What should you do FIRST when getting involved in a dispute or escalation?

1. Before you speak with your customer, ensure you have a good initial briefing of the matter from internal colleagues involved in the project or engagement.

2. Map out an internal communication strategy to manage any damage or fallout. Share it with all key internal stakeholders so everyone is aligned.

3. Aim to make every customer interaction a positive experience.

4. Arrange to meet with the customer, ideally face to face. If you are working under COVID restrictions, make it a conference call with cameras turned on.

5. Explain that the purpose of the first meeting is to listen to them and you are not coming with answers.

6. Find out as much as possible beforehand about who you are meeting, their character and personality type.

7. Show empathy.

8. Confirm your commitment to work with your customer, so they know you will remain engaged until the situation is resolved.

9. Use language such as ‘We’ and ‘I’ to personalise your communication.

10. Make sure you consult with your legal advisers and stakeholder management team before making any commitments. You never want to make promises you can’t keep.

Learning to Listen

The first step in managing any escalation is to listen to the customer. Letting the customer talk and giving them the opportunity to get their issues ‘out of their head and on the table’ without interruption will start to take the heat out of a situation.

Learning to listen is critical for managing commercial disputes and escalations.

Tips for Avoiding Escalations in a Pandemic

We are 10 months in to living with COVID and managing its impact on how we do business. Some countries are back in lockdown, some just emerging, and others are carrying on with minimal impact.

With many employees still working from home, it is timely to check-in on what is important to manage customers and avoid escalations.

1. Beware Zoom/Teams fatigue. There is a clear lack of interest by many to switch cameras on. You need to be very selective about when to schedule a 'camera-on' call but when you do, make the most of it! Emails, texts and phone calls are a lot more impersonal by comparison.

2. Commit to documenting conversations, decisions, actions, and the people who have been party to them. It is a lot more work now but crucial to avoid problems later.

3. Keep up communication. You almost need to feel like you are over-communicating! Stay focused on keeping people informed. Send update emails regularly and in the absence of the face-to-face connection, pick up the phone and talk to people.

4. Stay accountable. Keep your promises and do what you say you are going to do. Set clear expectations and if things change, make sure to reset expectations to avoid missing deadlines or commitments.

Don’t wait to share bad news

Managing bad news is one of the challenges of delivering large, complex projects. Whilst the majority of issues are ‘small scale’, occasionally there is a ‘large scale’ problem or disaster to deal with.

In my experience, project and delivery people tend to wait before sharing bad news. As problem solvers, their initial reaction is ‘give me some time, I think I can fix this before anyone else needs to know’.

So when is the right time for bad news to be shared?

One risk of failing to communicate on a timely basis is that the people who matter may hear it from someone else first! Executives don’t like surprises so they will challenge why you waited to tell them.

The flow on effects can also be significant – loss of people’s trust, confidence and questions about the way you run your projects.

My key tips on how to manage bad news are –
1. Own the communication. Be decisive on how, when and to whom the news needs to be shared;
2. Share both the problem and the plan. You will gain people’s confidence when you explain the problem AND how you plan on addressing or resolving it;
3. Show that YOU are in control. This alleviates any concerns and maintains people’s confidence in you.

Why do I need to document my coffee conversations and other informal meetings?

For today's ON AIR topic, I explain how and why you need to capture in writing what is discussed in your work-related coffee conversations and other informal meetings.

ON AIR captures audio from the Mastering Commercial Escalations 'virtual' workshops - see Programs for further information.

Do you check meeting minutes?

Do you check the accuracy of the minutes from meetings you attend? Here's why you need to!

Another 'Quick tip in under 2 minutes' video for project leaders, project teams, delivery professionals and anyone else who attends meetings.

Know Your Audience

Quick tips in under 2 minutes

This video focuses on the importance of being a strong communicator to avoid commercial escalations. Ashley shares tips on why you need to know your audience and tailor each piece of communication to that audience to get the best outcome.

How to Avoid Commercial Escalations video series Quick tips in under 2 minutes This video focuses on the importance of being a strong communicator in avoidin...

5 key questions to ask to determine the facts

There are five key questions that you must ask in order to identify the key facts in any situation. Those questions are;

1. What has been promised to the client? This requires you to go back to the contract and be very clear about what were the requirements and expectations set with the client at the time of signing it.

 2. What has been delivered? Now you know what was promised, has your company delivered the product, solution or services to the client as per the contract? Did you meet their expectations?

3. Is there a gap? If you haven’t delivered as per the contract, then it is straightforward where the gap lies, however if you have delivered, then you need to understand from the client’s point of view what is it they are upset about. What is their complaint? Where do they feel your company has fallen short?

4. What is the business impact? To properly assess the commercial implications of your client’s complaint, you must understand the impact that the problem has had on their business. This means standing in their shoes and seeing what went wrong. Not at a high level, but how it directly impacted the day to day running of their business and the flow on financial effects.

5. What is your/your company’s exposure or commercial risk? Once you understand the impact, this gives you their perspective. You must then consider to what extent your company may have contributed, or may have been responsible. The exposure or commercial risk to your company needs to be factored into your approach to resolving the situation. 

Separate the facts from the stories.

Rule #1 when dealing with any dispute or escalation is the need to get a clear understanding of what actually happened and in what order. Separate what is fact, interpretation and perception.

When speaking to people who are involved in a situation that has gone wrong you'll get different versions of what happened. People love jazzing up a story, often adding a bit of colour to make it even more interesting than it might otherwise have been. However, in a situation where the facts matter most, enhancing the story doesn’t help the cause.

My approach to solving any problems, commercial or otherwise, is to focus on the facts and the facts alone.

Why? Because it’s very difficult for anyone to argue against the facts.

The challenge is to ask the right questions of the right people. If you do this well the facts will become clear. Even after determining the facts, people often continue to push their version of the story because it suits their cause and supports their argument.

People can argue their version of the truth, but if it's not the truth it won’t stand up against the fact-based approach. 

3 Key Elements for Delivering Best Practice #3....Accountability

#3...Accountability

Today we discuss the 3rd and final element to deliver best practice, Accountability. Put simply, this is all about being accountable and responsible for the promises you make and the actions you sign up for.

Already you will notice that the three elements of best practice all tie in very closely with one another. Communication is all about telling people what they need to know and doing so on a timely basis. Documentation is committing to writing what it is that you promised to do or have done. Accountability is all about doing what you have said you will do.

There is nothing worse than someone who takes on a set of actions or makes promises and then doesn't deliver on them. This is a credibility killer! Doing that immediately puts into question your credibility and, as we know, once you lose trust you’ve lost the confidence and respect of the other party.

When managing escalations and disputes, clients will often tell me about the people who were involved before me and who made many promises yet some or none of them were delivered. There is a golden rule for anyone who has situations escalated to them, you don't want to be labeled or seen in the same light as anyone else who has failed to deliver on their promises.

Personally I work on the basis that I cannot make the same mistake and be seen as the same as those who have been involved previously. When I present myself to clients as the person to fix a situation, I am mindful that there are others who may have made exactly the same promises I have. For whatever reasons, my predecessors could not deliver on their promises. If I do the same then all that will happen is that I will end up being seen as another person who promised to solve everything and fixed nothing!

So here are my rules - I never commit to anything that I cannot deliver or where I think there is a chance that I can't deliver. I am very careful in how I word any commitments. For example rather than saying “I will have this sorted out for you this week, leave it to me” I would say “whilst I won't make a promise when this will happen, let me see if i can get something in place by the end of this week. I will let you know how I am going.” or words to that effect.

Further to that, if you have made a commitment to do something only to find that it is not going to get done in time for whatever reason, you must make sure that you communicate the change in status and reset expectations. People appreciate being kept informed and will be happier knowing that whilst things have changed, you have informed them and shared an update on the timeframe.

Don't underestimate the importance of setting expectations, but even more importantly resetting them - even when it is a situation that is not in escalation.

When it comes to being accountable, the words I don't ever want to hear someone say about me is "he is exactly the same as all the others". Again the simple message is don't tell people something that you can't deliver.

Accountability is about being responsible for what you promise and making sure you follow it though until completed. That doesn't mean you can't change your commitment along the way where needed, as long as you communicate to all of those who are expecting you to deliver the outcome. Your first step should be to document the commitment, then make sure you take the actions needed to meet expectations with plenty of time before the deadline. Lastly, communicate regularly, especially where there are changes to the plan and make sure you update everyone who needs to know.

Delivering best practice is hard work! It requires attention to detail and a commitment to maintain the highest standards, not just some of the time but all of the time. Just know that when you do it right, the results and reputation for doing it well are worth the effort.

3 Key Elements for Delivering Best Practice #2....Communication (part 2)

#2...Communication

We all want to deliver best practice but all too often fall short of the mark. Here are some important tips on what can you change today that will help you be a better communicator.

Don’t wait to share bad news. Whilst no one wants to hear about something that has gone wrong, it is a reality that things often don’t go to plan. More importantly companies actually plan for a project to have its challenges. So why is there a need to keep bad news a secret? It simply adds pressure to you and the situation.

The earlier you inform all impacted parties of a bad news story, the sooner they can react and minimise the damage control.

For some reason, delivery people tend to keep problems or bad news to themselves for as long as possible. They have a ‘fix-it’ mentality and believe that they can sort out issues. They work on the basis that until they have had a chance to fix it, no one needs to know. This is not to be secretive or protective of reputation, it is sometimes just a matter of pride. And if they can’t fix it, they go as far as to feel that they have failed. 

Either way, holding back on sharing the reality of a situation especially if its negative, more often than not leads to a loss of confidence in you by the customer. if not managed carefully, that can grow to a loss of confidence in the entire project management, especially where they see that the problem raised had not been flagged early enough.

As a general rule, don’t wait to share bad news. Make sure that your communication is clear and concise so that the news you are sharing is well understood. You should also try to have a high level plan on the options available to consider addressing the problems.

You should always present enough detail that tells people exactly what they need to know. They don’t need to be presented with a report that reads like a book…keep it short and stick to the main points. This is even more so when communicating at senior and executive levels.

When it comes to problem management, the sign of a good manager is not someone who comes to you, tells you there is a problem and waits for you to find them the solution. Good managers are those who bring a problem to your attention along with the solution, or at least a number of options to throw around.

When crafting an email, less is more. How and what you write in your communications is extremely important to make it as easy as possible to understand the points and not get lost in the words. I believe that writing is an artform and I prefer the term “crafting an email” when I refer to drafting any communication. Choosing the right words, writing it in an appropriate tone, picking the best format and forum to deliver the message are all critical aspects of communication. 

You need to be efficient, use less words not more, to make your point. Avoid repeating yourself to make your point - if you get your message right in the first line, you shouldn’t need to say it again in the next line. An email that is short and succinct is much better than being too wordy.

Consider your audience and think about what is it they need to know. Think about what they may want to ask you and then make sure that the detail you include in your briefing addresses all of those questions. This makes your communication even more effective when there is nothing left to ask.

What should be included in an Executive Briefing? If you are writing executive briefings or updates, try to keep them to one page. A structure you may want to use could include three key headings - Current Status; Next Steps and Background. 

Current Status should provide the key points of where a project is at as of now, informing the reader of the main challenges that you need your audience to know; you should also state who is managing the situation so it is clear who is the go-to person or people.

Next Steps should provide a message that you’ve got this covered, you have a plan and that you have the right people engaged. Share the action plan that they are working under that outlines who is doing what and when. This will give all stakeholders (yours and your customer‘s) the confidence that you know what to do next. Importantly. You should also make sure you set expectations on when your audience can expect to get the next communication update from you.

Background should be put at the back of the briefing pack, for anyone who needs to be brought to up to speed on the key information regarding the project or engagement without having to have a conversation to bring them up to speed. Why put it at the back when people need to read this first? Once people have read it, they won’t need to read it again and they will focus on the current status and next steps. Having the background at the back means it is out of the way for all ongoing updates,

The background should inform people of what the project is about as well as provide some history. It should tell the reader enough about the project that they don‘t need you to ask anything more and when they next read the current status it will make sense.

Last point, make sure your sentences are clear and your language cannot be misinterpreted. Avoid any statements that may cause ambiguity or confusion.

Don’t be shy to pick up the phone! Poor communicators are those who email everything and avoid talking to anyone! Strong communicators are those who meet in person, pick up the phone and talk regularly to their stakeholders and team members. 

As we already know, documenting and putting things in writing is a critical aspect of best practice but that should not overshadow the importance of meeting and talking to people. Documenting and talking - you can do both! 

Executives don’t like surprises. Delivering bad news is the one of the hardest tasks for anyone, at any level of management. Delivering that message in person or by phone, whilst extremely challenging for most, will be much more appreciated that doing so by email. and expecting a good reaction is not clever. 

The most important thing that an executive will tell you is that they don’t like surprises. Make sure that they are NOT the last to know. A very common mistake is that you let the fear affect you of having to tell senior people that something has gone wrong. Instead take another approach and do the opposite.

Impress your senior leaders with your management style and show off your ability to take the lead.

If you are one of the many people who are too scared to tell people bad news for fear of the reaction, I can understand so let me share with you this tip. You definitely want to tell people any bad news in person however you can make it easier on yourself by giving them a strong hint in an email.

If you give away what it is in that email, the element of surprise is taken away. But it is very important that in the same communication, you tell them you want to meet with them face to face to discuss. 

Your email could go something like this –

“I need to meet with you to discuss a problem I have just identified. Due to an issue with..…..the project is going to require additional work which may lead to a further delay in the date we can go-live. I will explain more when I see you, if you can please let me know when you have 30 minutes free for us to discuss.”

This way you are achieving two objectives – sharing that there is bad news without telling all, as well as avoiding the element of surprise and having to deal with the face to face reaction.

Next article will be on Accountability, the 3rd and final element of delivering best practice.

3 Key Elements for Delivering Best Practice #2....Communication (part 1)

#2...Communication

In this article we continue our discussion on the key elements of delivering best practice for delivery professionals. Last time we talked about the importance of documentation, today we discuss the 2nd key element, that being Communication. 

Communication is the foundation of all successful projects. For every project that fails, poor communication is always noted as a major factor.

This is not just relevant for technology but for projects across all industries. If you think about it, it should be obvious. Program directors, project managers/leaders who don’t manage their teams well, who don’t keep stakeholders informed and who fail to prioritise communication in their delivery style will deliver sub-standard projects and poor outcomes.

Why? Because they invariably fail to keep people up to date on key issues when arise, they struggle to keep their teams aligned and in-sync, and they don’t notify stakeholders of pending major problems on a timely basis. The first instinct of delivery people is to keep issues quiet whilst they get busy trying to sort it out themselves. The fact that they commonly don’t report information when they should in itself is a sign that there is a problem.

In my previous article on Documentation, I mentioned that best practice requires attention to detail. People who are strong communicators tend to have an attention to detail. They are on top of what is happening, they have processes in place to make sure that they are the first to know of a challenge before it becomes a problem, they are efficient and they pride themselves on keeping people informed.

Can you communicate too much? Yes, you definitely can over-communicate when you send too many emails and provide too many updates too often...and to the same people. Although in reality over-communicating is a problem that is is very rarely seen. 

So let’s take a moment and make this about you – I want you to ask yourself these critical questions;

Do you communicate enough?

Do the people in your team receive clear and regular communication from you on the status of the project?

Do your internal stakeholders (i.e your company’s internal senior/executive management) know enough about the key issues affecting your project?

Are the customer’s key stakeholders - that is the C-level executives, executive sponsor and financial controllers - aware of the challenges and risks of their project?

Do they know what may be going wrong and what they are ultimately responsible for fixing? 

And lastly, if there are any external 3rd party stakeholders, are they being kept informed on what is going on?

"The reality is that communication at the level needed to ensure success, does not happen anywhere near enough."

Most managers will be honest enough to tell you that they do a good job – not a great job - in keeping people informed. Being “great” at communication is actually extremely hard work but it is critical for success. Strong communicators make it their priority to keep all parties informed on what is happening, what are the challenges, and what needs their input for decisions. They do this regularly, on a timely basis and they usually manage to provide updates to people on the project before those people are asking for an update themselves.

So what can you change today that will help you be a better communicator?

Stay tuned for part 2 of Communication and I will share some important tips to get you started...to be continued.

3 Key Elements for Delivering Best Practice #1...Documentation

#1...Documentation  

When delivering IT projects, you always hear people and companies talk about best practice.

Best practice is defined by one source as “a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to any alternatives because it produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means”.

I often wonder who or what sets the standards for best practice? What is the global standard that makes it “best” based on? And how do you even know it is the best versus better than average? 

In this article, I will explore this further and discuss how best practice is delivered.

Over the next few articles, I will share with you the three key elements for delivering best practice. Whilst my focus is on IT projects specifically, these also apply across a broader range of industries . 

Today we start with the first element, Documentation.

In my opinion, the difference between good practice and best practice is found in one key aspect - the attention to detail.  

In my dispute resolution work, the strategy I adopt as a fundamental principle is a fact-based approach. What are the facts? What actually happened? This can’t be based on an opinion or someone’s version of what they think happened. It needs to be factual. 

The first action in any investigation is to establish the facts of the matter in dispute. As we all know, when trying to find out the facts, different people will have their own account of what happened. Ask two parties and you will always get two versions -  somewhere in the middle lies the truth!

In order to gather the facts on a dispute case, you need to rely on documentation and what has been captured in writing.  As a general rule, when there is a lack of attention to detail, it usually means that documentation will be poor too. That makes arguing any position very difficult if the written detail is missing.

Documentation comes in many different forms - it may be the official minutes taken from a meeting, your own set of meeting notes (when there are no official minutes), or the emails exchanged between parties. These forms will always be reliable when needed. 

However today there are many decisions made over a coffee. No notes, no emails, no minutes - just conversation. All of a sudden we have more decisions being made and more actions taken based on a conversation in a cafe, in the hallway or in some other informal setting. At the time it seems innocuous and unnecessary to put it in writing as you both agreed to whatever it is that you’ve now actioned. Right? Wrong!

Let’s dig into this a bit further and fast track forward a few months when things have started to go wrong with a project. The pressure is on, the mood has changed and perhaps one of the key decision makers from the project has been moved on and is no longer in the company. 

Someone new is appointed and they start to ask questions. They want to investigate how and when did the problems begin. Your actions and decisions are under scrutiny. They come across a critical decision that was made and they ask you about it.

When was this discussed? Who was consulted? What was agreed? Where was it documented?

In this decision made over a coffee and from that conversation, you did what had been agreed to. However there is nothing in writing because you didn’t document the meeting or put it in an email. What evidence do you have to support the decision that was made? Where is the agreement to proceed based on that understanding?

You explain that this was verbally agreed to with their senior manager - that same manager who has since left the company! And so the problem begins...

Documentation is a critical element to adopting a best practice approach. Whether you are the program director, project manager or consultant, if you are committed to embracing best practice, you must make a commitment to your documentation. 

In every meeting, you should take your own notes or arrange a note-taker to sit in on critical meetings. Major decisions must always be captured in writing at the time, not later when invariably details are forgotten. Often capturing the exact words that may have been used is necessary and later you won’t remember. 

“In coffee meetings, hallway conversations or other informal forums, when important decisions are made, develop a habit of following them up with an email confirming what was discussed and agreed to.”

If possible ask for a response too, ideally an agreement to proceed in writing...before proceeding. It is not that hard to write out a quick few lines in an email such as -

“Thanks again for the coffee this morning. Just a quick note to confirm that as discussed, we agree that we will proceed with.......etc etc

Please let me know if there are any concerns so we can get started on this tomorrow.”

Documentation is one critical element of best practice. When I investigate the facts of a case, I will commonly identify where there was an important decision or action that was pivotal to the problems that followed. My first question to you would be - when did the customer raise the issue? Who was involved in the discussion? When did they agree to the decision? And the big one...do you have their decision on this in writing?

The ‘ideal’ outcome is that a situation is discussed in a meeting and there are formal minutes to rely upon. However you can’t assume nor rely on ‘ideals’! Best practice is all about having routines and processes that ensure you are well prepared for circumstances that are not ideal. 

Make documentation a part of your best practice regime, be fastidious about capturing important moments in writing. Even if it is just notes to record what happened with no reason to share with someone else. Always be ready for when someone like me comes along and asks for the proof to backup your version of what happened. Then it is no longer a question of ‘if’ you have it documented. 

In my next article, we will explore the second key element for best practice, Communication.

The true test of any good business relationship is not when things are going well...

...it is how a business responds when things go wrong.

When everything is going right, it’s very easy for a business to be good, or at least appear to be good at managing its relationships. However when things go wrong, that is when you really put an organisation to the test. The more that goes wrong, the bigger the test.

Whether it’s a major complaint, escalation or formal dispute, the pressure of needing to sort out problems puts the spotlight on how a company reacts, responds and handles their customers in that situation. 

Every business needs to have a clear strategy in place for handling and addressing problem situations. They need a plan and a process for how they wish to handle difficult customers in high stress situations....and high stress customers in difficult situations.

An important component of the strategy is having appropriately skilled people to turn to, who are aligned with how their organisation wants to manage these situations. Most companies in Australia fail to value the specialist skills needed to handle complaints or escalated situations.

More commonly they hand it over to the Account or Sales Executive or escalate to the Sales Manager, whoever has the strongest relationship, however there are two mistakes with this approach. If things get heated and the sales person is thrown in to solve it, how are they meant to turn up the next week and sell? How çan anyone think that a sales person can properly go about resolving major problems and not expect some kind of fallout that impacts their ability to sell to the same people. For the customer their sales executive will now be seen as part of the problem!

Why would you spoil the strongest relationship your company has with your customer by throwing your sales executives into the fire when it will most likely ruin the relationship.

Keep your sales people out of it! Always be sure that your sales executive explains to the customer about why they are leaving it to the professionals and not getting involved. I am yet to find a customer who doesn’t agree that they want to protect the relationship they have with sales. You should make sure your customer knows their sales executive is still there to look after them and when the situation has been resolved, they will be able to resume their role from where they left it. 

A strong complaint or dispute handling process will make the customer feel valued. It shows your customers that within your organisation in these situations, you are committed to working with them, carrying out proper due diligence to investigate what went wrong and how it will be fixed. You will also show that you have a process, that commits you to methodically work through the facts to determine what is needed to correct the situation. 

There are other important benefits to having a formal escalation process. Internally such a process will highlight to senior management what might be wrong inside your own organisation, especially where problems like this happen on a regular basis. If these issues are repetitive, then the investigation element of a robust complaint handling process will pick up any flaws or gaps in your operations.

Complaints or disputes provide every business with an opportunity to check its operations, get things in order to improve processes and make sure that you stop whatever is happening so that your staff don’t continue to repeat the same offence. Strong organisations test and reassess their internal processes on a regular basis, by surveying their customers and seeking their genuine feedback.

Most customers value an organisation that is open to finding its flaws in the quest to deliver a much better customer experience. Customer experience is all about what its like for your customers to do business with you, not just when things are going well but even more so when things to go wrong.

Are poor business processes letting your customers down?

I recently finished building a house of which after settlement, I had a number of outstanding electrical issues that needed to be fixed. The electricians who the building company had used was asked to come and complete the list of work. The electrician company was a good sized business, with a staff list of around 70 people.

There were 10 items to fix and at the end of their visit, for various reasons they were only able to complete 6 of them - the remaining 4 items would need to be followed up. After 3 weeks of silence, I called to chase up the items only to find they had been forgotten. We immediately made another appointment to have these addressed, along with 2 new issues to be added that had since occurred.

After their next visit, they again were finished with 2 of the 6 items outstanding again. No surprises that despite a promise to follow these up, they were also forgotten and so the pattern continued.

A couple of appointments later, I got tired of the chase and raised a complaint with the company. After a bit more run around, they offered to send the director of the company to my house to meet with me and understand what was going wrong. He turned up to the appointment convinced that his company were delivering an outstanding level of service and couldn’t understand the issues I had raised or why I was seemingly unimpressed.

I took him through the story and the look of frustration on his face was clear. His comment at that time said it all. “Within our company we have put in a place a set of processes that stops this from occurring. How did this happen? We do not expect to have these types of complaints any more from our customers.”

He left my house intent on sorting out where the disconnect was in his business.

Companies spend an enormous amount of time and money putting procedures and processes in place to make sure that the customer experience is the best it can be.

Organisations then place much of their faith in their employees and field teams that they will be able to execute these processes.

For all the good intentions, the reality is that if the people in the field can’t properly follow and execute the processes, the customer experience will never improve. Equally if management don’t properly manage the outcomes, companies will fail to make any difference to the quality of their service delivery.

What is worse is that the only time they will become aware of what is not working is when a situation gets so bad that a customer complains and that complaint makes its way to the more senior levels of management.

Management’s response is usually “How did this happen?" They believe that they have processes to stop these situations. When they look into the complaint, to their disappointment what they find is that the processes that they spent so much time developing and implementing may not be realistic enough for their people on the ground to carry out.

Big or small, the problem I have described is not one that is typical of small business, nor is it more common to only large organisations - the size of the organisation doesn’t matter! It is a problem every day for all businesses.

So why does this happen? Is it due to a lack of time, a lack of knowledge or just a lack of interest? In the case of the electricians, the company needs to understand why their people were so poor in coming back to the office and working through the list of actions. What are the reasons for the lack of follow through on their promises? Do they not have enough time to do that before they are off the next job?

The electrical business, as the example, must make sure that their staff have a working environment that makes it easy for them to do these follow ups. Are their electricians encouraged to return to the office, sit at a desk and do their follow up? Or do they have to login to the office from their phone sitting in their car!

The challenge of delivering the best customer experience lies in the hands of the people who represent your business out in the field. If they don’t deliver it then it doesn’t matter how good your operations and management are back at the office. If the customer doesn’t see it then why would they want to call you again with more work?

Here are 5 important tips on how to improve customer experience successfully through better processes.

Tip 1: Keep every process simple.

It doesn’t matter what it is you’re trying to do, always remember that your staff have to implement it. What may seem like a good idea at the time in theory, may be difficult to execute in practice. If it is difficult to implement and even more difficult to monitor, then no one will want to do it.

Tip 2: Allocate a manager who will own its success.

When you introduce a new process, you must make sure that you have someone allocated to monitor and manage its execution and success. This includes spotchecks externally with select customers, and internally with specific field staff. Through these checks, you need to make sure that things are being done as expected, that the process is workable and can deliver the outcomes as planned.

Tip 3: Be prepared to review and adjust.

It’s very rare that you’ll get a process right first time. When you carry out this exercise make sure you also have a process in place to get feedback - from your customer, field staff and internal operations. Be prepared to fine tune it until you get the best outcome.

Tip 4: Make sure your company culture is consistent with the new process.

Very often management and directors have great ideas and want to see certain things happen in the business. However in reality you may find that these ideas are not aligned with the company culture, especially with those expected to deliver the services. It is very important to make sure that any new process you implement is aligned with the culture of the organisation as it is today, and importantly that it also aligns with the culture that you want your organisation to be.

Tip 5: Would you be prepared to do it yourself if you had to?

A great test for any new process is to consider if it is something that you would be prepared to do yourself. In other words, put yourself in the shoes of your worker and consider if you would be prepared to do what it is you are asking them to do. If it is not a process you would want to do, then why would it be okay to expect anyone else to do it, and more the point, do it well.

Strong management in conjunction with strong delivery are the keys to the success of implementing any process change.

Credibility is the key to managing disputes

People often ask me what is the single most important factor in successfully managing major problems and disputes. One word - credibility.

In a complaint or dispute scenario, the usual life of a problem sees it bounce from person to person as it works its way through the management chain. Each person along the way promises to fix the problem only to realise that they can’t, so they escalate it to their manager or to another part of the company. At each step the customer is given promises that it will be fixed only to find that for whatever reasons that person can't, won’t or don’t want to.

The longer this goes on, the more the customer will become agitated and frustrated at the lack of progress and failure to resolve. 

The key person in your organisation who manages complaints and disputes is seen by customers as the last remaining hope that their problem will be resolved. When you are the last point of escalation, you must remember that everyone who has touched the problem before you in the process is seen to have failed in one way or another. Otherwise the problem would never have landed on your desk!

Through the eyes of the customer those people have made promise after promise and despite their good intentions they have not succeeded.

Credibility is all about making promises you can keep. It is about making a commitment to do something to a deadline....and actually doing it!

In every situation, people always start off with their credibility intact in the eyes of another. They only lose credibility the moment they fail to meet a promise or a commitment.

Here are 4 key tips for you to use to manage problems and maintain your credibility.

Tip 1: Set realistic and achievable expectations

When you are the last escalation point, you can't afford to fall into the same trap as those before you, or you will be simply be seen as one of the same. Make sure that you keep your action plan and promises realistic. Don't commit to what you know can’t be achieved or you will be setting yourself up for failure.

Tip 2: Never miss a promise or a milestone

If you promise to have a task completed then make sure you get it done. If you promise to provide an update by a certain date, make sure you do so by that date. Missing a deadline, no matter what the task, leaves the other person thinking you too are not capable of addressing their problem. There is never an issue if the date needs to change or if the information you were waiting for is delayed, keeping the customer informed is the key.

Tip 3: Follow-up on every action

Don't skip any of the actions on your list. Your attention to detail is crucial to maintaining credibility.

Tip 4: Always communicate

There is nothing wrong with making a phone call to say "I am calling to let you know that I don’t have anything new to tell you". When you make that call, whilst the customer may not be happy with the lack of progress, at the very least they recognise that you kept your promise to call. The alternative is that you don’t make the call and they are left wondering if you have forgotten them.

Credibility must be at the forefront of every decision and every action you make. Just remember that everyone starts with credibility but you only need to fail once to break it and lose it for good.

Complaints and disputes...can they have a happy ending?

Do you believe that the worst complaints or disputes can end up with a positive outcome?

Here’s a typical scenario. A customer decides to buy a company’s product or engage their services. For whatever reason they finds themselves with a major complaint or dispute with that company. No one can argue that when this happens it is a poor customer experience. 

If you were that customer then clearly that’s not what you expected or hoped for when you first engaged in the transaction. As the supplier or provider it’s the last thing you wanted for your customer.

Put simply customer experience doesn’t get much worse than when a situation results in this kind of outcome.

Whether you’re the customer, the product supplier or the service provider, no one can change the situation after the fact but what you can change is what happens next. How a problem situation is handled is how we judge an organisation. It is this that determines if they stay a customer into the future or if you lose them for good.

“How your business responds will determine if the customer ever buys your product or uses your services again.”

If it is your customer who has complained, then what you decide to do next is crucial to turn the situation around and address the problem. There are two actions here - one is external, the other is internal.

The external one is the customer facing action - the handling of the complaint or dispute. The skills required to handle these is too often underestimated. You need people with expertise in knowing how to best handle these sensitive and often heated situations and you must let them do what they need to do. Managing disputes requires a strategy to achieve the ultimate outcome which is to retain the customer. Customer satisfaction should always be the first priority.

In parallel is an internal action, where as a product supplier or service provider you must ask yourself and your teams ‘how did we end up here?’ How did the engagement go so wrong? How did it remain a known issue for so long without resolution? How did it end up like this? Finding the answers to these questions is critical to understanding and improving customer experience. 

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If your employees aren't happy, your customers probably aren't happy too..

What would be worse? To hear your staff complain that your company is not a great place to work? Or to hear someone complain that your company doesn't care much about its customers?

You wouldn't want to hear either but don't start thinking about addressing one over the other. The reality is that if your employees are saying this, your customers are most likely saying it as well anyway! 

Research shows that employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction are closely aligned which means that if your staff don't look forward to coming to work, your customers don't really like doing business with you either. 

Now, as you read this I am sure that some of you (employees) may be thinking 'I don't like coming to work' whilst some executives are thinking 'we've heard those comments from our staff and our customers!' So is this all bad?

Thankfully it’s not and here are some encouraging statistics -  

• 72% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively affect customer service (Source: CIPD)

• 90% of leaders think that an employee engagement strategy has an impact on business success (Source: Accor)

• 80% of the variation in employee engagement levels is due to the line manager (Source: Accenture)

• More than 50% of organisations with high employee engagement retain more than 80% of their customers (Source: Demand Metric)

• 1 in 2 employees in large organisations feel engaged (Source: Tenikin Research Group)

The above numbers show that if you put strategies in place to improve employee engagement, the satisfaction ratings for both staff and customers can quickly improve too. 

Organisations need to be proactive to shift a culture. Changing the culture across any business requires a process and it needs to start at the top. Focusing on employee satisfaction is a great place to start.

The first initiative may be to improve the lines of communication in your organisation between management and the customer service teams. You can do this by providing a forum for these employees to feed back to the business what customers are telling them.  Whether the feedback is positive or not, whether they are suggestions, compliments, complaints or abuse. The only way to give people, both employees and customers, what they want is to have a forum to capture the noise.

Encourage your staff for their input and suggestions for better customer engagement. They want to be more engaged, they want to feel that they can add value to management decisions. In turn management needs to be open to listening, especially to those people in roles where they are talking to customers every day.

“Vital to every operation is cooperation.” Frank Tyger.

If you help your employees feel more involved and engaged, they will have a better attitude when they are talking to customers and it will be noticed. Likewise, providing customers with a forum to feed back to the business about how they would prefer to be engaged in the future is a major positive step.

Rookie Mistakes

Every business, irrespective of its size or industry knows that prospecting for new sales is hard work. Identifying potential clients, gaining their interest in your products or services and ultimately securing a sale requires skill and experience, but in the end it still is a numbers game too.

Today, the job of prospecting has been made a lot easier if you can get people to your website. Get them there and you can give them access to information such as white papers, special offers and discount pricing simply by requesting their contact details first. Immediately they become a qualified prospect and they are already in your hands!

With such an opportunity, it is disappointing to find many companies are not taking advantage of this and it shows with the lack of attention to detail and lazy business practices.

I was recently looking at a company offering services in lead generation. I found a report that was available for download so I left my contact details on their website. They followed up a few days later with an introductory email that read exactly this;

"Hi First Name, By any chance, are you interested in solutions for getting sales appointments and leads?...."

Seriously? Hi First Name? You already have my first name and even my surname but your lazy business practices allowed a blank template to be sent out. I'm sure the same mistake went out to every other prospect on their list. Does this encourage me to respond and engage in business with that company? 

You may suggest that we go easy on them thinking that this was a one off mistake but sadly they followed it up with another automated email one week later - with exactly the same mistake!!!

On a separate occasion, I had a marketing call from an organisation where I had made a similar enquiry on their services. The initial conversation itself went very well but after the call, they sent me a follow up email and their opening line read "Dear Andrew" - getting my name (Ashley) right might have been a better way to start that relationship.

More than any time before, businesses are being handed new prospects on a plate. The lesson here is take advantage of this, tighten up your processes and eliminate rookie mistakes!

"I'll order my burger with a huge serve of customer experience please.."

It’s not every day that you can write about burgers and customer experience in the same article but today I can.

Let’s start with customer experience. It doesn’t matter what you’re buying, a product or service, the customer experience doesn't get any better than when you get to control the process from start to finish. You just need three simple things – this is what I want, how I want and when I want it. If you get all that would you say you've had a great experience? I assume so.

So let’s now talk burgers. Burgers are big business today and there are more burger joints out there than ever before.  Once upon a time McDonald's were considered the kings of burgers, however today when you get a craving for a burger, McDonald’s is not your first choice.

From a business perspective, it is always interesting to watch how the giant players who once ruled their markets go about turning things around after they've lost their number one status. For McDonald's to turn this around would have to be something big, bold and very different. To use a very commonly used term, they would need to find a way to ‘disrupt’ the burger industry.

How could they make their burgers relevant again? If you have stepped into one of their restaurants recently, you may have noticed a new piece of technology. They have rolled out across Australia and the US the ‘Create Your Taste’ touch screens. A huge digital screen with choices to build your very own signature burger from scratch.

You get to choose everything from the bun, meat, cheese, salads, sauces and other add-ons. You tell them how you want it cooked and how big you want it to be. As long as you are happy to pay for it, they will make it!

When it comes to disrupting an industry, to succeed you don't need to think up the elusive ‘never been done before’ way to do something. You are better off focusing on the basics and being the very best at whatever you are in business for. One of those basics must include the customer experience. If you give your customers exactly what they want and they can have that same great experience again and again then you have succeeded. Reputations are built on memorable customer experiences.

McDonald's have shown us a great lesson in customer experience. Instead of trying to think up new ideas for burgers they think you would like to eat, they have simply put the control of designing the burger back in your hands – you get to decide what, how and when you want it. Is it enough to make McDonald's your first choice in burgers again? We will watch this space with great interest.