I’m sure your employer really does have a sense of customer service.  I just can’t see it.  It’s probably unfair of me to say that  they care as little (maybe even less) about you than they do about me.  And then you get stuck with me.  I’m such a lousy customer.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to face this every day.  When you had to explain how they had slipped in that change in the billing — where they went from billing me in arrears to be billing me one month in advance, I felt sorry for you.  The fact that they did this at a time when they were converting the billing systems — again.  I should have been more understanding.   Now you have to explain why I appear to  have two bills for the same period.  That’s got to be tough.  The fact that your own phone systems don’t work that well or you don’t get training — when you transferred me and accidentally hung up on me — that was tough.

What did I do?  I got mad.  How thoughtless.

After all, you’d think by now I should be used to this.  After all, I’ve never called without being transferred at least once.  So what’s the big deal today?  I know.

My problem is that I don’t keep this in perspective.  I know that it wasn’t you personally who missed the last appointment.   It’s a big company and stuff happens.  So when they don’t show up, I should be more understanding.   I know that it’s not you that makes the arcane structures so I had to be transferred four times when I called your company to answer another incomprehensible letter which was auto-sent with the wrong information.  (Ooops, there I go again!)  I know it’s not your fault that nobody took action on the notes made on my file.  I admit that I don’t get it.  You are busy.  You are understaffed.

I hate it when I get mad at you.  I truly am a lousy customer.

But it’s not just my temper.  I can’t seem to get anything right.  I can’t figure out your bills.  I can’t figure out why it always takes hours to deal with each new snag.  I just don’t have the patience I should.  If I’d just make up a spreadsheet and add it all up — or better still, if I’d just shut up and pay it.

I know it’s unreasonable for me to think that I should have someone who manages my account and would deal with the internal structures.

I should focus on what I can do to improve.  For example –  I should be  better at repeating the same story over and over and over…  Even if I am giving the same information to everyone.

Perhaps if I kept better notes.  It’s just that I’m really busy (yeah, I know it’s an excuse).   We’re trying to keep our business alive in a recession so I spend a lot of time trying to — well, earn money.    I realize how selfish this makes me seem.  Me, me, me – always about me.  Never about you.  I mean, you’re the phone company for heaven’s sake.  Who am I.  Or as my mother said “Who do you think you are?”

And I’m ungrateful.  Like when you offered me that discount because I was such a good customer.  What did I say?  Not thank you.  No.  I said — “is there any catch?”  What kind of comment is that?  An who thinks that having to sign up for a long term contract to get the discount -  is a “catch”?  And it’s not like you were NEVER going to tell me.  After I’d agreed, you would have had someone read me the terms or sent me a contract.  So I would EVENTUALLY know.  Sheesh!

I’m always concerned with money.  If I would just pay the darned bills and shut up, I know everything would work out better.  I keep telling myself that.  Picky, picky, picky.

At the end of the day, I’m just a bloody egotist.  I expect you to remember everything about me.  I expect you to do stuff for me.  I expect to do nothing but use your service and pay one clear bill a month.   Then to top it all off I expect the lowest price guaranteed — just because I give you all my business.

Oh, don’t forget that I expect you to jump if something goes wrong.  I act like I really need the service.  I mean – it’s just a phone or internet for heaven’s sake.  I act like it’s a big interruption in my business!

Look at that, will you.  I, I, I.  Me, me, me.   I hate what I’ve become.   It’s all about me.

I complain all the time — and I’m always wrong.  I have to be.  Nobody’s ever said – “we made a mistake” in all the years I’ve dealt with you.  Never.  That’s got to tell you something!

I don’t know why you put up with me.  I hate what I’ve become.

You don’t deserve to be stuck with someone like me.  I’m surprised you keep calling me to sell me more stuff.  Sometimes you call two or three times in the same day.  When do I call?  When I have a problem.  It’s never about you.  It’s always about me.

I can’t believe you’ve put up with me this long.   And I can’t live with what I’ve become.  As much as it pains me to say this — I think we should start seeing others.

As inevitably happens – he brought out a recent experience where the customer service was appalling.  I’ve heard many of these over the years.  It doesn’t take much prodding and we can all come up with one.  And I want to stress that I’m not talking about simply bad service.  That happens all too frequently to count.  This was appalling service — you’d almost have to try to make it that bad.    In his case, what was promised to be a 24 hour turnaround from a major bank, conveniently done on-line turned into many weeks of trips far out of his way to the only physical location where this business could be done, many phone calls and even with all of this – never a really satisfying conclusion, let alone an apology.

Yet he told it to me, matter of factly, as only one in a history of disappointments.   It was appalling, but nothing special.

Conversations like this have been going on for years in coffee shops all around the world.  But I think something has changed.  I can see it.  We all can see it

In Toronto, where I live, a recent fair hike was handled abysmally by our Transit Commission.   I don’t think there’s any question of it.  Is is a coincidence that a picture of a Transit employee sleeping on the job went viral?  It also sparked a multitude of similar pictures.  Public pressure was so intense that some of the transit workers were considering a work to rule.  That silliness prompted some awful cartoons suggesting that a work to rule would be an improvement in service.   The whole thing threatens yet to spin out of control.

Second case in point.  The Sons of Maxwell, a touring band had a fate that is as old as musicians and flight.  A classic guitar, checked as luggage by a member of the band was thrown and damaged.  If the reports are true, the band member actually saw an employee throwing a guitar.  You have to be brain-dead to not know that throwing a guitar is a bad thing.   It can only be thought of as malicious.

What did the band do?  They complained, certainly and were told that there was nothing that could be done.  So they wrote songs about it.  One of these went viral on youtube and at last count got 7 million hits.  Seven million.   As United Breaks Guitars went into the millions, so did the losses at United Airlines.

What’s unique about these?  Well, you have to remember, this is Canada.  It’s not New York.  We used to be the most polite  nation on the face of the planet.  The old joke was that a Canadian was someone who apologizes when you step on HIS toe.

But you can kiss that s**t goodbye, apparently.  Now if you step on the toes of a Canadian, they’ll shoot you — not with bullets — but with the always ready cell phone camera.  Blame and shame are concealed weapons of choice with Canadians.

Yes, it’s as if we all woke up and discovered that the meak may inherit the earth, but the cranky get revenge.

It’s also no surprise that Canadians are turning to social media to vent that outrage.  We’ve always been the biggest users of social media.  Facebook took off in Toronto.  The groups of Linked In are full of Canadians and Twitter is on fire up here.

Not that we’ve lost our sense of humour.  This is, after all, a nation whose greatest export is comedians – some of America’s funniest are Canadians – Dan Akroyd to Jim Carrey.

When you bring together that sense of outrage, a penchant for comedy and social media a virtual explosion happens.  A recent example?  In a wave of outrage directed at our current Prime Minister, some ingenious sole got the idea of trying to see if an onion ring could have more friends than Stephen Harper, leader of our nation.  Now Stephen has millions to spend on handlers, publicists, web artists  — whatever it takes.  In fact, we seem to have an entire province of millions in population who, if they found Stephen Harper copulating with a sheep would still leap to his defense (as long as it was a girl sheep – he is leader of  a right of centre party).  Yet one lone person with a sense of humour and a social media device was able to trump this and tramp the politician down into the abyss of humiliation.

Last count?  Onion Ring – 80,000 friends.  Harper?  29,000.

Frustration?  Anger?  These are new to Canada, but we’re learning fast.

Someone told me recently that in the US, 20% of people actively hate their cell company.  In Canada?  That number is purported to be more than 60%.  In fact, judging by a recent meeting that a friend was at, it may be more.   When the head of a new upstart cell company was introduced at a recent gathering in Toronto, the audience applauded vigorously at a comment that this new company was going to do some damage to the existing suppliers.

There was an old commercial for tea that ended with the tagline, “Only in Canada?  Pity!”    I don’t think this is a “Made In Canada” phenomenon.   I do think that the fact that the anger has exploded North of the 49th parallel should be a warning sign to companies and even governments.  Canadians are the direct opposite of the the Canary that miners used to take into the coal mines.  These birds were small and sensitive, if they got exposed to gas, they reacted early and gave the miners a chance to escape.

Canadians are more like a tsunami warning device.  By the time you see a sign from them all you can do is get washed away.  It’s simply too late.

But as always, I digress….

What I really wanted to share with everyone was a great question that I’m always asked about a new business?  It’s this.  What’s the first thing you should do when starting a new business? I read this in a Linked In forum that I participate in for entrepreneurs. I saw some of the other answers. They were good things to do. A lawyer suggested that you should incorporate. Another person suggested a business plan. Usual stuff.

I don’t want to criticize these folks, they gave good answers. But it struck me that they had all missed the point. So I went on a rant. Here’s what I said was the first thing that a new business should do:

Before you do anything, you do some research. I mean ANYTHING. Do not develop a business plan, incorporate, or print those snazzy business cards. We have some templates I’d be glad to share which can guide this initial research which is very, very, simple. It doesn’t have to cost a lot. But you want to make sure that there will indeed be customers. I think it was J.P.Morgan who said, I’d rather have a customer than a factory. He was right. He was also rich:-)

Here’s what you do:

- identify a small list of people who you think have a problem that your product or service can solve.
- evolve a basic concept and a simple illustration – just enough to talk about what you are proposing and why it will work – but not too much
- make an appointment to talk to these folks and make sure you let them know you are trying to do research, not sell them anything
- when you have your meeting, make sure you do all the good stuff (look at their web-site, confirm the time you have —) but most important, have good questions to ask and when you ask them, sit down, shut up and listen. Do NOT defend your concept, listen to what the person has to say. Especially look for competition and substitution. (on a private aside, if you come to me with a business idea and say you have no competition, I think you haven’t done your research)
- assemble that research and objectively assess if you have a viable business idea. Can it make money.

Stay organized, keep good notes, think logically, but don’t invest money, resources or any of that until you know you have a prospect of real customers who will pay real money for a solution that you can provide at a reasonable cost.

A couple of reasons why people don’t do this?

- It’s “obvious”
- My idea is so secret that I can’t tell anyone

Give it a rest. It’s not obvious. Nothing is. And frankly, if your great idea is so good that just hearing about it can cause a competitor to take away all of your market — you don’t have a chance in hell. Sooner or later you have to tell someone and when you do, big money or overseas substitutes will swamp you.

Oh yes, one last thing. Don’t sell any of the people you use for research. But ask them if they will give you advice as you move forward. Later you might even ask them if they’d like to be a pilot. If you build big trust with them over time, I’ve even seen people ask for letters to show financiers – not of intent to buy, but of the potential customer’s opinion.

Anyway, that’s what you do first.

Anyway, I put the answer up there and then I started to think that this was not just about new businesses. I’m working for an established company of very smart guys right now and they fell into the same trap with a new product line (maybe with a couple of new product lines). It’s like that old 60′s poster, “suppose you gave a war and nobody came?” Only this one is done with customers.

Great idea. Lots of good conversation. No buyers.

Anybody ever seen this before? I have. Truth be told, I’ve seen it in my own business. We get a good idea, maybe a customer buys something from us, and then we think we have a product on our hands. And before you know it, you are doing a web-site, putting promotional material together, trying to get your processes straight and your delivery capability so that you can deal with the rush of customers – that never arrive.

If you are really big, I guess you can do what doctors do — bury your mistakes. But small or mid-sized companies can’t do this very often or they’ll be the ones that are the subject of the eulogy.

The answer is so simple. Yet so difficult for us to get our head around.

Like I said, the same thing happens to me. As many of you might know, I sold my company to a larger firm, Chelsea Consulting. No, I’m not retiring. I joined the new firm as its CEO. The deal finalized a week ago. There has been a ton of work (it may explain why I haven’t updated this blog in a while). Web site. Promo material. Press releases. New service definitions. A lot of things to do.

I’ve been through this before, so there’s one thing I watch out for. Merger, sale, re-org — whatever — you have to keep selling and delivering. Yes, you have to do things well, but you can’t take your eye off the customer. Before you know it, you’ll start to think that the internal processes are more important than talking to customers. (Big or small – there’s always an excuse not to talk to customers!)

After 35 years, I’m here to tell you…there is nothing more important that talking to customers. There may be things that are just as important. Delivering on your promises. Staying organized. Paying attention to your people. But you must make time to talk to — not analyze, not email, not send stuff to — but to talk to your customers.

My favourite musician of all time is the now deceased Willie P. Bennett. He had a great song called “Take My Own Advice”. It’s a good thing to do.

Here’s my advice to myself. I think it would work if I was in a small company or a big company. We’re somewhere in the middle right now – we’re not small and we’re not huge. I know it works for us. And here’s what I’m telling myself.

Before you set the machinery in gear. Before you start that web-site. Before you have that strategic offsite. And above all, BEFORE you try to sell them something. whatever — pick up the phone and call a customer. Ask them how it’s going. Then sit down, shut up and listen.

Thanks to the person who posted that Linked In question. And thanks to Willie for continuing to give me good advice. Oh, and thanks to you for reading this.

As always, I love your comments. Good, bad…let me know what you think.

We all repeat this by rote like a demented parrot. How many actually believe it? And if we do, why don’t we act like it?

The cynic would say that the reason we don’t actually allow people to fail is that companies lie. They say they want to encourage taking chances but they really don’t. They simply do not want to pay the price. I suggest that it’s not hypocracy, that gets in the way. The problem is we don’t know HOW to fail. The good news is that you can learn to embrace failure – and reap the rewards.

Viagara? A failed heart drug. Despite the fact that it failed, someone noticed that it had an interesting side effect. As much as we might giggle about this one, who among us wouldn’t like to have our product or service find such a compelling need. It’s just a hunch, but I’ll be sales of Viagara are recession proof. They probably keep rising. okay, I’m sorry, I had to have at least one pun.

Post it notes? Made with a failed adhesive. It didn’t stick well enough. Heck, it would come off without even leaving a mark. Someone trying to keep track of pages in a book (a hymnal, I think) put two and two together. Once again, we might cut back on some things in the office, but Post-It’s get bought. I’ll be their sales are holding their own as well.

A little more esoteric. The Sony PlayStation. Born out of a failed agreement with Nintendo that resulted in Sony having access to some of the most highly prized games. Kutaragi – the man who saved Sony with the profits from this best seller was described recently in a Wall Street Journal article as a “renegade” who “went over budget on development costs”. He was almost ousted in the early development of the Play Station when it went over budget and substantially underperformed in sales. That might have been a bigger mistake – since this failure went on to generate 40% of Sony’s profits in the 1990′s.

Intellectually, we get it. Anyone who has had a first year course in marketing probably knows a couple of additional stories. Heck, you’ve probably heard some motivational speaker, perhaps even one hired by your own company, espousing the benefits of failure.

The problem is that we don’t really seem to believe it. We know it’s true, but we don’t how to deal with it.

Because truth be told, we don’t want failure. We just want the success that follows. No pain, no gain? Yeah, right.

I had an initial meeting with a prospective client where I talked about how much I’d learned from my mistakes. He nodded and made all the right noises. Then he turned to me and said, without batting an eye – “of course, we’d prefer it if you didn’t learn anything here.”

One of my favourites, when I was at Ernst & Young was on time when the head of our firm mouthed the words that we needed to take some chances and learn from our mistakes. One of the great things about a partnership is that when you are close to retirement, you get to say what you want. One of the more senior partners challenge him on this, asking if we really wanted our people out there “failing” at the client. The head of the firm, without missing a beat, said “no, I don’t want our people failing.” Full marks for honesty. You be the judge about the leadership shown.

I admin it’s not easy. I once had to give someone a speech that I’d read and admired intellectually. There’s an apocryphal story about an executive who failed big and was brought into the CEO’s office expecting to be fired. Instead, the CEO promoted him. I find the next part hard to believe, because I would have taken the promotion, thanked him and gotten the hell out of their before he came back to his senses or realized that it was me he promoted.

In this story, the exec confesses that he thought he was in there to be fired. “Fire you?” says the CEO. “After all the money we spent teaching you never to make that mistake again?”

I like this guy – even if he’s not real. I’ve told this story. Then one day, someone did fail big. They were competent. They were remorseful. They didn’t deserve to be fired. This person didn’t even work for me. But I saved their job and took them into my area.

I almost made an enemy out of the person that was about to fire them – except that I saved him the severance and it took a lot of fence mending. So this wasn’t an easy one for me.

The person thanked me – they were apologetic — they promised that they would work hard for our area. But in the back of my mind, was I 100% certain that this was a good thing? No. I was really worried.

And in case you think I’m a saint, forget it. I’m not. But a long time ago a guy named Eugene Fuoco saved my sorry butt after I messed up BIG TIME and offended an SVP who wanted my head on a plate, never mind firing me.

Fuoco placated this guy with the same wisdom. “He’s not going to do this again.” He could have made me clean toilets for a long time. Instead, he gave me another chance to shine at a big company event. I pulled it off and Ray (my nemesis) had the stones to come up and congratulate me. Even though I’d been a jerk, I did a great job. I was back in the land of the living.

I’ll never be able to pay Eugene back for his leadership and courage. But I had to honour it. So I fought my fears and did the right thing. Was I worried? You bet.

Did it work out? Actually it did. Years later this person has a great career, they are a friend and when they were in my area they were fabulous. The problem that I worried about never happened.

But that’s not the point. Even if I had a problem, it was still the right decision.

So why didn’t it feel right?

Part of it is our programming. Nobody likes to lose. We don’t really reward losers. Just listen when you hear the words “failure” or “loser”. It’s burned into our culture.

I once heard a comic refer to a silver medalist in the Olympics as the “number 1 loser” and I laughed.

The second reason is certainly the risk. When I saved that person’s job, when Fuoco saved mine, or when the executive at Sony sheltered Kutaragi — their actions were risky. Can you imagine what happens when you reward failure and then the person fails again? I mean, how do you explain that one?

There’s a real and present risk.

I can’t give someone a courage transplant. I’m not sure I have enough moral authority to do that. So let me give you a reality lesson instead.

Everybody fails. Even the ones who don’t highlight it. Yeah. Really. Actually, the ones who don’t mention it fail at least twice. The second one is the failure to tell the truth.

At best, it’s a little bit of organization cowardice that we all live with. At worst, it’s a cynical little game of doublespeak. It’s like the job interview question, “tell me about the failure you’ve had and what you learned from it?”

“Well, my biggest failure is that I care too much and I work too hard. Sometimes, people say, you have to get more work life balance. But damn, I just care so much about my clients and I love my work so much, I can’t help myself….”

Does anyone believe this?

I did a presentation to a group a month or so ago. I presented two situations. One was a real success, the other was one that didn’t go so well. Just for fun, I said to them, “I bet you think I’m going to talk about the success. How about we do something different this time?”

I told them about the challenges that I had faced and what I’d done with them. Now, even here, this failure went on to ultimately succeed – but it was still a risk. I’m convinced that I lost a big job this same year by being too honest in the final presentation and I was still recovering from that. So why did I try this “failed” strategy again? I considered how I’d approached it last time, I tried to figure out why it didn’t work, and I went back to it.

This time? We won — against a lot of competition. Would we have still won without this strategy? I don’t know. I don’t give it full marks, but I do credit it with being one part of a successful presentation.

There’s no certainty. That’s the point.

And even when we are given permission to fail — “Get out there, try it and learn.” – we don’t really believe it.

So there’s the dilemma. It is a “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t” situation.

As always, I don’t have all the answers. But I have given this some thought and here’s one way that is working for me. I have a couple of key things that I do. Here’s how I’ve learned to fail successfully.

Diversify:

It works for investments. Why not for corporate work? When I’m asked to do something risky, I never do just one thing. I try three pilots.

Why threes? I don’t know. I’ve just found that if I do three small projects, one will knock it out of the park, one will be okay and one will be a “learning process”.

Keep the cost down:

Use the power of pilots and prototypes. There is a price point we all have – organizationally, personally — where we are willing to throw away the cost and we can live with it. It sounds obvious, but I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen people bet the farm on a large investment. Don’t.

Manage expectations

Another reason for pilots, proof of concept and prototypes. These are set up as learning vehicles. We expect to have lessons learned and throw away results.

The expectations are low, so whatever you come up with will work – if you do it in conjunction with the first point – fast and light. I try to learn this lesson over and over again.

Think about it. If your boss or client asks you for something, what happens if you do it quickly? It’s short, to the point and matches the time you spend.

When you respond quickly to a request, you can jot down a quick message. Yes it has to be clear and have quality. But it doesn’t take a lot of verbiage, pictures, format or structure.

But what happens if that same event sits on you to do list for a week? Suddenly, you (and your boss) have bigger expectations. If it took a week, it had better be good. Then “thud factor” takes over and you look for more and more reasons to make it look like you’ve spent your time well.

Trust me, these behaviours are unconscious, but they are there.

So respond quickly. Use templates. Keep it brief. Stay late if you have to.

Manage the Message

Always remember that you are speaking cross culturally. People don’t want to hear about failure, really. So when you talk about it, even if you think that people are receptive, assume that you are giving bad news. Manage your message.

As my friend Shelle Rose Charvet will point out, if you want to give bad news, you do it by first stating the negative, put in the word “but” and then follow with the positive.

So it’s “we tried two pilots that had challenges, BUT the third showed that under the right conditions, this can be successful. We know the risks and how to manage them.”

So don’t fail to learn — learn to fail. In fact, fail your way to higher profits, greater agility and long term success.

And if I’ve failed to cover all the points, there must be two of you out there at least who can fill in what I’ve missed. Right?