Pay attention, Say Thank You
Church of the Customer recently highlighted a story from the Wall Street Journal about the law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP who in response to low morale and an excessive level of associate turnover initiated a program to encourage partners to show more appreciation and respect to the firm’s associates.
Specifically, the need to say "thank you" and "good job’ and to return associate’s phone calls and not cancel their vacations. As Ben McConnell notes, "that weird common courtesy stuff." When Ben says, "its no joke" I presume he means the facts of the story are true and, C,’mon, do you seriously need to be told to say thank you? It makes you ask some other questions:
- What’s wrong with the partners in this law firm that they are so un-appreciative of their associates?
- How do they treat their clients?
- Do they kick their dogs?
The title of the article asks the question: Does Saying Thank You Help Keep Associates? Well, doesn’t "that weird common courtesy stuff" help" keep" everyone? And, the opposite, being discourteous and unappreciative keeps everyone away.
Saying "thank you" and "good job" demonstrates attention and articulates appreciation. Paying attention and showing appreciation will improve morale and reduce turnover in all of our relationships, personal and professional….you can offer a money-back guarantee on that one.
David Pollard at How to Save the World wrote, "What people seek from others more than anything else, is attention and appreciation. I’ve observed that to be true in boardrooms, bedrooms and barrooms. You want to win over your boss, give him or her your full attention, and acknowledge his or her successes, without being a suck-up about it. You want to win over your audience in a presentation, make lots of eye contact, show empathy for their situation (which means doing your homework in advance) and thank them more than once for their attention and their awesome questions."
A study by Mitchel Adler and NS Fagley (2005) provides some basis for the other side of the equation…why being appreciative is a good thing…they found that being appreciative and expressing appreciation to others enhances feelings of well being; it makes us feel connected to what we have and to our experiences. They find that expressing appreciation builds social bonds and in fact "appreciation was significantly related to life satisfaction and positive affect. Importantly, they believe that even though being appreciative is a disposition, it can be taught. The WSJ article said that Sullivan & Cromwell saw an improvement in turn over after the partners went to charm school.
Another recent article in the Wall Street Journal about the Dali Lama addressed the ability to change our brains through a change in thinking….to actually become more compassionate and empathetic. In a study done with monks during meditation, it was found that indeed meditation could change the function of the brain and importantly, "monks with the most hours of meditation showed the most dramatic brain changes. That was a strong hint that mental training makes it easier for the brain to turn on circuits that underlie compassion and empathy."
So, mother was right: Say thank you, write thank you notes; be appreciative and don’t scrimp on expressing appreciation and gratitude. Should appreciation not come naturally, it is possible to acquire the traits that make it possible….through mental training or meditation. If you do these things you will grow up to have successful personal relationships, loyal customers and clients …and be especially successful at generating positive word of mouth.
Jackie Huba writes about the $800 million dollar company that connects with customers through the "thank you" note written by a sales associate. Andy Sernovitz sent me a handwritten thank you note for blogging at the WOMMA Summit that demonstrated recognition and appreciation that stood apart …I really appreciated that he took the time in our electronic age to write a handwritten note!
The Lesson: Pay attention, listen, observe those around us…let them know that you appreciate them and what they do. Practice it until it comes naturally. You will improve your own sense of well being as well as contribute to theirs. This will become the environment in which you live and work.
Kathy Sierra, in her post Angry/ Negative People Can Be Bad for Your Brain talks about social contagion/emotional contagion…the spread of attitudes throughout populations. She quotes Memetics and Social Contagion"…social scientific research has largely confirmed the thesis that affect, attitudes, beliefs and behavior can indeed spread through populations as if they were somehow infectious.
She quotes the Dali Lama, The fact that there is always a positive side to life is the one thing that gives me a lot of happiness. This world is not perfect. There are problems. But things like happiness and unhappiness are relative. Realizing this gives you hope." Paying attention to the positive side and expressing this to others gives everyone hope.
One final thought. My cousin, Dr Leonard Berg passed away several weeks ago. He was an incredibly accomplished man who left behind a legacy that truly produced positive change in the lives of people all over the world. At his memorial service one of his children noted that because of his work, he really wasn’t home a lot but she always felt that he was there for her. He was paying attention and she knew that what she did was appreciated; his attitude was contagious.
Tags: Church of the Customer, Ben McConnell Jackie Huba, Andy Sernovitz, WOMMA, Kathy Sierra, David Pollard, Social Contagion, Attention, Dali Lama, Appreciation, Sullivan & Cromwell,Wall Street Journal, Dr. Leonard Berg
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Trust in User Generated Content: Youth Say Yes, Adults Say No
Forrester has released a new study that says that although three fourths of on line adults access user generated content their confidence in the content is declining; conversely, the over 90% of on line youth that access user generated content indicate that their trust in the content is increasing.
Forrester’s report on Social Computing concluded that technology had made the top down model obsolete, that value was in experience not ownership, and that power was shifting from institutions to communities. This report spoke of connected buyers with less brand loyalty, less trust in institutions and more reliance on peer-to-peer networks and user generated content.
User generated content is proliferating. Trust is important. Brad Feld in a post called, Its The Trust Stupid says there are three principles for user generated content, trust, attention and relevance.
So if trust in user generated content among adults is declining but increasing among the young what does this mixed message mean?
Here is some of the available data on user generated content among the young and among adults:
Teens Create Content: An earlier study by Intelliseek indicated that Teens lead all segments in the creation of CGM; almost 30% of teens send photos via mobile devices, 45% have created a blog, and almost 10% subside to RSS feeds.
Young consumers rely on friends and families for purchase recommendations:
According to an earlier Forrester study, 50% of youth rely on advice from those they know and 65% report giving recommendations or information regarding products to others.
Social Networking sites are user generated content. YouTube users add 35,000 videos each day and viewers view 30 million videos each day according to Newsweek.
My Space is the 7th most popular English language website. If you need more data, see If You Don’t Get MySpace, You’re a Lametard at Mashable! or The Site That Ate the Blogosphere at Mobile Jones and Blogher.
MMOG (Massive Multi-Player Online Games) are user generated content. Participation is growing dramatically. There are 10 million people playing. They defy any preconceived demos one might have about gamers being young and male. Games such as Second Life The Sims, or The Movies are driven by the creation of user generated content. Included in the content development tools of MMOG is advertising. Players have the ability to put up their own advertising in the games such as promotions of in-game events or businesses.
Forbes reports that Mind Ark, creator of Project Entropia, and the first advertising tool built into a game has announced a collaboration with the distributors of ads from Coca-Cola and Warner Brothers that will appear in over 100 games. Clickable Culture reports that the Coca-Cola "will make its first official appearance at a live music event as part of the corporations sponsorship of the event’s real-world counterpart." OK, I admit…I am a little confused here between the real world and the counterpart; nonetheless, user generated advertising content is part of the real world and part of this virtual world. Something like life imitating art, imitating life imitating art….Coke’s tagline becomes the virtual thing?
Politicians bypass the mainstream media and turn to blogs: According to the Salt Lake Tribune and increasing number of politicians are using blogs to provide information directly with their constituents. However, a trust warning is included, "Of course as blogs spread, readers need to understand what they are seeing and what is behind it…when searching for information on a candidate or a lawmaker, readers should be wary of what site they peruse because some information may be missing our skewed….some of these blogs are controlled by parties or by parties or by political candidates." Yep, just like that other media source that we don’t trust.
User generated advertising seems to be everywhere. It is used by Jet Blue, Sony, MasterCard, Converse, and Tahoe. Results and opinions are mixed.
Consumer generated health and medical content have and important influence on decisions:A study by Cybercitizen Health (r) v5.0 indicates that consumers are increasing
relying on the Internet for health care decisions. They report a market of 99 million US adults. The Pew Internet & American Life Project confirms that direction but indicates that 52 million Americans or 55% of adults with Internet access use the Internet to get health or medical information. Regardless, the numbers are huge.
Importantly, Cybercitizen Health reports that there are a "small group of health
consumers (20 million)" that have tremendous influence on those using the Internet for health information. They speak of a "zone of influence, ranging from spouses, children and elderly parents to extended family and friends. In fact, other health consumers are very
likely to seek out advice from this group of highly influential health consumers, who are more likely than the average consumer to be using interactive media such as the Internet."
An aside, GE Healthcare joins and sponsors the delivery of consumer generated health care content. See also GE Imagination at Work.
So…there are many more data points indicating an increasing reliance on consumer generated content which doesn’t track with the reported decrease in trust among adults…at least as yet. In fact, a increase in reliance on user generated medical advice would indicate that adults are trusting the advice of their peers with something quite valuable….although a decline in trust measurement might precede an actual change in behavior.
The marketers who get the importance that consumers place upon the recommendations and opinions of their peers combined with the extent of the connections are already building new relationships with consumers and revising their marketing to foster collaboration and participation.
Clarence Fischer of Remote Access while drawing some comparisons between MMOG and classroom learning makes an interesting point about what makes these games
successful, "For a game to be successful, the secret is often not to make the game better, but to make the community which surrounds the game better. Empower them. Give them responsiblities and the power to personalize their experience." This might also be applied to marketing within the context of social computing.
Cory Treffiletti says that user generated content is a viable ad medium and makes the point that once a brand is in the public domain it belongs to the consumer, is controled by the consumer, and if they are provided with a sense of ownership for the brand and the ability to provide input that is responded to, will be a successful brand; if not the brand will suffer the consequences. He refers to this as brand democratization and says it is the wave of the future.
Technorati Tags: consumer generated content, consumer generated media, marketing, advertising, media, social computing, trust, MMOG, MySpace, blogs, advertising,
Attention: Giving It and Getting It
Dave Pollard writes in How to Save the World that "What people seek from others more than anything else, is attention and appreciation." He references an earlier post where he wrote, "It’s really all about attention, and paying attention. The attention we pay to others, and that others pay to us, defines us, far more than our appearance or our name. And how can we appreciate what someone (a life partner, a business partner, a customer, an employee, a friend or foe is about and has to offer) unless and until we pay attention to her, really listen and observe with (as much as is humanly possible no judgment, no personal filters or frames impeding. And once we’ve paid enough attention that we really understand that person (or for that matter, that creature of any species), how can we not appreciate her….watch, listen, observe, pay attention and you will know the reason."
I couldn’t agree more and I couldn’t practice it less. Just ask my children.
And of course I have a million excuses and explanations for this but that doesn’t change the outcome which is that the people that I care most about don’t get my full attention and therefore do not feel appreciated. Linda Stone coined the term "continuous partial attention" in 1997 and described it as a way of life for the past two decades in order to keep up with responsibilities and relationships. She says, "With continuous partial attention we keep the top level item in focus and scan the periphery in case something more important emerges." She doesn’t mention the outer edge of continuous partial attention when the top level item is so constantly shifting that there really is no way to distinguish between the top level and the periphery. I think you have to be a single mother with adolescent sons to experience that.
Newsweek covering the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference that had as its theme the Attention Economy says that "carrying a BlackBerry is admitting that your commitment to your current activity is only partial." Linda Stone, Newsweek noted, draws a line between the benefits of perpetual contact through email, IMs, text messages and so on to the overloaded contact that puts us in a place of constant crisis; where continuous partial attention becomes distraction and we can’t make a commitment to any one thing. She describes continuous partial attention as being motivated by our need to be connected which is enabled by the technologies of connection; we meet a friend for lunch and during that hour we talk to others on our cellphone, eat, email, and answer text messages. We are busy, we are scanning. We don’t have a clue. There is no meaning . It is noise not music.
Edward Hallowell, who is the co-author of Driven to Distraction the first book to, if nothing else make us feel okay about attention deficit disorder (ADD) has declared that there is an epidemic of attention deficit disorder. He has written a new book called CrazyBusy Overstretched,Overbooked, and About to Snap - Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD.
He uses the name attention deficit trait (ADT) to describe the condition when we get overloaded with incoming messages and competing tasks that we are unable to prioritize. Hallowell offers some solutions to "multi-tasking mania" such as allowing for 30 minutes a day for thinking or relaxing and to take time to connect to other people without your mobile device or laptop. I think we all know what we should do…what we don’t know is how to do it. Furthermore, we don’t have time to read his book. Note to Hallowell: Please write a blog so I can read that.
Research has shown that mulitasking reduces productivity. Research conducted by Joshua Rubenstein, PhD.indicates that task switching is counter productive and can even be dangerous when we don’t realize the limitations of our attention. As a matter of fact, Seth Greenberg, a professor at union College, says that "current cognitive models suggest that people have a limited amount of attention available at any moment…Attention can be thought of as a fuel that can be dispersed. Thus tasks can be performed simultaneously with efficiency as long as the required attention for both tasks does not exceed the limit." In other words, attention divided cannot stand….do more accomplish less.
So…back to the issue of giving and getting attention. My kids will ask me to, for instance, watch a TV show with them and say and "you have to come in here" which means without my laptop. Kathy Sierra wrote a post called Your Brain on Multitasking and says that the solution is to just give things your undivided attention, to be mindful and do one thing at a time. In a more recent post she states, Multi-tasking Makes Us Stupid. Well, ok then…that is settled. Who wants to be stupid? I’ll turn off the computer, not answer the phone, not read, or otherwise not give you and the TV my undivided attention. Maybe we can even skip the TV part.
Scott Berkun really summed it up in an attention titled post, Attention and Sex. He writes, "Your obituary will not list the hours you fought off boring meetings or ignored your friends by reading forgettable blurbs about forgettable things on your cell phone or laptop. Instead it’s the intimate, deep moments that refuse division that matter." He goes on to set an attention value proposition: "how we spend our attention changes the value of what we spend it on." His analogy, "if you only spend a fast food amount of attention, you will never have a 5 star dining experience" puts it all into perspective. I think this means, be mindful.
Last week we received an email about the death of a student who was a class ahead of my older son. The kids got out of school for spring break on Thursday, March 17th. That night he was the passenger in a SUV that flipped over and he wasn’t wearing his seat belt. I need to give my children much more of my undivided attention. We would all benefit and no doubt be more focused on our tasks knowing that attention was a continuous whole, not a continuous partial. I agree with Dave Pollard, that the attention and the appreciation that we give defines us and my definition right now is lacking.
Technorati Tags: attention, continuous partial attention, ADD, ADHD, multi-tasking
Core Assets and Social Capital
In Forrester Research’s weekly update, Charlene Li writes, "Yahoo! bought social bookmarking and tagging leader del.icio.us to add bookmark
tagging to its social computing portfolio. The value of tagging is that when
individuals label something online, they call it out as valuable. If enough people tag Yahoo!-stored assets as, then the collective intelligence of the masses is captured for all to use and Yahoo!’s site becomes richer, cleaner, and more satisfying-all magic words to an ad-supported business model. Other portal, search, media and retail sites should join the ranks of Yahoo! in making tagging a core asset."
Alec Saunders
writes that Yahoo! validated the value of tagging by buying
del.icio.us. He says, "Today tags might be the ultimate sticky asset.
Your tags are a reflection of your values, your thinking, your mindset.
Shared tags reflect the collective interest of a community. Tags and
profile, together could be used as contextual triggers for advertising
driving much more precisely targeted delivery than is possible today.
If, as the Web 2.0 advocates suggest, data is the new platform, then
Yahoo! just brought a core platform asset.
Well, yes, Sugar
Plum….in keeping with the spirit of the season, those visions of
assets do dance in Yahoo!’s head, or is it portfolios of assets that
dance in their visions? Yahoo!’s tags may be "social networks" but the "it" in that beloved expression, "your it" is search….and advertising and m-o-n-e-y. In the words of Thomas Hawk,
"Google and their non human algorithm have significantly trounced
Yahoo!
at the core service that was at one time the central technology of
Yahoo’s business, search. And up for grabs in the search game going
forward are still billions and billions of dollars."
OK..so that’s the business model. Assets, value…sticky assets, core assets, valuable. That seems to upset some bloggers. But let’s not forget that tagging is about users. There is a lot of really great things being written about social networks from the benefit to users
standpoint….David Pollard writes frequently on the topic of blogs, social networks, knowledge management and other inter-related topics.
And I think there is another important element in the asset play: social capital. In the year 2000, Robert Putnam published a book called Bowling Alone with the premise that Americans were suffering from a deficit in social
capital…that we had gone from belonging to bowling leagues to bowling
alone. Social capital is defined as the collective value of all "social
networks" [who people know] and the inclinations that arise from these
networks to do things for each other ["norms of reciprocity"]….a wide
variety of quite specific benefits that flow from the trust,
reciprocity, information, and cooperation associated with social networks. Social capital creates value for the people who are connected and - at least sometimes - for bystanders as well." It sounds a lot like the hallmarks of blogging and online social networks to me.
I think that rumors of the death of social capital
were greatly exaggerated….I think it is alive and well and has just
re-defined and in fact expanded the meaning of communities. Instead of bowling alone we are tagging together ….and blogging connects us in all kinds of amazing ways from shared knowledge and information to personal and business relationships and colloboration that would be impossible if we had to wear those nasty bowling shoes to experience.
Technorati Tags:
tagging, Yahoo, Del.icio.us, social capital, social networking
Client Expectations and Satisfaction Surveys
This post is about customer experience, this time from the vantage point of a client satisfaction survey…specifically law firms client satisfaction surveys.
Rees Morrison of Law Department Management asked the question,
"Does asking clients to assess the department raise their expectations
for the future?" His answer was "Yes." He went on to say that customer
satisfaction surveys may raise the bar for performance expectations for
the future. Further he writes,
Social science researchers recognize that when you ask people about
a feeling – “How satisfied are you with the responsiveness of the law
department?†or “To what degree do you feel the law department meets
your needs for professional development?†–respondents over-rate their
feelings. In large measure, the respondents never give a moment’s
thought to the question, and when they do focus on it, they inflate or
distort their views, thus the focusing illusion.
To the extent this distortion operates, it undermines the validity
of client satisfaction surveys, employee morale surveys and value
questionnaires and other instruments that collect feelings and
perceptions.
Is Mr. Morrison suggesting that attorneys shouldn’t ask their
clients for feedback for fear that they may have to live up to their
client’s expectations? Or that by asking for feedback it might be
implied that attorneys upon receiving feedback might feel obligated to
improve their performance? Surely not.
But, a client satisfaction survey is market research. As such, the design of the research question is critical to the value of the information that is received as a result of asking the questions. I believe this is very analogous to for instance the questions asked in a cross examination. The meaning of the words in a satisfaction survey has to be exactly what the operational definition of the words specifies.
Ask a question about responsiveness and unless you have defined responsiveness, or operationalized it, to mean something specific to the client, such as returned phone calls, then collecting "feelings" will be useless information because you will not know how to improve responsiveness….or as Mr. Morrison notes, the validity will be undermined. Set up your client relationship with specific satisfaction promises, perform to those promises, measure the specifics of the performance by a survey and then you will understand the meaning of the feeling of responsiveness.
Remember Humpty Dumpty from Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland? He tell’s Alice that, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean…nothing more nor less." Alice asks him, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." Humpty says, "The question is, which is to be the master, that’s all." Master the operational definition of what you are measuring and the precision of the survey will increase its value. To carry the Humpty Dumpty analogy a bit further, if you and your client do not have the same understanding of responsiveness for example, then expectations will never be met and if your survey attempts to assess the situation based upon ambiguous words then…"all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will not be able to put Humpty back together again."
Client experience is a marketing issue. Measuring it is market research. The client experience is really the operationalizing of your marketing. Operationalization means specifying the exact operations that defines the marketing promise. A client satisfaction survey is research. If your marketing states that you "use technology to be a better lawyer" your clients should be able to experience tangible evidence of the technology.
If a satisfacion survey is used to evaluate how well the firm met a client’s needs in terms of technology, the client and attorney should have all ready agreed on the technology to be used on their case, e.g. to exchange cell phone numbers, be updated via Basecamp, and have a Power Point Presentation presented at the trial. Then a client can be truly asked about and assessed for "satisifaction". The latter is best practices for research design.The design of research is critical to its value. Ask the wrong question
and you will get the wrong answer….and you may never know why you lost you client.
Don’t blame your client for "over rating" their feelings. Establish
specific functional elements that will result in positive or negative
feelings and then assess those. Instead of asking, "to what degree do
you feel the law department meets your needs for professional
development" begin your relationship with the client by:
- Determining their needs.
- Agreeing on how those needs will be met.
- Set measurement standards.
- Then assess satisfaction by surveying performance versus those standards.
- Meet their needs and their hearts and minds will follow…as will high ratings onsurveys.
The Greatest American Lawyer, an attorney genuinely concerned with providing excellent customer service, recently posted that he was sending out his first client survey and posed some interesting questions regarding client surveys in general.
- Will client’s respond at all; if so will they provide constructive criticism that can really help improve service.
- Will the survey serve a marketing function….a reminder to clients.
- Will the survey produce surprises…provide feedback regarding issues we were not aware of or mistakes that we didn’t know we made.
It will be interesting to hear the results of his survey. If the first time a client feels like they are being asked about the quality of the service provided is by a satisfaction survey and they feel like they have received poor service, it is my experience that client’s will either not respond or you will receive criticism that goes beyond the constructive variety. If the foundation of the client relationship is based upon clearly defined and agreed upon service needs and goals, and the relationship is nurtured along the way, then the client will be more likely to answer the survey and feedback should not produce unexpected results.
Tom Collins, at morepartnerincome talks about applying Six Sigma to law firm practice. He insightfully writes, "It must place the client’s wants and desires first. It
must believe to its very core that when the firm improves the success
of their customer, it improves the law firm’s success as well. It must be willing to honestly determine what its clients want and be prepared to deliver it." Determing the client’s wants and needs should mean in conjunction with the client. Also, agree on the specifics of delivery. Then measure against specifics, not feelings.
I have one final thought about "raising the bar for performance expectations in the future" as mentioned by Rees Morrison. Expectation is what is considered the most likely outcome. It is based upon past experience as well as what standards are articulated for the future. In many ways, achieving customer satisfaction is setting the bar too low. As providers of customer service, we should seek to exceed customer expectations. If our clients express that they would be satisfied with phone calls being returned within 24 hours, find a way to exceed the expectation and return calls within a business day even if the return call is just to set a time to discuss the issue the next day.
When we provide our clients with a list of "frequently asked questions" this is a helpful service….add a list of "frequently not asked questions" and you will be able to really differentiate your service and expertise. When someone says to me, "Is there anything you would like to ask me about this?" I am limited by my own knowledge of the situation or problem. When someone says to me, "You haven’t asked about…" and then proceeds to tell me something that exceeds my knowledge of the situation, then the value of the relationship is enhanced and my expectations are exceeded.
Technorati Tags: customer_satisfaction, client_experience, customer_service
No. I Don’t Have Time to Read Blogs
I was talking to my lawyer yesterday about what lawyers call my "high conflict" divorce case. Yes, we are divorced but instead of that judgment being the end of the conflict, it became the basis for my ex to escalate the conflict. This is, of course a whole other blog that is under development but this post is about people completely impervious to blogs. My lawyer started talking about the client/attorney relationship in an unusual manner for lawyers that I have actually worked with, as opposed to law professors, friends who are attorneys or those whose blogs I read…he talked in terms of client service and was pondering why, despite what their firm thought were great results in some case, the client did not express gratitude or otherwise provide positive feedback. Well, I could have given him quite a guest lecture on the topic based upon my personal experiences,and experiences of friends and family in the quagmire of the family court system; and I could filter the personal experiences with my marketer’s lens. However, I politely suggested that there was a lot being written about this topic on the web, specifically by lawyers who blawg. I suggested he might want to check out the {non} billable hour or In Search of Perfect Client Service or The Greatest American Lawyer for their insightful and innovative thinking about the practice of law.
When there was silence on the other end of the phone, I inquired as to whether or not he read blogs. His answer? No, I don’t have time to read blogs. My thought of course was: Do you really have time to not read blogs? And I know I am at one extreme with my the answer to all of life’s mysteries can be found in the blogosphere attitude….but c’mon, you want to know why, despite winning a case, your clients seem dissatisfied? Have a conversation with them…and listen; add some empathy. There you go…good start. You are in the service business….did you serve their needs? You say you "won" the case…did you have a discussion with them to define what "winning" the case was so in the end you could agree that you had won. Oh, stop billing your clients for your mistakes, especially when it is because you didn’t listen…ok, I may be going too far.
The New York Times has an article today on blawging lawyers that quotes Scott Turow, "when people think of law, you think of jails and
marshals and corporate executives. But the reality is…it’s all words, and lawyers are verbal people, both in terms of the
written stuff and the spoken stuff." The law is about words…your clients are about words.
But maybe here lies one of the problems in having conversations with clients…the same New York Times article quotes another blawger, Denise Howell, "blogs demystify the law without costing outrageous
sums; lead to more open, frequent and occasionally informed discussions
of politics, law and occasionally morality; and help forge links
between practicing lawyers, law professors, law students and the real
world.
So, one of the problems that I see in client/attorney relationships is that attorneys don’t really want to "demystify" the law for their clients…and certainly not without collecting "outrageous sums". Second of all, in the link being forged above, the client is conspicuously absent from the list.
Empathy 101
This morning’s WSJ had an article titled "Teaching Doctor’s To Be Nicer". I’ve linked to it, but since it is a subscription site, for those who can’t get to it, the point was that medical schools are offering students classes on professionalism, empathy, and communication skills. Mostly the article focuses on examples relating to the "callous" behavior by doctors towards patients in hospitals that medical students observe. Educators note this poor modeling as:
"the negative messages medical students get in
front-line, residency training that seem to contradict everything they
had been taught about ethical behavior, compassionate care and
professionalism. Researchers say the most powerful influence on future
physicians is the behavior they observe on a day-to-day basis in the
medical-school environment. And what they often learn is how to be
cold, intimidating, authoritarian, narrow-minded and disrespectful of
subordinates and patients."
I would like to note that I cannot comment from personal experience in hospitals…fortunately. However, I can comment about the bad manners of doctors from personal experience in waiting rooms as my 9AM appointment is "shared" (aka triple booked) with others because our time is valued less that the doctors
….oh, I know we are told that we wait because the doctor had a medical emergency, a problem patient and so on; check their appointment book!
OK, so the point is customer service, customer relationships, customer experience. Yes, I think it applies to doctors, also. I also think most doctors don’t view their patients as customers. However, if medical schools are offering courses in "professionalism, empathy, and communication skills" someone must be thinking in this direction. When business people talk about poor customer service and poor customer experiences we might use the very sentence "cold, intimidating, authoritarian, narrow minded and disrespectful of subordinates and customers {patients}…not patience, what customers are euphemistically thanked for instead of "thank you for putting up with our rude, inconsiderate, and non-empathetic behavior. Lawyers, I will note are another group of professionals who would benefit from a customer service focus.
The article goes on to mention that there is growing criticism that medical students were not adequately prepared for the changing health care environment where patients "are demanding better communications, concerned with slipshod care, medical errors and patient safety are eroding their trust in doctors". I think what we are talking about is that patients, or consumers of health care, have access to not only medical information and current research but also access to information about medical errors making them better informed, more demanding consumers. (We won’t discuss the the ever circling trial lawyers within the context of this post.)
I think what all this really means is that patients are customers and doctors are professional service providers….and that just as the bar has been raised by consumers/customers of products and services who demand positive experiences and service in exchange for their loyalty and trust, patient/customers are demanding more from their doctors. And the corollary is, if markets are conversations among people/customers then a large dose of empathy and empathetic listening will lead to better relationships for businesses and doctors.
So, now here is the real question: Are things really changing? We read and write about customer focus, creating positive customer experiences. We are now even making doctors learn to be nice. We blog our complaints about this bad customer experience and that bad customer service…we even have conferences on Word of Mouth vs. Advertising that debate this.
But, it still seems to me that if I posted all my close encounters in just one week with the wide world of self proclaimed customer centric corporations: Sprint, Charter Communications, Geico I wouldn’t be telling a different tale than I would have before the Age of Customer Centricity was officially declared…except that now before we receive a bad customer experience we are assured by a recorded voice that tells us "for quality purposes this call is being recorded" (WHAT does that mean anyway?) and then after we receive a bad customer experience we are asked to particpate in a customer {dis} satsifaction survey. I mean, all the data is recorded but into what pneumatic tube does it go ????? Maybe if we added a little emphathy into the customer conversation we would be better customers and providers and have better relationships.
As Jennifer Rice says on "What’s Your Brand Mantra?", All companies are people companies. She goes on to say that what is needed is new people practices not new business practices…"If we’re all
really honest with ourselves, what we really need are psychologists and coaches
and relationship experts". Now where is that Empathy 101 signup?
Passion versus Obsession
A client was recently expressing her concern that her adolescent son may have Aspergers. He is and always has been a computer genius or computer nerd, depending on who is describing him, with a few friends that have similar interests. She and her husband are very social people which makes their son’s personality all the more striking in its contrast to theirs. He has one official diagnosis, ADD, and is medicated for that. Other than ADD, he is an adolescent which probably should be a pathology all of its own to define the narcissistic, angry years that begin around 13 and end around 20. Or so I am told. Over the years, they have consulted with many mental health professionals. Currently, the combination of adolescence, stimulant medication, his temperament and personality are expressing some very unpleasant behaviors. Aspergers keeps rearing its head as they consult with psychiatrists, neurologists, therapists and counselors.
The issues pointing at Aspergers are the lack of basic social skills, the inability to decode social signals, lack of eye contact, and conversations that about narrowly defined, highly technical interests. However, the last doctor that they saw said that he thought "everyone" at the medical school had Aspergers.
And we have all heard others say that "everyone" in Silicone Valley including "you know who" has Aspergers.
In thinking about this, I wondered about the difference between being considered passsionate about say, computers or being considerered obsessed with them. Or medicine, or whatever the narrowly defined highly technical interest might be. If the interest is "highly technical" maybe we say obsession. If the interest is not technical, such as a sport, maybe we say, passionate?
Of course one of my favorite blogs is Creating Passionate Users which is written by some very technical people….who write engaging, passionate posts most recently about the developmental stages of companies. What do you think about passsion versus obsession?
Doris Wild Helmering is Blogging!
I am excited to note that Doris Wild Helmering has a blog. Doris, has a busy private therapy and coaching practice here in St. Louis and is a nationally recognized expert on relationships. She is a prolific author, on-air therapist, and frequent radio and TV guest….yes, Oprah, CNN, Goodmorning America and she has even offered advice to Roseanne about controlling anger. Check out her blog….I am sure she will have a lot to say!
Blame, Responsibility and Attribution Error
Yesterday’s WSJ featured an article about blame that notes among other things that "Americans are beset with blame mongering". Well, all we need to do is read the news to know that finger pointing seems to be the first step we take in coming to terms with a problem.
The WSJ, along with every other news source reported that George Bush was taking responsibility for the failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina. Blogs weighed in with debits and credits for Bush’s announcement. Many highlighted failures on the part of Nagin and Blanco and Margaret Carlson writes in the LA Times on the whole blame mess an article entitled, "Cashing in on the Blame". In this article, as with others, Bush is blamed for taking blame. Further, this article notes that Bush must have taken a page from JFK’s book who "subverted the blame game by admitting he had blundered at the Bay of
Pigs. He proved you can diminish blame by taking responsibility." I guess this must mean that no one has taken responsibility for much since 1961.
The WSJ article notes that blame is rooted in nature and nurture. The original finger pointers started in the Garden of Eden…so there you have nature; instructions for blaming soon followed and became nurture. So, we learned to blame so that we don’t have to accept responsibility for negative things. But then, after we attribute blame for the negative event or outcome , we are still left with something or somebody that has to change or be rectified. So we have more than one kind of /blame/responsibility really: I take the blame/responsibility for the situation and I take responsibility for fixing it/changing it versus I give you responsibility for this (blame) and you need to take responsibility and fix it/change it versus I take responsibility for the situation and I take responsibility for fixing it/changing it.
All of this seems to lead to attribution theory and the social psychologist Heider who drew a few boxes,
triangles and balls and then explained that external attribution occurs when we cognitively attribute causality to outside factors such as weather; internal attribution occurs when we assign causality to internal factors such as intelligence. We are more apt to excuse our own mistakes by "situations" beyond our control (external attribution) and blame mistakes on others because of their own ineptness (internal attribution). And no I am not making any inferences about a Hurricane and the intelligence of those trying to handle it. It’s just that attribution theory, especially fundamental attribution error theory explain a lot about the current state of blame in New Orleans which are pretty clearly split by party lines. When my ex-husband had a problem with for instance his computer it was the computer’s fault; the computer was broken; when I had a problem with my computer, it was because I had done something wrong; I broke the computer.
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