Archive for May, 2008
Posted by: Jo Sparkes | 23.05.2008
On Sunday 25th May, Penny Hicks of Budd and Elspeth Ryan will run hard and hopefully complete the Edinburgh marathon. At the same time they are raising money for the British Red Cross, helping people in crisis all over the world. The British Red Cross has launched an appeal to help tens of thousands of people affected by the major earthquake in China.
The following is an account of the earthquake that has been sent to us from someone teaching in Chengdu:
“I have been living in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, for a year and a half now. Sichuan, a comparatively poor and densely populated province in Western China, whose mountains slowly rise to join the Tibetan Plateau. Sichuan has a reputation for delicious food and a relaxed and leisurely attitude to life, and I’ve really enjoyed living here. The students I’ve taught at primary and middle schools, as well as at university have all impressed me deeply with their friendliness, intelligence and hard-working nature. So you can imagine the deep sorrow I feel when I think of all those bright young students cruelly robbed of their futures when their school buildings and lives collapsed down on top of them. A loss of any one of these children is a loss to us all.
I was at University teaching when the earthquake happened. At first I thought it was a plane or large truck going past. That might explain the crashing, banging and rumbling. I looked at the words on the projector screen jumping around. Then a student stood up and shouted ‘earthquake!’. We all ran out of the building. We didn’t know that’s not what you’re supposed to do; none of us had experienced an earthquake before. Fortunately we were lucky. Cracks appeared in buildings but very few fell down. At a friends school, two dormitory buildings collapsed (most students in China board at their schools) but the students were in class at the time. It wasn’t until I returned to my swaying 9th floor flat on Monday evening that the full horror of the situation emerged. The next day was awful; the heavy rain was non-stop and wall-to-wall TV coverage of silent, crushed bodies and wailing students clinging on to life was harrowing. The worst thought was that there were thousands more at that point that had yet to be reached by rescue teams. I couldn’t stop shaking, and I was never sure if it was the ground of me. In fact, nothing seems certain or sure anymore. In Chengdu, people are still so frightened that they are sleeping on the streets, sometimes with just a bamboo mat to keep themselves clean. Any open area or patch of grass currently resembles a campsite.
A week later, and people are still living in fear, even in Chengdu. The aftershocks happen nearly everyday, reminding people that this still isn’t over. Rumours bounce around the city in minutes. “The water is contaminated” and sure enough, minutes later in the shops, the bottled water and milk is disappearing fast. Irate customers are shouting at the sales girls that they need all that they’re buying. “There will be a big aftershock in 20 minutes: run outside!” My friends moan that it’s raining, its rumour, but we all still feel nervous and unsettled. Last night we receive another rumour - “in the next 3 days, there will be an earthquake of 6 to 7 magnitude; it was on the news”. We listen to the streets fill with cars beeping at each other, in a race to get out of the city. We think it’s another rumour, but we turn on the TV anyway. I’m surprised, there is a government warning of another big aftershock. The panic and fear infects me, and I cycle through the gridlocked streets to join my friends in the park. I takes me half an hour to find them among the thousands of other’s bedded down there. We give a mattress to a solitary elderly lady, sitting on a small chair in the mud. Dawn breaks, it’s all OK. But all of the schools are closed for another week. The banks shut at random times. Hundreds of people are queuing to buy tents, because it will rain tonight and people don’t dare to stay indoors. Even in Chengdu, life is not back to normal. But for those living in the refugee camps, in the mountains and near devastated towns, there is no hope of normality for months and probably years.
My students tell me of their hometowns. They say that where there were two mountains, there is now only one; whole villages have been buried by the landslides. Towns the size of Newbury have lost 3-5000 souls. Those that survived are now homeless (there are an estimated 5 million who now have no place to live), the children, orphaned. There are many tales of heroism and hope however. Those of us in Chengdu are organising donations of cash and supplies that are immediately sent out to the affected areas; many of my university students are volunteering in local hospitals and in the disaster zone. However, given the scale of the destruction, more help is still needed. Basics like rubber gloves for medics are in short supply; children’s shoes and other essentials like camp beds are urgently required, as well as basic medicines, tents and food and drink. The people of Sichuan have always been incredibly generous and warm-hearted in welcoming me into their lives. They now need others to show the same generosity to help them rebuild their lives and their futures.”
To help Penny and Elspeth raise money for the Red Cross please visit their justgiving page:
http://www.justgiving.com/elspethryan
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Posted by: Peter Massey | 16.05.2008
I feel like I’ve been a blog free zone this last month – travelling and conferences taking up the slack between work and play. So here are some highlights, in chronological order, that you might find useful from the last 3 weeks… Tell me which you’d like more on and I’ll write more.
1) LimeBridge’s 12th global gathering in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We missed the tornado a few miles south in Texas, but managed a European shopping competition since everything is so cheap. As Frederic said at the car hire desk (adopt cheesy french accent here…) “Surely we should take a driver with ze car at this price!” Given how cheap things are we did start a serious discussion about offshoring to America – it’s maybe not as daft as it sounds, at least in US brands or B2B.
We spent lots of talking about the book “The Best Service Is No Service” whch has now sold out in Australia and judging by the orders of 100+ at a time, will soon be in its second print run. Not bad after a month and a half.
But what shall we focus on in “book 2”? Suggestions on a postcard please. We’re thinking about “The complete systems model of how the customer experience and contact points drive economics in a business model” – maybe with a shorter title!
2) GOC – the Global Operating Council, alias the US CCO Forum, but focused on outsourcing and offshoring since that’s the biggest part of the US model. This was also the 12th meeting they’d had and ably hosted at the Avis centre in Tulsa. We giggled at the sign on the door saying “No fireams or dangerous weapons allowed on these premises” but apparently people sometimes forget and bring them in…… We had an excellent visit to Direct TV (think the US version of Sky) as well. The big take aways?
• The Philippines are already as saturated as India for voice. Some very interesting insights shared on which outsourcers are performing or not.
• Performance management, environment, coaching , work force management and lifestyle are still underutilized weapons of mass employment in the US. These were good companies but you’d be sacked in the UK for the lowest of the attrition levels being achieved
3) From the US it was straight into the Professional Planning Forum Annual Conference in Manchester. Apart from the best way to run a packed conference of 350 people in many streams and have a party too, there were fabulous shared case studies from all the Award finalists. The final Innovation award went to EDF for their work on contact elimination. We launched the 2008 F+S Research, which was carried out in conjunction with PPF. You can download the paper from our library. Another blog is called for on this striking work!
4) Madrid was the next stop for an in-house conference, a format that many of our clients use. Whilst we have designed and facilitated some, this one was just the key note speaker role again. With countries from all over Europe represented, it is noticeable how similar the issues are and how enormous are the opportunities to avoid reinventing wheels by learning from each other.
5) Finally to this week’s ECMW conference in London with about 500 in the audience and Richard Branson headlining. In fact the interview with him was rather tame, yet intriguing. Chairing so many conferences, one starts to feel like there are no new things out there. And at the same time so many things to learn.
The highlight for me was Daniel Pink, an author and former speech writer for Al Gore. Before his “green” film that would have not have been something you’d talk about. Anyway, he got my best speaker rating, and I loved his use of “levity, brevity and repetition” to get his messages across. What was the message? That Abundance, Asia and Automation are taking over. And in that environment its really important to develop right brain creative skills to compete.
Given he followed one of the most painful speakers I’ve seen in a long while – and I see a few – arguing for lots of maths and analysis, he was on a winner from the start. His technique was “scream, preach and shout” – and nope it didn’t work.
Other highlights? Fred Reicheld was masterful in his arguments for how he developed the Netpromoter scoring system after listening to very simple work at Enterprise (car hire not space ships) and Ritz Carlton and others. They had all talked about the Golden Rule – do to others what you’d like to have done to you – and from this came the referral question. Personally I still think saying you intend to recommend when asked is verydifferent from having recommended but lots not lose sight of the bigger prize – getting the board to balance finance and customer issues.
Willie Walsh of BA getting the best airline results but not taking his fat bonus in light of the debacle at Terminal 5 is a good case of recognising when the balance isn’t right.
Let me know your thoughts and what you want more on at peter.massey@budd.uk.com
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Posted by: David Naylor | 9.05.2008
This is just a straight forward example of service recovery.
I ordered a black toner cartridge last week which was delivered as expected. Unfortunately they sent a blue one.
I emailed the company www.cartridgesave.co.uk and had a reply within 20 minutes from Danielle (who provided a direct email address - in my book, the right thing to do). “A black one will be on its way today and we’ll collect the blue one”. A bit of a hassle returning the blue one I thought but their problem.
10 minutes later another email:
“Unfortunately we are unable to despatch the correct Remanufactured Samsung Black Toner Cartridge as stated in my previous email since this item is currently out of stock until the 20th May. So that we do not inconvenience you any further I will be despatching you today a Genuine Samsung Black Toner instead and Cartridge Save will cover the difference in cost. Additionally we would like you to keep the incorrect blue cartridge that you have received.”
Almost perfect recovery, except for the unnecessary first email that could have been avoided by checking stock first. Not bad for a low value consumer product. Here I am telling you all about it. That’s worth it isn’t it?
brilliant basics, customer experience, fast+simple, word of mouth | No Comments
