Quality and Innovation

(Image Credit: Doug Buckley of http://hyperactive.to)

In a previous article, I described the notion of quality consciousness that I’m currently preparing an article about.

To achieve quality consciousness, we ask the very important question (cf. ISO 8402) “What are the totality of characteristics of YOU that bear upon YOUR ABILITY to satisfy the stated and implied needs of your stakeholders?”

The reason we WANT quality consciousness is because we know that the more in tune with the essence of quality that we are, within ourselves, the better we will attune to the needs of our customers and clients – to be able to help them achieve their goals for making things better, more streamlined, and more cost effective.

I summarized quality consciousness as the “3 A’s” – Awareness, Alignment, and Attention:

Quality consciousness implies awareness of yourself and the environment around you (including what constitutes quality and high performance for people, processes and products – most importantly, YOU). It also suggests that you must achieve alignment of your consciousness with the consciousness of the organization, which will aid in full activity and engagement of the senses. Your attention must be selectively focused onto what you can accomplish in the present moment according to that alignment (which implies that you are able to effectively filter the rapid and voluminous streams of information coming at you).

It struck me today how similar this whole notion is to Timothy Leary’s appeal to the counterculture of the late 1960’s, to achieve breakthrough innovation in individual and collective perception of the world to “Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out”! The message, according to the summary on Wikipedia, was intended to “urge people to embrace cultural changes… detaching themselves from the existing conventions and hierarchies in society.”

So if you want to improve a product, a process, or yourself, embrace the breakthrough innovation that is promised by quality consciousness!

• TURN ON = Become aware of quality standards and the true meaning of excellence, for you and for the domain you work in.
• TUNE IN = Align yourself personally and professionally with your goals, and those of your organization!
• DROP OUT! Focus your attention on the essentials… don’t be distracted by the down economy, by social upheaval, or the perils of ever-increasing competition.

Deliver value… to yourself and those around you! Make it a personal imperative and watch the avalanche of breakthrough innovations begin to cascade around you and your inspirational attitude.

This post is a collaboration between Eric Sessoms at MyCustomerCloud & Nicole Radziwill.

In previous posts [(1) (2) (3) (4)], we defined authenticity in customer service as not only genuine behavior, but a genuine desire to do what is best for the customer. Both aspects of the definition are required to make magic happen. In this post, we’re going to check out a couple examples of authentic behavior in a customer service environment where genuine behavior is definitely present, but the desire to do what is best for the customer is certainly nowhere to be found. This is the flip side of authenticity in customer service: I’m PO’ed and I’m gonna share it!

Steven Slater became the poster child for and hero of ticked off employees everywhere when he grabbed his beer and slid down the escape chute of his Jet Blue airplane. The Internet has not yet grown weary of re-examining Steven’s actions that day. His reaction was so over the top that it almost makes the frustration he must have felt that day palpable to any of us who can claim some degree of empathy. And the accolades he received from the employed-and-frustrated across America is a clear affirmation that the average worker can relate to his stress level that day. It’s a fantastic example of authencity. There is is no doubt that he said and did exactly what was in his heart at that moment. Too bad it’s become a horrible blot on Jet Blue’s customer service reputation.

A more recent example involves a fantastically authentic AT&T customer service representative rant on Twitter. Rachael Pracht, the CSR in question, railed against a TechCrunch review that highlighted AT&T’s track record of dropped calls on the iPhone and discussed the upcoming Verizon service. Siegler relates the exchange in AT&T Customer Service Rep Tells Us How She Really Feels: “This Is Bullsh*t”. Rachael’s rant echos the frustration of Steven Slater, but she takes it to the next level by choosing a medium that’s effectively a real-time public broadcast. After identifying herself as an AT&T CSR, Rachael states, “This entire article is garbage because it’s all based on an opinion of someone who assumes everything. Thanks anyway.” Kudos on the authenticity. The words make the reader feel as if a direct connection was established between thought and tweet. However, as you might imagine, AT&T wasn’t so thrilled. Siegler reports that “Pracht’s account has been suspended by Twitter now. We do know that AT&T is looking into the situation.” Plus Siegler is now even more stoked about his move to Verizon.

They’re looking into the situation. Yeah, that doesn’t sound too good for Rachael.

Although it feels good to sound off under stress, we always need to remember that as paid employees we do represent more than ourselves. This little detail is important to keep in mind when the desire to do what is best for the customer begins to wane. And if a customer is being difficult, it’s our responsibility to find more productive outlets for our frustration.

Racquetball, anyone?

This post is a collaboration between Eric Sessoms at MyCustomerCloud & Nicole Radziwill.

In previous posts [(1) (2) (3)], we focused on authenticity in customer service. Being authentic in customer service means that the customer service rep demonstrates a genuine desire to do what is right for the customer. But what if what is right for the customer is not what the customer says he or she wants – or is asking for? The customer isn’t always right, and being authentic sometimes means letting them know.

Take, for example, a blog post we really enjoyed written by a guy named Rob – entitled “How to Detect a Toxic Customer”. Sometimes, your potential customers are vast reservoirs of viscous, acerbic sludge that will pollute the health of your company at best, or at worst, vaporize you upon contact. Citing a specific story in which he interacted with a toxic customer, Rob writes:

Few things are worse than supporting a demanding, entitled customer who feels that their purchase price buys them control over your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

In the end, it turns out that all the demands of Rob’s customer were completely unnecessary and overly complicated. (The Toxic Customer was eventually booted from his liaison role by another representative from the same company – who turned out to be much more civil and sane, and in fact – easy to work with.) At each point in the conversation with the Toxic Customer, Rob respectfully focused on his expressed desires (even though those desires seemed to be excessive). On the surface, Rob’s behavior could be perceived as authenticity. However, the real authenticity in this situation was demonstrated when Rob really started to question the expressed desires of the customer with boldness and tact.

The old adage “the customer is always right” isn’t always right – especially if we rely on the customer to be able to accurately express his needs. Great customer service is a partnership. Authenticity can mean pulling the plug on the relationship if that partnership can’t be effectively achieved.

(1) http://qualityandinnovation.com/2010/10/08/getting-to-great-authenticity-in-customer-service/
(2) http://qualityandinnovation.com/2010/11/05/authentic-customer-service-leadership-through-authenticity-part-i/
(3) http://qualityandinnovation.com/2010/11/12/authentic-customer-service-leadership-through-authenticity-part-ii/

This is Part I of a two-part collaboration between Eric Sessoms at MyCustomerCloud & Nicole Radziwill.

Let’s say you’re the Leader of a Customer Service Intensive Environment or a Customer Service Rep working in one those environments. How can you be authentic – and promote authenticity – in your customer service interactions? That’s the motivation for our post: we’ve brainstormed some actionable ideas for how these Leaders and Customer Service Reps can achieve authenticity by using the 10 Commitments devised by leadership researchers Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner.

First and foremost, everyone in the organization must converge upon shared or core values – those principles or beliefs that everyone feels are important and worthy of merit. Usually, these values are determined by the leaders of a company, but in some progressive organizations and start-ups, core values emerge more organically as everyone collectively defines the organization.

There are lots of examples of core values, if you need to get some ideas:

• http://www.mysticmadness.com/20-examples-core-values.html
• https://mystrategicplan.com/resources/core-values/
• http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/smartwork/201008/core-values-wall-posters-or-culture-builders

Once you know what your core values are, and know that everyone is solidly committed to those values, it’s time to start exploring authenticity in customer service. This initial article explores the first 5 of Kouzes & Posner’s Commitments; Part 2 will discuss the remaining 5 Commitments.

Commitment #1: Leaders search out challenging opportunities to change, grow, and improve.

The search for challenging opportunities to change, grow, and improve coupled with an authentic desire to do what is best for the customer creates an environment ripe for customer-driven development. In a customer-driven development environment, the concerns and ideas of customers are carefully examined and any insight gained is folded back into company policies. As a result, the customers actively participate in defining the organization they want to serve them. Customer-driven development can occur at all levels of a company.

Leaders & Senior Management: Generate an atmosphere of proactive customer contact. And we don’t mean contacting customers with the primary goal being to sell them more stuff. Proactive customer contact done in an authentic way means finding out what (if anything) the customer needs or will need. Sometimes your product meets those needs. Sometimes it doesn’t. If it does, help your customer leverage your product to meet their needs. If it doesn’t, do a quick gap analysis and fold that amazingly valuable information back into your product development plans.

In the trenches: Ask customers directly how your company or products can be more responsive and useful to them. Then listen to what they have to say! Highlight how your product fits their needs now. Resist the urge to shoehorn their needs into the bounds of your product’s current capabilities. If higher management has done their job, there should be mechanisms in place for you to feed back what you learn into ongoing product development plans.

Commitment #2: Leaders experiment, take risks, and learn from the accompanying mistakes.

Leadership is fearless and daring – and simultaneously a practical endeavor that’s infused with a solid vision of where to go. That vision, however, can and should change in response to prototyping and tinkering with new ideas.

Leaders & Senior Management: If your CSRs have new and innovative ideas for how to make customers happier – set aside a period of time to pilot new approaches and techniques, even in they seem crazy. You never know what customers might really respond to, and appreciate. For example, try one of Kate’s Seven Kid Secrets from Tom Kelley’s book The Ten Faces of Innovation. According to Kate, the way to make anyone comfortable sharing their ideas is to use techniques that make kids comfortable sharing ideas. How do you do this? Ask them about their shoes (or something personally important to them). Offer information about yourself. Ask them to invite their best friend along to chat. Remind them you’re working on a “top secret” project. Ask them to describe their house or surroundings. Ask what they would buy with ten dollars (or half an hour of your company’s time). Make them laugh.

In the trenches: CSRs can be leaders too! Use your customer service script for ideas, but don’t be afraid to diverge from the plan to make your customers feel like they’re valued friends. One of the best customer service experiences I’ve ever had was on a two hour call waiting for engineers to fix my DSL service. Turns out the CSR was a retired homicide detective who told me all about how customer service is – and isn’t – like solving murders. It was the best two hours I ever spent waiting for anything. He probably violated his script quite a bit by telling me about murders, but I really felt like he was being compassionate about my ungodly two hour wait. It gave me wonderful fuzzy feelings about my telephone company… can you imagine?

Commitment #3: Leaders envision an uplifting and ennobling future.

Leaders & Senior Management: Positive attitudes are not only important, but infectious. If leaders don’t believe that their organization’s efforts can help make the individual worlds of their customers better places to be – then there’s no sense providing the support! If you really don’t think that the service you provide is useful, maybe it’s time to build a better company. The future is bright! If it’s not, change course – your bleak prospects will poison your customers’ experiences with you.

In the trenches: You have an image in your mind of a world where you can – and routinely do – make your customers happy. You share in the joy of solving their problems, and feel a sense of camaraderie and community as you do your job. This Commitment establishes the kind of attitude you should aim to bring to your store or call center.

Commitment #4: Leaders enlist others in a common vision by appealing to their values, interests, hopes, and dreams.

Leaders & Senior Management: In Allen Schoer’s article, Uncovering alignment with authentic stories, storytelling is promoted as an effective mechanism for creating alignment (or common vision within an organization). In an organization for which customer service is an important component, leaders can create a cohesive culture of authenticity through compelling narratives that inspire Customer Service Reps on the front lines. In order for storytelling to be most effective in creating a common vision, Schoer reminds leaders to encourage employees at all levels to participate in customer service and tell their own customer service stories.

In the trenches: For the customer service reps that interact daily with customers, being leader who enlists others in a common authentic vision can manifest in a couple important ways. First, a customer service rep can appeal to the desires of the customer directly through authentic behavior. By listening to the needs of customers and folding their values, interests, hopes, and dreams, a rep works with the customer to create a truly customer-oriented solution. Second, a customer service rep can build a common vision with other reps by example. By consistently demonstrating authenticity in customer service, a CSR provides a model for others to follow!

Commitment #5: Leaders foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals and building trust.

Leaders & Senior Management: In any organization, but particularly within an organization that values authenticity in customer service, leaders need to create an atmosphere of cooperation and trust. This means leaders should actively provide guidance to CSRs, empowering them to shape customer service goals. Sometimes, the best way to refine an approach is to temper it through constructive, third party feedback – and that’s the role a leader can play.  In the end, the overall quality of customer service will benefit from a closed-loop system where guidance comes from the corporate level but is refined through experience.

In the trenches: From a previous blog post, Getting to Great: Authenticity in Customer Service, trust between a customer and the company that a CSR represents results from combining authentic behavior with an authentic desire to do what’s best for the customer. Moving beyond a desire to do what’s best for the customer and into doing what is best for the customer requires a collaborative effort between CSR and customer – combining input from the customer and a sense of empathic understanding from the CSR!

Continue to Part II, where we’ll cover the next 5 Commitments from Kouzes and Posner.

From the July 6, 2009 issue of Business Week:

“A new world order is dawning – one in which the West is no longer dominant, capitalism (at least the American version) is out of favor, and protectionism is on the rise… the era of laissez-faire economics is over, and statism, once discredited, is making a comeback – even in the U.S…. global trade is set to fall this year, for the first time in more than two decades.”

We have been conditioned to think that the notion of space – geographic space – does not matter in the new economy. We have the Internet, and ideas can zing from one place to another with ease (and nearly instantaneously, for that matter). Add to this videoconferencing with Skype, and keeping up with your contacts on Twitter and Facebook in near-real time, and it’s no wonder that people have also become accustomed to assuming that materials can move from one place to another with similar relative ease.

Space does matter. We know this when we are designing facilities and plant layouts, for example, because one of our common considerations is to minimize traffic between areas and departments. More often than not, we do this to minimize the time spent moving people or equipment around a plant, so that time is not wasted. But the same concept could apply to our supply chains. Why aren’t we minimizing the time that components or goods spend traveling through the supply chain, when it could lead to reductions in energy costs? Furthermore, why aren’t we shortening our supply chains to strengthen local and regional businesses, and train the next generation of skilled workers (who can actually do something useful for the regional economy)?

The logic has been something like this: energy is cheap, therefore transportation is cheap, and transportation is easily available and accessible through third-party providers like FedEx and UPS. But I can’t shake the feeling that “supply chain status quo” is not good for quality in the long-term – because it encourages us to source the products and components that are most affordable, rather than the ones that might help us cultivate a quality consciousness in our local areas.

In his weekly radio address, President Obama announced today a renewed intent to cut wasteful spending, and the upcoming announcement of even more decisive cuts. He also noted the appointment of Jeffrey Zients, a former executive and Director of Sirius XM, as the Obama Administration’s Chief Performance Officer. His official title will be deputy director for management of the Office of Management and Budget. Zients replaces Nancy Killefer, who rescinded her nomination in March.

There have been criticisms of Obama’s handling of the budget so far. For example, critics bristle at the thought that Obama approved the fiscal year 2009 budget with earmarks (this is covered in an article by George Stephanopoulos on March 1, “Obama Will Sign Omnibus Despite Earmark Pledge”). But the fiscal year 2009 budget – executed in March 2009 – is retroactive. It is intended to cover operations of the government and all government-funded agencies (including research facilities, and university-driven research and development) from October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009. Failure to pass that budget would have meant a swift and immediate crisis, catalyzing a domino effect of layoffs in the highly specialized industries. This could have a nontrivial and long-reaching impact on national competitiveness by depressing not only technological innovation, but also by cutting off practical opportunities for university students and researchers to contribute to innovation as they receive mentorship and training.

More about Zients from the White House Blog:

Zients has twenty years of business experience as a CEO, management consultant and entrepreneur with a deep understanding of business strategy, process reengineering and financial management. He served as CEO and Chairman of the Advisory Board Company and Chairman of the Corporate Executive Board. These firms are leading providers of performance benchmarks and best practices across a wide range of industries.  Currently, he is the Founder and Managing Partner of Portfolio Logic, an investment firm focused primarily on business and healthcare service companies.

AIG is falling. Bailouts are flying. All of the rules of business have changed, and the seismic shift is both electrifying and frightening. But there are opportunities to be embraced, and many of them are summed up in this article entitled “Why Small Companies Will Win in This Economy“. Here is my favorite part, a veritable mantra for the 2010′s:

Small is the new big. Sustainable is the new growth. Trust is the new competitive advantage.

Thanks to Betsey Merkel (Twitter: @betseymerkel) who initially Tweeted this. And thanks to Valdis Krebs (Twitter: @valdiskrebs) without whom I wouldn’t have seen Betsey’s insightful retweets and started following her too.