NUTS #6 - More Creative NUTS
The second example in Creative has to do with customer support.
Creative
pride ourselves as a company that provides the best technical support.
All
our staff know that. We have 400 people in Oklahoma USA, just listening
to
phone calls alone. We have a small technical/customer support team in
Singapore serving only the small Singapore market. The team is
hardworking
and dedicated to the company. In general, their service is good and
efficient - when there are rules.
There was once when I received a customer"s letter addressed to me
complaining about our customer support department (CSD) with regards
to a
missing CD from our product. Our CSD insisted that the customer get
the CD
from his dealer who sold him the PC with our product. And the
customers
attached the letters of exchange. It was such a minor issue but I felt
customer satisfaction was most important. So I wrote a small note and
asked
them to give him the CD and be done with it. CD-ROMs are very cheap
anyway.
A few weeks later, I received another letter from this furious
customer
complaining that our CSD wanted to charge him like $15 for the CD
because
it was the responsibility of the dealer to give it to him. And he
attached
even more letters for me to read.
I was very upset this time because, what could have been a very simple
and
pleasant customer support issue, costing the company less than $1 for
the
CD-ROM if people in CSD had just given it to him in the first place,
now
potentially cost the company a bomb:
Firstly, the CSD"s time to write all those letters of exhange, they
are
way, way over $1. But because of NUTS, our CSD people did not see it.
They
are just trying to follow rules when there are no rules in such
situation.
Secondly, the CEO"s time. I had to read about ten letters two times to
figure out the gist of it all. It must have cost the company thousands
of
dollars. And even after my first instruction to just give him the
CD-ROM,
they still went into a cat and mouse chase to try to ask him to pay
$15.
Someone in CSD probably set the rule that if a customer wanted an
extra
CD-ROM, it would
cost him $15 - that is it, regardless of the plight of the customer.
Thirdly,the most expensive part - the harm it had done to our brand
name.
A potentially unhappy customer would hurt the company way beyond the
customer. He would tell all his friends not to buy from the company.
But people with NUTS mentality could not see beyond the rules. They
could
not see that a $1 CD-ROM was much, much cheaper than their own time,
their
CEO"s time and the value of the brand name.
I had to call all the three persons involved in this case to my office
and
explain to them very slowly about our principle of customer support.
You
could not fault them for dedication, they were trying to make an extra
$15
for the company. Not seeing the big picture of how much more it would
cost
the company. I had told them that for us, the customer"s interest is
always
in the #1 position. I told them that they were the "customer"s
advocates" -
they had to be fighting with me for their customer"s interest, rather
than
the other way round.
Finally, told them to call up the customer directly, apologize and
give him
the CD-ROM he wanted and ensure that the customer was 100% satisfied.
If
the customers are not satisfied - we should not take their money.


We are moving faster and faster into many uncharted territories, where
there are no rules. We do not want to be paralyzed by waiting for the
rule
to be formulated before moving - it will be too late. We have to
discard
our NUTS mentality and learn to live in a new world where there are no
clear rules. Not that it will be a cowboy lawless land. There will be
broad
guiding principles such as common goals, objectives and basic
integrity to
follow. The rest, we have to look at the big picture and decide what is
the
best way to do a job, to achieve our goals.
Sim Wong Hoo
Excerpt from "No U-Turn Syndrome (NUTS)"
Chaotic Thoughts from the Old Millennium