Archive for the ‘Coaching’ Category

Why is it that complaints are so hard to deal with?  Recent headlines show that in the banking sector fines have been levied for poor complaints handling. There has also been an extensive report issued about complaints handling in the NHS, which has lessons for many organisations given that it deals with a wide variety of complaint situations. It can usefully help anyone interested in managing complaints well. This report reinforces the message that many people find complaints so hard to deal with.

The pain the complaints cause

The pain many organisations suffer when handling complaints often includes increased costs of dealing with customers flowing from:

• repeated contacts from customers who often try a multi-channel approach by phone, in person or in writing and even social media campaigns such as using Twitter, Facebook, etc.
• requests for compensation
• escalation to more senior staff tying up resources
• and worst case: legal action can be the last resort of the disgruntled customer

Your staff can suffer great stress with all of this activity too.  But it need not be like that.

Great complaints handling

If you want to get the benefits of great complaints handling, where do you start? The answer lies in part with knowing a complaint when you see it and having staff trained to deal with the complaints effectively.

So apart from training in handling complaints, what else can be done? A good place to start is to review your complaints handling process. What you are looking for is a process that identifies a complaint quickly so that it can be dealt with as a complaint effectively from the outset and not inadvertently overlooked.

As the report recently published by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman identified: “When a complaint is made, delays in responding, or a failure to listen, to apologise, or take into account individual needs can make an already difficult situation worse.”  This advice points not only to good complaints resolution processes but to having a healthy attitude towards complaints. This attitude is often harder to acquire than a process improvement. This is because a culture of effective complaints handling needs you to show leadership to your people and to get some effective training and coaching to help staff resolve complaints effectively.

Ten tips for great complaints handling

To help you resolve complaints more effectively our top ten tips for great complaints handling are:

1. Complaints handling process

Develop a great complaints handling process.  Look at the process you have for resolving complaints.  If you were a complainant trying to complain would it be easy to use? From your perspective is it fair, efficient, transparent and quick?  If it isn’t can you improve it to be easier for your staff and customers to use, reducing the costs of complaints handling.

2. Watch out for complaints

Catch complaints early: when things go wrong for a customer, make sure when a customer complains you identify the complaint as a complaint and deal with it as such.

3. Apologise to the complainant 

Remember that an apology can be a powerful remedy. Sometimes all that is needed is to say sorry. The research into complaints handling has shown that recognising that something has gone wrong and apologising for that can often be all that is needed to get the conversation with the complainant moving in a constructive direction. After all apologies cost nothing, are easy to deliver and can help the complainant move on.

4. Explain what caused the complaint 

Offer a thorough explanation of what went wrong. Don’t do this in a way that sounds like excuses are being made, but explain the reasons why a complaint was caused.  Make sure the customer does not feel like they are being fobbed off. If a mistake has been made then acknowledge that.  It is interesting that the second biggest factor for doctors and dentists when handling complaints is that there is no acknowledgement of mistakes.  The same could well be true for your customers as it is often hard for employees to acknowledge that a mistake has been made, they may need to be given permission by you to do this.  They may need some training to help with this.

5. Reassure the complainant

Reassure the complainant that steps will be taken to stop the issue recurring.  Often people who complain want to know that it won’t happen again or to someone else. However, be careful to make sure that the lessons learned are not lost. You need to have a way of doing this which can include:

• better training for staff
• improvements in processes or systems
• or simply better communication earlier to explain what might go wrong at the point of purchase.

If the customer knows the risks when buying then they make an informed decision and that can help.

6. Own the complaint

Don’t be defensive.  If a complainant gets the feeling that you are evading the issue, making excuses and not trying to help it will only make matters worse.

7. Enjoy that complaint

Have a great attitude.  Often the attitude of your people when dealing with the complaint can make all the difference.  A poor attitude is likely to make the complaint worse and the complainant will then often seek to escalate the complaint to a higher authority.  This ends up involving you in more cost and time to deal with the complaint. Consider having some of your team trained to become experts in handling your complaints.  This can reduce the overall training cost and provide you with a small team of dedicated complaints handlers rather than have all your people struggling to handle complaints.

8. Put it right 

Find out what the complainant thinks will solve the problem and try and deliver that.  Taking remedial action is as important as apologising.  This may also mean reviewing a decision or process.

9. Remain focused on the customer

Be customer focussed.  It may sound easy but it is not.  Emotions often run high in complaints handling and need acknowledging.  If the complainant knows by the way you react you are trying to resolve the matter that will make all the difference.

10. Give your complaints handlers support

Support your complaints handling staff. Those who deal with complaints need help and support.  The emotional drain on your people can be significant and so having an opportunity to debrief with a colleague and provide support can help.  Coaching can be a great way of assisting with this.  Do you have a supportive and coaching style in your team? If you don’t, you might want to talk to us to get some help.

Complaints handling made easy?

Complaints handling is not easy.  It is often something that is difficult to do.  But it need not be like this.  It is possible to handle even the most challenging complaints well.  After all consider the Ombudsman I mentioned earlier who is often dealing with life and death issues in the NHS. Her team are getting compliments from complainants about their help in solving complaints. You could be getting those too.

2nd January 2011 seems a great time to ask yourself if you are likely to be earning what you are worth this year.  But how do you start answering this?  You could start with checking your frame of mind.  If you firmly believe ‘opportunity is now here’ that will give you a fantastic advantage.  It will put you in the starting blocks way ahead of the pessimists who persist in seeing ‘opportunity is nowhere’, allowing themselves to be dragged down into the waves of negativity that washed the shores of 2010.

More than just positive thinking?

But of course a positive mindset and an array of mantras will only get you so far.  Top of the agenda for many of the business owners and professionals that I work with and coach is ultimately that of profitability. We can dress it up under other guises as much as we want, but at the end of the day, that’s what most of my clients are striving to increase.  And that takes more than just positive thinking.

Are you working in the business or on it?

One of the challenges for the professional turned business owner – dentist, veterinarian, doctor, architect, surveyor  for example – is to be able to balance working ‘in’ the business with working ‘on’ the business.  And those are two different things entirely.  What is very clear is that going into 2011 business owners need to do everything in their power to get the right balance.

How does the problem start?

The problem starts something like this:  Many professionals have been expert in their field.  They have great technical skills and their success at ‘operating’ has often got them to a position where they can take that ‘entrepreneurial leap of faith’.  Getting the business up and running is stressful enough, but it’s exciting.  Sustaining the business, expanding horizons, taking on and managing staff, attracting and keeping more satisfied customers, and increasing profit – now that’s another matter again.   Exciting?…possibly. Challenging?… yes.  Stressful ?…yes.  Risky?….. – definitely.

Are you self-sabotaging?

What compounds the problem is that many of these business owners go on to ‘self-sabotage’.  Compared to other entrepreneurs, these ‘professional cum business owners’ may have a more negative belief towards commercialism, marketing and self promotion.  They may be more motivated by some great and higher values and ideals and they don’t have money as the number 1 goal on the list.  Unfortunately it can lead them into business activities that don’t add up financially and lead them away from success.  They become ‘under-earners’ and the business and staff may suffer too.

So start changing the dynamic

There’s so much help, advice, training and tools out there to help any business flourish.  But for the ‘professional turned business owner’ in particular, if this article resonates with you, here’s some thoughts on starting to change the dynamic:

1. Be open minded about revenue streams that increase financial stability
2. Avoid gravitating into your ‘operating’ comfort zone.  It could become your ‘danger zone’.
3. Stop doing everything yourself  - delegate, outsource, automate
4. Learn to say ‘No’, but with respect and care
5. Reconsider work or clients that don’t pay enough
6. Listen to your internal ‘chatterbox’. Are you telling yourself negative beliefs about money or self-promotion?
7. Do you realise that you ARE in the sales business?
8. Do you see yourself as a manager?  Look in the mirror.  Have you got what it takes to manage a business and people?  What extra skills and support do you need?
9. Are you recognising the power that comes from the free marketing given by the happy, satisfied customer?
10. Look at your financial goals.  Double them.  With the right mindset, skills, and techniques, you won’t need to double your effort to reach them!

 Wishing you all the very best for a prosperous New Year

Alison Miles-Jenkins

Author of  “Help! I’m a Professional not a Manager “ and Managing Director of the award-winning consultancy  Training To Achieve UK

Contact Alison for your FREE copy of her guide.  You can also join her Privilege Club….for FREE!

The cost of conflict and how to address it

No peace for the wicked and no breakfast either today.  At the crack of dawn I was hurtling over to Buckinghamshire to attend a one day course.  This is a monthly occurrence this year, as I’m studying for yet another qualification.  I know I’m a bit of a learning and development junkie but I feel a compulsion to practice what I preach!

So it’s nearly eight o’clock, and I have just got home to write my Sunday blog, over dinner rather than breakfast.  Today we were inspired on the course to check out the Persian poet Rumi.  So before setting to with the roast, I spent some time with my nose in the poetry book, and one line caught my imagination in particular:

“Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing there is a field.  I’ll meet you there”.

This insightful poet, 800 years ago, was encouraging us to look beyond the immediacy of turmoil and conflict, to greener pastures rich with possibilities for resolution and solution.  So it seems fitting that my blog today explores the cost of conflict in the workplace and the potential tools for collaboration and harmony.  Appropriate also because only on Friday I was speaking at a conference for senior dentists on recognising and handling different behaviours, touching also on managing conflict.

Just how far have we come in the last 800 years I wonder? In 2010 how well placed are we as human beings to be emotionally intelligent, to ‘engage brain before opening mouth and inserting foot’? What happens in demanding situations where we may feel threatened by someone with a different viewpoint, or whom we perceive is seeking to achieve something at our expense or the expense of others?  How able are we to resist the power of our reptilian brain which can instantaneously trigger our fight or flight response, emotions getting in the way and propelling us into aggression or submission?

Are you aware of the cost of conflict in your organisation? Attention-grabbing headlines in the ‘People Management’ magazine in October 2008 told us:

“‘Poor conflict management skills cost UK plc billions”

The details informed us that conflict costs UK businesses £24 billion every  year due to lost working days, with an average worker spending at least 2 hours a week dealing with conflict.  Personality clashes and ‘warring egos’ were found to be the primary cause for conflict.  Stress and heavy workloads were also acknowledged as contributory factors.  In one of my client organisations I would estimate that 2 hours a day are lost to sorting out conflict!

Exactly how many lost working days was that due to conflict?  370 million.  Annually.  In the UK.

According to the above-cited research, causal factors included personality clashes, taking credit for others’ ideas and work, talking over people in badly run meetings, talking behind people’s backs, ignoring colleagues, personal remarks, relentless criticism, bullying, harassment, low morale and absence.  Insidious, covert aggression, more prevalent within the workplace, causes untold damage.

The statistics point to in excess of 12 days a year per 100 employees being spent by HR and management in managing grievance and disciplinary cases, with an increase to 132,577 employment tribunal applications in 2006/7, up from 115,039 in the previous year.
A naive and optimistic view might be that in 2010, we would be thankful to be at work, would adopt a caring and collaborative way of working, and at least temporarily be prepared to forego the game-playing that so often wounds the colleague and maims the organisation.  Not so, according to the evidence.

Let’s not forget that there are positive outcomes to conflict, with possibilities including recognition of and valuing differences, dusting down complacency, releasing energy and increasing commitment.  There is a greater chance of future collaborative working and breakthroughs in thinking if we have the appropriate tools to understand and resolve conflict.  The reality is that often we do not, and the risks attached range from anger, misery and a phenomenal amount of wasted energy, to bad, sometimes disastrous decisions, demotivation, resistance and downright sabotage.  At the very least you will have absence rates that will affect your bottom line/value for money.

So, as leaders and managers, where should we be turning our attention in the war against conflict?!

Here are some ideas.

To minimise risk of conflict:

• Walk the talk.  Don’t just say your organisation values its staff.  Ensure it does it.
• Invest in tools and interventions that help people become more emotionally intelligent, self-aware, and assertive rather than aggressive.
• Have regard for the ‘psychological’ contract with employees
• Don’t go overdrawn at the employee’s ‘emotional bank account’ (Stephen Covey)
• Remember that ‘Intention’ and ‘Impact’ are different things
• There is no reality – only perception – ensure there is respect for each individual’s unique map of the world
• Communication is key.  Consider method and goal, language and diversity, frequency, time available, transparency, effectiveness, VAK channels, organisational culture
• Be aware of the iceberg effect – visible symptoms, and potential underlying causes may not be the same

To manage conflict:

• Identify, address and seek to resolve conflict at as low a level as possible.  It will escalate
• When dealing with conflict between two parties, be mindful of individual mental maps and fantasy ladders
• Consider individual and team interventions
• Have a toolbox of approaches including diffusion techniques and assertive and negotiating skills
• Remember!  There is a range of coaching models and techniques to effectively coach around conflict issues.

Finally, returning to Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, our poet who inspired this blog today, leave the accusations, positions and protracted arguments behind.   Search together for common ground and focus on the way forwards.

“Since in order to speak, one must first listen, learn to speak by listening”  Rumi

Alison Miles-Jenkins Sunday Morning Blog – 13 June 2010 Blog Number 6

Motivation – minimal theory, practical advice and a few notes of caution

What part does motivation play in achieving success and whose responsibility is it? This is a question I am asking myself, on this particular Sunday, and which I am posing to you in my Sunday Blog – several hours late I know – but a Bank Holiday surely pardons a slight transgression?

So how come this particular question today?  Well, this lunchtime we went off to the local Pub to support one of its yearly events aimed at

 raising funds for the people of Kerala, in Southern India.  This is a cause dear to my heart.  We spent three weeks In Kerala on honeymoon in January 2009, marvelling at the hospitality, friendliness, humility and the most amazing level of customer service I have ever experienced.

The focal point of the lunchtime event, apart from the real ale and the curry, was an international piano bar superstar, playing keyboard, and singing, accompanied by three teenage female singers.  Such an amazing talent, enjoyed for free, in a country pub.  It got me thinking about achievement -  about excellence, about success, and all the ingredients that are necessary for talent and aspiration to be realised and recognised…whether inside or outside of work.

Someone once said to me, and I have always remembered it, that, daily, time is distributed democratically to all of us, and how astonishing it is to think that some people make so much of that resource, and others squander it.

Surely isn’t motivation the main ingredient – take all the others away, and the recipe will fail – half-baked, a sorry reminder for what could have been?  Whether you would call it a strength or a weakness, motivation and the desire to achieve is paramount for me. Built into our business name, it is key to our core process – helping individuals and organisations achieve by releasing their potential to become the best they can be.    So, there’s myself, my team, my clients, my coachees, my delegates, and of course my kids ….all of whom the subject of my motivating!  It’s tiring! 

Phew! But let’s pause for a moment – what do we actually mean by motivation?  Am I kidding myself …can I actually motivate others or just me?  Here’s a simple definition of motivation by Wendy Pan, which I can relate to:  “To give reason, incentive, enthusiasm, or interest that causes a specific action or certain behaviour”. 

But where should those reasons, incentives, the enthusiasm or the interest come from? This blog is not the place to critique the various academic theories that have proliferated for decades – from Herzberg and Maslow to Moss Kanter and beyond.    What is important to stress though is that, from my experience, intrinsic  motivators (when one is compelled to do something out of pleasure, importance or desire) are overwhelmingly successful and sustainable in the short and longer term.  I could see that on the faces of those musicians today. Extrinsic motivators (when external factors or other people compel one to do something) are only of short-term, limiting value, and can rebound with

devastating consequences. This too I sometimes see on the faces of the people I train and coach.  So BEWARE – leaders, managers, and all parents/parental figures if we gravitate towards the stick rather than the carrot.  As a parent with talented kids, and more than a penchant for being competitive and driven, I will do well to heed my own advice.  We can guide, support, enthuse, inspire, and lead by example – high challenge, high support maybe – but the essence of motivation must come from within.

Values provide the motivation for us to take action.  What are values? We could define them as social, moral and ethical standards, acquired throughout a person’s journey through life.  These values underlie every decision and chosen course of action.  We know that there is a clear correlation between job satisfaction and job performance, and the amount of satisfaction we derive from our work is governed by the extent to which we can act out our values.  Often, I unearth employees in client organisations, who outside of work, are running successful micro businesses, or who are high performers in Sport, the Arts or Music.  Often their employer does not even know.  What a waste!  Imagine if the organisation could align corporate, team and individual talents and goals, how staggering the increase in performance would be.

Of course motivation, although it may be the key ingredient is not enough.  To stand out, to differentiate ourselves, to excel at whatever it is we choose to do with our lives also requires talent, skill, the right attitudes, often a helpful dose of luck, and  practice. Winston Churchill was renowned for saying “Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential”.  In the book “Outliers” author Malcolm Gladwell repeatedly takes ‘practice makes perfect’ one step further, by stressing the need for 10,000 hours to hone a skill or task to distinction.  I have to say it has become something of a mantra in our household, much to the annoyance of our kids, aspiring to success in their respective fields!

So, the moral  of this blog is, as  Leaders, Managers, Trainers, Coaches, Mentors or even parents, goals we set for others (perhaps because it is secretly our goal) or goals that a person believes they ought to be pursuing can bring about feelings of obligation, not motivation. Values are human motivators.  Allow the individual to connect with their values and to have a say in determining their own goals.  Watch motivation, commitment and ownership then increase dramatically.   That individual however must remember that if they don’t invest very much, then defeat doesn’t hurt very much and winning is not very exciting.

Sunday morning blog – 30 May 2010 Blog Number 4

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