Customers increasingly demand the ‘yes’ answer to each and every question they ask, and they want what they want, and they want it now, says John M. Bernard in Business at the Speed of Now (www.wiley.com). “This turns the world of management on its head. Managers simply cannot keep using a system that creaks along, getting bogged down in protocol of bureaucracy. Companies must evolve or die. Once the need for speed burst into the business environment, it changed the game.”
Explains Bernard that the new approach to management that competitive success calls for is one that enables employees at all levels to solve problems and seize opportunities autonomously and instantaneously. He reminds that, while reasonable customers do not mind answering a few reasonable questions, no one likes being treated like an idiot or a crook, or being taken on an agonising journey through the messy decision-making maze of an organisation where management needs something to do. “Customers simply don’t care about a company’s internal procedures and policies; they want a speedy answer to a specific question, and the answer they want to hear is yes!”
The ‘yes’ forces
The power of ‘yes,’ as the book underlines, is that it saves customers time. “When a customer hears a prompt yes, she can happily move on to something else she needs to do. When she hears no, especially after waiting for over an hour to hear it, she feels as if she’s been robbed of something irreplaceable.”
Behind the ‘yes’ appetite, the author finds three forces, that is, social media, cloud computing, and the millennial mind-set. “Social media keeps people connected to information and to each other. Social media, from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to YouTube, Foursquare, and Groupon, enable users to share their thoughts, activities, accomplishments, and their likes and dislikes, the instant they occur.”
As an example of how customers can instantly offer feedback or issue complaints, the book narrates the famous ‘United breaks guitars’ case, where Dave Carroll’s song video about his shattering experience had 150,000 people viewing it within a day. “And within a year it had garnered a whopping 9 million hits. The London Times estimated that, in the end, the 18-month-long public relations fiasco cost United Airlines $180 million dollars in lost revenue, plus the expense of rebuilding its reputation.”
Cloud computing
As for the second force, cloud computing, the author offers examples to highlight that it dramatically drives down the cost of computing. Such as, about how, “When Sherry Swachhamer, Chief Information Officer of Oregon’s Multnomah County, switched her agency from Microsoft’s desktop Outlook to Google Apps, a cloud alternative, she achieved an estimated $500,000 reduction in annual costs for the 4,500-employee organisation.”
Though still in its infancy, cloud computing represents a solution to the ever-increasing acceleration of costs for traditional approaches to information management, Bernard notes. He adds that, more importantly, when you transport data to the cloud, you make it easily accessible to employees who need it in order to act swiftly and avoid customer relations catastrophes like the one United Airlines suffered when it stonewalled Dave Carroll’s complaint.
Millennial mind-set
The final and perhaps the most transformative force, says the author, has resulted from the coming of age of the new generation, the millennials. On this generation of consumers and workers that has grown up living in the now, he distinguishes that unlike the preceding generations they have never waited for much of anything. “Their mind-set, which combines skill in social media and all the latest communication devices with an appetite for instant gratification, has profoundly influenced the workplace and the marketplace.”
It can be insightful to learn that even in the otherwise drab workplaces such as accounting firms the fundamental forces are being felt. “Recently, while chatting with the managing partner and several of his top-level colleagues at a regional accounting firm, I saw the extreme frustration on their faces as they struggled to figure out how to integrate the fresh graduates they were hiring into the firm,” recounts Bernard. Pointing out that accounting firms rely on young, smart, ambitious, hard-working graduates to do the bulk of all the down-and-dirty audit work, he observes that the new generation is seeking an alternative to long hours at a desk, and negative feedback.
YESability check
Thriving in the ‘now’ demands that you enable your organisation’s ‘YESability,’ the author instructs. YESability depends on many factors, such as front-line responsibility for solving problems, and the communication and system tools needed to solve them, he elaborates. “But it begins with management understanding those factors and ensuring that the people who first encounter customer problems possess the tools, skills, information, and authority they need to say yes now.”
Of great value in the book is the story about how Tiffany & Company, America’s oldest and most prestigious jeweller, handled a customer grievance. The order was for a small crystal apple with a simple ‘Thank You’ etched on it to be given as a token of appreciation to a retiring executive director of a non-profit organisation. Only, when the ‘apple’ arrived at the customer end, it bore no inscription.
To the surprise of the customer, her call got a live person responding rather than a computer voice; and ‘she thought she actually heard a smile in that cheerful voice.’ A bigger surprise for the customer was the follow-up from the company side, fifteen minutes later, with the news that the ordered product would be delivered in time for the event the customer had in mind. “And, to make up for the inconvenience we have caused a valued customer, please keep the other apple as a gift from Tiffany & Company. You see, Ms Rauch, you are the apple of our eye!”
Great read that can push you to gather speed right away.