Monthly Archives: March 2013

Systems Thinking and Management, Uncategorized

Trust – Your Obstacle to Increased Revenue and Lower Costs

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I have often talked about the zero-sum game in my articles and blog.  The belief that good service costs more and cancels out any benefit.  “Customers”, they say, “should not be trusted or they will screw us out of every penny.”  If your organization thinks this way it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In fact, service organizations strike the first blow with poor and cumbersome service.  A customer having to wait on hold, navigate an IVR, and gets transferred around to different agents is bad enough.  If it only ended there, customers have to arm wrestle with technologically hand-cuffed agents that are scripted like robots.  All this costs money but management thinks it less costly then giving customers “what matters” to them.

Trust has to be built into what we do.  Starting with enabled agent that can actually help the customer.  How absurd would that be?  Customers that get good service not only cost less, but they bring more customers.  Good service is a diamond in the rough and giving it to customers attracts more customers.

Customers already trust you by giving you their business.  It just costs less to deliver it when trust us present.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his column at Quality Digest and his articles for CustomermanagementIQ.com. Reach him on Twitter atwww.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn atwww.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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Outsourcing, Systems Thinking and Management

The US and Our “Average” Workers

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I am still baffled by the article from March 6th by CNBC titled, ‘Average’ Workers Plague US Businesses: Execs Survey.  The knock on the American worker is that they lack critical thinking, creativity and communication.

WOW!!  Imagine that the American worker is now the problem.  Never mind the American worker has been outsourced, marginalized by poor work designs and subjected to outdated management thinking.  However, clearly the worker is the problem?

What’s missing?  According to the survey  . . . “highly developed skills in making decisions, the ability for workers to transmit their ideas in oral and written form, being able to collaborate with co-workers, and the foresight to be innovative and make something happen when action needs to be taken.”  Let’s take a look at these:

  • Highly developed skills in making decisions – How often do executives actually allow a worker to make a decision?  On anything?  Compliance is the name of the game for a worker – written procedures and rules see to that.
  • The ability for workers to transmit their ideas in oral and written form – Other than the outdated “suggestion box” when is an executive really interested in what a worker has to say?  The strategic plan and projects restrict any ideas of relevance this is a management problem not a worker one.
  • Being able to collaborate with other workers –  Deeper issues here, reward systems pit one worker against another in too many cases.  Competition is cited as the best path, not cooperation.  Again, a management issue.
  • The foresight to be innovative and make something happen when action needs to be taken – Again the system workers are laboring dictates how much innovation is achieved.  Workers are restricted by the system.

American management is what plagues the US, not the American worker.  Something American management has not come to grips with yet.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his column at Quality Digest and his articles for CustomermanagementIQ.com. Reach him on Twitter atwww.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn atwww.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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