How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

When Nicky Brimmer of O2 first took to the stage to talk about ‘Turning customers into fans: linking employee engagement to customer service’, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous poem started bouncing around inside my head. Nicky sketched a picture of O2 and Telefonica, Fortune’s number one most admired company, 295 million customers and 285,000 employees. Can you really love that many people? Let’s try and find out.

O2 was born out of BT back in 2002 and Nicky told us that when BT floated what was then BT Cellnet ‘we were at the bottom in every respect’. Customer satisfaction, quality of service, you name it. A decision was made to use the new start to build a new culture, new values. O2 wanted to be known as bold, open, trusted and clear. As a former BT employee I spent time managing the relationship between BT and O2 and I enjoyed the challenge. I admire the way O2 managed to shake off BT’s arrogance and forge something new, too often the pull of the familiar wins out. And if proof of their continued desire to learn is needed, O2 are one of many companies joining the Stop Doing Dumb Things unconference later this month to explore more ways of connecting employees, customers and community better.

Nicky told us more of the history as she took us along the O2 and Telefonica timeline, and I’m going to focus on some of the stuff that O2 are doing to better connect customers and employees. O2 call it creating fans, which doesn’t sit well with me though I can see how it fits with O2’s image.

We were shown a brief campaign video which showed six ways that O2 people could love what they do:

helping customers, simplifying, connecting customers to things they love, making it fun, great value, and change for the better.

These things manifested themselves in different ways.

Customer feedback and insight is fed back to staff quickly. O2 has the means to get store specific feedback back to the store within 24 hours. I like this and at the same time I would hope that at least some of that feedback is experienced in the moment through dialogue between customers and employees at the point of sale and service. Customers are invited to address senior management meetings directly with their challenges.

O2 people test O2 products before launch, not only to see how they work, but to familiarise themselves with them and act as sales advocates post launch too. And if O2 people come across a customer problem down the pub or anywhere else for that matter, they have access to a simple text based help system which helps resolve customer issues more quickly.

Nicky talked about the importance of HR, Brand and Internal Comms working together to make great connected experiences for customers and staff. Good to hear – I’d like to learn of more companies forging strong collaborative links like this in pursuit of better service. Heres a replay of an O2 customer service story we featured on here back in 2009.

And O2’s award winning CSR efforts focus on how O2 people can get involved with volunteer activity in their local communities. A simple and powerful way of strengthening connections in the neighbourhoods where you work.

Nicky closed telling us that O2 simply sees employee engagement as ‘good business sense’. And she shared some honest views on challenges too. O2 are working on allowing employees to use their own technology to do their work, and are considering some kind of financial trade off for people who use their own equipment to fulfil O2 work. Nicky described this as both a ‘great idea’ and a ‘struggle’. She also freely admitted that whilst customer churn has reduced since the link between employees and customers has been strengthened, more recent figures are not so good. And I get the impression there’ll be no knee jerk reaction to that – which is encouraging. Maybe there is love in the air after all? I’d love to know what you think.

Heroes – Lau Tsu

Statue_of_Lao_Tzu_in_Quanzhou

Here is our second post in the Heroes series. This one is written by Richard Baker. Richard is an experienced and innovative senior leader with a passion for employee engagement and customer service. With over 17 years strategic and tactical management experience, he currently heads up employee engagement and internal comms for a UK rail company. He’s also an expert advisor to the Goverment sponsored Employee Engagement Taskforce ‘E4S’.

You can engage with Richard via Twitter, LinkedIn and his blog. Take it away Mr Baker:

‘My Heroes. That’s a tough one.

When Doug first asked me if I’d be interested in guest blogging for him I said yes (I say yes quite often, and then live to regret it). He wanted some people to blog about who their heroes are and, on the face of it, you’d think that was quite simple.

However admiring someone, or an aspect of someone, is quite different to publicly announcing that someone is your hero isn’t it? I admire lots of people for the challenges they have overcome, or their fantastic achievements. These people tend to be people I know, I work with or I am lucky enough to call a friend or family.

I’m in my late thirties now and I’d like to think I’ve experienced more than most people my age (it’s that ‘yes’ thing again). As a result, I’ve learned a lot about people, their motivation and what inspires them. By the same token, I’ve learned a lot about myself; what I excel at and what my limitations are. The same goes for the heroes I had in younger life. As I’ve become less naive I’ve realised that rarely are our heroes all they promise to be.

That’s the problem with heroes isn’t it – they rarely live up to expectations. Our heroes today are protected by PR gurus, spin doctors and advisors whose job it is to protect their image, their ‘brand’. Not particularly authentic is it?

And so, instead of looking elsewhere for inspiration, I’ve turned to myself.

I tweeted a few months ago something along the lines of ‘instead of looking to others to inspire you, be the person who you aspire to be like’. Turns out Gandhi had already said a similar thing much more succinctly in ‘You must be the change you want to see in the world.’

Imagine what a world this would be if we all did what Gandhi said.

Our heroes are often thought of as great leaders. Think of a hero you have – would you follow them? Would other people? Do other people?

What then defines a great leader? What do we need to be, to be the people we aspire to be like?

Lau Tsu lived in the 6th Century BC. He was a philosopher in ancient China and wrote Tao Te Ching, often called simply Laozi after its reputed author. It describes the Dao (or Tao) as the mystical source and ideal of all existence: it is unseen, but not transcendent, immensely powerful yet supremely humble, being the root of all things.

Accordingly, we (humans) have no special place within the Dao, being just one of its many manifestations. People have desires and free will (and thus are able to alter their own nature). Many act “unnaturally”, upsetting the natural balance of the Dao. The Daodejing intends to lead students to a “return” to their natural state, in harmony with Dao.

Laozi encouraged a change in approach, or return to “nature”, rather than action. He wrote that technology may bring about a false sense of progress (and this in the 6th Century BC!) The answer provided by Laozi is not the rejection of technology, but instead seeking the calm state of wu wei, free from desires.

One of Lau Tsu’s most famous quotes is also a great recipe for a leader. It contrasts with our western view of what leadership is; great ‘leaders’ often have great egos to match! The alternative, and perhaps more enlightened view of a leader is as follows; “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him. But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves.”

If you’re looking for a hero to follow, that’s a good place to start.’

Photo c/o Tom@HK

Naked Whine

A few months back a couple of friends recommended I try the Naked Wine service. I’ve had trouble in the past with Virgin Whine so I was a little nervous but decided to give the folks at Naked Wine a try. I registered, asked not to be sent any marketing bumph or receive any telesales calls and ordered a case of wine. The wine arrived. It was good wine. I enjoyed it.

Shortly afterwards I received a call asking what I thought of my purchase. We had a polite brief conversation during which I asked that my records be marked so I didn’t receive any more calls. I know where Naked Wine are, I know how to get in touch, I know how to buy and drink wine and I’d really appreciate being able to manage this relationship from my end. The guy was OK with this said the records would be amended and we parted company.

I bought another case. The wine arrived. It was good wine. I enjoyed it.

Shortly afterwards I received a call asking what I thought of my purchase. We had a brief, to the point conversation about my preferences. I stressed, without being rude, that I didn’t want Naked Wine to call or email me. Thanks very much your records will be marked sorry about that good bye.

Several months of peace passed. Then I received this:

Naked wine one

I replied to the email, pointing out the previous phone calls. I received an apologetic email back from Lewis confirming I am not on any mailing lists and this won’t happen ‘going forward’ (his words not mine – can it happen going backward??). I heaved a sigh of relief – no more shall I receive unsolicited unwanted stuff from Naked Wine.

Or so I thought.

Naked wine two

I (just about) appreciate why this note was sent but given the nature of our previous correspondence it just amplified the sense of me talking with a company which ain’t listening.

I chatted through this scenario with friends at the weekend. Some told me to shut up and stop being a grumpy git, fair enough 🙂 Some said that Naked Wine are just trying to build a relationship with me and understand my wants and needs and service me better. That’s all very well but surely that should be on terms which suit us both? I run an email newsletter and everyone on that mailing list has given permission and/or asked to receive it. Sometimes folks subscribe out of the blue, and sometimes they unsubscribe. That’s cool, it’s their choice eh. I’m pretty sure if I just started adding people to my list willy nilly there’d be some grumbles and complaints – and quite rightly too.

What do you think? Am I being unreasonable to expect Naked Wine to want to do business with me as I wish or is it OK to get grumpy when a supplier repeatedly ignores your preferences?

Update

The conversation this story sparked here on the blog has been very interesting and offered different points of view. I’m grateful to everyone who retweeted the tale and who has contributed to it. I appreciate the fact that Rowan Gormley, the founder of Naked Wine has also been in touch. I wanted to share some of the twitter reaction to his participation – just to show that I’m not always a grumpy git 🙂

Naked Wine - getting respect on Twitter
Naked Wine - getting respect on Twitter