More on Metrics.

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I realized, as I worked on this post, about Comcast, I have a lot to say about metrics. A whole lot. It's not an easy subject, and the corporate world loves metrics. Every middle manager in the country becomes flush at the sight of a report detailing the After Call Percent, the Labor Percent, and the time in queue. They are positively froth at the notion.

Now, I am going to upset a lot of people. Maybe I won't come off as an expert. I have a lot of experience with metrics. And before you say that studies show that metrics are the best performance measures we have, remember that whenever you say "best" you have to ask, for whom.

Metrics, in a lot of ways, are a justification. No company likes it's technical support division. This love-child of rapidly growing tech, coupled with furtive and error-prone tech, is a sinkhole for company money. I'd bet that half of R&D is basically just "make it less error prone."  It's certainly cheaper.

But as technology increased, Tech Support became the second sales associate. We were the soft sell. "Hey, thanks for buying out product. All technology, even that car, has issues. We know that it's inconvenient when it doesn't work, let's get it working right for you."

The flip side - it's a sinkhole for companies to offer free support. They'd charge but most customers suffer a disconnect - they see a technician fiddle some buttons and then the computer works. The technological "wizardry" is largely subtle. When you take your car in for  a repaire, they lift it up on blocks, pull out parts. It looks like work. It's easy to understand as actual skill.  When a technician rapidly scrolls through text, presses a few buttons, reboots your computer, there doesn't seem to be any substance.

So the company wants a profit on a department and the customer doesn't want to pay for what looks like crystal waving hoodoo. But tech support needs to exist.


So Technical support managers use metrics because to the executives, who care only for the bottom line and who listen only to bean-counters, need, desperately need, to know why this red mark exists in the the ledger of their exchequer. They see this entire department that has no income and they can seem to justify it.

I don't understand why. They happily understand exchange of money for goods, at least - they ought. Unless, they don't. When they take their ski trips, do they not pay people for food? For shelter? Why do they think the $30 dollar bottle of hair product is worth it? I mean, their computers need fixing too. I get frustrated that I have to buy cleaning supplies, but after living in some lichen-coated ogre-caves in my past, I wouldn't be caught dead without at least a bottle of bleach. .

Metrics, in this case, justify something that ought need no justification. Tech Support is the second customer service. Once the item has been sold, follow-up falls, mostly, on service. If service is handcuffed to metrics, or poorly staffed, or poorly paid, you lose your ability to create meaningful and important customer experience. Yes, you will have a trickle of naive and bright-eyed techs who will begin the job with open-hearts. But your system will turn them into cowering, mumbling misanthropes in six months. And then, you'll need a retention team.

My point is exactly this: Metrics should never cost the customer experience. The customer experience needs to be managed. If you manage the customer they will have a bad experience.

Truth is, metrics are not all bad. On the contrary, someone I admire, Jon Taffer, uses a type of metric called analytics. He touts the "science of the bar business." He uses these metrics to aid the bar in increasing profit. But bars make money by improving and lengthening the positive customer experience. It's may sometimes come off as if you your chairs are 5 cm higher then profits increase 10%, but only because on TV, they edit and use shorthand. Bars make money on happy, well-served, pleasantly-buzzed-and-entertained customers. If a metric increases short-term profit for a bar at the cost of long term customers - then it isn't used.

Growth under the current system that puts profit first will fall. Profit is important, despite my difficulty understanding work, I can understand profit.

Good service, a good product, and good follow-up, is not a detriment to service. You don't make profit and then, as an afterthought, offer a good experience, or an experience.  You don't begrudgingly slough off to work, petulant and angry like a spoiled child, (or yours truly). You don't try to mitigate it as a "unfortunate and unintended consequence."

You offer a service and a good experience, and, in trade, you are provided other services or goods, or the shorthand, money.

Imagine! Imagine the bar that, as a a consequence, has nice lighting and a dance floor. "What do you mean, we have to have good liquor and clean bars? I just want to sell drinks!" or  a Pizza place? "Quality ingredients? Psh! Just sell them them ground up cardstock!*" How many people would be impressed by an executive with unwashed hair and a ratty suit? 

And, as  customers go elsewhere (assuming they can - Telecoms have the system locked up). You are left with needing "Retention specialists", basically glorified beggars and strong-arm experts who's sole purpose is to keep your unhappy customers on the hook.  You are no better than some back alley clip joint.

If you need metrics to justify your position, you haven't adequately managed your value. And if you need, god help you, an extortionist in "retention." then you aren't providing a service worth retaining.



* I am talking to you Pizza Hut.  Little Caesar's tastes better. And it's cheaper. You should be ashamed. 

** It's just me, but I put on a spiffy bowler and a monocle.

The Comcast Effect.

I seem, very much, to be in a tizzy over the economy - specifically how we work, why we work, and what we work on. I think the whole system, created by industrialization, has turned like some modern-day ouroboros, onto itself. The mechanization and industrialization has ran away with regulations (and de-regulations) all in the wrong places. It's left the free market, good work, and the lower-class gasping in the dust.

As for the middle class, our current legislative body, from fed to state, and often local, stabbed it in 2002, it just took this long for it to bleed out. The middle class barely had tiem to gasp "Et tu?"

The ever-increasing hatred of Comcast is a bandwagon that has perhaps circle. Recordings and interviews  making the rounds, showing us the madness of the Comcast system. And regardless of claims to the otherwise, Comcast knows about and encourages it.
In fact, I feel like translating the Comcast apology:

We are very embarrassed by the way our employee spoke with Mr. Block and Ms. Belmont and are contacting them to personally apologize.

 Translation: We are so busted. This is just like when mom caught me stealing as a child. I had to go, apologize, and promise to pay back the shopkeeper. So now we have to apologize even though the candy we stole was delicious. Lame 

 The way in which our representative communicated with them is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives.

Translation: We do not precisely train our CSRs like this. In fact, it's not until they get on the call center floor where we discreetly discuss metrics. We reinforce these metrics at their 30- and 60-day reviewt

We are investigating this situation and will take quick action. 

Translation:   So, we know what's up and we will handle it in-house by completely ignoring it and.or firing the employee. 

While the overwhelming majority of our employees work very hard to do the right thing every day, we are using this very unfortunate experience to reinforce how important it is to always treat our customers with the utmost respect.

 Translation: This happens all the time, but we will add an extra ten minutes in training to discuss how much we care about our customers so we can update the published date on our training materisl. We'll make it look like an overhaul by paying people way more money than they ought to rewrite the language of our training materials.

(As a mercenary who doesn't have apersonal beef with Comcast, I'd like to say to them: I am up to the rewrite job, and my fees are reasonable. It's will be $10,000 a month. You can bundle that with my $5000  a month  consulting and my $3000 cartooning. Now separately you'd pay 18 grand for all that, but with introductory bundling, I can get you two for $9000 or all 3 for only $6000 for 6 months!  What a deal!)*

 Sometime in the past we gave up on the simple idea of good products and services. There used to be this process. You made a product or a service, then shared it and exchanged it for money. if the product and/or service was good, and you were reasonable, you would get returns and some profit. Industrialization was, supposedly, simply an extension. of this.

But something went sideways. We stopped looking at return customers and happy customers as signs of good work and started engineering opinions. We sent out surveys. And the surveys said things like 'the call was too long" or "they didn't fix the problem and I had to call again."  And we valued signing up new customers, at any cost. We added flow lists and databases and metrics because we thought the science and data backed it up. And it did, to a point. 

But we stopped offering service, and offering to do the jobs, and starting managing the customer. Not his expectations, but them. We forgot that all the data in the world isn't giving the customer what they want or need. 

The fact is, while it's true that no sane or honest business owner goes into the game to lose money, the profit - the bottom line, comes from relationships, and connections.

Rather than asking "What can we do to help the customer?' We ask: "Can we make the customer happy in 6 minutes." Then we ask "Can we finish the call in 6 minutes to help the next person, and can we make them wait in a queue."

I have discussed this before here.

Comcast is not alone. I worked for a small Telecom, TDS. I was a pretty solid employee,but I had a problem. I wanted customers to be helped. I want to solve their problem and make sure they didn't need to talk to me again.
Did some of the customers need multiple things? Yes. That, at first, didn't bother me. Did some customers ask me for things outside my scope of support? certainly - I explained that I could help, or couldn't. If I could help, I said other agents might not be able to help.

I had excellent customer service. But in the world of metrics and numbers, this was unacceptable. And the simple answer is because our managers were so divorced from the customer and the process that they couldn't even understand good customer service, and why their metrics were detrimental to the people on the floor. Customer Service Representatives breaking out in a sweat when the difficult call takes very long. raises lost to skewed averages and you miss a metric.  

All companies do this. Marco's Pizza did this. Measuring the time to make pizza, the time in the oven, the time on cut and time out the door. All of these do, in fact affect customer service. But, in the end, the only thing that really matters is the quality of the pizza and the good customer experience.  At Marco's Pizza, the management is not distant from the customer. If a customer is happy, metrics are loosened. If a customer is unhappy, no amount of metrics repair it.

Metrics tell very little about the customer experience. It is a game of testing boundaries - how much can we get away with in our search for profit and speed and still have a positive experience.

It seems insane. In order to give a "positive experience" I had to not do all the things that made an experience positive.

Now the same telecom sent all their tech jobs to uneducated Jamaicans, costing the US jobs and giving a worse customer experience.

Madness and bad customer experience in a search for profit. No company went out of business by building positive relationships.

Something has happened. Industrialization and profit-hunting have become metric chasing. Desperate attempts to show your job is relevant by explaining why your imaginary measurements are good measurements. That the science of profit, time management, and efficacy replaced the ability to craft a good customer experience.


*Comcast must sign a 12 month contract. After 6 months the introductory rate become $19,999 a month. Early termination fees apply.

Leadership (An Outsider's View)

Hello, Kiddos!

Hopefully I make a little more sense than my last post. Sorry, I was shaking off the rust. Today I want to discuss leadership. From the outside.

I say from the outside because I have never considered myself a leader. Even when I've lead, I don't consider myself a leader. I am just doing what I do. No worries and cheers, mate.

If I were describe my leadership style, I would call it Positively Absolutely Canadian.

"Eh."

I was a leader, I just didn't know it. And don't tell me. If I found I was actually responsible, I might have an attack of the vapors.

My dad always told me "Whoever among you who wants to be leader must be your servant." The quote comes from Matthew 20:26. I used to think "that's stupid. I thought that leaders lead. In this age of CEOs and inherited wealth (I'm looking at you Waltons!), it doesn't seem most leaders had to serve in the trenches. They blithely walk in and fire 10 thousand people.  Or they decide to bomb other countries.

Perhaps I ought not listen to Bad Religion while discussing Leaders of today.

Still, My Dad is not wrong. To lead requires service. But a little deconstruction is in order. because I think a lot of leaders have forgotten there job, and why their job is important.

A leader has served. That's why he is a leader. In order to lead effectively, you need to have spent years learning your craft, honing it, and leveraging that experience into success.  So here is how to be an effective leader, from someone who isn't.

A Leader is an Expert
I shall name 3 leaders off the top of my head.   John Taffer, Robert Irvine, and Gordon Ramsey. They are all on Television right now, but they are excellent examples because their fame should make them accessible.  What do they all have in common?

Years and years of service.  They didn't simply walk in to a restaurant, take over, and lead. They started out at the bottom. They didn't read a book and start spouting answers. They did hard work. They slogged in the trenches.  They made mistakes, as a cursory biography makes clear.

But their experience allows them to ask the right questions and to direct people to the best answers. A leader has screwed up, gone down cul-du-sacs, and hit the wall enough times to see things coming. If you have a problem or an idea that is, to put it bluntly, stupid, wouldn't it be nice to find someone who's been in that jam to help you out of it?

Education and Experience are the marks of an expert. And Expertise is the Mark of a leader.

A Leader Is Successful
We love losers. Sitcoms show us this. Movies show us this. Books and Comedians show this. We love a loser. But we don't respect a loser, and we don't follow one. We want proof that our leader has lead and his followers are successful.

Would you follow Custer into battle?.Heck no. Despite an excellent and admirable career, his spectacular failure and death give us pause.  His name is synonymous with failure.

What do you think about Pete Best? Who? Sometimes called "The 5th Beatle."  He has had a unimpressive successful career. But his success has not been meteoric, and few would care about his notions of music and the industry. I daresay, for the sake of hyperbole, he couldn't conduct a kids choir.*

We want to see proof of success. We all want to win, and so we want to follow winners.
A good concept is fantastic. A rousing speech, a handsome face, and a good feeling are all wonderful. But what real followers want - need, even, is to trust the leader will bring them a win.

I find it strange that people would challenge the ideas of Chef Ramsey, Chef Irvine, or Mr. Taffer. I have to presume it's for ratings. These men have awards, merits, and most important, money. Seems when they speak on their  topics, one would shut the fuck up and do as they tell.

Maybe it's me, I dunno.  I respect experts.

Success goes hand in hand with expertise - it is tangible, observable proof of  concept. An expert puts many more wins in the column than losses (But see below).

A person with no successes is a braggart or a liar (but see below)

A Leader Gets A Mentor (And Is One, Too)
A leader is part cheerleader, part director, part shepherd and part drill sergeant. It's cliched to say, but a leader's goal should be success. They may not seem to have your best interests at heart, but they have a vision and they want followers to successfully engage that vision.

I had a professor (several, actually) who encouraged and cajoled effort out of their students. The best were very nearly unsympathetic. They were hard on people, and harder on the people at the top. They did not embrace excuses. They had a vision of a student successfully professing as they profess - provided the student worked hard.

The best thing a would be leader can do is find another leader in his field. This allows you to use the mentor's expertise and learn how to lead. It's a one-two combo, and I cannot stress enough useful this is. Don't follow yours truly and treat your mentor's input lightly.

One last caveat. If your vision doesn't mesh with the leaders vision, you aren't doing yourself any favors, nor them. Likewise if your vision does not engage your followers, you need to change it or work with them.

A Leader Is A Failure Who's Hung On Long Enough. 
Anybody who's read inspirational quotes no doubt knows this gem from Michael Jordan 

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

It may soothe the feelings of those without success, but the truth is a leader makes mistakes. When they steer a person away from a course of action, or make a decision, or ask a question, it's because they went there. They fucked up. And that fuck up stuck with them. And they want to spare their charges the same failure.

But it isn't merely self-aggrandizement of the mediocre. experience that teaches nothing is worthless. And so they dust themselves off, and try something else.


So that's it, kiddos. A leader is an expert with experience that helps guide people away from the same screw-ups they encountered.  To do this they had to start at the bottom, and serve and fail and learn.He who is to be master must first be a slave.

So go out, jump in at the bottom, and fail like you vote: Early and often!