Ignoring your customer

A few days ago, I found a discussion on LinkedIn, whether it has become an acceptable habit not to respond to mails or phone calls; companies become unappreciative or disrespectful. Unfortunately, this is not the first time I read this rhetorical question (and I really hope, that most of you would agree, that there is only one answer possible) Such outcries are fairly common these days, and even when speaking to people, it is perhaps one of the most heard complaint nowadays. 

Doing business is all about trust. Seems an open door, but fully true. Unless there are indeed pressing reasons (like the person is ill, the network is down) responding to communication is the most important basic a business should stick to. And even I myself am often quite shocked how disrespectfully companies behave these days. And one always asks; for what reason? 

Remembering a phrase from a British comedy "Keeping up Appearances", where one of the protagonists frequently utters "it doesn't cost anything to be a bit polite"  - in various different wordings, it is clearly a true statement. When thinking of it, last week only, I had about 4 such instances. I am not talking of an e-mail which remains after one day unanswered, but rather a third or so attempt to get feedback, while getting read receipts, but no other reaction follows.

I can find some interesting tips for candidates on the internet, to write a 'thank-you' note after an interview in order to remain visible and creating a good imago (aha, so it is important!). But,  from experience, do I sense that this is not applicable for the businesses at all??? To be honest, a company, which ignores me is definitively not interesting to me - whether an e-shop, client, a bank, or whatever. Sadly enough, we have improved our communication lines - just imagine how business looked like 30 years ago. And what I hear most often as an excuse; high workload. Come on, be realistic!

By making the whole world more better accessible has indeed also complicated communication in a way. Yet a basic politeness is essential and vital to your business, and it really does not slow your business down. I rather get a quick mail, telling me "sorry, we are busy, but try to find out" (even if they forget afterwards) rather than having the feeling of being treated like garbage. So the benefit will always be yours. It's not rocket science, but it will positively reflect your attitude on basic ethics.

Best Practices... really?

Every walk in life undergoes developments, and man is usually inventive enough to optimise anything around him. This includes even every day's business processes. Recent attempts in the past few decades, have somehow systematically bundled improvement ideas into nowadays acknowledged philosophies. Labelled with BPIs, Best Practices or whether with more specific names like Six Sigma, even Lean Six Sigma, Kaizen, A3, all are focused on eliminating a certain redundancy to increase measurable output - quality-wise, but equally quantity - while decreasing the costs.

The most important understanding is that it serves not so much the very own reputation, but should be beneficial to the customer. No matter, what so-called internal KPIs are being regarded as, the content of the customer is ultimately what matters. Poor quality, high price will make the customer to go to the competition, and you will be out of business. 

A big misunderstanding on this concept I once came across, when dealing with a partner, who approached me for a service. We agreed to a price and signed a contract, until.... the company stopped communicating. After attempted to address the issue, I received an e-mail, where I was bluntly told, that due to internal regulations for each external contract a tender is to be required. Assuming, that it was perhaps a misunderstanding, since the deal has been signed already, the response was the same: "Sorry, forget about the whole signed contract". Maybe a common practice in Slovakia, it is a behaviour, which to a westerner is a bit unusual. At least, from where I come from. Despite a few meetings, to come to an agreement, the opposite party was not willing to give in.

Deducing the whole development, it was quite apparent, that an over-eagerly Best Practices Manager of the said company, found some ways to figure out additional savings. Perhaps a job evaluation was pending, or whatever, but it seemed a fairly inexperienced attempt to squeeze out some lousy euros.

Best Practices, in my humble understanding, is a way to do the 'best'. But provoking breaches of contract to impress management seems far from a best practice. Ironically enough, it was one of my acquaintances, who conducted a best practices project with this company. Knowing him, I cannot imagine, that this was what he taught them.

New thoughts / business philosophies can easily be misused and thus becoming utterly counter-productive. The company in my view lost a considerable credibility and such tiny mishaps can result in creating a bad reputation to the outside world. News usually travels very fast, especially in our global virtual world. Such practice, and especially such incompetence to compensate for it, can be a huge business risk. New areas could perhaps be an interesting specialisation for young(er) generation managers. But never take this task too lightly. It takes more to manage portfolios than just superficial enthusiasm.

Web 2.0 and Business

Web 2.0 has almost completely penetrated out daily lives. The very mere fact, that I am an active blogger, demonstrates this more than enough. At the same time, I must also admit, that I do have acquaintances, who perhaps are not even aware of this and maintain a certain distance. For those, who are not fully informed; Web 2.0 is not a software update - it is basically the same conventional internet but instead of just surfing for information, booking a ticket, order a book, it has some additional platforms, which offer a more dynamic networking possibility: To directly and real time interact with anyone, no matter where both parties may be. Communication by only e-mail has been extended to another level - the social platforms.

While many people utilise environments like Facebook only to post party photographs from the last weekend, or holiday, perhaps to get in touch with lost friends from the past, companies have obviously discovered this medium as a new way to promoting and propelling new business opportunity. Although the former is actively being used by businesses as well, it is more platforms like LinkedIn, Xing, or and others, which offer a more serious environments to induce networking.

In a dynamic age - in which we are - we have quickly absorbed this new tool into our lives. Whether we have done so effectively enough remains to be questioned. Lately, I noticed an urgent request from one of my LinkedIn contacts. As I could provide a solution, I immediately responded - not just via LinkedIn, but I anticipated the probability, that the said person would maybe not visit LinkedIn within a few hours, therefore I also forwarded an e-mail as well. There was indeed a prompt reaction. Some weeks passed by, however, and I inquired on the status. The response was more or less disappointing: "Hasn't received anything".

I seem to notice an unfortunate trend, where individuals sign up (for whatever reason), and assume that the crutch of the whole thing is to accumulate connections. And there it stops. The person from my previous example, was indeed priding herself with a 2000+ status. Impressive, but what did it bring? Apparently, from further correspondence it transpired, that she had a complete chaos in her work. Perhaps the fanatic acquisition of links prevented her to keep focused on her initial work. Her waste of time, and in the end, my waste of time as well.


Another example is of somebody, who frequently (perhaps over-frequently) feeds twitter-like messages, which seem fully out of context, posting video messages that rather show a certain over-enthusiasm but hardly any profound added value, and instead of getting useful info, it became rather an irritating bubble. Perhaps better presentation skills and improving the language would somewhat help to overcome this problem, but in all, the strategy was fairly unprofessional.

Social networks can have a very useful role, when utilised in a sensible way the impact can be amazing. Promoting your business there can be very effective - after all, the basic "word of mouth" advertisement is far more powerful than any prestigious marketing campaign. And social platforms serve as a kind of real-time electronic word of mouth medium. No more, no less. And as in real life, the users are just people. Those who find a proper way to get to business, and those who will not. I am fully convinced of the benefits of Web 2.0, and I shall be using it optimally. Yet, remaining critical at all times is perhaps the best approach. 
PS.: I deleted the contacts from my list...

Outsourcing Risks

Business has two contradictory interests; profit and a happy customer. While in the old days, the to-be captains of industry would start somewhere in a shed and sweated for years to reach a success, nowadays business seems to focus on short-term profits. All the involved, from your banker up to your CEO, you need to deliver a business case with impressive multi-coloured graphs to demonstrate an even more impressive return on investment as soon as possible. But, is this really what it is all about?

As business has gone global, and thanks to computers and internet the world has truly become a smaller place, regional distances play hardly any significant role any longer. In contrast, the mere fact that regionally labour costs do vary considerably, has created a trend in outsourcing. Not so much talking of outsourcing your catering or cleaning services to a specialised service supplier, rather talking about specialised processes, like HR, IT and even Finance & Accounting.

Whether such a trend is indeed justified, depends on certain preconditions, which are not in all instances correctly understood, properly defined, resulting in unexpected higher operating costs - contrary to the projected saving. Especially, when dealing with the certain "offshore outsourcing" the risks are relatively high. Technical constraints - provided the hard- and software are compatible to the customer's - are hardly an issue, as even an in-house department can equally be affected by a technical failure. 

When building a business case for outsourcing, the driver is a lower price tag, usually represented by lower labour costs more or less in combination of other lesser costs like office space. The more customers get on board, the cheaper the service. Yet this may in some cases, as I witnessed in the past with two customers, a merely theoretical model, which when put into practice, proved to be far less profitable, even incurring a loss.

My first encounter in an outsourcing project was back in 1998, when the concept was rather new. The second was in 2006, where one could have had multiple reports from prestigious audit companies, delving in detail with possible pitfalls. Yet, the project has equally been grossly underestimated, resulting in a poorly structured project, where the individual customers felt far from being content. The former company could absorb the kind of set-back, the latter, a Brussels controlled but Finnish company was less fortunate.

Some basics have been overlooked; statistical data were badly interpreted, which negatively influenced the decision-making. The low price tag, became almost an obsession, which delivered at the onset enthusiastic staff, but poorly equipped to execute their tasks in line with the customers' expectations. This dramatically changes the success of the whole endeavour, where the saving is guaranteeing only poor output. Proper training come at a cost, but it only ensures that teams are comfortable with the tasks given. Otherwise, the quality will sway and a risk of personnel outflow is hanging in the air.

Coming back to my introduction; the main interest of any service provider should be a happy customer and from there trying to be cost effective. Fully understanding the customer's needs is a skill, which comes first, and fully realising, that setting up a new service centre is an investment, which will pay itself back after some years - and not from the onset.

Keeping in mind this, to properly invest in your people and ensure that the service deliverables are acceptable to the client, then moving towards excellence and process improvement can take place, which makes the whole business profitable. If not, it will become a costly prestigious project that is doomed to fail from the very beginning. And believe me, an unhappy customer is almost no customer and without him you make hardly any profit at all.

Misconceptions within HR

The very first interaction with a future employer - in most cases - is with the HR department, hence my first article will be specially dedicated to them. I still remember those days, where it was simply called Personnel Department, being in charge with the administrative chores regarding the employees and to get the pay-cheques out on time. When it became a human resources department, it extended its field from administrative into the realm of selecting and hiring candidates. The initial concept may be justified that the potential candidate is seen as an asset to the company. Nowadays, I often gravely doubt, whether this still holds true. 

In my almost daily contacts with HR professionals, I come across various issues, which hardly seems in line with the primary task of the involved, concurrently they could pose a serious threat to the overall long term strategic interests of the business. Whether it pertains to in-house professionals or external HR- or head-hunter agencies, the trend is becoming somewhat generally applicable - irrespective, whether we are currently in a crisis or not - and would require managements to seriously reflect on which way we are heading.

Some time ago, by mere chance, it came to my attention that a well known globally operating American computer company, was having some serious issues within their workforce in their Bratislava branch. When making an inventory throughout several departments within the company, the picture for all of them was fairly the same; 70% of staff was disappointed about the job they got  (and this was still a conservative estimate - basically a different chore than what they were promised, there was a huge staff flow - resulting in a constant learning curve and loss of know how, and thus a creating chronic deficit of dedicated and qualified people.

Given this situation, I would not like to be in the shoes of the CEO. Advertising appealing job titles, and finding out it's just a hollow shell, is not only a bit unethical to do, but will not instil much credibility for the new employee and already creating a dent in the confidence between the employer and his 'asset'. True is, that a cleaner will feel flattered if you name him a "floor manager", the reverse side is, that a senior marketing analyst, ending up in only feeding his excel sheets with data-batches and creating standard pivot tables will end up pretty annoyed. Discontent and a more-than-acceptable exodus of trained employees as a result, is devastating for your business. Wasting huge amount of energy and money to fill in the gaps is slurping up your efficiency, furthermore it destroys your brand. People leaving tell their story, customers are confronted with shortage of service, and so on. This will not remain within the walls of the office and negative insider-news is far more destructive than a well marketed product. Since my network is quite considerable, many of my acquaintances (or theirs) have at least once experienced a hiring process there, which would hardly be credible as a birthday-party anecdote. So heed for damage.

When giving feedback to the upper HR management in their London office, there was initially much surprise, on the outcome, assuring me that the results I presented were not in line with reports from the said office. It was not so much this fact that I would contest - in all fairness, it had to be expected; a manager would obviously protect his teams, and equally, reporting sometimes is more subjective than realistically objective, as it always serves an ultimate purpose. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to demonstrate the contradictory indicators against the facts. 

It should be a thorough lesson to realise, that HR is by no means an independent scientific discipline, which has the prerogative to act on its own. While many professionals do indeed follow a 'recipe-book approach', many times there is a serious lack of understanding of the company's business as a whole, and the huge risk involved, if not meeting the long-term strategies. Concurrently, there is a noticeable tendency of complacency, even arrogance as well: Some concrete cases reported to the said IT-giant, dealt with an outright concocted reason for rejection, which is a definite no-go. The role of HR is not merely limited, in supplying a company with new flesh, likewise it is to deal with candidates in a highly professional way. Never mind the recipe book, never mind the trained skills. A simple down to earth approach and common sense are needed. And one may re-label it as Talent Acquisition or whichever fancy name, the role remains the same.

In our times, budgets are supposed to be tight. Saving, however, on the most valuable factor in your business - your staff; present or prospective - can result in a disaster, from which a company might face extremely unpleasant difficulties. The players should take each other based on at least an equality basis, at all times, where the company and the candidate are superior to the short-term chores of an HR assistant. Only this way, the interests are optimally met. 

The aforementioned IT company has proven not to be too concerned, as shows from the updated continuous information. Wonder whether the present managers would be able pass the current hiring process. I firmly believe, this is definitively not the last article on human resources. Lest I might forget also to mention: I happen also to know very capable and true professional HR people, albeit they were more difficult to find.