Customer Service - The Pedestal Group

A “Fun” Competition

Anyone who knows me knows I am all about having fun. Having a meeting? Do something to make it fun. Balloons are fun – colors are fun – don’t just be boring and “professional”. A person can be both! Today, my husband sent me a link to The Fun Theory. These experiments are part of a contest to find ways to change behavior through fun sponsored by Volkwagen. And what great ideas they are so far! One covers a staircase in material that turns it into a piano. They showed a huge increase in people taking the stairs just to play music. And the thing is, not everyone who took the stairs showed any reaction. They just walked up the stairs as if it were normal that music came out. But, they still took the stairs.

The other one I watched had a noice maker installed in a garbage can so that when you threw something away, it sounded like it fell for miles. The great result of this one was people looked around for trash to throw in it! Not only did this encourage people to get the trash in the trash bin, but also to clean up the park around it!

So what can you do in your business to make it fun? In presentations do you tell funny stories? If you have to complete large forms, is there a funny part hidden in it somewhere? (I know a person who put a clause in every contract he ever wrote that said, “if you find this and call me to discuss it, I will pay yuo $150”. The bummer thing is no one ever called!) What is the part of your process your customers hate? Everyone has one. What can you do to make it fun?

Find the Signals

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On 7/30 Fritz, my dog, graced us with his Top 10 Management Tips. Fritz and I spend a lot of time together and I am routinely amazed at what he knows and does. I have always (foolishly) considered myself to be the provider and Fritz to be the customer but I realized this morning, I have that backwards. Fritz is a classic small business executive!

This morning, as usual, I started to close a phone call and Fritz was sitting up, ready to go play / walk / do something. Since we have only worked together for nine months, I was surprised at how quickly I came to expect this behavior. But from Fritz’s perspective, how did he learn what the end of a phone call sounded like? He can’t understand the words and he certainly doesn’t understand what that black thing that is constantly near mom’s head is, so how did he learn? HE OBSERVED. He knew what he wanted (my attention) and he observed what happens right before he could get it. Now he also did experiments – climbing up my chair at various intervals – but he quickly learned that the black thing took precedence. But he also learned over time that there was a certain cadence to my voice as I wrap up a call. “Great! Talk to you soon! Bye” translates to “now I can pay attention Fritz” in his mind.

Okay – that’s all nice Kath, but so what? Well, if you are a small business owner, it is a good bet you don’t have a magic mirror that lets you see into your customer’s operations. You don’t know what they are doing when they finally pay attention to you. So what can you observe? What can you take from Fritz and use yourself to learn how to be ready just at that moment the customer has to choose to make another phone call or pay attention to you? How can you be sitting up ready to play?

The advantage you hold is your ability to communicate. Fritz can’t ask me “what is that black thing and why do you care?” but you can. Talk to your customers about how they made the decision to come to you. How did they remember you were the solution to their problem? What trigger led them to notice you were ready to play?

Think about it, call your customers, try some experiments. For me, well, it is time to go throw the toy in the yard.

No Sub-Folders? What next?

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David Johnson at BNet wrote today about his use of “metadata” and Windows Vista search to find his documents. They are all stored in ONE folder. I knew this was coming but I didn’t realize it was already here. And I’m just not ready to do it.

In the past, computer users were taught to file things in folders and sub-folders to keep everything organized, much like you would in a file cabinet. Organizational specialists told you to file things based on your first reaction to where it should go so you could easily find them again. Many people embrace this organizational structure but just as many file everything on their desktop (scary – I know).

Several years ago I implemented a content management system that used metadata to store and retrieve records. We struggled for a long time as to what would be assigned to each record until the vendor asked the magic question – what is the minimum information you would accept to find a document? Suddenly we had a context. If someone came to the counter and wanted a document, what was the bare minimum information they had to have to get what they wanted. Example – they couldn’t ask for “some student who was female and graduated in 1992” (this was a student records program on a campus) but they could ask for “Kathy Breitenbucher, graduated in 1992”. If the peson requesting had the student’s social security number that was enough, etc. And so began my discussions of metadata.

Shortly thereafter operating systems started talking about metadata. The idea is you create a document and then assign the metadata to it. Then, when you need the file, you just run a search and there’s your document. We’re all used to searching the Internet for stuff so what’s the difference? Well for me, it is changing everything about the way I work. I considered using the “find file” feature a failing of my organizational structure. I mean, if I put it somewhere, I should know where, right? So now I’m suppose to do away with all of that and always search. Hard to get used too.

I know David is right and this is the smart way to manage data. It is more efficient, leaves less room for error or misfiling and in the long run should save time. But giving up my folders? I’m just not there yet.