“Cognitive Overhead”
I came across one of the most informative and clear explanations I’ve ever encountered about why customers may not always react the way we hope they will. It’s called “Cognitive Overhead”.
Simply put, it’s how much they have to think and/or do something to take action to get something. The easiest way to understand this is to think about two simple examples:
The words “click below to subscribe”.
The word “subscribe” used as a direct link (known as a “Uniform Resource Locator” or URL) to a page to fill in details.
In the first case, a customer reads the instruction and then must find a link somewhere below (maybe lower than the part of the screen they can see). In the second, they simply click on the word “Subscribe”. This may seem simple but the fact is that the first example requires two steps whilst the second only requires one.
If we imagine our processes in a similar way, how many steps do customers have to go through to obtain a product or service through our website? There will be a minimum number, but the question is how low will that be?
Sometimes customers have commented that they didn’t follow a process through because it was either:
- “Too long”
- “Too complicated”
- “Unintuitive” or
- All of the above.
If the third (let alone the last) answer comes back too often, our business has a serious problem. All it’ll take is one competitor with processes that are shorter, less complicated more “intuitive” or all three to take our customers from us.
As an example, my wife and I have both found that installing eSIMs from a certain provider comes under the “all three” category. We’ve given up using their eSIM.
As businesses, we need to minimise the “cognitive overhead” for our customers. As technology and complexity grow in our world, this is going to become harder. Developers need to understand how the customer works and how to blend this with how their business works.
The first question we should always be asking ourselves is, “Will this process benefit the customer?”. If the answer is “not much” then we shouldn’t institute it. People will try to justify complex processes for reasons like “legal requirements”, “regulations”, or similar. All businesses are subject to rules, but building processes around these rules or around what the business needs isn’t the way to go.
In short, “the simpler the better” is the way to go. Our problem is, how do we get there?
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.
Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Selling, Strategy
If Only…
I had a memorable episode which showed me the importance of “covering all the bases".
For some time, I’ve been looking for one of those adjustable desks that moves up and down at the touch of a button. I don’t like to bend over a computer if I only have a quick bit of work to do but equally if I have a lot, then I prefer to sit at a desk.
I finally found my “dream desk” in one of our local stores. It looked good, had the correct electronics, a wire holder under the desk for holding things like power strips and a hook for holding a pair of headphones.
So, what went wrong? I asked the salesperson to show me the desk “in action” (i.e. make it go up and down on its electric motor). The desk wasn’t plugged in to an electric socket, as the nearest one was about 3 m away. Luckily, the store had an extension cable which it was easy to plug into that distant socket and then move closer to the desk. We plugged in the desk, but nothing happened. We looked for the instruction manual and here was the second problem: it was all in Chinese characters and no one could read it.
Where I live and work, three languages are spoken, one of which is Chinese. Unfortunately, they couldn’t put their hands on manuals in the other languages. So, there we were needing a “troubleshooting guide” and not being able to do anything about it…
I was more disappointed than annoyed. After all the desk looked right, had everything I needed and if they had had one that worked and/or a troubleshooting guide, they could have made a sale. Unfortunately, it looked like they now simply had a desk.
We need to make sure we get the details right. There’s no point in putting something on display if you can’t sell it (how many times have we said we wanted to buy a particular item in a store only to be told “Sorry, that’s just a display model.”) If it’s a display model, and you have no other stock, then take it off the display.
Equally if something is on display and stock is available, sales staff need to know how to make it work, where to find the manual and the manual needs to be in the appropriate language.
In retrospect, all of this seems “common sense”. However, it’s surprising how often we encounter cases where the “sense” isn’t so “common”.
What can we as business leaders do to make sure we cover as many of these little details that could lose our business 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.
Labels: Customer Care, Selling, Teamwork
Handling Replies
In this age of 24/7 email, it’s all too easy for us to be “deluged” with emails from any number of people.
When I first started using email back in the 1990s, all I had were my corporate email (and that was an “in-house only” system, which did not allow us to send emails to people outside the employer’s network until later) and my personal “public domain” email.
Since those days, I’ve added two more personal email addresses (for different purposes), my own consultancy business email and my other business email, bringing me to a total of two corporate email addresses and three personal ones!
I receive email in each. Some require responses, some are for information only and others are “junk”. The trick is in handling responses.
One of my former employers had a standard for responding to email requests: two working days if no deadline was specified. Even if we could only send a “holding reply”, at least the sender knew we had received their message and were acting on it. This was considered “professional”. Not only is it “professional”, it’s also courteous and shows the sender that we take them seriously. Personally, if I feel someone doesn't take my requests seriously, I move on to someone who will.
Fast forward to the current age and things seem to be very different. Part of the problem seems to be caused by email systems sending emails from “unknown senders” to one’s “junk” or “spam” folders. This can be for any number of reasons which I won’t go into here.
From a customer service and professional point of view, we should have both corporate and personal standards for replying. My personal standard is that, if I need a response by a certain deadline, then I ask for it by that deadline. If I email someone without giving them a deadline in which to respond, I will generally chase after one or two weeks, depending on the urgency. Luckily I have a highly evolved follow-up system to ensure that I do chase.
For all of us in service industries, we should have response standards. Some organisations send out an automated response to every email stating that it will be handled within a certain number of working days. This is fine, provided that said follow up does occur. My experience is that most of the time, it does.
Does your organisation have “standards” for responding to emails with or without deadlines? If not, how might you change things?
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
Working With Entrepreneurs
I’ve been lucky enough to work for two global finance organisations as well as with numerous entrepreneurs in my consultancy roles.
Large organisations are, very different to a small business (usually headed by the founder). I continue to learn from entrepreneurs but can say now that there are several commonalities amongst all of them.
The first is a burning desire to bring something to market. It could be a product, a service, a solution to a problem, a way of doing something better cheaper faster or whatever. Whatever it is, they’ve found a way to do it and to do it well enough that people are prepared to pay for it. The thing is, only they really understand what it is they’re trying to achieve.
Following on from the above, once an entrepreneur has defined what it is that they want to do, they go “all out” to see their vision come true. They’ll work 24/7 to make it happen.
Another is what many of us may call “absent mindedness” or “inability to concentrate for long periods of time”. Entrepreneurs’ minds work very differently from those of their workers. They’re thinking about different things continuously and re-prioritising as they go. They may be accused of “forgetting what you said five minutes ago” but usually what’s happened is that something more urgent has appeared on their “radar” (unbeknown to you) and they need to deal with that. The key: keep your interactions short and to the point. Don’t waffle.
Not only are they thinking about the immediate present and what needs doing, they’re thinking about the future. They’re chairman of the board, director, CEO, chief finance officer, head of sales, head of product development, head of manufacturing and even head of logistics!
Many (but not necessarily all) entrepreneurs are also extremely flexible and patient (when they need to be). They have to be if their business is to flourish. Whilst their workers may have the “luxury” of getting impatient with others, entrepreneurs appreciate that often they have to “suck it up” if they’re to get the business. They’re great at finding solutions and ways around a problem.
Another trait that many have is they’re consummate salespeople. Again, this may not apply to all but it does to those with whom I’ve worked so far. Even if they have to take on someone as a “professional” sales person, they still have to “sell” their idea, product or service to that person.
Entrepreneurs aren’t always good when it comes to the details. That doesn’t mean they “don’t do detail” it’s just that they tend to have the idea first and worry about details as they go along. I’ve been amazed at the level of detail into which some of the entrepreneurs with whom I’ve worked have gone, but equally there are others who need others to “make it work”. It’s a case of “have your people call my people”.
Are you an entrepreneur and do you see yourself in any of these? Would you add more?
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, Selling
How Clever Are Apple?
I followed the speculation and rumour mills concerning Apple’s intentions (if any) to update its iPad Mini series of tablets.
The last time they did this was 2021 and, according to the pundits, if Apple followed previous patterns, the Mini was “due” for another update in 2023.
Rumours flew around about when (not if) the update would be announced in 2023 and 2024 and what it would consist of. I read articles, watched YouTube videos of how users love their Mini and why we should buy one, whenever it was updated... First people though it would be announced at the 2023 March Event, then September’s.
Meantime Apple remained silent! They let the market do the PR work for them. No need to build suspense, no need for expensive advertising. Even as they announced updated MacBooks, Apple Watches and others in the iPad range, the focus remained on Apple in between these announcements thanks to social media.
Let’s not forget: Apple are clever. They wait until they’re “good and ready”, then make their move. Remember the Apple Watch? Their competitors had introduced smartwatches well before Apple, but when Apple finally produced the first Apple Watch, they took the market by storm. Many still consider the Apple Watch as the “best” smartwatch out there.
I was given an Apple Watch for Christmas one year and wore it almost non-stop for three years without really having a battery issue (so maybe the “short battery life objection” isn’t really valid?). The problem was, after that time, I found that, to update the watch’s operating system, I had to wipe its memory and restart. None of my analogue watches obviously have this problem, but I’d suggest that smartwatch manufacturers look into this issue so that one doesn’t have to replace the watch every 3-4 years (although this may be deliberate).
Personally, I’m going to wait until they produce something that has more than 2 days’ battery life, that doesn’t look like a mini-iPhone on my wrist and that doesn’t require me to change it every 3 - 4 years.
I may have a long wait…
Apple have used the classic magician’s sleight of hand to make people think they’re doing one thing whilst they do another.
Whoever the genius is at the Apple Corporation, well done on getting the market to do your advertising for you!
The iPad Mini v. 7 was finally released in October 2024 and now the latest rumour is that Apple are considering a foldable iPad…
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: Selling, Strategy
Are We Going "App-Happy"?
I read once “somewhere” that apparently 80% of a business’ users will look to access its services or products on their mobile (read smartphone) device. Small wonder then that the development of apps has grown exponentially over the past years.
There are apps, however, and there are apps.
Rather like those department stores that promise to sell us (almost) anything and everything apps are now doing the same job. As I go through life, I find more organisations, businesses and such like who “have an app for that”. Sooner or later, I suspect that even our tiny little six-person business will be forced to pay someone to develop an app for us (we don’t have the expertise to do it ourselves).
What I've found in a number of cases though is that when interacting with an app, firstly I risk tapping in the wrong place with my (some might call them large) fingers. Many apps also seem to require at least two levels of security. These are usually a username and/or password and/or One Time Password (OTP) sent to the user. Often the OTP is sent to their mobile phone number. That’s great if that user doesn’t travel outside their country or keeps their SIM in their mobile device even when travelling (incurring the sometimes outrageous data costs that this entails). Luckily, smartphone manufacturers have found a partial way around this through using facial recognition (although there are still some suppliers with whom I deal who insist on sending an OTP to my phone).
My real question is: how many apps can we truly deal with? In the end, I suspect that people will stop dealing with certain suppliers if they don’t buy their products regularly or if they’re just fed up with so many apps on their phones.
My personal experience is that, as I’ve aged, I prefer (and indeed need to!) access apps or services from a larger screen, such as a tablet or desktop computer. For young people with good eyesight and slim, nimble fingers, the mobile phone is great. For others it may be a curse.
Worse still are organisations who insist on transacting only through their app (they don’t even have a website). Again, if they’re interacting with the younger generation this shouldn’t be a problem but I wonder whether they’ll start to lose business as customers advance in years. No doubt there'll be others to take their place.
In the end, I suspect the decision will boil down to “Do I really value this product, service or supplier and, if so, is it worth continuing using their particular app?”
Only time will tell. Meanwhile, if we as businesses want to develop our own app, how are we going to make sure that it will be as “user-friendly” 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, Selling, Strategy
When is “Good Enough” “Good Enough”?
I’ve had the privilege of watching several entrepreneurs building their businesses over the years. What interests me most is their approach to what we might call “getting it right“.
For some, “perfection” is the only standard. For others, “good enough” will do and they then refine the product or service.
Both have their pros and cons. “Perfection” means that a lot of work will go into producing a product or service that genuinely meets customer needs. Inevitably, a number of elements have to be combined to make this happen: concept, assembly (if it concerns an actual product), delivery to customer and after sales service.
The downside is that getting to that final stage of perfection can take an awfully long time and delay product or service launches.
In some cases, perfection must be mandatory. We see this in buildings, automobiles, aircraft, bridges where if the product fails, a considerable number of lives can be lost.
On the other hand, especially in the IT industry, “good enough” will do. A programme or service can be launched and then, as customer feedback filters back, it can be “tweaked” to refine the product or service until it meets needs.
In some cases, “good enough” may be preferable both to take the market lead and to make sure that the product can be scaled or changed as needed. A very simple example would be the Apple Watch. Apple were by no means the first in the smart watch market, but when they entered some years after competitors such as Pebble and Samsung, they brought a totally superior product to the table. They’ve continued refining it as well (although battery life still seems to be their main hurdle).
For every entrepreneur among us, deciding when “good enough” is “good enough” and when to strive for perfection is very much a personal and business decision. For example, can Ford afford to aim for perfection every time? When should it do so? Power and transmission (engines) and safety issues such as indicators, lights, airbags, brakes and seatbelts need to be perfect. However, “small” refinements like tone of dashboard colour may mean they miss taking the market lead by getting the product out there faster, earning some money, and then improving it based on feedback. Look at every iteration of the same model every year – does the basic design change? Of course!
My personal view is that it depends on circumstances. If one has the resources and time available to achieve perfection, why not? In a fast-changing business and competitive landscape, being “second past the post’ may be the difference between success and failure. It will be for each and every business owner to decide for themselves.
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
Hard Customer Service Facts?
I spotted an infographic developed by Rapid Answers that listed five key points that we need to think about during our interactions with our customers.
Fact number one: more than 60% of consumers are influenced by other consumers’ comments. How often have I looked up reviews on Amazon or other sites before making a purchase? How often have you? The 60% figure also looks very precise and nicely rounded – wonder how they got that.
Fact number two: repeat customers spend 67% more and are more profitable. I can’t comment on the 67% figure (again, it seems very precise) but it is fair to say that repeat customers generally will spend more than those who come only once. It’s logical.
Fact 3: 40% of organisations cite “complexity” as the greatest barrier to improving “multi-channel customer experience” - whatever that is. Again, without knowing on which survey the 40% figure is based I can’t comment on its accuracy. There’s no denying, however, that we live in an increasingly complex world and consumers don’t like complexity when accessing services (I’m one of them!).
Fact 4: 78% of consumers have bailed on (abandoned) a transaction because of a poor service experience. Again, can’t comment on the 78% figure but personal experience tells me that bailing on a transaction because of poor service happens. I’ve done it myself. Not only will people abandon the transaction, but they’re also likely to go online and tell millions about it.
Finally, it takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience. Another way of putting this is that it takes a long time to build trust but very little time to lose it. I have no hard data on how many positive experiences it takes to make up for a bad one, but I can say that one has to work a lot harder to build and then maintain that bond of trust. If, though, one does make a mistake after building up a substantial or sufficient “emotional credit balance”, customers can be a lot more forgiving than if we constantly provide poor experiences.
The long and short of this seems to be that organisations that genuinely focus on great customer experience will be the ones who succeeded where their competitors don’t. Their prices may be higher, their product range may be more limited, but they will still get the business because of their "service experience". In short, we need to focus on:
- Attitude and service to generate positive comments on our services/products.
- “Bringing them back for more”.
- How easily we can deliver our product/service and how easy is it for customers to obtain it.
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, Strategy
Customer Perception = Reality
Kate Zabriskie coined the above term which neatly encapsulates what is often the main cause of tension between customers and suppliers.
We’ve all heard phrases such as “The customer is not an interruption of your work, they are the reason you have work,” and so on but it was only when I saw this that light dawned for me.
Many businesses are organised “Around themselves”, that is, they produce goods or services according to processes that they have designed to deliver those goods or services.
Only a few think about how the customer may want to obtain or access those goods or services. This is where the “customer experience” concept comes in. Its objective is to make life as good as possible for customers using the following criteria:
- The product or service must meet the customer’s needs.
- It must be easy to use.
- The customer should enjoy using the product or service.
The problem is that, if we’re lucky, the product or service will meet our needs.
Easy to use? How do we have to fill in? How many fields do we need to complete online? How many steps to complete the process? Does our password need a minimum of 8 characters, at least one of which should be an uppercase letter, one a number and one a "special symbol"?
Enjoyable? How do we feel after completing endless forms and waiting in a queue for 30 minutes?
Very few organisations can achieve all three.
Once we know what the customer wants, and how they want it, we’re on our way. The only way to get this information is to talk to customers themselves. Unfortunately, the way many organisations do this is to use “focus groups” or “market surveys” that aren’t designed to elicit what the customer wants so much as to reaffirm that the processes are “right”. Even the use of the latest trend – “persona” that are meant to represent the “typical buyer” (there’s no such thing, buy the way) of that product or service look at the buyer from the business’ point of view rather than the buyer’s.
Once we get our heads around the difference that’s needed, we can start to understand how customers want to engage with us, what products they need to do what, and how they want to access them.
Until business leaders realise this, there’ll always be a conflict between their perceptions and those of their customers.
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
Keep it Simple
Technology lets us do so much more in terms of accessing, using and providing information and services. Unfortunately, this may well be its main disadvantage.
If it’s to be useful, technology has to be user-friendly to all users. There will, of course, be exceptions: specialist technology etc, but I have in mind the “standard” apps that one uses on a smart phone to access services.
We’ve come a long, long way in a very short time in terms of what’s accessible on a mobile device. We now have a generation of children (“Gen Alpha”) who simply don’t know what life without a smart device is like.
Equally, we have a (dwindling) number of people who can best be described as “technophobes” (afraid of technology). These are most often found in the “Silent” (pre-boomer) and even the Baby Boomer generations.
As time goes on, apps are updated. The latest update to the Apple Infrastructure is iOS 18 which has caused some distress to users as it has changed the “photos” app into something that appears at first sight much more cumbersome to use.
It occurred to me that one of the problems may be that many of these apps are designed by Millennial and Generation Z developers who are perhaps designing them for their own generation without thinking about those who have gone before. It wouldn’t surprise me if Gen Alpha look on such apps in the not-too distant future and wonder how anything so anti-diluvian could ever have been allowed on the market.
Be that as it may, the one thing many apps seem to have in common is that, as they are updated, they become more complex and the user interface becomes less user friendly. I’ve frequently had to resort to Google to find solutions to simple problems once I’ve downloaded the updated version of an app which I used with no problems before. Developers design apps without always appreciating how they’re used by current users (even though the update may actually provide an even better experience, it still frustrates users until they’ve understood how to work it).
My advice to anyone (not just developers) is keep it simple. The simpler it is to use, the more users you’ll have. If you’re lucky, it’ll also be simpler to diagnose and rectify any faults in the coding.
We seem to think that, if something’s complex or complicated, it must be good. That is rarely the case. As Einstein famously said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Simple processes and procedures generally are easy to understand, apply and, if there’s a problem, it can be rectified fairly quickly.
What in our organisations could be simplified?
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
A First Attempt in Learning!
One of the more useful (but frustrating!) learning experiences I’ve had was dealing with someone who just set up their own business producing “environmentally friendly” business cards.
His product was simple: take a company’s business card, transfer it to a credit card-size piece of plastic and embed a chip that held all the details of the business card. Along with this, a QR code was printed on the card which took you to a site giving you the same business card information. Even better, with certain brands of smart phone, just touching the card to the smart phone automatically transferred all business card information onto the smartphone and the user could then save it as a new contact. Brilliant idea. Environmentally friendly. Practical.
The downside was that, whilst the concept was sound, execution was flawed. After three months of working with this business trying to produce a professional card, we finally gave up. It’s not something that comes naturally or easily to businesspeople. The problem was that we could see no end in sight; there was always something wrong in the dummy copies produced. What’s more, we were asked to pay for the cards before they were delivered so we would pay and then receive a card that wasn’t fit for purpose.
Sometime ago, I wrote about knowing when to hold, fold, or walk away. In this instance we decided to walk away. We sent what we considered was a polite message thanking the business for their efforts and making a goodwill payment for the work they had done. The amount of work we had put in designing, proofreading several erroneous print runs and explaining what a business card was used for was far higher than the value of the card.
The other business’ reaction? Not prepared to accept any accountability for their errors. Instead, we got a catalogue of excuses, including the well-worn “No one else has had a problem with this.” Maybe no one had had a problem with this before, but there’s always a first time for everything.
This is a project we’d still like to pursue with the right partner. One day even the business that we walked away from may have perfected its operating model, in which case great. We’d far rather support a growing local small business than deal with a large, faceless corporate entity. The trouble is, they need to have a sound business operating model.
This was also a great learning opportunity for us. We learned the importance of explaining our particular branding, the message behind it and to be able to design artwork suitable for transferring onto a medium other than paper. Yes, we lost a bit of money, but we learnt far more from our mistakes and assumptions and the consequences that arose. We’ll know better how to proceed the next time.
In the meantime, we’ll still have to use “paper” business cards.
Just because something ends in failure or we have to walk away, it can still be a lesson. The trick is to learn from that experience, and not repeat the same mistake. In this case, neither of us were ready for the other.
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, Selling, Teamwork
The Recruitment Nightmare (For All)
I provide training to students in CV writing and interviewing. Of the common complaints they have is that they don't hear from recruiters after sending in their application. To be fair, recruiters have also complained that candidates “ghost” them at interviews (don’t show up and don’t provide a reason)…
My answer to candidates is twofold:
- Were you making a “speculative” application or
- Were you responding to a job advert?
In the case of speculative applications, my feeling is that, depending on its size, it’s a 50-50 chance as to whether the organisation replies quickly or not at all. After all, this is an unsolicited application. However, when someone is responding to a specific advertisement for a specific job, it should be common courtesy to reply one way or the other. Here’s where the problem starts. Recruiters are becoming overwhelmed with the number of applications received, even for a specific job after posting a specific job advertisement. We may see phrases such as “only successful applicants will be informed”. My suggestion to anyone who does this is to specify a time by which applicants can expect to be informed (and therefore, by extension, the date after which unsuccessful applicants can consider their application “unsuccessful ”).
Even where one is making a speculative application, the recipient should treat it with a degree of professionalism. After all they’re being complimented by someone thinking that they are worth applying to! You also never know, if you “ghost” that applicant today, tomorrow they may be in a position where they can refer business to you and will remember how unprofessionally they were treated when they applied. Fate can be a fickle mistress!
How does your organisation respond to job applications? If, when posting a job advertisement, it states that “only successful applicants will be notified”, does it say by when this will happen?
The third situation I’ve encountered with my trainees is that they make an application and then some three months later are called for interview! It’s at this point that they should seriously be considering whether they shouldn’t have chased their application any earlier. In some markets recruiters may not react, favourably to this kind of “pushing”. Unfortunately each market has its own peculiar culture and each organisation is different.
My conclusions:
Recruiters: if you aren’t going to respond to every applicant, at least give a date by which everyone can expect to have heard one way or the other.
Jobhunters: if no date is given for when you should have received a response, diarise to chase (say) a week after the deadline and, if you hear nothing, a week after that and a week after that. After three chasers, consider your application “unsuccessful” and move on.
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, Selling
"Me-Tubing"?
YouTube must be one of the most popular streaming channels for videos on information on how to do things, where to travel, stuff to buy and a host of other subjects all of which have their fans.
I’m just as guilty as anyone else of going down the YouTube “rabbit hole” for information, stuff to buy, reviews on products and so on. Over the five or so years that I’ve been watching YouTube, it’s become clear that some “YouTubers” (or are they “Vloggers”?) may not appreciate what they’re doing.
An example: I stopped watching a video about “travel electronics” after eight minutes as the presenter still hadn’t come to the point on the products they were showcasing. That’s eight minutes of my life I’ll never get back that were consumed by the presenter displaying their ignorance of events outside the US. This potent combination of mindless chatter and ignorance simply confirmed that this was not a channel worth watching and I marked it as “don’t recommend this channel” in my YouTube account.
They weren’t YouTubing, they were “Me-Tubing”.
People have suggested that I start my own YouTube channel. I haven’t yet for several reasons:
- There are many subjects I could talk on (no "USP").
- I’m aware of my lack of “video presentation expertise”.
- An awful lot of the videos that I’ve watched over the last couple of years all say the same thing. The only differences are usually in the type of tool or product presented or in the experiences being presented.
For example, “Survival” or “Bushcraft” videos all tend to recommend much the same type of equipment. Equally there are plenty of survival videos that show how to make a shelter out of materials available in a forest, out of a tarpaulin or using other materials.
As I’ve said: there are some YouTubers who are great and I watch their videos if it’s a subject that interests me. What I notice is that they all seem to follow a common set of rules:
- Keep it short (5 to 7 minutes is good; if you can’t say what you need to say in that time, you’re wasting other peoples’ time).
- Get to the point – fast. There’s nothing worse than the example I gave above of a 24-minute video where the first eight minutes (or 1/3 of the video) were just the presenter rambling.
- Stick to facts: except to give context or set the scene, don’t speculate, don’t imagine.
For me, if a YouTube video is longer than seven minutes, it must be:
- Either by a presenter who I know to give value OR
- On a subject that really interests to me OR
- Something about which I wish to acquire knowledge.
Of course, travel vlogs are an exception. If anyone can encapsulate the experience, pros and cons of flying business class on Singapore Airlines in seven minutes or less, good luck!
If ever I do start presenting on YouTube, I like to think that I’ll have defined the:
- Target audience.
- Subject or subjects I will present.
- Duration of video (depending on subject of course).
- Important facts that I think audiences will need to know.
What’s your experience of YouTubers or “Vloggers” and how would you approach this activity?
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, Selling
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
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
