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Already, always networking

The finishing touches are being put on Framework’s new ebook on Caribbean networking and it struck me that a professional is always networking, whether they want to or not. This can easily be seen with what is currently happening on Facebook, which is making the activity of networking in the region much, much easier than it has ever been in the past.

When the topic of Facebook comes up, the reaction is usually one of two: either they talk about how addictive it is, or they talk about how little time they have and how they are too busy to be on Facebook.

The difference is interesting — because Facebook does make networking easy. In fact, it makes almost ALL aspects of networking easy, effortless and it saves a great deal of time and effort.

It defies explanation to those who don’t understand it, but I am coming to realize that those who don’t have the time to be on Facebook are probably also the ones who don’t have the time to network. In other words, they are willing to leave their networking to chance. They are willing to squeeze the activity in a little here and there.

What they don’t know is that they would get a much bigger bang for their buck if they were to use a networking tool like Facebook. It is an extremely high-leverage activity.

Also, it is easy to see that on Facebook, the number of people using the free service is indirectly proportional to age. In other words, younger people have networks in the hundreds, while older people can hardly find ten.

The fact of the matter is that younger people are better networked than older people, and are using tools to give themselves a tremendous advantage over their older peers. They understand that they are always networking, whether they are thinking about it or not.

Their profile in Facebook is doing the work for them, and their presence in their friends’ networks speaks for who they are in an efficient and time-effective way.

Those that “don’t have time” to network are stuck with the old practices — attending functions, giving out business cards, etc. — that all take time, money and paper and they just have no idea what they are missing.

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Customer Experience Programmes Falling Through the Cracks

Customer Experience programmes are some of the most difficult for large corporations to manage, and many end up falling through the proverbial cracks.

I remember when I first heard the concept a few years ago, and applied it to my company newsletter, FirstCuts.

I found myself undertaking an out of body experience that was difficult. I had to imagine what it was like for a subscriber to go through all the touch-points that they would encounter, regardless of whether or not I had control over them or not.

Luckily, I subscribe to many newsletters, so I had a way of thinking about the service I was providing in terms of what I would have liked to see someone provide to me. It still was not easy, however, and resulted in my having a to create a tool to understand the different experiences that a customer could have at each touch-point (The Service Inventory.)

The problem is compounded tremendously in corporations.

Unfortunately, the touch-points that a customer experiences don’t all fall into one nice department called “customer experience”. In fact, most customers’ first touch-point has nothing to do with service in many cases. Instead, people’s first impression might be through the company’s advertising, a speech given by the CEO, what their cousin told them about the company, or the fact that they couldn’t find parking when they made their first visit.

These are all critical touch-points that help to create the emotional bundle of experiences that customers are left with at the end of the day.

What makes this all hard for companies, and for the heads of customer experience departments, is that they must somehow find a way to influence the entire company to provide a different set of touch-points for customers.

And this is why customer experience programmes often fail — companies either reduce them to mere customer service, or they fail to get the entire company to buy in on the importance of looking at all the touch-points, from the CEO on down.

It takes a total commitment to deal with all the touch-points that customers experience, and the truth is that customers don’t care which department is failing to give them the experience they want at the moment, all they know is that the company is bad.

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Substituting Being Smart for Being Organized

Here in the Caribbean, smart professionals sometimes get quite lazy.

They have quick minds which they use to run rings around people who are not quite as sharp as they are, don’t know how to hold them to account, and are unable to see behind their lack of organizational skills.

They are used to dealing with people who aren’t quite as smart as they are, and are able to get away with procrastination, arriving late at meeting and being sloppy with their commitments because they are able to “make up for it in the end” with a blast of concentrated effort.

The only time they run into trouble is when they come upon others who are either as smart as they are, or more organized than they are, or demonstrate a willingness to hold them to account for their promises. Then, the game is up, and if they don’t “up their game” to the next level, they are likely to fail, or be fired or be sidelined.

This laziness results in lower standards, failed objectives and a general sloppiness that pervades corporate Jamaica, and businesses across the region.

I compare this with my experience in some of the best corporations in the world. The difference is not merely one of size, but it starts with the choices that are made by one smart person, compared to another.

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FirstCuts 17.0 — Expats of the Caribbean

Don’t expats have it easy? They get the best of everything: higher salaries, better benefits and special treatment all around. In our small island homes, we have no idea what it takes for an outsider to transition to live in our own culture, and our ignorance is costing us dearly.

Read or listen in to the latest issue of FirstCuts to see what your Caribbean company could be doing differently now.

Please leave your comments on this issue below.

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Advice from a Giant

George Phillip was a quiet giant of Jamaican industry, and his recent passing away was a blow to most who knew him.

I had the chance to interview him for our recent study “The Trinidadian Executive in Jamaica” before he passed away, and he was generous and insightful — so much so that he was someone I wanted to do an audio interview with, until I heard the news. He was the most successful Trinidadian executive to work in Jamaica.

One unverified piece of advice he was known to give had to do with terminating Jamaicans. He said something to the effect that when one is terminating Jamaicans, one needs to go an extra mile.

“Johnson, as you know we are doing some downsizing and unfortunately your name has come up as someone to let go. As part of your separation, you are due to receive $X for each year of service. However, to help ease the transition we have decided to give you an extra $Z, just to acknowledge the work you have done in the company and to help make things easier.”

His point was that that little extra step is critical in leaving a Jamaican worker feeling respected.

George was right on the money — what we Jamaicans call brawta (a little extra) goes a long, long way.

During my interview with Douglas Orane at HRMAJ, he mentioned a study that was done at the U.S. Embassy. It showed that the Americans complained that Jamaicans were too casual, always late, etc. The Jamaicans had one complaint — Americans were rude, never said hello or good morning and left them feeling disrespected.

Whether this is a true story or not is to be discovered, but I am sure George would agree with the finding.

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Creating a Better Regional HR Conference

The HR Conference season is over for 2007, and I have some observations, and some goals I have set for myself that hopefully will spur on some exciting activities in 2008.

So far I have attended and spoken at 2-3 HRMAB’s, 2 HRMATT’s and 3 HRMAJ’s. I have been to a couple of JEF conferences and also a JIM Conference. I may also have lost count of one or two here and there…

What is striking about our conferences is how limited they are to the attendees of the country. At HRMATT, there were 2 Jamaicans and a single Bajan. At HRMAJ there was one Bajan (the same one) and one Trini. At the last HRMAB conference there were 2 Jamaicans, and perhaps 3-4 Trinis.

The numbers don’t augur well for what we are all attempting to create — a regional body that unites all practitioners across the region. At the moment, the only unifying entity that exists is CaribHRForum, the regional discussion and email list.

Under the auspices of CaribHRForum, I am thinking about doing more to help regionalize our conferences. So far, I have come up with the following ideas:

  1. Find out why people aren’t attending the conferences across the region (a survey maybe?)
  2. Determine what needs to change to enable them to attend
  3. Sharing the outputs from each conference across the region
  4. Giving cross-conference awards e.g. best paper submitted to a conference
  5. Granting conference discounts for those who travel to attend
  6. Setting dates early in the planning year to allow for those who want to attend to do so
  7. Approaching cross-regional companies to sponsor several conferences at the same time

Does anyone have any other ideas about what we can do in the short term to generate greater attendance?

As budgets get created for 2008, does attending a regional conference show up on HR budgets as a priority? If not, is it because the company has no interest in CSME, or is it because the case has not been made for HR to be an important part of the changes that are coming?

I am eager to hear. Let me know your thoughts.

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JaCSA Graduation Event

This past week I had the opportunity to speak to the graduates of the first Jamaica Customer Service Association Certification Programme.

It was a wonderful event, to be sure, and I was surprised to discover that I had become known for the work I had done to define what I call the “3 Levels of Service” that I had witnessed here in Jamaica.

It was a bit startling to be told that I was “the Frien’ Service Guy” — based on one of the three levels of service. They had read and assimilated the points had I made in that blog, and apparently it had become something of a mantra for them.

This was exciting, particularly as I remember when the idea hit me, and I thought it was something of a joke for me to share with my friends. I never imagined that it would be included in a class on customer service, or that students would be using the idea in such a playful, and innovative way.

I shared this with my wife, and noted how powerful it was to give away ideas. It gave proof to the idea that I have on my website that ideas are strengthened when they are shared (a concept taken from “A Course in Miracles”). There are many who think, as I used to do, that ideas are stolen when they are shared, but in this respect “I’ve come a long way baby!”

I was encouraged by some to turn the ideas into a book, which is something that I think I would enjoy doing. In the meantime, I’ll be testing all the ideas here in this blog before fixing them up for “prime time.”

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Customer Service: Comments

In a comment on this blog, Crystal made some excellent points. Among them were:

Weeding out the wrong candidates is definitely a must because all the training in the world would not prompt an employee who is not customer service oriented to assist a potential customer. Unfortunately for a vast majority of the Caribbean this is not an option. Many businesses taking this route will be left with closed doors. It is difficult for them to attract employees much less the right employees. I have witnessed quite a few instances where customer complaints have resulted in a mere slap on the wrist or no consequence at all to the employee, all because business owners need these employees to keep their doors open. I believe that it would take an instance of outright theft for them to let an employee go.

There is some definite truth to this, as the difficulty of finding employees in Trinidad, and to a lesser extent, Barbados is well documented. Yet, the lack of service in Jamaica which has rampant unemployment, does not bode well for that theory. However, I would argue that the general service level in Jamaica is higher than it is in the other islands; this from personal experience.

Too often business owners in the Caribbean do not reflect the attitude that they want their employees to portray. Many treat their staff with disdain, mistrust and so they reap the benefits of their deeds.

I believe that this is the crux of the matter, and is reflected in the book “Why Workers Won’t Work” and other studies and reports. Incidentally, a summary of the book is available at our website.

Not to say that the employees are not a fault, many refuse to utilize the training given seeing the current job as a stepping stone and so they are not required to give their all.

Let us say that they are not taught how to give it their all, especially in a customer service relationship.

My wife suffered recently at the hands of a doctor who had no problem having her patients wait for hour without apology. She also “prescribed” J$4000 of Herbalife products when she came in with a stomach ache… none of which happened to be covered by insurance, but which she made a profit as a distributor in her multi-level marketing “business.”

Where does a doctor learn customer service skills? An accountant? A lawyer? Certainly not in school. Yet, they are called upon to use their undeveloped skills each and every day with an unsuspecting public.

In our small economies, I imagine that 90% of high school graduates will have occasion to work in a customer service capacity at some point, without a single hour of customer service training whatsoever.

The problem is that we are well able to pick bad service out when we see it, but terribly poor at seeing and stopping ourselves when we are the ones delivering it.