Manufactured Crises

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive!

This week’s focus: manufactured crises

When the Sequester occurred on Friday, we heard the media share all the things that would be negatively impacted in our lives. Barack Obama and his cabinet heads were particularly vocal about the “major impacts” ahead.

For example, tax returns may be processed slower, there will be fewer TSA folks at the airport, air traffic controllers will be laid off at airports without commercial flights, defense contractors will be impacted, the Blue Angels won’t be able to fly, an aircraft carrier may need to stay in port, etc. Golly.

The Sequester’s impact on Federal spending is an across the board 2% reduction totaling $85 billion. Corporations know a 2% cut will cause inconvenience but not major disruptions or dislocation of services or support. We’ve heard little from any of the industries impacted. Why? Because there isn’t a crisis ahead. This is a speed bump and a not a very big one at that. This was a manufactured crisis.

Companies face bigger crises everyday via margin leaks that erode 2% or more of their profits. These crises are the result of business execution inefficiencies that haven’t been addressed appropriately, new initiatives with unclear outcomes, customer experiences that leave customers treated with indifference, and leadership continually distracted addressing failure work instead of strategic issues to support growth.

We have to be careful about which “crises” we pay attention to so as to not be distracted from those things that are really important in our businesses. This is the key to thriving.

Thought for the week:

3 Simple Rules

• If you do not GO after what you want, you’ll never have it.
• If you do not ASK, the answer will always be NO.
• If you don’t step FORWARD, you’ll always be in the same place.

- Dave’s Words of Wisdom, UK

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What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Recent Blog Posts That May Interest You

• Being Homeless Is Not A Crime
• Marrisa Mayer Orders Telecommuters To The Office

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2013 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Boeing 787 Business Execution Failure

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive!

This week’s focus: business execution

The grounding of the Boeing 787s due to the fire danger associated with the lithium-ion batteries continues to be a costly, brand-damaging problem. The U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, announced at the time of the grounding that these aircraft would not fly again until they are “1,000 percent safe.” [A bit of hyperbole in that statement, Mr. Secretary?]

Boeing wants to get the fleet back in the air as quickly as possible and keep production and deliveries moving. The solution they have offered the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA): a better fire containment box and improved venting for the lithium-ion batteries so if and when a fire occurs, it can be contained to the battery unit itself.

Is Boeing nuts? The answer is better fire suppression? Wrong answer, Boeing!

The right answer is a design that eliminates the risk of fire that has been thoroughly tested, qualified and implemented in each 787 before each plane is allowed to return to the skies. You know it, the FAA knows it, the airlines with 787s know it, and so does the flying public.

At an Association for Corporate Growth Silicon Valley chapter dinner meeting this past week, I moderated a panel called “Transportation of the Future.” I was honored to have Dr. Sujeet Kumar, CTO and co-founder of Envia Systems on the panel to discuss lithium-ion battery technology. He told the audience that the 787 lithium-ion battery is built using the wrong chemistry and is an inappropriate design prone to the very problems Boeing and its customers have experienced. The good news: Technology is available today to eliminate the risk. The bad news: It’s not apparent Boeing is looking for solutions outside its current design.

Boeing: Fix the problem the right way and restore our confidence in your brand and your wonderful 787 aircraft that the airline industry needs.

Thought for the week:

“To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials.” – Sir Richard Branson

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What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Fast Company Blog Posts That May Interest You

• How Dell Helps Entrepreneurs Get Hardware Solutions To Market
• Why Dell Decided To Go Private
• What Decisions Your Business Really Needs To Make About the Cloud

 

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2013 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Allegiant Air Needs to Improve Customer Experience

My recent decision to travel from Silicon Valley to Eugene, Oregon, via Amtrak is due to frustration with Allegiant Air on its twice weekly trips between Oakland, California, and Eugene, Oregon. Eugene is not the easiest place to fly to. Long delays and the announcement of delays until after you arrive at the airport are my biggest complaints about Allegiant Air. Perhaps they are trying too hard to save money.

• The airport staff is pretty junior and not well-prepared for dealing with customers having a “not so great” customer experience.
• Allegiant Air is flying old MD-80 aircraft they purchased for about $4 million each, a dirt cheap price. They painted them nicely and changed out the interiors to make it feel like you’re on a new aircraft. But, that beauty is only skin deep. Mechanical delays are common—too common for my taste. I’m sure they meet FAA standards, a requirement to fly in the U.S.
• There was no kiosk to print a boarding pass at the airport—I had to stand in line for an hour after I left my boarding pass sitting on my printer in my office. Big mistake on my part! Yet, to save money, they don’t have kiosks like other airlines.

Finally, Allegiant Air has a Twitter account but they don’t monitor or provide updates via Twitter. They give you a phone number to call on their Twitter profile and warn you that you won’t get a response via Twitter. They had issued a total of 3 tweets from their account back on the 20th of December. I call this “the illusion of using social media.” “Oh, you can communicate or complain about Allegiant on Twitter but this isn’t a way Allegiant chooses to communicate with customers” They want you to call them. What’s wrong with this picture. It’s 2013. Hello?

Allegiant Air needs to pick up its game in terms of communicating with passengers. If Allegiant Air knows hours earlier that they are going to be late several hours, they should let their customers know as soon as they detect this. We are adults. We can handle it. Nobody wants to wait in an airport for 3 or 4 hours if we don’t have to. This only compounds the problem of being late.

Being a low cost carrier doesn’t suggest that their customers should experience lower quality service and a poor customer experience.

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© Dave Gardner 2013

West Coast Business Travel on Amtrak

As I write this, I’m on the Amtrak Coast Starlight train about 3 hours outside Eugene, Oregon, on January 2nd, 2013. This is my first trip on Amtrak. So, what prompted me to travel via Amtrak?

• The fact that I wanted to get to Oregon and return when it is convenient for me and not be restricted by twice-a-week travel schedule limitation offered by a low-cost airline.
• Portland is a 3-4 drive during the rush hour from Eugene—not a great choice.
• My one-way Amtrak ticket was $124. Couldn’t come close to that air fare.
• A one-way plane ticket is generally more expensive than a round-trip ticket. I knew when I wanted to arrive but I am uncertain about when I will return. Not a good formula for flying unless you’re flying Southwest into and out of Portland.
• The 550-mile drive is expensive and potentially problematic due to winter weather this time of year not to mention exhausting.
• I think I’ll arrive more relaxed and ready for business by using Amtrak.

I traveled overnight and will arrive in Eugene before 1 pm. Amtrak picked me up in the shadow of the new San Francisco 49er’s stadium in Santa Clara, about a mile from my home, at 8 pm. I traveled to Oakland where I picked up the Amtrak Coast Starlight which goes all the way to Seattle. There are only eleven stops between Oakland and Eugene.

I booked a reserved coach seat which gives me the equivalent of most domestic airline’s business class seating—it is roomier. There’s a power outlet to charge my phone, computer, etc. I probably got 5.5 hours sleep after we left Sacramento, California at around 1 a.m. Not bad.

The scenery has been beautiful for the daylight portion of my trip. There’s no TSA security lines, the Amtrak staff has been pleasant, and I discovered ardent Amtrak fans who really like this mode of traveling the United States. This trip would have been more fun if my wife was with me.

Will I do this again? Yes.

And, so I did on the 8th of January–I am returning home on Amtrak. The train left at Eugene, Oregon, at 5 p.m. and will get me back to Santa Clara about 10 a.m. the next morning. It’s a bit of an adventure to travel via Amtrak but it’s the good kind of adventure. It’s nice meeting people and spending time with them. I don’t do this when traveling by air. And, I got some work done on the train.

Some surprises:

• It was pretty amazing watching a big rig stuck at a railroad crossing for 15 minutes at 2:30 am in Chico, California. Imagine the driver’s bad luck to be heading somewhere in the middle of nowhere and stuck waiting for a passenger train to pull away from the station. I couldn’t see the driver’s face through the train’s tinted windows. I would have been pretty incredulous were I the driver. But, what was the driver going to do?
• In vast open areas, there are homes less than one hundred feet from the railroad tracks. I’ve got to believe the impact of our 14-car Amtrak train hurling by is disruptive, especially in the middle of the night.
• You can meet people and have real conversations with people on the train. The pace of life slows a bit. On the Coast Starlight, there are many hours where there is no cell phone service due to the extremely remote route the train takes. It’s okay to be off the grid for a while—it changes the frenetic pace we live and work at.
• My seat mate was from San Francisco and takes Amtrak all the time. I learned a lot from him.
• A table of 4 with 3 at it will be filled by a solo traveler like me. I had a delightful breakfast with a Santa Barbara-based attorney heading to Bend, Oregon, with his wife and a friend.
• The train is quite comfortable.
• The food ranges from pretty decent (I’d give it a 6 on a scale of 1-10) in the dining car to quite mediocre in the lounge car (I’d give it a 3). I couldn’t grab a burger at night in the dining car—they had only higher-end meals with a limited selection in the evening. I tried the lounge car and was pretty disappointed in the microwaved cheeseburger; it seemed like a 1970′s food-dispensing machine quality. I’d almost forgotten how bad that era was.
• The lounge car was closed for an hour or so and, when it re-opened, they announced they were unable to take credit cards for about 20 minutes after the lounge car re-opened. That consumed what little cash I had on me for the trip which was inconvenient. I had already waited over an hour to grab food—I didn’t want to wait another 20 minutes at 9:15 pm at night.

I found the Amtrak employees try pretty hard to please given what they have to work with. If Amtrak could pick up their game a bit on the food side, it would enhance the experience.

Amtrak has done a pretty poor job explaining to the general public what they have to offer. If they would work harder to create desire and show they are a viable alternative to flying in many instances or simply can create an alternative great experience for their customers, they would attract many more riders. But, they really need to pick up their marketing game.

I’d love to talk to Amtrak about how to accomplish that. And, I do plan to use Amtrak more for future travel.

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

Are you torturing your customers?

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive!

This week’s focus: customer experience

I was struck by the following Twitter profile:

Bikram Yoga Red Deer
@BikramRedDeer
The ORIGINAL hot yoga.
90 minutes of torture for 90 years of health and happiness!

If I could earn 90 years of health and happiness after just one “tortuous” hot yoga session, sign me up! Ask yourself:

• Does your company require “n” minutes of customer torture to create the result your customer wants?
• Do your clients and customers feel completely spent after they have completed a transaction with you?
• Will a customer want to do business again and again? Or, will they promise themselves never to do business with you again?
• Are there things you need to do to eliminate any discomfort so you build a life-long relationship with a willing, enthusiastic customer?

There is real value in addressing the pain points your customers feel. Failure to address the pain points is business malpractice. How else do you expect to earn 90 years of prosperity?

Thought for the week:

“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” – Chuck Palahniuk

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What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2013 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Employee business execution and performance

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive!

This week’s focus: business execution

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!, offered the following thought via @FortuneMagazine on Twitter:

We need employees to think about their execution and we need them to think about their performance. Not potential.

To me, this means employees are engaged in the business and see how what they do impacts customers and the customer experience.

• What kind of a “wow” employees are creating for themselves and their customers?
• Are they passionate, engaged and excited? Fist bumps and high fives? Or, dead calm.
• Do they see themselves making a difference or simply manning a desk?
• Showing up for a paycheck or driven to do the best they can for themselves and their company?

If Steve Jobs left us anything it has to be the notion that superior execution and creating a great customer experience is the key factor between surviving and thriving. This comes as a result of being intentional and conscious about everything you do.

Thought for the week:

“The road to success is always under construction.” – Lily Tomlin

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What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Customer experience drives franchise out of business

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive!

This week’s focus: customer experience

The Friday before Thanksgiving, the Carl’s Jr. fast food burger emporium across the street from my office closed for business. There is nothing sadder than a business closing and the jobs lost, particularly at this time of year. Why did this happen?

• The staff could barely speak English. Sure, they could take an order, but, most could not greet you properly, handle a conversation about special food preparation requirements, etc.
• A cook soon became a front counter order taker whether they were prepared for or well-suited for this position or not.
• A customer was treated with indifference.
• You could see the fear in their eyes of many of the staff dealing with a non-Spanish speaking customer.
• The manager hired people just like him–there was no diversity in one of the most diverse employment areas you can imagine.
• The food was haphazardly and inconsistently prepared, e.g., the french fries were often lukewarm, a burger often had a huge clump of lettuce crammed between the meat and the top bun, etc.

Across the parking lot, the McDonald’s thrives. Carl’s Jr. has the potential for much better food than McDonald’s yet this location struggled for years. It’s no wonder they closed given the customer experience they delivered. Corporate seemingly didn’t understand what they needed to do to make this location succeed.

Is your company delivering the customer experience that ensures it and you will thrive?

Thought for the week:

“A successful man is one who can lay a foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” – David Brinkley

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What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Closing business execution gaps

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive!

This week’s focus: business execution

There are so many things that we take for granted:

• Being able to pay with a credit card
• A light coming on when we flip the switch
• Being able to flush a toilet and have running water to wash our hands
• Traffic signals never putting vehicles on a collision course
• Aircraft not colliding in the skies

Yet there are many things that don’t happen as we had expected in our businesses:

• Delivering a fantastic customer experience across all touch points in your business
• Getting new products into the marketplace on time that “wow” customers
• Deploying new IT systems on time and within budget that are widely and rapidly adopted by those who rely on those systems to get their work done
• Aligning resources with demand (people, inventory, supplies, etc.)
• Meeting financial goals for revenues and/or profitability
• Ensuring that people do what is expected of them–even when we aren’t watching

The first grouping’s success occurs as a result of superb business execution. The second grouping’s success is far less predictable.

What actions do you and your business need to take to ensure your business execution is as superb for the second grouping as the first?

Thought for the week:

“Live dangerously; takes things as they come; dread naught, all will be well.” – Sir Winston Churchill 1932

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What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

How Verizon Wireless Can Improve Customer Service

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive!

This week’s focus: customer service

I’ve had a terrific customer experience with everyone I have worked with at Verizon Wireless going back to 2004. The products, services and people have been great. I never cringe at the thought of interacting with this company. That’s not to say they can’t get better!

Here are my recommendations for improving the customer experience relative to a technical problem I’ve been chasing for a few weeks:

• Never close a trouble ticket without confirming with the customer that the problem is resolved via the proposed solution. More than one ticket was closed when I still had the same problem meaning no one was working on it!
• When you tell a customer you are going to call them back, call them back. Not hard. Yet, 3 different people promised to call me back and didn’t.
• Never transfer a customer to one of your supplier’s technical support organizations without (a) informing the customer that that is what you are going to do, and (b) getting the customer’s permission. It’s quite a shock to suddenly find out you aren’t dealing with Verizon Wireless in the middle of a long call.
• When departments that need to be working together to get to the bottom of an issue aren’t collaborating, escalate the issue within your organization to management and senior management to get them talking. It’s not okay for an organization to be unapproachable when it comes to dealing with a customer issue.

Do these things and I’ll be a happier customer. If you have a customer service organization, avoid the mistakes I’ve identified above and you and your customers will thrive.

Thought for the week:

“If your stakeholders are in the social space, they are talking about your brand — so either engage and be part of the conversation or be left behind.” - Karen Quintos, Dell CMO

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What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Last Chance to Save Unless It’s Not

How many emails do you get each month offering you “Last Chance to Save $____?”  I get lots of them. And, what’s remarkable (he says in  complete jest) is this really isn’t the “last chance to save $___.”

How do I know this? Years of seeing emails from the same companies over and over and over and over.

Years ago, I traveled to Hawaii once or twice a year. Some merchants count on the fact that most people go once. Why else would these same merchants have the faded “Going Out of Business” signs clinging to the exterior walls?

Businesses perpetually “Going Out of Business” aren’t. They are just trying to lure unsuspecting buyers that there are great deals in the store.

These tactics are manipulations. They are intended to create urgency to get you to buy now. Call me crazy, but, I’m not much for being manipulated. I prefer businesses that don’t resort to such manipulations to win my business.  Imagine a manipulation like:

3-Day Old Fish Dinner: Half Price!

Sound intriguing? Let me grab my wife and we’ll head on over. On second thought, never mind.

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting, http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

Sir Richard Branson on Customer Experience

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” which is offered to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: customer experience

Sir Richard Branson, Chairman of the Virgin Group companies, speaking at Dreamforce 2012 talked about how he decides to get into a business. He offered that after 100 or so round-trips on British Airways, he found the staff was dreadfully unhappy and the food and service mediocre at best. He thought he could do it better, that customers would appreciate that, and he could build a nice business that he would enjoy using.

Virgin Airways has taken considerable market share from British Airways. Virgin expanded to Australia and has 35% market share there. Virgin America was founded on the premise that it wouldn’t be hard to surpass the customer experience provided by the U.S.-based airlines. Hard to disagree with his assessment, right United, American, US Airways, Delta?

What is the innovation?

• Hiring a managing director who is passionate about the value proposition who can attract, hire and inspire others to be part of the leadership team.
• Finding out what customers don’t like and addressing those issues straight away.
• Hiring people who care about people and putting them in customer-facing roles.
• Having fun and making it fun.
• Treating paying customers like they are the reason for the airline.

Complicated? Not really. But, not trivial to execute either or more companies would be able to achieve this level of success. These “innovations” are helping the Virgin portfolio of companies thrive.

Thought for the week:

Heard via Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE at Dreamforce 2012:

“Everybody has a strategy ‘til they get punched in the mouth.” – Mike Tyson

What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Feature Bloat–Where Is Product Management?

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” which is offered to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: product management

This past week, I saw the latest release for a company’s software. I was stunned–but not in a good way. The product has become so bloated with its 800 features that I wonder if they’ve ruined their product and their company.

As I thought about all my clients over the years–ranging from start-ups to Fortune 50–I considered where I would interject this solution. I’m hard pressed to see this as the best solution in departments and organizations I’ve worked with. That’s not good.

One of my colleagues asked if customers had requested these changes. The executives insisted they had. Really?

Product management is a critical (yet, often absent) function that should drive the evolution of products and product lines. Product management carefully considers input from customers, sales, dealers, marketing, engineering and customer service and, then, creates a product road map that addresses their customers evolving needs.

More is not always more. Complexity makes my eyes glaze over. If you want to thrive, don’t make your customers and prospects eyes glaze over.

Thought for the week:

“There exist limitless opportunities in every industry. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.” – Charles Kettering

What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Joy and the customer experience

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” which is offered to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: customer experience

When I arrived at the Caltrain station in Sunnyvale, the one hundred or so of us who exited the train saw a young mother and her 2-year old daughter waiving wildly to greet us. You couldn’t help but smile.

As I walked to the parking garage, I said hello and continued to my car as the train pulled away to its next stop. The waving stopped, the mother said, “We’ve got to go,” as she quickly put her daughter in her stroller. “There’s another train coming!”

They quickly crossed the 2 sets of tracks and within seconds a northbound train arrived. As I climbed the steps, I looked over my shoulder and, sure enough, they were repeating the same process they had when my train arrived.

While I’m sure they don’t realize it, they brought joy to all who cared to take it in. I’m sure the mother thought this was her way of entertaining her daughter but the reality is, they created far more joy than they received.

What joy do you and your company bring the world? Do you think creating joy just might help you and your company thrive?

Thought for the week:

“Most people bypass what is good and refreshing in their lives, and habitually focus on the unpleasant, bad elements.”  - Plutarch

What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Four Seasons leadership rocks!

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” which is offered to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: business execution

I love it when I’m invited to an event at any Four Seasons.  In Silicon Valley, we’ve had our own Four Seasons in East Palo Alto since 2006.

This past week, I  reached out to the head of HR at the Four Seasons to understand how they are able to deploy such a remarkable team and provide such an incredible customer experience time and time again.  [Note: As I didn't tell the head of HR that I was interviewing her for an article (because I wasn't), I'm not going to share the details of my conversation. ]

However, I do want to share what happened as, it too, illustrates how the Four Seasons is able to create such a remarkable customer experience.

• I called the hotel and simply asked to speak with the head of HR.  I was informed of her name and immediately transferred.
• When a woman answered the phone, I simply told her my name, that I was a management consultant, and informed her who I wanted to speak with. Her response was something like, “One moment please,” and I was immediately transferred. I wasn’t interrogated about why I was calling. No blocking, no tackling, no running interference. I didn’t have to leave my phone number for a call back later. My request was fulfilled on the spot.
• The woman I was transferred to answered her phone and we had an absolutely delightful, no-holds-barred conversation. I didn’t get her voice mail and the ensuing opportunity to leave a message–I got right through.

How often does this happen in today’s business world?  Almost never. It is so refreshing that I feel compelled to write about it.

I want to compliment the Four Seasons for superb execution on something this simple. It could have taken days to accomplish what transpired in seconds. But, it didn’t. And, the Four Seasons has created another “Wow” for me.

Are you and your company this easy to do business with?  If you are, rest assured you’ll be a stand out in your marketplace. And, if you’re not, you’ll stand out for all the wrong reasons.

Thought for the week:

“The poor, the unsuccessful, the unhappy, the unhealthy are the ones who use the word tomorrow the most.” – Robert Kiyosaki

What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

What kind of customer experience are you creating?

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” which is offered to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: customer experience

When a customer thinks about a company, his/her mind rapidly converges on a relatively few possible opinions about the brand:

• Yum–they like and are drawn to the company
• Yuck–they dislike and are turned off by the company
• No reaction–they haven’t formed an opinion, either positive or negative, about the company

If your company is a “yum,” you’re in a very good place. If your company is neutral or has no opinion, you still have an opportunity to convert people to a “yum.” If you company is a “yuck,” you may have lost an opportunity to work with that customer again, particularly if there are alternative choices in the marketplace.

How do customers rate your company? If you aren’t striving for a “yum,” your company can’t possibly thrive.

Thought for the week:

“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” - Jean de La Fontaine

What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

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The Future of Customer Service

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” which is offered to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: customer service

I was invited to attend a Customer Service Think Tank hosted by Dell in Austin, Texas. Customer service experts and industry thought leaders gathered to ponder the challenges, opportunities and future of customer service and support. One session looked at “the future of service:”

• Customer service will be at the core of what successful companies do–it won’t be an afterthought.
• There will be a lot less customer service as the most effective service is the call the customer never has to make as products get better and better.
• There’s auto-detection of possible issues based on customer profiles and a known solution to problems. Other customers will benefit as well.
• Smart semantics and artificial intelligence will help customer service personnel and customers converge on solutions faster and with greater ease–complexity will be less obvious to customers.
• Companies will become more community-driven–the community will be where issues and opportunities surface.

Are these ideas on your company roadmap? If not, how do you expect to thrive?

[Note: You can learn more about the entire event here. Dell paid my travel expenses for this event.]

Thought for the week:

“The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.” – Tom Peters

What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Just what is customer service?

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” which is offered to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: customer service

Just what is customer service? Some would say it’s a department. I say it’s a mindset that thriving companies adopt: they are in business to serve their customers. Why?

Anything and everything that impacts a customer and ultimately contributes to the customer’s experience is, in effect, customer service. Sales, order administration, product development, operations, and the customer service organization collectively determine how the customer ultimately feels about the company.

Companies that thrive realize that they are in business to service customers and examine each aspect of the business to ensure that customers receive a great experience.

Thought for the week:

“A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.” – Sir Richard Branson

What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

SAGE ACT! 2012 Data Corruption Has Me On Edge

Update 14JUN12: Sage ACT! found that one errant ical calender entry for a recurring meeting corrupted the database and rendered the synchronization functions and more unusable in ACT!  I told them to take their time studying this problem and a possible fix to make ACT! (and me!) less exposed to this problem.  They agreed. It didn’t take long to identify the problem which is really good. Sage ACT! takes this seriously–I’m happy for that.  Too many companies are firewalling themselves off from customers in this day and age.  Sage ACT! is not one of them!

Update 12JUN12:  As a result of the blog post below, I’ve now been contacted by several people from SAGE ACT! and an independent consultant who works with SAGE ACT!  SAGE ACT! has requested and will receive my full database offering them the possibility to understand what occurred to corrupt my database. I’m happy for this collaboration with them.  SAGE ACT! is responding the way great companies should respond in this situation.  I’m happy for them reaching out to me.  I will update this post as the situation unfolds.

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At some point during the past couple of months, my SAGE ACT! 2012 database became corrupted. As I have been in the process of moving from one laptop to a new laptop, I had stopped using ACT during this migration period.

What’s the impact? This corruption no longer allows for the proper synching of my ACT Database with Google Gmail, Calendar and Contacts.

ACT Support informed me that some (recurring?) corrupt calendar entry from Google Calendar corrupted my entire database. The impact is not that that record didn’t make it over to ACT–I can no longer schedule anything in ACT based on a specific time and can’t synch my ACT database with Google.

This functionality worked well for about 6 months. Now, poof—it’s gone!

I’ve been using ACT since the late 1990′s—I’ve been very dedicated to this solution. Until now.

I spent considerable effort this week rebuilding an updated ACT database that I can synch with Google again. But, should I?

The data integrity between ACT and Google isn’t bullet proof. As my good friend Dave Wilkinson of DataComCorp and I discussed, it isn’t a matter of “if” this will happen again, but, “when.”

And, to determine that it has happened means I will have to meticulously back up by date and time, set up tests to determine if everything continues to synch properly, etc. In other words, I have a lot of work to do to validate that the solution I paid for is working properly. That is too much effort in my book.

What’s wrong here?

• ACT should have better error detection and not accept records into it that can corrupt an entire database.
• ACT alleges that this problem originates within Google and I have to accept their representation that this is true—it’s too easy to blame a third party for problems in your product., particularly when that third party isn’t involved in trouble-shooting and problem resolution.
• ACT informs me that this issue is very rare. Can I bet my business that this “rare occurrence” that has already happened to me in the first 6 months of use won’t happen again? Simple answer: No.

I was told I could send my database into ACT to see, if, on a time and materials basis, they could determine where the problem occurred. No guarantees of success. No time or cost estimate.

Personally, I’d be happy to send my entire database to the ACT development team so they can look at it and determine what they need to do make their product more robust. No one asked for that. Blame has been assigned to Google. The matter is closed as far as ACT is concerned.

How many other customers have this vulnerability and don’t know this? How many other customers may be unaware that this has already occurred to them? After all, there is no error message being passed when this occurs. The functionality just stops working.

I really like ACT. I’m deeply disappointed that I can no longer use this product as it was intended. I upgraded my ACT version specifically for this integration with Google. My confidence is shot.

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

 http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Dave Gardner All Rights Reserved

Dave Gardner’s “Thank God It’s Monday” 23APR12

“Thank God It’s Monday” is to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: customer experience

A Colorado colleague contacted me for a referral to a new stock broker. His broker had left the firm and he’d been assigned to someone in Utah. It was clear, he really wanted to deal with someone local.

I suggested he go to his brokerage office, speak the general manager, and ask to interview his top 3 brokers to decide who will handle his account.

It’s easy for some companies to forget that they are dealing with customers who have a choice. If the firm handles this well from this point on, this relationship will be saved and everyone will thrive.

Thought for the week:

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” – William Shedd

What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Dave Gardner’s “Thank God It’s Monday” 02APR12

“Thank God It’s Monday” is to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: customer experience

What would you say about a company that offers support forums to its partners but then doesn’t respond to problems? Is it really a support forum?

A company isn’t in a partnership if it doesn’t respond to partner requests for help–it enjoys a one-sided relationship, not a partnership.

The question that arises is whether the support forums are working as designed? If they are, this behavior is shameful. If they aren’t working as designed, then managers who should be accountable aren’t doing their job.

• A company provides voice mail as a vehicle to leave messages with the expectation that calls will be returned.
• A company provides email as a way to have bi-directional communication.
• And, a company should provide a support forum only if it is an avenue to get assistance with problems.

Companies that thrive treat customers and partners like gold. Companies that treat customers with indifference risk becoming irrelevant no matter how good or big they are today.

[Note: Read my entire Fast Company article “Hey Google Support Forums--Don’t Be Evil.”]

Thought for the week:

“Either you run the day or the day runs you.” – Jim Rohn

What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.