While putting the finishing touches on a white paper on contact center cultures, this spilled out onto the keyboard.
It’s may not be right for the white paper but I thought I would share it.
(This is what happens when you listen to Schubert while working.)

Contact Centers form very specific kinds of cultures, which require special care and attention, and present challenges not usually seen elsewhere in the organization.  They are labors of love.

At times, it is difficult to discern a contact center culture from that of a production line, a command center or a hospital.  The origins of the contact center workforce is often diverse, at the same time, constant and committed.
Contact centers may have the highest turnover rate of any corporate discipline, but are kept running by devoted individuals that often offer entire careers to the service of those they don’t know.
A contact center reads the life-pulse of any organization, feels the tremblings of a failed business and the trends of immense growth, usually before the rest of us.
Customer contact centers hold the key to the future of our businesses through their access to the hearts and voice of our customers.  Yet, we often see them as cost centers, necessary evils in our effort to create brands.
Contact centers collect the leaks of corporate miscalculation and work knee-deep in water everyday.
Customer contact centers are one of most powerful touch-points we have, and the most directly impacting tool in creating Xtreme Customer Loyalty.

Support and visit your customer contact center, it’s good for business.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCL

This story is sad, but a little funny at the same time.

Continental Airlines Flight 47 kept about 50 passengers on this regional Jet on the tarmac overnight.
Fifty people in a regional Jet with babies and backed up bathrooms can be a pretty scary thing.

The airplane was diverted and landed in Rochester about 12:30 am.  Passengers were not let off of the plane because the security officers had already left for the day.  The airport reports that it told the crew they could deplane, but the crew disagrees. (full story on USA TODAY.)

Of course, we can expect confusion when a flight is diverted after hours to a small airport that is not serviced by the airline.
But what a difference a little front-line EMPOWERMENT would have made !

A crew member calling the police on their cell phone saying – It seems very unreasonable for us to keep 50 people in here all night.  Can you help us reach some authorities that could give us options? – Instant emotion, Instant Loyalty.

Take a chance on Empowerment, it works !

(I wonder what a SouthWest Airlines crew member would have done)

Rudy Vidal
Committed to Extreme Customer Loyalty

Copyright 2009 – Rudy Vidal

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of CCNG members in Cincinnati, and the topic of contact center cultures came up, again.  Seems to be a popular theme lately, so I thought a couple of points on contact center culture management might be nice.

Because it’s rare that people agree on the definition of corporate culture, I feel I should put one in. So, here is my definition (since I don’t like wikipedia’s)

A set of generally accepted norms and values that result in the behavioral/operational paradigm of an organization.

Regardless of the type of organization, I have found some consistencies with cultures:

• Cultures require management ownership
• Cultures cannot be changed.  They are either shifted or destroyed
• Cultural shifts cannot be mandated.  Mandate=Destroy
• Cultures are not the employees
• Cultures are usually the effect, not the cause.
• Cultures are a labor of love.

Key Levers

Before any culture work takes place, management must assume responsibility for the current and future cultures.

Culture management is much like gardening.  When the harvest is poor, an expert can easily point to our errors: we planted at the wrong time, used the wrong soil, provided too much or too little water, etc.  However, when the harvest is plentiful, we can hardly take credit for the miracle of nature, when all we did was ensure the right conditions.  Management’s responsibility is to place the right components in the right conditions and keep the balance.

When boiled down I find the key levers to be

(Expectations + People&Capabilities + Environment)/Purpose

Ensure clear Expectations.
Ensure the right People have the right Capabilities (knowledge and tools)
Provide an Environment conducive to gaining the desired results.
Alignment of each to a clear and accepted Purpose

The shifts in culture are determined by the balance of these variables in relation to the corporate purpose.

Please note: All of these variables are under the sphere of management control.  Again, management ownership is key.

Simplified Dynamics
When the key levers are sufficiently aligned to the purpose of the organization, things tend to go well.  The culture rarely feels problematic and business issues can usually be addressed through specific and focused action – ie. changing a policy, adding a person, adjusting a process etc.

When one or more of these key levers are sufficiently misaligned with the overall purpose of the organization, the culture will shift in an effort to regain purpose.  The shifts seem to happen in 2 major ways:

1. The culture will compensate through one of the key levers  (ie: people may work harder) or

2. The culture will adopt a new value system to reconcile the imbalance and justify the misalignment.

An oversimplified example:
A contact center is asked to cut costs through headcount reductions, and expected to increase its service levels.  The culture may keep alignment to the purpose by working harder.  If this solves the issue and is sustainable, the shifted culture compensates.
If the adjustment is not sufficient to achieve the management expectations, a new value system may be adopted – “Management is Unreasonable”.  This newly added cultural value will help or hinder the culture’s effectiveness (alignment).  As before, if it helps, it is accepted and maintained.   If it does not help, yet another value will be formed to further cover the gap – “the harder we work, the more they expect”.

In short, any time the culture has a continuous perception of being ineffective or misaligned, a new wave of value adjustments will take place to address the gap.  This will continue until the culture sees itself realigned or until it reaches “shift saturation”; the point where it stops making  adjustments for the overall benefit of the system.  At this point, shifts become personal in nature (at the employee level), and the inherent power of cultural wisdom is lost.

We can’t over-emphasize the importance of communications (to ensure correct perceptions) and the maintenance of balance to avoid a a series of shifts that do not serve the company well.  It is also important to keep in mind that the key levers for change hold considerable power in managing the culture and the effectiveness of the business.

Cultures Drivers
Although I know organizational behaviorists will not appreciate this oversimplification, I’ll throw caution to the wind in exchange for a graphical explanation of  cause and effect.

-    Management expectations or beliefs, set the wheels in motion.
-    These expectations result in the creation of policies & procedures.
-    The policies and procedures create an environment which promotes (or not), the attainment of the management expectation.
-    The interaction of all these with employees (at all levels), produce a cultural paradigm.
-    This culture interacts with customers.

The power of WHY?
Most management with whom I speak regarding culture are looking to “change it” in order to gain better business results.  However, the culture is rarely the cause of good or bad business results.  Unless the business model or market expectations have drastically changed, I find the culture is usually effect of an underlying cause.  Although it may definitely be problematic, it is rarely the cause of the problem.

I believe many of the difficulties in today’s corporate cultures are the result of an unclear or undefined purpose.

Most companies know WHAT they do
Some companies know HOW they do it
Few companies know WHY they do it.
See Simon Sinek

Without this clarity of purpose, the culture is usually left to rely charismatic leadership, which when changed, causes havoc and great loss of direction.

Next post: considerations for creating culture shifts.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to Extreme Customer Loyalty

Copyright 2009 – Rudy Vidal

About a year ago, I changed banks from Bank of America to MetroPacificBank in Irvine Califormia.  I was not happy with the customer service of BofA and decided to bank at a small single-branch bank hoping to get more personal service.

It was a good decision.  This last year, I had the best banking experience of my life without major issues and with great customer support.  But, as luck would have it, last month MetroPacific Bank was acquired by Sunwest Bank.   As is normal in these cases, most of the management team, including my banker, VP Colleen Brady, was let go.  At first I was a little nervous but figured that Sunwest deserved a chance.

Three weeks ago I had to open an new business account, and in making the request I soon found out that my great experiences with MetroPacific was more based on Colleen’s care and empowerment, than the result of mature customer centric processes.  My account is still not open. So, I decided to leave, in spite of the great personal efforts of Chris – a very customer centric account manager left in charge of my account. (thanks Chris !)

The lesson I learned:

When customers figure out that their satisfaction is the result of employee commitment and not the result of an institutional customer focus, they realize they are not loyal to the brand, but loyal to the employee.

I immediately called Ms. Brady and asked: “what bank are you going to?”

It’s great to have passionate, customer centric employees.  But, great employees are no substitute for institutional customer centricity.

We need to back those employees with tools, processes and policies that help them promote a corporate commitment to the customer and thereby create brand loyalty.  In addition, our customers need to see that the effort is not only in the employee, but innate to the company’s intention and values.

I hope Ms. Brady doesn’t go to Bank of America.

Rudy Vidal
Creating Profitable Customer Loyalty

Today I was brushing up on Mahatma Gandhi, his philosophy and methods. If you are not familiar with his works and philosophy beyond what media or folklore provide, I highly recommend a closer look.

While reading, it occurred to me that part of the reason customer service has a large impact on our lives is not because it is special in and of itself, but because it is an extension of the golden rule and therefore, of good social order -

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

The curious thing is that in order to follow the golden rule, we must be willing to temporarily disengage from our own condition. That is to say, we must focus on the customer’s point of view, putting ourselves in their position.

We cannot offer good service only when we feel the world has been fair to us, when things are going well, when all is just as we want it. Good customer service requires that we consider the needs of another, even as we struggle with our own. OK, this is sounding a little dogmatic, but isn’t it the essence of good customer service.

I often notice three types of customer service people.

1. Those of us whose willingness to provide XCS is dependent on whether or not we are receiving it.
2. Those of us who are simply trying our best to do a difficult job
   and
3. Those of us who have realized, strangely enough, that our own quality of life is usually positively affected by our honest effort to consider the needs of others.

Those of us in the first group, need to move to either of the others, or should consider a diferent line of work. Most of us, however, find ourselves in the second group as we move forward day to day to do our best at a job that is, at times, difficult. This is not a bad place to be.

But, the blessing of customer service work can more readily be felt in the third group, where our lives tend to improve because of our work. Where we become more tolerant and our problems seem to become less debilitating as we disengage from the idea that we are the center of the universe, while we concentrate on helping someone else.

Service does not need to be monumental or earth shattering. It just needs to consider the customer’s point of view separately from our own.

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” – Mahatma Gandhi

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS !

Your contact center is suffering from unexpected staff shortage. Two queues are are in trouble. Michelle, one of your super agents is skilled in both queues. Where do you place her?

Actually, it doesn’t matter. The point is you will decide to put the agent in one of the queues, which ultimately means, for whatever reason, you will consider one queue, a set of customers, to be more important than another.

Because service and the idea of serving people has an ethical taste, it is easy to adopt a general altruistic philosophy towards customer satisfaction. As a humanist you may believe all customers should be addressed with the same attention regardless of their economic weight on the organization, however, for a business person managing limited resources, some customers are worth more than others.

Depending on your company’s priorities customer may be more important because they purchased a strategic product or because your company needs quick market share growth in a particular segment to win a positioning battle. For whatever reason, when in a resource constrained situation, some customers are in fact more equal than others.

Great customer centric organization work hard to avoid this dilemma altogether. When Customer Centricity becomes part of our corporate DNA, we begin to proactively manage the incessant pressure of limited resources, always including the customer in our business plans, our contingencies and our innovation.

Customers are resources just like cash. The difference is that customers can appreciate the value we add and the difference we make in their lives, and therefore, can offer long term loyalty.

The benefits in the transformation of corporate DNA towards customer centricity is not only external in the way customers see us, but more internal in the way we begin to see ourselves; holding ourselves to a different standard for the benefit of our customers, and therefore our own, as a member of a social group.

“Recognizing our responsibilities as industrialists, we will devote ourselves to the progress and development of society and the well-being of people through our business activities, thereby enhancing the quality of life throughout the world.” – Konosuke Matsushita, 1932

At some point we will all have to make the decision to place super agent Michelle in one queue over another, but our intention to work towards avoiding the dilemma altogether, speaks volumes about our future.

Committed to XCS !
Rudy Vidal

I’ve been thinking about intention for a couple of days now. So, I may as well post.

I think great work of any lasting value comes through intention. In fact, I believe clear intention may be a prerequisite to greatness. I read somewhere, “if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else”. The place we end up may be a good place, but we will probably not be able to reproduce our results consistently.

Through intention we can transfer the “human-ness” of our effort to another person and increase the likelihood and strength of the potential emotion. Simply because two people purposefully and intentionally interchanging in a common interest is emotional. Intentional service.

Some touch-points are managed by technology, collateral materials and other innimate methods, but even then, our intention can be made to show through.

Without intention we run the risk of having our companies feel machine-like and impersonal, even when we do a good job. Without intention we loose the opportunity to create and be part of a culture that is sustainable, reproducible and proud.

My intention is to serve my customer as I would like to be serviced myself.
Because it feels right and brings positive emotion to all involved.

Committed to XCS !
Rudy Vidal

Ok, I’m glad to be writing about a good experience, since sometimes I think I concentrate too much on the poor ones. And, although I could use the excuse that there are many more poor ones that good ones, I still think we learn more from discussing good customer experiences.

Today, I went to a newly opened Harmon’s supermarket near my house. As a result I have decided I need to find the person in charge of training at Harmon’s because it is clear that training is the key to consistency and consistency is the key to exceeding customer expectations quickly.

From the moment I walked into the store my expectations were exceeded:

The deli guy: (a young man not older than 18), asked if I would prefer my slices of Parma ham separated by individual sheets of paper. Usually I have to spend 5 minutes peeling the paper-thin slices from each other, making a mess and causing unnecessary handling (not pretty). – Sure, if it’s not too much trouble. – Not at all, my pleasure. I’m assuming you would like them very thin, right? Yes, please.

Over to the bread counter from where a French Baguette had been staring at me for some time. – Could I have a Baguette please? – Of course, can I offer you a sample of it first, to make sure it meets your expectations? – Yes, that would be nice. Delicious, I think I’ll take two.

Over to the prepared foods: – Could I have a pound of the mozzarella, tomato and artichoke salad? -You’ll be glad you chose it, and you will not feel bad you didn’t make it yourself. The Mozzarella is fresh, the artichokes were cooked today and the tomato’s are those off the vine, right behind you. Would you like to try it first?. – No, no need thank you, I know fresh mozzarella when I see it. – By the way, that Baguette and this salad were made for each other. – I know, I can’t wait.

Where can I find the honey? – let me take you to it. – if you point I’ll find it. – No, its my pleasure, right this way please.

At check out: Do you prefer paper or plastic? You gotta be kidding me, right? – No sir, your choice.

What happened at Harmon’s today is special. Not because I was treated well as a customer but becuase in one day (my first visit) I had enough great experiences to bring me to a tipping point about the store.

Normally, most retail establishments need multiple visits to gain the trust and loyalty of a customer. This takes time, and money. Harmon’s on the hand, was able to provide me enough examples of excellent service and quality to exceed my requirements for loyalty, on the first visit ! This means they shortened the meantime to loyalty and thereby increased their velocity of cash. Brilliant !

What made this possible was consistancy across the employee base. What made that possible was training and hiring. Very good training and very good hiring.

The right people, in the right seats, on the right bus, well trained, following a clear vision.

That’s beautiful.

Kuddos to Harmon’s in Draper, Utah !

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS !

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at Panasonic Computer Systems Company’s National Team Meeting in Tampa. As with most sales meeting, the purpose was to educate, promote and motivate the sales force towards increased efficiency and effectiveness.

Unlike most sales meetings, nearly all of the speakers (The Chairman of Panasonic North America – Yoshi Yamada, High level dignitaries from Japan’s Parent Company Matsushita Electric, and local senior management) spent considerable stage time speaking about Customer Satisfaction, or as the corporate culture addresses it, Customer Comes First.

Matsushita’s founder, Konosuke Matsushita (KM) was a visionary who saw the customer as the necessary focal point for a successful business before the concept was an accepted piece of common business sense.

I worked at Panasonic Corp. of America for a long time. In fact, I would say I grew up there and cut my corporate teeth under the influence of KM’s philosophies. It is clear to me that who I am and what I believe about customer satisfaction is, in large part, the result of this experience.

I often tell the story of reading an article in a business magazine as I was starting my working career. The story was about KM and his philosophies on business and social responsibility. Immediately I knew I would do all I could to work in his organization.

We all would like to think we are original in our thinking, but in reality we are greatly influenced by our environment and by key personages in our lives.

I have a passion for customer service and for the concept of turning the power of corporations towards social good. My idea? I think not.

I’m just thankful to have had the opportunity for such exposure.

We would all be better served to address a bit of KM at all of our Sales Meetings.

Committed to XCS !