Tag Archives: Customer Service

Kindness and Common Sense Often Go Hand-in-Hand

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“There are few problems in life which kindness and common sense cannot make simple and manageable.” (Mary Burchell)

Attribution: Donna CameronI’ve been invited to speak at a conference later this month on the importance of kindness in business and the workplace. Working on my PowerPoint (of course, there must be a PowerPoint!) and putting some notes together this last weekend, I kept thinking how obvious it is: kindness is one of the keys to success in business—both individual success and organizational success. It seems like a no-brainer.

I’m old enough that I remember the days of “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap and a proliferation of business books about Winning Through Intimidation, Looking Out for Number One, and Nice Guys Finish Last. There really was a time when “profit at any price” was a prevailing business philosophy and when ideals like kindness, compassion, and even teamwork were viewed as soft, squishy, and oh-so-weak.

Managers believed—they were even taught—that they got the most effort from their employees through bullying, browbeating, and coercion. They overlooked the obvious—that those behaviors resulted in low morale, resentment, and high turnover.

In recent years, there’s been a whole lot of research on kindness. As I’ve noted in many earlier posts, there are health benefits, wealth benefits, relationship benefits, and, yes, many, many business benefits. Just as there were once many books on cutthroat business practices, there are now numerous books on compassion as a successful business strategy. Among them:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unlike the others, this last one isn’t a recent book. It’s 20 years old, but still one of the best business books I know. Certain ideas are timeless, and you’ll find them in this and other books by Lance Secretan.

 

Here’s just a sampling of some of the recent research on kind and compassionate workplaces, found in these books and elsewhere:

Employees of companies described as having kind cultures:

  • Perform at 20% higher levels
  • Are 87% less likely to leave their jobs
  • Make fewer errors, thus saving their companies time and money
  • The companies themselves have 16% higher profitability
  • And if they’re publically traded companies, they have a 65% higher share price.

Research has also shown that compassionate business cultures consistently have:

  • better customer service
  • healthier employees and fewer absences
  • far less turnover and an easier time replacing employees when they do leave
  • higher productivity
  • greater employee engagement and commitment, and
  • an atmosphere where learning, collaboration and innovation are more likely to flourish.

In business, kindness is your competitive advantage.

It helps to have some common sense, too.

Which brings to mind United Airlines’ recent incident. I’m sure you’ve heard the story: Passengers were bumped from their seats and removed from a plane to make room for United crew members who needed to get to the flight’s destination. One bumped passenger, a doctor of Chinese descent, was forcibly removed when he refused the bump, telling airline personnel he had to get home to see patients. Security dragged him from his seat and pulled him by his arms and on his back down the aisle; his face was battered and bloodied in the process. What did United gain by this? Well, maybe they got their flight crew to their destination, but it cost them millions of dollars (one estimate I saw said easily a billion!) in bad press, lost passengers, and worldwide contempt. In China, where United is among several airlines competing for a share of the huge travel market, videos of the incident have gone viral at record rates, and Chinese travelers are vowing never to fly United. The monetary and P.R. costs to the company are incalculable.

Common sense and a compassionate mindset would have told United there were numerous other options: buying tickets for their crew on another airline, seeking a back-up crew, allowing the stranded crew’s flight to be delayed, approaching passengers without the confrontational, stormtrooper tactics…they could even have chartered a small plane. The relatively small cost of any of these options would have been preferable to the “nuclear option” they chose.

But if kindness and compassion—and, let’s face it, common sense—aren’t part of a company’s culture, these are the sorts of things that happen. I’m guessing other airlines, and other businesses in general, are using the United story as a teaching moment for their executives and employees. Let’s hope United has the good sense to be one of those companies.

If they’re interested, I can recommend some good books….

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” (Jimi Hendrix)

The Jerk Shall Inherit the Earth?

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Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies, God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” (Kurt Vonnegut)

Bandalier,NM-ladderWell … crap.  I’ve spent the last fifteen years reckoning the importance of kindness in my life, and the last five months deeply immersed in an exploration of kindness.  And I have become convinced that despite local, national, and world current events to the contrary, people are growing kinder; we are on the verge of a kindness Renaissance.

Turns out I was wrong.

At least that’s one interpretation from an article that appeared in the June issue of Atlantic magazine.  Entitled “Why It Pays to Be a Jerk,” author Jerry Useem asserts that—consistent with the old adage—nice guys generally do finish last.  He further claims that some of the most successful people in business are also some of the biggest jerks—think Steve Jobs—and that their jerkiness is exactly what led to their success.

Useem does caution that being a jerk can also backfire and lead to abject failure, but bad behavior done right in certain circumstances is often the path to the top.

For example, stealing supplies or provisions just to benefit oneself doesn’t advance you in the eyes of colleagues, but stealing and sharing the bounty with others puts you at the head of the team.

And someone who aggressively claims to have the answers, even when they don’t, is seen as a leader and often elevated to the leadership position.  Further, it seems that the more unaware one is of how unfounded and even deluded one’s self-confidence is, the more swift and direct is the narcissist’s propulsion to the top.  UC Berkeley Research Psychologist Cameron Anderson explained, “By all indications, when these people say they believe they’re in the 95th percentile when they’re actually in the 30th percentile, they fully believe it.” And somehow they make others believe it, too.

I think this explains so much about our political system, or “jerkocracy,” as I am moved to call it. It would seem that some politicians think they’re a lot smarter than they really are and we’ve bought into their delusion.  Okay, I know that’s a totally unkind thing to say, but really—do a quick run-down of presidential contenders—doesn’t it explain a lot?

Another distressing example in the article showed that people who are treated rudely and condescended to by salespeople in upscale brand stores (e.g. Hermes, Gucci, Louis Vuitton) tend to spend more money than they do when treated well by another salesperson in the same store.  There were some qualifications to this: the shoppers needed to value the brand, the salesperson must convey the image of the brand, and such tactics by the salesperson generally only work once with the same buyer (of course, if you’re selling Rolexes, one sale is probably sufficient).  It also completely backfired if it wasn’t a truly upscale store, i.e., don’t try this if you work at Kohl’s or Target.

Givers and Takers

If anything’s clear from the article, it’s that the whole subject is murky.  Useem cites research by Wharton professor Adam Grant, author of Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success.  Grant depicts “givers,” those whom we would generally describe as kind and generous, and “takers,” who are often labeled narcissists and jerks, noting that both givers and takers occupy the top—and the bottom—of the success spectrum.

The conclusion seems to be that you can be successful if you are kind and a giver as long as you are perceived as strong and are consistent in your behavior.  And you can be successful if you are an overconfident, narcissistic jerk as long as you are convincing and seen as someone whose success will have a spillover effect on those around him.  For both giver and taker, if you don’t convey your understanding of and ability to bring others along on your success journey, you can expect to make a nose-dive to the bottom.

So, it appears we have a choice if we want to be successful: we can be kind or we can be jerks—we just have to do either effectively.  While I have undoubtedly been a jerk at one time or another, I hope those episodes have been rare.  I choose kindness.  Being a jerk to achieve success would be soul-crushing.

Perhaps the choice between the kindness route and the jerk route depends upon how you define success.  I’ve never viewed it as either wealth or power.  Increasingly, I do define success as spreading kindness and helping others.  As long as power, intimidation, and obscene wealth constitute success for some, it looks like jerks will continue to lead.

So, the Atlantic article is discouraging.  There does not appear to be a straight path to a kinder and more respectful world.  Jerks are still reaping the rewards of their bad behavior.  There’s still a long way to go to reach the kindness tipping point.

Nobody ever claimed it would be easy.  But, we’re in this together and each time we choose kindness we move that much closer.

“Our lives are made of these moments.  Simple words and actions, taken together, weave a single day, and our days become our life.  Every gesture is a seed, and the seed determines the harvest.” (Wayne Muller)

Uber Kindness

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“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” (Desmond Tutu)

If You Are GrouchyI’ve been reading about how Uber and other companies are changing the dynamic of customer relations.  That old “the-customer-is-always-right” mentality is being stuffed in the trunk with our luggage, and in a nifty bit of table-turning, businesses are rating their customers and rejecting those who don’t measure up.

One would hope that the ultimate outcome will be both companies and customers who strive for pleasant and kind interactions.

In the case of Uber, while passengers have always rated their drivers, now drivers are also rating passengers, and low marks may mean the customer is left waiting at the curb for future transport.  From an Uber blog post:

“An Uber trip should be a good experience for drivers too – drivers shouldn’t have to deal with aggressive, violent, or disrespectful riders. If a rider exhibits disrespectful, threatening, or unsafe behavior, they, too, may no longer be able to use the service.  Have partner drivers been deactivated for consistently poor ratings? You bet. Have riders been given a temporary cooling off period or barred from using the app for inappropriate or unsafe behavior? Yes. The system works to make sure the most respectful riders and drivers are using Uber.”

Lyft, a private-driver taxi company similar to Uber, has followed suit in rating passengers and using those ratings to help determine whether or not to accept ride requests.  Home rental service Airbnb also makes ratings of guests available to help home-owners decide whom they will and will not rent their homes to.

It makes sense.  If I have a choice in who I drive to the airport or who I rent my house to for a week, I’d like it to be the courteous passenger or guest—not the ones who are rude, ill-behaved, or unpleasant.  Admittedly, courtesy can be subjective: one driver might give high marks to the passenger who sits quietly in the back seat, while another might feel that person was cold and unfriendly.  One driver might like conversation and banter, while others prefer silence.  The same holds true with passenger preferences.  Maybe it all comes down to simple common sense: when we meet a person, we gauge their communication style and their personality and we adapt to them.  Ideally, they do the same to us and we meet in the middle, recognizing that we’re each doing the best we can.

The implications are fascinating.  In the case of Uber and Airbnb, customers are learning to be polite and considerate.  They’re learning that people in service industries expect and deserve to be treated with respect.  And they’re learning about the consequences of behaving otherwise.

When the customer rates the service and the service rates the customer, the hope would be that the rating is approached with a spirit of positivity.  All are looking for what’s good rather than for what isn’t.  Those who are optimists and seekers of virtue will find what they are looking for.  The danger is that people who are naturally critical or negative will revel in their new role as faultfinders.  Perhaps the answer is a complex algorithm that calculates each individual in his or her role as both the reviewer and the reviewee.

While there is always the chance of abuse if a subjective system is utilized by subjective and/or flawed individuals, if the company culture is positive, I suspect the system will settle into one that is also predominantly positive.

The Comcast Factor

If one starts out with poor intentions, though, a two-way evaluation system is rife for abuse.  Look at what happened recently with Comcast—a company notorious for both abysmal customer service and a poor company culture.  In February of this year several stories of customer abuse were revealed.  When a customer tried to cancel service, her closing bill arrived addressed to A%#hole Brown.  Another customer who called Comcast to resolve channel access issues found her first name had been changed to “Super Bitch” on her next bill.  It would seem that these are not isolated incidents.  On another customer’s bill, the word “whore” was added before her first name and another customer was given the appellation “dummy.” Stories like this go all the way back to 2005, which would lead one to believe that Comcast has a serious culture problem and is doing little to fix it.  That obvious assumption is supported by the fact that Comcast consistently has the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any ISP in the country and is was named the “Worst Company in America” by a 2014 consumer survey.

The Beginnings of a Consideration Movement

Leaving aside companies like Comcast which show scant hope of ever exhibiting kindness or quality, perhaps there is a burgeoning consideration movement whose time has come: service companies rating their customers … dentists rating their patients … movie theaters rating their patrons….and all with the intent of creating a more pleasant and rewarding two-way relationship.  What do you think?

In our small company, we have exercised our prerogative to dismiss clients a few times over the years—nearly always for behaving disrespectfully toward our employees.  In every case, the decision resulted in improved office morale and created a space for a better, kinder client to fill.  Invariably, our only regret was that we didn’t do it sooner.

While it would be preferable if courtesy and kindness came naturally as a first response, perhaps the threat of a public rating system is what’s needed to arouse our kindness awareness, and that will ultimately lead to habitual kindness responses.

One can always hope….

“Unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind.” (Marcel Proust)

Kindness Takes a Holiday…

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“If you treat people right, they will treat you right … ninety percent of the time.”  (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Attribution: Bill WiederkehrI’m not sure how kind I was yesterday.  I don’t think I was exactly unkind, but no one hearing me would have remarked on my kindness, that’s for sure.

Maybe there are times when “not unkind” is the best we can muster.

It all started Friday afternoon when a work colleague alerted me to the fact that a client’s website would not accept credit cards.  We had set up the account months ago and this was the first occasion this small client had needed to process credit cards through its website.  And the need was immediate.

Since I was the name of record on the account, it was my responsibility to resolve it.  It wasn’t clear where the problem was, so I tried to communicate electronically with the two companies involved.  Neither company would recognize the account number.  So, I got on the phone to them.  After nearly two hours of back and forth and lots of automated messages and irksome hold music, it became clear that the account I had opened had been inadvertently closed, and an account we had closed had been kept open, but was not compatible with web-processing (more information than you could ever want, sorry).

Since I had a copy of a letter in hand confirming what account they told us last November was open and what account was closed—and the reverse had clearly transpired—it seemed like a simple matter to rectify the error. However, by the time it was discovered, it was close-of-business on the east coast and I was told that I would have to call back Monday.

It was a frustrating weekend, imagining members trying to register for an event and getting continued error messages.  We put a note on the website asking them to call us if they encountered problems.

First thing Monday morning—after a fortifying cup of coffee—I took to the phone again.  All the relevant information was at my fingertips: The name of the person I had spoken to when I opened the account, and the one who had assured me in November that account “A” was open and account “B” was closed, and copies of correspondence confirming the same information, and specifically saying that it was “web-ready.”  I also had copies of all the monthly bills our client had paid for a non-functioning account.  I was prepared.

Upon finally reaching a live human (no easy feat on a Monday morning), I was shuttled to three departments before someone would acknowledge that there had been an error and it was theirs.  Then I made the mistake of asking what I thought was a perfectly reasonable question, “How are you going to fix it?”

Well, it turns out, that’s another department, and they would cancel our non-functional account (at a charge of $125) and send me the paperwork to open another account.  If they expedited it, we should be able to take credit card payments within a week or ten days.

That’s when I got cranky.  “This was my problem, but it’s now yours.  You’re not going to charge my client a cent to cancel an account that is entirely useless to us.  And this needs to be fixed today, not tomorrow, not next week.  Whom do we talk to to make sure that happens?”

She named someone in another department.  “Okay,” I said firmly, and maybe a teensy bit loudly, “get him on the line, and you stay on the line, too, until we’re all in agreement that this is resolved.”

“But once you’re in Bryan’s hands, he’ll take care of you.”

I was now well into hour four of phone wrangling (phone hours being much longer than standard hours) to resolve this issue.  Bryan might be Pope Francis’ kinder brother, but until my problem was fixed, I wasn’t going to let Elsie off the phone.

After about 15 minutes I had assurances—both oral and emailed to me—that the account would be opened within 24 hours, there would be no fees for opening or for canceling the incorrect account, and they would personally petition for the repayment of monthly charges since last November.

One of our team members had heard part of the exchange.  “That wasn’t a pleasant conversation,” she commented.

I filled her in on some of the details.  “Was I terribly unkind?”

“Not unkind.  Not kind, though.  You were rather, uh, forceful.”

I found I was okay with that. Sometimes forceful might be what’s called for.  I don’t think I was rude, and at no time did I yell or swear at a human*.  I flunked “kind,” but I got at least a passing grade for “civil.”

When I started this blog, a cynical (but lovable) friend asked me if “living kindly” meant I was going to be a pushover for everyone who wanted to take advantage of me or of my kindness.  I told him kindness and pushover don’t equate in my estimation.  Perhaps we tested those waters this week.

I know there are people who could have resolved the credit card issue and remained kind throughout.  I am not yet one of those people … and perhaps may never be.  I guess that’s why I’m here….

*Is it wicked to yell at automated messages?  If so, I confess I was unkind.  In my defense, the disembodied voices seemed not to care….

“Being kind doesn’t mean being gullible.” (Aniket Jawale)