Category: Customer Service

Letter to the Boss, from John Everyman

My search for interesting and useful stories about employee engagement take me to many places. I search all over, and sometimes the very best stuff is a lot closer than you think. Thanks to the wonder of the internet I’ve made lots of friends I’ve yet to meet, though I know a good deal of them better than I know some of my relatives!

One of those highly enjoyable meet ups that has come my way is with a guy named Craig. We share at least two common interest, guitars and engagement. Here is a link to a great story written by Craig as a letter, from the worker to the boss. In itself it’s a lovely tale about connectedness. Behind it is some really powerful stuff, like talent wars, career shifters, and people who need people. It’s also about retaining good people, and the payoff.

Craig concludes by saying, “If you manage to land good talent, you’d better work hard to hold on to it. What factors impact overall job satisfaction, and therefore retention? Forget the bottom level basic survival needs of the Maslow model. The work force is craving much more than just pay and benefits. I’m not a researcher, and I don’t care to list yet again the mountains of studies and data to validate this, but the studies are out there. Fact:

Companies with higher levels of engagement also experience greater profit, productivity and retention rates.

The bad news: you cannot buy engagement. The good news: engagement costs nothing.”

Common Causes of Project Failure

Spotted an interesting report primarily aimed at managing and delivering projects across Government. But hey, why should they have all the learning eh? Strikes me that this is a lot about trying to do too much. Headlines discussed include:

1. Lack of clear links between the project and the organisation’s key strategic priorities, including agreed measures of success.
2. Lack of clear senior management and Ministerial ownership and leadership.
3. Lack of effective engagement with stakeholders.
4. Lack of skills and proven approach to project management and risk management.
5. Too little attention to breaking development and implementation into manageable steps.
6. Evaluation of proposals driven by initial price rather than long-term value for money (especially securing delivery of
business benefits).
7. Lack of understanding of, and contact with the supply industry at senior levels in the organisation.
8. Lack of effective project team integration between clients, the supplier team and the supply chain.

You can download the full report from here.

9 Ways to Deliver Common Sense Customer Service

I really enjoy a visit to David Zinger’s site. He gets lots of folk involved in what employee engagement means. Like David, I believe that engagement is essential for the delivery of great service. Another guy who thinks the same is Phil Gerbyshak. Here are Phil’s 9 ways to deliver common sense customer service. Headlines only – take a trip to David’s excellent website for a bit more detail.

Enjoy

1. First impressions matter (a lot!)
2. Tune the customer in and the world out – When your customer is talking, listen to what they’re saying.
3. Please and thank you still count – Remember those manners your parents taught you? Use them…ALL THE TIME!
4. You don’t know everything (but you better still find the answer) – When you read it, you know it’s true.
5. Customers aren’t always right (but they are always the customer)
6. People’s names are like gold (learn them fast)
7. Your name matters too – Take a few moments to introduce yourself too.
8. Complaints are great– Complaints are an opportunity to fix what’s wrong.
9. Service recovery matters (a lot!)