Email and Action
One of the phenomena which I’m sure we’ve all experienced is all that email we receive that requires an action, often without specifically stating that it requires an action.
I had a case where someone emailed me that they were finalising posters and to let them know if I felt any amendments were required. I looked at the posters, felt they were okay, and as I did not feel that any amendments were required, I kept silent.
The next thing I heard, my colleague had received a message asking if it was okay to go to print.
To be fair, I currently work in a market where English isn’t the first language of many. However, it did remind me that we need to be absolutely clear:
What action is required.
By whom and by when.
How that action is to be taken.
As I said before, where English may not be the first language of the person emailing, there’s some room for leeway. However, most of us are taught at “management training courses” that it’s vital to ensure that communication with others is clear. In this case I received a message that said “Sharing with you the draft poster for your review. Our team is finalising the posters and plan to share on our social media by this weekend. Should you need any amendment, feel free to let us know.” My understanding was, “Here’s the poster. We’re going to share it this weekend unless we hear otherwise from you.” As I didn’t feel that anything else was needed, I didn’t let them know.
A corollary to this is to ensure that, if we send an email that requires action to multiple recipients, we make it clear who is to take action and by when.
Have you ever encountered an instance where a response to a request for action that you sent has suggested that you could have made things clearer? I certainly have and we live and learn with each.
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, Teamwork
The “Feedback Conundrum”
Nowadays, when we buy something or use a “Live Chat” service, we get a message asking or for “feedback” about our interaction.
It’s not unusual. It’s gratifying to see that businesses are keen to know if they’ve met our needs. I have some doubts as to how much notice they actually take of the feedback, but I’ve also noticed another growing habit now of asking for “justification” of feedback given.
In one recent episode, I gave a score of 3/5 to a vendor. They seemed disappointed. To put it in context, I asked a question, the live chat operator answered it and that was that. What more did they want? The business seemed to think that 3/5 was “bad” and that the live chat operator could improve. The problem was, he did his job: he answered a question to my satisfaction. There was nothing he could have done better!
Was there an expectation problem? Did my view of what 3/5 meant differ to theirs?
Not every action can be “excellent”. We don’t get 10/10 for turning up to work (although some people seem to think that this should be the case).
My views on what deserves a 7/10 score may differ vastly from other people’s depending on my standards and theirs. If someone does the job they’re paid to do, that’s “standard” for me. What I think of as 4/5 may not be what others do. It’s all subjective.
The only way around this is to provide definitions of what scores may mean. Some organisations do this when they ask for a score of (say) 1 – 10 where 1 is “Extremely Unlikely” and 10 is “Extremely Likely” when requesting feedback on whether a customer is likely to recommend their services to others. The customer still has a broad degree of discretion but can decide to which extremity they will incline.
We can’t expect “rave reviews” for just “doing what we’re paid for”. The extra points come from when we go the proverbial extra mile in solving a problem, providing a service or something truly out of the ordinary.
If there’s room for improvement, we should say so (constructively). If not, then customers shouldn’t be pressured to make something up just to satisfy the “box tickers”.
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, Selling
How I Will No Longer Use Facebook
How many of us have “that friend” (or “those friends”) who post everything they do, remember, feel, eat or experience on Facebook?
I have a few. I love seeing what they’re getting up to if they have something newsworthy to say. I have difficulty in believing that my Facebook contacts care that I am “eating lunch” at (name of restaurant). Equally, I doubt they’re interested in the fact that I’m at (name the place) with no further information to go on. I also suspect they’re not particularly interested in what I’m having to eat/drink.
I once saw a meme stating “believe it or not you can do things without posting them for everyone to see on Facebook!” How true!
I follow three simple rules when posting on Facebook:
- It must be interesting/informative OR
- It must be inspiring/thought-proviking OR
- It must be amusing
I wonder how “interesting” people find it that I am having a pint of beer (guilty as charged!). To put this in context, I live and work in a “dry” country, so for me being able to order a pint is a treat (and my contacts would understand that).
There’s enough “clutter” out there on Facebook, some of it best described as “completely moronic”, without us adding to it. As one wag once put it, “We used to have village idiots; now with the internet they’ve gone global!” I would rather not be numbered among the idiots…
So from now on, I shall regale my Facebook contacts with only interesting, informative, thought-provoking or amusing posts. It means that I won’t “share memories” as is the wont of many of my contacts. To me doing this seems nothing more than a desperate craving for attention (or should that be “like” emojis?).
Something else worth mentioning is that, when we meet somebody new or interview for jobs, people check us out on social media. I only use Facebook and LinkedIn but there are others who use these two along with Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, X and whatever else is out there. Not only does this make for a minefield to manage, it also means that it’s too easy to post something “contentious” and forget that it’s there. With more and more use being made of social media postings to pillory others, this strikes me as a fairly sensible move.
Do you have your own personal rules as to what you post and where?
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, Leisure, Social
An AI Saga
Not long ago, I posted an article on customer reactions to Artificial Intelligence (AI).
I recently experienced a “typical” episode of AI falling down on the proverbial job. Interestingly enough, it concerned one of the categories in the XM Institute chart in the article I posted: “Lack of a human being to connect with”. One could also say it was covered by “Poor quality of the interaction”.
I simply wanted to find out why a particular amount had been taken out of my account. Normally, I would email the bank concerned and let them respond in their own time. However, this bank doesn’t have a “Customer Questions” email address. Customers are faced with two choices:
Call the bank (and spend ages on “hold” listening to poor quality holding music whilst also pressing myriad buttons to select a choice of what your issue is.
Use their “artificial intelligence” to resolve the problem.
I get it: AI’s still in its infancy and I suspect it will take time for AI programmes to really settle down to the state in which they can interact with customers effectively. However, all I had was a simple question, “To whom was this direct debit payable?”
The AI was unable to solve my problem (probably because I couldn’t express it in the appropriate “AI language”) so I had no choice but to make a call to the bank’s hotline.
I live overseas and the hotline is open from 8 am to 8 pm UK time. For me, that’s 3 pm to 1 am my time. I will therefore have to wait until 3 pm (having first tried to raise the query at approximately 10 am my time), go through the process of connecting to the “right” service representative, and then taking up their time and mine with a relatively simple question.
A simple email address for “non-time sensitive queries” is another option. The problem I think that many organisations have found with these in the past is making sure that said email address is monitored frequently enough to turn around requests in a “reasonable” amount of time.
No doubt, the bank in question will improve its AI as it collects more experiences and feedback from customers using the system. In the meantime, though, it means that people are likely to spend more time rather than less sorting out simple problems.
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, Strategy
