Byron Kalies

It’s time to seriously think about change…when you put your drive for the 10th on the motorway; when they refer to the sand trap on the 14th as Byron’s Bunker; when your woods really are made of wood; when no-one dreams of giving you a 9 inch putt; when a 4 ball medal match plays through your friendly 2 player match play; when your putter carries the name of a long-dead, hardly-remembered golfer; when your 3 wood has the word spoon inscribed underneath; when your preferred ball is a Spalding Executive; when Titleist sponsor you….. to wear Nike…it’s time to think about change.

Perhaps it’s even time for a radical change.

You’ve done everything you can think of and still your handicap is in the 20s. You bought new clubs, new golf balls, 7 putters, used the interlocking grip, the baseball grip, the leading grip, the trailing hand grip, the Toga Death grip. You’ve stood closer to the ball, further away from the ball, practically on the ball. You’ve tried yoga, acupuncture and chewing gum to help you relax. You’ve tried drinking Red Bull to keep you focused. You’ve bought a shed full of magazines, DVDs, books. You’ve changed your diet, changed your ball marker and even your lucky black hat. Nothing works. You’ve tried absolutely everything short of getting a lesson from the pro.

You need help.

Psychologically people tend not to want to change. There are a hundred theories why this is so. A popular one believes it all stems from the time we were living in caves and any change was dangerous to our survival. In those times change really was difficult. If you wanted to change your swing there were no driving ranges, no nets to practice in, very few indoor practice areas. So change was only made when the price of not changing was so drastic, or life - threatening that you had to. Maybe you were slicing so much you were worrying velociraptors. That would make you work on your grip.

It is now almost universally agreed that people don’t like change because we simply like the comfort of routine, custom, habit. This seems to be true for most aspects of our lives. All our daily life we tend to sit in the same seats in the clubhouse, park in the same place, miss our putts on the same line. We see the vets in the same bunkers on the same holes every day.

We tend to read newspapers from the back, even though the sports pages are rarely at the back anymore. We leave a half inch of tea even if we have never used tea leaves for 20 years. We take a driver off the 8th tee although 9 times out of 10 it ends up in the rough.

However, would you change if your life depended on it? As a betting man I would lay odds that you wouldn’t. This is based on a report by Dr. Edward Miller. The report showed that people who undergo heart surgery are often left with a choice; in stark terms the choice is ‘change or die’. If they change and lead a healthier lifestyle after surgery they could avoid pain, further surgery and stop the spread of a variety of
diseases before one of them kills them. Or, they could stay the same; eat, drink and be dead.

Only 1 in 10 patients changed their lifestyle. It seems that they would prefer to die rather than change. Although this is initially difficult to believe it seems that people get stuck in a defence and denial attitude and simply refuse to accept it. This sounds ridiculous but when you think of people like George Best, James Belushi you wonder. You look at other people who get trapped in a potentially disastrous lifestyle that they simply can’t seem to change; Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson, Bill Cllinton and you believe it a little more.

So it takes a fair amount of pain and effort to change - so why bother? I have playing partners who approach a bunker with the same enthusiasm you display approaching a rabid rhinoceros. Yet they rationalise it away by remembering the one great bunker shot they played on March 28th 1987. And, then they say, “Well, how often am I in the bunker - once or twice a round if that - it’s hardly worth bothering. “

So they don’t and carry on…

I wonder what would cause someone to be sufficiently fed up with their game that they would actually do something about it? Well, if you did actually hit your playing partners on the tee with that hook you keep compensating for, or you were making more and more bizarre excuses not to play in medal competitions then this could well indicate that you are getting dissatisfied enough to actually do something about it.

So, if you seriously think about feigning injury and walking in, rather than play out of a
bunker you should probably start thinking about making a change…….it’s time to face your demons and do something about it.

First appeared in ‘Better Business (U.K.)

How do you handle complaints in your business? I went to a seminar once where complaints were described as snowflakes. They’re rare, precious and absolutely unique. You cannot buy them. They are the best feedback you’ll ever get. People have taken the time to tell you something you didn’t know about your business, I hope. You should cherish them.

OK. I’d definitely agree with the sentiment. However when I managed a betting office and had a six foot six inch thug demanding money for a bet he had put on too late I didn’t quite see him as a snowflake, or feel very much like cherishing him.

But, this is absolutely true. Complaints are the best way of getting an insight into your Organisation. You can’t do it - you’re too close. Your staff rarely do it - they may be too close to the business, too afraid of losing their job or simply couldn’t care less. The two types of people who can do it are new employees and customers. New employees are great. They can see past the ‘we’ve always done it this way’ mentality - well for a while at least.

In an organisation I worked with, in my computer programmer days, a new trainee asked why we kept all the computer reports each day, then moved them the next day, stored them for a week then threw them away.

“Because we do.”

“Do you ever use them?

“Well we could use them if there were a problem.”

“So when was the last time you had a problem?”

“Last week.”

“And did you use them?”

“Of course not. You’d never find anything. We have all the information on screen. It’s so much easier to find.”

It was estimated that this saved at least £20,000 a year in paper, workload, storage etc.

Back to customers and complaints. You know things will go wrong don’t you? As an Organisation with people there will be mistakes. It’s only human. Even without humans there are mistakes. So you know there will be mistakes the trick is not to pretend they don’t happen, but ensure there’s a process for dealing with them. Even more than this ensure that people aren’t afraid to own up to mistakes, accept responsibility, put it right and move on.

It’s also to do with the culture of your Organisation. How do you deal with mistakes in your Organisation? Is it a ’shame and blame’ culture or a supportive culture?

There’s the story of a top salesman who made a terrible mistake. He’d bought a vast amount of fruit. He thought it would be a bargain but had totally overestimated and his company was left with tons and tons of this rotting fruit. He arrived at his office the following day and started to tidy his papers, clearing his desk. He gets a call from his manager,

“Could you pop up and see me?” she says.

“Of course” he mumbles and slowly makes his way up the stairs to his boss’ office.

As he enters the room he says “Look I know I got it wrong - I’m sorry - I’ve written my letter of resignation - here it is.” and puts a letter on the desk.

His manager looks at the letter, rips it in half, rips it in half again and puts in in the bin.

“You must be joking.” she says smiling “We’ve just spent £20,000 on your training - there’s no way you’re leaving until you’ve made that back for us.”

The worse example of a shame and blame culture I came across was when I was doing some fact-finding on motivation in the Polish Civil service. There was the culture of punishment for mistakes. On one occasion I witnessed a staff meeting set up to announce that one of the employees (who was ordered to stand up at the front throughout the meeting) had failed to meet her target for the third successive month and would be demoted. I’m sure the staff there would be motivated to do well in the short term - fear is a great short term motivator. However, there are 2 huge problems with this; firstly you have to continue this level of fear - even increase it - if it is to have any effect and secondly - in the long term the best people will leave.

What you should be focusing on is resolving the mistake. There’s a really useful tip I learnt a while ago about dealing with mistakes. It’s only two parts; part 1 - apologise and part 2- do everything you can to resolve the problem. Part 1 is about acknowledging the error and apologising. This doesn’t mean saying “sorry” hundreds of time and wringing your hands and sobbing. It means one sincere, honest apology. Part 2 is to do with action. How can we move this on? “What can I do to put this right for you?” would be an excellent place to start. It’s concerned with action and resolving problems rather than dwelling on the problem.

The process should focus on ’speed of recovery’. Mistakes or customer complaints must be dealt with quickly, efficiently and learnt from. The vast majority of complainants just want things to be right. They don’t complain for fun.

At Ritz-Carlton hotels they have a policy to never lose a customer. Whoever receives a complaint owns it and has to resolve it to the customer’s satisfaction. Then record it. All their staff are allowed to spend up to $2000 without referring to their supervisors to resolve customer problems on the spot.

You can often turn mistakes into real positives as long as you approach it in the right way. There’s the story of the photographic studio that ruined one particular roll of film in developing it. This film was of a wedding. As a result half the photographs didn’t turn out. This was a disaster, obviously. The studio contacted the newly married couple and asked them where they would like to go to retake the photographs. They chose the Bahamas and off they went. They are now the biggest fans of the studio and will recommend them to all their friends.

It wasn’t cheap for the studio, but the alternative must have been worse. One complainant will tell ten others and they will tell ten others and so on. Similarly one case off exceptional customer care will have ten friends telling ten others as happened in the following example;

A customer at a John Lewis department store had a seriously ill child who desperately wanted a toy parrot which they didn’t sell. Two store assistants went shopping in their lunch break to find one without success. Another found one on the internet and ordered and paid for it herself, her colleague bought one in America when she was there on holiday the following week and another employee from another department having heard the story brought her son’s toy parrot in with a great note from her son to the ill child asking him to look after it.

If someone gets a bad meal at your restaurant and don’t tell you about it then you know they’ll tell others. You’ve got to actively encourage complaints. You do this by listening, watching and taking action. In this country people are still quite reticent about complaining. You’ve got to encourage them. Make it non-threatening. Listen to them.

To re-emphasise the simple key to this; when dealing with complaints the philosophy should be to apologise and then put it right. Apologise once - properly and sincerely. Then, find out what you can do to make it right. Then make it right.

You’ll be surprised how effective a marketing tool this can be. If you think of an example in your life of excellent customer care I bet it’ll come from an occasion when something didn’t go well initially.

First appeared in ‘Marketing N.Z.’ (N.Z.)

On August 1st 2004 I wondered how great the customer care was for New Zealand companies. I had carried out a number of these projects for UK, US, Canada, South Africa and Australia so thought I’d give it a go.

I, very unscientifically, chose the top 25 companies from a web page by typing in “top 100 companies New Zealand” on Google, got the list (www.webrank.biz/top100nz.htm) and started contacting people. These results were from 2002 but I figured this would give me a good idea anyway as it contained a mixture of retail, energy, meat, food, finance, telecom. As I said not the most scientific method - but this isn’t a thesis.

I sent the following email;

“I am writing a customer care article looking at how large Organisations handle complaints. I believe there will always be complaints and that the best Organisations can turn complaints into something positive. I would dearly like some examples from New Zealand of customer complaints you have dealt with effectively to produce a positive result. Obviously I would not want you to infringe on any confidentiality issues with individual customers.

Many thanks

Byron Kalies”

(The article is real by the way and hopefully will be published towards the end of the year.)

The websites were generally extremely good, well developed and most had had a fair amount of time and money spent on them.

Usually it’s fairly straightforward to find a contact email - usually. In a few cases it was impossible. Well the few cases were really one case; Foodstuffs Co-operative. This co-operative boasts that “the collective turnover of the Foodstuffs companies ranks the Organisation as the third biggest business in New Zealand“. The website is excellent. There is even a lesson plan for teachers. Yet they couldn’t supply an email contact address for Wellington and South Island. There was an address (and a name, and a photo) for Auckland. So, I sent the email. Fourteen days later - no reply. I sent a reminder.

On the subject of names I have a particular pet gripe about this. I want to have the name of a person to write to. It’s almost become the law in other customer care contacts, e.g. telephoning; “Hi, Diane here how can I help?”. However of the 25 companies I contacted only 5 supplied a name (Foodstuffs, AGL NZ, Fletcher Buildings, Methanex New Zealand and Carter Holt Harvey). Of the other I usually got an email address I could contact, nzcustomer@…. or services@… but not a name. Fonterra supplied lots of names for Investor Relations questions but nothing for customer service. Some of the companies had phone numbers, addresses and fax numbers but not always email addresses. It’s not difficult to supply an email address. Email is my preferred form of communication for this. It suits me and being half way around the world it’s by far the best method, so give me a choice.

Some companies only supplied a form. Again, give me the choice. The standard of the forms were mixed. Some of the questions left you wondering; “Are you a customer” Meridian Energy (were they planning to be more / less helpful?). Shell offered to send me a copy of their Business Report - thank you. This ranged from the superb Air New Zealand - just the 2 fields - email address box and query box, to the not so good Caltex New Zealand. Caltex had a long form for me to fill in. They even wanted to know my occupation - I’m still wondering what they do with that information. They were redeemed though as they were the only organisation that recognise that UK is actually not a country and that Wales is (I’m Welsh by the way). I forgive them.

Only 3 of the companies sent an automatic immediate reply. I was disappointed. I like to be acknowledged. I really like to know that my message has got through. It costs the company virtually nothing and keeps me happy.

Anyway, I sent the emails, filled in the forms and waited for the replies to flood in. The began trickling in the following day;

One of the very first and very much ‘go away, don’t bother me’ was Alliance Group Ltd - high quality meat products. I’d seen the website and read the statement from the Chief Executive talking of strong commitment to quality and customers, “It is the reason we have always maintained such strong relationships with our business partners and customers within New Zealand and around the world.”. So the reply to my query “We acknowledge your enquiry. We do not wish to participate” was a bit of a blow. I suppose technically I’m not a business partner, but how did they know I’m unlikely to be a customer - being a vegetarian? Lucky guess.

BP (”…dynamically led company that never stands still. In touch with customers”) replied and asked if I’d chosen the wrong website. I replied that I hadn’t. They replied that they’d contact their Media manager and get back to me. Fourteen days later - no reply. I sent a reminder.

AGL sent a nice reply saying that they were Australian and didn’t have examples from New Zealand. “Fine” I replied “that will be great. Fourteen days later - no reply. I sent a reminder.

Woolworth’s had quite a bit about customers on their website and in their Guiding Principles; “You should be responsive to their enquiries and ensure they are not misled when you are providing information”.

They’re response was polite but… “The information you have asked for is sensitive and we are unable to share it outside of the Organisation. Also we do not have the resources.”

Interestingly enough they seemed to have the resources and seemed less coy about sensitivity when they quoted 4 testimonials on their web site; “I cannot express how brilliant this service is (online ordering)” - Kim, Christchurch… “I rang my children in Wellington this morning (Monday night NZ time) and they confirmed that the groceries had arrived. They were absolutely rapt.” - Matthew, London

Meridian Energy (”Meridian Energy is committed to providing you with a quick, courteous and efficient service”) forwarded my enquiry to their Customer Service team. Fourteen days later - no reply. I sent a reminder.

Telecom Corporation of New Zealand (”Providing service and support is what we’re here for. “) forwarded my email to their Customer Resolution team. Fourteen days later - no reply. I sent a reminder.

Fletcher Buildings (”Our business exists to meet the needs of our customers”) suggested I contact some of the companies within the Fletcher Building Group - “why couldn’t you do it for me?” I thought “you know them”.

Methanex (not a great deal about customers on this website) sent me a nice reply but I’d obviously asked the wrong question; “With regard to the community, we have Community Advisory Panels in our areas of operations, and you can find out more about them on our web site”

Shell (From 9 Business Principles… “Principle 9…… Communication …”Shell companies… provide full relevant information about their activities to legitimately interested parties, subject to any overriding considerations of business confidentiality and cost” ). “After consideration we would rather not.” Maybe they decided I’m not a legitimately interested party. Well I’m interested so does that mean I’m illegitimate? Or are they concerned about business confidentiality?

Contact Energy (”How can we help you today?”) wrote a nice email explaining their customer care procedure but “Unfortunately we are not able to provide you with specific examples, as the disclosure of this information would breach the Privacy Act.” Are they concerned with business confidentiality as well? They did, however, promise to send a copy of their complaints brochure. (They also called my ‘Bryon’ - not designed to please people - getting their names wrong).

Mobil Oil (”We pledge to be innovative and responsive”) contacted me with another overview but “I am unable to share specific examples with you.”

The remaining companies haven’t replied yet. I’ve sent reminders;

Food land proved a problem. Firstly I sent the email to a company in Hawaii (I think) and having finally tracked down the Food land from the list (FAL, I hope). I looked at their website (couldn’t find any mention of customers) and sent the email. I’m not hopeful.

Fonder has a superb website. A values poster and lots of great quotes about customers; “Measure a job well done through our customers’ eyes.”, “Communicate with openness and honesty”. I’m waiting.

Air New Zealand (”We strive to deliver a consistently superior standard of customer service”), CHH (”We are always keen to provide the media with any assistance they need to write stories about our company.”), Richmond Food (”Our staff are encouraged to be action-orientated. Innovative and produce quality work”), AFFCO (”emphasis on meeting customer demand is behind the Internationalisation of AFFCO”), PPCS (”Talk of quality is cheap -it’s what really happens which makes the difference”), Caltex Oil (”To our customers… This creed dictates that our customers come first and will receive ultimate worth and value through fast and polite service”), Comalco New Zealand (”We care about people and the world in which we live.”), Genesis Energy (”At Genesis Energy we take pride in our Customer Care team…. We listen. We do.”).

For all of the above; Fourteen days later - no reply. I sent a reminder.

There was one from the 25 that came somewhere close. This was The Warehouse Group (”We aim to keep our customers satisfied.”). Not brilliant but a little better than the others. They explained their way of dealing with customer complaints in a clear, unambiguous way. Nice, simple process. Still no examples though.

I couldn’t believe the top 25 companies in New Zealand were incapable of coming up with one customer care example between them. Maybe it’s because I’m not a customer to them - I’m Welsh, I don’t eat meat, don’t drive a car, don’t use their phones, gas or electricity, use their food stores, use their bricks or wood. Maybe, but I decided I’d ask more companies so I looked at the current list of the top 500 Australian companies in BRW and identified the New Zealand ones.

I sent them the email…..

One week later and some replies;

BP passed it on and then replied with “Hi Byron, I’m sorry but we are unable to help you with this request.”;

Foodstuffs regret that “they are unable to offer any ‘case studies’”;

Richmond gave me a few sentences on general customer care practice then “I’m afraid I cannot provide you with any examples”;

Meridian Energy supplied a nice, specific paragraph on their process then the email of the electricity complaints office;

Fonterra forwarded my email to a subsidary(sic);

AGL apologised and asked for more info as did Telecom, as did Genesis Energy.

I’m still waiting.

Carter Holt Harvey probably got the closest to helping me by explaining the structure and how they handle complaints and offering to help more. I’d had enough by then.

Of the new companies I emailed 8 ignored me totally; Sky City, Auckland Airport, Fisher and Paykel Healthcare, Nuplex Industries, Repco Corporation, Tower, NZ Oil and Gas and Tenon.

I looked at their web sites again and found 1 of Tower’s 3 values. I need to quote it in full;

“Our highest commitment is to our Customers (whether consumers or intermediaries) without whom our business would not exist. Customers seek many things from us - performance, service and communications - but what will make us unique is our total commitment to outstanding Service… in the form our customers want.”

I gave them another chance to respond…..

Of the 3 that took the trouble to reply Sky Network TV wrote “Our management has decided not to comply with your request”;

Fisher and Paykel decided they would “focus on our resources coping with work that will return benefits to us. I therefore have to decline your request for case study.”

And Waste Management had the best reason of all “We are a non profit Organisation and we do not get complaints.”

Finally a reply from Selena Batt. A set of customer stories I can use from Genesis Energy (”We listen. We really do”) and restoring my faith in New Zealand customer care.

New Zealand Top 25 companies I contacted;

1. Fonterra Co-operative Group

2. Telecom Corporation of New Zealand

3. Air New Zealand

4. Carter Holt Harvey

5. Foodland (NZ) Holdings

6. Fletcher Buildings

7. Foodstuffs (Auckland)

8. Shell New Zealand Holding Company

9. The Warehouse Group

10. Woolworth’s (New Zealand)

11. Mobil Oil New Zealand

12. BP New Zealand Holdings

13. Foodstuffs (Wellington) Co-Operative

14. Foodstuffs (South Island)

15. Richmond

16. AGL NZ

17. Alliance Group

18. AFFCO Holdings

19. PPCS

20. Meridian Energy

21. Caltex New Zealand

22. Contact Energy

23. Genesis Energy

24. Methanex New Zealand

25. Comalco New Zealand

Sky City

Auckland Airport

Fisher and Paykel Appliances

Fisher and Paykel Healthcare

Nuplex Industries

Repco Corporation

Sky Network TV

Waste Management NZ

Tower

NZ Oil and Gas

Tenon

First appeared in ‘The Age’ (Australia)

I once went to a seminar where complaints were described as snowflakes. They are rare, precious and absolutely unique. You cannot buy them. They are the best feedback you will ever get. Someone has taken the time to tell you something you did not know about your business, I hope. You should cherish them. I would definitely agree with the sentiment. However, when I managed a betting office and had a six foot six inch thug with a shotgun demanding money for a bet he had put on too late I did not quite see him as a snowflake or feel like cherishing him very much.

Those in the know

But, it is absolutely true. Complaints are the best way of getting an insight into your organisation. You cannot do it – you are too close. Your staff rarely do it – they may be too close to the business, too afraid of losing their jobs or simply could not care less. The two types of people who can do it are new employees and customers. New employees are great. They can see past the ‘we’ve always done it this way’ mentality – well, for a while at least they can.

In an organisation I worked for, in my computer programmer days, a new trainee asked why we kept all the computer reports each day, then moved them the next day, stored them for a week then threw them away. “Well, we could use them if there were a problem.” came the reply.

“So when was the last time you had a problem?”

“Last week.”

“And did you use them?”

“Of course not. You’d never find anything. We have all the information on screen. It’s so much easier to find…Oh I see…”

It was estimated that when we stopped producing these reports it saved over £20,000 a year in paper, workload and storage.

Fix the problem

Back to customers and complaints. As an organisation with people there will be mistakes. It is only human. The real strategic management skill here is not to pretend they do not happen, but ensure there is a process for dealing with them. Even more than this ensure people are not afraid to own up to mistakes, accept responsibility, put it right and move on. To do that however you need to have a ‘no blame culture’, where mistakes are accepted and learnt from. When dealing with complaints the procedures you implement should focus on ‘speed of recovery’. Mistakes or customer complaints must be dealt with quickly, efficiently and learnt from. The vast majority of complainants just want things to be right. They are not complaining for fun.

Trust your staff

At Ritz-Carlton hotels they have a policy to never lose a customer. Whoever receives a complaint owns it and has to resolve it to the customer’s satisfaction. Then they record it to try to ensure it does not happen again. All their staff are allowed to spend up to $2,000 without referring to their supervisors, to resolve customer problems on the spot. You can often turn mistakes into real positives as long as you approach it in the right way. There’s the story of the photographic studio that ruined a roll of wedding film in developing it. This was a disaster, obviously. The studio contacted the newly married couple and asked them where they would like to go to retake the photographs. They chose the Bahamas and off they went. They are now the biggest fans of the studio and will recommend them to all their friends.

Going the extra mile

It was not cheap for the studio, but the alternative must have been worse. One complainant will tell 10 others and they will tell 10 others and so on. If someone gets a bad meal at your restaurant and does not tell you about it then you know they will tell others. You have got to actively encourage complaints, by listening, watching and taking action. In this country people are still quite reticent about complaining, so you must encourage them. When dealing with complaints the philosophy should be to apologise – properly and sincerely. Then, find out what you can do to make it right. You will be surprised how effective a marketing tool this can be. If you think of an example in your life of excellent customer care I bet all the money in my pocket it came from an occasion when something did not go well initially.