Stop promoting customer service people

One of the common entry positions
in most companies is the customer service department.  This is the silo where we take nice people who need jobs, and let them interact with our customers.  In some cases, the employee has extensive training about the company’s product or service.  In most cases, however, they are thrown into the lions pit, with only a reference manual or computer system as their defense.

It’s time to sink or swim.
It’s obvious that the sinkers are those I would define as just not cutting it.  No worries, however; these people will be just fine, because they are nice.  And with one more customer service position on their resume, and another set of interviews added to their training, you can be certain they will land on their feet soon.  One day, they may even make it to middle management (and lose that “niceness” quality).

For those who are just treading water,
they will have to start swimming sooner or later.  Otherwise, the job will get tiring, and the complacent will eventually sink or be sunk.

As all swimmers would agree:
it’s a daily grind.  Each day brings on new challenges (that the sinkers passed on), and new knowledge is acquired about the company.  These are the folks who actually care about the customer, and feel compelled to be more than nice: they have a burning desire to aid the customer. As knowledge from the other silos is consumed and loopholes in the computer system are traded, a burning desire to be doing more is the characteristic of someone who will soon leave the department.

It’s promotion time,
and The Company can no longer justify the salary for those champion swimmers.  They have picked up too many skill sets and learned too much about The Company’s products and services.  The only thing to do is “promote” them out of this silo and into a new one.  But do you see the problem here?  They just took someone who is very valuable to the customer, and promoted them away from the customer.

Shouldn’t we be promoting people into customer service and not out of it?

Please stop kicking talent out of the customer service silo.
Seriously, knock it off.
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Social Media people are social

Social Media has the word social in it.
I’m not trying to point out the obvious.  I’m enlightened by that statement.  Social Media is a terminology used for this new thing that’s going on over the internet.  It’s linked with digital marketing, SEO, and branding.  But at the root of that term is the word social.

According to wikipedia…
The term Social refers to a characteristic of living organisms (humans in particular, though biologists also apply the term to populations of other animals). It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.

At the 3rd annual Social Media of Arizona conference
I took a series of refresher courses in this field by listening to some awesome speakers.  Greg Chapman, Matt O’Brien, Arnie Kuenn, and Laurie Buczek were a few of the brilliant minds that I listened to.  I am thankful for everyone’s time in putting together such engaging content.  As always, during a SM conference, I was meeting the “attendees” over twitter during each speaking session.  We were live tweeting important points, retweeting those points, and joking over things like a can rolling down the isle, or my favorite – how to spell spyfu.

Then we get to meet.
Grabbing lunch, going to the bathroom, or just standing around recharging gadgets – you get to talk to people!  The same people you just heard speak, or random strangers, or people you just “met on twitter” are all people you can talk to.  You socialize with real people and then realize that social media’s most important aspect is the word SOCIAL.  There’s no ROI that I can compute, but I can tell you that the relationships I formed at this conference are important.  These people are awesome!  (You know who you are).

Relationships are important.
So next time you’re figuring out your strategy or computing ROI for social media as a business tool, keep that in mind.  One person at a time, you need to engage with people and build a long lasting relationships, whether that’s on twitter, facebook, or linkedIn.  Sound simple?  It is.

Connect with the people – stop marketing to them.
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Create remarkable customer service experiences

Customer Service.
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear this word?  For most people, they will instantly think of either a good or bad experience they had with a department that holds such a name.  Usually these experiences are a result of something bad that triggered the customer service interaction.  For instance:  you don’t get the food you ordered, your product is broke, or you need to return an item for a different reason.

Good customer service interaction can lead to a dedicated customer.
Especially for those that love to tell their friends everything (“sneezers”), most people love to talk about customer service experiences.  When something goes wrong and then fixed above and beyond expectations, people will brag about how great your company is.  It’s my belief that mistakes are OK, since customers will often remember a positive customer service experience over flawless execution.

Bad customer service interaction stories can spread quickly.
It’s bad for the company when a horrible experience compels the customer to “never shop there again” and make sure they slander your name in public any time they hear you mentioned.  It can be go beyond traditional word of mouth, as I’m sure you’ve all witnessed more than a few times already.  Whether it’s that guy writing a song and putting it on YouTube, or a trending topic on twitter, social media can spread those bad experiences quickly.

But why just focus on reacting to customers?
Look, we all know that a customer service department is needed to react to bad customer experiences.  Have you ever considered a function of that department “proactive service”?  Because of being able to listen in on social media, companies have an incredible opportunity they are missing.  Stop focusing on only the “bad” that people are talking about and start including a habit of listening to the “good” chatter.

Proactively reward those individuals.
It doesn’t have to be much; sending a handwritten letter, a tweet back, or an email is enough reward.   Every once in a while, treat them the same way you’d treat someone who just needed to be made happy because of a bad experience.  Create a memorable experience for customers who are already praising you.  Don’t just focus on those who you need to fix.

Try this and see what happens.  I promise you will be delighted with the results.
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I’ll take creativity for a dollar

According to wikipedia –
Creativity is the ability to generate innovative ideas and manifest them from thought into reality.
The process of creation was left to God (and other deities in other religions).  Alot of talk recently has led me to the belief that the overall word “creativity” has been become to vague;  however, I’ll leave that thought for another post.

Some consider the Renaissance the modern birth of creativity.
Men had a sense of their own independence and freedom.  They felt moved to give a voice to their creativity in the form of art and music.  This was the exact opposite of  the ancient Greek sense of creativity, where the concept of art was subject to rules, and not an act of freedom.  When I think about freedom of creativity, I think about men like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello. (Sidetrack thought: if there was no renaissance, would there be no Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?)

Did you know that the Medici family
funded a large portion of creative men during the Renaissance, which may be why the Renaissance began in Florence, and not somewhere else in Italy.  The Medici family was a banking family, got involved in royal clothing (proving my theory that bankers are in the business of selling suits), and later a royal family.  Leonardo, Botticelli, and Michelangelo all had commissioned works from the countrymen of Lorenzo de’ Medici alone.

Great creativity comes from a lifetime of creating.
Unless you are part of the creative class, you only have the capacity to be creative during off hours of your job.  Yeah, that’s right, Super Creative is 12% of U.S. jobs and Creative Professionals are 18%.  These are the people that are being paid to create all the time.  In a way, the corporations and clients of this creative class of people, are funding creativity very much like the Medici family funded creativity in the Renaissance.

So what is your role in creativity?  Are you actively funding it, being paid to create, or are you trying to create in your spare time?

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4 ways Social Media can help schools right now

We all love doing things that make us feel good.
In the past few months, I’ve seen and met people in the Social Media community that are doing great things for great causes.  Whether anyone realizes it, there is a ton of social currency being banked and spent, just in Milwaukee and it’s surrounding areas.

So how can us Social Media folks help out schools right now?
For more background on this, you can check on an article by Jeff Sherman on onMilwaukee. Basically, Kohl’s is giving away 10 million bucks;  $500,000 per school for schools that have the most people voting for them on a facebook app.  You have to “like” Kohls before you get to vote, the voting is a bit clumsy, but I”m sure all of you reading this would be capable of voting.   I’m specifically asking you to help me help St. Marcus Lutheran School (link direct to Facebook App here.)

St. Marcus School is a Christian, Milwaukee Choice School specializing in college prep. studies.
They do amazing things there.  I’ve seen many of them.  They take kids without structure and provide a structured, rigorous, no-nonsense, no excuses, college preparatory school.  St. Marcus is 1.5 million dollars short of breaking ground on an addition to their school, which will allow more kids this opportunity.  They are currently full-to-the-gills with 420 students.

I love St. Marcus because in short, the school believes there is no excuse for failure.
If you need to hear more than just me, take a look at this Fox6 video, this About Us page, or watch this incredible video on YouTube.  Time is running out, as this Kohl’s event is over soon.  The time to act is now.  Social Media lovers, time to round each other up!   Please help in the following ways:

1.  Just Vote.
Even if you just vote with this link: http://bit.ly/9nJKmG, you’ll be helping.

2. Tell Others.
Retweet, email, facebook, text.  Whatever your communication preference, please spread the word about helping St. Marcus Lutheran School touch more inner city youth.

3. Give up one blog post.
For anyone who has a blog:  Please consider blogging over the next few days to help spread this message.  Use your influence to make a difference.

4. Use your influence, and find others of influence.
I believe that we can make a difference.  Help influence others to step up, use your email lists, get behind this, and share in my passion.

Make a difference for a school that believes that failure is never an option.  These kids need St. Marcus, and more kids need the opportunity to attend St. Marcus.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR ST. MARCUS LUTHERAN

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Bankers are in the business of selling suits

Seriously; Think about it:

All bankers wear suits.
I heard they even make little suit pajamas that they sleep in. And the crazy thing is that we feel compelled to dress up when we interact with bankers. They must have a close partnership with suit makers, growing rich from the royalties of the Suit & Hat Makers United Coalition.

Whether they are on the buying side or the selling side,
they influence everyone around them to dress up. Somehow, they have the power to control your dress code (at least until late December of 2012, right?)

For those of you who know me all too well, I’m not a big fan of dressing up for business. Don’t get me wrong however; I enjoy clothes other than t-shirts, shorts, or jeans: when the colder Wisconsin weather is upon us. For years now I’ve been over analyzing why I feel so compelled to wear a t-shirt when a suit coat is in order, or white socks with my dress shoes.  In some situations, it’s my subtle way to stick out.

It’s a self-imposed handicap?
When I’m doing my thing, I want the attention to be on the wisdom that is flowing from my brain, out of my mouth, and into your ears. I’m confident in what I do.   I don’t want you to be impressed with my suit.  I don’t want you checking to see if my socks match my shoes to compliment my pants.

If you dress to impress, I have no disrespect.
But the next time you’re getting cleaned up for a big business transaction ask yourself this question:
“am I good enough to do this in jeans and a t-shirt?”
If the answer is no,

become the best at what you’re doing, or quit and do something else.

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Have good user interfaces made us lazy and dumb?

So this post’s finalized version is motivated by Jim Raffel from jimraffel.com who has one heck a great blog, and blogs way more than I could ever motivate myself to do.  Thanks Raffel!  Also thanks to Scott Stratten for pushing me even further and releasing before a grammer edit.

…..

I’m sure this will get some User Experience Designers upset, but here’s a thought:

I’ve noticed something lately
about the generation of kids attending high school.  Mostly, I noticed this recently because my niece graduated from high school, and I hooked her party up with some awesome karaoke ran from my laptop.  What I noticed was astonishing:  These kids could use their cell phones to play games.  They could use my ipad to facebook, and play games.  However….

When I asked them “who knows how to use a computer”…
because I had to leave for the night and wanted to show any of these kids how to use windows search to find the karaoke songs (I have over 250,000 songs) and add them to the queue…  Holy cow.  Only one kid from the entire group of 20+ kids felt comfortable enough to say “Hey Uncle Jon, I know how to use a computer.”.

Really?  Seriously?  1/20th of graduating high school kids?
I’ve ranted in the past about spending more time in front of a computer than behind the wheel of a car, but are you kidding me?  Do these kids have the same parents that say “I don’t really use a computer but man, my kids do all kinds of smart stuff on that thing”.

Is it because things are too easy?
Seriously, consider this for just one second:
– When I was a kid, we had to load games from a DOS prompt.   We did not have autoload.
– We knew how to load “*”, 8, 1 on the Commodore 64 (and 128).
– We had to blow in our cartridges to get them to work.  A basic understanding of connectivity.
– We had to use a screwdriver for a UHV connector into a VHF connector for an RCA dongle to hook up our gaming platform.  What?  use tools?

Fast forward to a culture where “User Experience Designers” need to make everything easy.
So now we live in a world where:
– Macs have one big button and call people who know how to do PC like functions “geniuses”.
– We are (slowly) moving to one power cord – USB
– Yellow goes to yellow, red goes to red, white goes to white (Yes, everyone but the color blind can hook up TV stuff now)
– (Insert your really easy thing in the comments section below)

Today’s kids can’t easily
– Hook up a stereo (it’s all integrated these days)
– Fix their broken Xbox’s
– Got other examples? – feel free to comment below.

I know it’s a strong statement, but maybe we made things too easy – are we making generations of dumber kids?

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Think left handed today (or right handed if you are a lefty)

The Corpus Callosum fascinates me.
In case you’ve never heard of it, let me quickly catch you up: The corpus callosum is a bundle of fibers connecting the right and left hemispheres of the brain. It’s like a hallway in our brain that allows information to flow between hemispheres. The left side of our body is controlled by the right side of our brain, and the left side of our brain controls the right side of our body.

Severed corpus callosum testing in the 1960s
by Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Wolcott Sperry confirmed that our left brain specializes in language and our right brain is all about facial recognition and attentional monitoring. Further testing suggested that right brains recognize others while left brains have a bias for recognizing self.

Creativity,
artistic ablities, musical skills, and photographic memories are part of the right cerebral cortex. If you have crazy math skills and and find it easy to work with numbers and words – that comes from the left hemisphere.  Think about what side of your brain you use most on a daily basis.  Think you’re naturally creative?  Think twice.

Your brain is not meant to be creative.
Through creating, recognizing, and using patterns, our brain makes sense of the world we live in. Life would be impossible without these patterns. However, it is imperative that at times we change these patterns or create new ones. This goes beyond creativity into a lateral thinking process where we are able to change perception of how we see the world and it’s patterns in order to make changes.

I think it’s time for you to break your patterns.
Break out of all your patterns today.  Eat dinner in the morning.  Eat desert first.  Take an alternate route home from work.  Go home and change your outfit right now.  Do as much as you can to break out of your patterns.

Today, I’m going to spend the day left handed.

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5 things you need to be doing right now

In my previous post, Ideas colliding in the ether need an idea coach, I ended telling you to stop dreaming and start doing.   I hope this inspired at least a few of you to jump start your ideas.  For the rest of you, who still haven’t acted on at least one thing last week, here’s my list of 5 things you should be doing right now.

1. Write the idea down
Don’t get hung up on the details yet.  Don’t worry about the medium.  Whether you choose to capture these thoughts via digital or analog – just make sure you keep it with you.  Keeping them close to bed is very important.  When you find yourself not being able to sleep or waking up thinking more about the idea, you’ll be able to write it all down, right away.

2. Tell the people you trust
Float the idea by your inner circle.  More often then not, this will spur on sub-ideas and details that you may have not thought of yet.  Most importantly, this is your first commitment on the road to making it happen.  Ask your trusted circle to hold you accountable and ask you next week how this idea is progressing.

3. Google it
Take a journey over to Google, and search for every variation of your idea possible.  Spend at least 3 straight hours doing this.   If you find that your idea has already been materialized, you’ll need to figure out if the materialized idea has failed, or succeeded.  If it’s failed: learn from the failure and decide to continue, or wait for a new idea.  If it’s a success: learn from the success and align it with your notes.  Learn as much as you can from this as well, because it will help with your next idea.  If after Google, you decide your idea is still worth pursuing…

4. Plan your first iteration
Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change is a book I read over a decade ago.  Back then, it inspired us to quickly develop software solutions in short bursts.  Today, I apply the core concepts of XP to develop business in short bursts.  So, for your first iteration, make sure you plan to put something in front of potential customers within one week.   Make sure you can accomplish this by yourself or with the right partners.

5. Find your partners
In older business models, this is where you would be finding the vendors you need.  In an agile business model you need to find partners – those people or companies who you will need to help this succeed.  Align yourself with people and solutions that can quickly accomplish your first week iteration.  Be creative with sharing potential revenue streams if you have to.

Run! Run! Run!
Every day make sure you accomplish at least one thing that gets you closer to finishing your iteration.  Cross it off your list.  Write more on your list for future iterations.  Keep committing to running with your idea.  If you trip, get back up.  If you fail, don’t be discouraged.  Failing happens – don’t be afraid to start the race again.

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Ideas colliding in the ether need an idea coach.

Every time we have a good idea, someone else is having that same idea.  Often I’m sure that 3 or more people are sharing the exact same idea at the exact same time. These ideas just normally collide out in the ether. Let’s face it, people are great at coming up with new ideas, and not so great at turning them into reality.

Maybe ideas need a reality coach.
Personal trainers help their clients improve their exercise techniques and provide motivation and support.  Life coaches help clients determine and achieve personal goals.   Why isn’t there a coach to nurture ideas?

Most people just need a little push.
Alexander Graham Bell’s father encouraged his son’s interest in speech.  A fellow telegrapher and inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope supported Thomas Edison and let him live in his home in New Jersey.  Later in life, Edison promised $50,000 to Nikola Tesla to push him to succeed in making improvements to his DC generation plants.   Even brilliant people need a supporting cast.

I urge you to build a support group.
Surround yourself with positive people who will push you.  In turn, push them back.  Start that self published book.  Finish that self published book.  Start speaking publicly.  Hold that event.  Invest in that ipod application.  Finish that blog post.   Help others finish everything that’s left undone.  As a group, collectively finish one thing a week.

Stop dreaming and start doing.

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