The What Goes Around Blog

Poor Customer Service? Time for a Song!

As many of you know, I was recently inspired to write a song about the lamentable customer service BT was providing to Darren, one of their broadband customers. The song proved to be a big hit, attracting much more attention than I anticipated. According to the BT customer service team, it also helped Darren in his quest to get his service restored (though he had to endure nine days without service first). The good people at BT Care got in touch – firstly to say:

Just posted a comment on your video about your friend’s broadband problem. We would love to get this sorted for him, could you ask him to drop @BTCare a tweet or send btcare@bt.com an email with details of the problem and we will get on to it ASAP. If you ask him to put YouTube in the title of the email I will know it is him.

I would really like to get this sorted for him. Thanks

Then after they had been in touch with their customer and started to sort things out they contacted me again:

It looks like we have been in touch with your friend and are getting things sorted for him. Thanks so much for your help with this.

I really appreciated the way BT Care engaged with me – good work.

Their reaction was a marked contrast to Ian Livingston, BT group CEO. He saw the video and called me three times in one day to remonstrate with me about the song. He was aggressive towards me and made veiled threats of legal action. The song was tongue in cheek – and I don’t think there was anything in it that warranted BT taking legal action. I discussed the matter with friends and the general agreement was ‘the song served its purpose – maybe you should take it down?’

Judging by the way Ian Livingston had reacted I had clearly caused offence, albeit unintentionally. As my friends said, the purpose of the song was to help Darren, so to that extent, mission accomplished. I removed the video from Youtube.

Ian Livingston contacted me again the following day asking

Can you let me know what you decided to do about it all as I can¹t see anything?

I replied confirming I’d already taken the video down. He responded again – here are some of his final words to me (and though I clearly wound him up I was at the time a BT customer and shareholder):

Doug

Your song had nothing to do with Darren getting sorted. It was picked up before we saw your song. I had got it from his email to me which as I dealt with almost immediately as I do with all customer emails despite the assertions in your song….Customer complaints have reduced by 50% over the last 18 months so perhaps we are making some progress and the RFT (edit – right first time) programme is delivering although we have more to do….For someone who prides themselves in engagement skills, you clearly struggle.

Ian

Leadership is not a Sacred Path

Over at our group on LinkedIn, bad behaviour is all the rage. So to help create some balance in our world, here’s a look at what makes great leadership behaviour. Leadership is not a sacred path, it is a route open to all, we just need to choose it. Enjoy the read, and then please…take some action.

As a leader, the most important thing of all is make yourself visible and act completely consistently at all times with your declared values (you don’t need to look much beyond Gordon Brown’s “bigoted woman” howler to see the importance of this). When people have to change, they become anxious and look for any discrepancy between the leaders’ words and deeds, which they magnify and use as reason for inaction. For example when the leader talks about the importance of the team, but rewards individual performance, people will be demoralised and will opt for individual performance, because they assume that is what the leader really wants. It is not that money bribes, but it talks. Very loudly. You might like to watch Dan Pink speaking on the Science of Motivation, for more on this.

Educate people as early as you can about the changing situation and ask people what their ideas are. Often managers mistakenly pretend there is not a problem because they do not wish to alarm people. This is patronising and denies the organisation the value of more people’s awareness, experience and creativity. Additionally, it is a mistake to believe that people resist change. What they resist most is having change imposed upon them. So managers who plan secretly then announce their solutions should not be surprised when they meet resistance instead of the commitment they had expected and hoped for. They are committing leadership malpractice.

Building on the previous points, people very much want to feel safe and in control. Dealing with imposed change can threaten these feelings, so good leaders help people to regain control and actively engage them in co-creating their new future.

Having identified your top priorities for positive change, bear in mind that Tesco learned and showed that you cannot run more than three strategic projects at the same time. Many businesses try to do too much, which distracts and confuses their people while dispersing resources too broadly. Sustained focus is vital. Do what you need to do until you have done it. Then stop and get on with the next thing.

Engaging Times Newspaper – Issue 1

Wouldn’t it be cool to have a newspaper all about engagement. There are loads of great stories on websites, in magazines, and on blogs about trust, co-creation, talent, making your workplace great, and much more. I thought it would be great if we could bring some of the best stories and research together. I said to myself, I’m going to make this happen.

I had heard about this fantastic company called The Newspaper Club so I got in touch and sure enough, they were able to help me out. They will print anything from 5 copies of the newspaper you design. Over a few days I compiled content, and edited like I’ve never edited before.

Finally, I was ready to print. I pushed the button. Nothing happened. Well I guess it wouldn’t, this real old fashioned newsprint idea takes a while you know. Seven days later, whump! 100 copies of Engaging Times hit the doormat, just in time for us to give them away at our Engagement Conference. And I can now add newspaper publisher to my skills list.

You can get your free copy of Engaging Times by clicking the link below. I really hope you enjoy reading it. If you would like to contribute to future issues or make a contribution to the cost of future issues (in return for some prime editorial space) then just let me know. I have a handful of copies of Issue 1 left. If you want a piece of engagement publishing history (steady on) then drop me a line from our contact us page. First come, first served.

Engaging Times Newspaper – Issue 1