Customer Service Ain't Dead Yet! 3 ways to make it work!

When the phone rang late one afternoon, I was surprised to hear the appointment person from the diagnostic center on the other end. She was calling to find out where my request for records was. OK, let's back up.  

I recently changed doctors and, because the medical industry lives in the 19th century, I had to take care of getting my medical records from Dr. A to Dr. B. When I did this about 6 years ago, I ended up transporting them myself. I'd called the diagnostic center, talked to a very helpful woman I'll call Rose and she said she'd fax me the request form.

Somehow the request form got deleted on my end but I didn't know. So at first I was surprised to get Rose's call. No problem - she'd send another one. OK - first surprise; she had followed up. But it gets even better. She gave me a direct phone number to call when I faxed the form back. She told me to tell the receptionist to come find her as she was usually away from her desk. OK - second surprise.  

When I called Rose, the receptionist said she'd go find Rose. OK - third surprise. Then I heard the receptionist put down the phone - no holding muzak hell - and after about 5 minutes Rose picked up the phone and proceeded to find the form, check it, and assure me she'd get the records sent that day. All pleasant, all helpful, and all the extra mile. OK- fourth surprise. 

I know this facility well and have been going there for almost 20 years. It's a very busy place and I'm sure lots of demands on the staff. But Rose took those extra few minutes to take care of a patient as if it mattered.  

I could fill this blog week after week with stories of bad customer service. My business takes me around the world and like any traveler I have horror stories to relate. But that's hardly news. Rose was big news.  

Here's how companies could replicate Rose:

1. Hire for people-skills talent: Anyone who has flown Southwest Airlines knows the result of this rule. Let's face it, the job of flight attendant is tough and only made more so as airlines continue to treat passengers as a pain in the *%# as they cut back on everything except new ways to charge you for the privilege of getting from point A to point B. Instead, those folks at Southwest keep cracking jokes, singing, smiling, noticing, and doing everything they can to make it a pleasant trip.

Rose genuinely cared about people. In spite of the volume of work, she kept up with the requests and when mine didn’t appear, she called. This is different than going through the “have a nice day” check list.  

2.    Involve people in devising better systems to serve customers: The folks who know most about what bugs people are those on the front lines talking to them every day, whether the local barista or person on the phone in a far-off place. Ask them. Let them come up with a way to solve the problem or suggest better ways to help customers get what they want. 

Rose had come up with her own system for making sure patients/customers got what they needed. She convinced coworkers to make sure they let her know when someone needed help and she wasn’t available.  

3.    Recognize talent and let people ‘teach’ others: This institution happens to have a great reputation and sends staff through training for many things. However, each unit and doctor is responsible for additions to the ‘corporate’ initiatives. Savvy managers know they have valuable employees who figure things out and take initiative. Why not recognize that initiative and allow the exceptional person to ‘train’ the others? 

Rose set an example for other people. Caring is contagious. (Believe me; folks outside her area in other parts of this vast medical complex are not like Rose – just the ones in her little corner of the universe.) She took it on herself to see that other people were in cahoots to deliver exceptional service. 

So hats off to Rose! Thanks. You remind me of a young man in the Shanghai lost luggage department for an obscure airline…He called me long-distance a couple of times on his cell to find out if my luggage had been located as I made my way back from an extended trip to Asia. Meanwhile, the main carrier seemed to have trained folks to be as rude and unhelpful as possible…but that’s another story. Today, we’ll glory in the Roses of this world who take a few minutes to care.

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©Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, president, Advantage Leadership, Inc.

Author: Conventional Wisdom: How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform, and Progress Like the Founding Fathers

No great historical links to the founding fathers in this post. Their letters home from the Constitutional Convention hit on all the same themes of poor service business travelers harp about today; poor food, inflated prices, lack of convertible currencies, inadequate expense budgets, slow reimbursements…plus they had to share rooms and sometimes beds with fellow (snoring) delegates! So maybe our complaints aren’t so bad.

Is Washington broken?

Making sausage is yucky

The talking heads have been going on for some time about how broken our government is and how disgusted everyone is about watching the "sausage making." Maybe so...If you were watching C-SPAN (or one of the networks covering the health care debates and votes) last night, you got a glimpse of the "process," the "rules," the jawboning, and arm twisting. But is that really a demonstration of a broken system? Was there some halcyon day in the past with the two parties discussed issues calmly and rationally and then agreed without rancor?

Not really.

Back to the first big controversy

Travel back to the very first Congress...that's right...back to 1789. There were no parties yet. (They would arise in George Washington's second term.) However, there were "factions." Groups of representatives were beginning to congeal around specific issues representing the wide variety of opinions in the country. In fact, ratifying the Constitution and setting up the government had been widely debated and many states ratified by paper-thin margins. North Carolina and Rhode Island were still not on board. So the beginnings of our government were not all sweetness and light.

The first big issue to get the blood boiling was "assumption." The states and the Continental Congress had run up huge debts during the Revolutionary War and the European creditors were howling for their money and threatening to cut off all credit to the fledgling country. Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, had brought to Congress an extensive bill to create a financial system for the U.S. The plan was for the federal government to 'assume' the debt, set up a national bank, issue bonds, and establish what we would recognize as a modern financial system.

The push back and opposition were immediate and fierce. The details are not as important as the general principles that fire today's health care and other debates. What is the role of government? What is the balance of power between the states and the federal government? Big government or small?

Leading the opposition to Hamilton's plan was James Madison. Before the evolution of party leaders and whips, he had assumed those roles and was the principle leader in the House of Representatives charged with implementing President Washington's agenda. But when it came to assumption, Madison balked, and began to retreat from his former partner in writing the Federalist. The impasse was as heated and nasty as any we have seen lately. Remember there were no rules for the press so that papers and pamphlets contained anything and everything...more akin to our blogosphere than the modern press.

The deal is struck

One evening Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, invited Hamilton and Madison to an intimate little dinner party. Although they were all quite coy later about what transpired that evening, the results were soon apparent. Madison twisted enough arms to that assumption passed the house with a few votes to spare and he could vote against the bill and keep his seat with his anti-assumption constituents. Then he engineered the quid pro quo -- the vote to establish the new capitol on a parcel of land in northern Virginia not far from GW's home. (Hamilton worked behind the scenes to forestall New York and Pennsylvania who were vying for the honor.)

So there we are...the first Congress operated just like the present one...horse trading, arm bending, rule bending, backroom (dining room) deals. The vast majority of legislation is always a compromise of some sort. We are too diverse a country for it to be otherwise. Sometimes the deals are pretty despicable and sometimes relatively benign...but there are always deals.

The founders were enamoured with the Roman Republic and wanted to emulate it in many ways. But the Roman Senate was no gathering of saints any more than the state legislatures and Continental Congress where most of the new Representatives to the first Congress cut their political teeth.

Operating as designed

So, no, the U.S. government is not broken. It operates as designed with its checks and balances, backroom deals and public posturing. It's designed to come back to the center more or less and designed to be messy like all creative processes. Only dictatorships operate without the mess.

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Read more about the founders and their leadership styles and processes...and meet modern leaders who use their same approaches. httl://www.ConventionalWisdomCenter.com and read Conventional Wisdom: How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform, and Progress Like the Founding Fathers.

Compromise -- good idea or bad idea?

Whether in the board room, the Congress, or dinner table debate, at some point someone will suggest a compromise. Then what happens? Some folks believe you should stick to your 'principles' and never give an inch. Others just want the debate to end so they'll jump at the chance. Neither extreme leads to good decisions or even good compromises. The U.S. Congress is debating health care/insurance reform at the moment and we see both types of extreme behavior on both sides of the aisle. In the end, there will be some sort of legislation passed and it will be a compromise...that's the way the system is set up. In fact, it took a major compromise to set up Congress in the first place.

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was not that much different from today's Congress. It had a variety of opinions and special interests contending with one another. It had people who were adamant on many issues. Perhaps the most contentious debate was around representation --would it be equal numbers of representatives from each state or representation based on population. The smaller states wanted equal representation as they currently had in the Congress formed under the Articles of Confederation. They feared the power of the larger states and believed they would be gobbled up without equal voting power. The large states had been constantly frustrated by the ability of small states to stimmey legislation because representation did not rest on population. Both sides drew a line in the sand...or the dusty, musty floor of the Convention meeting room. This contintious issue threatened to derail the entire convention and people were ready to bring it to a close rather than give even an inch.

The arguments were bitter, lofty, extreme, and heart-felt. Virtually no one was neutral. Then on June 11, Roger Sherman (that stern looking gentleman above) put forward a motion. It was not accepted immediately and needed to go through more debate, but in the end, the Great Compromise, as it came to be called, would be accepted. The two houses of the new Congress would be selected differently. The upper House (Senate) would be based on equal representation for each state. The lower House (Representatives) would be chosen by population. It was not an easy compromise but it was 'great.' There was lots more discussion -- the devil is always in the details -- but the compromise stuck.

It's impossible to predict what might have happened had Sherman not stepped forward and had not the majority of votes finally gone for the Compromise. Many historians believe the Convention would have broken up and the fragile Union would have quickly disintegrated and been divided up by the European powers perched on the borders.

Almost exactly one year later the required ninth state ratified the new 'compromise' Constitution and the news was officially handed to Congress July 2, 1788. That compromise saved the Union because the delegates were able to back off a little from their 'principles' and see that survival of the country -- the greater good -- was more important.

So the question for each of us today, whether in our companies, nonprofit boards or government entities, is the same one that faced the framers. Is this the point to give up 100% of nothing to embrace 50% of something that will serve the greater good? This is never an easy question because it means we won't get everything, or even a lot, of what we want. Can we live with it? Can we support it so that we will make progress, if haultingly? For strategic leaders, like Sherman and James Madison, George Washington, Ben Franklin and others at the Convention, the answer was yes. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

Will your followers, staff or constituents be able to thank you for compromising for the greater good?