Remember The Name(s)

I'm terrible at it. Absolutely horrible. When I meet someone it is almost for certain that 10 seconds later I can't remember their name. I know it is one of my worst traits and I hate it about myself.

Image provided by ArstySF

I'm envious of people that remember names because it comes natural and even more envious of those that have trained themselves to be better at it. I have tried almost all methods: say it 8 times in the next minute, word association, activity association, writing it down...none of it works for me.

It is important to remember someone's name for many reasons, but I think the most important is because it shows you care. Note I did not say it shows you listened. Listening is important, but caring is more important.

As I was trying to find a parking place at Church today I saw my new friend Dave from the Mammoth Ski Trip. I rolled the window down and yelled, "Hey Dave!" He came over and said, "Hey Kevin," and then looked in the back and said "Hey Brody, gimme five." It is important to note here that Dave had never met my son Brody. He had heard about him during our trip but never met him. He cared enough to not only remember my name but to remember Brody's name. He knew Brody was really important to me and it showed that he cared about that. I immediately felt like I was important to Dave...which made me feel great.

The next time you want to make someone feel like you care, remember the name(s) of people that are important to them...which will always include their own name.

And if you have any fail proof method of learning names please tell me...I would love to be better!

Make Sure What You Do = What Your Customer Wants

Sometimes on the weekends I do very dad-like things.

Brody turns 3 in April, and since we are expecting baby-sister (no name picked yet) in April it was time to move into a "big-boy" bed. So this weekend I built a bunk bed. Okay I assembled a bunk bed, but I did everything but sand and stain the wood. I could not believe the amount of assembly required for this bed. It made me feel very "daddish" though and I was super excited about it. Putting together my sons bunk bad...seriously how dad is that!? Brody loves it and climbs all over it.

And today we were playing with his cars from the movie Cars (he has all of them) and I got this great idea to build a ramp to drive the cars down from his top bunk. I thought we would have a great time building it together. We went to the hardware store and got some material, got the project all setup, and after attempting to hammer one nail Brody got bored with the board. I spent the next 45 minutes building a ramp with barriers, lanes, and finish molding. I thought it was really cool (still do). I took it up to him all excited and set it up. Brody thought it was cool for about 4 minutes until a different toy grabbed his fancy.The reality was Brody did not ask for a ramp. He was completely content just playing cars with me and didn't need anything else.

I often find I want to do something for my customers that I think is cool, even if they don't need it. This is especially easy in software development where unnecessary features get added because they are cool but not very functional (think annoying paperclip man in Windows). Avoid doing something because you think it's cool. Instead do something that is useful, which should start with spending some time with your customer and listening.

And if you're a dad spend some solid time playing with your kids and listening.

Losing Business with Business Automation

Automated customer service emails have their place. But when they are not in line with customer expectation you can end up doing more harm than good.
On Friday Jan, 17 I took a flight on US Airways from San Antonio to Phoenix. I experienced the worst service in my history of flying, which is saying something since I spent the equivalent of one full work month on a plane in 2007 (about 160 hours for those told there would be no math) . Never before had I written an airline as the bar is set pretty low with regard to guest experience and I am generally understanding of the airline plight. Airline employees deal with unhappy and rude customers all the time, and 98% of the time the problem is out of their control like flight delays or being out of Coke cans mid flight.

But attitude and how a job is performed is completely in the control of any employee. The kicker for me was getting off the plane to wait for my carry on bag to be delivered (small plane) and watch our bags get "launched" by an employee three feet up over a railing and fall about three feet to a landing. Thankfully I didn't have anything fragile in mine, but I saw one laptop bag go airborne (as it's owner cringed) and one garment bag get a hammer style throw.

Since my iPhone does not have video capability (one of its major limitations) I tried to get my camera out to take video but was too slow (I think it would have made an interesting YouTube upload). I sent a note to US Airways, but not an "angry customer" note. I told them the story of my experience and ended it saying I did not want anything in return but hoped customer service would be a higher priority.

The following day I got an automated response from US Airways apologizing for my "travel difficulties" and a $75 non-transferable travel voucher. I suppose I could have just accepted this as the reality of things, but I felt a bit insulted. US Airways could have quickly validated if I had a frequent flier number (which I do) and found my Star Alliance status. My guess is they could have also discovered I spent over $2200 in airfare since January 1, 2008 (30 times the voucher amount).

I sent a response email to customer service saying I did not want the voucher I just wanted better service the next time I flew. They sent another email apologizing for offending me with the voucher and that my concerns had been delivered to the appropriate management. I ended feeling again like my experience stunk.

US Airways could have righted my experience one of two ways. Picking up the phone after the second email would have been ideal. It would have made me feel appreciated and ensured they understood I was not angry but disappointed. Obviously they cannot do this with everyone, but the reason for loyalty programs is so you know who a customer is and what losing them may mean. Second, though I did not want anything, a full fare voucher would have told me they really wanted me to fly with them.

The point of business automation should be to improve the guest experience, not the other way around.

It's Not About You

I was visiting a church last Sunday and the pastor’s sermon started with, “It’s not about you…”. His next four words were “…it’s about God.”, but for this post I’m going to focus on the first half.

As I embark on this journey to be a successful hospitality technology consultant I have multiple times thought about the challenge of how to communicate clearly my desire (my mantra if you will) to help clients be successful. I find this especially difficult as a technology consultant because there are so many of us (versus them). This is also a challenge because many prospective customers have had poor experiences with consultants. How do you convince a customer that your desire is for them to be successful and that you can help create value?

I believe the first thing is to recognize that it is not about you. Focus on your customer and see how they react.

In short, use your ears and listen. Epictetus said it best, "We have two ears and one mouth so we can listen twice as much as we speak."
I’ve posted on this key successful trait before (probably because I recognize how much I need to improve in this area), but I find that listening can help a client believe you want them to be successful. Clients hire you as a consultant because they believe you have or can find answers. And they may be right, but having answers comes with the prerequisite of understanding the problem – vis a vis listening.

Success as a consultant is predicated on your client's confidence that you can make them successful. In your next client meeting build confidence not by knowing all the answers (because you won’t) but by listening and understanding the problems you are there to resolve.

Listen and React

I was reading Seth Godin's blog today and this link to Apple was highlighted. I have been a hard core PC user my entire life. But the more I see of Apple (and that you can now run Windows on a Mac) I'm convinced that being associated with Apple is a good thing in almost every way.

Listening to your customers when they are going to spend more money is easy. Listening to them when they are unhappy and want something for free is much harder. Apple and Steve Jobs illustrate perfectly why listening to your customers is beneficial. Happy customers buy more stuff, so if you have to spend $100 to make $200 it's probably a good idea. My guess is that most of recipients of the gift card will spend more than $100 dollars. And if the iPhone can be sold for $399 versus $599 it means that the $599 price was probably big time margin. Apple is playing a great revenue game. You can sell fewer phones for higher margin or more phones for lower margin. The initial iPhone selling was way higher than the forecast by Apple, so you can bet that sacrificing some margin for volume is a good gamble (not including the pending holiday season).
And since the mass majority of people will spend more than $100 when they redeem it is just more revenue for Apple...genius move!

Additionally Apple has said that if you purchased the iPhone within the last 14 days they will refund you the difference.