BE DiFFERENT or be dead Blog by Roy Osing

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Excellent post! So often, leaders confuse walking around the office with actually engaging with and serving their employees. Saying “hello” is not the same as a “serving moment”.
I love LBSA. It describes an aspect of leadership that is critical to employee growth. By uncovering the needs of employees and removing barriers to peak performance, the leader is demonstrating empathy. Through this behavior employees are sure to reach their potential. Personally, it would motivate me to strive to exceed expectations.
Excellent post. Thanks for sharing this fantastic approach to leadership.—Jen Kuhn, The Experience Factor

December 28, 2009

Customer Complaints - Pain or Opportunity?

It all depends on how you look at it. Most organizations look at complaining customers as a ‘nessary evil’ and part of the job that needs to be done, but which is not looked upon with a great deal of delight. Customers complain, frontline employees try and explain the company’s position in hopes to appease the annoyed customer and the customer goes away either satisfied or even more angry.

BE DiFFERENT organizations, on the other hand, treat a complaining customer as first, a source of Customer Learning, and second, as a potential opportunity to recover and actually build customer loyalty.

I discussed the Practice of Customer Learning in a past blog and I cover it extensively in my book. It goes beyond traditional Market Research and is a continuous process of learning from customers what works and what doesn’t in your organization. CL focuses on every customer contact and seeks to drain as much information from the experience possible in order to enhance market performance.

A customer complaint is an excellent touch point from which to learn. It may not always be pleasant for an employee but it can provide rich information for you. Some companies treat complaint getting as a key strategic imperative, and honor those who do a great job at it. NORPAC Controls of Vancouver BC is a company which believes that great employees attract complaining customers. They measure the number of complaints each frontline person handles successfully and they recognize the best complaint getter. Interesting cultural philosophy. The company is very well known for its ‘Be the Customer Vision’.

A customer complaint could be a Service Recovery waiting to happen. If the complaint is the result of a company blunder, handling the complaint the BE DiFFERENT way might be the difference between you losing the customer forever and enhancing their loyalty to you. I have talked about the Recovery Practice before. It’s about fixing the problem and then doing the unexpected for the customer based on what you know about them. If you give ‘em what they DON’T expect, they will be dazzled and give you an ‘A’ for your efforts.

So stop talking about ‘complaints’ and start calling them Recovery Opportunities to get a DiFFERENT focus on how to deal with them. Develop the process to turn complaint handling into successful recoveries and train your people on how you want it done. Measure their performance and communicate it far and wide internally. Honor those that excel in doing it.

Cheers, Roy

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Posted 12.28.09 at 06:25 pm by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 24, 2009

Customerize your Language

If you are like most organizations, you have your own language. Whether you are in the communications business, the law profession, or medicine, over time a vocabulary specific to you is developed and understood by all. The problem is that your unique language is reflective of looking inward to your technology, systems, and operating procedures rather than outward focused on your customers.

If you don’t customerize your language you can hardly say that you are addicted to serving customers in every way possible. The words and music don’t match. In addition behavior can’t change to be outwardly directed to the customer if the internally focused language implies the opposite.

Let me give you a couple of examples to explain what I mean.

Calls Processed. Most organizations have call center operations which typically handle sales and service responsibilities. The productivity objective of most call centers is to process as many calls with as few resources allocated as possible. Other metrics include call speed of answer and average call holding time. The common denominator of this operation is the word CALL. You process CALLS. You answer incoming CALLS as fast as you can. You try and minimize the length of the CALL. Help me understand where the CUSTOMER is in all of this. If a CALL is the focus, with implied productivity measures it is hardly a wonder that taking care of what the customer wants gets lost. Employees are more interested in CALL productivity than dazzling customers. The solution? Get rid of the call processing mentality and get on to the serving customers one. Start talking about the number of customers served; customer wait time and customer serving time.

Customer Commitment. At least the customer is in this expression, but it lacks the personal dimension that is so important in dazzling customers. I like the word promise.Companies make commitments; people make promises. There is much more serving power in Customer Promises than Customer Commitments. The productivity metrics become much more meaningful and visceral under the promises notion. What % of customer promises did you keep? How many promises did you break? Who in the organization is the best at keeping customer promises? WOW! Much more powerful and easy for employees to relate to than the company commitment paradigm.

There are other examples in Chapter Forty-Seven of my book. Check them out.

BE DiFFERENT action plan:
- develop a dictionary of your current language
- identify the word/expressions that you understand but which lack the punch of passionately serving customers
- create customerized words to replace the internal focused ones
- change internal success metrics to reflect your customerized language
- tell employees what you have done and why (to align all systems including language to serve customers)

Cheers, Roy

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Posted 12.24.09 at 04:13 pm by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 20, 2009

The ‘Serving Customers’ Model

Organizations today are challenged to create strong customer loyalty. In the face of empowered and knowledgeable customers (thanks to search engines and the internet), fickle customers (who will leave you in a heartbeat for better treatment) and hyper-competition( the rate of new business formation has increased like never before) there is a struggle to get the right formula to both attract new customers and keep the ones you’ve got.

What’s the answer? You need to look at your Serving Business as having two components.

The first component, Core Service, represents the basic foundation of your business. It is your basic product or service without which you simply don’t have a business. In the telecom world Core Service could be defined as dial tone (although today it is probably an Internet Protocol data stream). In finance it could be ‘financial advice’. And in software development it could be an ‘operating system’. Your customers expect your Core Service to work according to specifications. They EXPECT 24X7 dial tone; EXPECT reliable financial advice: EXPECT a working O/S. As a result when you provide working Core Service you get a ‘C’ on your Serving Customers Report Card and no more. However, when your Core Service is NOT working as promised you get an ‘F’ on your Report Card; they leave you and they don’t go quietly, telling everyone how bad your organization is at serving customers!

Bottom line: your Core Service has to work ALL the time as promised. But don’t expect loyal customers when you do.

Loyalty comes from the second component of Serving Customers - The Service Experience. Whereas Core Service is WHAT you GET from an organization, the Service Experience is HOW you FEEL when you get it. Or is the way you are treated by the organization when you do business with them. If the service experience you provide is ‘memorable’; if it ‘takes their breath away’ (thanks to Author Chip Bell!); if it ‘blows people away’; if it ‘WOW’s’ them; if it ‘DAZZLE’s’ them, you get a ‘A’ on your Report Card. And you are rewarded with customers telling others how great you are; they stay with you at least until you deliver a de-dazzling event which puts everything in jeopardy.

So, how to create customer loyalty? Provide Core Service in a satisfactory manner ALL THE TIME - consistency is key here. Once you have risen to this challenge you have earned the right to move on to loyalty building by providing dazzling Service Experiences every time a customer touches you.

Cheers, Roy

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Posted 12.20.09 at 01:38 pm by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 17, 2009

BE DiFFERENT or be dead Virtual Book Tour Recording

For a recorded copy of the session click on this link

GO HERE

As a reminder, this is what the Tour was all about…

Over the last several months I have been very busy doing what I have been calling Taster Seminars on my book. I have had the opportunity to discuss my BE DiFFERENT Practices with organizations of all sizes and types and the results have been satisfying indeed.

Unfortunately there are many more people who have asked for the Seminar than I have been able to accommodate, hence the reason for the Virtual Book Tour.

So what’s it all about? “What the heck is a Virtual Book Tour?”

It is a virtual event where I will be introducing you to the Practices in my book. Check out the Table of Contents of my book.

It is F.REE. But more importantly you’ll learn some “apply-now” tips as everyone who has attended a face-to-face seminar has.

The Tour is brought direct to you live via webcast - a 60 minute, entertaining journey into BE DiFFERENT.

Listen to it in the privacy of your home or office. Saves a ton of time.

No driving or paying for parking. Very green. DiFFERENT.

You can ask direct questions of Roy- before and during the 60 minute webcast.

You get a F.REE BE DiFFERENT or be dead E-Guide to follow along with. This is your Learning Handout of the Tour.

Make it an office group event. Invite your colleagues for more fun, & insights.

AND an exciting new BE DiFFERENT or be dead Growth and Survival Series will be announced at the Tour event.

Be Different or Be Dead

by Roy Osing

BE DiFFERENT or be dead Blog by Roy Osing

Customer Complaints - Pain or Opportunity?

Customerize your Language

The ‘Serving Customers’ Model

BE DiFFERENT or be dead Virtual Book Tour Recording

ABOUT THE BOOK

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