‘Fess It Up And Fix It
It is no secret that no one has a mortgage on good ideas and that is one of the real joys of networking. If you want to be inspired, encouraged and supported – then networking with other professionals is a sure fire way to get yourself up and going again. It is especially important if you feel alone and despondent in your professional workplace, if you are a sole trader struggling to keep your staff motivated or if you are alone working from home.
As a guest of Peter Taliangis, I was able to enjoy a recent breakfast presentation by Richard Dore of the Proteus Centre speaking on “Would You Like Service With That?” While the question would seem to be rhetorical, we had a lively session with other questions that were shared around the table and that helped build our networking experience. One of them was to share among ourselves our own recent experience of customer service – the best we had had and the worst we had experienced.
Networking means people are talking and it seems that most people default to the negative when talking about customer service. Which begs the question: when they are talking about you and your customer service, are they defaulting to the negative? Are stories about their customer service experience with your business building it up, or dragging it down? At our table, that observation proved to be the case – it seems that people love talking about their bad experiences.
One thing that surprised the audience was Richard’s advice, that when you are asked “How’s business?” if you ever reply “Busy”, you are actually pushing people away and not encouraging them to want to interact with you and your business. By saying you are “busy” you are implying that you are not in the market for new customers, that you don’t any capacity for additional business. He strongly recommends your answer should be much more positive and professional.
Another topic which raised a lot of discussion was the use of acronyms which somehow get transferred into daily conversation with people outside of your own industry, who have no idea of what you are talking about and are too embarrassed to say so.
SAS = Scandinavian Airlines Systems: a case study on how an employer’s focus on a service culture has led to the airline being voted (ahead of Google) as the best company in the world for which to work. But as an acronym, it meant little to the audience until it was explained. No one was talking about our own Strategic Armed Services (SAS)
MOT = Moment Of Truth (which comes from a book of the same name, written by Jan Carlzon of Scandinavian Airlines) means the 15 seconds that the airline found they had in which to make a positive impression on their customers. Many contact points, but all of them short on a time basis. With 37 different explanations for MOT, we really needed that one to be explained in the context of customer service. He certainly wasn’t referring to the Ministry of Transport (MOT)
In the customer service context, Richard said, ICU means ‘I see you’, making eye contact and acknowledging the customer in a positive way. We giggled at our table, because we thought it meant Intensive Care Unit – which, when you dwell upon it, is what customer service does need in some of the firms we meet.
In the online world, ISYOT means ‘I See You Out There’, which acknowledges your presence being noted on the internet and is highly recommended by those skilled in SEO and Networking . We didn’t laugh at stories of staff that ignore you while they take private phone calls, chat about their weekend away or just fail to respond to your presence in the retail space, because the greatest crime in customer service is indifference. While the session was not expanded to include the online world, it is easy to see that failing to reply to a customer’s email, respond to a product query or complaint or answer a query that comes through your website means that you are also showing indifference to your customers – current ones and potential future customers.
Richard Dore’s advice to “Fess It Up and Fix It” was an engaging session on empowering staff to respond to customer’s issues and fix them, rather than escalate them; that good customer service pays off and teaching staff how to provide good service is an investment rather than a cost. Empower them, he said, and then get out of the way while they get on with it. Proteus certainly endorses learning and networking as key elements in developing Leadership Skills and on the morning contributed a “metre of books” from their bookshelf to one of those who attended the event.
Networking is a great way to learn new things, get ideas on how to review what is going on in your own business and meeting people who can become a good resource for you. It’s also very good method for getting out of bed early on a chilly winter’s morning! I recommend it.
(c) Lesley Dewar 2011
Lesley Dewar is a well known blogger and workshop facilitator who writes regularly on Social Media, marketing and customer service in the category of Stories My Nana Tells – Business Tips
Her free eBook can be downloaded directly at Networking To a Plan Sharing this article is permitted providing this footnote is not deleted – all rights reserved.
