Does Omni-Channel Service Equate to Better Service?

The evolution of customer service delivery channels has sped up in the last few years.  Consumers being connected all the time is having a big impact on the expectations of the consumer and the way in which customer service is delivered.  The real question that needs to be asked; “Are consumers happier with the service they are now receiving?”  Based on the research I am seeing, the answer is NO.  The good news is that service perceptions are not getting worse.

So how is that possible?  Weren’t the new media streams like Facebook, Twitter, on-line chat and browsers supposed to help put an end to unhappiness in the customer base?  Only if you drank the Kool-aid™.

The fact of the matter is that it does not matter whether you call it omni-channel, multi-channel, internet-channel or any other kind of service, if the customers cannot get their answers in a timely way, they are not happy.  If the service model is already a mess, adding more media streams only makes things worse.  Today, the penalties for poor service are very swift and severe. 

So what should companies be doing to avoid these penalties?  Simple.

1. Recognize that at the end of the day, the agents carry the load when it comes to service.  I have read hundreds of Twitter and FB rants and only rarely is the rant solely about a web page or an IVR script.  Almost always, there is an unskilled agent involved.  Train agents on the knowledge and people skills they need for their job and verify each area on a regular basis. 
   
   

2. Recognize that not all media are created equal.  English is not a simple language.  Neither are a great many other languages.  The ability to write those languages and to know both what to say and how to say it is not a universal skill.  Each new media embraced as part of the customer service model brings along unique skill requirements that must be met.  Agent skill-inventories are the easiest way to identify whom among the existing staff are either qualified or could be quickly qualified to take on the new media.  Skill-inventories have a short shelf life so regular verification is needed.

3. Silos are the biggest barrier to the customer service process.  Silos reflect a management structure that places politics ahead of service with a few exceptions needed for legal reasons.  Silos are found in data, product and media areas.
   
>From a data standpoint, there needs to be 1 picture of each customer.  That picture will be a composite, drawing information from multiple systems, but it needs to appear to the agent as a single system. 

Product silos prevent agents from seeing the breadth of a customer’s involvement with a company.  Is the bank 1 company with 50 different products to offer or 50 small banks each with a single product?  If you want a relationship with your customers, you know the correct answer.

Media decides how the agent and customer interact.  Agent to customer-data should always be comprehensive and agnostic with regard to media.  Do not give the social media agents different information than that which the voice agents access.  With the proper skilling, they may well be the same agent. 

The well-designed customer service system is built on a foundation of comprehensive customer data accessed by properly skilled agents and self-service systems through communication avenues considered appropriate for the industry.  While the underlying communication technologies may change, the basic mandates have been around as long as there have been customers and vendors.  

Understanding Workforce Optimization

I read an article today about workforce optimization, WFO, and was struck by the author’s viewpoint.  Seems she saw WFO encompassing the hiring process in addition to the more traditional performance management and scheduling elements.  This viewpoint, yes, it is valid, is a bit different from the WFO definitions from sources such as Gartner or DMG.  To be honest, I think all of them get it right but none of them has the complete picture.  In fact, the WFO descriptions are beginning to sound a lot like the story of the 6 blind men trying to describe an elephant.

Optimizing a workforce is not a product category as much as it a strategy; a very high level strategy.  In my experience, understanding WFO starts with understanding the 4 pillars that make up the strategy:  Segmentation, Routing, Skills, & Schedules. 

To understand how these 4 pillars intersect one another, let’s walk through a typical interaction. 

An existing customer picks up the phone and dials Acme Widgets about an order not yet received.  Once the caller is identified, the routing engine is engaged to perform a number of tasks.  Looking at the contact history in the CRM system, the customer’s preferences and contact history are retrieved.  In short, the customer gets segmented by the routing engine. 

The routing engine then goes about locating a suitable resource for the customer.  Among the many decision criteria available to the router is a list of skills or attributes about each and every agent.  That list of skills mimics the customer segmentation model and is part of WFO. 

The job of the router is to find the most appropriate match between agent and customer.  Notice I did not say “best available” agent.  Once that agent is located, the call is delivered to the agent and the customer engagement occurs. 

So how did the list of skills come about?  How often are the skill values verified?  How do you know they align with the customer segmentation model?  What about the availability of the agents?  Are you able to forecast volumes at the site level or can you forecast at the activity level?  Can you forecast at the customer segment level?  What role does segmentation play in the overall forecasting model?  Does the scheduling model built on your forecasting model take into account agent skills?  Can your scheduling model dynamically adjust staffing assignments or is it static once published? 

These are all valid WFO questions though sadly, they are too frequently seen as a routing question or a WFM question or a training question.  The fact of the matter is that how you assign, measure and track agent skills has an impact on both WFM and interaction routing.  Performance management tools, KPIs from the ACD and the variety of subjective feedback mechanisms have an impact on the skills measurement process which then has an impact on routing.  A change to the customer segmentation model is not just a change of marketing as it has implications that effect routing strategies and agent skills.  When you affect skills you affect agent training and WFM….and the list goes on.

WFO seems just like the elephant until you step back far enough to see what is really there.  It is very clear to me why WFO is a relatively new category within the contact center market.  Until the various modules in the call center were integrated, it was very hard to really see an elephant not to mention that virtually every company was organizationally structured to reinforce the 4 pillars as being separate services with largely independent objectives. 

Today, the software in the contact center is largely integrated, lots of it is hosted and there really is no reason for the pillars to be silos.  It is time to take that large step back, look at the customer experience process from a much broader perspective and architect the various customer service processes knowing that there is a ripple effect that needs to be embraced.

The agents, the clerks in the stores, the staff at the airport check-in desk and anyone else who comes in contact with customers are the most valuable resources in a business.  WFO is about optimizing their skills and talents and applying those in ways that exceed the customer expectation.  Accomplish that and you will have optimized the workforce.

I’d like to hear your thoughts about WFO.  Please reply to this posting and let me know if your organization operates with the 4 pillars as silos or are they connected through more than a handful of software APIs.

The Role of Social Media in Simple Terms

Wind the clock way, way back. Look at retailing before telephones and radios. Customer service was a personal experience that happened at the place of business. Want to visit with other customers, visit with your neighbors as the smaller towns all supported the local merchants and the merchants generally listened or went out of business. Wind the clock forward and retailers are on a steady path to greater and greater levels of isolation with their customers. Most retailers today have no real "forum" for customers to share ideas or unique experiences with each other much less share these ideas with the vendors/retailers.

That's the basis for social media in the business world. Creation and fostering of a community of customers and company representatives that allow for a free flowing dialog of ideas, feedback and sadly, problems. The problems need to be quickly addressed so as not to sour the balance of the conversations. The best thing is to create a sidebar conversation of some sort to resolve the issue and then publish to all that the issue was successfully resolved. Never leave a posted complaint without a notice of resolution.

This model puts the responsibility for social media in the hands of Marketing/Sales with problem resolution the responsibility of Customer Service. Don't mix these 2 together. Marketing needs to focus on growing the loyalty of the customer base. Customer Service needs to address the problems.

In fact, in a well run Customer Service model, customers are advised to use designated support channels when they have a problem and not rely on Twitter or Facebook for answers. On-line support forums are not the same as "social media" per se but are a great place to allow customers to help each other provided they are properly moderated. Do not mix these forums with other social media channels.

Those companies that have complaints and problems being reported on their social media sites on a regular basis have a failed Customer Service system. It's no more complicated than that.

Remember the old adage, "Praise in public, reprimand in private." This applies to social media as well.

If you would like help defining and deploying an effective Social Media strategy alongside your Customer Service system, CEP, Inc. can help. Please contact us for a free evaluation of your existing systems.

The Role of Social Media - The Cold, Hard Truth

Social media must be about letting the customer meet the "company" and other customers in order to develop a sense of community. People like to share and like knowing there are others who also acquired the product. Encouraging others to "spread the word" is what the purpose of Social Media ought to be and that supports a larger branding mission if done well.

The idea that FB, YouTube & Twitter ought to be a primary means of customer support is just plain wrong. No one needs to create the next Dave Carroll through poor service.

If there is a fire in a bedroom of your house, don't build another bedroom as a solution. Put out the fire! Same rule applies to customer service.

Social Media: Is a Dangerous Pattern Emerging?

A friend of mine recently had a problem with her American Express card. She had an issue with a late fee, called the 800 number, was told that the charge was valid and though there were many years of great purchase and payment history, the late fee would not be waived. My friend cancelled her AMEX card and posted a short version of the incident on Twitter.

Not surprisingly, American Express reached out to her as they are an avid user of Twitter search technology. The Social Media representative waived the late fee and recovered the credit card account.

So what has American Express, like hundreds of other companies, now accomplished? Sure they saved an account and made a customer happy. That’s the obvious answer. Look a little more closely and the answer is not so pretty.

AMEX had an opportunity to resolve the issue on the first phone call but the agent either did not feel the situation warranted a waiver, was not authorized to issue a waiver or was otherwise motivated to deny the issuance of the late fee waiver. As soon as the situation hits Twitter, the game changes and now it is acceptable to waive the late fee as the issue has gone public.

What AMEX has done is reinforce a behavior within its customer base that complaining on Twitter is the way to get a desired outcome – forget a private phone conversation. It is as if AMEX has decided that in order to keep their revenues high, they will not waive various penalty fees unless the problem goes public.

This is a moronic application of social media. Social media ought to be an avenue of building a community of users who share stories of the great things a company did for them and how the company is responsive; you know, the nice news about a company. What AMEX is creating is a “gripe board” where customers will learn to seek resolution rather than picking up a phone.

What company, in their right mind, wants to be training customers to gripe in public whenever they have a problem rather than call someone for a private conversation? The Twitter gripe is widely public. The black eye is done. The resolution may never be published and the readers of the gripe may never see the positive outcome but I bet they will remember that a loyal customer griped that loyalty was not rewarded.

I cannot offer statistics other than anecdotes such as this but the more I read about social media and the efforts to sell companies on social media as a front-line customer service tool, I cannot help but wonder how many companies are racing to be “with it” when it comes to being “social” and forgetting what it is they really need to be doing. Encouraging customers to gripe to the world in order to secure an acceptable resolution to a problem is just a bad idea. In fact, it’s worse than bad. It may well be terminal for a fledgling company.

AMEX is probably not worried. In fact, AMEX paid customers to go away during the mortgage meltdown. Clearly, thinning the ranks of card holders is part of their overall business strategy. For the rest of the business world, I suggest an examination of the social media strategy is in order.

Social media should be used as a marketing tool. That’s it. Build a community. Let customers share stories. Encourage interaction through coupons, contests and games. That’s what social media is intended to be.

Contact centers are where customer support happens. The interactions are private and the rules of engagement should be the same regardless of whether someone calls, writes (yes, some of us still write letters), e-mail or posts on a social site. The objective is to resolve the issue quickly and fairly such that publishing an account of the situation and the resolution does no damage to the reputation of either party and does not encourage customers to seek a public forum as a first point of contact.

Mistakes will happen and customers will post gripes on social sites. The point is to not encourage the posting of gripes on social sites as a primary means of obtaining customer satisfaction.

Back to my friend’s situation. Had the initial AMEX rep applied the same rules regarding fee waivers, the Twitter gripe would never have been posted. AMEX would not have had to spend additional time and money to “negate” the gripe posting and an untold number of people would not have read about AMEX’s failure to forgive a late fee for a long time customer.

Social media cost AMEX money in this situation. Is social media costing your company money?

I’d like to hear your stories about how companies are “encouraging” you to utilize social media. Feel free to post your stories and I will publish them all.

Why All the Fuss About Social Media?

Social Media is quite the rage these days. I must be seeing at least 2-3 webinars per week on the subject from various companies and vendors talking about how Social Media is impacting our lives, our customers’ lives and the world around us. In many cases, borderline panic is the underlying message.


What is Social Media really and is it deserving of this much attention? Is there really a need to panic? What is it about Social Media that really needs to be understood? All good questions and each deserving an answer.


Let’s start with the basics. Social Media refers to a large and growing number of web sites offering a means of electronically sharing ideas, photos, videos and just about anything else imaginable. Some sites allow users to control who can view posted content and others have unrestricted access to all content. Some sites are focused on specific purposes such as restaurant reviews or communicating with friends while other sites are simply a location to upload photos and videos to be shared with the world. Underlying all of these sites is the near-universal connectivity of the Internet.


So how do these sites have an impact on the world of business? Opinions. Millions of opinions. Opinions on just about every topic imaginable. Some opinions are sound and others are not. Some ideas are well researched and others are not. All the ideas constitute something that at one time was considered important enough for someone to take the time to post to a site. If that opinion involves your company, the potential for impact, negative and positive, is present. Therein lies the quandary surrounding Social Media; are the opinions worthy of concern or worthy of encouragement or maybe not worthy of anything?


In the distant past, customers had a limited reach for influencing the opinions of others. Friends, families and colleagues were possible audiences for the opinions but the impact of any 1 person was rarely a concern. The sharing of a single personal experience rarely made a significant impact on the overall business. After all, how many people could one person reach with their story?


Social Media has changed that equation. The pervasiveness of the Internet, upon which Social Media is built, allows customers to potentially reach million of “friends” in a matter of minutes. A single opinion posted on a Social Media site can have an immediate impact on a company and its existing and potential customers. Social Media has effectively put the world’s largest megaphone in the hands of virtually every customer. How this megaphone is used is what deserves the attention of every business.


The foremost concern of every business is the negative review. While the now-famous “United Breaks Guitars” video series is an extreme example of a customer-voiced opinion, the reason these videos came into existence is the same as the millions of negative reviews being posted on a regular basis; the customer sought service through normal channels and was left unsatisfied.


Yes, it is that simple. Reading a sampling of the negative posts, it is pretty clear that service was sought through normal channels and when not received, the customer vented their frustration on their favorite social media site.


Thus we arrive at a business decision involving 3 choices:

1. Invest in a social media tracking system in order to capture the negative postings and work to resolve the problems.


2. Invest more resources in the existing customer service systems so that no customer fails to receive service in a timely and effective way.


3. Balance the investment in both improving the existing customer service systems and initiating an effort to capture the relevant social media traffic.


The right choice has as much to do with the customer demographics as it does with budgets and personnel resources. The right choice also has to do with how the Marketing department is using Social Media as a tool for generating sales traffic.


Therein lies the 2-edged sword of Social Media. Social media sites can be a great way to help build a loyal following of customers and advocates. Creating a virtual community of customers provides a great opportunity to promote new products, solicit feedback on existing products and desired products as well as encourage customers to become advocates for the products. If the effort to promote also serves as a magnet to attract negative feedback, then this ought to be considered an opportunity.


In fact, I suggest that any company looking to embrace social media solely for the purpose of capturing negative feedback is wasting both time and money. Without the marketing effort working to build a loyal community of customers through various social media channels, the endeavor is certain to fail. Selective participation by vendors on social sites is generally rebuked by the regular participants.


The bottom line to any business regarding social media is to recognize the opportunity to use social media as a marketing channel first and foremost. If your existing customer service delivery channels are not doing the job, fix them. The social media channels may be used as a means for routing unhappy customers to a service resource that can help but should not be considered a primary pillar upon which a customer service delivery systems is built. Adding more moving parts to a broken system does not result in an improved system.


If you would like help developing and deploying an effective Social Media strategy, I am happy to help. Please call me and I will be happy to provide assistance: 602-492-1088.

Science of Business – Made Easy! [Inertia]

The law of inertia is very simple.  It states that an object in motion will stay in motion until it is acted upon by something that changes it direction or speed of motion.  The law of inertia also states that an object at rest - motionless - will remain at rest until an external force causes motion of the object.

 

So how does the law of inertia apply to a business?

The laws of inertia apply to businesses in a wide variety of ways.  Let’s start with motion.  Within every company, the act of delivering a product or service to a customer involves motion.  More deliveries equals more motion.  Less deliveries equals less motion.   Sending out flyers to prospects equals more motion.  Asking for referrals equals more motion.  Behind each of these motions is someone putting forth effort.

Essentially, inertia is a product of effort; effort from employees and effort from customers.  Employees contribute to the inertia levels through their actions to help grow the company.  Whether it be selling, delivering, servicing or supporting those who do these things, each employee’s efforts towards making the company a success contributes to a higher level of inertia. 

Customers contribute to the inertia-building effort too.  Buying products or services are the obvious means of contribution.  Sharing their positive experience with others and making recommendations to friends and acquaintances contributes greatly to the inertia-building effort.  A new restaurant relies on customers telling their friends of “their great meal” if they hope to survive more than a month. 

As motion is equated to inertia, the more motion, the higher the level of inertia.   Inertia translates into customers buying more products without a direct selling effort.  Inertia is what keeps a company relevant in a marketplace though the newest product was announced long ago.  Inertia is the momentum that produces sales without constant promotion, incentives and discounts.  In short, inertia is what allows a company to get through the dips in the sales numbers and ride out the occasional rough spots that happen to every business.

So does every company have the same level of inertia?  No.  Inertia is not just a function of effort.  It is also a function of velocity and size.  Let’s start with velocity.

Velocity refers to the speed at which an object is moving.  The same object traveling at half the speed will have half the inertia.  The company whose “speed of business” is half that of its same-sized competitors will have half the inertia.  Its ability to weather the downtimes will be less than its competitors as it has less inertia.  Velocity is evidenced by the speed of order delivery, the number of sales calls made per day versus the nearest competitor and the speed of service delivered to customers.  Want more velocity?  Do these things faster and without errors and you will have more velocity.  Faster but with lots of mistakes will reduce velocity and inertia. 

Size or mass is the other factor influencing inertia.

If you roll a billiard ball and a bowling ball down a sidewalk at the same speed, which is harder to stop?  Exactly, the bowling ball.  Its mass is so much greater than that of the billiard ball, it has more inertia.  It is much the same situation in business.

 

The large, multi-national companies we read about every day have a tremendous amount of inertia.  Years in the making, these companies have many thousands of employees and customers helping to create more inertia every day.  For them, economic downturns are unpleasant but rarely fatal.  The inertia they have built up over many years of growing to become a large company gives them the inertia needed to get through the rough spots.

 

The small business does not enjoy the same inertia without having a much higher velocity level; higher velocity making up for the lack of mass.  The small business needs to be much more diligent about inertia-directed efforts every business day.  The small business needs to make sure every customer is an advocate and every employee determined to make the company a success.  There is no “down-time” for the small business as its inertia can quickly slip away.

Back to the rolling balls.  How much more effort does it take to keep the billiard ball rolling down the sidewalk as compared to the bowling ball?  A lot more!  The billiard ball has a lot less inertia to keep it rolling without a constant push.  That’s the same in business.  The benefit of the billiard ball is that it takes a lot less effort to impart a greater level of velocity than the bowling ball.  In a large business, it takes a lot more people exerting effort to enjoy the velocity that fewer people can produce within the small business.   

We’ve covered the differences between the small business and the large company from the standpoint of existing operations, but what about starting a new business?  How does a business get inertia when it is just starting?  Good question.

Our 2 balls are now sitting side by side.  Per the definition of inertia, both balls have inertia, the amount of which is tied to their respective masses.  Which is easier to start rolling?  That’s right.  The billiard ball is much easier to start rolling than the bowling ball.  Less mass means less effort to get started.  Again, the same rule applies to the world of business.

The small business, like the billiard ball, takes less “effort” to get rolling.  The financial resources required to start a small business are generally less than that of a large company, the number of employees needed is smaller and the timeframe to go from idea to door-opening is generally much shorter.  The large business is on the other end of the scale.  Starting a large company takes much more start-up capital, more employees and often much longer to organize.  As you might imagine, very few companies start out as large companies.

In fact, most large companies of today were small companies when they started.  Southwest Airlines started with 3 planes.  McDonald’s was a single restaurant.   General Electric started with a single light bulb.

Just in case you get the idea that the singular objective of every business ought to be maximum size, let’s put that notion to rest.  While it would be silly to suggest that keeping a company small by inhibiting its growth is a sound business strategy, I would suggest that growing the company at all costs may also not be the ideal objective.  As I have pointed out, there are certain advantages to large companies that small companies do not enjoy.  Inertia is one of those distinct advantages.  Inertia does come with a downside however.  Nimbleness.

Let’s go back one more time to the rolling balls.  Assuming they are both rolling at the same speed, which ball is easier to divert or change the direction of its motion?  That’s right.  The billiard ball.  Its smaller mass and smaller inertia make the billiard ball much easier to divert than the bowling ball.

Again, the same holds true in business.  A change of business direction is much easier to accomplish in a small company than a large company.  There are less employees to recruit to the new idea.  There are less customers to notify.  There are fewer barriers in the way.  In business, any major change of direction produces an upset of routine that needs to be addressed throughout the organization.  Everyone needs to understand what is happening, why it is happening and how they will be effected.  In a company of 100 employees, that is much easier to manage than a company with 10,000 employees.   Remember that every employee is contributing their part to the company’s inertia.  To get everyone to change the focus of their inertia-generating efforts is no small task.  It takes a lot more than a few memos and phone calls to get all the employees in a large company to be fully productive after a major operational change. 

Mergers of large companies are great examples of this.  When Nations Bank bought Bank of America – and kept the Bank of America name – it took over 4 years to bring the 2 organizations into a single entity.  Changing the names on the branches and buildings alone took over a year.   America West Airlines and US Air have taken over 2 years to merge and there is still no singular name in place.  We’ll see if United Airlines and Continental Airlines can merge any faster.

The fact is that really large companies find it very difficult to change directions because of the large amount of inertia they have developed.  It is much easier for a large company to acquire a small company who leads in a market where the large company wants to enter than it is to try to take existing resources and have them start a new company in the same market.  It is this nimbleness that makes small companies the pioneers behind so many new technologies and new markets.

 

The final item to point out in this discussion of inertia has to do with the inertia of a conglomerate.  Today, there are only a handful of conglomerate companies left in the world.  Conglomerates are companies that own businesses in a wide variety of unrelated markets.   Berkshire Hathaway is a well known conglomerate owning an insurance company, railroad, bakery and many other companies.  What makes a conglomerate different from a singular company of equivalent size has to do with how the individual businesses behind the conglomerate are operated.  The wise leader allows each individual business to operate independent of the other entities.  In this way, each operating business is able to build and manage its own inertia without the distractions of the other businesses.  The inertia of such a conglomerate is the sum total of the inertia of the individual companies.

 

The poorly run conglomerate attempts to create “efficiencies” by collapsing common business services into a single entity while the individual companies try to remain independent.  Sadly, the benefit brought about by the cost savings is far less than the loss of productivity as layers of bureaucracy within the common services effort slow down even the most simple of business tasks.  The net result is that the “efficient” conglomerate resembles a handful of billiard balls held together by duct tape trying to roll down the sidewalk.

The lesson here is to realize that inertia is a result of efforts acting on the mass of the business to produce velocity.  It is a result of efforts by employees and customers to create forward motion within the business.  The small business can enjoy great levels of inertia from a handful of focused and motivated employees because its mass is small.  The large company requires similar efforts from its employees but the impact of any one person’s efforts are much harder to measure due to the difference in the mass of the business.

Regardless of whether you business is small, large or something in between, inertia is something every business owner needs to understand.  It is a law of the physical universe and it is a law of the business world and it impacts your business every day.

If you would like help understanding what is creating and what is hindering inertia in your company, please call me regarding available consulting services:  602-492-1088

Science of Business – Made Easy! [Friction]

Friction is one of the more useful terms in business for which the origins are clearly in the field of science. Friction, by definition, is the rubbing together of 2 or more surfaces. That rubbing produces heat, wear and eventual failure of components. Friction is why cars have radiators and door hinges need oil. Friction is present in almost all mechanical processes and something to be mitigated as it cannot be eliminated.

In business, friction is equally ever-present.

In business, there are common phrases heard around the office such as “rubbing someone the wrong way” or “I am getting heat because I disagree with the plan.” Each of these phrases draws on the science behind friction. In these cases however, the rubbing is not physical but emotional. When 2 people disagree, their personalities and viewpoints clash and “rub” against one another because they are not going in the same direction. That rubbing produces friction and just as in the science world, the result is “heat”. Just as in science, the harder the rubbing action, the more heat that is produced.

When a manager announces a change of direction or policy, those who find themselves at odds with the change can be expected to produce friction as the direction they desire to go is not the direction of the business. Until such time as their agreement on the change is secured, it would be expected to hear “squeaking”, “groaning” and other audible indications of friction. This is just a simple rule of science.

Friction occurs in a great many other parts of the business world. In fact, whenever 2 or more people come together, there is always a possibility of friction. Sometimes the friction happens quickly and then dissipates such as a small misunderstanding and sometimes the friction can last a very long time with its continuous production of heat. You’ve heard of employees needing to “vent” their frustrations. Yes, that’s heat coming from some source of friction in the business.

Just as in the mechanical world, friction is the enemy of the production system. When the factory machines start to squeak, maintenance personnel need to be quick to locate the source of the noise and get things back to operating quietly. Left unattended, every shop foreman knows that a squeak is a warning sign of something much worse to come if left unattended. In the business world, this same rule applies.

If an employee starts to “squeak”, immediate attention is needed to uncover the true source of the squeak and return the employee to being a productive contributor. Left unattended, the squeaking can get louder, can start “sympathetic squeaks” elsewhere in the company and even lead to a breakdown in the production in the business. As in many machines, the squeak may be a bit hard to detect at first but like a good shop foreman, a good manager who has been around his employees for years can detect a squeak long before it is detectable to the average employee. Sometimes the only manifestation of friction is heat. If you have worked in an office for any length of time, you can tell when a cloud of friction has settled in versus when the business is firing on all cylinders. The key is to be sufficiently alert and observant to recognize the signs of friction.

Friction exists in the world of science and the world of business. No way to escape the fact that every business will experience friction at one time or another just as every machine needs a bit of maintenance now and again.

In the world of machines, friction is often overcome with various forms of oil. It may be grease, liquid oil or water but unless the parts creating the friction were never designed to meet – in which case you fix the broken parts - the solution is to add a lubricant. In cars engines, motor oil provides a thin layer of lubricating material so that parts that appear to be rubbing are not actually touching one another. Door hinges get a bit of grease to stop hinges that are making noise. In many cases, the oil also helps to keep the rubbing parts cooler.

In the business world, the “oil” comes in the form of communication. In fact, communication is the only solvent that addresses business friction. Communication removes the friction that comes from misunderstandings and confusions. Communication, like oil, may be needed in varying quantities depending upon the circumstances.

A brand new car motor needs 4-5 quarts of new oil and the oil needs changing more frequently in the early life of the motor. In a new business or when a major restructuring occurs in an existing business, there is a similar need for large quantities of “business oil” until the new motor is running smoothly. Call it a “break-in period” if you like. The fact is that any sort of dramatic change or continuous series of frequent changes in business direction needs to be accompanied but large quantities of communication if there is a desire to hold down the level of squeaking. Failure to do this produces disastrous results.

So how do you “change the oil” in your business? Periodic meetings with the employees. Regular messages from all the levels of management in the company. In organizations that recognize the importance of constant communication with the employees, they are consistently the smoothest running companies you will find. Squeaking is a rare event and easily addressed as there are few other noises to drown out even the smallest of squeaks.

The fact of the matter is that today, a great many companies are running so lean that the time needed to communicate to the company’s “engines” is often pushed down the list of priorities. The oil is left in an extra 5000 miles and the filter is not changed. Little squeaks develop and are ignored as there are tasks considered more important. Suddenly a major breakdown occurs and management has a terrible look of surprise on their faces. Shame on them. They have no reason to be surprised. They failed to maintain the company in good working order and it broke down. The problem and its solution are now more costly and will waste more time and energy than if the simple maintenance process of communicating with the employees had been left atop the priority list.

Communication is truly the lubricant that solves the friction that happens between people. In life inside and outside of the office, this fact holds true. The next time you start feeling heat in the office or start to hear a “squeak”, find the source and talk with them. Listen to what they have to say. Understand their viewpoint. You may not agree with the viewpoint but you must understand it. Do this and watch the squeak go away. Watch the heat disappear. Watch the working harmony return to the business.

If you would like help implementing a communication system designed to keep the wheels of commerce lubricated, please call me regarding available consulting services: 602-492-1088