Inspired by Martin Luther King

I want to thank the participants with whom I'm travelling on a Service Transformation Leadership Journey for telling me about their heroes. Martin Luther King was the top hero named by many of you and I wanted to learn more about him. I did not grow up in this country, so it was a wonder to me what MLK achieved. I visited the center and was moved to tears, and inspired anew!

In Atlanta on March 3, I was privileged to visit the Martin Luther King Center.

Here are the quotes that said something to me. Then I paraphrased some of them for the task we face ahead of us in connecting with customers in a way that is at the Level 7 of the Relationship Model - where we want the best for our customers and our customers want the best for us.

Here goes - MLF's riff on MLK

Original MLK quote:

“This is no day to pay lipservice to integration,

we must pay life service to it.”

Paraphrase by Mei Lin for the 21^st century

“This is no day to pay lipservice to customer service,

we will transform our service leadership model and give and receive life service from our performance of customer service.”

Original MLK quote:

“ We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy form the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”

Paraphrase by Mei Lin for the 21^st century

“We must learn to use time creatively in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of business in a democracy and transform our pending economic elegy into a joyful song of thriving community. Now is the time to lift ourselves from the quicksand of greed to the solid rock of trustful, value-filled relations between business, employees and customers”.

Then straight from the master himself:

“There is nothing that expressed massive civil disobedience any more than the Boston Tea Party, and yet we give this to our young people and our studnets as part of the great tradition of our nation. So I think we are in good company when we break unjust laws and I think those whyo are willing to do it and accept the penalty are those who are part of the saving of the nation.”

“I think the greatest victory of this period was…. something internal. ….. The greatness of this period was that we armed ourselves with dignity and self-respect. The greatness of this period was that we straightened our backs up. And a man can’t ride your back unless its bent.”

“Our hope for creative living in this world house that we have inherited lies in our ability to reestablish the moral ends of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral awakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments.”

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals…….This is no time for apathy and complacenty. This is a time for vigorous and positive action. “

“We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientifc and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.

“Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realms of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the end for which we live.”

No its not a Fawlty Towers episode, this REALLY happened

So How Bad can Bad be?

Read and weep till you have to laugh in despair....

I've highlighted the saddest parts

"One customer who complained to MyCustomer.com received a bill for £750 for a one bedroom flat in which only the central heating was gas-powered. Energywatch told him that such a bill would be feasible for a large family house for an entire year, but was totally realistic as a quarterly bill for a one bedroomed flat.

While he attempted over a period of days to contact British Gas to question this, he received a series of letters from the company warning him that they would enter his premises with the police to recover the debt unless he replied within seven days. The letters were of course backdated to seven days previously!

When he finally did manage to get through to British Gas, he spent the first 40 minutes being passed from department to department. Eventually he was able to convince British Gas to send an engineer to look at the meter, which as he pointed out was clearly defective. On the appointed day, he took time off work after being told that the engineer would arrive between 10am and 4pm.

Inevitably, the engineer did not turn up. At 4pm the customer phoned British Gas only to be told that he had been misinformed and that the engineer was scheduled to come between 10am and 5pm. Come 5pm, still no engineer. The customer called back again and was told that he had been misinformed again and that the engineer was in fact due between 10am and 6pm.

British Gas then told him to call Transco, the outsourced engineering firm that dealt with this. He called them, only to be told by Transco’s call centre that – incredibly! – “We don’t have anything to do with British Gas.” When he asked what he should do now, the operator at Transco suggested he should call the National Grid.

The by now furious customer called back to British Gas and demanded to know if the engineering appointment had ever actually been made in the first place. The call centre operator happily told him that no appointment was booked on his customer record. Nor were there any records of his previous conversations with British Gas that day or earlier.

The operator also said that when – or if – the engineer had come out, he would have had to take away the meter which would then be destroyed during the fault testing process. If it was deemed not to be faulty, the customer would then be liable to pay £50 to have it replaced. This was all news to the customer who had not been informed of any of this before. When asked by the customer what proof he would have about whether there had been a fault or not if the meter had been destroyed, the call centre operator told him that he would have none."

Thanks to MyCustomer who has brought this tale of sorrow, this modern day Sisyphus to life!

Customer MisManagement - Another Management MIA story

Sigh..... the lowlights of this cautionary tale.

Bottom Line

Key Performance Indicators look great while in reality customer trust plummets

10,000 customers were polled about service in the UK, the Nominees of this Hall of Shame are......

HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE: THE BIGGEST OFFENDERS

1. British Gas

2. Sky

3. BT

4. NTL

5. Royal Mail

6. Orange

7. HM Revenue and Customs

8. nPower

9. Lloyds TSB

10. O2

11. Currys

12. AOL

13.NatWest

14. Vodafone

15. ScottishPower

16. Halifax

17. Barclays Bank

18. Virgin Holidays

19. Argos

20. HSBC

So what helped the winning nominee British Gas standout?

"British Gas manages to beat them all with customers regularly left hanging on the telephone for more than 45 minutes at a time before getting to talk to an operator.

Two thirds say they have been further irritated after staying on hold for hours, only to find they are put through to someone who cannot understand English, while 54 percent of callers hang on the line for ages only to be cut off by the operator.

"The knock-on effect is further trouble for the customer as almost a third of us end up receiving a final notice on a bill or a final warning after failing to get through on the phone and hanging up.

What British Gas management thinks is going on (sadly I think they CAN'T see the problem, rather than WON'T see the problem)

“The average call waiting time to our general enquiries line in February was just over two minutes,”insists Rhys Jones, corporate affairs manager for British Gas. "British Gas has appointed 800 new agents in its call centres and we are seeing significant improvements in average speed of answer times to our general enquiries line. We have also reduced the number of internal transfer of calls through investment in agent training and in customer relationship systems.

"British Gas CEO Phil Bentley is the man who has to sort out the unholy mess that is the firm’s customer management strategy. He has gone on the record to reporters with the stock ‘blame the computer’ response of so many utility firms."

Customers have reached their limits of accepting technology as an excuse for poor service

Management is right on the firing line.

"....Bentley must be aware that competition is only getting stiffer.... Powergen has spotted a chink in British Gas' armour and is attempting to thrust home its advantage. The message for consumers is coming in loud and clear - the market is being shaken up, but the best deals to be had are still online.”


Are you MIA on what Peter Drucker reminds us is the Business of Business?

Making and Keeping Customers?

Trust: A Prize Indeed

The Edelman Agency, which is a public relations firm, publishes the Edelman Trust barometer, "a multi-country research study seeking to understand trust which they define as "trust to do the right thing" Their focus is on how corporations build trust and what they need to do to get their message out. While a different focus from ours here in this blog, in that our focus is about building trust with customers, there are interesting highlights to report... with areas of interest to Customer Relations in bold (my 2 cents). These snippets are drawn from the blog of the firm's CEO Richard Edelman http://www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog/

"We are now at a point where CEOs and other members of top management have to lead in a more public manner
.....As Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal said so well, public companies are now political institutions and need to solicit support from stakeholders including NGOs, employees, communities as well as shareholders

"First, the smart company will communicate on both the vertical and horizontal axis. The top down, one way, controlled messages often from the CEO that have characterized corporate communications is still important. The traditional media, particularly business magazines and newspapers, is vital to achieving credibility. So are expert spokespeople, such as academics, financial analysts and doctors, who can help the CEO carry the message because of their credentials. But the peer-to-peer horizontal conversation, led by impassioned employees and consumers, is now a critical companion.

"Second, the proper treatment of employees is the new “green” in building trust as a global company. The number one activity for a socially responsible company is fair treatment of its employees, comparable to how its products meet environmental standards. Positive employee relations are as important as fair pricing of products in being a good corporate citizen.

"Third, there is a general decline in trust in all spokespeople and sources of information. That means a company must tell its story consistently and in multiple venues in order to achieve trust. We live in a world—as Linda Stone describes--of continuous partial attention."

Management MIA : Chasing Customers Away

Can you afford to ignore customers? Can you afford to chase them away? Even worse, what if every unhappy or ignored customer from the past 10 years starts telling their stories.

In the age of bloggers and Google Alerts and commentary, all kinds of up-to-now hidden cases of customer abuse (to small or larger degree) are surfacing.

I just have to re-produce the conversation that Valeria Maltoni had with Chase - she just wrote about it February 10th and IT HAPPENED TWO YEARS AGO.

"I called Chase and after hitting many numbers on my touch-tone phone, I finally got to a live person; life was good, now I could explain they had made a mistake. The conversation went like this:

“Hello, how are you doing today?” said the customer service rep at Chase.

“Very well, thank you,” I tend to start these calls on the cheery side for good measure.

“How can I help you today?” he says.

“Well, I just received my new platinum Chase card, and I think there was a mistake,” and then I plunge in, “It’s a MasterCard and I used to carry a Visa.”

“There was no mistake, the platinum Chase is a MasterCard.”

“Well then, since I did not ask to be upgraded to a platinum card, can I please have my old Chase Visa back?”

“That is not possible; Chase has upgraded to MasterCard.”

“So let me understand this, indulge me for a moment. Are you saying that all of the cards Chase issues are now MasterCard?”

“Yes madam, that’s what I’m saying.”

“But I already carry a MasterCard. I want a Visa.”

“We switched thousands of customers and nobody is complaining.”

“I’m not complaining, I’m explaining to you that I do not need a MasterCard and I want a Visa.”

“We communicated that to all our customers and nobody complained.”

“Sir, this is not a complaint, it’s a request. And I am not thousands of customers; I am the one who is talking with you on the phone now.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you at this time?”

“Well, I guess there isn’t. Chase has already decided to cut an exclusive deal with MasterCard, whether its customers like it or not.”

“Thank you for doing business with Chase, goodbye.”

And that was the end of the call. The extremely polite customer service rep has been trained to follow the guidelines, not take comments or feedback from his company’s customers. Since I did not intend to keep the card and carried no balance on the account, I wrote a letter to the President of Chase Bank at the time explaining why I was canceling my card and referencing my call.

I never heard back..... " Valeria ends with some salutary advice:


"why not listen to customers? Why not take the time to answer letters and emails? If the communications come from just one customer here and there, it wouldn’t be so time consuming after all and you might make a few friends in doing so. That person on the other end of your phone might be an influential. Is it smart to ignore the inquiries of customers? In this new business context where social media is gaining in credibility and scope can you afford to ignore these inquiries? What’s in *your* wallet?"

Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • ConversationAgent@gmail.com • www.conversationagent.com


For another unhappy credit card customer story, look at the one told by Millie Garfield at
http://mymomsblog.blogspot.com/index.html

" I'm not happy losing my 5% rewards program and I'm not happy with the new rewards plan but listen to this!

....when I received the new card I followed the instructions, called to activate the card and did what they reminded me to do, "I destroyed the old card."

The next day I.... used my NEW CARD. Well, what do you know, "card NOT AUTHORIZED."

I tried it several times but it was not accepted!! I did not have enough cash to pay for my purchases ......"


A tip - for Business working out how to build relationships with Customers - what are you doing to chase customers away? Or make them love what you do?

Just do a google on "your company name" + "happy"

Are the online communities you like on this list?

I'd love to get your comments on any of these communities

a. Which of these are you a member of?
b. Do any of them feel like a "real community" to you?
c. How often do you visit the community?
d. How many of your friends or colleagues are in the community
e. Are there communities that you think should be added to the list?




www.myspace.com

www.facebook.com

www.friendter.com

www.hi5.com

www.socializr.com

www.digg.com

www.linkedin.com

www.prosper.com

http://del.icio.us

www.loopt.com

www.dodgeball.com

www.match.com

www.youtube.com

www.xing.com (previously OpenBC)

www.classmates.com

www.blackplanet.com

www.bebo.com

www.care2.com

www.cyworld.com

www.facebox.com

www.faceparty.com

www.flickr.com

www.friendsreunited.com

www.livejournal.com

www.orkut.com

www.piczo.com

www.reunion.com

www.xanga.com

http://360.yahoo.com

http://spaces.live.com

Relationships reinforced by Social Computing

Great presentation on social computing by Charlene Li -

A quick overview

A. What is social computing?

Social computing = technology puts power in individuals and communities, not institutions

It's the social aspects that are important for businesses to understand and take advantage of

Blogs are reverse chronological journals that are very easy to use
GM's vice chairman Bob Lutz has a blog - gives a human face to GM. People are writing back to him. GM is developing relationships with people before they even buy a GM car

What are the things people are passionate about? You'll find social networking there:

Blogs: e.g. www.dogster.com
Advertisers are there: Nintendo is advertising a new dog game there

RSS = Really Simple Syndication e.g. Burpee.com for gardeners

Podcasts: www.Whirlpool.com
Supporting families, talking about topics families are interested in

Viral Marketing: e.g. Microsoft targeted gamers in stealth campaign "IloveBees.com"
Halo 2 as a result of campaign got 1.2 million pre-orders

Social computing adoption is small but growing, here are the increases in percentage of people who use these social computing media at least once a week or more, between 2004 and 2005:

Use blogs at least once a week or more
5 to 11% of households

Use a social networking site once a week or more
4 to 6%

Use RSS once a week or more
2 to 6 %

B. Successful social computing requires ceding control to build the relationship

Charlene Li's 5 rules for successful social computing

1. Engage in conversation
e.g. Microsoft's Channel 9 - videos of engineers talking about product, community discussion boards, individual profiles
e.g. Maytag's Skybox - blogs provided product support for customers

2. Enjoy the conversation
customers can tell if you are not being truthful or if you are faking it
Bob Lutz of GM"Often I find your comments insightful and compelling. At times your criticism is harsh, but..."

3. Let customers tell you what they need
e.g. iTunes gives users great control over their RSS to customized to their needs

4. Put experience in the hands of the user
e.g. Austin City Limits Festival
Let readers be the reporters and blog their reviews and their passion for the music
e.g. www.SubservientChicken.com - let people tell the chicken do any one of 400 things
its an ad!

5. Admit when you've made a mistake
- Deepens the relationship to increase the level of trust



C. Charlene Li's recommendations on how to get started:
- at a minimum start to listen e.g. Unilever turned Dan Entin into a Brand Advocate when they noticed him complaining about the difficulty of finding a store that stocked one of their products

- Start small e.g. recruitment, press release RSSS feeds, earnings call podcast

- Promote social products: Allowing customers to customize your brand deepens their engagement with your brand

- Measure engagement e.g. try examples and measure results - how many come? how long do they stay? (like Forrester is doing with these videos of their analysts: Charlene and others)

Risks of ceding control are actually less than not ceding control, do proceed, but take some precautions for example: Confidentiality can be an issue, if so, have someone else check it first before publishing

Social computing resources

Measurement: Biz350 Cymfony, Intelliseek
Blogs: Six Apart, WordPress, Roller

Summary

1. Successful social computing: marketers to cede control to consumers
2. Technologies come and go, relationships will always be there
3. Tap into the power of consumers: Let them drive your brand and products

Social computing is a way to develop brand advocates

Great talk by Charlene, if you have 20-30 minutes, give it a whirl. She's a fun and engaging speaker. Look for her reference to "man cave" - its hilarious.


Thought from Mei Lin - I found out about this because I have a Google Alert on Charlene Li, so that's yet another social computing tool that's out there that customers are using to gain more control over the information want to find.

Jan. 22, 2007 published at www.CustomerThink.com (see above link) Reprinted by permission.

Apply the "People Prescription" to Call Centers

By Mei Lin Fung, The Customer Innovation Excellence Institute

My friend Cindy made 85 calls to the same number. She refused to give up in her quest to speak with someone able to use human judgment. And hers isn't the only modern call center war story. Just one of the worst.

If you dare to talk about call centers at any gathering of adults in the United States, you will get an earful. Odysseus took 20 years to get home after the Trojan War. Today's call center stories seem to be about 20 years in sales and service hell.

A sick joke is circulating—one I heard among presenters and practitioners at the International Call Center Management conference in 2006. It goes like this:

So we train and motivate the heck out of our agents to meet their key performance indicators (KPIs) so that our team leads and supervisors can meet their KPIs, so our call center director meets her MBO bonus target, so her VP meets his executive bonus target ... and so on up to the CEO, who gets to collect as many bonuses as he can before he ... goes to jail.

What are people saying about your call center?

Consider the health industry, whose story is highlighted by Daniel Goleman in his book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (Bantam, September 2006). In it, he coins the term, the "people prescription." Goleman points out the forces of change that will cause healthcare professionals and organizations to pay closer attention to relationships.

Malpractice suits, for example, are based more on the people. Goleman cites the Journal of the American Medical Association, which in 1997 found that it was poor communication with patients—not the events, themselves—that predicted whether a physician would be sued for malpractice. JAMA found that doctors who communicated well, did some simple things: They told patients what to expect; reassured them; shared laughs with them; checked if they understood what they needed to do; and asked for their opinions, encouraging them to talk.

‘It was poor communication with patients—not the events, themselves—that predicted whether a physician would be sued for malpractice.’

Yet, malpractice insurance premiums generally don't reflect whether a doctor is a good communicator or not. Based on the JAMA study, good communicators should pay significantly lower premiums, just as good drivers and more experienced drivers pay lower car insurance premiums.

Perfect WordPerfect
My CIE Institute colleague, Casey McNeal, Ph.D., started in technical support with WordPerfect, the well-beloved word processing software application now owned by Corel. Every single WordPerfect user I've met is a raving fan.

In its heyday, WordPerfect didn't even need to pay for advertising, according to McNeal; employees just talked with their customers and heard their problems and solved them there and then—or told the product managers what the customers wanted. The company's monthly phone bill was $26 million. In McNeal's group at WordPerfect, they kept track of performance by organizing teams of no more than 14 people each. Everyone knew each other's expertise. They cared about their customers and their team mates. Customers loved it.

McNeal and I recently met a former WordPerfect customer who told us, "WordPerfect customer service knew me when I called by the sound of my voice." She spent an hour telling me wonderful, joyful, exhilarating WordPerfect stories, stories of how WordPerfect made her a champion in her company, allowing her to innovate and experiment. She talked about how, when her corporation moved to Microsoft Word, she bought a copy of WordPerfect for her home computer. I reckon that's the platinum standard for customer loyalty.

Think about your customers: Would they continue to buy the product to use at work, using their own money? Could your service or product be valuable and useful to that degree to your individual customers? To the companies they work for?

Healthcare
Goleman says there is a scientific case to be made for "rapport building." In an earlier book, Working With Emotional Intelligence (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, September 1998), he introduced Emotional Intelligence (EQ), a factor he said was equally important as, if not more important than, intelligence quotient as a factor in one's personal happiness and success.

Goleman cites a study that found that nurses who most strongly wanted to leave their jobs had more work that upset them, had lost their sense of mission and caught and spread negativity in their interactions with co-workers and patients. Nurses who escaped this contagion did simple things, including speaking warmly and showing affection; building nourishing relationships with patients; improving their moods; benefiting themselves emotionally; enjoying better health; and having a sense of a meaningful mission. And they were less likely to leave their jobs. Would you rather be a patient at a hospital that created a intrinsic motivation and supportive environment for the health care providers or one that doesn't even recognize the problem?

Kevin Schwartz went to Massachusetts General for lung surgery. A harried nurse took the time to get to know him and went out of her way to reassure him that someone in that cold sterile hospital cared about him, an act of kindness that, he said, "made the unbearable, bearable." As a result, when he died, his will directed a bequest to the hospital, which established an annual Compassionate Caregiver Award to honor medical staff members who show extraordinary kindness in caring for patients.

Today's call centers suffer from customer churn and employee churn. Counting the number of calls and average call time just because they are easy to count is wrong. It costs in lost customers, lost employees and the loss of your company's hard-won reputation. Is your call center guilty of robotic misapplication of industry benchmarks and metrics that might not apply to your unique customers? What might be inadvertently happening call by call everyday in your call center that erodes the hard-won trust of your customers?

Apply the "people prescription" and provide meaning and mission to employees. It's about time we truly earned customer trust. Demand technology that furthers this goal. Your customers will be delighted, and they'll tell their friends and colleagues. Isn't that what business and ROI is all about?

Blog footnote: Read Daniel Goleman's book Social Intelligence - its a must read for all interested in Social Networking http://www.amazon.com/Social-Intelligence-Science-Human-Relationships/dp/0553803522/sr=8-1/qid=1169801278/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-9933075-4666238?ie=UTF8&s=books

How to calculate the ROI of Blogging, and skypecast on social networking Jan 26

Forrester has published a report providing an approach to calculating the Return on investment on blogging. At his Micro Persusasion blog, Steve Rubel has given us a neat summary complete with table. The simple description of this approach is:

Take the cost of other means of creating the buzz, the pr awareness or the marketing outcome and use that cost as the number to assign as the "value of the blogging".

The ROI or return on investment is: Value of the blogging divided by the actual cost of having the blog

It's a start.

Lots more thinking to come about how to evaluate new media and social networking.

For my money, lifecycle valuation is the most complete approach to ROI. Any point ROI calculation ends up being a justification for an intuition someone has about what is the right thing to do. In the end, its the series of interactions over the lifecycle of the relationship that really make the relationship valuable. Activity Based Costing and Revenue forecasting is critical for getting this stuff right.


Upcoming event Jan 26 2 pm ET
that you might find interesting on social networking and community

Shared Insights starting a Skypecast series focused on leading companies leveraging community and social networks to improve their business. The inaugural Skypecast will be this Friday, January 26 at 2pm ET/11am PT:

Sylvia Marino, the executive director for CarSpace at Edmunds who oversees all aspects of design, features, business operations and strategy for CarSpace, the online automotive social network for car and truck enthusiasts. She is responsible for all consumer-generated content and interaction on three web sites that make up the Edmunds Automotive Network: Edmunds.com, Inside Line and CarSpace.

Join by going to: https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=294081 at 2pm ET/11am PT and clicking on “join this Skypecast.”

Must have a Skype account to join the conference!

The Skypecast will be recorded and posted on this site.

Visit the "News/Press" section of the Community 2.0 Conference site http://community2con.com regularly for a schedule of upcoming Skypecasts leading up to the event.

The History of Civilization in Seven Words

More People Pooling Resources In New Ways

These are the 7 words summing up the history of civilization. I was reminded of this remark quoted in Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold, when I read Gerry McGovern's latest newsletter "The Web is the Organization" - this is a spin on the Sun MicroSystem tagline "The Network is the Computer". I don't know that I agree with Gerry McG's title, but he is reflecting the history of civilization summarized in these seven words, when he says: (I've created a collage from the words in his article)


"The Web has become the organization.

...a billion people with a billion things to say....a million ways to work together.

The ability to organize is .....the basis of civilization....

The Web allows for new forms of organization....

(having) a profound impact on how we live, work and play ...

Today, your office can be at Starbucks....

....work with your team using Skype....

....delivered to the highest standards without any fulltime employees;

This is a new way of working. This is different.

.......

We don't need to be told what is cool.....

We decide. ....

We vote by visiting one website more than another,

by watching one video more than another,

by rating one book or song higher than another.

And we like it that way, and we trust each other.


According to the 2006 Edelman Trust Barometer:

• Trust in the Web as a source of information is growing, while
trust in TV is declining.

• Employees are more trusted as spokespersons for an
organization than CEOs.

• "A person like me" is more trusted than doctors, academics and
other such experts.

In the U.S., trust in "a person like me" has shown a dramatic increase from just 20 percent in 2003 to 68 percent in 2006. "


End of extended quote from Gerry McGovern's newsletter
Content management solutions: Gerry McGovern http://www.gerrymcgovern.com

Earlier this week, I wrote about the announcement by Apple Inc. of their iPhone - it continues to be a great example of the trust in "a person like me" as individuals comment and blog by the thousand on the web about the upcoming product

CRM 2.0 is going to be the most profitable concept for pioneering companies, like, for example Apple Inc.

You know that idea of getting customers help to design your product....

Apple Inc. is going to be the guinea pig and already it looks like its an amazingly brilliant and profitable idea.


Well with the "iPhone" annnounced by Steve Jobs this week, over the next 6 months, you are going to watch the first customer-designed product that is created by millions of people, 1000's of experts, 100's of pundits and dozens and dozens of journalists from around the world in specialized fields. And Apple will get all of this market research, feedback, good, bad, well thought out, ill thought out, whatever...... FOR FREE, before they have invested in manufacturing set up, committed to final features, etc etc. Imagine the free PR, marketing, intensity of anticipation, the backlog of excitement..... PRICELESS!

Just take a look at this blog about the iPhone....

The Apple iPhone debate by ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes -- The blogosphere's went wild with opinion, comments and fears about Apple's iPhone, but a lot of it was ill thought-out. In this post I aim to take a more objective look at the iPhone.

And just in case it isn't enough, look at Steve Job's strategic use of controversy:

Hey, have you heard? Cisco's decided to sue Apple over the use of the name iPhone

The settlement is going to be less than what they'd have had to spend to get equivalent advertising....at this rate, they are going to get the noun iPhone right smack into a listing in both Websters and the Oxford English Dictionary before the end of the 2008

And they both win:
The Cisco and Apple names keep front and center in the press for as long as the controversy keeps going.

Have you thought about how you and your organization are going to develop your CRM 2.0 skills?


It's a whole new world out there!

Thought for the day

Life is an upstream, not an uphill, battle, and it results in just one story:

How and alongside whom, one used his (her) paddle

Walter Kirn



After all the Trendwatching, this piece of prose that seemed particularly apropos.

From Walter Kirn's review of Prime Green, the diaries of Robert Stone. in the New York Times Book Review Sunday January 7 2007

Customer Connection Trends to watch for 2007 - all by courtesy of Trendwatchers.com

Back to business - what a different world is being born. I've "cut and pasted" and summarized a great report from Trendwatching.com - they have their finger on the pulse in the birthing room. Here's the highlights and links to examples.

TRANSIENT LIFESTYLES

Attractive to consumers driven by experiences instead of the fixed, by entertainment, by discovery, by fighting boredom, who increasingly live a transient lifestyle, freeing themselves from the hassles of permanent ownership and possessions.

PARTICIPATIVE LIFESTYLES

For these creatives, status comes from finding an appreciative audience…. it's becoming increasingly important to hone one's creative skills. Status symbols, make way for STATUS SKILLS? E.g.: Nespresso’s AAA Campus.

CONNECTING LIFESTYLES

From networking sites to buddy lists to meetup.org to a boom in members-only clubs, social status 2.0 is all about who you connect to and who wants to connect to you, tribal-style. CONNECTING LIFESTYLES is a subset of

ONLINE LIFESTYLES, which encompasses everything from status gained from the number of views for one’s photos on Flickr, the real estate one owns in Second Life, to the good looks (and outfit) of one’s avatar. E.g. Trendwatcher's YOUNIVERSAL BRANDING briefing.

ECO-LIFESTYLES

Status from leading an eco-responsible lifestyle is both more readily available, and increasing in value. A substantial subset of consumers is already bestowing recognition and praise on Prius drivers while scorning SUV owners. See top 10 eco & sustainability ideas).

TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY 1+ billion consumers are now online, and the majority of them have been online for years. They're skilled bargain seekers and ‘best of the best’ hunters, they're avid online networkers and they're opinionated reviewers and advisors (tripadvisor.com now boasts 5,000,000+ travel reviews).

As camera and video phones are becoming both ubiquitous and more powerful, reviews of anything and everything will go multimedia. EVERYTHING brands do or don’t do will end up on youtube.com, or a clone to be born which could be dedicated to product reviews.

, Consumer reviews will increasingly become real time and on the spot, i.e. expect ever shorter gaps between a consumer experience (good or bad) and the rest of the world knowing about it. Oh, and those web-enabled phones will also come in handy for in-store price comparisons; check amazon.co.jp a bit of inspiration.

Real-time TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY daily and hourly reviews on any topic imaginable.

PROFILE MANIA the missing link in the above is profiles: Expect a host of new TWINSUMER ventures to monetize collaborative filtering and profile matching in 2007, most likely by partnering with sites that are already centered around profiles, like MySpace and Bebo.com. Collaborative filtering and profile matching ranges from social shopping (check out Crowdstorm, ThisNext and Stylehive on Springwise) to the Last.fms and Yoonos of this world. Expect more niche price comparison sites like Red Roller, which compares shipping prices for small businesses.

Web N+1 Educate yourself about as many WEB N+1s as you can. Quick tip: start by (re)reading everything by Kevin Kelly, who has been correct in predicting the Next Big Online Thing over and over again. When it comes to the shift from offline to online, the predications are out there, we haven’t seen anything yet, and you have no excuse not to know about it. * Web N+1 was cleverly coined by Steven Pemberton.

TRYSUMERS: “Freed from the shackles of convention and scarcity, immune to most advertising, and enjoying full access to information, reviews, and navigation, experienced consumers are trying out new appliances, new services, new flavors, new authors, new destinations, new artists, new relationships, new *anything* with post mass-market gusto.”

Trying out and sampling is the new advertising. An entire TRYVERTISING infrastructure, from 30 second samples on iTunes to firms specializing in relevant product placement is now in place, enabling consumers to try before they buy. “introducing yourself and your products by letting people experience and try them out first, is a very civilized and effective way to show some respect.’’ Amen. And Trendwatchers walks the talk, you can sign up for regular Trend briefings yourself for free at their site. www.trendwatching.com/trends/2007top5.htm

Global C2C infrastructure is now in place, from eBay to classifieds, enabling (or even encouraging) TRYSUMERS to quickly dispose of what's no longer needed. From Daniel Nissanoff, author of FutureShop: "An interesting phenomenon that somebody shared with me was that, as eBay began to grow, people began to buy musical instruments, especially guitars, much more frequently, because they weren't as worried about taking up the wrong instrument or buying the wrong instrument and getting stuck with it. The auction culture is beginning to empower the consumer to reach because they can afford better items since they're not paying the whole ticket for them. They know there's going to be residual value at the end of the day and they're willing to take more chances because they know there's an exit if they made a mistake." (Source: Daniel Nissanoff interviewed by Tom Peters.)

THE GLOBAL BRAIN: all of the world’s intelligence and experience, fully networked, incorporating not only the usual suspects like gurus, professors and scientists, but the experiences and skills of hundreds of millions of smart consumers as well. With the 'shortage of talent' that every brand on every continent seems to fear in 2007, expect many corporations, small and big, to aggressively court the 1% of most creative and experienced individuals roaming the globe.

Which Superhero are you?

Happy New Year everyone!

Here's a fun thing to find out which superhero you would be if you were a superhero.

As you can see, I found out that Wonder Woman is where my choices lead me.

Pretty neat.

Have fun in 2007

Mei Lin



Your results:
You are Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman 83% Green Lantern 80% Hulk 70% Iron Man 65% Superman 65% Spider-Man 60% The Flash 60% Supergirl 58% Robin 50% Catwoman 40% Batman 20%

You are a beautiful princess with great strength of character.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test



Oh, there's more serious stuff.........


We're working on a new definition of Customer Relationship Management at the behest of Paul Greenberg who tells you all about it in his blog and how to get involved in PBWiki - or the Peanut Butter Sandwich Wiki

http://www.the56group.typepad.com

touch the earth

Read this book -

One of the wondeful things about the work I am doing in Oklahoma is getting imbued with the Native American spirit.

The book Touch the Earth is available used for 64 cents on Amazon

The native American spirit has so much we can learn from, the oratory is magnificent, the sense of belonging to the earth is so deep.


Read this book to learn about Oratory, about the native American spirit that has the power to bring back to life the heart of business - which is about

CONNECTING with each other to enable a better future for all.


Here are some words that touched me:

In writing to the powerful who had chased them from their lands, to George Washington when he was President

"We know that you are strong
we have heard that you are wise
and now we wait to receive your answer to what we have said
that we may know if you are just."


Black Hawk to General H. Atkinson, 1833 who had captured him and held him prisoner till his death, in his dedication to the general of Black Hawks autobiography

"I am now an obscure member of a nation that formerly honored and respected my opinions. The path to glory is rough and many gloomy hours obscure it.

May the Great Spirit shed light on yours -

and may you never experience the humilty that the power of the American government has reduced me to,
is the wish of him, who in his native forests
was once as proud and bold as yourself."

The Space of Possibility

Karen-Claire Voss is a voice I've just discovered by courtesy of Shelley Mitchell. I've written of Shelley in an earlier blog - she is the founder of The Actors Center of San Francisco and gained fame and kudos for her one woman performance of Talking with Angels. Shelley embodies the roots of acting as the act of communication between human beings. Her performance of Talking with Angels showcases what acting can be at its very best: communicating via heart, body and soul.

We have so much to learn from this meaning of the craft of acting.

Contrast that to the term "Customer intimacy" as its used in business today.

Can we really take that to mean that a business is really committed to developing authentic meaningful relationships with their customers?

Acting has suffered from the same deterioration in meaning.

From a supreme act of communication, acting now conjures up images of "faking it" "emotional manipulation"

We in business must be careful when we use terms like customer intimacy that there is genuine intent and real operational heft supporting such a claim.

'Ware! A customer tricked is a customer lost.


Now, back to Karen-Claire Voss who speaks wisely from Istanbul, Turkey having survived the wilds of Berkeley "methodolatory". She calls us to action to search for a world of joy and adventure; She sees the university as a space of possibility: (I have interjected spacing and bolding on her original words found at the link above)

"All thinking men and women,
whether directly involved with education or not,
need to make a conscious effort
to rediscover the vision of education
as a process characterized
not only by rigor, but by wonder;
not only by closing, but by opening.

Far from being a romantic, irrelevant fantasy,
this vision is critically important.
Without it, all of us inevitably lose sight of what real education means.

....developing countries like Turkey, Rumania, and the former Soviet Union....particularly (poignantly, painfully)
susceptible to being seduced by an image of education
as the mere acquisition of technical skills of one sort or another
...thinking of the gathering, classification and organization of data
as being the same as .... the seeking of wisdom
....the mere fact of complexity as being the same as quality"

For more on Karen-Claire Voss see http://istanbul-yes-istanbul.co.uk/index.html
For more on Shelley Mitchell see http://www.shelleymitchell.org/

Putting the Patient in the Picture

I've been writing for CRMGuru since 1998 when it was called CRMTalk, a wonderful community emerged out of that interchange and grew into the Guru thing. My involvement with CRMGuru has been very valuable in teaching me to write and communicate better. This article just came out today - I had interviewed Joel Berman right after he was the star of the Health Information Management Systems Society Conference 2006 in San Diego. He showed us all what was possible in medicine when technology is applied right. I felt the lessons shown there deserved a wider audience outside of the healthcare world and wrote about it for CRMGuru. The full article is posted below. Many thanks to Gwynne Young Managing Editor at CRMGuru.com for great work in slimming it down while bulking up the muscle in content and value. I hope you'll agree! If you do, or if you don't - let me know! It's you I write for!


Nov. 13, 2006
Advances in Customer Management in Health Put the Patient in the Picture


By Mei Lin Fung, www.CIEInstitute.com

Mary Howard (not her real name), 75 years old, went to see her doctor, Joel Berman, M.D. Howard had a case of the shingles, and Berman offered the standard treatment, antiviral and steroid medicines. As Berman related to me in February 2006, after his presentation at the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society Conference in San Diego, California, his patient then told him, "I had a very bad reaction to the steroid last time. I couldn't sleep, and it made me very nervous. How important is it?"

Together, they looked it up on the computer. Through instant, side-by-side use of information technology, Berman reinforced patient responsibility for her health. He supported Howard, and together after considering several with their differing effects, chose a medicine that did not include steroids. With a sense of control over her destiny, Howard took the prescribed course of treatment, and the shingles subsided without the nervousness surfacing even once.

Together, doctor and patient are using IT to achieve her well-being to the best of their joint knowledge.

Berman, the doctor in this case, is a leading pioneer in the enlightened use of electronic health records in health service delivery. He practices at Capital Region Healthcare, which serves 125,000 people living around Concord, New Hampshire.

We're entering a new era of health, with more and more medical practitioners adopting the use of electronic health records, under a timeline mandated by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. Although there is no deadline, the agency is indicating that Medicare payments will be linked to conversion to an electronic system.

A sea of forms
Before fall of 2000, when his office moved to Electronic Medical Records to maintain digital records for the history of patients' visits, vital signs records, medications, immunizations and laboratory reports, Berman told me he "was drowning in a paper world."

"In 1998-'99, I couldn't find charts. X-rays [were] misfiled. I had to come in early every day just to find the charts and proper paperwork for the patients I was scheduled to meet that day," he said.

The most sophisticated EMRs even track the health outcomes and the evidence for decisions made.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

‘Berman told me he 'was drowning in a paper world.'’

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Capital Region Healthcare gradually built 700 electronic forms on seven different servers that had no enterprise-wide coordination and were often duplicative and inefficient. In 2003, Berman's office first began to cull and consolidate the forms, to create a limited number of standardized "smart forms" with built-in decision support.

Berman became a champion of using technology to accelerate patient health improvement and simultaneously improve the well-being of doctors and nurses. In the process, he learned the value of capturing data in a structured way. As he said, "The real power is in its application as a database. ... You can't just put it in as text. We must put it in the right field, so that later one can find [for instance] what percentage of diabetics have foot problems."

What Berman found is that the EMR application offered prompts and reports to doctors that supported the doctor-patient relationship. Data was input in a manner that increased the importance of the doctor-patient relationship. The vision of health service delivery extended well beyond EMR, vitally incorporating key measures of patient health improvement.

Berman worked with Capital Region to re-design the EMR to organize the prompts so that they supported, rather than interfered with, the doctor-patient relationship. It was only after the other doctors could see that IT was helping them that they put effort into inputting data, which, being structured, could later be analyzed to help tie outcomes to patterns of intervention.

Berman has shown that EMR can be patient-centric and can support health practitioners like himself who say, in Berman's words, that "the real art of medicine is in the conversations we have with our patients" (from Silo Practice to Collaborative Care, a slide show by Joel Berman, available at http://www.emr.msu.edu/Documents/chug_2005_fall/pdf/berman_silo_practice_to_collab_care.pdf).

Berman's presentation at that 2006 Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society Conference was a revelation to the large crowd who came to hear it. Afterward, the questions from listeners were full of praise and intent on understanding how he had pulled off the incredible task of having the physicians lead the way back to patient-centered healthcare.

Representatives from Medicare indicated interest in collaborating to spread the success of his approach more widely.

Common metrics
The group practice agreed on common metrics for all physicians, which Berman said really motivated people when colleagues found others doing a better job than them. The EMR was not just a repository; 60 physicians and nurse practitioners were measured by it and responsible for the quality of data to maintain integrity of the database. Those healthcare professionals had to, in Berman's words, "learn the proper ways to enter data into the EMR." As he said, "No one wants a bad report."

It was Berman's key insight to tie the EMR implementation to the national Diabetes Physician Recognition Program (DPRP). The connection was critical to the success of the implementation. The goal was to improve patient health and improved doctor and nurse well-being. EMR was just one of the tools to achieve that goal. Data from the EMR enabled practitioners to have a feedback loop tying outcomes to actions, which, in turn, lead to a series of corrective steps, resulting in accelerating health improvements in patients.

The strategy resulted, in the roughly two years between November 2003 and September 2005, in steep improvements in nine of the 10 metrics of DPRP. Capital Region was able to pull ahead of other physician groups in providing high quality care that supported patient responsibility for their health.

Capital Region was recognized by Diabetes Physician Recognition Program as providing higher quality care than other physician groups. That recognition meant that more doctors referred their patients to Capital Region. Not content with winning kudos in diabetes care, Capital Region is now going after recognition in the cardiac area. In February 2005, Berman's group adopted the NCQA's Heart Stroke Recognition Program as the next enterprise-wide quality initiative.

Capital Region is not alone. Information technology is improving doctor-patient relationships—and patient health.

The Department of Veterans' Affairs, for instance, is adopting a new computer program to help patients make more informed decisions about their care. The Electronic Support for Patient Decisions initiative uses customized software to provide patients with information about treatment options and standardized procedures among clinicians. The program takes physicians through the informed consent process step by step, displays educational materials about risks and benefits of procedures, generates and stores consent forms, and imports information from patient records.

It is clear that IT is leading to a new relationship between doctors and their patients in becoming partners in managing the health of the patient and improving healthcare and healthcare costs.

Technology has, Berman said, "profoundly altered the nature of my relationship with my patients in a good way. It's changed my role from know-it-all authority figure to one in which I'm a collaborator with my patients, an advisor, a coach and a guide."




Mei Lin Fung is Chief Architect of www.CIEinstitute.com, the Customer Innovation Excellence Institute, and director of www.TalkTimeAsia.com She is an expert on Customer Lifetime Value. Her focus is in creating high value and earning customer trust through highly valued customer experiences. She was an early pioneer in CRM, working with both Tom Siebel and Marc Benioff at the start of the industry. She was managing director at Wainscott Ventures, a venture capital firm with offices in New York, Washington, D.C., and the Silicon Valley. In April 2005, Fung was appointed as overseas consultant to the Contact Center and CRM Committee of the Ministry of Information Industry in China. With Lee Pui Mun Ph.D in Singapore Institute of Management, Baumin Lee, Ph.D at 95Teleweb, Beijing and Casey McNeal Ph.D., at The CIE Institute, Fung is developing Customer Innovation Excellence Certification standards and curriculum in conjunction with Oklahoma State University.




Copyright 1998-2006 CustomerThink Corporation and CRMGuru.com. All Rights Reserved.

Reprinting CRMGuru articles is generally permitted, provided you follow the CRMGuru Reprint Guidelines.

Our Greatest Fear

I attended an event on Wednesday Nov 2, organized by WCAN (We Can) Women of Color Action Network, invited by Linda Parker Pennington who was moderating a panel which included Ted Marsh - a wise man who I was very pleased to meet!

He has his own 14 levels of relationships and we look forward to seeing how we might collaborate.


He shared a poem with us - which I thought was wonderful and so I'm sharing it with you

Our Greatest Fear
by Marianne Williamson from her book “A Return to Love”
Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles


Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate,
but that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some; it is in everyone.

And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give
other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.



Do not commit the sin of omission: Let your own light shine!

May I let my own light shine!

the Undiluted Voice of the Customer

Businesses are spending their money on "the voice of the customer", trying to hear what it is their customers want.

But do they want to hear it?

Not really because it can expose their phony practices being deployed in expensive marketing and sales campaigns.

Look at the recent article on the link above: Distorted medical testing

"The results from all the (medical) tests GAO purchased mislead consumers by making predictions that are medically unproven and so ambiguous that they do not provide meaningful information to consumers," says the report, without naming the sites. The tests range in price up to $400. Some companies also offer personalized prescription treatment plans costing nearly $2 grand along with the tests.

The lab test business is booming (especially for diabetes), and one of the likely factors is Big Pharma's megaspending on drug advertising. The bottom line is, talk anything over with your doctor first, and if you're trying to educate yourself, use sites like the AACC's Lab Tests Online, one of the first signatories to WebWatch's credibility campaign."

WebWatch is Consumer reports "unsponsored blog" and its one of the channels for the Undiluted voice of the customer that is publicized by Consumer reports, published by the US consumer union, evaluating products, services and websites from the point of view of the consumer.

Webwatch has great stuff that is valuable to those businesses who want to hear the real voice of the customer, who are looking to truly satisfy customers, to attract and keep them. In an area of interest to all us Internet users, Consumer Reports' State of the Net 2006 tells us: "The risks associated with using the Internet remain high." After a national survey and follow up investigation by the Consumer Reports National Research Center the worse offenders are:

SPAM - Just as bad as last year! With 50% of those surveyed experienced high levels of spam


Viruses - no better, just as hazardous and just as many problems even though fewer hit the news. 25% experienced a major problem and incurred average $109 in damage/fix costs. Estimated national cost of virus: $5.2 billion


Spyware - fewer incidents, still epidemic. One million households replaced their computers in the last 6 months because of this. 12.5% encountered the problem and spent $100 to fix, for a total national spyware damage cost of $2.6 billion


phishing - no reduction in frequency, cost increased 5 times. 1 in 115 lost money from an account that had been "phished" at an average cost of $850, totalling
$630 million in the US.


I ask myself why aren't businesses tapping more into the undiluted voice of the customer? Why spend money when Consumer Reports gives it to you for $26.00 a year.

Then the lame excuses (or answers) flow....

* Most businesses sell to other businesses, so "its not about my products or services"

my response: If you know what your customers' customers want, then you can sell better to your customers!

* We don't look at our products/services that way

my response: yep, that's why you have to pay for "voice of the customer" research so that you can be gently coaxed by therapists disguised as consultants to do what you should be doing "looking at your products and services from the point of view of the customer"

* Our management bonuses and MBO's are not based on Consumer reports ratings.

Don't you think business management Management objectives, Key Performance Indicators and bonuses SHOULD be based on customer ratings of the product and services? And if they are not, think about how that happens. Compensation games that distort rewards for true competence.


Too many KPI's and MBO's are set as part of the "compensation game" where the employee proposes (to their manager) as low as possible targets that are as reachable as possible in order to win the bonuses and promotions. And managers commit the sin of omission, mostly due to not being trained in how to set performance goals, and just accept what the employee proposes, because "they know their business best".

We have a great responsibility to competently set management performance indicators.

And we are failing today.

This is evident up through the CEO and Board levels, think of the Sarbanes Oxley law.

Do you know if your performance indicators will cause customers to trust you to perform competently and with integrity?

You should, because those are the factors that lead to customer retention and advocacy (fancy word for telling friends and colleagues).

Beware of the Voice of the Customer that has been subject to "Management Spin".

Look always for the Undiluted Voice of the Customer.

Gen X and Gen Y : To Be What I Can Be

When I first moved to the US back in 1982 before you (many of you anyway) were born, I really missed the newspapers back in Australia where I'd lived. The main reason was the lack of international news. The Boston Globe was illuminating about the US, but what about the rest of the world?

Somehow I got steered to the Christian Science Monitor and we've taken it ever since - wow, 24 years! They have great international coverage and a wonderful humanist way of looking at the world, that keep me connected to the values of community and family. I am not a Christian Scientist, but I really appreciate the good work they are doing in putting out a quality newspaper in an age of Dross. The CS Monitor and the NY Times are the 2 dailies we get. I love opening a crisp new paper in the morning.

Yesterday, Wednesday August 23, I read an opinion piece by Traci Fenton, CEO of WorldBlu Inc, a business design studio by their own description who specializes in organizational democracy. The blog link above takes you to the full article, but I'd like to highlight the insights that particularly resonated.

Did you know for example that the latest Megatrends 2010 book by Patricia Aburdene says that the search for meaning is the Number 1 Megatrend?

Well those of you living lives of quiet desperation, maybe you are not alone.

Imagine, there actually are many many many people looking to have their lives "be an expression of their sense of purpose and identity". And more and more being born every day. Gen X and Gen Y have inherited a world which might as well be run by machines, our human-ness is so little taken into account, that the search for meaning has become paramount.

And these Gen X and Gen Y they are our customers.

And the Gen X and Gen Y are inside companies working to attract and retain customers.

We can't service and "sell" to them in ways that do not reflect their priorities.

Traci Fenton described some characteristics of organizations which would reflect the priorities of Gen X and Gen Y. How would such organizations go about attracting and retaining customers? Would you prefer to buy from one of these or not?

What do you think of this list of 10? A riff on Traci's

1. Get Naked - Open Transparent, Authentic
2. Dialogue and Collaborate - Not monologue and dysfunction
3. Everyone is a Somebody - No one is a grunting nobody
4. Purpose-filled organizations - That people are proud to belong to
5. Constructive Confrontation - People can bring up business issues they disagree about. You can agree to disagree. But once decision is made, everyone supports it.
6. Not a Cog - People are recognized for what they can be, what they can contribute
7. Choices Abound - Dictators Not allowed.
8. Freedom takes discipline. Integrity R Us. Modeled from the top and the bottom.
9. It's about Me: What I can be, how I can improve, how I can contribute to the organization adn community
10. Its an amoeba - not a pyramid, operating from rules that respect individuals and effective action.


Given this, how can we prepare ourselves to work in the kinds of organizations that are emerging? To attract and nurture customers who will stay with us, when the customers are looking for very different things from earlier generations?

Well, I've been pondering this, and here's the first experimental workshop we've come up with.

To Be What I Can Be by Shelley Mitchell that is planned for Singapore and San Francisco in the remainder of the year.


“To Be What I Can Be”

A Master Class for Non-Actors by Shelley Mitchell www.shelleymitchell.org


to be nobody but yourself
in a world which is doing its best
night and day to make you like everybody else,
means to fight the hardest battle
that any human being can fight
and to never stop fighting
e.e. cummings



Public speaking, the act of one human being speaking in front of others, has been practiced throughout the 40,000 years of humans living in groups. For 39,500 of those years, speaking has been in about understanding the meaning of our lives, for healing, for ritual, for assisting with the passages of life, from child to adolescent to adult to parent to community participant to elder.

Acting as pure entertainment is only 500 years old. Before that, acting, public speaking was done in religious contexts and agricultural and hunting rituals. Acting only in relation to banishing boredom and emptiness is new. In the past, its been about searching for meaning in human life.

This master class will expose you to the ancient pursuit by actors and public speakers to stand up and do something meaningful and mutually beneficial. Why should it matter to you?

In today’s industrialized world we all suffer from media pollution, over-exposure to bad acting and bad speaking. Lee Strasberg, artistic director of the Actors Studio, has spoken out in his 1970s Encyclopedia Britanica article on Acting, against the utterly artificial tones of the early radio and tv broadcasters. Through public media, now people unconsciously imitate this sound to seem ‘super’ efficient in their daily lives on and the telephone because they have learned a speech pattern created by bad acting!

To be what you can be, you must learn to communicate from yourself. To do what real actors do.

There’s a sweet spot to aim for: A combination of moment-to-moment presence and one’s self.

Being attentive to the present moment and what is happening around you,

Being in touch with yourself , which supplies the big idea, the force of what it is that you are communicating in that moment.

Only 8 % is communicated by the words you say. The rest is in body language and the tone of your voice. Imagine if the words you speak have nothing to say, after all its only 8% of the message. By working from the inside-out Actors learn to harmoniously send the message with everything they do, how they move, the sound of their voice, where their eyes look from one moment to the next, the set of their chin, the tilt of the head is all intuitively informed when they accept what ‘is’ in the moment and in themself.

We must wake to our own lives, before we can act.

Just like a runner eats the right food to run,
Take time to learn and understand the stuff that feeds our souls
So that we can communicate.

This master class specially designed for non-actors will give you the headstart to

Be What You Can Be.



Shelley has been working her whole life to contribute this master class to the world.

About Shelley:

Shelley Mitchell who trained for 4 years under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York City. In the US if you have watched the television program 'Inside the Actors Studio' you are probably familiar with the techniques associated with Method Acting and the way in which professional actors talk about their craft: a synthesis of mind, body, emotions and spirit.

The 'Method' originated around 1900 with techniques pioneered by Russian actor/director Constantine Stanislavsky. It was subsequently developed in America in the Group Theater of the 1930's and at the Actors Studio, both under the direction of Lee Strasberg, one of the most influential acting teachers of the 20th century.

The impact of Stanislavsky, Method Acting, Strasberg, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, the Actors Studio, Ute Hagen or whatever else you want to call it, in YOUR life is enormous...even if you don't know it! Why? Because for the last 60 years every serious actor or actress in the film industry has been aspiring towards the standard set by Brando, James Dean, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and Marilyn Monroe icons of 'Method Acting' and the Actors Studio.

Who are some actors who've taken a shine to 'Method' acting'?-

Angelina Jolie Charleze Theron
Al Pacino Sally Field
Johnny Depp Sean Penn
Marilyn Monroe James Dean
Marlon Brando Anthony Hopkins
Jude Law Sienna Miller
Dustin Hoffman Joan Chen

Shelley's work is very definite, very sound, very detailed... -LEE STRASBERG

"My studies with Shelley have been life-changing -- not to change anything about me, but to discover and embrace the essence of who I am as an individual. While the deeper connection with my self has freed me to be creative on stage, it has as much been so positive in my personal and business relationships."

Rex Ishibashi, major consultant to many startups in the San Francisco Bay Area

Relationships keep us Honest - The Seven Levels of Relationship

Last week I read a book about personal relationships - I was intrigued by the title "Seven Levels of Intimacy" by Matthew Kelly, published by Beacon Publishing.

I had expected to see similarities and analogies, in fact, picked up the book hoping to get a fresh perspective on customer connections.

Still I was surprised about how much there is in common between personal relationships and business relationships. The title of this post is a quote from the book. Basically, the story about relationships is that relationships are about stories about people. Over time, our stories might change as our perspectives and priorities change. But our relationships with people who knew us in the past mean that they know the stories of our past, and as we evolve, the people we knew, help to keep us honest, keep our stories straight even for ourselves.


So with due acknowledgement to Matthew Kelly's classification, here's a postulation of the Seven Levels of Customer Relationship

Level 1 - The Encounter

For a business, this is "Customer Acquisition" and involves welcoming and engaging the interest of a prospective customer

For a customer, this stage is "First Impression" and involves working out whether or not to spend time to get to know the business, finding out whether the business can or cannot provide something of value

Level 1 is characterized by predictable behaviour on the part of both the business and customer, a series of transactions that may or may not be the beginning of a relationship

Level 2 - An Exchange of Facts

The business tries to find out if the customer is really serious about buying something they have to offer, if the customer has a need that the business can fulfil.

The customer tries to find out if the business can fulfil a current need

Level 2 encompasses the exchange of facts that determine whether or not both parties decide to move to the next level of relationship, the exchange of facts beyond the concrete parameters "I can deliver this by..." "I will need it delivered by.."

It is at this level that the words used by each party are very important as an indication of whether or not there is enough common ground, enough common perspective to move to a higher level of communication, to reveal information that will help make a deal.


Level 3 - Exchange of Opinions

The business starts to go beyond sharing factual capabilities, but begins to describe "why we are in business, why we would make a good partner"

The customer expands on what they need beyond the delivery of the goods or services - what the selection criteria might be that goes beyond the first transaction

At Level 3, both parties are starting to invest more of themselves in the exchange. The information shared at this stage is generally not freely shared at the beginning of the relationship, a degree of trust has been built up that both parties believe the other is likely to be receptive and react positively to the exchange of opinions at this stage.

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Relationships only go up to the next level if both parties are ready and willing. Sometimes they fall back a level or two, if the expectations of one or both parties are not met at the higher level. It is possible to recover a fallen relationship after time has passed, whether this happens or not, depends on how important the relationship is to party who makes the first move to recovery.
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Level 4 - The "We have a dream" stage....The stage of Common Purpose

When two parties come together, its because both parties get value out of having the relationship. The business gets the opportunity to get paid more than it cost to product the good or service. The customer gets the opportunity to gain more value than the price paid.

At Level 4, a sense of common purpose is achieved where both parties see that each benefits from the relationship, and the opportunity to transact will bring concrete benefits to both the business and the customer.

The "We have a dream" stage usually also involves "Delayed Gratification", the first few transactions are usually less valuable than the ones in the future.

Both sides invest in the initial transactions knowing that the payoff to the relationship comes over time, as each learn more about the other, and build a sense of shared purpose. The relationship begins to shift from adversarial to collaborative. Its not just about Win/Lose on Price anymore, but Win/Win becomes more important as the relationship bears richer fruit over time. The business and the customer help each other out in ways that would not have been possible at the beginning of the relationship.


Level 5 - The stage of Innovation, of taking Risks together

The relationship can expand to provide more value to both parties, mutual innovation, mutual learning provides gains that were not possible before.

The customer begins to depend on the business - this only happens as trust deepens

The business begins to depend on the customer - to grow the business, to expand in new ways

At this stage, Listening Carefully and Clearly are Critical skills for both sides.

Avoid the Dialogue of the Deaf!


Level 6 - The Honest Authentic Stage or the "I need help" stage

The business and customer have reached a stage of trust and acceptance of each other as dependable, trusted partners who will take risks for each other. Only then, are they able to move to the next stage of actually being ready to confess "I need help" or be willing to willingly admit fault and error knowing that the relationship is strong enough to be fully authentic with each other.


Level 7 - The Stage of "The Best Possible Version"

At this stage, both the business and the customer wish for and want the best possible version of each other. Both seek to help the other fulfil their potential, because both benefit from this fulfilment.

In CRM, people have called this, from the business perspective: Customer Asset Portfolio Management, where the business tries to maximize the customers considered as assets to the enterprise.

From the customer perspective, this has never (to my knowledge) been described, but you could call it "Supplier Asset Portfolio Management" - which is for a customer to manage the set of businesses that the customer depends on, so that each supplier provides the best possible set of services for the customer.

When a supplier knows that the customer wishes for the supplier to be the best possible supplier, they are more likely to fulfil that expectation.

When a customer knows that the supplier wants to provide services that will help the customer be the best possible version of the customer, then the whole game has shifted away from a Zero Sum game (I win, you lose) to a Positive Sum game (You win, I win) which expands the value for both sides.


What do you think? Does this describe levels of business relationships or not?