Customer service.  The holy grail.  The desire to maintain a level of service that at least maintains consistency of approach and ideally builds and locks in continued loyalty and the opportunity to keep customers, get them to spend more and maybe… just maybe… even refer other people they know into your flock of would be buyers.

But amid the continual improvement programmes, beyond the service charters, the hours of training, monitoring, the depth of management systems and all else that interfaces with the paying client… there lies a deadly assassin that knows no bounds in undoing all that amazing work in keeping customers happy.

It’s called….. *ssshhhhh, say it quietly* …. the accounts department.

Yes, accounts.  Every company has one.  Whether a small, international, local, or huge company.

Accounts, the place where service withers quicker than a flower in 40 degrees of heat.  Let me share just a couple of things with you.  Just two personal experiences that have invoked moments of undesired headbanging and make you question your own insanity.

Experience number one.  The beloved and much maligned payments team of HMRC.  Yes, it’s true, we wanted to pay some tax, and they just wouldn’t let us.  (And yes, I know they are a governmental public sector organisation, but there is a story in here.)  You see, we needed a unique reference number.  And they hadn’t sent it to us.  Now ignore that every company name is unique, and that every company already has a unique reference provided by companies house through its registration number…  Oh no, that’s not good enough for HMRC.  They need another one.  And without it, it seems they just won’t let you pay tax (I suddenly see the logic of the Starbucks argument!).

Now, it’s little known that within the walls of HMRC are security guards holding employees under house arrest.  Ensuring they don’t betray the unwritten 127 year rules of being helpful to people calling their call centres.  5 efforts to get a number to pay them some money, before having to write a letter to a place you’ve never heard of and hope that within 28 days they may send you soemthing moderately helpful… really, it shouldn’t be that hard… should it?

And then we have example number two.  I shan’t name the company (as I quite like them aside from this moment of authoritarian insanity).

Now this company has just been acquired by another.  They have all the details of who we are, we’ve paid them many times since they were bought, and until this moment, not an issue has been experienced.

Pleasant experience with the people we deal with on the account, fast, helpful, friendly, understanding.  The sort of people we like dealing with.

But then came….*ssshhhhhh* …. Accounts (it may help with the ambience if you play the Jaws music before leading into a  frenzied 12 inch mix of the Psycho soundtrack)

Basically, it seems, that if you are a customer, you have to give your payment details in a new form over and over again, by fax, or in person, every time there is even a minor tweak to your account.

Now… imagine… you’ve worked hard winning a new customer.  You bend over backwards, you beat all difficult turnaround times, you dazzle them with charm, precision, advice, brilliance, quality, value for money and everything you can imagine… and you think your job is done.  You wait on the referrals, you ask them for feedback (but fail to ask about accounts) and in all, you think you have an advocate.

But the possible fly in the ointment.  The accounts department where authoritarianism has gone mad using processes that are as far from customer facing as possible, tucked away in a lead encrusted bunker where service is an unknown word.

Sadly it happens all too often, and the experience can sour a beautiful relationship between supplier and customer.

So do me a favour.  Every now and then, just shine a light in the deepest darkest corners of the accounts department.  Maybe gain some feedback specifically from your customers (especially ex ones) and see just how you rank in the service stakes for making it easy for people to pay you.

But beware, you might be alarmed in seeing what you might find.

I think it’s only fair that I offer a muse alert!  No, we aren’t blazing out Knights of Cydonia in the background… but the MD is feeling all reflective and on a Friday that’s going to mean a blog entry that’s likely to ramble a smidge!

(Sorry readers….tis true!)

I’ve had a few days of talking to new clients, new contacts and shaping thoughts for new communications and ideas with our creative agency and internally.  And that makes you think, it makes you tell your story, and it leads to reflection of the journey you’re taking and the steps that have been taken to date.

Hence the muse alert!

One thing that it did bring to stark focus was our culture at Clarity.  It may not be obvious to the outside world, especially those who only know us a little, but we have an approach that can only be described as challenging.

Challenge in a good way.  That we are open to challenge from anyone, that we provide challenges to our clients, contacts, friends, suppliers and anyone within earshot!  Anybody who took a seat with a jumbo sized popcorn to watch the spectacle of internal debate I’m sure would be surprised!

First, at the intensity of belief behind opinion and suggestion, the intensity of challenge from everyone and perhaps mostly … the speed and fluidity in shifts of opinion that have been debated so passionately.

That got me to wondering.  How common is that?  Where a company can discuss, debate and disagree vehemently, can exchange ideas passionately, can go back and forth with extreme fluidity but all of it done in such a way that personal feeling is completely left behind and whoever has the best way of doing something, whoever comes up with the best and most effective solution, whoever comes up with the most creative spark of an idea, it’s immaterial as to who they are, if they were right last time a debate took place or what age, gender, upbringing they stem from.  And from the best ideas, we turn that into change and never ending improvement.

A belief that anyone can be right.  A belief that any point of view can always add value if listened to, digested, considered and built upon.  A belief that a single nugget of thought from anyone can generate seismic shift of opinion, create unbounding opportunity or lead to a radical step change.

Muse over …. you can all go back to planning your weekends…

I know… I know… we’ve chuntered about this before.  But it seems the powers that be in the online world aren’t hearing the chunterings.

Time and again, website after another (especially on news sites it seems), you hit the home page and within miliseconds… there it is.

An unbranded box, alien to all it’s surrounded by.  A wasp amid the summer picnic (ok, so I’m not saying all websites are a picnic.. but you get the drift, I was trying to be all wordy and wax lyrical!).

Ahem… anyway…

The point is, what is the point?  A pop up survey, manifesting merely seconds after hitting a webpage, maybe visiting a site for the first time, and maybe from a social media link to an interesting article or story, and this is what you are faced with.  “Tell us about our site”

It’s just madness.  Do you ever see people walking down the street, stopping a random stranger and asking…”Do you like me as a person?”

No!  Just no!  Because that would be bonkers.  The person couldn’t be in a qualified position to give an accurate answer and the fact you’d just delayed them, asked them something stupid and made them feel uncomfortable would probably generate a none too pleasant response!

So why the craze of pop up surveys?  Just a fad?  A cheap token effort to make it look like feedback is being asked for?

Do these surveys ever generate anything other than drop out?  Do those measuring analytics review the change in visitor behaviours following the introduction or conduct AB testing?

This is purely a personal view, but in the hundreds (and it must be close to that now) of instances where a web pop survey has appeared within seconds of landing on a web page, my instinct has always been “close”.  Sometimes the web survey, sometimes the page I was navigating to.  Which surely cannot be the intent of the company, to drive away or annoy it’s visitors.

And I know I’m not in a minority.

So a plea.  To the powers that be.  Please please please… do away with this new fangled fad.  Yes it’s very clever you can technically make a survey appear within seconds of someone hitting a webpage.  But question whether you should, rather than whether you can.

…It’s acceptable, maybe even expected that a survey will look naff, have minimal or no brand identity, have no connection with the audience and have no style to it whatsoever?

Tell me why it is acceptable to have a token logo acting as if there has been bespoking of the survey… but that logo is the wrong resolution, is grainy and is to the detriment of the company conducting the survey?

Tell me why it’s acceptable that the survey sizing is completely wrong, has radically conflicting fonts to brand identity and has buttons that make brutalist buildings look pretty?

That may have been acceptable in 1993, but it’s not in 2012.  Yet daily, we see examples, are sent examples of real life surveys being delivered by or on behalf of some of the biggest companies on the planet.

Demand more, expect more… because more is possible.

Do you ever get the time to just sit back and look at what you’re doing?  Whether you be in marketing, HR, operations, finance or at board level?

I mean really sit back.  Divorce yourself completely from what’s happening and view it without emotion or heritage and see things for what they truly are?  Do you challenge the truths that have been built up over time to try and deconstruct them and rebuild them for today?

I recently read an article by a former cricketer (Ed Smith) recounting a discussion with a football journalist covering Spain and their dominance of international football for the last 3 major tournaments and the lesser known dominance of youth football.

The nutshell (so you don’t have to go hunting for the article) is that Spain are in a dominant cycle not because of talent and skill…. but instead a thought.  An idea.

The thought and the idea emerged from a desire and a want.  And that want stemmed from Johan Cruyff who believed that the single most crucial factor in a football game was the mastery of a simple facet of it.  The pass.  Master the pass, control the game, set the tempo, stymy the opposition, win the game.

All that followed in Spain was a devotion to this idea.  The methodology worked.  Spain are dominant because of the mastery of the pass.  Yet the reason for this success is not money, or commercial sponsorships, it isn’t history, fame, or anything like that.  The success is based on that idea and that single thought.

Can you imagine how much had to be stripped back to get to the simplicity of that single thought?  The wood for trees and complexities of modern sport could easily get in the way of seeing that simple truth let alone putting the methodologies in place to work towards it.

And that got me thinking.  Firstly of my business, but also of others.

How often do companies base ideas on what already exists?  A tinkering, an enhancement, a facsimile for speed and efficiency?  The danger of such is that the original function, the original notion that created that process or system or activity may no longer be valid.  It may have been first created 50 years ago and since then could have been moulded and shaped and cajoled into what it is today.  Different views, different notions but ultimately all building on the existing fabric rather than starting with a fresh sheet and assessing true need and objective at this current time.

Over time the truth gets tarnished and loses it’s simplicity.  The reasons for first doing something are forgotten and we simply slip into habit mode, often following for the sake of following rather than questioning and challenging.  And that’s why the truth can benefit from deconstruction.

So think about your business, your department, your processes, your systems, your clients, customers, contacts, prospects, staff, suppliers and the world around you.

What is your simple truth that could lead to success?  What single notion could make your staff devoted, happy and motivated to succeed?  What single concept could pull customers and clients to you and have them stay with you for a lifetime?  What thought can change your company, your industry and transforms your profits, results and successes as a byproduct?

It’s not easy, obviously.  But if thought has the ability to define a generation of sporting prowess in something as complex as football, surely deconstructing the truth could be as beneficial in determining business success.

Shakespeare.

Taught to the millions in a language from days gone by.  Read in countries across the globe.  Popular.

Yet the language of that time has all but disappeared and is far from being in common use.

In 1932 (80 years ago) the Likert scale was introduced.  Some may not know the name but you will undoubtedly have seen it.

You’ve seen a questionnaire with a range of 5 scoring options with strongly agree at one end and strongly disagree at the other?  Thats a Likert scale.

Now we’re not going to go all scientific here so stay with us.  We believe that scale isn’t of today.  We believe it skews results rather than assists to understand viewpoints of staff, clients and the public, and we believe it gives an easy choice for people who cannot be bothered to properly take a survey and therefore adds to distorted results.

Our thinking is based on two simple points of view.  Should a scoring range for a survey have a neutral midpoint?  Can a range of words (equidistant and bipolar as maybe) suitably capture the mood and opinion of a population.

We don’t think so.  Language and mood have radically changed in the last decade with the development of the internet and the advent of social media.  It’s shortened,  More slang is used.  Traditional sentence structures have broken down and grammar has become more loose.  (You just have to look at my ramblings to see that!)

So does a barometer using words defined in 1932 cut the mustard in 2012?  No.  Do you sit down with your colleagues, friends, families and whoever you have the ear of and say…

“I need to get your feedback on something…. so ranging from strongly agreeing to strongly disagreeing, with neither agreeing nor disagreeing as the middle option… should i paint my bedroom purple?”

Firstly, any audience would look at you with a strange bemused look, but secondly you either give out a quick comment that only fits in with the scoring scale and if you can’t fit an option, you plump for the middle.  Or, you spend considerable time trying to fathom how the scoring scale works and how it applies to the question you’ve been posed.

Take a numeric scoring scale though.  Say 0-5.  6 points, no mid point.  Does the survey participant see a midpoint?  Yes, 3.  Is 3 the actual midpoint of a 6 point scoring scale with 0-5?  No.  The range works especially well because taking an average score can run to as many decimal places as you like.  That means miniscule variations can be picked up more easily.  And everyone can instantly comprehend a numeric scoring scale.

We know many companies still use Likert and thats their choice.

We think scoring ranges should belong to the people of the day and make sense to that audience.  Likert is 80 years old.  It’s time he and Shakespeare became better acquaintances as models of the past.

Whatever business you’re in… do you get that sinking feeling when you see a company or individual going about something in a way that just isn’t going to cut the mustard?  It’s not just us then!

There seems to be an increasing tendency to use online surveys for one of two reasons.  Data capture.  Or bulk marketing.

Fine, if that’s what floats your boat.  But if the reason for the survey is glossed over to insinuate it’s for “customer satisfaction purposes” and then you’re faced with oodles of questions asking for everything from your inside leg measurement to whether you’ve used a latest product or would like to use a particular product.

I’m sorry guys, but come on.  An online survey is a mechanism for canvasing views, capturing insight and understanding audiences.

Trying to use it for cheap marketing or to bulk up contacts to then cramb into a bulk mail marketing activity… no, thats not going to work and it’s more likely to get your audiences to switch off than engage with you.

We’ve seen online surveys used by companies who have a poor sign up process, have huge gaps in contact details for clients, customers and contacts and as a desperate measure, hoping a poorly thought out online survey will save the day.

Or the big companies who tag on an online survey at the point of buying, or at the end of a customer service engagement on those livechat systems.  It just all seems to miss the point.

If you want to understand an audience, do it right.  It’s easier in the long run, has more value and is much less likely to give the perception you’re going about things for lipservice or cheap marketing brownie points.