We hear all the time that hiring is destiny:  You have to be very careful when looking for new team members—especially those who are on the front-line and Customer facing—that they’re empathetic, Customer-focused, and just plain nice.  In fact, there’s an entire cottage industry growing around hiring for your support/services/sales teams to ensure you’ve got the right fit.  Once they’re in the door, we spend tons of time (and money!) explaining our processes and procedures to our new hires so they can make an impact right away.  We may enable them with some of the greatest technology, give them awesome benefits packages, and even stock the fridge in the break room for them.  Volleyball pits, shuffleboards, ping-pong, you name it.  We’ve given them everything they need for work, and play, it seems.

Then they sit down at their desks, put on their headsets, and take calls.

And the wheels fall off. (more…)

I wrote recently about an incident at a local grocery store that sparked some thought about how sometimes we provide excuses instead of offering solutions.  Likewise, sometimes at my gym, I come across a piece of equipment that’s out of order for some reason or another.  Usually, there’s a note pinned to it alerting us that it’s not to be used.  To some degree, I’m sure the team member whose job it is to put that sign on the equipment considered his job ‘done.’  The person whose job it is to fix it?  That’s another story.

Anyway, the punchline of these and other similar experiences is that Customers aren’t as interested in hearing about why their experience can’t be better (what we’d call in other scenarios “excuses”), they just want them to be better. (more…)

The other day I spent about 45 minutes round-trip (short by standards…read on) and about $45 mailing Christmas cards.  Happy Holidays to our family and friends who receive one from us!

I use the word “mailing” deliberately because that’s all I was doing.  I wasn’t shopping for them, digging through my computer to find the file where I keep my list, writing them, addressing them, or stamping them.  This was just to mail them.  Some of them are a bit bulky, and the box of cards we bought this year (a very clever, diverse, and creative collection of truly lovely cards with lots of adornments and festoonery) even came with the caveat that they “may require additional postage.”  So, just to be safe, I bundled up and headed out to the post office.  At this time of year, doing that at 5pm wasn’t the best idea, but I got lucky and headed right to the front of the line.  That’s where my luck ended. (more…)