Customer Service Reader

Firing up the front line

Notes from Firing up the front line
Jon R. Katzenbach and Jason A. Santamaria, in Harvard Business Review

For many organizations, achieving competitive advantage means eliciting superior performance from employees on the front line. McKinsey & Company and the Conference Board studied five distinct managerial paths that result in committed, high-performing frontline workers. The approach discussed in this article, the “Mission, Values, and Pride (MVP) Path” generates organizational energy through mutual trust, collective pride, and self-discipline. Frontline employees commit themselves to MVP organizations because they share its values, and are proud of its aspirations, accomplishments, and legacy .

Among those studied, these organizations were classified as following the MVP path: Marriott, 3M, The New York City Ballet, and the US Marines.

MVP organizations have five practices in common: they over-invest in cultivating core values, prepare every person to lead, know when to create teams and when to create single-leader work groups, attend to all employees, and encourage self-discipline as a way of building pride.

Practice One: Over-invest in inculcating core values

• Define your core values. What do you stand for? Why do you exist?
• Stress the importance of your values, e.g. integrity, honor, courage, and commitment.
• Define critical objectives, e.g. speed, responsiveness, flexibility.
• Build a sense of belonging to a noble cause.
• Build collective pride and mutual trust.
• Encourage mutual accountability.
• Assign training and mentoring to the most experienced and talented role models.
• Increase the length of training programs from a matter of hours to days or even weeks.
• Role play realistic scenarios that require recruits to apply the company's values when making tough decisions.

Practice Two: Prepare every person to lead

• An organization's belief that everyone can and must be a leader creates collective pride and builds mutual trust. Each person knows she can rely on her colleagues to take charge, just as she can be relied upon. Energy and commitment naturally follow, and have a powerful impact on morale.
• The first goal is not to teach recruits how to take charge, but to demonstrate the qualities that characterize effective leaders in action: morality, courage, initiative, and respect for others.
• MVP organizations follow this up with ten weeks or more of training in the practical and theoretical components of running an organization, from logistics to motivation.

Practice Three: Distinguish between teams and single-leader work groups

• Managers tend to label every working group in an organization a "team", but employees quickly lose motivation and commitment when they're assigned to a team that turns out to be a single-leader work group.
• Single-leader work groups are fast and efficient, and are needed when individual tasks are more important than collective work, and when the leader really does know best.
• Most work in business is done by single-leader work groups, which rely entirely on their leaders for purpose, goals, motivation, and assignments; each member is accountable solely to the leader.
• Real teams are rare. They draw their motivation more from missions and goals than from leaders. Members work together as peers and hold one another accountable for the group's performance and results.

Practice Four: Attend to the bottom half

• Most managers resist devoting time and talent to the bottom half. They believe it's easier and cheaper to replace underperformers than to rejuvenate them.
• In places where the economy is booming, labor is in short supply. Many companies that once seemed to have an unlimited number of applicants for low-level positions are now struggling to keep every job filled. For that reason alone, salvaging underperformers makes sense.

Practice Five: Use discipline to build pride

• MVP organizations emphasize self-discipline and group discipline. They ask every member of the front line to be her own toughest boss and to be a strict enforcer for her colleagues.
• It takes very little to harness the power of discipline, to get frontline employees to set and beat their own high standards for performance. It starts with an executive decision never to be content with enterprise-imposed, top-down discipline, and a commitment to encouraging self-discipline and group-discipline.
• MVP units celebrate the achievements of teams that practice self-discipline, but also visibly confront the failures of those that don’t.
• Such a dynamic could backfire in certain circumstances - for instance, if the underlying values of the institution are corrupt. But in their approach to discipline, MVP organizations demand that everyone act with honor, courage, and commitment. When people do so - on their own and as a group - enormous energy is unleashed.

The Solution

An organization’s success at the consistent delivery of outstanding service is merely the cumulative result of the contribution of each of its members. Outstanding service is just the consequence of each individual’s choice to be great at service. That’s our decision, as individual providers, to make. It’s our responsibility. And it’s our gain.

Notes from Chapter 3, The 8th Habit, Stephen Covey

Most of the great cultural shifts started with the choice of one person. Sometimes it was the formal leader; most of the time, it was not.

These agents of change first changed themselves, then inspired and lifted others. They possessed an anchored sense of identity, discovered their strengths and talents, and used them to produce results.

• People like this don’t get sucked in or pulled down by all the negative, demoralizing, insulting forces in the organization
• Their organizations are no better than most organizations
• All organizations are, to some degree, a mess
• Don’t wait for your boss or organization to change
• Be an island of excellence in a sea of mediocrity
• Be contagious
• Learn your true nature and gifts
• Use them to develop a vision of great things you want to accomplish
• Understand the needs and opportunities around you, and meet them
• Make a difference
• Find and use your voice
• Serve and inspire others
• Inspire others to find their voice
• All of us can decide to leave behind a life of mediocrity, and to live a life of greatness
• We all have the power to decide to live a great life
• No matter how long we’ve walked life’s pathway to mediocrity, we can always choose to switch paths

The employee experience

Notes from Customer Experience Management, Bernd Schmitt

In most companies, employees do not care about their jobs. A Gallup survey found that only 25% of employees are “actively engaged”. 75% are just muddling through. University of Michigan’s David Ulrich observes that “job depression” is on the rise.

• Disengaged and depressed employees are not likely to deliver a great experience to customers.
• To turn that around, you must engage the heart and soul of every employee. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at the University of Chicago found that employees want to experience work as “flow” – when they become so involved in what they’re doing that they lose track of time. Flow is about optimal experiences and enjoyment in life, and the ultimate goal is “turning all life into a unified flow experience”. When that happens, work does not feel like work, and the separation of work and leisure becomes meaningless. Work and leisure become one.

You can make that happen by treating employees as customers, and applying the principles of Customer Experience Management.

1. Find out what they want, learn about their experiential world.
2. Ask them what they would change.
3. Instead of imposing a regime, let them help develop their new work environment.
4. Get them really involved in the brand. Run workshops and discuss what it means to them. Let them suggest how they can live the brand in their work and in their personal lives.
5. Examine the employee interface. How can you improve contacts and interactions?
6. Seek their input about innovation, include them in developing innovations.

If you pay attention to your employees experiences, you will be rewarded with a happier, more productive, more proactive workforce. Utopia? Yes, sadly many companies today still operate according to a command-and-control system. Strategy is developed at the top and disseminated to the front lines in an environment of fear. This experience-destroying, military model of the organization fails to recognize the innovative and value-creating forces that a positive employee experience can unleash.

Good people make good service. Good service makes good people.

Listed below are competencies extracted from the Emotional Competence Framework of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. They are the competencies that matter most to the success of customer service providers. Conversely, when we practice service - whether on customers, family members, colleagues, or communities - we become better at these competencies. We become better people.

Outstanding customer service providers:

• Realize the links between their feelings and what they think, do, and say
• Have a guiding awareness of their values and goals
• Are reflective, learning from experience
• Are open to candid feedback, new perspectives, continuous learning, and self-development
• Are able to show a sense of humor and perspective about themselves
• Can voice views that are unpopular and go out on a limb for what is right
• Are decisive, able to make sound decisions despite uncertainties and pressures
• Manage their impulsive feelings and distressing emotions well
• Stay composed, positive, and unflappable even in trying moments
• Think clearly and stay focused under pressure
• Act ethically and are above reproach
• Build trust through their reliability and authenticity
• Admit their own mistakes
• Meet commitments and keep promises
• Hold themselves accountable for meeting their objectives
• Are organized and careful in their work
• Smoothly handle multiple demands, shifting priorities, and rapid change
• Adapt their responses and tactics to fit fluid circumstances
• Seek out fresh ideas from a wide variety of sources
• Entertain original solutions to problems
• Generate new ideas
• Are results-oriented, with a high drive to meet their objectives and standards
• Set challenging goals and take calculated risks
• Pursue information to reduce uncertainty and find ways to do better
• Learn how to improve their performance
• Readily make personal or group sacrifices to meet a larger organizational goal
• Find a sense of purpose in the larger mission
• Pursue goals beyond what’s required or expected of them
• Cut through red tape and bend the rules when necessary to get the job done
• Persist in seeking goals despite obstacles and setbacks
• Are attentive to emotional cues and listen well
• Show sensitivity and understand others’ perspectives
• Help out based on understanding other people’s needs and feelings
• Understand customers’ needs and match them to services or products
• Seek ways to increase customers’ satisfaction and loyalty
• Gladly offer appropriate assistance
• Grasp a customer’s perspective, acting as a trusted advisor
• Are skilled at persuasion
• Fine-tune presentations to appeal to the listener
• Are effective in give-and-take, registering emotional cues in attuning their message
• Deal with difficult issues straightforwardly
• Handle difficult people and tense situations with diplomacy and tact
• Orchestrate win-win solutions

In addition, outstanding customer service leaders:

• Acknowledge and reward people’s strengths, accomplishments, and development
• Offer useful feedback and identify people’s needs for development
• Mentor, give timely coaching, and offer assignments that challenge and grow a person’s skill.
• Understand the forces that shape views and actions of clients, customers, or competitors
• Accurately read situations and organizational and external realities
• Use complex strategies like indirect influence to build consensus and support
• Listen well and seek mutual understanding
• Welcome sharing of information fully
• Foster open communication and stay receptive to bad news as well as good
• Articulate and arouse enthusiasm for a shared vision and mission
• Step forward to lead as needed, regardless of position
• Guide the performance of others while holding them accountable
• Lead by example
• Recognize the need for change and remove barriers
• Challenge the status quo to acknowledge the need for change
• Champion the change and enlist others in its pursuit
• Model the change expected of others
• Spot potential conflict, bring disagreements into the open, and help deescalate
• Encourage debate and open discussion
• Build rapport and keep others in the loop
• Make and maintain personal friendships among work associates
• Balance a focus on task with attention to relationships
• Collaborate, sharing plans, information, and resources
• Promote a friendly, cooperative climate
• Model team qualities like respect, helpfulness, and cooperation
• Draw all members into active and enthusiastic participation
• Build team identity, esprit de corps, and commitment
• Protect the group and its reputation
• Share credit

See also this article which codes the whole EC Framework according to customer service requirements: basic competencies, higher-level competencies, and competencies for customer service leaders.

Empowerment prerequisite

Notes from Built to Last, Chapter 6, pages 138-139, Jim Collins, Jerry Porras

Companies seeking an "empowered" or decentralized work environment should first and foremost impose a tight ideology, screen and indoctrinate people into that ideology, eject the viruses, and give those who remain the tremendous sense of responsibility that comes with membership in an elite organization.

It means getting the right people on the stage, putting them in the right frame of mind, and then giving them the freedom to ad lib as they see fit.

It is tightness around an ideology that enables a company to turn people loose to experiment, change, adapt, and - above all - to act.

                                                      . . .

Nordstrom has a one-page employee handbook - a single 5"x8" card. It says: Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1 : Use you good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.

While visiting a class at the Stanford Business School, Jim Nordstrom was asked how a Nordstrom clerk would handle a customer attempting to return a dress that had obviously been worn. His reply:

I don't know. That's the honest answer. But I do have a high level of confidence that it would be handled in such a way that the customer would feel well treated and served. Whether that would involve taking the dress back would depend on the specific situation, and we want to give each clerk a lot of latitude in figuring out what to do. We view our people as sales professionals. They don't need rules. They need basic guideposts, but not rules. You can do anything at Nordstrom to get the job done, just so long as you live up to our basic values and standards.

Core ideologies

Core Ideologies In Visionary Companies
Excerpts from Built to Last, Chapter 3, pages 68-73, Jim Collins, Jerry Porras
with links to currents statements

Core ideologies = Core values + Purpose

• Core values = The organization's essential and enduring tenets; a small set of guiding principles
• Purpose = The organization's fundamental reasons for existence

3M
Innovation; “Thou shalt not kill a new product idea”
Absolute integrity
Respect for individual initiative and personal growth
Tolerance for honest mistakes
Product quality and reliability
“Our real business is solving problems”

American Express
Heroic customer service
Worldwide reliability of services
Encouragement of individual initiative

General Electric
Improving the quality of life through technology and innovation
Interdependent balance between responsibility to customers, employees, society, and shareholders
Individual responsibility and opportunity
Honesty and integrity

Hewlett-Packard
Technical contribution to fields in which we participate
“We exist as a corporation to make a contribution”
Respect and opportunity for HP people, including opportunity to share success
Contribution and responsibility to the communities in which we operate
Affordable quality for HP customers
Profit and growth as a means to make all of the other values and objectives possible

IBM
Give full consideration to the individual employee
Spend a lot of time making customers happy
Go the last mile to do things right; seek superiority in all we undertake

Johnson & Johnson
The company exists “to alleviate pain and disease”
“We have a hierarchy of responsibilities:
customers, employees, society at large, then shareholders"
Individual opportunity and reward based on merit
Decentralization = Creativity = Productivity

Marriott
Friendly service & excellent value (customers a guests)
“Make people away from home feel that they’re among friends and really wanted”
People are number 1 - treat them well, expect a lot, and the rest will follow
Work hard, yet keep it fun
Continual self-improvement
Overcoming adversity to build character

Merck
“We are in the business of preserving and improving human life.
All of our actions must be measured by our success in achieving this goal”
Honesty and integrity
Corporate social responsibility
Science-based innovation, not imitation
Unequivocal excellence in all aspects of the company
Profit, but profit from work that benefits humanity

Nordstrom
Service to the customer above all else
Hard work and productivity
Continuous improvement, never being satisfied
Excellence in reputation, being part of something special

Procter & Gamble
Product excellence
Continuous self-improvement
Honesty and fairness
Respect and concern for the individual

Wal-Mart
“We exist to provide value to our customers” – to make their lives better via lower prices and greater selection; all else is secondary
Swim upstream, buck conventional wisdom
Be in partnership with employees
Work with passion, commitment, and enthusiasm
Run lean
Pursue ever-higher goals

Walt Disney
No cynicism allowed
Fanatical attention to consistency and detail
Continuous progress via creativity, dreams, and imagination
Fanatical control and preservation of Disney’s “magic” image
“To bring happiness to millions, and
to celebrate, nurture, and promulgate “wholesome American values”

Core purpose

Excerpts from Built to Last, Chapter 11, pages 224–228
Jim Collins, Jerry Porras

• Core purpose, the second component of core ideology, is the organization’s fundamental reason for being. An effective purpose reflects the importance people attach to the company’s work — it taps their idealistic motivations — rather than just describing the organization’s output or target customers.
• It captures the soul of the organization. Purpose gets at the deeper reasons for an organization's existence beyond just making money, as illustrated by a speech David Packard gave to HP people in 1960: “I want to discuss why a company exists in the first place. In other words, why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. As we investigate this, we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately — they make a contribution to society, a phrase that sounds trite but is fundamental … You can look around and still see people who are interested in money and nothing else, but the underlying drives come largely from a desire to do something else — to make a product, to give a service — generally to do something that is of value.”
• Purpose (which should last at least 100 years) should not be confused with specific goals or business strategies (which should change many times in 100 years). Whereas you might achieve a goal or complete a strategy, you cannot fulfill a purpose; it is like a guiding star on the horizon—forever pursued, but never reached. Yet while purpose itself does not change, it does inspire change. The very fact that purpose can never be fully realized means that an organization can never stop stimulating change and progress in order to live more fully to its purpose.

Examples of Core Purpose

• 3M: To solve unsolved problems innovatively
• Fannie Mae: To strengthen the social fabric by democratizing home ownership
• Mary Kay: To give unlimited opportunity to women
• Merck: To preserve and improve human life
• Nike: To experience the emotion of competition, winning, and crushing competitors
• Walt Disney: To make people happy

Merck mission

Excerpts from Built to Last, Chapter 3, Page 47
Jim Collins, Jerry Porras

In 1935 (decades before “values statements” became popular), George Merck II penned the ideals that would guide his company to greatness: “[We] are workers in industry who are genuinely inspired by the ideals of advancement of medical science, and of service to humanity.”

With these ideals as a backdrop, we’re not surprised that more than 50 years later, Merck elected to develop and give away Mectizan, a drug to cure “river blindness,” a disease that infected over a million people in the Third World with parasitic worms that caused painful blindness. Knowing that the project would not produce a large return on investment - if it produced one at all - the company nonetheless went forward. When even governments would not buy the product for their own infected people, Merck elected to give the drug away free to all who needed it. Merck also involved itself to directly reach the millions of people at risk from the disease, at its own expense.

Asked why Merck that decision, then ceo Roy Vagelos pointed out that failure to go forward with the product could have demoralized Merck scientists - scientists working for a company that explicitly viewed itself as “in the business of preserving and improving human life.” He also said: 

"When I first went to Japan fifteen years ago, I was told by Japanese business people that it was Merck that brought streptomycin to Japan after World War II, to eliminate tuberculosis, which was eating up their society. We did that. We didn’t make any money. But it’s no accident that Merck is the largest American pharmaceutical company in Japan today. The long-term consequences of [such actions] are not always clear, but somehow I think they always pay off.”

Sony's founding purpose

Excerpts from Built to Last, Chapter 3, Page 50
Jim Collins, Jerry Porras

When Masaru Ibuka started Sony among the ruins of a defeated and devastated Japan, he rented an abandoned telephone operator’s room in the hollow remnants of a bombed and burned-out old department store in downtown Tokyo and, with seven employees and $1,600 of personal savings, began work.

He codified an ideology for his newly founded company. On May 7, 1946, less than ten months after moving to Tokyo - and long before turning a positive cash flow - he created a “prospectus” for the company that included the following items:

If it were possible to establish conditions where persons could become united with a firm spirit of teamwork, and exercise to their heart’s desire their technological capacity ... then such an organization could bring untold pleasure and untold benefits … Those of like minds have naturally come together to embark on these ideals.

PURPOSES OF INCORPORATION

• To establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society, and work to their heart’s content.
• To pursue dynamic activities in technology and production for the reconstruction of Japan and the elevation of the nation’s culture.
• To apply advanced technology to the life of the general public.

MANAGEMENT GUIDELINES

• We shall eliminate any unfair profit-seeking, persistently emphasize substantial and essential work, and not merely pursue growth.
• We shall welcome technical difficulties and focus on highly sophisticated technical products that have great usefulness in society, regardless of the quantity involved.
• We shall place our main emphasis on ability, performance, and personal character, so that each individual can show the best in ability and skill.