Service Excellence is No Nuclear Science

Nice cool restaurant. You could say exquisite. A guy walks in, with his sweet heart. Say girl friend. Mission: give her a treat of a lifetime. Food is served. Wine follows in tow. Disaster strikes: (NEPA is no big news in Nigeria!). OK PHCN. Girl: I can't even see my spoon. Man: (Shouts) Attendant, don't you guys have a gen.? Attendant: sheepishly: we have sir, but we on it at 7.30, now is only 6.30. Darkness covers the entire place. Outing is ruined. Man: I will never come back to this place; come let's go; Girl: sure. Couple departs - Leaves food, wine, and honour behind.

I was a witness.

If you were the ATTENDANT: what would you have done: noting the 7.30 ''switch on gen policy".

First creative answer wins free copy of my new book ''The Gods of Quality Strike Back''. Download at www.pauluduk.com from February 15th.

Customer Service Police On The Prowl!

Is your service quality up to scratch?

Watch your back, CSPs (Customer Service Police) are on the prowl. Dressed in plain cloth, they sniff out bad service and throw offenders to jail. The bad news: they arrest Supervisors along so no one is immune unless you give QED (Quality Every Day) Service. Be the first to Watch this 1 minute YouTube video to see the signs of things to come!
  http://youtu.be/w2SocD-2B4Q

Safe journey as you navigate the treacherous waters of service excellence in a world without frontiers!

BANISH BUREAUCRACY

Is bureaucracy good? Yes, for the dustbin!  Know that excellence and bureaucracy are strange bedfellows. How many bureaucratic organizations do you see serving the customer with passion and care? In Nigeria the when the electricity utility bureaucracy  was called National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), Nigerians called it ‘’Never Expect Power Always’’. Today in the bid to privatise the company the name has been changed to Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) but to most Nigerians it remains NEPA. So your guess is as good as mine. No bureacracy ever serves its customers with distinction, except perhaps, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Yes, and the Salvation Army. Alcoholics Anonymous too! And Doctors Without Borders! That’s about all in the whole wide world! The truth is, these not-for-profit organizations are manned by volunteers and not ‘staff’ as your typical Ministry of Works!

More than any other person in the UK, Richard Branson has spent all his energies lampooning British bureaucratic organizations, like the (old) British Airways, and to prove his points, he has set up rival outfits under the Virgin Group. Branson believes in speed, urgency and simplicity. When next you see Branson, look closely and you will notice he doesn’t wear tie. Tie is synonymous with bureaucracy and establishment thinking. All his business associates told Branson that the world did not need another transatlantic airline and Branson turned the impossible   into a highly profitable business by launching Virgin Atlantic Airline. And boy, is Virgin Atlantic profitable! Branson thrives on contrarian thinking!

                                     

As Marvin Bower once alluded, though in another context, as organizations grow and become more successful, they tend to become more self centred, and with myriad of committees and high hierarchy. As a direct result of growth and self-centerdness, the customer becomes relegated to the background as relationship managers are saddled with responsibilities unrelated to their core duty of serving the customer. Bower no doubt was castigating bureaucracy. Unbelievable as it might sound, in bureaucratic environments, sometimes, you hold meetings to decide when to hold meetings! Take the case of Nigeria’s National Assembly, for over one month the committee of the two chambers of the National Assembly set up to review the country’s constitution could not meet as the members could not decide whether the deputy speaker of the house of representatives should be addressed as co-chairman or vice-chairman. That’s how stifling a beaureacracy can be! Can you imagine the board of private sector company, say GE or IBM or MTN, not being able to meet due to the inability to decide how to designate one of the board members in pecking order to the chairman?

Jackie and Kevin Freiberg of NUTS! fame tell the hilarious story about Don Valentine, a former vice president of Southwest airlines. Jackie and Kevin were personally told the story by Herb Kelleher, the then legendary Chairman and CEO of Southwest. Herb was trying to emphasise his disdane for bureaucracy and how much premium Southwest placed on speed, action and the can-do spirit. Herb was describing the rite of passage or call it baptism of fire that Don Valentine the new marketing top gun that was hired from Dr. Pepper went through. At a meeting called on a Monday morning in one January  to discuss a new television campaign Don was asked to lay out his plan for getting the campaign up and running and he began by saying scripting would be in March, followed by  approval for the script in April, and all being equal the cast would be assembled in June and culminating in shooting the commercials in September. If 9 months preparation was standard for shooting commercials at Dr. Pepper Don soon learnt such standard was for the museum at Southwest. The story concluded by saying, after Don finally came to the end of his presentation Herb Kelleher spoke up,   “Don, I hate to tell you, but we’re talking about next Wednesday.” It was then that the scales quickly fell off Don Valentine’s eyes and as the authors surmmarised, he came to know just as other employees that at Southwest “there are two kinds of people: the quick and the dead”.

The Bridge banish bureaucracy as you may have already discerned is about speed and a sense of urgency. The can do spirit has to be woven into the very fabric of the organization from day one. It becomes the culture and is communicated through heroic stories and sagas of the past. With this mentality, unshackled by bureaucratic slow march, employees are not timid about springing into action and doing whatever it takes to help the company accomplish an objective in record time as yet another  graphic story also from Kevin and Jackie Freiberg’s NUTS! South West Airlines Crazy Recipe for Business & Personal Success illustrates. The story was about Southwest’s expansion to Little Rock. On hearing that the airline was planning to go to Little Rock, a competitor airline that was three times bigger than Southwest tried to scuttle the move by also announcing they were also heading to Little Rock in what they described as “a compressed time frame.” Herb ever the maverick who never shied away from a good fight whereever there was one despatched his SWAT Team to Little Rock barely 48 hours after the competitor airlines’s announcement and within ten days Southwest was ready to begin operations at Little Rock! In case you don’t know what an airline needs to put in place before it begins operation, this is what: you need to get departure and arrival gates, draw up  a flight  schedule, get your computers and servers up and running, buy planes of course, and decorate ticket counters. Southwest accomplished what needed to be accomplished within ten days, sub-leasing all available gates from Continental airlines and when the competitor finally arrived Little Rock, they found to their dismay that there were no gates as Southwest had secured all.  Talk about matching action with words.

In bureaucratic establishments whether government or private sector, talk and inaction are always the orders of the day, action is always the exception. In Nigeria, Zenith Bank is no doubt the action Bank. It is not uncommon to see a branch of the bank literally springing up overnight on a street where none existed before. Jim Ovia the MD/CEO of Zenith bank has no stomach for sloppiness and inaction, as an ex-staff of Zenith who is now in private practice but still works on contract capacity for Zenith related to me on my enquiry how Zenith does it. Zenith has over 300 branches in Lagos metropolitan area (my guess as the bank would not divulge the information), Nigeria’s economic powerhouse. Whenever a suitable location for a branch has been identified and a report made to Jim, the next thing he wants to know is when the branch will commence operation. While it takes some banks over  twelve months to plan each branch development, a typical Zenith branch is up and running within a month from the date the decision is made to site a branch.   Bureaucracy and profitability are common enemies. Any wonder  Zenith is one of the most profitable banks in Nigeria today!   Though Marvin Bower, the founder of McKinsey and Company was of the opinion that the list of ‘primary goals’ of a successful firm should not include profit. He felt profit should be subordinated to the overarching goal of providing sterling service. In his opinion if you did your work well the profits would come. He was quoted as going to the extent of saying ‘’any service business  that gives a higher priority to profit deserves to fail.”

 If you didn’t know, Zenith’s service is sterling. I remember my very first interaction with Zenith. That was around April 2007. I needed a debit card to pay Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) for my international passport (only Zenith and UBA issued the card as at then) and had to go to the Zenith branch not far from AP petrol station at Awolowo Road , Ikoyi. I was attended to by Mariam Musa, one of the customer service officers. She was extraordinary. She was engaged in tens of activities at the same time. The systems as usual were ‘hanging’, but she handled every thing so meticulously to divert attention from the fact. Ever smiling, she came back to me now and again to reassure me that my card would soon be ready. I played along and pretended I didn’t know what was going on. Finally my card was ready. It was now time to compliment her having satisfied my curiosity whether Zenith was up to scratch in customer service. When I told her she did a great job she appeared taken aback, and replied, ‘Sir I’m sure if I came to your bank I would get a higher standard of service, thanks all the same.’’ That is not the end of the story. Within an hour I received an email from Zenith inquiring whether everything went well. No wonder, in Nigeria today, to own a Zenith bank account is a status symbol.          

Both Peter Drucker and Joseph Schumpeter have in different contexts decried bureaucracy. Both men have said that “retaining the spirit of entrepreneurship is accomplished primarily by defying tradition, challenging orthodoxy, breaking up the old, selecting niches, and recognizing that bureaucracy and success are irreconcilable.’’

CHOOSE GREATNESS!

There are three taboos in Toastmasters. Three taboos! The three taboos are politics, religion and sex. So as Toastmasters all over Nigeria join the rest of the citizenry to perform their civic responsibilities let’s uphold the finest tradition of Toastmasters by resisting the temptation to peddle politics in the hallowed chambers of The ACROPOLIS.  In the light of Toastmasters tradition, I will toe a very fine line in this write up not to cross the rubicon (we do not endorse any candidate), as we gear up for the general elections starting today.

Victor Frankl in his Man’s Search for Meaning proved beyond all doubt that between stimulus and response there is a space. That space, he called the freedom to choose.  Unlike the birds of the air, the fish in the waters, and the animals in the fields, man is the architect of his destiny. Beginning tomorrow, we begin the arduous task of constructing our destiny. Alexander the Great was given two choices when he was seven, and then known as Alexander of Macedon.  Instead of a long and uneventful life, he chose a short life full of glory, and today Alexander the Great is amongst the handful of men in all of human history to have the title ‘Great’ appended to his name.  So beginning tomorrow,  let’s go out and choose greatness. It’s our choice! We have the privilege to choose between greatness and mediocrity, between greatness and the enemy called average, between greatness and the status of also ran as a nation.

Remember, when we all become great, our families will become great, when our families become great, our neighbourhoods will become great, our communities will become great, our local government areas will become great, our states will become great and our nation will become great. Let us take empty sloganeering with a pinch of salt. Let us close our ears to meaningless grandstanding. Let us close our hearts, our minds, and our eyes to barren ‘politics’. Let us seize the moment. Determine the destiny of Nigeria with your vote.

When that line of our national anthem that says  NIGERIA’S CALL OBEY echoes on the plateaus of the middle belt, the flat lands of our far north, the mangrove forests of the south-south, the undulating plains of the east, and the lagoons of the west, and our children ask, daddy, mummy, did you obey NIGERIA’S CALL? What shall we tell our children? What shall we tell our children’s children? What shall we tell the children yet unborn? Shall we tell them we failed?  The answer is in your vote.

I call all Nigerians to choose greatness. Greatness will help us hew great highways out of our dilapidated roads. Greatness will help us mould grandiose dams for first class power generation out of our epileptic electricity system. Greatness will help us engineer superlative citadels of learning out of our moribund and cult ridden schools.  Let us CHOOSE to bring light where there is darkness, enlightenment where there is backwardness, and progress where there is retreat into the stone-age.  A pessimist says, one tree does not make a forest, an optimist says it takes a tree to begin a forest; a pessimist sees the glass as half empty, an optimist sees the glass as half full; a pessimist sees darkness, an optimist lights a candle.  Let’s choose wisely.  Let’s make our votes count. Nigeria deserves no less.

Aristotle tells us that the roots of progress are bitter but the fruits thereof are sweet. Aristotle further tells us that the leader ought to stimulate people to virtue and urge them forward by the notion of the noble. A great leader is a servant, a shepherd, and a steward. An old Indian proverb says when you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Our leaders should live in such a way that when they die, the world cries and they rejoice. Is there one amongst them? Choose that one! Remember, leadership is not a right, but a privilege.

As we had earlier announced, in the light of the elections, the doors to the ACRPOLIS will be under lock and key on April 2nd and 9th.  However, practise your speaking and leadership skills even while queuing up to cast your vote.  Remember the rule of three. As Carmine Gallo posited, three is more dramatic than two, three is funnier than four, three is more memorable than six.   

The Top Five Lies About Service Excellence

The Top Five Lies About Service Excellence!

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.

Henry Ford (1863 – 1947)

The idea of this article came as I was going through some business cards I’ve collected over the past five or so years. I was looking for cards I needed to trash. Management consultants call the exercise I was embarking on house maintenance. I was almost half way through when I saw the card a general manager in one of the second tier banks gave me at a seminar Risk Management Association of Nigeria organised in 2006 or so.  A card deserving of a bank’s top gun, it had all the details carefully listed including website, fax, telephone numbers, email address, name, and of course title boldly written: General Manager.  I was about to trash it for irrelevance, when I instinctively flipped to see if there was anything written at the back, and sure, there they were:  The New Ordinary Bank Plc, Ass + Goat + Sheep, N50bn shareholders’ fund,  N150bn in assets, 100 branches nationwide.  

Can you see it?  Look closely. I guess by now you have seen it. Nothing was said about marching confidently into the future with five million strong enthusiastic customers, and nothing was said about the army of dynamically engaged people that would see the bank through.  So the first top lie is:  customer retention is irrelevant, while the second top lie is: the people are replaceable. Customers and employees are the two sides of the same coin. They are variously referred to as external and internal customers and great organizations go to great lengths to win their hearts and minds.  Mediocre organizations pay lip service to customer and employee retention and engagement.  Mediocre organizations retain the best parking slots in their premises for their top brass.  At their car parks you’ll see ‘cars parked at owner’s risk’ boldly displayed.  Great organizations instinctively know that the little things matter, like reserving convenient parking for customers, and like promoting their people when due.  They know that the only thing that matters is the law of action. Action wins, not the words we say because we can lie with our words but we cannot lie with our actions.

The third lie is: our size matters, the fourth lie is: the popular press and our corporate communication unit say we are great so we are indeed great, and the fifth and last lie: we have been around for a thousand years so we are unconquerable.  All the lies in the world will not make you great. A wise man once said, the fact that someone is willing to lay down his life for an idea does not necessarily make the idea correct.  If you wish to know how great you are, just go and ask your customers and employees.  Only the market place determines who is great and who is mediocre. The market place rewards great companies.  The society at large respects great companies and their leaders. Recently I attended an event where the best and brightest, and the highest and mightiest in Nigeria were invited.  It was the sending forth of Tony Elumelu, the former Group Managing Director of United Bank for Africa.   It was there I understood how society apportions respect and dispenses honour.  The CEOs of some supposedly high flying companies were not recognised as the high and mighty filed in.  To the compeer, the companies the CEOs represented were inconsequential, deserving no attention. It didn’t matter that most of them were quoted on the Nigeria Stock Exchange.

To the customer, the size of your balance sheet, the type of car your CEO drives, the décor of your CFO’s office mean nothing.  Whether the floor of your reception area is made of marble or granite is certainly immaterial to the customer, all he wants to know is what you have in stock for him, and how you make him feel. To the employee, the only thing that matters is that all your actions tell him he is valued.  Letting your people have  the first crack at the latest opening in the organization says more than all the tonnes of verbiage you put in between the covers of your glossy annual report. Size will not save you, ask GM.  The popular press will desert you, ask Merril Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Long Term Capital, Enron and Author Anderson.  That you are as old as Methusella and have had a glorious past is irrelevant to the market place, ask SONY, the once electronics icon. 

Peter Crosby once said,  ‘if we take care of the customers and the employees, everything else takes care of itself. It is hard to find an organization that both customers and employees regard with continuous affection and appreciation'.  Martha Rogers reminded business people and readers in The Conference Board article: One Customer at a Time: Competing in the Interactive Age to brace up for competition as ‘everybody everywhere wants your most valuable customers and will approach them from all channels and geographies in ways unimaginable just a few years ago. So, like it or not, yours is a global enterprise.’  The internet means people can shop anywhere anytime so even people in your neighbourhood will avoid you because of mediocre service and shop somewhere else as the five top lies will not save you. 

Paul Uduk

Author, Bridges to the Customer’s Heart

PaulUduk@Gmail.com

http://www.bridgestothecustomersheart.com/