I’m not a coffee drinker but I work with many folks who love their coffee (you know who you are so I won’t mention any names). Often, en-route to a meeting, the airport or any number of destinations the team will stop for coffee. This is usually a good thing because happy people are much more fun to be around than those that didn’t get their morning jolt of joe. On the rare occasion that I’m interested in getting a beverage I will usually order a large hot chocolate. This is where the problems begin.
I have lived in Washington State for 13 years now. Not being a coffee person, I don’t see the fascination with ‘a Starbuck’s on every corner.’ They make coffee and other beverages. Their customers seem to be happy with their products and services so who am I to judge. The ‘issue’ I have with Starbuck’s is that I don’t speak Starbuckaneese. I step up to the counter and politely ask for a large hot chocolate. The reply inevitably is, ‘Vente?’ To which I reply, ‘uh… large?’ and the banter continues. They obviously hear me when I speak but they sure aren’t listening!
I don’t feel like I need to learn some secret handshake or vocabulary to buy a hot chocolate. It isn’t brain surgery. It’s a beverage. It’s not even a health food. Just figure it out and stop trying to ‘translate’ what I am saying. You’re a barista not a UN employee so when a customer says large I think you should be able to figure out that they want the big one. Got it?
You may be thinking to yourself, ‘Man, this guy has issues…’ and you’d probably be right but I have seen the same behavior in the other businesses and it usually results in customers not getting what they ask for. Are you guilty of this behavior? Do you know someone who is? Have you experienced this behavior when you were the customer? How did that make you feel?
When I call someone a customer I mean it in the most general sense. You are either the supplier or the customer (think back to all the TQM training you went through in the 90’s). You move through the supply chain taking on either role depending on the situation. It doesn’t matter if you are a fellow employee (internal customer) or a consumer of our products (external customer) you are still a customer. That also means that at some point in this process you become the supplier as well. So, in the words of my mother, clean the wax out of your ears and start listening.
I have witnessed the same type of large vs. Vente interactions in companies. A member of one team says they need something specific and the “supplier” hears what they say and interprets it to mean something different. I hear you saying large but I really know you mean Vente. Ever ask for a Coke and have a waiter say Pepsi? Is this a word association game? So if your “customer” asks for something specific and you think you know what they need maybe you should just clarify it.
I witnessed an interaction between an Operations Manager and an IT Manager where the Ops person says point blank, ‘I need to get my field engineers laptops with more horsepower than the standard company laptop profile. How do I request them?’ The IT manager replied, ‘You don’t need a different laptop. We get the current ones really cheap.’ Ops dude now says, ‘I know that but my engineers have to use a machine to machine interface to control some complex equipment and our current laptops slow down and lock up. The equipment manufacturer says our laptops don’t have enough RAM and the processors are too slow to meet the minimum equipment requirement.’ IT dude replies, ‘Those laptops have plenty of RAM. Everybody in sales uses them and they are just fine.’ And it continues on into the night. Both people have valid points but this interaction is leading nowhere and if the ‘supplier’ isn’t listening and just goes through the motions nobody will be happy in the end.
When you take on a mobility project and you think you know what your users need you are only seeing half (or less) of the picture. I’ve harped on this point so often it hurts but it just keeps coming up in my daily interactions so I figured I’d do it again. Start by asking questions and actually listening to the answers. Restate the answer as you heard it and make sure you gain consensus with the speaker that you are on target BEFORE you move on or take any action. And for God’s sake, write this stuff down! It does even less good to have the conversation if you don’t document it and circulate the docs to the stakeholders.
So the next time you ask for a Pepsi and someone replies, ‘Vente?’ you can laugh to yourself and remember we had this conversation.
Tags: Brian Philbin, Business Mobility, Business Process, Increase Customer Satisfaction, Mobile Futures Today, Mobility - General
