Customer (dis)service: when the owner is chasing the dog!

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We moved last year, a process that can best be described as wading through treacle. I lost track of the amount of time I spent listening to scratchy blasts of Vivaldi attempting to correct basic errors from service providers. Each time I was reassured my call was important, that they were experiencing unusually high demand, and that the call would be recorded for training and monitoring purposes.

It seems my experience of dealing with customer facing organisations is not uncommon. Miranda Green in an excellent FT Weekend piece entitled “Your call is important to us… please hold” quotes from a New Britain Project Report which notes the average Briton spends between 28-41 minutes a week battling inefficient customer service systems.

She says, “The 1.5bn hours that Britons spend each year dealing with personal admin leave many close to cracking up“.

The digital revolution and remote working was supposed to improve productivity. Has it or are customers now entangled in a web of endless options with faceless systems? Let’s examine.

I’m going to share a couple of unrelated stories with one common theme – each of the organisations invested heavily in client facing technology to improve service.

The Conveyancing Story: “I will send an email to see if we’ve received an email”

As part of the move I rearranged financing on a previous home. Our finance broker set everything in place and an offer was forthcoming from a lender (BMS) I’d previously used. This time they instructed a different conveyancing company (let’s call them Optimus Prime-OP).

All went well at first. An online tracking system was set up in our name; it allowed us to upload relevant documents and see how our financing was progressing.

The tracker system was updated with details of all communication. Great, we thought! There was no chain involved so they were predicting a quick completion. The mortgage offer was sent. And then….

I uploaded proof of ID and address on March 4th. They spotted an error (not of my making). Somehow, due to an input error during the application process I’d become 10 years younger. OP required authority from BMS to accept my passport Date of Birth as being correct.

On March 7th the lender emailed OP to give them that authority.

On 10th I rang OP for an update having checked the tracking system which was unchanged. I’m told “we haven’t heard from BMS” which surprised me. I asked the broker to double check. He did and confirmed the email address BMS sent it to was indeed an OP email address.

When I relayed that message to my case handler at OP the following day I am told, “That’s an admin email address which I don’t have access to.” I was further told “I will have to email them the admin team to gain access to it.”

By now it’s March 24th and my patience has worn thin so I escalate the request to a very helpful team member:

Good morning Mr Corney, thank you for your phone call. I can confirm that the email from BMS regarding your date of birth is not on the file, I can confirm that I have emailed the admin team in order to re-check the inbox…

Yet another round of Broker / Lender / Conveyancer discusssions ensue and I am promised a call by a Senior Legal Officer to discuss. No date or time is given.

As I was unavailable when they called (on March 25th) I get this message:

I have recently attempted to contact you to discuss the expression of dissatisfaction that has been raised on your file, however it appears you were unavailable. As an update on your file the issues surrounding your ID check have been resolved and your file is now at the final stages where we will perform a final review of the file to ensure that we have everything required to supply you with a completion date and you should be hearing from us within the next couple of days to discuss the possibility of completion for your file.

Completion duly took place before the Stamp Duty increase came into play on April 1st.

Rather than revisit my issues, here’s what a dissatisfied customer just posted on TrustPilot:

AVOID! AVOID! AVOID! A simple remortgage has taken 5 months! We ended up having to pay variable rates for 3 months. There is no sense of urgency unless you raise a complaint. There’s no one to speak to or email about progress. Everything is done via a very inefficient portal. I can’t believe — recommended them!

The Soccer Story: “Paying twice to sit in the same seat!”

I purchased three digital tickets for a Premier League fixture from a top ten club. One for me and two for a friend and his adult son. My friend downloaded his and his son’s and I mine. I’ll let “Kevin” take up the story:

The evening before the match, we discovered my son was unable to attend because of a last-minute appointment…

During the afternoon, I checked the wallet on my phone, only to discover that the ticket in my son‘s name had been designated as expired. I thought this may be my fault so I called the supporters’ line again and was advised that this was not so. I was told that the ticket was still valid and I should go to the turnstile on the evening, or the ticket office, if there was a problem. The three of us arrived at the ground and approached the turnstile. My ticket worked but the second did not. The steward very helpfully allowed me out, through a door to go along with my friends to the ticket office. We courteously explained what had happened and the attendant called for an assistant manager.

He asked if we could talk to my son to confirm that he would not be using the ticket. We managed to achieve this – only for —to then tell us that resale was not possible and we would have to purchase a ticket again. Reluctantly, I did so, paying a further £40 for the ticket, only for my friend’s wife to enter the ground with us and sit in the very same empty seat that we’d already purchased!

And here’s an extract from the reply:

…Once a ticket has been purchased, we are unable to make changes to it. All tickets are non-transferable and non-refundable and this is stated in our terms and conditions. 

When anyone arrives at the ticket office on a matchday, of course we are immediately trying to find a resolution to a problem and to do our best to assist where possible.  We need to have confirmation from the ticket owner before we process anything via their account – Once I had spoken to your son, I realised that the ticket exchange had recently closed and therefore my suggestion of reselling the ticket was no longer possible. The only alternative was then to sell Ana a ticket for the match.

I understand your frustration, however I hope you understand that we are not trying to be difficult, but must be consistent with our policies… 

Where is the common sense in all of this? Having asked to speak to the ‘owner’, the offer to transfer the ticket was subsequently withdrawn because of an arbitrary computer deadline.

Empowerment be dammed

A couple of years ago I wrote a piece: “Gloves and Mail Sacks: What happens when you don’t empower your team”

Contrasting other experiences to the Japanese practice/culture of Omotenashi; the pursuit of excellence in customer service by anticipating and exceeding customer needs, I bemoaned the erosion of a service culture across businesses due to a lack of empowerment at the front line.

Two years on I fear with the ubiquity of CRM technology we are at the point where the owner is now chasing the techonogical dog. No one seems to have authority or inclination to question processes that are manifestly dumb.

If business owners don’t empower front line management to make common sense decisions and override computer systems then how can they aspire to excellent customer service?

And finally

Lest we shrug our shoulders, recognise our impotence and accept this is the cost of progress, the New Britain Project report draws a correlation between quiet desparation and disaffection.

Voters are increasingly fed up with a system that wastes their time. The danger is that this frustration is no longer just background noise, it’s now shaping political behaviour. This isn’t just annoying, it’s political. If ministers don’t fix the systems people deal with every day, they risk losing voters to parties that want to tear the whole system down.”

Will “Kevin” go to that club’s matches again? I’m not so sure!

Will I go anywhere near OP again? I am sure – I won’t!

The future cannot be known, it can only be imagined.

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Little did I know when I wrote this title how accurate it would prove.

Having “put pen to paper” on my final client report and recommendation mid January, I was hit by the devastating event of my mother passing.

The following weeks have proved traumatic to say the least and taken me time to recover!

Drop everything, we need you!

It’s mid October and I get a message from a former client requesting my help to lead the Lessons Learned component of the inaugural UK Caribbean Infrastructure Fund (UKCIF) conference:

… I would like to ask if you might still have availability and interest. The event is Nov 20 to 24!

UK Caribbean Infrastructure Fund (UKCIF), which provided funding for the Conference, is a £350 million grant-funded programme from the UK Government to build climate-resilient, inclusive infrastructure and boost economic growth in the Caribbean.

Having stepped back from consulting to focus on an expanding business interest I wasn’t initially enthused. The timetable was absurdly tight. I had less than a month to develop an agenda to cover the first couple of days for a disparate group of stakeholders. And, I would have to get the 60+ representatives from 13 countries to prepare the story of their project in advance then to create an environment that promulgated the sharing and adoption of lessons from major infrastructure projects in the Caribbean. Here’s the initial brief:

“The Lessons Learned Workshops are designed to provide a platform for participants from diverse sectors and countries to share and extract valuable insights from the implementation of their projects. The primary objective is to facilitate effective knowledge exchange at sector, country, project, and cross-cutting thematic levels.
Additionally, the workshops aim to equip participants with the skills to independently conduct lessons learned sessions within their respective teams upon returning to the execution of the project.”

Additionally, I would have to do all of this under the watchful eye of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), the sponsors.

BUT!

I love the Caribbean, I’d never been to St Vincent (host country), I liked and trusted the person I’d be working most closely with, and it felt like the ultimate challenge; an opportunity to leave a legacy footprint drawing on 50 years of international assignments.

So, I said yes and sent off a provisional outline agenda / proposal in response to their terms of reference.

Agreeing the agenda

This was never going to be easy; getting everyone on the same page in 3 weeks while creating materials for the event, developing pre event ‘homework’ tasks and producing a short “welcome to the event” video for the delegates.

Ahead of the video production we gathered virtually for a stakeholder briefing. I began by asking each to identify what a successful event might look like. I find it important (assuming everyone is willing to work colllaboratively) to get an understanding of the motivations of those who have most to gain/lose from an intervention. And if there are widely differing opinions then that too is informative.

Flights booked, hotel reserved and taxi sorted for journey to LHR I set about the task of creating an agenda and the pre event ‘homework’. Here’s what I asked the delegates to do:

Getting started

My challenge: to strike an effective balance between experiential learning and data collection. I wanted delegates to take away a set of tools “Knowledge Products” that they might use to improve the way they undertake major infrastructure projects while concurrently identifying a set of tangible lessons that could be applied from day one.

Our Day One objective:

Today is about surfacing learnings already identified, arriving at a shared understanding of the term lessons learned, the importance of conducting Lessons Learned processes and developing a general understanding of what critical knowledge looks like for each project.

Day One takeaways

Having encouraged the delegates to reflect on what struck them during the day this stood out:

And these keywords emerged:

Dress: Elegantly Casual

At events such as these it’s often the post activitiy discussions that lay the foundations for future collaboration. St Vincent proved to be an excellent host with the Prime Minister / UK High Commissioner’s reception a particular highlight.

On previous visits to the Caribbean I’ve always admired how people dress for formal gatherings and this was no exception aided no doubt by the suggested dress code on the invitation.

And an impromptu evening at a local fish bar spawned new friendships; what’s not to like about these offerings?

Keeping the momentum going

After a short recap, I set out our aims for Day Two:

As Day One surfaced several lessons while providing a good theoretical underpinning, so Day Two will focus on practical application, capacity
building and the use of different tools for capturing and incorporating lessons, based on Active UKCIF projects.

We used a variety of techniques to identify and make use of the lessons that emerged during the day.

The Peer Assist session was enthusiastically adopted and a raft of excellent suggestions surfaced.

Here’s what the various projects said about the discussions:

“The support was overwhelming, one point, verify the condition of the equipment being provided by the contractor before engaging with them”

“Issues were around implementation. The conversation was amazing; it came up with a number of things we needed to focus on including the establishment of a technical committee the project team might reach out to for advice”

“We had a very productive discussion. Three areas; Develop a negotiation strategy and team ahead of the award; negotiate on big tickets items and consider scope reduction to deliver cost savings; look at methods that are more familiar to contractors to ensure bids are lower.”

“Issue was around set up and procurement of resources. One suggestion, to look at what can be done by the client to mitigate the lack of resources”

And finally

The event underpinned the power of story. Here’s a powerful example from the Day One project presentations:

Port Project: Anticipating the unexpected!

It was anticipated that local aggregates would be used for the project, but local materials did not meet the requirements when tested. So, the decision was taken to import aggregates, but the source country was known to have these African Giant snails. The decision-making around this issue took many months and resulted in a delay, but it was necessary to have the Biosecurity plans to prevent, eradicate or contain any invasive species.

I could not have chosen a better location or group for a swansong event. There is a warmth and generosity of spirit among the people of the Caribbean (the climate and environment help) and humour plays an important role in establishing the right environment for people to share.

We surfaced a number of themes to work on when undertaking major infrastructure projects.

Thank you St Vincent and CDB.

The importance (or not) of affirmation

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Culture, etiquette, manners, rituals call it what you want. Functioning society thrives when people know and abide by a set of norms in the way they behave and interact with others.

I’ve previously suggested that the English thrive on ambiguity, a character trait that can prove hugely challenging to expatriates trying to comprehend what has (or has not) been agreed.

In an excellent comment, as part of my “A Collaborative Valedictory” reflection page, Maria Ana Botelho Neves who is Portuguese reminded me that, when she was CEO of the UK Charity I was a Trustee of, I gave her a book. The Culture Map became the backstop for many conversations with the English ex Army Chairman.

The author, Erin Meyer, poses business leaders these challenging questions:

Why does your Swedish colleague have so many problems leading his Chinese team? How do you foster a good relationship with your Brazilian suppliers while sitting at your desk in Europe?

How do you navigate the tricky task of performance reviews when your American employees precede negative feedback with three nice comments, while the French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans skip the positives and get straight to the point?

What is the best method for getting your team based on four continents to work together effectively?

Face to Face collaboration can be tricky too: how do you intepret where people sit if you are in Asia; at what point in a meeting in the Middle East do you start talking business; if you are invited to the house of a client or colleague, what’s the appropriate gift to take; or is the taking of a gift seen as insulting? All have the propensity to cause unintended offence!

I’ve seen near misses in Italy where English drivers enter the Autostrada anticipate the car on the inside line will move over to accommodate them. They do not! It’s about custom.

As we move into a hybrid working environment and communicate mostly via social media tools (and email), the above challenges are amplified and the impact on business and relationships potentially damaging.

Bridging the cultural chasm in global wealth management

Many years ago, when I was Managing Partner of Sparknow, we undertook an assignment for a client who had recently rolled out a global administration system. Their challenge: to get people collaborating across timezones, cultures and language.

Virtual communications were at the core of the problem. There was a lack of understanding of the style and customs of others. Working with their learning & transformation team we asked each team member to keep a journal. Here’s an extract from our invitation to participate:

Following a set of interviews we created a booklet “Tick” (what makes us tick) to highlight their different cultures and customs and how to best work with each other.

Here’s a page from the section: “How not to write a confusing email”.

The success of this initiative was in embracing and affirming the positive contributions and unique aspects of different cultures. The global team had input into the booklet (we deliberately avoided the word ‘Guide’) and a sense of ownership. It was written in their words with their examples.

And finally

In the online world we inhabit today, where virtual presenteeism is becoming the norm, it is easy to feel isolated and misinterpret what is or is not being said.

Silence is a powerful tool. I’ve seen it used effectively by HMRC’s enforcement teams, I’ve used it when interviewing people about a sensitive subject or recollection such as an Oral History. It’s particularly effective when giving an address to pause and let an important point ‘land’,

However, a non response can be equally damaging to a working relationship. There is nothing more demotivating than sending a message to a colleague who you know has received it and get no response.

The thumbs up emoji is a wonderful tool to at least acknowledge and affirm a request.

What Does 👍 Mean. The thumbs up sign emoji 👍, also known as the “yes” emoji, is used to express general contentment. It can also be used to show approval and support for someone’s actions or ideas. It can also mean “great job” or “keep it up,” depending on the context.

emojipedia.org

Gloves and Mail Sacks: What happens when you don’t empower your team

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I’ve previously written about the Japanese practice/culture of Omotenashi; the pursuit of excellence in customer service by anticipating and exceeding customer needs. Where such a culture is not the norm and you aspire to high standards it is important customer facing team members are confident they have the authority to make clients or guests feel special and keen to return.

Here’s what can happen when they don’t feel they have the autonomy to make on the spot decisions.

The golf glove story

I’ve been in Sesimbra, Portugal for an annual trip with a few of my golfing buddies. Bear with me, this is not about the golf or the astonishing Sesimbra Carnaval which took place concurrent with our arrival and continued with gusto all night outside our hotel window!

Despite having some of the best courses around, golf in Portugal has not attained the same cult following as in other European countries. And it’s very difficult if you play left handed to acquire accessories such as golf gloves.

I’d managed to acquire one near to our home in Lisboa, so, fired up and ready to go I was looking forward to the next day’s game at Qunita Do Peru with renewed optimism.

Arriving in good time for our tee slot at “…one of the most prestigious golf courses” whose mission includes the phrase “Provide premium and unique experiences…”, clubs and glove were loaded onto our buggy while we went for a pre round bica. Almost immediately a very affable South African lady (Caddy Master) came to tell us she’d moved our bags and shoes to another cart. Coffee drunk, we went out to collect our gear only to discover my recently acquired (and unused) golf glove was nowhere to be seen.

Caddy Master was confused; she remembered transferring it to the new buggy and could not explain its dissapearance. Not wishing to create a fuss I asked her to make a few enquiries to see if it had been handed in at reception / pro shop. It had not!

The professional had a right hand glove in my size. Great I thought, problem solved. Except it wasn’t. I was then asked to pay. When I queried why, since they had moved my original glove, I was told it was on the replacement buggy and it was not their fault it had gone missing.

The giveaway phrase: “we would have to pay for the replacement”!

The mail bag story

Every 6 weeks or so, Bees Homes writes a letter to selected homeowners in which we provide an insight on the housing market as well as tips on how they might effectively present their property in the event they decide to sell.

Though time consuming, it has proved to be a valuable way of demonstrating expertise and generating future clientelle.

We usually manage to fill a couple of sacks with envelopes and the local post office (before it was closed) gave us sacks to make it easier and avoid clogging up post boxes.

A few weeks back I took two sackfulls into Ringmer Post Office housed (as most now are) in a convenience store. Greeted by a closed sign, the welcome was less than effusive. However a kind soul ‘John’ said if all we wanted was to deposit the sacks that was ok.

I thanked him and asked for replacement sacks. He was about to hand some over when a surly woman, perched behind the closed sign, said “Be careful John, we don’t have many sacks left”.

Fortunately, John ignored her and handed me a couple of replacements.

And the moral is?

In the first example at Quinta Do Peru, while everyone was very pleasant their response in a crisis was kilometres away from what they espoused to be. As a result none of us felt like going into the clubhouse for a meal and drink at the end of our round.

In the second, it was the crass stupidity of the remark and the way it was delivered that struck me. Had John not have offered replacements I would have asked him to put our sackfull into theirs and asked for mine back!

Reflecting on these and many other similar situations over the past few months I am left wondering where the disconnect occurs between the coporate narrative and those charged with delivering the service.

I think it comes down to empowerment and ownership: we hire expensive brand consultants to develop vision and mission statements but, absent a service culture, the lofty ideals they come up with fail to land with the people charged with implementing them. They don’t own the story!

How would your team behave in these situations. Are they empowered to make on the spot decisions and feel confident to do so knowing you have their back?

And finally

It would be remiss not to give a shout out to Alexandra Goncalves of Orizonte Golf the organiser of our Sesimbra sojourn. She ensured we were well briefed about the traffic restrictions around our hotel caused by Carnaval that might hinder our arrival and arranged for temporary storage of our golf clubs at Aroeira.

March of The Clowns: View from Sana Sesimbra Carnaval Feburary 23

Post script (March 23)

Alexandra shared my post with Quinta do Peru’s Director of Golf, Hugo Amaral. He responded to me as follows:

Dear Paul,

I was just told today by Alexandra about what happened on your visit to Quinta do Peru and I was shocked to know all the information.

I remember clearly such date as on the same day hosting a tournament for Edge college, and it was a very busy day. May that’s explains why I haven’t been informed on spot about what happened as I was probably on the course with the Tournament organizers.

I feel ashamed by all this situation and do hope that that incident didn’t ruined your experience at Quinta do Peru.

The fact that the Pro Shop isn’t owned by us, and of course we would have to reimburse the shop owner for the glove, shouldn’t be used as an excuse to incur you on an extra expense, and it should be our responsibility to fully replace your lost good.

I do hope that next time you are in the region you pay us a new visit as I would be more than happy welcome you and compensate you of this extra (forced) cost.

Please accept my apologies and my kindest regards,

Hugo

Hugo’s response was appreciated and reminded me of an experience in Cuba after which I wrote a piece on “A complaint is a gift“.

Barriers to communication: “Auditory Clutter”

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A few days ago while having breakfast, my wife and I were listening to The Today programme. Just after 7am Michelle Hussein interviewed a Professor of Pediatrics about the increasing incidence of Strep A in children and what could be done to prevent an expansion. Ten minutes later in the business round up, prompted no doubt by the recent collapse of FTX, there was an interview with the Editor of a financial journal about proposed crypto market regulation.

Both interviewees were knowledgeable yet while Ana and I could not recall much from the second we could recall most of the first. Why?

It wasn’t jargon, or technical terminology, that obstructed our hearing it was what Ana described as “Auditory Clutter”. As Managing Director of Bees Homes, she draws on an Interior Designer background in selling unique homes. Part of her expertise is to decluttter a property and stage it so prospective buyers can imagine themselves living there.

I would argue the same applies in communication. If we declutter our spoken words it makes it easier for the listener to grasp the message we are trying to convey and not get lost in redundant words. Interestingly, in the context of speech, “Cluttering” is described on Wikipedia as:

… a speech and communication disorder characterized by a rapid rate of speech, erratic rhythm, and poor syntax or grammar making speech difficult to understand.”

So, back to The Today interviews, what were the differences? In the first, responses were delivered at a considered pace, with good diction, a relaxed (almost Pilot like) manner, and a total absence of filler words. In the second, we lost count of the number of Ums and Ers; by the end we were listening to those and not the essence of the message.

Here’s a challenge. Next time you are talking to a group or a friend get them to count how many of these filler words or phrases they hear you say:

  • So
  • You know
  • I mean or You know what I mean
  • Like, as in, I was like
  • Er, Erm or Um, OK, right
  • Yeah

If you don’t think it matters, take a look at this sentence I heard someone utter recently, “English is like, totally fun to learn, you know”. If you remove the filler or redundant words “English is fun to learn” is more succinct and comprehensible.

An English phenomenan?

Lest you think this is purely an English phenomenan think again. In my adopted country Portugal, filler words play an important part in day to day conversations as I found when taking a language course a few months back.

I also recall when, as a budding young relationship manager at Saudi International Bank, I was sitting in front of the treasurer of the national airline in his Jeddah office telling him we will no longer offer encashment services in London for his staff and cabin crew. Though fluent in English he repeatedly used the word “Ya’ni“ between sentences. I was unsure at first if it was an insult – I discovered it wasn’t.

And finally

Is the use of filler (meaningless) words) necessarily a bad thing? I’ve spoken to people who say they form an essential part of conversations giving people thinking time before responding. I am indebted to Portuguese with Eli for this explanation:

They don’t have a meaning in and of themselves. But they do perform an important role in the conversation.

Sometimes they help you include the listener in what you’re talking about.

Other times they help you introduce a new topic or take a new turn in the conversation.

But mostly, they help you make time to think — and that’s their most important role.

My conclusion: try to avoid filler words if presenting or responding to formal questions BUT if having an informal conversation, go with what feels right!

Today’s photo:a rooftop conversation in Lisboa around SocialNow that was devoid of auditory clutter between a Canadian, Dutchman, Englishman and a Portuguese.