Training – Page 21 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

Customer Service Isn’t Hard – Just Be a Mind Reader

August 24, 2009/2 Comments/in Customer Service, Sales, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

How many times have you had a customer service interaction where you walked away in disbelief over how clueless the person “helping” you was? You’ve sat there at least once saying “I cannot believe they just don’t understand my problem.”

Now think about how many times your customers have said this about you or your organization. Scary, isn’t it?

I’m not only talking about customer service reps in call centers – I’m talking about anyone who interacts with a customer (salespeople, relationship managers, marketers, executives, etc.). Any one of those individuals can completely destroy a customer interaction by not connecting to the customer’s need. This disconnect occurs because the person providing the service comes at it from their own perspective rather than the customer’s.

Why does this happen? Probably because your metrics are screwed up and you create incentives for bad behavior. Remember – Hobbes pointed out that man is inherently selfish. Your people will behave in a manner that maximizes their own well-being (cash, advancement, free time, etc.). But don’t despair. There’s a simple thing you can do to generate the behaviors that will have your customers rave about you: become a mind reader just like Karnak.

Please Don’t – A Great Tactic For Successful Strategy

August 17, 2009/2 Comments/in Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

High-falootin’ strategery sounds awesome. Unfortunately the best strategic plan in the world can come crashing down if you don’t have tactics in place to support it. And these tactics have to occur on a daily basis.

This is where, as a manager, you’re probably missing the boat. I know your intentions are good but your dysfunctional behaviors are the root of strategic destruction (how’s that for being provocative?).

I’ve mentioned before that strategy is about saying “no” and I’m unwavering on that point. The organization has to know where it’s going and pursue a balanced set of initiatives to get there. It has to be a mix of building your core business so it can spin off the cash required to invest in new ventures. It’s about hitting the sweet spot on balancing between growing the core or expanding beyond it. Let’s assume you’re already doing those things.

Train Them Now or Lose Them Later

April 6, 2009/4 Comments/in About Us, Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Training, Upcoming Events /by Mike Figliuolo

A friend of mine was lamenting the current economic environment. He bemoaned budget cuts at his company and the lack of opportunities for professional development. He also said something truly alarming:

“Our management team is so focused on just making the numbers that they’re not investing in developing their people.” (Incidentally, I think making the numbers can be stupid). He added “But it’s really not a huge deal because in this economy, no one is going to quit over lack of training or development, y’know?”

After I reattached my head to my body, I thought about this painful comment. I think we might have actually reached the point of myopic leadership destruction where leaders get so focused on the short term that they forget the future. They become so narrow in their view they miss the point that their people will have choices before them after this crisis. Sure you can skimp on your people today and they’ll sit there and take it. But as soon as the economy turns, they’ll be bugging out on you and heading to a better job faster than you can say “leadership FAIL.”

So all this got me thinking. Tight budgets. Lack of training dollars. Yearning for professional development. As I noodled on these ideas, I fortuitously had a great conversation with Jack Windsor and genius struck. He handed me a solution to these problems on a silver platter. I would love to hear what you think about this…

How Training Failures Cause Cast Aways

March 30, 2009/2 Comments/in Customer Service, Leadership, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

I had a most unfortunate and frustrating experience recently. I bought a new pair of sunglasses because I lost mine. I had searched for the lost pair for a week but to no avail. I picked up a new pair at the local mall sunglass shop.

Of course as soon as I got home I found the old pair. Perfect. Since I didn’t need two pairs, I headed back to the mall the next day to return the new one. That’s when things went south.

There was a single cashier on duty. When I arrived, there were only two other people in the store. The cashier began processing my return. She began having difficulty with the system as she processed the transaction. This is where things started going Antarctica south. It became very clear this poor cashier had been tossed alone on an island like Tom Hanks in Cast Away.

From here forward in the story, I’m going to highlight some customer service, training, and leadership suggestions and issues I hope you take away and use in your organization.

Making Your Service Ethic Contagious – Guest Blogger

February 18, 2009/14 Comments/in Customer Service, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

That’s right – customer service is contagious like the common cold. It can spread faster than pink eye at a day care center. Improved customer service comes from spreading a passion for interactions with our customers. And in today’s hypercompetitive world, customer service can be a true point of competitive advantage (Mike writes about that point constantly). So how do you make service contagious?

I didn’t catch it until I was 16. I was working in a real honest to goodness Mom & Pop store. Murray Logan and his wife Del were the founders of Logan & Sons, a small grocery store specializing in high quality meats and produce and delivering great customer service.

If you are involved in managing customer service you know it gets infinitely more difficult to treat the customer the way they want to be treated when you add employees to your business model. When it’s your store and you are the workforce you don’t have to worry that the customers will get treated well. But from the moment you add your first employee, your work gets much more complicated. Now you have to define excellence, teach it, observe it and re-teach it constantly.

How did the Logans do it? Simple.

Leadership Perspectives: “Steermanship” – Guest Blogger

December 22, 2008/3 Comments/in Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

I am again pleased to have Bill Malkemes as a guest blogger this week. You’ll find some background on Bill at the end of this post. Enough rambling – here are Bill’s thoughts:

I was reading some of the leadership material on this blog. Since I have seen Mike in action mentoring young leaders at a National Conference on Ethics in America (and was pretty impressed with his results), I thought I would see if I could write a short message at a macro level that may be useful to other readers then talk about a subject or two at the micro level.

In my case I can be referred to as an “experienced” leader. As the head of my organization of high achievers it can be quite competitive for assignment of key tasks and appropriate recognition of accomplishments. In younger days it was fun to get into the details and solutions for the tasks, but now I am needed more in the management mode. So what I try to do is keep the organization vibrant with new and exciting work, appoint task leads in a fair manner, and turn them loose. I don’t call what I do leadership, although leadership does take different shapes and forms. From my perspective, I call it “steermanship.”

When the work comes to you as a manager or task leader, assess the starting status and the end state that is needed. With education and experience you also get a feel for the complexity of the work and key scheduling and/or decision points that you may have to assess along the way. Although you may have a way you would do the job, I have found it enlightening to give someone the job and desired end state and have them come up with the plan, needed resources and desired end state. What I find unproductive or missing at times for those with less experience is 1) the selection of personnel who can get the work done but not necessarily within a team concept and 2) having intermediate checkpoints to assess and redirect effort if needed. I let the task lead chose whom they want with them but hold final approval of their selections as there may be conflicting jobs requiring the same key personnel. I also have them put in some intermediate checkpoints for themselves to check their progress. I give suggestions when needed but not in a dictatorial way. Thus I don’t over-supervise but “steer” when appropriate.

Team Training – The 9th Leadership Principle

December 8, 2008/4 Comments/in Leadership, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

Want your team to be more successful? Try training them. Seriously. I know the economy is terrible and funds are tight but the WORST mistake you can make is skimping on your people and their development.

“Gee Mike, they’re not going to change jobs in this economy so why invest?” They’re not going to change NOW but as soon as the economy picks back up, they’re gone. They’ll head to organizations that want to develop them If you saw the last poll we ran here, growth opportunities was the #1 driver of job satisfaction and idiot bosses were the #1 reason for leaving a job. Coincidence? Um… no.

Training your people as a team is a critical Leadership Principle (#9 for that matter but not 9th in importance). Not only do you have to train them to be competent at what they do, you should be succession planning, building their skills and, most importantly, excessively emphasizing that you succeed or fail as a team. Why? How? Let’s discuss.

First, you have to be trained. Your people follow your example and you want them to see you’re committed to development. First you have to get over yourself and accept that you need training too. The perils of thinking you’re too smart are your team doesn’t believe you when you say you’re committed to their development and you become a worthless dinosaur over time.

Customer Service Math 101: It Ain’t Just a Penny

September 1, 2008/5 Comments/in Customer Service, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

So it’s been a while since I spouted off about customer service but I just had an experience that peeved me so now is a good time to tee off on the topic again. I was driving home and suddenly had a sweet tooth so I stopped at one of America’s iconic fast food joints and spun through the drive through. It went something like this:

“Welcome to Make You Die of Congestive Heart Failure’s! Can I take your order?”

“Yeah. I’d like an artery clogger super sweet sugar booger special but give me the small… I’m trying to watch my diet.”

“That will be $1.29. Please pull around.”

I spun around to the window and handed the young lady a wrinkled up dollar, a shiny quarter and a nickel with some pocket lint attached to it. And then it happened… Her words reverberated throughout the cosmos, shattered stars, and spawned black holes.

“Thank you sir. Have a good night.”

Have a good night? Look, I wasn’t great in 2nd grade math but I was pretty sure she owed me a penny. A penny. I know – get over it. But it’s the principle of the whole thing. It came across as “I’m too busy to make change for you and, well, it’s only a penny so I know you don’t care so move along so I can clog someone else’s arteries.” Knowing the food she served me would merely kill me slowly, I believe she had the sinister intent of doing it more rapidly by causing an embolism.

Folks, this is customer service math 101. Sure it was a penny. But it’s one penny on the path toward creating a customer-hostile culture.

Just Look Busy!

August 25, 2008/1 Comment/in Leadership, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

And then there are those times you overhear a conversation that stops you dead in your tracks. You actually have to hit rewind in your brain and ask “did they actually just say that?” Ever have one of those moments? Clearly I did recently.

I was heading to a client site the other morning. As I headed out of my hotel room, I was rumblin’ bumblin’ stumblin’ down the hall (can I get a Chris Berman “holla holla!”?).

My sole mission in life at that point was to get a second cup of coffee from the lobby (and anyone who knows me knows The Rule – don’t speak to me until after my second cup o’ Joe). Clearly my mind was foggier than Yoda’s swamp on Dagobah.

As I passed two housekeepers who were conversing in the hallway, I heard it – the statement that shocked me more than hearing “I’m your father Luke.”

One housekeeper said “Just look busy when she goes by. That’ll keep her off your ass for the rest of the morning.” Note: this was VERBATIM!

Despite the caffeine-deficiency-induced lack of a solid connection between my brain and my eardrum at that point, I was still able to process the enormity of this statement. “Just look busy.” Wow. I was floored.

Hey Mr. Smartypants!

June 18, 2008/4 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

You’re not as smart as you think you are.

Seriously. I mean, you’re bright and literate but you’re really not as smart as you think. Neither am I. See, the thing is, as soon as you start walking around with your smartypants on, you expose yourself to the risk of career irrelevance. The world changes. Every day. The risk of thinking you’re smart is that you think you don’t need to learn anything new or change. Once that happens, you’ve doomed yourself to irrelevance just like the amazing car phone (remember those?).

Smart people know a lot. Heck – some of them think they know everything (sort of like Lumbergh). They won’t tell you that because it’s boorish but trust me, they think it even at some subliminal level. You know it’s true. Because of that, they’re loathe to learn something new because by definition it means they don’t know everything. It’s easier to know it all by refusing to admit there’s anything new to know.

By now, Mr. or Mrs. Smartypants has stopped reading because they know the lesson or suggestion is coming and well, gee… they already know it all so there’s no point in them continuing with the rest of the post. If you’re not a smartypants, keep reading.

Short Term Loss, Long Term Customer(s)

June 17, 2008/3 Comments/in Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

It happened again. Not once, not twice… but three times in one week. No, I didn’t get more speeding tickets. I had three outstanding customer service experiences.

So I’m on my way to a client engagement one morning. Of course, the hotel (which was fantastic – a newly renovated Hilton in Pittsburgh. I highly recommend it) did not account for my coffee drinking preferences. There were only two of the little LaVazza coffee packets (I need about six to get going – it’s a nasty habit). I downed them but it still wasn’t enough.

I strolled over to the client site and stopped by the nondescript little coffee shop in the lobby. No, believe it or not it wasn’t a Starbucks despite their ubiquity. This place is called Buon Giorno and it’s located in the lobby of the ABSC building in downtown Pittsburgh (near North Shore Center by PNC Park).

I looked over the fresh pastries and bagels but I was on a mission – coffee. The young lady behind the counter greeted me with a warm hello in between a lively discussion in a foreign Eastern European language I didn’t understand. She was arguing with someone unseen behind the back counter. I opened my wallet to do a cash check and saw nothing but blackness and old receipts. My eldest daughter had hit the BOD without me knowing it (Bank Of Dad). No cash whatsoever but I’m sure she enjoyed her trip to the mall. I asked the lady “do you take plastic?” You know what the answer was. My quest for caffeine screeched to a thundering halt.

Perfect 10

May 26, 2008/3 Comments/in Customer Service, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

I know sometimes it seems like I have more complaints than I do uplifting, heartwarming stories like the ones you’d find on the Hallmark Channel.

But every once in a while, someone gets it right. Nails it. Perfection like Nadia Comaneci.This particular individual of whom I speak was slightly less athletic than the sprite-like Nadia. Okay, a lot less athletic. About 6’2″, 280. With a mountain man beard. But that didn’t matter because his skills in the service arena were absolutely spectacular.

It was a bright, sunny afternoon and I was performing one of my regular jobs – I was the IT guy for the day. It’s amazing how much maintenance running a home wireless network consisting of kid’s PC’s, laptops, XBoxes, and other peripherals can be. But it’s better than my other two jobs as plumber and chief bug killer.

Anyway, it was time to install the new printer. Everything was hooked up just dandy. But where was the wire to make the final connection to the PC? I emptied the box. I went through the 18lbs. of packing materials. No wire. I read the box and in the modern-day equivalent of “batteries not included” in tiny 10 pitch the box said “USB cable to connect to PC not included. Sucker.”

I swear, the “sucker” part was on there.