The Meeting to Decide Whether to Outsource the Call Center

May 4, 2011 By 7 Comments

Note from Art: this is a rave. I was on the receiving end of one too many miserable support experiences recently, and this is my, “I’m Madder than Hell…” response.  Back soon with my regularly scheduled and much milder content on management and leadership.

Executive One: The numbers are undeniable. The money we’ll save by outsourcing the call center to (insert country where English is neither a primary or secondary language) will add a full percentage point to our earnings this year.  The savings come from paying below poverty-level wages and instead of a building, we’re giving the people Burner Phones and letting them work wherever they want.

Executive Two: Has anyone thought about the customers?

Executive Three: Screw the customers. If they don’t like the service, they can switch to one of our competitors.  And we all know that our competitors do the same thing.  We’re just keeping up.  I fully support this initiative.

Executive Two: Won’t this adversely impact our image?

Executive One: We’ve done extensive polling, and we project that our customer satisfaction ratings will move slightly from their current “Dissatisfied” to “Genuinely Pissed Off.”  We can live with that.  This keeps us well ahead of our two competitors who have ratings of “Hate Beyond Comprehension.” Heck, we might even pick up some customers if we market this right.

CEO: Do the people in this call center speak English?

Executive One: Yes, a bit. We’re exposing them to one new Dr. Seuss book every month. You should hear them read “Green Eggs and Ham.”  And remember, our manuals are written in a combination of Kanji, Sanskrit and Pig Latin, so the customers will feel relieved to connect with someone who they can partially understand.

Executive Three: My favorite is Yertle the Turtle. Bet they’ll love that one.

Executive One’s Lackey: Don’t forget, we’ve created a fail-safe system to reduce call volume. The phone menu is a lot like playing “Angry Birds” blindfolded, and we suspect that 40% of callers will never reach the level where they connect to a real person.

Executive One: That’s right, Lackey. Thanks for reminding us. This is actually part of our corporate “Educate America” program, where we encourage more people to think for themselves and solve their own problems. And if someone is really stumped on an issue they can always use Twitter to get help.

CEO: Brilliant…I’ve been looking for a social media strategy and you just nailed it.

CEO: One last question, who do I call if I have a problem with one of our products?

Executive One: No worries, we’ve got our best local engineers available on call to take questions from the executive group.

CEO: Brilliant, how fast can we get this started.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

To all of the Executive One’s and CEO’s who perpetrate these miserable systems and services on customers, in my most heartfelt tone, you are complete asses.

If Dante were writing his Diving Comedy today, there would be a special level of hell reserved just for you. I suspect it would involve a miserable support call where you never get the answer, lasting for what seems like eternity. After all, that’s what you do to us.

Get a clue. Respect your customers. Put the support help in the market you are doing business in…and if that happens to be here in America, hire, train and support some Americans.  I for one am tired of the crap you pass off for support.

As for you geniuses who have decided that live support is only at the end of an instant message, your level in hell is currently under construction.

 

Filed Under: Leadership, Performance Tagged With: , , , ,

Suddenly, Deming is Relevant Again

February 12, 2010 By 15 Comments

demingIn my opinion, he’s never been irrelevant as a management philosopher, teacher and advisor, but our fast-moving, idol-for-a-minute, fad-crazed modern culture, we’re quick to write off those thinkers and doers from prior eras as yesterday’s relics…interesting perhaps, but irrelevant.

If you are a younger reader, the man that I am referencing in this post is W. Edwards Deming, the late and in my opinion, great management philosopher and consultant. Dr. Deming is certainly well known in quality circles (bad pun intended), but scour today’s current management books and if you’re lucky, you might find an occasional reference.  Fascinating treatment of a man that inspired and guided the rebuilding of a country (Japan) and that spent his last years trying to “keep American companies from committing suicide.”

Through no fault of their own, my recent informal polling of some really sharp university students (undergraduate and graduate), I found through the “show of hands” method that very few had ever heard of Deming, and those that knew the name didn’t really know much about him.

I refuse to let a group of talented emerging professionals run through any management course of mine without spending some time with Deming, and introduced them via a 15-minute interview that he conducted in 1984, entitled “Management’s Five Deadly Diseases.” I encourage you to do the same.  It’s fifteen minutes of pure Deming in his affected, slow and hard to understand speaking-pattern, filled with wisdom for managers that transcends time.  I’ve added this and a few other readings to your homework list below.

Following my Tuesday night showing of this video, I caught up with one of my favorite management thinkers, Bret Simmons at his Positive Organizational Behavior blog in a great post, “Toyota’s Quality Mess: What Would Deming Say?” Bret and I exchanged some notes reinforcing the impact that Deming’s work has had on both of us in our careers.

Homework for Your Career:

If you are curious to learn more and improve your understanding of the role of a manager and perhaps improve your performance, consider this homework list:

  • Visit the Deming Institute and learn more about his “Theory of Profound Knowledge” and his “14 Points for Management.”
  • And if you’re really into it, find a copy of “Out of the Crisis” and shudder at the parallels and still relevant lessons.

The Bottom Line for Now:

I’m most definitely in the camp that says that the science and art of management have not moved forward much in the past 100 years and that has to change.  I’m also critically concerned about learning from the past and understanding the wisdom of those that came before us.  We’ve not yet moved beyond the flaws and failings that Deming saw clearly in the management practices of the industrial revolution. And in fact, the only way that we will move forward is through conscious effort, or should I say, “constancy of purpose.”

You owe it to yourself, your career and your firm to understand and learn from this great man.   I’ve outlined the homework.  The test results will be visible at the end of your career.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leading Change, Performance, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Looking for A Framework to Rebuild Your Business? Think Baldrige

August 25, 2009 By 11 Comments

My own personal observation is that the Baldrige National Quality Program is one of the most misunderstood, unknown and poorly marketed great programs for organizations seeking a framework for business performance improvement.

Cash for Clunkers, it ain’t! We would all be better off if it got one-tenth of the airtime of that well documented automobile sales promotion.

What’s the first thing that you think of when you hear Baldrige? Of course, quality jumps to mind and specifically, thanks to advertising, many people think of automobile quality. If you’re like most people, you’ve seen pictures of the actual glass award in commercials and you might have even viewed a clip of one of our Presidents shaking hands with the CEO of a Baldrige winner.

I recently asked a small group of professionals what they knew about the Baldrige program and one person asked whether it wasn’t a quality award for winners of the JDPower survey! At least she was partially right, as quality is an important component.

OK, and in my opinion, that’s the other misnomer. Certainly the program has its roots in Quality (with a capital Q), but it’s much more comprehensive than the many other very good programs and frameworks that focus specifically on quality and process improvement.

Baldrige is a comprehensive framework for organizational performance excellence, focusing on seven core categories (the criteria):

  1. Leadership
  2. Strategic Planning
  3. Customer and Market Focus
  4. Measurement Analysis and Knowledge Management
  5. Workforce Focus
  6. Process Management
  7. Results

From the Baldrige website: ‘The criteria are designed to help organizations enhance their competitiveness by focusing on two goals: delivering ever improving value to customers and improving overall organizational performance.’

This is much bigger than measuring defects.  This is much bigger than a glass trophy.

Resources You Can Use Immediately:

I encourage business professionals at all levels to become familiar with the Baldrige program and the treasure trove of incredible materials…many of which are either free or low cost.

Read: The Criteria for Performance Excellence. It’s better than a month of MBA courses on understanding the criteria in detail and what factors are considered when evaluating high performance in those areas.

Download and Use: the two great surveys: “Are We Making Progress” and “Are We Making Progress as Leaders”. These are free, and you are encouraged to use, copy, distribute and employ these surveys inside your organization. (Note to my many leadership blogging/consulting/training friends, this content is golden!) Even outside of the umbrella of formal pursuit of the Baldrige Award, these survey instruments can prove remarkably helpful for any firm attempting to assess where it is at on many levels.

Review: the Judges Survey of Applicant Satisfaction presentation summarizing the survey results on what prior participants have to say about the program. Most joined for the purpose of driving improvement…not to win an award. The participants also indicate areas of improvement for the Baldrige process and examiners.

Purchase and watch: for $35 plus shipping and handling, the detailed Award Recipient DVDs. While there is a bit of program hype, mostly you’ll gain context on how some now pretty impressive small and large companies have used the program to dramatically improve their organization’s performance. These live case studies are priceless.

Talk: to a Baldrige program award winner or an examiner. The program and participants are remarkably open to inquiries and to sharing experiences and highlighting what to expect if you decide to pursue the process. Watch the videos and place a few calls and you’ll have some remarkably fresh insights and ideas on the program and how it might help your business.

Consider: applying. While there is ample material on what is involved and there will be time required to apply…and of course to assess, you gain access to some of the best, low to no cost business performance consulting on the planet through the Baldrige examiners. Again, don’t underestimate the commitment required to benefit from the process, but don’t run away from it because of that either.

The Bottom Line:

It’s time to shake our misperceptions about Baldrige. It is a powerful framework for business performance improvement. I’ve dealt with many CEOs that behind closed doors admit to not being certain about where to start and what to focus on to fuel results.

Before you call on the expensive consultants, take a few hours and investigate Baldrige. You might just find some great starting points.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leading Change, Performance, Strategy, Values Tagged With: , , , , ,

Life, Professional Development, Quality and the Art of Ceiling Painting

May 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

There’s a graduation in our house this week, so please bear with me if my blog post here has come down a few levels from the lofty topics that I enjoy writing about. 

Our youngest son wraps up his high school career and like many families across the country, we are holding an open house for friends and neighbors to celebrate the event. 

And like many husbands in similar situations across the country, I’m in charge of finishing up those chores that I put off all winter while I was writing Leadership and the Project Manager or teaching or delivering workshops or talking about performance excellence to industry groups.

Today’s chore is to paint the kitchen ceiling. 

Joy.

Many of my colleagues have chastised me for not doing a better job valuing my time and hiring out these types of tasks.  They are right on the value.  It does not pay for me to paint my ceiling when I could be doing something of a client-service nature (translation: revenue generating activities). 

Nonetheless, there is something cathartic about shifting gears, getting out of my chair and tackling a project as nefarious and diabolically difficult (to me) as doing a good job on a kitchen ceiling. 

Additionally, I come from a long-line of do-it yourself types and it is tough to fight all of the genetic and environmental conditioning that require me to grab the tools when there is work to be done.  I’m working on it, but I’m not cured yet. 

Doing a quality job on the ceiling takes total concentration, a focus on detail (the edging along the wall) and well-honed technique to ensure good coverage without lines and runs.  Add in paint with an eggshell finish because of the kitchen environment, and for me, this is no small task.  Ironically, the painting is the easiest part of the job, yet it is the preparation that ensures a great outcome.  

Like almost every job in life and in business, a successful outcome is a function of detailed preparation, a good plan and painstaking attention to the issues that potentially will impact the outcome.  The patching, sanding, masking, cutting-in and thorough application of paint are all critical to the final product. Oh, and don’t forget the drop cloths to catch collateral spatter. 

In the working environment, and in our own professional lives, our focus on learning, mastering our tools and techniques and ensuring that we place all of our energy and concentration on the task at hand are difficult qualities to learn. It’s easier to take shortcuts, but shortcuts never yield the quality we truly need to succeed and excel.  We often have to learn these lessons the hard way, but the best professionals stick with it until they complete a quality job.

As my son ends up a great high school experience and heads off to college, the metaphor fits.  I’m hopeful that he has started to understand the lessons of the painter and painting.  He’ll probably have to redo a few ceilings of his own along the way, like we all do. Hopefully though, in the end, he will also paint a few masterpieces.  

Now, I’ve stalled long enough.  The roller awaits!

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career Tagged With: , , , , ,

Sixty Years of Deming and American Managers Forgot to Pay Attention

December 21, 2008 By 7 Comments

Note from Art: this distinctly non-holiday post couldn’t wait for a better time.  There’s no time like the present for leaders and managers to be thinking deeply about their businesses and the road ahead.

Dr. Deming once stated that he hoped one of his life’s accomplishments was to keep American companies from committing suicide.  The public spectacle of Detroit and Wall Street committing suicide in the same quarter would indicate that he failed in his mission.

The site of these firms begging in the streets for alms from taxpayers is nauseating.  The impact that this gross mismanagement of the grandest kind is having on the welfare of American workers and families is also sickening.

Deming spoke, taught and wrote about what we should be doing.  He was clear in his belief that the U.S. was the “single most under-developed country in the world,” principally due to our philosophically bankrupt leadership and business management approaches.

He talked to many of the leaders in the U.S. auto industry. He described a theory of management that if adhered to, would cure U.S. firms of the “Deadly Diseases” of traditional U.S. management practices.  These were the very diseases that got automakers and so many other firms in such big trouble to begin with.  Short-term thinking, ego, false leadership models, lack of constancy of purpose and so many others that are in plain sight for all to see and fix.

From the ashes of World War II, Japanese leaders and managers worked to develop a new style of management.  This tiny country (in land mass) with no natural resource other than a motivated workforce and leaders and managers relentless in pursuit of quality and collective prosperity, rose in a few short decades from laughingstock to the world’s second largest economy.  Peel back the layers of Japanese success and you will find Deming at the center.

Deming’s Theory of Profound Knowledge and 14 points offered (and still do) keys to many of the answers.  They are not prescriptive, but rather they combine to create a philosophical approach to running a business, that if adhered to, will stand a chance of succeeding for customers, workers and partners on a global stage.

We now face the daunting task of regenerating our economy.  All of us that work, manage and lead have an opportunity to contribute.  While our ashes are paper and not buildings like Japan in 1950, the situation is just as dire.

One reader mentioned in an earlier post of mine that it was interesting how Deming was rolled out when things got bad.  My perspective: it’s interesting how we paid him lip-service when we should have worked to understand, adapt and apply his principles.

Dr. Deming saw that much of American industry had sown the seeds of its own demise in flawed management practices, even when times and numbers looked good.  If you are looking for ideas during this time of trouble, Deming’s philosophy of management is a good place to start.

*Suggested reading:  Out of the Crisis, W. Edwards Deming

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leading Change, Marketing, Product Management, Surviving Lousy Leaders Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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