Archive for the ‘Best business practices’ Category
I got off the plane from China on Tuesday afternoon and was back at the airport Wednesday morning heading to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for what has become an annual sojourn (for at least the past 8 years give or take a missed year)..
One of my friends is the linchpin (apologies to Seth Godin) in this diverse group of more than 24, 16 – 20 of which show up any given year. What I find interesting and to truly be a pleasure is connecting once a year with people that I likely would never have met under any other circumstances. We eat together, ride together, drink together and laugh for 4-5 days.
They come from all over the United States, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut. The trip for some has been going on for more than twenty years. Over the time we spend together you will find yourself riding with or at least playing with every one of the guys, so you will have the opportunity to catch up on what’s been going on with everyone for the past year.
While there are some email contacts over the year nobody appears to be terribly interested in any kind of regular communication aside from pre-trip instructions and information. I can assure you there will not be a Facebook ‘group’ created for this bunch.
Yes it’s a vacation but for me not the usual kind since I’ve never been the type to have a regular boys’ poker game or guys’ night out – not that I am against it BTW. Over the years we’ve all gotten to know each other better – things are discussed about our families, lives, businesses and even plans for the future. The linchpin is a friend and business associate for close to twenty years but since I’ve been coming on the trip our relationship is closer as a result.
And that’s the point isn’t it? Today so many of us spend countless hours looking at a screen, responding to email, writing proposals and doing work, checking social networks, ‘surfing, around the web, ‘consuming’ content and searching out information. We think we are connected to people because we answer emails, respond to FB posts and to some degree that’s true and better than the alternative of NOT being connected at all.
But as I keep on saying – being there makes all the difference. When Sunday rolls around and we all say our good-byes and head back to our regular lives the countdown begins for next year’s trip. It’s something we all think about and look forward to as the trip approaches. For me that will start Monday because this social network is the real deal.
What interesting things do you do to network with people that do not involve looking at a screen?
Now that I am back in the good ‘ol USA after a 22 hour travel from my Shenzhen hotel back to my office, I can reflect a bit on my latest trip to the Middle Kingdom. This trip far exceeded my expectations both professionally and personally. As much as I enjoy Chinese food (and I truly to enjoy it) I have yet to satisfy my hankering for a cheeseburger. I will work on that today.
Although my first trip to China last fall was interesting and frantic (as was this one) I felt that I had more of an opportunity this time to spend time interacting with great Chinese people to a much larger degree. Here are four things I learned that I have as a quick takeaway:
1) Chinese people have more variety on their table at every meal than anyplace I’ve ever been I had a series of banquet like events some with more than a dozen courses. There were a number of times I was not sure what I was eating right away. Unusual things I ate – sharkskin soup, honeybees and yes – scorpion. All the meals had a few varieties of steamed greens (even breakfast). Meals in China are at a much slower pace than in the USA. I also will have to get used to drinking the warm water as that’s the way it’s served.
2) Chinese people will consistently go out of their way to help. This was evidenced by so many different people, from driving me around to taking me out for meals (I only paid for 1 meal in China and had to fight to do that). I will keep that in mind when my Chinese friends and associates come to the USA since I will want to pick them up, drive them around and take care of them in the same manner. Not something that is a custom in the U.S. but it really helps grow a personal and then professional relationship.
3) China is under construction and dustier and less hygienic than the USA. I did not notice the amount of construction going on last time I was in Shanghai, Beijing, and Wuxi. Shenzhen is also growing like mad and building goes on 7 days a week. Bathrooms in China are not always all that clean (that is also true in the USA) and there are seldom towels with which to try your hands.
4) If you want to do business in China you have to be there. My second trip has demonstrated that even more clearly to me. I left with a number excellent business opportunities and will be following up with some proposals but in order to have a chance to make those deals happen I will have to present in person on my next trip which I expect will be in 3-4 months. Our company can really help Chinese companies in marketing to the west and the USA in particular. I felt the many CEO’s at the companies I met understood that (for example I met with the CEO of the largest television manufacturer in China – Skyworth) but also encouraged me to come back which told me that they need to see my commitment to China by returning again soon.
There are many other observations I have on my trip and I will detail things to a larger degree once I have had a chance for the experience to settle in a bit more. I really like going to China and look forward to exploring more of its culture, its people and its history.
By the way I read an interesting book on my Kindle on the way to China – ‘Big in China’ by Wall Street Journal writer Alan Paul. He and his wife Rebecca who works for the WSJ moved their young family to Beijing in 2005 for 3 ½ years and he describes the experience. Worth reading if you want to get a sense of what it is and was like living in China for an American.
Everyone I know that flies a lot has their own horror stories to tell. Everyone that has a mobile phone or mobile broadband service has complained about their carrier. While my experiences with American Airlines and Verizon yesterday would not necessarily fall under the ‘horror story’ category, they did illustrate how not to handle a customer.
Our flight back to LaGuardia from Raleigh, NC started out innocently enough (I was with our Executive VP and Creative Director Nader Ashway). We were seated and ready to go when an announcement from the cockpit informed us that there were mechanical difficulties with the aircraft and they were going to try to fix it but we would be better off getting off the plane and waiting in the gate area.
We immediately got on the long line to find out what were our options for other flights to LaGuardia. Note – when you sit near the back of even a small aircraft it becomes a bad thing since you end up with fewer options. We had not considered this when booking. We will next time. By the time we got to the counter our flight had been fully cancelled and our options were –standby list on two later flights and a ‘guaranteed’ seat on the flight to LaGuardia that was scheduled to leave four hours after our original flight. There were few if any announcements in the gate area informing displaced passengers of what was going on.
American blew an opportunity to make a little hay out of adversity. All of us know that sometimes planes have equipment problems and safety first must be the #1 policy. But the communication was so non-existent that I could simply not believe it. I booked electronically and American Airlines has my mobile number, my email and they have to know what happens to any passenger at any given moment. Not one communication have I received from American Airlines – nearly 24 hours later!
How about the idea of offering all displaced passengers complimentary access to the Admiral’s Club until they could be rebooked? For people that have never been in that club it might even convince them to join. Talk about a missed opportunity. For those that have been in there at least they would feel acknowledged that a problem (not weather related) occurred and American Airlines at least tried to do what they could. Offering me a seat on a flight four hours later did nothing to serve this customer.
Only because I am a glutton for punishment I then decided to use the time to repair my Verizon wireless modem card that had been acting up. I called the number and a helpful woman in Georgia named Angela tried to help me get the card back up and working since I had money on the card and wanted to get online.
After rebooting my machine two times and trying everything else under the sun for 45 minutes (draining my mobile phone battery in the process), Angela told me that she needed to fill out a ‘trouble ticket’ with a case number. And it would ‘only’ take 5-10 minutes. What? How does this serve me – the customer? I already had been dragged through a series of protocols that simply established that Verizon’s modem was defective. Now I have to wait for them to fill out a trouble ticket? But having invested 50 minutes into the call I was compelled to wait and see it through. At the close of the call (I was pushing hard to get off the phone to save what little battery I had left), I was told I would get a SMS text message with the ‘trouble ticket’ information. You guessed it. I am still waiting for that text and my mobile card still does not work.
Verizon has that age-old message at the start of a service call – ‘This call may be monitored for customer service”. I don’t think that they are really listening at all do you?
Friday afternoon was opening day at CitiField for my beloved New York Mets or as Steve Somers of WFAN coined it – the Wilponzi’s. Ouch. It was a cold and dreary day like many days in early April at baseball parks in the northern climes. My ticket partners and I made a reservation at the Acela Club where we’ve eaten a number of times since it opened with the new stadium in 2009.
Arriving intentionally a bit early at 2PM for our 2:15 PM reservation, we knew that there was a 3:45 PM reservation behind us so we would have to clear out by then – first pitch was scheduled for 4:10PM. The line outside the restaurant was surprisingly long. None of us could figure out why. This began an odyssey that defied explanation for much of the afternoon. It ended well but only due to a savvy restaurateur in Drew Nieporent of Myriad Restaurant Group (Tribeca Grill, Nobu, Corton among others if you don’t know), who in addition to being on the scene realized that things were not going smoothly at all.
At $ 48 prix fix a meal at the Acela Club is not cheap. But you do get a lot for the money mainly due to the impressive salad and sandwich bar that has more high quality food than you could eat even if you didn’t eat an entrée. (The truffle macaroni and cheese is addictive).
Once we were seated, the drinks we ordered took 20 minutes to arrive. And our server was nowhere in sight for those 20 minutes of waiting. One of our partners cryptically mentioned to another server that we actually were at the stadium to watch a ball game “today”. Our meals did not arrive until well after 3:15. A couple of times we were visited by a host who offered us a free drink (we declined) and apologies for the slow service which did show that the staff was aware that things were not going well.
Once the meals did arrive the food as always was good. However at that point there was sincere doubt that we might return again – first pitch was 10 minutes away and it was long past 3:45. We finished up our meals and one of the hosts came over and told us that they were sorry for the long wait and the restaurant was going to pick up our meals.
Wow. And who said there was no such thing as a free lunch? None of us expected that but we were extremely pleased with the result. And yes we will be going back to the Acela club again soon but we might not have had they not come in and made amends.
On the way out I passed Drew (whom I have met a couple of times but do not know well at all) who was both on the phone and surveying the proceedings. I mentioned to him that it was a tough day and he more than agreed saying they totally messed it up – surprising candor from one of New York’s premiere restaurateurs. But I also told him that in the end they got it right by doing the unexpected.
Everyone should think about doing the unexpected when you know your customer has a bad experience in order try to make it right. Anyone can have a bad day. It’s what you do to respond that sets your company apart.
Do you have any good stories on successful resolution to a potential bad customer experience?
This thought has been popping up in my mind consistently over the past few years. With voice recognition technology continually improving (I admit it still has a way to go), the need to actually keystroke in words is possibly becoming less and less relevant every day.
I don’t know about you but my handwriting is terrible. Never all that good in the first place, it has devolved into a text style instantly recognizable by nobody and sometimes not even by me. I am a far better typist since I type ALL the time and dislike having to write by hand. Since I grew up even before the advent of the personal computer (I was a proud owner of an IBM Selectric back in college) typing was a vast improvement over my even then lousy handwriting.
Teenagers today impress everyone with their mind-blowing speed when SMS texting. I also notice that kids are very fast and good at typing on a keyboard as well (their spelling – well that’s another story). But what if there was really good voice recognition software and technology that worked all the time? Perhaps I will receive notes from companies like Dragon and Nuance, as well as products from Windows, Google and Apple espousing how well their products work. I’ve used a few of them from time to time and my impression is they are improving but the learning curve takes too long – that is they take too long to recognize my voice to make the proper word interpretation.
Eventually voice recognition technology will be truly high performing. And the need to actually type one’s thoughts and ideas will be reduced dramatically. There will be a much higher value put on editing since the inability to think orally (unfortunately evidenced by too many people too frequently) will allow things like term papers and white papers to be much more easily started. But the finishing will then truly be the challenge – something that writers already are well aware of. Taking all those thoughts you have that then are translated into text that you can read on the page will be exciting at first as it will seem so easy. Yet crafting something that is both interesting and concise (brevity is beautiful after all), is not as easy as it looks – even when you don’t have to physically type the words.
Part of my process for “creating content” as it is now called, is writing and editing at the same time. Even after I finish the thought process I go back and edit. And then I edit again and again. So while I welcome advancements in voice recognition technology I am so wired into typing my thoughts it will not be easy for me to adopt its usage – at least for some of the time.
Of course then there’s eye tracking which was in the news this week as articles both in Business Week http://buswk.co/hbW9QS and the New York Times http://nyti.ms/giq0eA highlighted this emerging technology
I don’t long for my old IBM Selectric, but I wonder if I could really give up typing all together. Could you?