The Observer needs Caulking!

After 16 years this week's column in The Observer by Management Editor Simon Caulkin was the last. I understand this is a decision made by management at The Observer as a cost-cutting measure…

If you’ve never read Simon’s brilliant yet appropriate and relevant column, then you really don’t know what you’ve been missing! Simon has written about ideas this blogger holds dear – indeed his column has been a must for anyone who understands that traditional management ways of thinking have largely created the mess the economy is in! His column has always been a refreshing and insightful read that appealed yet was relevant across the political spectrum, both public and private sectors, as well as different industries.

I am dismayed and disappointed by The Observer's bizarre decision to axe this column. And I’m not alone in my thinking… over the last weekend, over 50 distinguished signatories (including little old me!) gathered to produce not just a letter of protest to the powers that be at The Observer, but also an earnest recommendation that they reinstate Simon’s column as a matter of urgency!

The letter, signed by a diverse group - ranging from entrepreneurs, SMEs, management consultancies, large corporations, academia and renowned authors across the globe was sent to the editorial team at The Observer this morning and we await their response.

In the meantime, we’ve set up groups named “The Observer needs Caulking!” on both Facebook and LinkedIn.

This column must continue. Please show your support by joining these groups and posting your comments for all to see!

Q - Do call centres face increasing competition from the web? A - Only if they're not very good...

In a recorded message played to attendees to the Call North West conference this week, Beverly Hughes MP said that call centres face increasing competition from the web.

At first glance, this observation might seem a bit left field, but on reflection I think she could have a point…

I was talking recently to a contact of mine about call centres, specifically a well known UK bank. This company is one people used to always recommend (yes, you can probably guess who it was). I probed a bit deeper when she said their service was always excellent… After all, having seen a fly on the wall documentary on TV that featured that bank not so long ago, I figured that their new increased focus on individual staff achieving sales targets and throwing squidgy toys at colleagues on the phone to a complaining customer to improve staff morale might not be conducive to a fantastic customer experience…

I was disappointed, but not surprised, then, when the lady explained that she mostly dealt with them over the internet…. I guess then, there’s nothing that can go wrong - if you do it yourself, you do it right first time…

On that basis, then, I can understand where call centres could face competition from the web… Computers can replace transactional relationships (and save the companies money), but they can’t replace everything. Sometimes as customers we need to talk to someone, have a dialogue – after all business is about people, how they interact with you, how well they respond to the demands you place on them and the value they create in serving you… if we get to the stage where we only stick with businesses because their online capability works for us, then there is no longer any customer loyalty or value in our brands.

Yet ironically, that’s where the call centre can come into its own – by creating value and building long term and sustainable customer relationships and brand loyalty.

Unfortunately, so many companies miss this trick… they spend so much time in call centres focusing on targets and silly games to motivate their teams, that they forget the very customers they exist to serve. What businesses need to do is to start looking at the world through their customers eyes, design their processes to meet the demands their customers place on them, whilst encouraging their staff to take the time to do things right first time.

If they did this, then they’d find they could really make a difference to their reputation and the loyalty of their customers…. Now does that sound like a good idea, or what?

Observations on the importance of customer service...

Chey Garland speaking at the IoD recently talked about offshoring and how some work will always be done abroad to reduce cost. She also commented about getting things right first time and the importance in a recession of a quality service, retention of existing customers and doing things to a higher standard. All fantastic points I would agree with, but unfortunately, Chey’s subsequent observations about call centres needing to “do things rapidly” because time is what’s most important to customers these days let her rhetoric down.

We all know that from a customer’s perspective it’s most important for things to be done right than to be done quickly.

Instead of focusing on speed (or how many customers can be processed during the course of a shift), call centre managers need to learn to focus on responding to their customers demand, and empowering call centre staff to take the time to do things “right first time”, and creating a work environment in which service excellence can flourish.

If all call centre managers did that, then they could reduce complaints and repeat calls: ironically taking the cost out and improving service…. Hmm – perhaps there could be a better way of working?? This blogger thinks so...

Well done, Carphone Warehouse!

Carphone Warehouse has this week announced it's scrapping commission in its stores having completed a successful pilot of a new pay scheme!

Hurrah for common sense!! We all know that commission drives the wrong behaviours in people, encouraging them to do whatever it takes to get the sale at the expense of customer needs.

Carphone Warehouse’s UK Sales & Customer Director, Steve Blan said of the pilot ‘We’ve seen that the selling techniques people were once protective of are now being shared. Great salespeople understand it is in their interest to share knowledge and skills.’

In addition, because everyone working in a store gets 2% of profits each quarter, if a customer decides to cancel or return, the store profit decreases, so it’s now in their interest to sell the correct product to meet the customer’s needs.

Andrew Harrison, Carphone Warehouse's UK Chief Executive said that staff retention in London had gone up since it introduced the scheme, helped by a rise in basic salaries from £11,000 to £17,000 – yet ironically, some staff are angry… Probably the ones that learned how to cheat and lie to achieve excellent sales figures - they’re saying things like “if there’s someone bad in your team you are handicapped”….

Full of team spirit, those boys, eh?

They should push off and work for someone else – if Carphone Warehouse is genuinely committed to its customers and giving them impartial advice, they’re best rid of commission driven numpties out to make a sale at any price!!!

It’s not complicated, but it’s certainly a new phenomenon in mobile phone sales.

Well done Carphone Warehouse for turning your back on the traditional image of the mobile phone salesman – this blogger is watching with interest to see whether you really mean it...

Come on, Suralan! Don't you think it's time you set a better example?

OK.  To be quite frank, this has gone far enough!!

Commenting on Debra’s ham-fisted, obvious endeavours to lie her way out of bother this week, Suralan observed, “Thinking on your feet is good, but sometimes you’ve got to tell the truth!”

To my mind that’s tantamount to saying “Lying is usually best…”

To use a phrase coined in the same episode by the eloquent James, that’s cods**t!

If senior business leaders like Suralan are giving out that message, is it any wonder that call centre workers tell the occasional fib (or even bare faced lie)  in order to meet their performance standards …

Call centre managers set targets and keep watch over agents’ performance against them.  If the target is high and therefore difficult to achieve, agents may only be able to achieve it by telling the odd porkie (after all Suralan says that’s OK….)

And they do – I’m sure you’ll have experienced it as a customer…  agents will do everything they can to avoid missing work targets or standards. 

These aren’t bad people, they’re just managed using a bad system….  a system that is perpetuated by the likes of Sir Alan Sugar.

Come on, Suralan!  Don’t you think it’s time you set a better example?

This blogger does…

The Apprentice - Get real, Suralan!!

Watching my regular fix of “The Apprentice” did make me chuckle this week!! It just reinforced some of the crazy management beliefs that are out there, yet ironically demonstrated why the thinking behind them is so nuts!

The wannabe executives needed to make appointments with retailers in order to sell their wares. Unfortunately, they didn’t make as many appointments as project manager, Lorraine expected: “Only one appointment – I’ve lost my job for that before now!” she criticised.

Clearly Lorraine had in mind a target number of appointments which her team should achieve. As in all telesales environments, the members of Lorraine’s team wanted to do well. They wanted to make appointments - they weren’t bad or lazy. And Lorraine went on to give us a fine demonstration of how managers demoralise their teams when they don’t achieve their targets…

Originally, I wasn’t keen on James, but he did explain his side of things quite eloquently when he compared the responses to his calls to opening a funeral parlour and people stopping dying! James was smart enough to understand that the call outcomes weren’t entirely down to him: “I had a bit of bad luck in that no-one I rang was interested,” he lamented.

Then, as if the guys that had been doing the calling didn’t feel bad enough after their verbal bashing from Lorraine, “Suralan” swaggered in with “My people rang six people and got in!”

Yeah right!!! That’s a fair comparison, isn’t it? Let’s just look at these two opening lines from a telesales operative:

A - “Good morning, I’m calling on behalf of Sir Alan Sugar and we’re filming The Apprentice at the moment. May I make an appointment to come and see you tomorrow?”

B – “Good morning, I’m calling from a company you’ve never heard of. We’ve got some great products that are really different from those of the hundreds of people like me that ring you each day. May I make an appointment to come and see you tomorrow?”

I wonder which appointment you’d arrange?

What business owners need to learn from this week’s bout of public humiliation if that if people are set an unrealistic target, they may only be able to achieve it by “cheating” (e.g. booking bogus appointments, lying to or pressurising people into taking appointments and so on). Alternatively, workers will become increasingly demotivated as they believe their managers’ accusations it’s their fault.

Perhaps if Suralan used his programme to demonstrate how businesses should really operate, then things might improve in British industry. But then I guess that wouldn’t make good television…

I agree - it's definitely time to get rid of all IVRs!!

Hurrah!!!

Finally some research that shows what we already knew - that customers are very unhappy with IVR systems (where you press 1 for this, 2 for that, 3 for something else, and there's never an option for what you want!)…. (http://www.callcentrehelper.com/time-to-get-rid-of-your-ivr-2854.htm)

When this technology first came along, call centre managers argued that it was just resistance to change - customers would eventually adapt, and accept IVR when they got used to the technology. Unfortunately, customers still find IVRs frustrating, confusing and downright annoying – and as this research shows, they’re not adding much value for the organisations that have implemented them either…

Maybe it’s time call centre managers wised up and focused on what really matters to the customers they exist to look after instead of trying to deflect their calls or prevent them from speaking to a member of staff in order to save a bit of money.

If they actually looked at the world in their customers eyes, designed their processes against the demands their customers place on them, and trusted and empowered their staff to take the time to do things right first time, then they’d find they could really minimise the costs of transactions with customers, whilst giving customers what they want.