As my enterprise computer software company which produced innovative lodging systems for hotels and resorts grew quickly, we found ourselves straining to keep up with the hiring and training of good customer support representatives, a critical part of the equation then and still so today in the 24-hour environment of hotel front desk operations.

The need for instant support.

If a front desk clerk called support at 11.00 PM in the evening, it usually meant that there were guests lined up waiting to check in, anxious to pass beyond this necessary but inconvenient bottleneck between a tiring plane ride and a comfortable bed.  The result would be very frustrated clerks facing angry guests if the wait was too long.  It was simply not acceptable to be backed up in customer service, forcing either a ten-minute wait or a call back from support.

Rapid growth=hiring inexperienced customer service reps.

It took several months to hire and train enough new service reps to keep up with the rapid growth of our company.  But the problem was solved, and response times returned to “immediate” for at least this class of customer call.  There was no wait, and the quality of response was rated as “excellent” by callers later surveyed.

But “There’s the rub” (the snag) wrote Shakespeare in Hamlet.

[Email readers, continue here…]    It took two long years for the company to fully recover its lost reputation after the actual problem was fixed to the satisfaction of all.  Aided by salespeople from competitors and long memories from unhappy customers, the myth of continued quality problems in customer support bounced around the industry for those years, until finally good press, great experiences and an effective marketing campaign together overwhelmed bad memories to put this issue to bed.

What if the problems had been more complex?

If the problems had been in product stability and customer service together at the same moment, there might not have been enough time and resources to recover.  There are plenty of young companies that died trying to recover from such a combination.

Your reputation hinges upon delivering a quality product at the moment of release and maintaining product quality throughout its life.  The smaller the company, the more is at stake.  There are fewer resources and much less of a reserve of goodwill among the customer base to absorb a problem release – or in the example above, inability to fill the void in customer service created by rapid growth.

If you are getting the impression from these many insights that complex relationships cause simple problems, you are right.

We have heard the “haste makes waste” ditty since childhood.  There is little need to reinforce the obvious.  On a larger scale, there are epoch stories of giant companies eating massive losses in a recall of product, often based upon limited testing before release.

Here’s an example some of remember well…

A marginal example was the Intel release of the Pentium Pro and new Pentium II processor to rave reviews – until a math professor found an obscure error in the chip’s code that made a rare floating-point calculation error.  Posting that finding on the Internet, quickly Intel found itself defending against fears by others using the processor for math work that the processor could not be relied upon.  Intel rushed to fix the bug and offered to replace the processor to anyone requesting such a replacement.

At a cost of millions and a reputational hit, Intel recovered.  The lesson here is a bit obscure, since it is not clear whether the kind of testing then common in processor design would have surfaced the error.  It is quite clear that such an error would be found immediately today based upon changes in testing procedures made by all processor manufacturers after that event.

Where was the waste?

The waste from haste in this example was in not pre-thinking of enough testing scenarios for a new product.  There is always a trade-off between cost for testing, time to market and risk of problems.

[Email readers, continue here…]   Perhaps better examples to point to are easy to find in the toy industry, where recalls because of small parts that could be swallowed by infants or lead-based paint or flammable components make the news on a regular basis.

But “To lag is to sag.”

And the other side of this coin, “To lag is to sag”, addresses the two issues of loss to the competition because of delays in release of a new product, and burning of fixed overhead while products are redesigned.

It becomes obvious then that there must be a balance somewhere between rushed release and too much rigor in pre-release planning and testing.  Perhaps that balance can be measured in estimating what a company could endure in lost overhead and hits to reputation before becoming crippled and unable to recover.  With that measure based upon pure estimates, the balance point changes between companies, with the largest, most profitable companies able to suffer the most risk as to resources, and the smallest suffering by far the most when measuring reputation.

There is so much history behind this insight, and so many stories that illustrate this point.  Your first customers for any product or service form your reference base, the important group of allies that your marketing and salespeople rely upon when attempting to create buzz and make a mass market for a new product.

Panic! A new product launch…

If you’ve been involved in the launch stage of any product in the past, you should recognize the overwhelming feeling of panic when initial customers make first contact with complaints about quality, functionality, speed of service or other critical part of the new release.

Be ready to over-allocate resources to a launch.

The best advice I can give is to allocate all your resources to supporting the roll-out of a new product, at least for a short period.  Respond immediately to every question and complaint.  Capture every compliment and ask if you can use it for marketing purposes.  If the product or service is especially complex or expensive, send someone from sales or marketing or even R&D to the customer location at the moment of first use.

What if my resources are limited?

[Email readers, continue here…]   Of course, most of us have limited resources for such overwhelming support of a new offering. So, make the first release a limited one, sized so you can support it with existing resources, even if that means releasing it to only three carefully chosen customers at first.

And I am serious about the “…at all costs” admonition.

If you must provide a free backup unit, personal on-site service for a month, your personal cell phone number for the customer CEO, or any number of unexpected offers of superior service and accountability to those first customers, do just that.  Make your customer a partner in the process.   Send flowers to the staff in the department using the product for the first time if appropriate.  Call the customer CEO and thank him for helping launch a product so very important to your success.

The result of your efforts?

The result of doing this right will be to blunt criticism, reinforce compliments and provide a solid user base to build upon.  And the alternative is a lost opportunity to shine, perhaps a first wave of negative public reviews that post and report across the Internet, and a loss of reputation and goodwill that will take years to overcome.

So, empower your staff.

I don’t know about you, but I would much prefer to spend dollars reinforcing a great first customer’s experience than fighting fires in the marketplace after seeing negative reviews.  Make sure your entire staff buys into this mantra. “These first customers are critical.  You are personally empowered to do everything possible to exceed their expectations.”

From sports car to aircraft to super tanker, successful operation depends upon the pilot’s understanding and urgent timely use of a dashboard.  Real time information is critical to real time decision-making, and increasingly in the modern business world, decisions are made by management without extended meetings or discussion with others.

Managers need real time information

And with the rise of modern technology-driven businesses, the same is true of management in the business world.  A good dashboard of relevant real time information is now available for most any business, often created by computer software from data derived from monitoring real time tasks within the business.

Consider these critical pieces of information

You should consider creating such a dashboard or reviewing the one you use if already driving with one at hand.  I’ve developed four criteria for use in creating and evaluating your dashboard.  When constructing yours, you should consider the following:

1. Controllable outcomes: There is no use for information for which there is no ability to control changes as a result of analysis.  Ensure that you include only information for which you have a way to alter future outcomes in a positive direction.  An example would be a real time display of the value of the dollar against the yen.  If your business has no trade with Japan that could be affected by arbitrage, early shipments or other tactics that take advantage of the moving value of these currencies, that statistic is irrelevant to the dashboard – even if interesting to you.
2. Earliest warning metrics:  [Email readers, continue here…]     What good is information if you can’t act upon it in a timely manner?  Find metrics that will be “leading indicators” of trouble to come.  Think of labor efficiency (future product or service delivery impairment) or warehouse inventory (sales slowdown, supply chain management problems) as examples.
3. Items in the critical path (bottlenecks): This is one of my focus issues for my workshops, it is so important. One of your chief duties is to remove bottlenecks in the delivery process for your product or service, enabling all resources before and after the bottleneck to achieve maximum efficiency.  If a critical path machine or employee is slow or down, your own email box overflowing with questions from subordinates needing answers, or any other measure of critical path impairment in need of fixing, you should know about it at the earliest possible moment.  Add a measure of each that you identify with to your dashboard.
4. Items impacting cash (now or later): Cash is the oil of your business.  Slowing of production, deliveries, raw materials, receivables collections, billing for work completed – all are going to influence cash flow soon and should be tracked when out of expected range.

Some simple indicators you can track

Simple indicators that affect multiple areas above include increasing backlog, call center delay time denigration, increases in finished goods inventory amounts, unbalanced work in process inventory buildups, and reduced efficiencies in billed time for consultants or experts.

And how about projecting cashflow?

How about projecting cash on your dashboard:  cash on hand plus expected accounts receivable collections subtracting necessary accounts payable payments and payroll.  You will find many more candidates for your personal dashboard.  Try to limit yours to five or fewer critical measures that can be updated no less often than daily if not in real time.

You will be steps ahead of most of your competitors and in a much better place to succeed if you create and maintain an effective dashboard.

There is more money lost in businesses today from inefficient processes than any other single area.  Yet this is not a place where most managers feel comfortable deconstructing and rebuilding.  Somewhere out there is a consultant or future employee (or even suggestions from present employees) that will provide the roadmap toward making your processes run more smoothly, more quickly and more inexpensively.  As a byproduct, process quality is likely to improve as well.

A more efficient way to do it?

 No matter what your company produces, there is surely a more efficient way to approach the process.  Start by carefully restating the goal for the process, such as “produce 500 quality units per day” and create metrics to measure the present output and quality (rejects or time lost) with this goal.  Look inward, forming a “tiger team” from within your organization to define the steps presently taken to reach the goal, and make improvements in increments that can be put into effect and tested quickly.  The best reward for those involved in improving a process is to receive the kudos from management and themselves for making dramatic improvements in their internal processes.

Consultants, outsourcing, and scrapping the system

If internal resources cannot handle the solution, it is time to find an outside resource that can.  Either way, someone must start with creating a map of steps from start to completion, breaking it down to measurable sized increments.  Look first at whether some steps are creating a bottleneck or quality breakdown affecting subsequent steps.  If improving individual steps is not the solution, then scrap the process entirely and attempt to define a way to meet the goal through a differing route, such as outsourcing parts or the entire process, doubling the capacity of a segment of production, or redefining the goal itself.

All these efforts will help you to better know the process to a degree you never expected to achieve.  And meeting the challenge of improving productivity is a great morale lift for all, as well as good business practice for the company and management.

You may not know it but the National Transportation Safety Board has for years offered a reporting program for pilots, air controllers and others involved in aviation safety.  Anyone reporting an accidental safety error (such as flying into restricted airspace) within ten days is granted immunity from FAA prosecution, as long as the mistake was not an intentional breaking of the law.  Even NTSB understands that mistakes are learning experiences as it insulates accidental infractions from prosecution in order to learn and solve problems communally.

What is your culture?  Do you respond to an employee mistake with a warning or even punishment?  If so, it is a sure thing that fear will cause your employees to hide them, cover them up with quick fixes if possible and worry over the consequence of creativity efforts or of pushing the envelope a bit.

Doesn’t the whole enterprise fail a bit each time a learning opportunity is lost or someone hides actions from management?  And what does it say about your corporate culture and your individual management style?  Even if you condone the overreaction of others in management, aren’t you then guilty of reinforcing such a culture of punishment over learning?

Celebrate your mistakes.  Others will follow.  All will learn to share for the sake of safety, growth and open culture.

As founder and CEO of the then public company, I was expert in several of the “clean” processes such as studio recording, record mastering, cover design and photo–lithography.  But if I knew then what I know now, I would have spent time working with my employees in each of the subsequent and more mechanical processes such as printing press management, record press management and shipping control in order to better learn my own business and hear first–hand suggestions from the line.

I lost an invaluable opportunity to learn from the front line.

[Email readers, continue here…]  Later, as CEO of a fast growing computer software company with over thirty employees in customer service alone, I did learn the lesson, as I sat in on customer service calls on occasion to get a more complete understanding of the process, pressures and opportunities for improvement.  Then, when my manager of customer service sent a request up the line asking for funds for equipment or expanded staffing, I would understand the need, sometimes offering suggestions for improvement to try before making the investment.

It had taken years to learn that empathy comes from experience, not just perceived understanding.  And that there is such a thing as a business leader showing empathy while making good strategic decisions.  I learned that employees appreciate knowing that their executives have experienced and can understand their world.  I learned that tough decisions, such as denial of a request, are better received when all affected know that there was a deeper understanding of the issue and reasons for the response.

All because I learned to sit in and understand the position, the workflow, and the challenges at each stage in the process of customer service.

Are you too busy to learn each step along the corporate process enough to understand issues and challenges?  Start by sitting in with customer service.  The benefits are immense.

And that behavior results in leaving little time for outreach to the most critical possible component in your chain – your key customers. During CEO roundtables which I attend regularly, fellow CEO’s analyze a compatriot’s use of time during the once-a-year personal presentations each makes in turn.  If the presenting CEO is honest in the analysis of actual time spent each week, it is often revealing to all to see how many hours are spent turning inward toward meetings, operational management, or responding to emails or texts sent by others.

As a group, we set a bar of fifteen percent as the minimum amount of time each week that a good CEO should spend reaching out to the company’s key customers in a proactive attempt to find issues, trends, unmet product needs, and of course create bonds that make their jumping to a competitor more difficult.

[Email readers, continue here…]  Do customers know what they want from their suppliers for future products?  We often ask our sales people to “find the pain” and show how our product solves that pain problem.  But it was Henry Ford who famously said, “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse’.”   Some new products arrive with no frame of reference.  FedEx, the automobile, the Internet, and many more examples, prove that there can be a significant market for ground-breaking ideas.

Do customers know what they like when they see it?  Of course they do. So why not show a prototype, asking for input to improve it or adapt it to the needs of the customer?   With that kind of interaction, the customer becomes a partner in development, tied to the success of its outcome and much more willing to purchase it when completed.

Is business built upon good relationships?  Of course it is.  And who is best to create closer relationships at the top than two CEO’s speaking personally without distraction?   I have won deals after forming such trusting relationships, and have lost deals to those who have beaten me to the opportunity.

The challenge is also the opportunity.  A good CEO spends time with critical customers and values the feedback and relationships that result.

When there are multiple parallel developments of components to fit into the whole product, the slowest component determines the speed of completion for the final product.  One designer, one engineer, one developer seeking to achieve a degree of perfection to meet a personal level of satisfaction is capable of derailing an entire complex project.

And yet, who would not want the highest quality product to place into a competitive marketplace?  Who would not want a “better” component or product?  By its very nature, “good enough” defines the acceptable market level of quality, price, feature-functionality, and salability.   That standard certainly varies by any requirements for product safety which surmount all others.  That one standard aside, all of us must internalize the short mantra that is the subject of this insight: Better is the enemy of ‘good enough.’