Your message and other things you say

This is a test from Firefox’s add-in, Scribefire.

And a blockquote.

Had a customer experience story with a major electronics manufacturer. First, I noted that the 800 number was just for the class of equipment I owned. Second, I got a real (English-speaking) person with only two phone menus and 30 seconds. Third, they seemed genuinely interested in helping. I did get a handoff from a screener to a tech rep, but again, was on hold for less than 30 seconds, and even though I had to supply the service number I had just been given, no further information was needed.

The solution, predictably, was to download some update which would “clear things up” (even though the “what’s new in this release” snippet mentioned nothing of the sort). Both people promised an email to me (one for a follow-up survey and one for the link to the update, which I was already halfway to with Google). Both emails were in my inbox in less than 90 seconds.

Then the kicker: The very nice lady ended the call with, “and if that doesn’t happen to solve your problem, don’t hesitate to call us back.” Both humans were unusually pleasant.

I realize that they all still read from the script, that there is a limited chance my problem will go away, and everyone is a lot happier with a holiday looming, but still… They had a pre-filter to route me to the folks that could help me, they were nice, questions were answered directly, they listened when they were supposed to listen and talked when they were supposed to talk, and they didn’t make me feel like I had been an imposition. We could hope that all manufacturers would be as nice to deal with.

Customer service is easy. Make it pleasant for the customer. I.e. “serve them!

As part of my coaching, one of the areas we almost always touch on is how to answer questions. In my experience, a large majority of people who can competently share information fall flat on their face when asked a direct question. Most coachees I work with can go for 30 minutes with no major gaffes or goofs, and I’ll ask, “How did that feel to you?” The first word out of their mouth? “Uh, …” Paragraphs of information without a moments hesitation, and when asked a (simple) question, their confidence apparently leaks rapidly.

Perhaps no area of public speaking can lose credibility as fast as in answering questions (poorly). That’s why it’s so important to have that polished and ready to go. We can never be fully prepared for every question, of course, so it’s important to practice technique as well as content.

But some low-hanging fruit:

• Make up a set of 5 FAQs or MHQ (most hated questions) and after crafting a (good) response practice answering that question with a straight face until you can do it right. Corollary: if you can’t quote your rate with a straight face or flinching or saying “Uh”, do you really think you’re worth it?
• Don’t qualify the question. No “That’s a good question,” or “I’m really glad you asked that question.” If there’s emotion involved, connect with that emotion (”It sounds like that’s a frustrating area for you. I can see why you’d be concerned.“
• LOOK at the person who asked the question as you answer it. Not ALL the time, but most of the time. If there’s a part of the question that is direct (e.g. “No.“), then answer that directly to the asker of the question. Qualify and add detail to the entire audience.
• Don’t respond until you know what you’re going to say. Avoid the dreaded “Uh, …” as the first word (which, BTW, is overwhelmingly the first word out of the mouths of an MBA student when you ask why you should hire them).
• And definitely, don’t ever, ever make up an answer. If you don’t know, then say so (bonus points for making the next words out of your mouth, “but I’ll find out and get back to you.“)

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Questions are so important, why leave them to change? Practice the answers and the answering until you can get it right.

Coaching a group the other day and was faced with the comment, “This is a lot easier when we’re on the road in front of strangers. It’s harder doing it in front of your peers. They know the material and the pressure is greater.” While I don’t think any of the skills I was espousing are particular hard in front of any audience, it was worth thinking about. Is it easier to speak to a group of people you will never see again?

Then I spent a couple of days with these folks and never heard a single word other than encouraging ones. They genuinely wanted to help each other, and their coaching was every bit as good as my own. By contrast, the stories they told of their audiences hinted of personal agendas, landmine questions, drunks destined to disrupt, and downright hostile. Tell me again you want the strangers?!

This organization had something special that every speaker should want — a group of peers that share the same pains, the same desires, and had a wide enough variety in skills to be good for one another. My parting challenge was for them to do exactly what their comfort wanted — I wanted them to schedule times to practice in front of their peers. Only through that time of refining and honing their craft will they get to the point they convinced me they wanted to achieve.

Get the coaching and help you need BEFORE you hit the road.

I think I’ve got the blog back up, on a new and improved version of Wordpress. I suppose that’s a good thing. My cursory glance shows it to be working, although the admin interface is a bit different and my categories appear to have disappeared.

Sorry mom and my other two readers for the hiatus.

Hire a web guru to do web guru-ish things

Trying to book a flight for an upcoming trip.  Against my better judgment, the nonstop flight woos me and I try to book on an anonymous airline108 that tries to parade as the airline of the country.

When I get to “purchase ticket”, it tells me to be careful and not hit anything twice, double booking, etc.  I watch for two seconds and switch to a window to book a hotel.  A few minutes later I return to the website to be greeted by a message that said their server timed out, the IT guys went on strike, or a nuclear bomb destroyed their reservations facility.  I hit the back button on my browser to be greeted with a confirmation page that has retained none of my information.

Now I have no idea if they’ve billed me or not.  I’ve got no confirmation email and my guess is no.  So I click the little “chat with an agent” button to be greeted with a nice window telling me all agents are busy.  If I want to get an agent, I should close the little popup window and click on the same button I just clicked to get this notice.  I don’t think I want to spend the rest of my night trying to see if there are agents chatting with customers (my guess is they all went home at 5pm EDT).

So which is easier:

1. Spending probably an hour of my time trying to confirm that I don’t have a flight booked and trying to rebook it, or
2. Confirming with my credit card that no charges went through and/or canceling them if they did and booking on one of the three airlines I normally travel and KNOW their web site works.

Hmmm…
No wonder they went bankrupt.  Glad our tax dollars saved this airline from destruction.

Make it easy for customers to buy.

Thanks to my ISP ‘improving’ the offering to me (without my choice, notification, or approval), the blog has been down for four days.  I finally did my own research to at least get it to where it is, but there’s a bug with the version of mySQL that they have ‘upgraded’ me to that has posts in reverse order.  For those of you still reading via the web site (and why on earth haven’t you moved to RSS yet?), that is a major problem.  Check the calendar widget to see when a new post has been made.

Sorry for the inconvenience.  I don’t expect that I’ll be renewing my contract with this provider, and may even jump ship before it comes due.

Don’t take away features and functions that work without notification and workarounds.

At a technical conference, the audience had just sat through about 100+ minutes of technical detail and demonstration. It was interesting stuff (to them) but was quite a bit on the dry side and was a parade of facts and features. The conference organizers had invited a keynote to liven things up at the end of the session.

The speaker trotted out on stage and opened with, “Wow. That was a LOT of information. I guess you understood most of that, but I didn’t. I have no idea what it is you folks do.” That sure isn’t Rule #1 compliant, now, is it?! He then proceeded to mispronounce the name of the company who had hired him twice in the first 10 minutes of the keynote.
While the egregious (I love that word) error is not knowing the audience, a smaller error is admitting it, and essentially separating the audience from the speaker. A speaker should strive to build bridges between the audience and himself, not alienate and separate himself from them.

Know your audience and connect with them.