Chronicles from a Caribbean Cubicle
New Thinking from Framework Consulting
On a recent project, my partner and I attempted to come up with a set of practices that we considered to be basic to the delivery of a good customer experience. While these practices would have to be tuned to produce any particular customer experience, they seemed to be basic enough to be broadly applicable.
I will explain each of these practices in an upcoming post.
In customer experience programmes across the region, a real difficulty lies in getting the job done, while creating the intended experience at the same time.
At the very low standards of service we experience across the Caribbean region, it’s safe to say that the average service professional, in the process of delivering service to a local customer, does a poor job of creating any conscious experience.
On the other hand, the very best service professionals I have ever encountered are able to take even a denial of service, and turn it into a positive experience. How is that possible?
Well, I am no surgeon, but the idea of undergoing surgery freaks most people out. Yet, as undesirable as it is, a patient who survives can indeed regard the entire experience as a useful and important one in their lives. Childbirth is similar in this regard.
Not that this is easy. It takes practice, skill and awareness, and also the will to serve people in this most sacred of ways.
There are not too many fresh graduates of high schools and colleges who are able to perform this particular trick. Instead, they learn from their management how to disregard experience, and to use force to get the job done. Then, predictably, the professional can blame the circumstances for the customer’s experience, and remove themselves from a position of any accountability.
They simply are providing the worst customer experience possible.
A foreigner to the
In other words, we make the mistake to accept, say, 80% of what’s needed plus a good story as equivalent to 100% of what’s needed.
This may very well just be a human tendency that is pronounced in the region, or it might have its roots in plantation slavery — who knows? I am not even sure that it is important to understand the origins, as it might be enough to know that the tendency exists, and this must be factored into the way that everyone from the CEO to first-line supervisors manages regional professionals.
It speaks to the unwillingness we have to confront each other over low performance, and the skill that’s required to confront each other directly. Without it, there is discord, hurt feelings and even violence.
The mistake that many make is to put achievement above all else.
I remember when I lived in the U.S. and I met people who would gladly do anything to get ahead, and effortlessly step on others’ feet, heads or any other body part to get ahead. It seemed strange and out of place in my Caribbean-based reality where people were pushing hand-made carts to sell sky-juice and shaved ice for a few dollars each day.
This brilliant article at 43 Folders, a personal productivity focused blog, captures the feeling perfectly. It looks at the pointlessness that we call accomplishment and how hard it is for us to break out of the immediate world around us, and to realize the context that we in fact live in.
For example, the obvious poverty here in Jamaica constantly reminds me that I am lucky, especially at those moments when I think that my life should be as it was in South Florida.
An idea that I explored in a prior issue of FirstCuts (http://urlcut.com/FirstCuts9) addressed the idea of progressive delegation as a tool to develop a replacement management or executive.
I recently had the thought that it could be simply thought of as managing someone on a short leash — giving them small items to do, and asking them to report back on them in short time frames.
In the most extreme cases I have seen this done with the trainee reporting back up to three times per day. Some would call this micro-managing, but I think a new manager who is getting their feet wet for the first time needs a lot of encouragement and assistance when they make mistakes as soon as they make them.
Also, once they know that the “short leash” will only increase in time, they realize that their freedom to do their own thing is something that they can earn over time, once their confidence in themselves and their reliability in getting things done improves.
Over time, their boss can trust them 100% to get the job done, but it does take time and effort to get to that point.
I found the following quote to be so appropriate:
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field” — Physicist Niels Bohr.
I feel as if I am well on the way to making as many as I can, as quickly as I can!
The thing about making mistakes is that they are instructive, and teach us how not to approach certain issues and problems. In my line of work in assisting Caribbean companies, for example, it’s easy to think that what works elsewhere in the world should work here.
This remains one of the easiest mistakes to make.
This interview on the Breakfast Club with Paul Thomas, former CEO of Lascelles Division of Lascelles de Mercado, done in 2000, speaks to some of the results he realized in a major culture change programme.
Recently I put out a volunteer request for someone to edit the entries on my blog.
The author of the fine blog, BeyondBee, agreed to be my editor, and in addition to fixing numerous typos, she also indexed each of the entries.
It was the kind of thing that I could not bear to do myself, as I get quite embarrassed at some of the stuff I have said in the past, or the way in which I have written it.
She seemed to have no problem with any of it, and effortlessly fixed all sorts of errors with a smile and a willing spirit.
This blog owes her a debt of gratitude… and I hope my readers will visit her own blog to sample her fine writing. See http://www.beyondbee.net.
Here it is. Big Christmas morning, and I am at my computer typing away.
What gives?
Well, I was lying in bed thinking up all sorts of ideas to write about, including this one, and concluded that sleeping was just… boring.
I much prefer to be here — taking an idea out of my head, and giving words to it. It’s simply more fun as my computer operates as my personal canvas of sorts, a way to express myself in the world.
This past year, the expression has taken the form of audio and video, more than ever, with the publication of my first several podcasts.
Recently, I made my first foray into e-commerce, with my “New Habits-New Goals” course allowing for on-line payment through PayPal.
The truth is, I love this part of what I do — to think up new stuff, and then turn my creativity into tangible expression in the world. I lay in bed thinking that this is what an artist must feel like when they go into their studio at 4:00 am with an idea in their heads that they just cannot shake.
In May I wrote about the fact that the LIAT/Caribbean Star “merger’ was really turning out to be an acquisition.
Now, several months later, in December, all pretense of a merger has fallen away and the only public conversation is about the pending acquisition.
This, in an article from Caribbean360.com:
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, November 15, 2007 – The seven-year-old Caribbean Star will operate its final flight today, marking a takeover by competitor LIAT, in a buyout that Chairman, Jean Holder describes as “one of the most significant business deals in the history of the Caribbean”.
Late last month, the two carriers finalised and executed an agreement that facilitated the transfer of Caribbean Star’s assets to LIAT. That asset purchase agreement did not include the remaining five aircraft leased by Caribbean Star which are expected to be transferred to LIAT in a separate transaction expected to coincide with today’s closure of the carrier, owned by Antigua-based Texan billionaire Sir Allen Stanford.
Would it have been more truthful to just say this from the very beginning?