What you intend and what you are looking for shapes what you see.. David Sibbet

A maturity model for customer service

Gary Lemke, the genius behind CRM Advocate was writing a series of daily columns about whether or not we need a role of "Chief Apology Officer:.

I was struck by the idea of people creating problems so they could have more apologies to make, and therefore a long list of "accomplishments".

So Gary and I had an exchange on email, where I urged him to "go all the way" in identifying the maturity level of organizations in relationship to this topic of "apology".

To get him started, I suggested this ladder:



Level 0 - ain't no need for no stinkin' apology

Level 1 - maybe we outta start saying we're sorry

Level 2 - howsabout we think about fixin summa this stuff? we're tired of hearing complaints day in day out

Level 3 - we don'have to fix it if we don't let the bad stuff happen - what we gotta do to avoid these potholes we keep falling into

Level 4 - now its pretty boring 'cause things kinda work, maybe we could make it more fun for us and our customers, after all we deal with each other every day?

Level 5 - Business is Delovely! Delightful, delectable, delirious,
delicious, it's DELOVELY. Credit to Cole Porter.

Open call for Haikus for the 21st century soul-searcher

I was glad to speak at the Santa Cruz Women's Leadership day last month and had the pleasure of meeting Camille Smith. I ended with my poem, that starts with the first stanza quoting Edna St Vincent Millay and ends with

..." let us now conceive the loom of intention to weave wisdom into the fabric of our souls"

In response, Camille sent me her haiku on habits...finely observed and described Camille!

Thank you for writing it and sharing it with us.

Habits
Unconscious comfort
Worked fine yesterday (I think)
Tourniquets to growth.

Camille Smith, Work In Progress Coaching™
www.wipcoaching.com, camille@wipcoaching.com