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My Dearest British Gas

My Dearest British Gas!

Quite frankly I want to cry!  You’ve made me cry – a grown man!  It’s not a pretty sight.  I feel like you’re stalking me.  Everywhere I turn there you are.

It all started in September 2011, when I received a cryptic and interesting correspondence suggesting that you and I were going out again!  That I’d come back to you after all this time.  But it was news to me because I’d moved on.  I’d grown. I’d changed.  I’d found someone that made me happy – EDF energy (ah, just the sound of her name)…er…anyway…where was I?

However, when I phoned up to deliver the bad news, you denied you ever knew me.  That I wasn’t even on your “system!”  So I did a little digging – super sleuth that I am (I have a hat and a magnifying glass and everything) - and discovered that you’d filed me under business.  Well, that really hurt! After all the years we’d been together, it was all just business to you!  Ouch!  I was angry.  No, I was beside myself.  I knew you couldn’t mean it, so I did some more digging and discovered that it was just a business further up the street that you were wooing, you must have accidently put my address down instead of theirs.  It must have been subconcious, because of your ongoing feelings for me!  I knew you still cared.

But I still could not be with you; what would EDF think (ah, just the sound of her name…).  So I called to tell you that you needed to let me go and put me behind you, filed neatly under “erroneous transfer”.  I thought we’d finally parted ways as friends, but I was wrong.  Your lust was too strong.  Your desire for me too intense.  Your passion to have me too insatiable.  You wanted me too much!

So you kept sending people to woo me; to declare your undying love for me.  Thrice you sent them, in your vain attempts to capture my heart once more.  Oh, they said they were here to “read the meter”, but I knew the truth. I knew you’d sent them to win me back.  You’d even sent one just last week, claiming to be “reading the meter” for the previous occupant, who has not been a resident here for four long years.  I knew no one could make such a silly error and it was me you really want to see.   But alas we cannot be together.  It has been to long.  It will never work.  We are too different now!

Yet still you continue to intice me to call you, just to hear my voice.  Only this week you once again forced my hand – I realise we’d agreed to be friends and you promised to take good care of little BAXI Potterton for me during your yearly visit and if he needed any special extra care; which I thought was an honourable and noble thing to do (and a steal for just £17 per month).   But then I noticed you started charging £19.14,  without even having the courteousy to let me know to my face!  I was shocked, but I knew you only did it so you could talk to me one last time!

I know you still love me, but there is too much water under the bridge.  I’ve found someone else; someone I think can make me very happy.  A new, younger, prettier supplier (ah, just the sound of her name).  And we just need to be left alone to live our new life together!

You need to move on.  You need to let you go.  You need to forget me!  You need to confirm and assure me that there are no, none, zero, not one (not even a little one hiding behind the sofa) British Gas energy (either electricity of gas) accounts registered to my address.  I think it would be for the best if you stopped worrying about Baxi Potterton too, and just returned the £19.14 for this month and cancel our agreement.  I know he’ll miss you, but in the long run it’s better this way.

It’s all for the best.  I’m sure there is someone one out there for you….don’t give up hope.

Once yours,
Ben  (Drury)

And the reply (kudos to British Gas MD Phil Bentley for joining in the spirit of the original email!):

Dear Mr Drury,

Thankyou for your recent email. I’m really sorry to hear of the poor service you’ve encountered from British Gas, for which, please accept my personal apologies.

I’m not a nobel laureate, and can’t possibly follow your missive, other than to say it’s extremely commendable of you to retain your sense of humour in the face of such provocation from British Gas.

There’s clearly a problem here and therefore I’ve asked my specialist team to look into this and sort it out as a priority, which I’m confident they will do. We will ensure the transfer away from ourselves is completed smoothly for the energy accounts. I’ll check on the boiler cover – we usually expect our customers to stick to the one year contract, otherwise people would cancel after Winter, and start again in Autumn.

My apologies once again for letting you down – I do hope your romance blossoms…. but she is French, you know, and somewhat fickle and, according to OFGEM, our marriage-guidance counsellor, she has the worst track record of lasting relationships in the industry!

With very best wishes,

Phil Bentley
MD British Gas

And the interview on BBC Radio Newcastle:

Jan 09, 2012 | Categories: Bad Service, Communication, Front Page, Miscellaneous | Leave A Comment »

Want an awesome 2012? Answer these questions!

2012

If you want 2012 to be your best year yet, you need to start working in areas that energise and fulfill you; areas where you excel.  You need to be serving others, not just yourself; and you need to build deeper more meaningful relationships.

Here are some questions,  borrowed from author Michael Port, to help you get started:

1. How can I be fully self-expressed in my work to create meaning for me and those I serve?

2. How can I work only in the areas of my greatest stengths and talents?

3. How can I better listen to and serve people.

4. How can I over deliver on my promises to people.

5. How can I cooperate with others to create more abundance.

Happy New Year.  Have an awesome 2012 and let me know how you get on!

Dec 31, 2011 | Categories: Miscellaneous | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

Escapism vs Freedom

One of the biggest mistakes we can make in life is to confuse escapism with freedom.

I recently spoke with a number of individuals who use drugs. When discussing why they choose to use drugs all of them say that one of the benefits of using drugs is that they help you feel better for a short while. They make everything that you worry about go away for a brief moment. That’s escapism.

Now escapism is great sometimes. It helps us to unwind. It is good to watch a really great movie or read a fantastic book and get so absorbed in a well told story that you forget where you are, just for a little while. But the trouble with escapism is that you are merely finding a different world to inhabit momentarily and when the moment is over you return to the same place you were when you left. It’s a dangerous habit to be ruled by. Freedom on the other hand is about finding ways to deal with issues so that they no longer weigh you down. They no longer exist. They have been dealt with. Now that sounds much better.

You see…

…with escapism you spend your life standing still; with freedom you spend life on a journey growing and experiencing joy.

…with escapism you hide from life; with freedom you embrace it.

…with escapism you wake up dreading what might happen today; with freedom you wake up excited about what might happen today.

…with escapism you spend you life fighting; with freedom you spend your life flying.

…escapism is easy and gets you nowhere; freedom takes effort buts gets you where you want to go.

But how do we choose freedom over escapism? Here are a few tips to get you on the road to freedom.

1. Always make positive decisions. Whenever you have to make a major decision in life always make it for positive reasons. For example change jobs because you want to do the new job you’re moving to, not because you hate your current job.

2. Never put off a job you don’t want to do. They just stack up and makes escapism all the more appealing. Resolve to get it done TODAY.

3. Never let the sun go down on your anger. (This is one I struggle with, because I like to sulk.) Where ever possible resolve any issues you have with someone before you go to sleep, otherwise you will only wake in a bad mood the next morning and that’s no way to start the day.

4. Never say “that’ll do”. Have an attitude of excellence. In everything you do give one hundred percent. There is nothing like finishing the day knowing that you gave your all. You lived fully. That’s freedom.

5. Make integrity the highest priority. Be true to yourself. Whoever you are, do not compromise yourself. Your values are the only thing that can not be taken from you – you have to give them away. Don’t. It’s like giving your very self away!

None of these things are easy to do, but they are possible. Choose one this week to focus on and keep it in your mind. Write it down. Stick it somewhere you can see it often, throughout the day. Use it to review your day. Work at it until it becomes a habit, second nature! Then start on the next one. Before you know it you will be freer than you imagined and living the life you’ve always dreamed, not dreaming of the life you wished you lived!

Oct 19, 2011 | Categories: Front Page, Miscellaneous | Tags: , , , | Leave A Comment »

Does your business have a mission? (Or how to make more money and not be evil!)

I’ve been watching the Occupy Wall Street demonstration and other protests around the world over the last few weeks with a sense of excitement.  Not because I dislike capitalism. I actually think capitalism works and can be very beneficial for communities and society – just look at the micro loan successes in developing nations.  Nor am I excited because I like to watch a good heated disagreement, which, let’s face it, everyone does!

I’m excited because I see the beginning of a brave new business world that I believe we desperately need.

As far as I can tell there are some businesses that aren’t really businesses at all.  They don’t do much good and they add very little value to their customers.  They’re not contributing to society in any way.  Quite frankly they’re nothing more than “personal welfare states”, whose sole focus is to make money for the owners or shareholders.  The transaction goes something like this:

“I need some money to fund my unencumbered lifestyle, so I’ll see what I can sell at the highest price for the smallest cost (and effort), maximising my income.  I’m not worried about the on going consequences, unless it directly affects my ability to repeat the transaction!”

That way of doing business is what drives people to protest and occupy Wall Street . It’s what drives us a little insane when we call up organisations and get an automated system followed by someone with a long script who doesn’t care. It’s what makes programmes like Rogue Traders and Watchdog necessary. It’s what causes people to question all business and believe all large organisations are selfish and evil.

But what if businesses behaved more like charities?

I’m not suggesting that businesses should be funded by benevolent donations or provide their goods and services for free.  However, apart from being funded in a different way, I shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a business and a charity.

The thing about a charity is that it tends to have a very inspiring and focused mission that has very little to do with making money and reaches beyond it’s own existence.  A charity exists to provide a solution to a problem for the common good, but far too often in business, the mission is to increase the turnover and net profit!

What if businesses chose to operate with an equally inspiring mission.  A mission defined by a great solution they want to offer, along side a set of values that define how they intend to behave.  Everything else that the business does can then be measured against these mission and values.

Don’t get me wrong.  I think businesses should make money.  In fact, businesses that don’t make money won’t last very long.   I don’t have a problem with businesses making  money.  Nor do I have an issue with people being paid well for working hard to build a great business; or shareholders making a return for taking a risk and investing in a growing business.  It makes good businesses sense to make money and to pay your talented staff and trusting investors well.

What concerns me are organisations with a mission to maximise profit that supersedes all other considerations.

Businesses should not have as a mission “to make as much money as possible!”   That’s pure greed! And greed is what turns capitalism bad!  It’s what causes the sub prime mortgage collapse. It’s what drives Bernie Madoff to steal.  It’s what causes thousands of job losses at Enron.   Greed is NOT Good, Mr Gekko!

Instead, let’s build businesses with laudable missions and values that we’re not afraid to express to our customers.  Let’s build businesses that are about more than just money.  After all, Jim Collins’ has shown us in his books ‘Good To Great’ and ‘Built to Last’ that those organisation built on a strong mission and values tend to make more money too!

Oct 17, 2011 | Categories: Front Page, Leadership, Org Culture | Tags: , , | 2 Comments »

Give Them A Story To Tell!

Going Going Gone!

I recently attended a lecture on marketing and I heard a statistic that as shocking as it was didn’t really surprise me. According to a recent study at Durham University, 68% of customers move to a different supplier/provider purely because of the way their first provider treated them. That’s over two thirds of YOUR customers moving to a competitor, not because of your product, but because of the way it was “packaged”. Gone because of something that is totally within your control. Gone, so have to find a new customer to replace them and hope that the same thing doesn’t happen to this new customer.

How on earth do organisations get it so wrong?

Bad Assumptions

From my experience, organisations who struggle with customer service and customer retention do so because they have made some poor assumptions about their clients. Usually based on two general misconceptions:

1. Customers understand and judge your expertise based on their sound judgement of the goods or services you’re providing. Wrong: your customers make judgements about your business based on all sorts of different, odd and emotional reasons. They may well use a logical argument to justify their judgements (post-rationalisation), but don’t be fooled, their judgement is not based on their sound judgement. They don’t understand your business like you do.

2. Non-core areas of business are far less important than the core area. Wrong: If customer don’t make sound judgements of the quality of goods and services, then what do they judge you on? They judge you on how they were treated. They judge you on the experience you gave them, so the non-core areas of business are critical to ensuring that your customers believe that you’re good at what you do.

Non-Core Critical Extras

Don’t get me wrong, your product or service is extremely important. You need to get it right or you will, more than likely, go out of business, but it’s not enough on it’s own. You need to get the non-core areas of your business right too. Those parts of the business that are not essential to performing your core business function (taking photos if you’re a photographer; selling shoes if your a shoe retailer), but that are absolutely critical to your overall success. Your “non-core critical extras”. By critical extras I’m talking about are all the things that make your customers feel good about doing business with you. All the things that make them say, “Wow, I wasn’t expecting that!”

Imagine you are on the phone to a big multi-national company. After negotiating the automated system, you finally get through to a human, and you’re told that they can’t possible deal with the issue, so they put you through to someone else, who asks you to explain the entire issue yet again. When you’ve finished retelling your tale, you’re told that you’ve been put through to the wrong department and you need to talk to the people upstairs. Before you can protest you’re put on hold to listen to ‘Greensleeves’! Eventually a third person picks up, but he too declares innocence and wants to put you through to someone else, but not just anyone else – the person you first spoke to five minutes ago!

When you get off the phone from a call like this all you want to do is tell someone, anyone who will listen and you want to let everyone know never to use this company. EVER!

But wait a minute! What if the opposite was also possible? What if you could give your customers such a great experience, such fantastic service that when they leave you, all they want to do is tell someone how great you are! They just have to tell all there friends that they must buy from you! Guess what! Some companies have seen revenues rise by as much as 40% by giving their customers such a great story to tell.

A story to tell

Imagine you have a leak under your sink. So you call out a plumber. He turns up on time. He does the job. He tidies up and leaves. Great. If one of your friends asks about a plumber you might pass on the number, if you remembered it.

What if you had a leak in the evening and you call the same plumber. He was just on his way out to a posh dinner, but he pops over anyway. When he turns up he’s wearing a smart Dinner suite. A crisp white dress shirt, with a beautiful silk bowtie – hand tied – and a carnation in his button hole. He neatly lays out his tools, completes the job without getting dirt on his pristine attire. He cleans up, smiles and hands you the carnation as he leaves. The next day you’d tell that story to someone, whether they asked about a plumber or not. Now that’s giving your customers a great story to tell.

Giving a great story can not only give you loyal customers, but it can create customer evangelists for your company that not only give you repeat business, but drum up new custom for you as well. Effectively, volunteers for your marketing department.

Two Ingredients

A great story comes from examining every part of your customer’s journey and make sure it’s an awesome experience and there are two ingredients that can help that happen. Getting these two right doesn’t guarantee success, but without these two you are guaranteed to fail.

1. Get the right people, who are passionate about your vision of customer service in the right jobs and let them get on with doing what they are good at, what you employed them for.

2. Provide the right tools and systems to make it as easy as possible for those people in the right jobs to provide consistently great service.

Right People

In order for you to consistently deliver a high quality customer experience you need to have people that believe in your vision and are passionate about making it a reality. People that are with you. This is where companies like McDonalds fail so badly. Where ever you go in the world, if you order a Big Mac, it’s going to be exactly the same. You’ll get the three buns, you’ll get the lettuce. You’ll get the two burgers and you’ll get the little dollop of pink sauce. Exactly the same, anywhere in the world because Ray Croc has provided the tools to do it. He has systemised every part of the process so that any unqualified 16 year old can do it. Unfortunately any unqualified 16 year old does not share the vision of great service at the customer end. They don’t really care about what they’re doing which is why the food is the same, but the experience is shockingly poor. You need to put right people in the right place. People who want to deliver what you have asked for. To do this some companies need to spend more on recruiting the right people and less on training the wrong people.

Rght Tools

Once you have the right people, who are behind your vision then you need to provide them with all the right tools, systems and support to consistently deliver on the promise. To deliver excellence time and time again.

They need to know exactly what good service looks like. They need to know how they are expected to deliver it. They need the freedom to be able to solve problems and issues that arise that don’t fit into the normal agreed patterns. They need to be given not only the responsibility, but also the authority to perform. We’ve all been on the phone trying to solve a problem and the person you’re talking to says, “I can’t make that decision, I’ll have to ask my manager”. I’ve always wondered why they don’t have those powers. If you have the right people in the right jobs doing what they are good at, with the right attitude then they’re going to do what’s right. Give them to tools to do it! In their book “Now discover your strengths”, Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton quote a study in which they asked employees whether at work they had the opportunity to do what they do best every day. In companies where employees strongly agreed with this statement, customer satisfaction went up 44%.

AWESOME SERVICE = RISING REVENUE

If you get the right people in the right positions and you give them to right tools you can give your customers an awesome story to tell. You can have your customers spreading the word about your product or service. You can create customer evangelists. You can hold on to your 68% of clients that usually leave and you can gather your competitors 68%. And guess what? Your revenue will go up.

Jul 07, 2011 | Categories: Front Page, Good Service, Service "How To" | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Counter-Management™

Ever phoned a company and been put through to someone else, who puts you through to someone else, who puts you through to someone else, until you either get cut off or end up talking to the person who originally answered the phone?

Why does this happen? Why is service so poor? And how do you get YOUR employees to perform for you?

Many managers try to ensure employees don’t do the wrong thing by stopping them doing anything. They put rules and regulations in place to strip employees of the ability to make any decisions or take any initiatives at all. Managers create teams of automatons trained only to follow a series of rules – the manager’s rules.

What organisations actually need is ’Counter- Management’™. Counter-Management is about inspiring and freeing employees to excel – helping individuals and teams
to be brilliant by releasing them from constraints  and protecting them from organisational bureaucracy. In short, letting them get on with what they’re good at!

Don’t get me wrong, employees shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever they like. People need managing. They need their work to be appraised, but this should be a process of training and improvement not control and punishment. But how do you create this sort of environment?

People with Purpose

Firstly, managers need to ensure that the people they employ are the right people for the job. You can provide training to give people the skills, but it’s much harder to train people’s character! You want people who already believe in the vision and purpose of your team. (During initial induction, Zappos Shoes offer their new recruits several thousand dollars to leave the organisation, ensuring they only retain the people that really want to be there!)

People with Permission

Next you need to give your employees permission to do the job they are being asked to do. They need to be told that they can do whatever is needed to achieve the vision of the team. They need to know that they are allowed to take risks, make decisions and make mistakes!

To grow and develop and become our best we need to work in a environment where it’s ok to make mistakes – an environment where things can go wrong, be examined and be corrected without apportioning blame; an environment where mistakes are seen as opportunities to improve.

This may all sound like hard work. It is – at least in the short term. Creating this sort of environment takes a concerted effort and there may be a few false starts on the way. However, in the long run your team will be happier, more productive, will have less staff turnover and be a place where people want to work and want to give their best.

Jun 30, 2011 | Categories: Leadership, Org Culture | Tags: , , , | Leave A Comment »

Does my business look big in this?

Remember the good old days? You know the days when all you needed was a great product and people who needed it would buy it. The days before marketing was invented! No? That’s probably because they never existed

Whatever you do you create an impression to others around you – that’s marketing! What you wear, how you behave, the way you speak all create an image by which others judge you and make decisions about how they wish to deal with you. Your business is exactly the same!

Positioning your business correctly depends on understanding your market and the image that market expects from you. People are looking for your credibility on the product or service you sell. They want to know that spending their money with you is a good investment and they’ll get value in return.

The trouble is your customers don’t judge your expertise based on their sound knowledge of the goods or services you’re providing. Your customers make decisions about you based on all sorts of different, strange and emotional reasons. They may well use a logical argument to justify their beliefs (post-rationalisation), but don’t be fooled, their view of you is not based on their sound judgement.

So, if customers don’t make sound judgements on the quality of goods and services, then what do they judge you on? They judge you on the image you portray of your self, and that view is based on your marketing, your packaging, your shop front, your logo, your website, your name, your associations and the stories others tell about you! Customers base their decision about you on how you appear, even before they meet you.

Whatever market you’re in, there are likely to be many other providers (and if there aren’t, there will be soon) and your potential customer has many choices for where to spend ‘his’ hard earned money. Your image is what will make him spend it (or not) with you. Unfortunately in the UK nearly 70% of customers will spend their money with an alternative provider because of the way they were treated (Durham University 2008). Their image of the first provider is that they just don’t care!

You can avoid this by getting your image right and giving your customers a great impression of you. Just remember your customer sees your business very differently from you so make sure you periodically talk to your customers about how they see you. You may be surprised at the answers, but it’s the best way to make sure that your customers view your business in the way you want it to be seen.

Jun 28, 2011 | Categories: Good Service | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

Jack Welch’s 8 rules of leaders.

I’m just reading Jack Welch’s book ‘Winning’. If you’re a leader, I’d recommend reading it. It’s wonderfully written and full of years and years of experience, which he’s managed to express so simply and eloquently.

In one particular chapter on leadership he shares the eight leadership rules that he’s held through a career that’s made him one of America’s most successful CEOs.

  1. Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach and build self-confidence.
  2. Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, the live and breath it.
  3. Leaders get into everyone’s skin, exuding positive energy and optimism.
  4. Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency and credit.
  5. Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls.
  6. Leaders probe and push with a curiosity that borders on skepticism, making sure their questions are answered with action.
  7. Leaders inspire risk taking and learning by setting the example.
  8. Leaders celebrate!

There is so much packed into these eight ‘simple’ statements, I’ve chosen to take them one at a time and spend a few days unpacking each one to think about where I need to improve. Why don’t you do the same? I’m sure anything we can learn for a leader like Jack Welch will be worth the time!

Mar 04, 2011 | Categories: Leadership | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

Do you want a lifetime of happiness?

Here’s an old Chinese proverb explains how to achieve it!

If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day, go fishing.
If you want happiness for a month, get married.
If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime, help others!

Now stop asking how and go and help someone!

Feb 16, 2011 | Categories: Miscellaneous | Leave A Comment »

John Maxwell – Ten things that define an environment for growth!

I’ve just been watching John Maxwell teaching on how to make 2011 a great year or as John puts it “your best year ever!” Whenever I read or hear any of John’s teaching I’m always inspired.  He is great at capturing and expressing truth in really accessible and challenging ways.  I’ve found his books really helpful over the years.  I’ve even reviewed some of them on this blog (Book Review: Today Matters).

The wonderful thing I find about reading and listening to John is that he always seems to express something new that challenges me and today was no different, so I thought I’d share what challenged me today.  

To grow, we need to create our own growth environment; it doesn’t happen naturally, we need to be intentional about it.  In his video, John shares ten things that growth environments need to be and I’m just going to share them here:

  1. A place where others are ahead of you.  if you’re at the head of the class you’re not going to grow.
  2. A place where you’re constantly challenged.
  3. A place where you can focus on the future.
  4. A place where the atmosphere is affirming.
  5. A place the puts you out of your comfort zone (but not out of your gifting zone).
  6. A place that means you wake up excited.
  7. A place where failure is not your enemy.
  8. A place where others around you are growing.
  9. A place where people desire change.
  10. A place where growth is modelled and expected.

Why not take some time out today to think about how you can create the right growth environment for you!

You can hear John speak more about making 2011 “your best year ever” at John Maxwell Team.  I would recommend you get over there now and sign up! It’s challenging teaching!

Feb 15, 2011 | Categories: Leadership, Org Culture | Leave A Comment »