Right the First Time?

Right the First Time? No! Never!!

Japanese, we hear and read, have become famous for doing every thing right the first time. What with their TQM, zero defect programs, kaizen and gemba kaizen etc.

However, in many other countries, it is opposite; right the first time? No. Never. It is not even right the second time or the third time.

A friend of mine who is a business manager in one of the reputed organizations in a big city was narrating me an experience. He wanted to organize a training program for the managerial staff in his company on "productivity". For this, he was in search of a good video film on "productivity" with around 20 to 30 minutes of running time. He came to know that an organization devoting itself fully to the cause of productivity training was having such videos. He contacted the organization personally. He was put to a clerk who was supposed to show him the list of videos the organization had and also to arrange a preview of videos which my friend would select.

My friend had to sit in front of the clerk for nearly half an hour before the file containing the list of videos was traced. After the list was traced, it was found to be an old version. The clerk said, "I think that we have received some twenty more videos since then". Let me check my other records. Other records were equally difficult to locate. So, he stretched his memory and and updated that list- God alone knows how much and how accurately updated that list was!

My friend scanned through the list and selected two videos titled "Productivity" and "Productivity is Every One's Business". In the list against the titles of the videos was written the language in which narration was for the video. On checking with the clerk, he ensured that the narration for the two selected videos was in English, which is what my friend required.

Then, my friend met the officer in that organization who asked my friend to come again the next day for the preview. He instructed the clerk to ensure that at 4 PM sharp the next day everything would be in readiness for showing the videos. The clerk nodded in confirmation.

As per the program, the next day, my friend reached the productivity organization at 4 PM and met the officer. The officer asked my friend to sit down and asked, "Yes gentleman, what can I do for you? From which company you are? etc." My friend some how checked his annoyance and keeping his cool said, "I met you yesterday and you asked me to come today at 4 PM for preview of those videos, you remember?"

The officer looked amused. "Yes, yes, now I remember. I never thought that you would really be so serious about them and also be so punctual". He called the clerk and ordered him to do the needful and asked my friend to follow the clerk.

The clerk gave a big yawn first and then called his computer cum LCD operator, "Listen, show these videos to the gentleman". The operator quipped, "But how's that possible? We have already given the projection screen to ABC Company this morning only". The clerk went on, "Doesn't matter, project on the wall; after all this gentleman wants to have just a peek at them. Even if the projection on the wall is not very decent, don't worry".

Well, that's that. The operator took him to a small dingy room which was supposed to be the computer laboratory cum the projection room for LCD projector. In an almirah, the DVDs and VCDs containing the videos were kept one on other quite haphazardly. The operator took nearly twenty minutes to pull out the jackets of the DVDs on which were written the titles of the videos that my friend wanted to see. The operator connected the LCD to the computer but LCD's lamp would not light up. He started fiddling with the wires, plugs and adapters and in the process, got a mild electric shock. He smiled at my friend, "That's part of the job. This is not the first time". Finally, the LCD and computer, both started. My friend adjusted himself on to a broken stool trying himself to keep away from the open electrical wiring all around. And what did he see on the wall, a video titled, "Do it Right the First Time".

"My God, this is not the video I wanted to see", my friend said. The operator was not much disturbed though. He said, "Doesn't matter. The video you want to see must be in the jacket meant for the video "Do it Right the First Time". So, he took out the DVD from the jacket labelled "Do it Right the First time" and loaded into the computer.

This time the title that came on the screen-wall was, "Right Methods, Right Answers".

And that was the beginning of an unending research project. The operator was taking out DVDs/VCDs one by one from each jacket (right method!) and started showing their titles to my friend through projection on the wall-screen. Not a single video was kept in it's proper jacket. "Effective Executive" video was kept in "Negative Attitudes" and "Negative Attitudes" video was kept in the jacket meant for "Modern Scientific Management" and so on.

It took the operator exactly one hour before he stumbled on "Productivity". My friend, at last, took a deep breath and the operator beamed as if he had made the greatest achievement in the world.

"Yes, the title came all right- "Productivity". Only the title was in English- narration in the film that followed was in some language other than English.

Just above this dingy small computer laboratory cum LCD projector room, in the lecture hall of this productivity organization, a training program was being conducted by the same organization. The name of the program was "How to Solve the Problems Systematically?"

Read the “inside” stories of the corporate sector at: (Management Anecdotes) http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/

Solution to Recession is Not Throwing People from Their Jobs

Lay-off is Not Combating the Recession

Rather, it is cowardice.

Try to reason out as to who are the culprits of the world wide slow down/recession? The answer is: the decisions and actions of the people at the helm of the affairs of all kinds of organizations, companies, institutions and governments. The answer is: the greed, profiteering, irresponsible behavior towards the customers, abnormally (forced) high prices of lands/construction/buildings/houses/education/health care/all kinds of products, artificially jacked up stock prices, corruption/scams/frauds etc. It is the top management everywhere of every organization (including governments), that is the real culprit.

As an extreme statement, any Tom, Dick and Harry can run the organizations in good times. It is during bad times, they need to really run the organizations. It is then that their mettle can be tested.

Running the organization in such bad times does not mean chucking out people of the organization as the first and the easiest of all the solutions. And yet, how many organizations throw out their top management guys? Perhaps none.

The business sense will tell any fool that we need people to buy things. If you throw out a large numbers of people from their jobs, the purchasing power dips further which is one major cause of recession or slow down. Apart from that, you are putting millions of people and their families under the traumatic experiences without jobs. Families after families get uprooted when you throw them out of jobs during recession or slow down and many people have committed suicide due to the trauma of job loss and loss of earnings for the family.

Better solution will be to reduce the salaries of every one in the organizations and not lay off any one.

More salary cuts should be for the top guys of various organizations (including the ones in the governments) since their salaries are abnormally high in general and they are the ones who made horrendous mistakes and drove everyone to this disaster called recession. There have been numerous instances when despite recession and despite employees being laid off, the company top bosses distributed huge bonuses to themselves. And then, these same top bosses go to the governments (in other words, to the same public whom they are chucking out from their jobs) with the begging bowls for the bail-out money. More steep salary cuts of the top brass of the companies and moderate/reasonable salary cuts of other employees will bring down the salary costs of the organizations dramatically.

Then having achieved this, motivate all the people in the organizations to apply their minds towards further cost cutting. As a result, organizations will be in position to reduce the prices of land, construction, buildings, houses, education, health care and all kinds of products. As the prices become reasonably low and realistic and within the reach of people, they will start buying the things and investing in things. The whole resurrection will be absolutely painless.

Also, devise and implement stricter controls over the governance of the organizations (including those of external auditors and justice departments) so that the scams/frauds/corruption are brought down to minimum and ultimately eliminated.

Read the “inside” stories of the corporate sector at: (Management Anecdotes) http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/

Don't Hero-worship, Your Hero May Be A Zero

Don't Hero-worship, Your Hero May Be A Zero

It's no use hero-worshipping any one these days. In fact, it wasn't any different even in the days gone by.

You just don't know that your hero may be a zero after all.

There have been innumerable incidents in the past and in the present when some one whom you had put on pedestal disappointed you sooner or later. And you felt terribly cheated because all along that person was your torch bearer, your leader, guru, mentor, ideal, idol and what else?

Many of these so called great men have been hoodwinking every one but you just did not have even the slightest hint. And one fine (or is it bad) day, that great person gets exposed doing some scam or fraud, committing day light robbery and looting the public.

All along you had been idolizing your hero for having built up a great empire or a great business or for holding a very high position in a high office. You looked at his success and got mesmerized. He was in the newspapers, on TV, on the net and every where you can think of, every second of every minute. The media and along with the media, you also went ga-ga over his professional and personal achievements. But after getting exposed, the same media painted him in mud and you started realizing that his professional and personal success were a big fraud and scam. By now you know that his personal wealth is all stolen money; your own money, the public money he has so smartly snatched away from you under your very nose.

I do not wish to dirty my hands by writing the names of such thousands of hero-zeros of the world but one can always do it by referring to the archives. And millions of people all over the world used to rave about these people in superlatives until these people were caught red handed doing horrible activities.

Lesson to learn: don't hero worship any one; all you may know, some other day, is that your hero is actually a big zero. After all, every one is made up of clay finally. Don't get awed by any one.

On the other hand, believe in yourself. Believe that you are a complete entity in yourself. Live life as per your own values making sure that they are correct in every way and yet, do learn from various people and circumstances, wisely. But, definitely, you don't need to copy or imitate any flashy soul (generally hyped by the media) who may in fact be a big bad wolf in disguise.

Read the “inside” stories of the corporate sector at: (Management Anecdotes) http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/

Massacre of Customer Service

Murder and Death of Customer Service

Did you ever experience good customer service any where, by any one, any time?

Who so ever says "yes" to this question must be hallucinating. Frankly, I always desired for it but was hopelessly searching for it till lately.

And yesterday, there was the final blow- the customer service was finally murdered and died a glorious death. For me, at least.

I was to cancel my credit card with one of the credit card companies. I decided about doing so, because the (useless) credit card company charges me credit card renewal annual fees. I now believe that in fact, rather than charging me fee for that plastic piece, they should pay me annually because I make money for them. So, I got philosophically aroused yesterday, finally. I picked up my land line phone (I still trust the land line phone since I get a dial tone there, it works without need to charge it at all unlike it's younger brother "cell" who just stops working and becomes useless if I forget to charge, it works without electricity or power, it does not send me prompts like "network is not available", the voice still sounds like that of a human being on both sides of phone- does not break or does not feel like that of robots or ET etc).

It was one most nightmarish experience, telephoning that credit card company's Help Line or BPO or Call Center or Customer Care Center (is there any other nomenclature?)- what so ever fancy names they give these days for "not providing the customer service" from the real service professionals of the company. The companies have ganged against us poor customers and have totally stopped us from directly dealing with the company's own customer service experts. However, when the company wanted to sell me it's goods and services, every Tom, Dick and Harry of the company was talking to me personally to palm off their products to me at a huge price, as always. Every one from CEO of the company to the salesman of the company directly talked to me, was so sweet, entertained me and finally fooled me in buying things from them with lots of talk of customer service also. In the excitement of buying, I forgot to ask them as to whom to contact for after sales service and they never told.

Well, let me get back to this horrendous telephonic experience with that call center. First, it took me several hours to figure out which telephone number to call for getting in touch with the customer service guys. Once I got the number, I dialled it again and again but it was engaged. It took me another half hour to finally get a ring on the other side. I thought that some one would warmly welcome me personally. But all I got was a recorded human voice, painfully professional in style and accent. I would have been happier being greeted by a live human being, howsoever plain. It totally put me off. Then, it (the recorded voice) rattled out some 8 or 9 options on what am I supposed to do as the next step- like it said, "press button 1 for this, press 2 for that and press 3 for something else and 5 for............and 9 for customer service executive". Since I forgot everything that was rattled out by the time I came to know about the use of number 9, I decided to press 9 in desperation.

In the mean time, I was dreaming that with within next two to three minutes I would be finishing my business with them and could concentrate on my own business. But that was not to be.

I heard another recorded voice saying that I should punch the credit card number using telephone keys. These days I get terribly confused with numbers. There are hundred of numbers with me: telephone numbers, credit card numbers, debit card numbers, passport number, income tax card number, bank account numbers, id card numbers, ATM card numbers, zip codes, complaints registration numbers and more numbers and yet more numbers. And all of them are miles long. Yet, with great difficulty I carefully pulled out the right credit card and punched its mile long number into the phone.

That was not sufficient. Another recorded voice asked me to punch my date of birth and zip code. I always tend to forget these two things. I did punch those two numbers too, after referring to my ready reckoner of numbers, which I always keep on my person these days.

Now having done this Himalayan task of punching endless numbers, I was looking forward to meet my dear customer service executive (of that call center, surely not of the original company that sold me the credit card so sweetly). To my shock, the next recorded voice announced that all of their customer service executives were busy with other calls (this is because they recruit lots less people than are really required to provide prompt reply over the phones and the technology is dismally inadequate and incompetent too). The recorded voice also said, "It will take 16 minutes 23 seconds before a customer service executive comes on line for you". I almost started admiring the exact prediction about the wait period. What technology!! But soon reminded myself, "Don't get drifted away from your original mission of sorting out your own problem".

During this 16 minutes and 23 seconds wait, I was compulsorily bombarded into my ear all sorts of advertisements and announcements of the company shamelessly. We make out so much about the spams on the Internet unnecessarily when here I was receiving spams after spams into my ear (same things happens to me on the 150 channels of television every five minutes when I am showered mercilessly all spam ads and same thing happens in the news papers and through the postal direct mailers etc). The recoded voices also suggested, "Why don't you send an email to us about your complaint etc". I thought that if I take the course of email to get my problem addressed, I would end up not solving my problem sine die. So I hanged on.

Finally, 16 minutes 23 seconds elapsed. That to me, looked like a few years literally. Now came the voice of my dear customer service executive, "I am so & so and what can I do for you sir?" I knew that it was her fake name and she was faking on her courtesies too. It felt as if she was reading directly from the manual that was given to her. Any way, that is none of my business.

So I explained to her that no other credit card company charges the annual renewal fees for credit cards and so, you should not do it too. I am your customer for past many years and I would appreciate if you fall in line with the current practices. I was expecting that she would reply, "Let me check up what can I do for you in this respect" and was expecting to hear, "It's OK, we won't charge you that fee here onwards. Thanks for being our customer". On the contrary, I heard her saying, "Sorry, that's our company policy. you will have to pay the renewal fees". I was not expecting this and so got a bit worked up and threatened to cancel my account with them and she happily replied, "OK, will cancel your credit card account with us. But I need your wife to talk to me since yours is only an add-on card and your wife is the first card holder". I assured her that it is perfectly OK with her to cancel the card. She has already instructed about it to me and she has her concurrence. The customer service executive won't buzz and demanded that my wife be brought on the phone.

I just could not bring my wife over the phone that time since she had gone out of home for some work and so was not present there, then. I explained the customer service executive about this and requested to cancel the account; after all it's the same thing whether my wife tells her or I tell her. Additionally, my credentials were also already checked by making me punch so many endless numbers on the phone machine. And I told her about my plight in getting through to her after crossing few thousand hurdles over the phone. She showed no pity on me. She was not willing to listen to me any more and in absolute finality declared , "If you have to cancel this account, ask your wife to speak with us."

Now, I shudder at the thought of my wife going through the same appalling experience that I had just gone through.

That day I mourned the demise of customer service.

Read the “inside” stories of the corporate sector at: (Management Anecdotes) http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/