What is your word worth?
I recently had a particularly silly experience with the US Postal Service.*
I mailed an envelope (containing nothing more than a copy of my very thin, light book) from Denver across the country to a client. The estimated arrival time on the east coast was to be two days. In fact, I sent two identical packages from the same place at the same time to two equidistant (from me) places on the east coast. One arrived exactly as promised. The other? A week and a half later (I spent that time bemusedly watching via the tracking on the USPS website as it made its way up and down the coast), it finally arrived.
So I called the Customer Service number and asked for what any other Customer in his or her right mind would request: A refund for their complete failure to do what they’d promised.
Their response?
“Sorry, sir, it’s just an estimate.”
Well, yes, I know it’s an estimate. You never know what may happen, after all. For what it’s worth, there was no force majeure during this time, but from time to time things will happen that are simply accidents or other issues. Packages slip between cracks, trucks break down, someone—I dunno—actually goes postal? Anyway… […]
I’m a greedy networker
I’m a selfish networker. But hear me out; I don’t mean it the way you probably think I do.
When you read that first sentence, you probably conjured in your mind a picture of that guy who shows up to the networking events with a bunch of his business cards, introducing himself around telling people what he does and asking, “Do you know anybody who needs that?” Or even, “Do you need that?” This guy’s out there, basically soliciting. And there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that.
That said, a professional networker (or one of those consultants to consultants) would likely say, along the lines of good vibes and karma, that it’s better to go into situations like that more with a sense of giving than receiving.
Well okay, but I’m still selfish. And here’s how I mean that: […]
Operationalize
I used to say that I don’t know anything about Marketing.
Then I started spending a lot of time with marketers. They’re an interesting bunch, and considering that, as I like to say, Marketing and CX share two sides of the same coin—that being the Brand Promise—I’ve had many conversations as our work compliments each other.
But what of that interaction; the interaction between Marketing and Customer Experience (functionally, I mean)?
The way I see it (and here’s your chance to validate that, perhaps, I still don’t know anything about it!), Marketing is all about building a Brand; at least in theory. I don’t mean that’s my theory. I mean that the brand that Marketing builds is, well, still on paper, so to speak. […]
Shu Ha Ri for CX?
Having spent a lot of time in education—corporately doing plenty of L&D work, having had lots of clients delivering workshops and such, and of course as a professor—I’m intrigued by how folks learn. What’s lost on a lot of educators, unfortunately, I’ve found, is the purpose of education in the first place.
Now, I don’t mean ‘capital-E’ “Education”, in the sense of higher-level pedagogical high-falutin’ smart-guy how-to-teach-people stuff (as its own profession, say). Rather, I mean in-front-of-a-class-all-day, getting-stuff-across-to-people-so-they-can-do-stuff-type work. It’s in that longer-defined latter sense that I think people in the former view miss the real reason we want people to learn: Not simply to have knowledge, but rather, so they can use what they’ve learned.
Anyway, this occurred to me recently when I ran across a new (to me) concept called Shu Ha Ri.
I’ve always guided myself as a teacher by a couple similar (and related) phrases:
- Use the tools, don’t let the tools use you; and
- It’s okay to do it wrong, as long as you’re doing it right.
(If you know me or have ever sat through a class I’ve taught, you’ve heard me use either of both of those a lot.)
Well, Shu Ha Ri embraces this philosophy to a T. […]
No, I don’t want to log in
I recently had a ridiculous interaction with one of our household service providers. I had a general question about one of their policies and went online to check out their FAQs to see if I could get an answer. A usual pet-peeve of mine, that endeavor was fruitless (whoever determines which questions are “frequently” asked clearly spends no time considering questions people may have), but for another article altogether.
So I engaged the chat function.
Navigating beyond the bot, which had little more than the FAQs to share (pet-peeve number two…are we keeping track of other articles I need to remember to write?), I got to a person and posed my query.
The actual person with whom I was chatting immediately asked me for my account number to verify me.
Nah, that’s okay, I said. I’m not inquiring about my account or any activity or charge or anything like that. I just have a question about your policies. Can you tell me, …?
I’d be happy to help, came the reply…I just need to verify you in the system first. […]
Getting CX Right: Copper Mountain Resort
I posted about this way back when it happened, but I’m enjoying working from the mountains these past couple weeks, so the experience is in mind, and I figure it’s worth drawing your attention to it in a more formal manner:
Copper Mountain ski resort in Summit County, Colorado, is my mountain. I love it, so I’m partial to them anyway. If your kid brings home an A, he’s the smartest one in school. So, I may be inflating this experiene a bit. (I could offer them plenty of CX criticism, like why on earth do they close the Excelerator lift at 3:30 when there’s still plenty of skiing left to do up there?! But anyway.)
And, in reality, this example of GCXR is, fair enough you’ll see, a bit esoteric to us CX practitioners. But still, here goes: […]
