Experience Counts!
I recently read an article on LinkedIn written by a young owner of a company, describing how he had hired an “older person” and they had been a success.
Two things struck me here:
- His delight that things had worked out so well. Why should they not have? Older people generally have more maturity, experience and have seen more problems and their solutions.
- The fact that there may be a perception that only “young” workers can be successful.
Let’s go back to that word “maturity”. This consists of “experience” and having “seen it all before” (or a lot of it). Young people these days, however well-educated, often lack the “streets” to handle many problems. They’ve been indoctrinated with political correctness, virtue signalling and other concepts considered by left-leaning teachers as “important” in today’s society. What they haven’t been taught are skills such as how to deal with an angry customer, how to solve a problem with their colleagues, how to analyse a situation and find what caused it, how to have a “difficult conversation”.
Many of these skills require a certain mindset. When confronted by an angry customer, stating “I’m offended” may stop them in their tracks but it won’t solve the problem. Why do we need customer service training these days? Because too many new young recruits lack these skills and the emotional intelligence to handle angry people. They’re too used to walking away.
One of the key skills we should ask new recruits to demonstrate is that of critical thinking – the ability to look at things from different angles and not to just accept them if they conform with the echo chamber of their minds.
Older people will have developed these skills over time. They can be a calming and guiding influence on younger, less experienced workers.
They don’t always expect higher salaries because of their age.
They won’t always require more “sick leave”.
They’re not after the boss’ job.
They’re likely to learn faster and be productive in a shorter time.
With all the humour surrounding the “Boomer”, “Generation X”, “Millennial”, “Zoomer” and now “Alpha” generations, there’s clearly some understanding of how older workers differ. Why not use that to our advantage?
Being surprised that an “older worker” may actually do well is like being surprised that a driver with 10 years’ experience can drive better than one who passed their test the day before.
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: Career, Leadership, Productivity, Social, Teamwork
Customer Concerns Over AI
We may as well face it, artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay - for better or worse.
A recent survey by the Qualtrix XM Institute looked at the consumer concerns among 28,400 consumers w across 26 countries with organisations that had adopted AI.
These concerns related to:
- Lack of human connection
- Job losses
- Poor quality of interactions
- Potential misuse of personal data.
- Potential extra effort required when dealing with AI
- Reliability of information provided
What was particularly interesting for me in this survey was that in none of the cases above did concerns exceeded 50%. In other words, either people were accepting that AI was here to stay, or they did have concerns but maybe felt they could be overcome.
At present, general feeling is that AI will replace repetitive, procedural type tasks. Where, however, a “human interface" is required, we will continue to deal with humans.
Personally, I’ve seen the results of “chat bots” being used to provide so-called “Live chat services”. My gut feel is that these bots aren’t capable (yet) of distinguishing whether a human being needs to be brought into the equation or not. They simply follow a list of questions and answers and, if your problem doesn’t fit into the correct pattern, suggest that you call the organisation. Somewhat self-defeating…
Of interest also was that less than 30% felt that information provided could not be relied on. Does this mean that they’re comfortable with general levels of technology or that experience has shown that information is indeed reliable?
The three concerns rating 45 or 44% related to job losses, quality of interactions and misuse of personal data. A gain the fact that these were under 50% may or may not indicate that there is a relatively high degree of confidence in quality of interaction and data protection, but I would suggest that things could be improved.
In all, the survey suggests that it’s too early to be complacent with regards to the adoption of AI. There will no doubt be a “teething period” as organisations get to grips with how best to exploit this new technology and how to train it for their particular function.
Suffice to say, AI language programmers will be in high demand for the foreseeable future.
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, Leadership, Productivity, Selling, Strategy
It’s All in the Response
One of the most important things we all possess is our personal brand.
Like a corporate brand, when people think about us, they associate certain qualities or attributes with us. These could be anything: “reliable”, “trustworthy”, “helpful”, “efficient”, “professional”, knowledgeable and so on.
Just as when we think of a corporate name, we associate certain qualities with it, we need to think about what we want people to associate with us and (by extension) our organisation.
One of the key areas in which it’s all too easy to fail is in our response to requests. When I started my career, I was taught that, unless a deadline was given, I should respond to a request in a memo or letter (email hadn’t been invented) within two working days. Even if we were unable to provide full resolution, we were required to reply that we had received the request, were acting on it, and would provide an update within a specified period of time.
Is it the case that the fashion is more to ignore communications? To be fair, many people are deluged with emails during the working day. It’s become too easy to send an email rather than pick up a phone and call the person or even (assuming it is possible) walk over to their desk and speak to them.
Another complication is that emails may go to a “Junk” or “Spam” box if the “system” doesn’t recognise our address. Add to this the high volume of “Junk” email to which we are all subject anyway and one begins to see the problem.
What can we do? The most effective technique I’ve seen so far is to go very quickly through one’s emails periodically during the working day and sort them into three categories:
“Action” items need a response or action within 24 to 48 hours. “Read Later” items may be “information only” or information needed for a report that we are expected to produce at some distant point in the future. “Maybe” emails are the ones that we get around to as, when and if we have the time. In the latter case I find that I end up deleting the contents of the “Maybe” folder.
The advantage of this method is that it clears our “Inbox” rapidly, reducing the pressure and prioritising what needs to be done. However, it requires discipline. At times I find that I still tend to let things pile up in the “Inbox” which then becomes my de facto “Action” folder. This works for me, but I appreciate that others may prefer an alternative.
After using it for a while I found that barely 20% of incoming emails were “Action” items. The rest were filed in “Read Later “, “Maybe” or just deleted on the spot.
The point of all this is that when somebody emails us, they usually expect a response. It would be unreasonable to expect an immediate response (unless they said so and why it was needed), but if more than a week went by without me receiving some kind of reply to a request I had sent, I’d start to entertain doubts as to the professionalism of the recipient of that email.
Whatever the case, we’re judged by how quickly we respond. It’s up to us to make sure that judgement is as favourable as possible.
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, Teamwork
