Month: January 2007

Nature vs Nurture and the Art of Customer Service and Product Innovation

I’ve been silent for the last week because in my spare time rather than blogging, I’ve been banging my head against the Windows logo. Short version of the story… I started getting a Windows error (svchost for you geeks), which I was able to diagnose as an Auto Update issue. After some amount of playing around, I found a Knowledge Base article stating there was a hot fix, but it was only available from Microsoft support. They had an option for online chat support for $35, saying it would be faster than the email run around. I’m an optimist and went for it. The chat went about as you would expect… back and forth that wasn’t focused on my problem, but rather about them filling in their customer database. Then, the remarkable piece happened, the support agent came back to say, and I quote:

“That hot fix isn’t available any more. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

 Many responses came to my mind, as you can imagine, but the most important and immediate one:

“Oh, hmmmm, that’s too bad… well, in that case, maybe, at least, TRY TO FIX THE PROBLEM I JUST PAID YOU TO AT LEAST TRY TO FIX?!”

However, being more patient, I said, “Any other ideas?” After 30 more minutes (really), the chat hung up and I heard no more. Sigh.

Alas, I will fix my own problem, but it reminded me of an on-going discussion that I had with Scott Cook when I was at Intuit. The short title, “Can you train people to understand customers?” While some people are naturally good at seeing the hard to see, or being empathetic, I believe that people can be trained — or nurtured — to see. Continuing my optimistic tendencies, my top tips for nurturing listening, understanding, seeing and/or empathy… that fit for both customer service and product innovation:

  1. Slow down. The biggest limiter I’ve seen is jumping to conclusions. Take the time to pattern match at a more detailed level to get the true picture, not the general one that “everyone can see”.
  2. Work at disproving your theories. When you have a theory, many things you see will fit it because our minds work that way. If you actively work to find the holes, you’ll typically do a better job at proving them.
  3. Be there. For customer service, take the time to understand the full situation… not just what the customer is saying now. If you are in innovation, actually go and sit with your customers. I always say, “See around the problem.”
  4. Relive your time with customers. Reviewing what you think you’ve learned is important. What surprised you in the case or the visit? Surprises provide the biggest opportunities. (Caution: Surprises aren’t all good, but the ones there are… really are.)
  5. Go for the fun. While the obvious might make us feel like we solved a problem quickly, it usually isn’t fun. Let customers teach you… rather than you teaching them. This opens your mind and makes you think differently.

Do you think my MS rep would have benefited from these tips? I do. What are your experiences on nature vs nurture, and product innovation or customer service?

OK, I’ve already ordered this shirt. I’ll be wearing it often… 

T-shirts are user friendly
         (PCs are not)

P.S. Yes, I almost put “Computers are not”, but well, you know I tip my hat to Apple with that adjustment.

On my way to PBR, I bought three things

What is PBR you ask? Well, Professional Bull Riding, of course. Yes, you can take the girl out of Arkansas, but she still likes to watch those cowboys riding bulls! We went to see the top-level tour “Built Ford Tough” in Worcester this weekend with our friends, Peter and Christine. Went to shoot guns at the gun range before that. (Thanks to Peter!)

And what does one wear to a PBR event? Jeans, of course, and that’s the subject of my #1 most recent purchase:

  1. Adjustable-hem Radcliffe jeans. I can say this because it isn’t me, but the jeans… everyone who sees me in these jeans says they look awesome… not just polite “you look great”, but “W-O-W, you look great”. Again, definitely the jeans, not me. All of that aside, what I really love about them… they have an adjustable hem! Flats to heels to capris with a simple little cufflink-like innovation. My hat is off to Suzy. On the sizing if you want to order online, I read the charts and recommendations and whatever they said, I did. No problem at all.
  2. On Target: How the World’s Hottest Retailer Hit a Bull’s-Eye. I’ll likely be blogging a bit more on Target and include some info from this book, but I did buy it when I saw it recently. I’ve always liked Target, as I remember them featuring kids in wheelchairs just like regular models in their ads years ago. I liked that about them. I’m enjoying learning more of the history and culture. One clear indication on their culture: Corporate “jetiquette” is for the most senior executive to serve everyone else, “taking orders, setting up, handing out trays, cleaning up”.
  3. Mayan Chile Chocolate cake from Chocolate Maven in Santa Fe. Woah, this cake is amazing! I got to chose a cake recently while visiting Santa Fe… and as soon as I read about this one, it was mine. It has a wonderful chocolate flavor with just enough chile that you notice the hot and smoke, but then kind of wonder what that taste was… as you smile pleasantly and take another bite. You can’t get their cakes shipped, so I’m going to have to keep dreaming about it for awhile. You can hold off the urge a bit by ordering their Mayan Chile Hot Chocolate online!

Hope you enjoyed this list. I’m thinking of making “I bought three things” a series based on nice response from my first “3 things” post. What do you think?

Besides spilled hot chocolate, what’s on my shirt today? I imagine I’ve surprised a few of you with the whole PBR and gun toting thing. No, I don’t own my own guns; I don’t actually even feel comfortable in a house with them. But, yes, I do like to experience different things; and as long as they are handled safely, I don’t object to guns.

And, while I enjoyed watching rodeo and bull riding as a kid, it wasn’t until I read Josh Peter’s Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies, and Bull Riders: A Year Inside the Professional Bull Riders Tour that I was really hoppin’ to go. This book is well written and really covered the people and business of the PBR. A fascinating life.

So, for the “out of character” info I shared with you today, on my shirt is what I say to Evan whenever I surprise him by doing something odd… shoulders shrugging, I say:

I’m diverse

Experience: The good, the bad, the ugly

Experience is a hot topic around Spreadshirt. Over the past few years, Lukasz, Michael, and Matthias have built a terrific team that exemplifies the Gen Y workforce described by Jay Adelson in Business Week’s “Digg This: Talking to Gen Y”. A few weeks after I joined, I wrote to Harry Nellis, “our” partner at Accel, and told him that I could feel at Spreadshirt what Adelson describes as the ideal for Gen Y:

“…create an excitement about the company’s achievements, but more important, help employees recognize their role in accomplishing that mission.”

I love seeing and feeling this at the company. So, what’s the hot point? Well, Gen Y also means younger, which means fewer years of experience. Since we have a great, motivated team… why do we need experience? Our discussions have led me to these thoughts:

We know the good:

Experience brings us the possibility of learning… from mistakes, from success… mostly from mistakes. Mistakes can give us that “hand on a hot stove” imprint in our brains… you remember not to do it again from the OUCH. The important thing is that you step back to learn from your experiences, and [Alert: hard part here] do your best to — without bias — understand why something failed. It is only then that you can actually apply your experience… and not be doomed to repeat history.

We know the bad:

A fun example of the curse of knowledge is given by Stanford professor Chip Heath in Made to Stick (which gets an A++ rating from me… I’ve followed Chip’s work for a few years and am a believer). In a Stanford study, participants were assigned either a “tapper” or “listener” role. The tapper would tap out a very well-known song and the listener would have to guess the tune. Before the answer was revealed the tapper had to say whether the person would guess the song or not. The tappers said that the listener would get it right 50% of the time… reality… the listeners got it 2.5% of the time. The reason: The tappers had the curse of knowledge; they heard the full song in their head with complete accompaniment, while the listener heard some form of Morse code. When you are applying your experience, remember that you are hearing the full symphony, while others could likely be hearing you tap on the table… or it gets bad.

I’ve recently discovered the ugly:

Closely related to the good and the bad is my recent discovery of the ugly. With the Spreadshirt exec team, you are rarely lacking in critical analysis, which is awesome 95% of the time. The ugly is the 5% of the time when you just can’t explain why something is wrong. But, you have seen it so many times in so many different ways that you know what will happen — and, you don’t want to stick your hand on that stove or see others go through it. Ugh. While your gut (which, IMHO, is your inner self expressing your experience) tells you it is wrong, you can’t justify why. And, the arguments contrary to your gut are compelling. When this happens for me, I try to get to what experience is driving my gut. When that doesn’t work… call it ugly, decide whether you can live with the decision either way, make your case, and move on.

Along with my intro story, another story goes well with what’s on my shirt today. Harry recruited me for this position. As I talked to him more about the opportunity, I admit to being surprised when I realized that they were recruiting me as the gray hair for the org. I did think that I had a couple more positions (not just a couple of years, but a couple of positions!!) before I was the gray hair. But, alas… here I sit as a:

gen X geezer

Trust, Europeans, CEOs, advice, PowerPoint and dog commands

A 2006 European study covering “who you trust” (pdf) rates CEOs as the least trusted source on a product or company information — seriously dead last in every country polled. Ouch!

I have a thought each for CEOs and those not trusting them, and I want your feedback on these newly formed thoughts. Both were spurred into action by my respected friend, Jenny Spadafora, who writes a thinking person’s blog, 12frogs. Thanks, Jenny!

For CEOs… find points of overlap

As I licked my personal wound of feeling mistrusted simply based on three letters behind my name, Jenny challenged me, “How many CEOs do you trust?” My fingers started typing names, which I erased and then typed, “I don’t know them well enough to say ‘trust’.” She continued — pointing out something we saw time and time again as we visited customers at Intuit — people trust people who are “like them”. And… most people don’t feel CEOs are like them.

My advice for CEOs and would-be CEOs (and anyone that wants to lead):

Get to know your customers, employees, suppliers, and shareholders.

From my expeirence, the points of overlap where they see places where you are like them increase interaction quality and more trust will develop — a virtuous cycle.

Quick example, last week, our Customer Service team brought a Dilbert cartoon to me that made fun of a new CEO around an issue that is sensitive here (location). The team felt I was like them enough to appreciate a cartoon, even if it could have been considered somewhat at my expense. I was proud to have gotten to that point in only a couple of months with my being at their office only 1/3 of that time.

Do y’all have examples of this type of “points of overlap” theory working to increase trust?

For those wanting to trust… seek first to understand

Yes, CEOs should hold themselves to a high bar and continue to raise it as they meet their objectives. They should not be scoundrels. That said, the consumer of the information and actions of the CEO should hold themselves to a higher standard. Remember two things:

  1. When you see a dumb decision, there really are often factors you don’t know about, can’t see, or even, can’t understand.
  2. Recall that global optimization (across a corporation for example) often does cause local stupidity (in your department or life for example).

You shouldn’t excuse dumb and stupid acts, bud do raise your own bar in working to understand.

How did Jenny get me here to this point? She wrote an exceptional post on assault with a deadly PowerPoint file. (Please read it because she’s right.) Her first point is about realizing that the PowerPoint is not the novel, but the Cliffs Notes. As an information consumer, either when looking at a PowerPoint, hearing a presentation, or questioning a CEOs actions, understand that you are getting the Cliffs Notes version and there is more to the story. Seek first to understand… then go on the attack if you need to, but make darn sure you’ve done step 1. Hold yourself to that standard.

What do you think? Think these two points can help us get to a better place? Does it matter that CEOs rank last in trustworthiness, or am I just being sensitive?

I’m going with a pun for my shirt today. I’m a word geek, so I have a subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary online. In thinking about this post, I looked up trust, and was amused to find that the second definition was:

b. Imperative: an instruction given to a dog, requiring it to wait for a reward, usu. in a begging position with a tidbit placed on its nose.

So, with that in mind for a definition of trust, I’m:

Waiting for my reward

Fun words… emotive words

Over the holidays, I read Phil Dusenberry’s One Great Insight Is Worth a Thousand Good Ideas. If you are a brand/ad geek, you’ll enjoy this book. I’ll likely do a few posts with lessons and examples from it.

I wanted to start with one story that I think most of us can use immediately… use emotive words… words that excite. The example:

Best Cellars, a wine store near Phil’s home in Manhattan, doesn’t use regions or grape varietals to mark their sections, but rather words like juicy, smooth, big, fizzy, fresh, and soft.

I want a wine store like this in my area. I can feel these words, and I can’t feel Pinot Noir. I’ve stared at hundreds of bottles of Pinot Noir, trying to remember anything I could about the different regions where they are grown, the particular years that made them taste different ways, the vintner’s specialties, etc. I need something that helps me connect and Best Cellars words bring out more emotion for me.

This reminded me of one of my favorite shirts that Lukasz has. It is a black shirt that in silver type simple says:

focus

Again, this brings out emotion!

I’m looking forward to working with the team to think of creative ways to apply this at Spreadshirt. Easily, we can have categories in our stores, and allow categories for shop partners, that express the emotions they had when creating the shirts, the emotions that they think people will get when buying them, the emotions that folks want to evoke with a gift, etc.

Question for you… Have you seen great examples of the use of emotive words? I’d love to know what’s worked for you.

So, let’s see, what’s on my shirt today?

I’m feelin’ it!

On my way to trying to be insightful, I bought three things

I’ve been flattered — and somewhat intimidated — that the most common word folks have used about my blog has been insightful. Yipes, that’s a high bar, and it feels like I have to think a lot. Today, I wanted to lean more towards cool and spontaneous, than pensive. So, how about listing stuff that excited me so much I actually bought them as soon as I saw them? Here’s my top three recent “cool” purchases:

  1. Moleskine’s small Japanese fold out pocket album. I found this when Fast Company profiled Scott Wilson, an up-and-coming designer. Unfortunately the online link doesn’t have the full picture of him that shows the accordian folded pages, which, as Scott said allows “a long thread of ideas… [seeing] how they progress.” (The middle Amazon close up pic does show this a bit.) I regularly have this problem that things flow, rather than jump to the next page in a notebook, and I’m looking forward to seeing if this works for me.
  2. SLEEPTRACKER watch. I must have been sleeping in 2005 when this won an amazing innovation designation from Time, and I can’t remember where I saw this recently, but as soon as I did, I ordered it. I have always believed there was something to waking up during the right sleep stage… some days you feel you were woken up in the middle of something. The idea that a watch can tell when I’m in the right stage and wake me up during the time range I set… I LOVE THAT.
  3. Remote control, inflatable Sumo wrestlers. The video on ThinkGeek is fun, but not near as fun as seeing these two guys in action. They are not easy to drive, as they like Weebles — bottom heavy. The sounds they make… you laugh just hearing them, period. Now, full disclosure… we’ve returned our first set because one of them had a mechanical failure within the first hour of play. I’ll tell you if the second set is also defective.

Now, after attempting to be cool, I have to admit an insecurity… I have a fear that “insightful” could be the new “interesting”? Are you folks trying to find a nice word to categorize my ramblings without telling me you fell sleep through them? Admitting that, on my shirt today would be…

Am I “interesting”?

P.S. With that said, I am on a personal crusade to wipe the bad smell off “interesting”. I use it all the time and really do mean it in the sense of intriguing, “you are teaching me something”, “it makes me go hmmmmm…”… in a good way! 😀

Before it is tooting my own horn…

First things first…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I had a terrific holiday in Santa Fe and hope your holidays were just as wonderful.

The shirt presents were hits; I got to see first hand how many smiles they can generate. I didn’t think I would get Richard out of his “I’m the decider” shirt. Thanks to the team for great execution on these presents!!!

Speaking of the team, I wanted to write a note about our customer service team before it would be considered tooting my own horn.

Before I joined Spreadshirt, I placed some orders to understand the full Spreadshirt offering. When I talked to our US Service Director, Denise, during the interview process, I shared my positive experience with her team on one order that had an issue. She thanked me, then proceeded to tell me about what had happened. What’s surprising here? She took initiative to investigate whether I had placed any orders before talking to me. I hadn’t told the Spreadshirt folks that I had placed the orders, but she checked. Since I’ve joined, I see that Denise runs her team this way, they investigate problems, and that provides differentiated service.

Research, investigation… whatever you want to call it… makes a difference, and it’s something I live by. It takes time, but even if you’ve gone down the wrong path, it works. It shows people — customers, partners, employees, colleagues, press, analysts — that you care enough to think through their situation. The key, it must be real, not mechanical. This is the quality that Denise brings out in her team, and it makes for rave reviews… and not just from me! My Google Watch on our name is regularly bringing up praise for our service team, which I happily forward along.

As a manager, how do you ensure a customer service team that holds this as a key goal?

  1. Hire people that are curious.
  2. Hire people that naturally show they care.
  3. Hire people that don’t get stuck on one theory to the exclusion of others.

The good news is that these are fairly clear qualities to get to during an interview. So, what’s on my shirt today? It is a bit long, but speaks to the essence of all three points:

In science, the most exciting phrase is not “Eureka!”, but “Hmm… that’s funny…” — Asimov

Thanks to a customer service team that I’m proud to represent!