Customer Service Conundrums 2

Ok, so I am back again with more thoughts on customer service and the desperate need for improved training here in China. And, for this entry, I want to keep things simple, to focus on the basics.

As I write this blog, I am watching an LCD screen on subway line 10 in Beijing. The video that is playing is of an Olympic volunteer helping a disabled spectator to visit the Bird's Nest stadium. The sentiment in the video is wonderful. The volunteer helps the man into a specially modified vehicle using a state of the art chair-lift. She then helps him out of the vehicle again at the stadium and directs him to a wheelchair accessible entrance. The video then closes with the disabled man sat waving a mini Chinese flag. It all sounds lovely doesn't it? However, I have to doubt its realism.

Let me recount my own Olympic customer service experience. And, then let's contrast the two. During the recent National Day holiday, my girlfriend and I took a short trip to Beijing. One of our aims was to visit the Bird's Nest and Water Cube. The plan was simple. We wanted to arrive late in the afternoon so that we could see the stadia both in daylight and then illuminated at night. To me, this did not seem like an outrageous expectation. Unfortunately, I could not have been more wrong.

Our problems started when we tried to transfer from line 10 to line 8, which would supposedly take us straight to the Olympic arena. However, security in the station would not let us change trains without tickets for the center. As we did not have tickets, we asked where we could obtain them The guard said that he did not know, but that we could not transfer lines.

Unable to find any help, we moved outside in an effort to locate some tickets. We found several Olympic volunteers bedecked in their now famous blue shirts, but still no solution. Enquiring in both Chinese and English, we were not told where we could find the tickets, only that they did not have any. It took trips to three booths and conversations with nine separate volunteers to finally discover that tickets were limited and there were none remaining. In the end, the closest we got to the stadia was snapping pictures from across the fence.

Our experience was frustrating. Primarily, this was because we could not see the the two arenas. However, I must admit that I was also irked by the fact even though there was a large display of customer service, lots of smiles and plenty of enthusiasm, there was not actually that much help.

Personally, I believe this to be a major trend in customer service here in China. Many organisations seem to be keen to invest in customer service, but on a slightly more superficial rather than practical level. They want to show they care, they want to show they have the staff to help, but they do not provide the practical training to make their staff effective. Let me give you two examples I have encountered in Tianjin in which an organisation made an effort, but where their training - or lack of - had rendered this useless.

The first is my local Wal-Mart, a place that continuously seems to push customer service boundaries .... in a bad way! Let me paint you a typical scenario. After filling my trolley with shopping, I move to the cashier. Unfortunately, there is a huge line of people and only a few open checkouts. However, standing around holding walkie-talkies and taking inventory are scores of other employees. When I ask what they are doing or if they could open some more checkouts, they stare at me and tell me that is not their job or they are not trained to do that. This situation always leaves me perplexed and incredibly frustrated. Wal-Mart is clearly making an investment in customer service, but not at the most basic, most critical level. There are posters around the store advertising various services, there are staff waiting at the entrance to welcome shoppers and there are staff giving away free samples. All of this is nice, but none of it is necessary. Yet, having enough people at the checkout is vital, but ignored.

The second example is the Tianjin BMT (Binhai Mass Transit) - a light rail system that operates between Tianjin and TEDA. Last week, I was on my way back downtown after training in TEDA, and, I was in a hurry. I rushed into the station, bought my ticket and headed to the entrance. The next train was about to leave. I pushed my ticket into the slot. However, instead of the small gates opening, it spat my ticket back out, remaining firmly closed. I tried again, but got the same result. So, I moved to the next entrance, still no luck. All the while I was doing this, an attendant looked on passively. After my third failure, I turned to her for help. She stood, stared and shrugged. As I glared at her and began to shout, she eventually sprang into life, taking my ticket and exchanging it for one that worked. Much to my dismay, this took some time and, before I had a new working ticket my train left. I was fuming.

This was poor service, which, on its one, was not unusual. It was the events that followed which grabbed my attention. The next train left 15 minutes later. When it did, one of the attendants - in full dress uniform - saluted as though it were a visiting foreign dignitary. This then happened at every station along the route back to Tianjin. I began to wonder, if Binhai Mass Transit was prepared to go to such lengths to create a good impression, surely they could have spent a few moments training their staff how to operate an essential piece of machinery.

The BMT's slogan is "Speed Brings Efficiency". As I read it, I wanted to find a staff member and yell at them, "No! Training your staff in the basic skills of their job brings efficiency." It does not matter how fast the train is, if the staff cannot help the passengers.

Mr Turnover

As I am not a HR manager, I do not encounter the rampant turnover that characterises China's 'war for talent'. So, how do I know it exists, how do I know the war is raging. Well, first, by talking to HR managers across northern China and asking about their challenges. Second, by following the media and by reading surveys from major organisations like Hudson and McKinsey to understand major employment trends. Just recently though, I encountered a third way - I met Mr Turnover.

Obviously, Mr Turnover was not actually his name. He was actually called Mr Zhang. I met him at an event in Tianjin. It was just that he epitomised everything about the 'war for talent'. He graduated in 2003 and in the time since, he had got through six different roles. That's it count them, six! When he told me, I was dumbfounded. 2003 was one year after I graduated. In the same period, I have had three major roles, which I would actually consider a little excessive.

I must admit, I had read countless surveys and spoken hundreds of HR managers, all of which told me turnover in China is rampant. Yet, I had never seen a living breathing example quite like Mr Zhang. Because of this, I was keen to pick his brains.

My first question was a simple one, "Why?". Was there some fundamental underlying reason that he moved between roles? Was he so greedy that he whenever he caught a sniff of more money he could not jump ship fast enough? Did he have one particular skill that no-one else in China possesses that makes him a unbelievably hot commodity? Were the organisations he worked previously so bad at engaging their employees that he felt compelled to leave?

As always, the situation was not as simple as any one basic reason. It was as though Mr Zhang was a microcosm for China as a whole. His reasons for moving were a mixture of push and pull factors. He was well-qualified in a highly sought after field, which meant that organisations were keen to tempt him away. "Headhunters are always on the phone offering more money", he pointed out. He was, though, quick to add, "It's not just about the money. At two of the companies I only lasted around three months. This was not financial, I just did not like the atmosphere or environment."

And, what of his current job? Was he ready to make it number 7? "No, not at all. The salary is good, I feel very comfortable with my colleagues and they offer great training."

My conversation with Mr Turnover was fascinating. It certainly confirmed that China's 'war for talent' is a complex issue for which there is no quick fix.

Higher Education Inflation

For this blog entry, I would like to tell you about the start of my career. Specifically, I would like to tell you the story of my first full-time role after graduating from university.

It was 2002 and I had just graduated from the University of Hull. After spending four years in academia, I was keen to cut my teeth in the real world. Having finished with a good degree I was expecting to find a well-paid challenging job within a prestigious organisation. I figured this would be no problem. Unfortunately, I was wrong. You see in the late 1990s and early 2000s university enrolment in the UK increased dramatically, just as it has in China in the past 5 years. This meant the UK began to experience something we could term 'higher education inflation'. Suddenly, a degree was no longer worth quite as much as before and, crucially, it no longer guaranteed a great job and a higher starting salary.

This was the situation that confronted me and many of my classmates. We were all expecting to find great jobs, but alas, there were just not enough of these for everyone. The situation was so bad that many of my friends were forced to take low-paying temporary jobs whilst they searched for the perfect role. Eventually, I was lucky enough to find something. However, it was far from being my dream job. It was a role in the sales and marketing division of a major British newspaper company. The position was not quite as senior as I was hoping and the pay was good, but not great. Therefore, I was unsure whether to take the position, but eventually, I was swayed by desire to finally end my job-search and also by the offer of a shiny company car.

The manager who hired me was named Mick Butcher. If I were to describe Mick, I would use the term 'old school'. He had been in the business for many years. Even though this meant that many of his methods were rooted in the 20th rather than the 21st century, he had quickly grasped the changes in the British job-market. He realised that for a job which previously demanded just A-Levels (qualifications taken in the UK prior to attending university), suddenly could require a degree. Mick took full advantage of this, using the shiny company cars to lure myself and two other graduates to his team.

In terms of pure recruitment, this was a master stroke. However, in the longer-term, the plan was found wanting. Fast-forward 18months and all of us had left. Why? The key reason behind this - and a fact that Mick failed to realise - was that with graduate qualifications come graduate expectations. My colleagues and I wanted training, we wanted development opportunities and we wanted the chance to earn more money. None of which we got.

So, how does my story apply to China? The clearest link is higher education inflation, which in China might better be termed better as "higher education hyper inflation". The number of graduates in China is mushrooming. This year, literally hundreds of thousands of graduates will leave university and face the prospect of not finding a job. Possibly the best example of this took place in Zhengzhou in late 2006 when a recruitment fare descended into chaos as hundreds of students stampeded in an effort to get a lead on the best roles on offer. In many respects, this situation is fantastic news. It means that (a) you will be able to fill more roles with highly-educated young people, and (b) you will have a far wider choice of candidate. However, this is only fantastic news if you manage the situation correctly. Getting your graduates aboard should be just be the beginning!

The danger for many organisations is that, because the graduate recruitment market is weighted so much in favour of employers, many companies grow complacent. After all, if there are so many graduates out there, they should be grateful for any opportunity they receive, right? Wrong! Once you have the best possible graduates on board, you need to keep them and, more importantly, you need to develop them. The crux of China's hyper inflation is that you must use it as a way of planning for the future. Currently, we have a situation where experienced talent is scarce, but determined and highly educated young potentials are plentiful. In China as a whole, this situation will not change quickly. However, for your organisation, you could speed things up.

I recently completed two different sets of training at multinationals in Tianjin, which had adopted fantastic approaches to their graduate recruitment. Both had decided to aim high, very high. They had hand-picked their graduates from some of China's top universities. As I began training these graduates, it did not take me long to realise that not only were they well-educated, but their communication skills and English levels were also fantastic. I must admit, I was surprised to meet such young employees with such ability, and I explained as much to the HR manager at one of the organisations. She replied:

"Oh yes, I know. We filtered out hundreds of candidates to find them."

"Oh, really? So you must have high hopes for them."

"Absolutely! We envisage them playing a major role in our organisation over the next ten years. I truly believe some of them will take senior management roles."

"10 years? Wow! That really is long term planning. But, with all the turnover in China right now, aren't you worried about losing them."

"Not really. We are giving them a fantastic opportunity. We plan to provide extensive training, to give the opportunity to work overseas and to enjoy very competitive financial rewards."

It was fantastic to see such a clear vision. The two organisations had certainly not fallen into the same trap as my first employer. They understood the opportunity presented to them and realised that by offering great development opportunities, they could nurture their new graduates to become future leaders. I did, though, have one final question for the HR manager:"Training, good salary and overseas travel - wont that be expensive.""Of course, but only in the short-term. To recruit senior managers is becoming outrageously expensive. In the long-run, if we can grow our own talent, this process will actually save us money!