Dennis Snow Blog

My guest blogger today is Don Tanner of Tanner Friedman, a strategic communications firm. Be sure to visit their site, and especially click on the OUR TURN tab to check out some terrific ideas in each of the three categories, Blog, Perspectives, and News.

Don’s article below is a perfect compliment to my recent post, The Frontline Equals the Bottom Line. I love Don’s line about how leaders sometimes “fire poison tipped arrows directly at their own people.” Sad but true.

I hope you enjoy this thought-provoking article!

What Goes Around Comes Around in Employee Relations – by Don Tanner

How do you treat your employees? Do you guide and mentor and set them up for success, or, do you badger and belittle and set them up for failure?

I am continually amazed by stories I hear. How about the boss that does not provide a roadmap for future growth (”Keep on doing what you’re doing”) and then chides the employee when certain un-communicated milestones are not met in their mind. Or, the superior that gives “all or nothing” ultimatums rather than guiding and encouraging the colleague towards success in reaching particular goals.

Such individuals-in-charge seem to operate out of fear and ego. Don’t they realize that they are stifling and paralyzing their greatest resource for sustained and future success – their employees? Sadly, no. And when times get tough, rather than rallying the troops and circling the wagons, they fire poison tipped arrows directly at their own people.

The biggest barrier to change for such individuals, in my experience, is their past successes. “My way works so why not keep doing it” seems to be their motto. What they don’t realize (and find out in time) is that treating people badly always comes back to haunt you. It may take 5 years, it may take 20 years but your reputation (cemented by all of the former employees you treated poorly) will soon precede you and the death knell for your company becomes only a matter of time.

As the 80’s “hair band” Ratt so famously sang: “‘Round and ‘Round.”

Tags: Commentary, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Recommended Resources by Dennis Snow
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If time management is a challenge for you (as it often is for me), this video post shares an effective technique.

If you receive my blog via email, you may need to click here to view the video.

Tags: Recommended Resources by Dennis Snow
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In one of last week’s blog posts, I discussed the important role storytelling plays in effective leadership (“Leadership and Storytelling”). I emphasized that stories provide the links that connect an organization’s employees to its history, its purpose, and its values. And that purposeful, well-told stories can stir the emotions of team members and make leaders more real.

At the end of the post I promised I’d recommend some resources that can help you develop and refine stories. The most important component of any meaningful story you share, of course, is its authenticity. I direct you to the following resources simply to help add polish to your stories.

Book Recommendations

Story Theater Method: Strategic Storytelling in Business, by Doug Stevenson. While the book focuses on crafting speeches, it provides excellent guidance for crafting stories for any purpose.

Managing by Storying Around: A New Method of Leadership, by David Armstrong, specifically addresses using stories as a leadership tool. The book shares many, many stories along with their application to the business world. Armstrong doesn’t intend the reader to actually use his stories, he provides them as examples of how effective stories are structured for business and, most importantly, how stories can make a point better than any other method.

Other Resources

“The Nine Steps of Story Structure” is a post from Doug Stevenson’s Story Theater blog. This brief post provides an outstanding blueprint for taking any story to a higher level. You can also navigate around the site for more of Doug’s resources.

“Business Storytelling” is an article from the Mind Tools Website. The article highlights the various types of stories and provides tips for effective storytelling.

I hope you find these resources to be helpful as you develop and share your stories!

Tags: Leadership, Recommended Resources by Dennis Snow
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There are a few business books I find myself going back to over and over. I’ve just added a new one to my library that I know will be one of those books – The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence, by Tom Peters.

The 163 ways to pursue excellence are presented in bite-sized nuggets (thank God) that I’ve found to inspire new ways of looking at things. Sometimes I’ll find a sentence in the book that launches my thinking in ten different directions. Other times I’ll read a section of the book and want to slap myself for not thinking of it on my own. But one of the signs of a useful book, in my opinion, is one that highlights gaps in my thinking.

Tom’s writing style is fun. He sometimes uses a small font size and sometimes uses a A LARGE BOLD FONT IN ALL CAPS. Some of his paragraphs are just two words. And he clearly isn’t worried about offending anyone. Agree or disagree, he refreshingly says what he thinks.

If you’re looking for a book to give you the dose of inspiration you’re in need of, or will challenge your organization’s thinking, check out The Little Big Things.

Tags: Recommended Resources by Dennis Snow
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American Express today released the results of a study they conducted with Echo Research titled, “American Express Global Customer Service Barometer.” Click on the link to access the report.

The study explores attitudes and preferences toward customer service, including data from the U.S. as well as eleven other countries.

Some of the findings surprised me:

“In fact, contrary to conventional wisdom, customers are more inclined to talk about a positive experience than complain about a negative one. Three-quarters (75%) are very likely to speak positively about a company after a good service experience in contrast with 59% who are very likely to speak negatively about a company after poor service.”

Previous studies have reported that customers are more inclined to talk about negative experiences than they are to talk about positive ones. I’m wondering if this new report indicates that excellent experiences have become so rare for customers that they have to share them with others.

Another finding reinforces the importance of building trust over time with customers:

“Importantly, consumers are far more forgiving if a company has earned their trust over time. Almost nine-in-ten consumers (86%) report they’re willing to give a company a second chance after a bad experience if they’ve historically experienced great customer service with that company.”

This statement is true in my case. With an organization I trust because of their typically high level of service, I’m willing to forgive the occasional glitch in the experience. And because excellent companies usually recover well when they make a mistake, I often end up more loyal than before the mistake was made.

Potential actions to take:

• Share the results of this report in your next team meeting. Discuss the implications for your own organization.

• Send the report to others in your organization, letting them know how you are using the data.

• Highlight some of the data points in your next employee newsletter.

Tags: Commentary, Recommended Resources by Dennis Snow
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Check out this excellent post written by Bob Burg (author of The Go-Giver): “Ernesto Would Be Proud, Part 2.” (Read Part 1 also, but Part 2 is the one I want to highlight here). The recommendations Bob presents are appropriate for any organization that wants to deliver excellent service to its customers.

Bob highlights four “aspects of value” – Consistency, Attention, Empathy, and Appreciation. He makes a compelling argument for how focusing on these  four elements can create a great customer experience.

Something to think about – In your job or in your organization, what three behaviors would demonstrate excellence in each of Bob’s “aspects of value”?

Tags: Commentary, Recommended Resources, Service Analysis, Tips for Better Customer Service by Dennis Snow
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Just wanted to send a quick recommendation for two articles in today’s Wall Street Journal (June 7, 2010).

The first, “Customer Service as a Growth Engine,” reinforces the message that as the economy rebounds (albeit slower than any of us had hoped), companies are investing in improving customer service – “Just over a quarter of the 1,405 companies surveyed by Accenture late last year said customer service would be the first area they’d increase funding for as the economy recovers. Some companies have begun that practice this year.”

The same article goes on to say that American Express is “expanding a training program started last year aimed at getting call center agents to focus less on resolving calls quickly, and more on building customer loyalty.” From personal experience I can tell immediately when a call center’s only accountability metric is call volume per agent. No warm, fuzzy feelings there.

The other recommended article in today’s WSJ is actually a review for a book written by Zappos founder and CEO, Tony Hsieh. The book (which I haven’t read yet), is titled, “Getting a Foothold Online: Delivering Happiness,” and recounts the birth and growth of the giant online shoe seller. The key lines come toward the end of the article – “He freed his reps from scripts, from mandates to sell, from having their calls timed. The reps had only one imperative: Wow customers. And they did.”

If you’re looking for ammunition to support your argument for improving customer service in your organization, check out the articles and pass them along.

Tags: Commentary, Recommended Resources by Dennis Snow
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For many businesses (my own included), a good portion of our customer interactions involve the telephone. Whether we’re actually having a conversation, leaving a message, trying to get past a “gatekeeper,” or recording our own voicemail message, the customer only has the quality of our phone skills for making judgments about the quality of our organization’s customer service.

As customers, most of us have suffered through:

• Employees answering the phone with an indecipherable greeting.
• Being put on hold without being asked.
• Explaining our needs only to be transferred and having to explain them again.
• A bored, disinterested voice on the other end of the line.
• Lengthy voicemail messages that never seem to get to the point.

I recently read a helpful article that provides some good reminders for all of us when conducting business over the phone. I hope you find the article to be helpful and, if appropriate, pass it along to other members of your team.

Telephone Manners Article

Tags: Commentary, Recommended Resources, Service Analysis, Tips for Better Customer Service by Dennis Snow
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Fellow consultant and blogger Mari Pat Varga recently asked me to be a guest blogger on her site. Specifically, she wanted me to discuss the customer experience improvement tool that I call “Service Mapping,” which helps organizations design their processes with the “lens of the customer” in mind.

In the blog post (the link is below) Mari Pat also included a clip from one of my presentations in which I describe how to get the most from the Service Mapping tool.

I hope you find the tool to be valuable in your service improvement efforts!

A Tool For Creating Outstanding Customer Experiences

Tags: Recommended Resources, Tips for Better Customer Service, Unleashing Excellence by Dennis Snow
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I’m ashamed it has taken me so long to recommend one of my all-time favorite books, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield.

The title is clearly a play on The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, and it is a highly appropriate title. The “enemy,” in this case, is RESISTANCE. That is, anything that keeps us from doing our work. While Pressfield’s chosen work is writing, the principles he outlines apply just as well to anything from running a marathon, starting a business, starting a diet, or anything else that requires attention and commitment. In my world, his principles apply to any organization wishing to improve their customer service.

Here’s the key line at the beginning of the book: “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” That line can apply to any endeavor we want to do (or even were meant to do) and what actually gets done. The gap between the two reflects the resistance succumbed to when faced with actually doing the work.

Here’s another quote that got my juices going: “Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.” (Italics are mine).

Resistance is one of the main reasons companies abandon one customer service initiative after another. When the planning is done, when the meetings are over, we have to sit down and do our work to actually implement the plan. Like the writer staring at the blank page, we become easily distracted by other “urgent” matters and never get around to doing the thing that really matters. Changing an organization takes commitment and a willingness to battle resistance on many fronts – from ourselves, our employees, our bosses, and even from our customers.

For every excuse about why an organization can’t implement this or that strategy, there’s another company who “slayed the resistance dragon” and got the work done and is better for it.

Please, please, do yourself a favor and get the book. After you’ve read it, which I’ll bet you’ll read in one sitting, send me a note with your thoughts. I’d love to hear what The War of Art inspired within you. One of my hopes is, of course, that it inspires you to beat resistance in applying the customer service principles in the new edition of my book, Unleashing Excellence: The Complete Guide to Ultimate Customer Service. Shameless plug I know, but Unleashing Excellence really does provide you with the tools to break through the resistance you’ll face in improving your organization’s customer service.

Tags: Commentary, Recommended Resources, When Bad Service Happens To Good People by Dennis Snow
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