Pivot Point Solutions

Eurostar Earns a Second Chance

In my last post, I had some harsh words and pointed advice for Eurostar’s customer service team.  Over two weeks from my initial inquiry, Eurostar’s Traveller Care team responded.

Here’s how I graded the end-to-end experience.

• Responsiveness – Poor. Two-plus weeks for a response of any kind is just too long.

Read the rest at BNET.

2 Comments July 6, 2010

Eurostar’s Service a Black Hole

Ever have a situation when you felt like your concerns and complaints go in, but nothing comes out?  I call that the customer service black hole.

A personal experience with Eurostar reminded me of its recent public failures. Four trains broke down just before Christmas. Then, less than three weeks later, another train got stuck in the tunnel.  As for me, my experience will never make the front page of London’s dailies.

Read the rest of my latest BNET post here.

1 Comment June 28, 2010

The Last Customer on Earth

Imagine the stakes if there were only one customer on earth – the last customer.  What would the customer’s perspective be?  Do you think companies would act differently to win that last deal?

The last customer will choose whichever vendor or product they want.  The customer controls every aspect of the transaction, including timing.  This customer [rightly] feels they have as much time as wanted.

The Customer Wants

• Uncomplicated – Is it easy to do business with this vendor?
• Responsive – Does this company listen to (and act on) my needs?
• Fair – Do I get more value from the purchase than the price of the product/service?
• Long Term Commitment – Will this company pack up and leave after I make my purchase or will they support me after they have my money?
• Fun – Why not?  Since I control when (and if) a transaction occurs, why wouldn’t I choose a vendor that is fun to work with?  After all, life is short and the experience (the ride) matters.

Companies competing for the last customer will try to figure out how to close the deal quickly so that they beat the competition and win the business.

Companies Must Determine

• Pricing – How low will I have to price my products to win the business?  Will that be low enough to beat the competition?
• Features – Do my products meet the customer’s needs?  Is it clear what our product costs?  What the product does?
• Treatment – Do my business processes support the purchasing experience?  How we will support the customer?  Is it easy for customers to make the purchase?  In short, have we done what is needed to ensure the customer’s success?

Clearly there isn’t just one last customer on earth.  But if we pause to think of how each of the stakeholders in the purchasing transaction think and act, we can learn how to treat how to customers today.  The pivot point is that each customer holds the power of the “last customer.” They can choose.  Which ways does your company cater to customer needs in order to earn the business?

1 Comment June 22, 2010

Answer 3 Questions to Improve Employee Engagement

We say the words.  We create the power point decks.  We even grant ill-begotten awards to [ostensibly] motivate our teams.  (An iPod for a deaf employee, you must be joking?)  But without answering 3 simple questions, your company has little hope of having the kind of engaged employees who make a material difference (over $350B each year by some estimates) to company value:

1. Why am I Here? – Map an employee’s role to the greater “cause”.  How does an employee make a difference?
2. Can I Make an Impact? – We may know why we are performing a job and how that job impacts the bottom line of the company.  But if employees see no possible way to succeed, they give up.  If our teams can’t answer “so what?” we end up with educated but ineffectual employees.
3. WIIFM? – What’s in it for me?  Employees appreciate rewards, but be careful.  For some the reward is accomplishing the task while for others the reward may come in more tangible forms.  Regardless, mismatching the reward with an employee’s needs breeds dissatisfaction and disengagement.

It shouldn’t be “news” that companies with engaged employees outperform those staffed by the “walking wounded”.  Given the preponderance of evidence (read this article on employee engagement or this Wharton article for more background) it’s clear we have a long way to go.

The pivot point is that even though engagement is a shared responsibility of employees and companies, it starts with us!

2 Comments June 14, 2010

Succeeding in Business and on the Battlefield

Organizations in which peers hold one another accountable perform better than those that rely on management oversight alone.  Jospeh Grenny (The Peer Principle) and Patrick Lencioni’s (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team) make similar points – when we share the responsibility of holding people accountable we achieve greater results.

This conclusion comes as no surprise to those we honor this Memorial Day.  Veterans of World War II and other conflicts recount numerous anecdotes of soldiers who fought because the people in their unit depended on them.  Sure, they fought because of personal danger, and the military may argue that soldiers must follow orders, but the greatest generation was so great precisely because they held themselves and one another accountable.

Sounds great in theory but best to start with the goals; accountability comes second.  Success in Business and on the Battlefield demands:

• Clear Objectives – How many times has your organization operated under the “Ready, Fire, Aim” plan?  Without clearly aligning people in the business you are guaranteed to fail.  Military leaders don’t order their troops to “go” without first pointing them in the desired direction.
• Coordinated Action – Clear lines of responsibility are as important as shared purposes.  If our people don’t know what is expected of them, we should be able to predict lackluster outcomes.  We can’t expect galvanized (or passionate) action if people flail about without a sense of how their efforts fit together.
• Recognition of the Consequences of Failure – Battlefields provide an inherent urgency and an amazing clarity of action.  In business our success/failure has little to do with “loss of life” yet we still benefit from speed.  Without speed we miss opportunities that our competitors exploit.  The price of failure in business will never rival that in battle but having a deadline (a threat, if you will) helps all of us focus on important aspects.

The pivot point is that companies must first be aligned around common goals.  Without a common foundation, shared accountability becomes an exercise in finger pointing… hope that thing’s not loaded!

2 Comments May 31, 2010