11.07.09
Posted in Academia, Service Innovation, Service Science, Service conference, Service education at 9:51 pm by Doug Morse
Dateline: Compete Through Service Symposium Day 3
This was the worst day of the Symposium… but only because it was the LAST day and I was left wanting more. Isn’t that a good sign? If we leave wanting more it is like having a great meal, you really want to continue eating because it was so good, but you are now full. I leave the Symposium feeling like I have a lot to digest but wishing I could continue to interact and learn with the great folks that attended and world class team from ASU.
“Why do you hate my bags?” was the call that Dave Ridley ,from Southwest Airlines, wanted us to ask his competitors when we all flew home. You may have seen the Southwest Airlines ads about how bags fly free on Southwest, bucking the trend of most airlines. I thought about the whole charging for baggage issue on airlines and in my opinion Southwest is very clever in not charging. I am not sure that any other brand could copy this and get the same results. Think about it, SWA is known for ‘low cost’, for great customer service and great value. Not charging for bags is perfectly aligned with their excellent service culture and their brand. They believe strongly that employees come first as they will make happy customers. Happy customers seem to make SWA the only airline to make a profit. Charging for bags would actually be a bigger problem for their employees than for the customers because it would force their employees to do unnatural acts. ( and deal with angry customers )
This last point was brought home to me as I checked in for my flight home, not on Southwest. (with carry-on only, I LIKE my bags ) In the check in lobby was a young couple, with young children frantically repacking suit cases, baby carriers etc, in order to consolidate the luggage and reduce their penalty tax. The customer was not happy and the employee looked uncomfortable and embarrassed. The employee, in fairness, was trying to be helpful with in the boundaries of the stupid rules she had to follow. Putting your employees into that situation should be cause for CEO to go to leadership jail in my opinion.
Now, think about this whole idea of charging for bags in the service industry context. The service industry (in general ) went through the process of converting services from free to fee about 15 years ago. Product services got unbundled to allow customer s to pay for value. A whole lot or marketing genius went in to convincing customers that the new FEE based services were actual a better deal than the old bundled offerings. Customers could choose the level of value that services offered and choose to buy or not. Ask any company about this process of FREE to FEE services and they would likely say they would rather have un-medicated root canals than go through that period again. So, airlines decide it is a good idea to charge more for the same (or less) service with no added value or benefit to the customer. Most customers would give a higher customer satisfaction score to an armed robbery than to dealing with an airline trying to convince you that they have the lowest fare, as long as you want to travel with nothing more than your empty wallet. So who would you rather fly with, Southwest Airlines or Pickpocket Airways?
Dave Ridley said that their ability to succeed in their “not for profit” industry was attributable to them hiring the right employees. They believe the right employees have a ‘Warrior Spirit’, a ‘Service Heart’ and a ‘Fun loving Spirit’ . The Warrior spirit is about people who will willing to go the extra mile to get things done to meet the mission. A service heart is what I describe as people that have the ‘defective customer gene’. I believe that there are certain types of people who love dealing with customers even when they are being yelled at. They thrive on converting angry customers to loyal friends. They are special. Fun living spirit is perhaps the most obvious. People need to know how to enjoy themselves and have fun even when the times are tough. If you find this type of employee, hire them immediately! Even if you do not have an opening, hire them now. Once they find a job somewhere else, you will never get another chance!
If you are reading this blog and attended the symposium, then you might have noticed that my lead for the blogs and the headlines came from the last speaker of each day. Coincidence? It is not that they had the best quotes but that I just have a shorter memory….
All seriousness aside, it would be hard to rank the best speakers or best quotes, I will leave that up to you. (fill out those feedback forms or Tweet your opinions or add comments below ) I do know that I enjoyed our first speaker of day 3 very much. Joe Doyle is the head of Customer Service and Consumer Affairs in the Governor’s office of Georgia. I was particularly excited to hear Joe because this is the second time that I have had the pleasure to hear the State of Georgia story. I first heard Joe at the 2008 Frontiers in Service conference in Maryland. Since that first presentation it is clear that they have continued to make great progress. Here is the story, for those that missed it. The State of Georgia has a goal to be number one in customer service in the US. Perhaps that might be too low of a goal as the bar is not that high but it is unique in government. Georgia has over 130,000 employees, over 2000 public service functions, takes over 50 million phone calls or contacts each year with declining budgets. In spite of these monumental challenges, they have reduced the service times of critical public services by orders of magnitude. One example is helping to collect child support from delinquent parents. The old process took 14 weeks (could YOU wait 14 weeks for critical funds?? ) the new process is same day. The improvement was done by employees with current resources and no new technology. In the process they freed up numerous other wasted resources. Service time went from 3.5 MONTHS to same day, it costs LESS to provide the services, customers are HAPPIER than ever and you get it all done with no additional resources, consultants or new technology and the process is repeatable! Who would not want that in their business and this was done by a state government who typically are not known to employ rocket scientists. We can all learn a lot from the model demonstrated by the State of Georgia.
Joe’s opening act was followed by a remarkable person by the name of Courtney Klien. Courtney is CEO of New Global Citizens. What was remarkable was not that she likely still gets carded at any bar but that she created a business with such a marvelous mission. While she mostly spoke about how to hire, manage and work with the Millennial Generation what struck me most was presence and perspective that she had about what will matter in the future workforce. Service can have many meanings. In the context of Courtney’s presentation I came away encouraged that the next generation of workers will have a focus on providing service to the world. This may mean globally, this may mean social causes, this may mean environmental but what ever the cause it should be a good thing. For those that missed her I would search for her on the internet and then see www.newglobalcitizens.org .
After Courtney’s presentation we got to hear about how another organization overcame tremendous obstacles to drive service innovation. Kim Gravell, VP of Innovation for Cardinal Health, told us that her company delivers “… a million boxes of hope, everyday”. How cool is that? While Kim spoke about their process innovation to deliver new services I really thought about the underlying challenges that she did not dwell on. Remember that Larry Winget told us the day before to stop the whining. There was no whining about the degree of difficulty, just pride in what they could change. As a good friend of mine has said many times “service ain’t for wimps” (only the strong survive… for those that do not read ’southern’ )
I don’t want to speak for Kim however I have had some experience doing what she is doing so here is what I imagine are the underlying issues that Kim has had to overcome. The complexity of innovation is made more difficult in Healthcare product manufacturers because some of what they do is in a regulated business. When it comes to critical medical products, the government makes change more difficult. Second, Kim is working with a large $90+ Billion dollar enterprise, which typically are not known for being nimble or embracing innovation without finding all those lost souls who believe that their workplace is a democracy. Lastly, when you know that what you do might impact on patient’s lives your vision over the horizon may need closer inspection as you move forward. Congratulations to Kim and her team for embracing the ASU resources, finding expert help and moving toward their vision.
I would echo the request that Steve Brown and Mary Jo Bittner gave at the end, tell your friends to come next year. Given the economy and the impact to most conferences this year the turn out this year was outstanding. Sponsors help to make these events better and reduce your costs for attending so we need to thank those that supported our experience at this symposium. Industry supporting academia is also important and one way to help ASU or other Universities is to actively participate in research and the whole education process. Overall I know that I had a great experience and will continue to recommend this symposium to my friends and clients.
That is my opinion, what’s yours?
Permalink
11.06.09
Posted in Customer Experience, Service Innovation, Service Science, Service conference, Service education at 8:43 am by Doug Morse
Dateline: Compete Through Service Symposium , DAY 2
“Nobody cares how good you were” This was one of many good quotes from Larry Winget who entertained,energized and educated as the final speaker of the day at ASU’s Compete Through Service Symposium Day 2. Larry, who wrote the book “People are Idiots and I can Prove It”, takes no prisoners when he speaks. While he had everyone laughing in an entertaining way, people got the message about the need for people to take responsibility and be accountable. This is a message that is doubly important in the services business. He tells the simple truth that everyone needs to hear, to be successful takes hard work and excellence. No one is responsible for your successes or failure, other than yourself. Simple message,hard truths.
If you missed the symposium, you missed a great day with great speakers. We started with Rob Hibbard from Enterprise Rent a car. For those involved in Customer Experience communities you are well aware of the success that Enterprise has had in delivering a culture of great customer service backed by great execution. They were written up in Fred Riecheld’s book on Net Promoter Score called “The Ultimate Question” The founder of Enterprise, Jack Taylor, is quoted as saying “Take care of customers and employees and the business will follow.” Simple but powerful message. One example of walking the talk is that Enterprise promotes from within and to be eligible for promotion you have to deliver customer satisfaction at or above the company average. Rob said something else that I thought summarized the focus on customers. He said
“Each moment of truth brings an opportunity to earn or burn customer satisfaction / loyalty.”
It must work because their business results show the benefit of the passionate customer service.
Next up was Bob Gilligan from GE Energy. He talked about the tremendous challenge that the Electric Utilities will be facing in the near future. You may not have thought much about the power utility business as a consumer but big changes are coming. Growing markets for digital products are increasing demand on the electrical grids. 10% of electricity is consumed by digital products today and growing to 20% very quickly. Electrical Utilities are becoming large complex service networks and GE and others will need to be collaborative partners with the utilities and the consumers. The value proposition surrounding electrical grid will change from just reliable transmission of power to one that is a partnership with consumers to save money, improve the environment and manage the efficiency of the technology. This presentation fit in well with the presentation that was delivered later by Dr Jim Spohrer from IBM when he spoke about IBM’s “Smarter Planet” Initiative.
As I mentioned yesterday; the brilliance of this symposium is the mix of subjects and industries that we are exposed too. Kate Johnson from Oracle talked about a leading software company in B to B environment and their perspective of services. The lessons here are that Oracle is really using services to not only support their technology but to partner with customers to increase the utility of the software purchases while lowering their overall IT costs. Innovation is key to help move from a reactive delivery of service to a proactive delivery of value. She also talked about their investment into collaborative support models.
The last presentation of the morning was by Dr. Jim Spohrer from IBM research. Jim talked about the need for greater investment into the science of service and how SSME ( Service Science Management and Engineering ) research has yielded over an 8 x return on investment for IBM. Service innovation pays. Dr Spohrer also talked about the deficits in education and skills needed for service innovation. To solve some of the challenges of the future, especially in complex service systems, we need more University graduates who are cross disciplinary. He refereed to “T” shape people. People need deep domain expertise in something but also need broader skills and understanding of how their specialized domain interacts with adjacent domains.
The afternoon sessions were breakouts with too many good choices. One of the sessions that I could attend featured a panel with IDEO, Boeing Services, Mayo Clinics, Marriot Hotels and Petsmart that discussed Service Design. Here were vastly different businesses with many similarities in their approach to service design. The key was they they all seemed to have a well defined process for design, test and roll out of new services. One line that I liked came from Petsmart who said that you have to design and develop services that customers will pay for. Quite often customers may ask for a type of service but are not willing to a pay the price (or cost ) for that service. Service offerings need to be tested or piloted before wide scale deployment. We heard this message in other presentation as well.
Long but enjoyable day. It was great to meet new people and see old friends during the networking sessions.
It was another good day in the symposium. That is my opinion, what is yours?
Permalink
11.05.09
Posted in Academia, Service Innovation, Service Science, Service conference, Service education at 8:21 am by Doug Morse
Dateline: Compete Through Service Symposium , DAY 1.
For those that regularly follow this blog you know that I am a huge advocate for what the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University’s (ASU ) WP Carey School of Business brings to the service industry. For 20 years they have put on a unique conference that brings together some of the best and brightest in the services industry, globally recognized academics in the services field and speakers who both inform and inspire. It is my pleasure to bring you some of the highlights from this conference. For those that are attending, I hope that you will add your thoughts and comments. For those who could not attend because of the current business pressures, I hope that this will give you some insight. Perhaps if your boss reads this blog he/she will make sure that you can attend NEXT year. (call me an optimist…. )
Emily Yellin, author of the book “Your call is just not that important to us” ended the day and her presentation with the thought that the service industry should think about their “Karma Footprint” as a measure of our success. Perhaps Emily can become the Al Gore of the Call Center Environment….
Emily is a journalist who was frustrated with her personal experience with a call center and decided to investigate the call centers of the world. Her book relates the stories of what she found in her interviews and how the little things can really be BIG things if they are not addressed. Her observations led her to talk to us about 3 key areas of focus for successful service organizations. They were :
– Design
– Follow though
– Values
Design was about knowing and understanding the full servicescape and actively designing more complete services that add value to the customer experience. Follow through was about understanding the language that we use and how we communicate with our customer and how to understand what the customers are looking for to solve their issue. She advised to look for ways to say “yes” to customers rather than finding ways to blindly comply with internally focused business rules. For values she observed that service groups are often marginalized in organizations (this resonated in the crowd !) and as a result employees were not inspired to deliver excellent service. Companies who have core values focused on the customer create better cultures. Zappos is certainly a great example of how values in an organization make a difference.
What was particularly good about Emily and her presentation was that while she is not a service professional her findings from her research seem to sum up the two previous speakers in a very authentic way and in which we can all relate.
The first speaker of the day was Jim Champy, who is the well known author of “Re-engineering the Corporation” along with his new book, “Inspire”. His first book was a bible for me when it came out so I am anxious to read his new books. The subtitle of “Inspire” is “Why customers come back” “Inspire” is about doing those things that inspire a customer to come back or for them to become loyal customers. There are many examples of companies that he cited but the key points for me were things that all companies should understand today.
- Be a part of a compelling cause. Customers will want to do business with companies for whom they feel support a common cause. (environment, healthcare reform, etc. )
- You can leverage both high tech and high touch to deliver customer value
- Understand the needs of the customer. Seems simple but so many companies try to sell what the customers THINK that they want and not really understand what they need. Henry Ford once said”If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse” In my opinion, understanding needs with a unique perspective is a way to drive innovation.
- Business models need to align to customer values (we often call this selling to the customer value chain )
- Customers are inspired when you simplify complexity for them
- Companies need to be Authentic. To be truly authentic requires that the culture across the ecosystem is authentic. It can’t be a slogan or just one department.
- Companies must be honest and transparent. In today’s connected world customers will figure out when there is inconsistency
After Jim Champy we heard from Michael Critelli CEO (ret. ) of Pitney Bowes. One of the best aspects of this symposium for me is that we get to hear from many different industries and the symposium covers consumer based services, business to business service and even government services. It is a great mix that ASU puts together.
Michael Critelli talked about the difficult nature of B to B service and how it is more complex than consumer based service delivery. ( a man after my own heart ) He spoke about the trade offs that Pitney Bowes had to make to transform their business He suggested that B to B companies offering services have to make choices along a continuum and across several axises. These included:
- Profit center vs product integrated offerings
- How do you staff, build and hope they come or try to deliver just in time resources appropriate for the customer need.
- Range of offerings. Do you offer Kiosk (self service type offerings )or high touch and high cost (concierge type ) offering or a mix?
One point that was highlighted for me was when Michael talked about High Tech / Low Touch services that he called Kiosk services. We know from our research that the number one attribute of service favored by customers is relationship. They want to know that your interests and theirs are aligned. If you move customers to lower touch services models you lose the old methods of maintaining the relationship and need to put in new measures and triggers that will help you keep in alignment with your customers needs.
One last item that I wanted to highlight was the presentation around what the CSL does and what makes it unique. For those that know me know that I am a supporter of Service Science and Service Education. ASU is one of the leading Universities in both of these areas. Mary Jo Bittner showed us a real life example of how businesses and universities can partner to bring about service innovation and trans formative change.
Not bad for day one. That is my opinion, what is yours?
Permalink
