Tales of things to come…

Over on my personal blog I mentioned I was not only back from Lincoln, but gave a few of the notes I’d taken of things to remind me to blog about when I got back. Some aren’t going to be long enough for a whole blog by themselves and some are… well… some may need two. They’re at the rolling around in my head stage of development right now.

It was nice to go back to doing my old job for a week. The setting up the new store was nice and the working with a new manager was nice. The store wasn’t open so a lot of the training opportunities I’d have had in that sort of situation didn’t present themselves as I’d like them to have. There were chances to teach though. At one point when the employee was upset about something that affected her personally… a mistake that’d been made (and rapidly fixed!) I managed to turn that into a teaching opportunity as well. Whether or not the new-manager turned it into a learning opportunity or not is another matter. That was one of the things we talked about believe it or not.

The days were long, and the work was hard. It was hot out and some of the work took me outside long enough to work up a good sweat… which is unfortunate. But the heat and work meant that no matter what I ate, within reason, I didn’t gain any weight… and believe me. When eating on the road and on expense account AND with a bunch of other people (who are NOT watching what they eat) it’s easy to go off-plan.

I think my first blog post will hit tomorrow and will be on a topic not mentioned over at the other site, but hinted at here in this post. Glad to be home. Looking forward to the next time I get to go help out on a special project. It was fun.


Posted on Monday, July 18th, 2011
Under: Training | No Comments »

It’s not peaking if it’s a plateau.

“You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.”
~ Steve Prefontaine, runner.


Plateaus aren’t like mountains you climb. They’re like steps to somewhere else.
~ Rich Griffith

I’m running and my running training has stalled. I’m an area manager and my area management has stalled as well. I couldn’t get any traction. I kept thinking about how much better our customer service was now than just two years ago when our company’s direction and focus changed with the ownership changed. Seriously. If you came in our stores 3 years ago and came in today… you really wouldn’t recognize the place. And I was really happy with the progress. (hence the first quote.)

Then the store’s owner went on a store tour while I was in San Diego training a manager and supervisor out there for a couple weeks (I’m coming back to this part, it’s important) and his tour notes weren’t bad at all. They were pretty good. The facilities continued to show improvement, the stock and displays showed improvement… and when he was greeted by the employee sitting on a stool behind the counter instead of standing up I put my face in my hands and read the rest between my fingers. When the employee didn’t go to the sales floor to offer assistance but instead barked from the counter “AnythingIcanhelpyoufind?” I was thunder-struck. Obviously I was missing something. I’d gotten complacent. I’d gotten used to things being better and I’d stopped to take a breath. That breather had turned into a loss of forward momentum on the part of me and subsequently my managers and the crews. (More on THIS later too, an entire future blog post, with luck I’ll remember to come back and add a link here.)

While training the manager and supervisor out in San Diego I found myself doing a lot of talking obviously. It’s a lot of training when hiring someone off the street from outside the company to do management positions. It’s not something we typically do, and it was the first time I’d trained at this level someone who’d never worked for us at all. What I noticed was how much I was talking about customer service (I started training on Monday and the owner’s visit I was talking about happened on Wednesday so the customer service song was obviously ready on my lips.) a lot. I would talk about it while discussing all sorts of things. What I didn’t do was talk about any of the things I’ve talked about here or here in relation to any of the training material or handbooks we give new employees. Our training curricula has nothing in it about customer service other than we’re supposed to greet customers when they enter the building. Nothing about offering to help them, nothing about knowing anything about the product, nothing else about customers at all! How were we in retail and none of our material ever mentioned customers? They’re somewhat important to retail aren’t they?

In fact! Are you sitting down? Our store product training consisted of the trainer saying to the new trainee “While I do this (something managery, maybe payroll), you go on the sales floor and look around. If you have any questions just ask.”  Yep. You read it right. Product and store familiarization was a way for the trainer to get some alone time. How could we POSSIBLY render good customer service when we never had any program explaining our products or how we expected our customers to be treated? We’d spent the last two years making managers perfect HR passable mechanical managers. They can all do perfect write-ups that will stand the scrutiny of any unemployment judge… but we’re not teaching them HOW to give good customer service. I’ve considered not confessing this horrible short-coming all day.

Personal aside: I really thought a long time about it. It was so normal it didn’t occur to me until I was training someone completely green that it was stupid. We’d always promoted from within so they always knew the stuff. The sales associates often had lots of time to familiarize themselves with it on their own time and I wouldn’t abandon them that way, but I’d seen others do it for years, YEARS, and never thought anything of it. Now I’m ashamed of it. Seriously. How did I not see how insane that was? It stopped this morning.

Me? I love customer service, and I do it really well. I would coach people to do it when I would see them doing things not great, but I typically work with managers and I wasn’t conveying, obviously, that I wanted THEM to do that with their employees. I was making my managers really good at customer service themselves, and really good at fixing problems to keep customers, but what I wasn’t doing was making sure my managers were spreading the love down the chain. They were working their collective butts off to make sure their employees didn’t do anything wrong so they wouldn’t lose their jobs or have to fire them. That was from on high and me because it was my boss’ priority. But there’s a huge chasm between being “not doing wrong” and doing right. We’d somehow wound up making sure our front liners weren’t doing wrong.

I know it sounds like I’m saying we were astonishingly mediocre (which I hear is a huge sin!) and I’m not. We really aren’t that bad, and we’re MUCH better than we were… but we can improve so much more now that I realize that we weren’t training for great. We were training for “not wrong.”

So, just like in training for a race (I am training for a race by the way) or dieting, or striving for greatness instead of good enough, the training needs to be shaken up a little bit. There need to be more intense days, and days where the focus changes entirely for a while. Runners don’t run hard every day. They take time to work on other things to let those muscles recover. We’re going to do things differently around my neck of the woods for a while. It’ll be intense for a bit, and it’ll mix up the focus for a bit. But one thing that’s going to be consistent. Every employee from janitor to manager to supervisor is going to be involved helping us develop a Customer Service training program that includes product knowledge, store set-up, store knowledge, and anything else that we decide is part of great customer service. I think they’ll be excited to be part of the program to watch themselves grow. It’ll mean a lot more to them if they help me than if I try and top down dump the new way of thinking on them.

Personal Aside 2: It took all I had to not talk about Ho`omau in this post. That’s the chapter I was re-reading a few nights ago when all of this gelled. Last night I was reading through it again as I’d bookmarked it on the kindle and wasn’t reading my marked up copy and I swear it was like reading that chapter again for the first time. If you haven’t read Managing with Aloha: Bringing Hawaii’s Universal Values to the Art of Business yet I recommend it. As your management challenges change over time and different things come into view and other things fade different parts of the book become more pertinent and they resonate differently. The reason I didn’t want to frame this post around Ho`omau honestly is because I’ve just read that chapter of the book twice and I was afraid I’d sound too much like I was quoting it or being too derivative. Suffice it to say that the value of Ho`omau, the spirit of perseverance, and sticking to it, and not giving up… those values are very much what I’m talking about in this post.


Posted on Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
Under: Customer Service, Management, Training | No Comments »

“May I help you?” isn’t enough.

I shop a lot at amazon.com and I rent movies through netflix.com. Those two sites know me. They know what I look at, what I buy, and what I watch. Subsequently, when I go back they’re able to suggest other things I may like as well.

trix Once upon a time our town had a comic book store and the people who worked their knew their comics. They knew them to the point they could, if I bought MongoDROID Issue 17 they could suggest that I might also like Mongopolypse Issues 12-16: The Chubby Rain* mini-series. This sort of product knowledge that they had was what kept me coming back to their store.

When I used to go to GameStop here in town the staff there was able to help me pick Nintendo DS games based on what I’d bought in the past and subsequently returned. They knew what I’d bought and kept and were able to suggest games that I might not otherwise have considered (anything with an animal in it I would never choose to buy on my own). Their expertise in their area was what kept me coming back as a customer. It wasn’t great prices or anything like that. I wanted to talk to someone about something that interested me and get feedback and suggestions. (the staff now isn’t as good as what they had before so I don’t shop there. I went in yesterday while waiting for a hair appointment and they ignored me while I looked at a game system, not a game, the system… that’s a big sale they didn’t even try for. It’s why they get no more of my gaming dollars.)

I don’t make any purchase over a hundred dollars without first finding out if there are amazon reviews on the product. Seriously. I use the wisdom of the masses to help me buy things. I was looking at car stereos today at a local car stereo shop and got some part numbers. I’ll look them up for reviews before I buy. Not because I don’t trust the guy. He was pretty helpful and the information he had on my old stereo matched up with mine. But we don’t have a relationship yet. I don’t know if he’s motivated by commission or trying to sell out old product or trying to help me, so I’ll consult Amazon.comand Crutchfield for information first. That relationship is something that is important to consumers. Hank Hill references it when he talks about “his car guy” in an episode where it turns out that through his masterful negotiation skills he’s paid “Sticker price” for years. That’s a case where the salesman was a jerk. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the establishing trust, having a specialized knowledge and expertise, and having a desire to help the customer get what they want.

When you’re in retail, and I am… if you’re a smaller specialty shop this is what your employees have to do. They have to know the product in the store. They have to engage the customer and find out what they’re looking for, what they’ve tried, what they liked and didn’t like about previous purchases, and try to figure out what is in stock at that moment that will help the customer right then. If it’s not something that’s in stock at the time the sales person needs to be VERY good to have the customer come back to them. If I tell the customer, “Oh, you mean the widgetmaster 2000? That’s EXACTLY what you’re describing and sadly, we’re out of stock but should have some by next Thursday for the low low price of something reasonable,” the customer is now armed and able to go to Internet.storefront.not.me.com and order it there… and I lose out. It’s not their fault. It’s my fault as a retailer for being out of stock.

This is a clarion call for all those boutique type stores out there, those one-shot type stores that do one thing… if you’re not going to do it well, you’re not going to do it long. That comic book store I was talking about? I thought they did things REALLY well. Knowledgeable staff, big selection, no competition within 100 miles to speak of, and plenty of local events to keep people coming in. They went out of business anyway. So, if you’re NOT doing it not just good, but really good, you’re not going to be doing it for long. Sometimes, even if you are doing it really well the ball bounces the wrong way and places go out of business. There’s no reason to be in retail if you don’t like retail. Honestly. There are so many other jobs out there, why do one you don’t like?

*Two points if you know the reference and give it in the comments.

PS: What’s the picture of the bowl of Trix have to do with anything? Nothing, but isn’t it bright and colorful?


Posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010
Under: Customer Service, Training | 2 Comments »

I can’t stand can’t…

In the past fifteen years I’ve trained a LOT of employees. One of my biggest pet peeves has always been people who stand there while I’m training them and just shut down, lose their eyes and say “I can’t do this.”

282973853_2d15095186_m It makes me want to scream. I will say something a hundred different ways to get someone who is trying to figure it out. But when they stand there and won’t listen or try… when they just stand there with clenched fists screaming “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!”

It makes me want to yell. Seriously. It’s so hard to work around that. I can work through them not having a skill set. I can’t work around more negative talk than positive or trying. You know that whole lead a horse to water but can’t hold his head under it thing? Yeah… it’s like that.

There’s something I need to mention though.

I do it too.

My room mate wanted me to ride motorcycles with him when we lived in Memphis but my first shot at riding motorcycles didn’t exactly go all that great really. I was going to take a class but I was scared I’d either fall and hurt myself, or embarrass myself… even with the class. He would say how fun riding was and I’d flash back to how scared I was of screwing up and lock up.

We were driving to a movie and he asked again when I was going to take the motorcycle riding coarse and I started yelling at him about how everything was easy for him. He’d been riding his whole life and I’d never done it before… “HE JUST DIDN’T UNDERSTAND!!!” He stopped nagging me about the class and a month later got it for me for my birthday. I could go or not but he didn’t talk about it any more. He found where and when and paid for it. He didn’t go watch. I did it and you know what? I love riding now.

I was scared to do something new and I was scared I’d be embarrassed in front of people. It helped that he wasn’t there to watch me learn how. I can totally understand people not wanting to be embarrassed in front of people they know. I try so hard to help encourage people when they’re wearing the shoes I was wearing that day… the day I was the one yelling “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!” I’ve been there. I’ve been the irrational one insisting that they didn’t get it.

I don’t know why I do it… I wish I could say “DID” it but I’m told I’m not totally cured of it yet. On the plus side if I start stone-walling now my roommate wails at me, quite dramatically, “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!” That tends to help jerk me out of my stone-walling.

If any of you have tips on how to turn can’t into can I’d live to hear them and I promise… I DO UNDERSTAND!


Posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Under: Management, Personal | No Comments »