate will continue for some time until things settle down and new standards and metrics are set up to ensure that everybody gets the most of the new system.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience 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.
Labels: Leadership, Productivity, Strategy, Teamwork
