April 24, 1997
Dear Everyone:
Got home early last night because I was attending a
class in “Pleasant Hill”. This was a half-day class that you could attend either in the
morning or afternoon.
Naturally, I was torn between taking the am or pm session.
Consider this:
It takes about 45 minutes to drive to
“Livermore”. It takes all of 20 minutes to get to the
“Pleasant Hill” facility. If I took the morning session, how much longer could I stay in
bed that day? (Oh, God, it’s
a word problem!)
On the other hand, it takes an hour to an hour and fifteen
minutes to get from “Livermore” to home in the evening. “Pleasant Hill” to home
is still 20 minutes.
Tough choice either way.
I opted for the stay-in-bed-longer option, but got bumped to an
afternoon because the morning classes were already full.
I could either wait until next month (which is already busy) or
take an afternoon session.
That decided, Wednesday afternoon worked best since that’s when I really
write the Weekly Letter, and it would give me more time.
You’ll notice that skipping the class altogether
was not an option. This was
another one of those touchy-feely customer satisfaction courses put on
by the same people who inflicted “Putting People First” on us last year.
This one is called, “A Complaint is a Gift” or CIAG.
The philosophy behind CIAG is that most customers
don’t complain.
Statistics show that 96% of dissatisfied customers do not
complain. They just don’t
come back. Consider the
following, real-life example:
Last week “Jeannie” bought a pair of sneakers at a store that shall remain
nameless. She paid $17.50 for the shoes. This was a discount store, so there was little opportunity to try the shoes on
before buying them. When she got home, she discovered that the shoes, which retail at major
department stores for upwards of $40, really didn’t fit that well.
Did she take the shoes back to the store and
complain that they weren’t up to her expectations?
No. “Jeannie”, Shopper Extraordinaire, who never passes up a
sale table, was (almost) willing to blow off $17.50 rather than go
through the hassle of registering a complaint.
But you can bet she’ll probably never buy shoes from that store
again.
So, shoe-wise, the store loses a customer and
doesn’t even know it. The
same is true of our customers at work.
If we don’t hear from them, how will we know if they’re
satisfied? Thus, the person
who comes to you with a complaint is actually bringing you a “gift” in
the form of valuable feedback (even as they’re yelling at you on the
phone because they didn’t get the box/form/copy paper they ordered).
They represent the
“silent” majority of 96%.
Management wants us to become a
“complaint-friendly” organization.
We actually spent more than a quarter-hour practicing saying
“Thank you” to complainers, taking turns being the complainer and the
“Thank you”-er.
Of course, the most important aspect of this kind
of training, or any meeting for that matter, is:
Will there be food provided?
As for “Jeannie’s” shoes, we solved the dilemma in another way.
I tried the shoes on and they fit me just fine. Since my own sneakers were fast approaching the falling apart
stage, I said I would take the shoes and subtract the $17.50 from “Jeannie’s” tab. “In that case,” she said, “I paid $27.50 for them.”
Movies...
Saw
Smilla’s
Sense of Snow. This
stars Julia Ormond in a role that, for once, goes very well with her Ice
Princess persona. Smilla,
who is half-Greenlander, knows 200 words for
snow.
Smilla knows snow.
When a neighbor’s child is killed, apparently playing in the snow on a
Copenhagen rooftop, Smilla “senses” from the footprints that the boy was
not playing but running from something.
Running from what?
Smilla will find out.
Gabriel Byrne plays a neighbor.
He is suspect because he keeps showing up in the right place at
the right time.
Richard
Harris is also suspect because when was the last movie Richard Harris
was in where he wasn’t guilty of something?
Who’s the real bad guy?
If you’re going to go and see this film, go
quickly. It’s not going to
be around for very long. And
be prepared: Every time they
show an aerial shot of Copenhagen, you’re going to be hearing
Danny Kaye
in your head singing, “Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen...”
Love, as always,
Pete
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