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.

The Pied Piper of Tianjin

It was early Saturday morning and the light was just beginning to permeate through my curtains. As it was the weekend, I was looking forward to rolling over and enjoying two or three more hours of blissful slumber. Unfortunately, my plans were wrecked by a rasping voice piercing the silence from outside. In a vain effort to escape the awful din, I pulled my pillow up over my head to block out the noise. Alas, it was to no avail. So, crotchety and bleary eyed I shuffled across my bedroom floor to my window. I pulled the curtains back to see what was going on.

Beneath my apartment block is a large hair salon.Considering I lost my hair at 20, this place normally has no impact on my life whatsoever. However, on this particular Saturday, things were different. The manager was standing in the doorway of the salon holding a megaphone, screaming at his employees. The situation made me chuckle. The manager was clearly irked about something, and was making his feelings known. Unfortunately for him, his employees seemed oblivious. I could tell by their blank stares and vacant expressions that absolutely nothing was sinking in.

This leadership style is one that I have seen countless times in northern China. It is one in which managers and supervisors do not look to stimulate or motivate their teams to help generate new ideas and better performance. Instead they just expect them to blindly follow instructions. This reminded me of the old children's tale the Pied Piper of Hamlin. In this story a town in Germany is infested with rats and is desperate to remove them. So, the mayor hires a piper to play beautiful music to make the rats follow him. The piper does this and leads the rats to the river where they are all drowned. Everyone in the town was delighted. However, when the mayor refused to pay the piper, he used his music to lead all the children in the town away, just as he did with the rats.

The manager of the salon was trying to emulate the piper. Unfortunately for him, he did not have a magic flute and his staff were certainly not following him.
This is an all too common scenario in China. Too many managers believe leadership is simply about making others follow their lead. Sadly, because of this, their employees grow increasingly de-motivated. Here are a couple of examples that I have encountered:

1. My first example came when I was training staff at a major multinational in Tianjin about meeting skills. I asked how useful - on a scale of 1 to 10 - they thought their meetings were. To my surprise, I heard lots of 2s and 3s. "Why, so low?" I asked. "Our managers" they replied. "They talk, we listen. And, then, they make the decision .... We do not even need to be there."
2. The second example was a little different because the manager in question actually realised there was a problem. She was the sales manager for the DongBei office of a major multinational and was frustrated because her staff were reluctant to offer ideas and simply wanted to follow her lead - whether she was heading in the right direction or not. There were two reasons behind this (i) her predecessors followed the pied piper school of leadership and expected obedience rather than ideas from the staff, and (ii) the sales manager was imposing both in physique and personality and, as a consequence, scared her subordinates. The problem was that even though she recognised the problem, she did know how to solve it.

It took me a little time to grasp the relevance of the manager who woke me that Saturday morning - I was still pretty sleepy after all. As I am sure you will have read in my previous entries, top-quality talent is in desperately short supply here in China. The area where this shortage is most acute is in qualified managers. There is a McKinsey report that I have quoted several times in Network HR that illustrates this clearly. It found that by 2015, China would need 75,000 MBA qualified managers to ensure its continued growth. However, in 2005, it had less than 5,000. To make up this shortfall, most organisations still look away from mainland China for their managerial talent. By simply importing managerial talent, China is handicapping itself - it needs to develop homegrown talent to plug the leadership gap. China needs to put down the megaphone and major organisations need to invest in training to help develop leadership talent.

Calling a Ceasefire

So, turnover in China is spiralling seemingly out of control. Why is this? Why has a full-scale talent war broken out? In previous blogs, I touched on two of the major reasons.

China's pool of talented, skilled and experienced employees is far too shallow. Since the days of Deng Xiaoping, China has been growing, and growing fast - in each of the past six years it has enjoyed double-digit growth. On face value, this is great news. China is developing faster than any other nation in history and, as a consequence, Chinese people are enjoying far greater economic freedom. However, dig a little deeper and things get a little more complicated. Much of this growth may have been built on Chinese manpower, but talent and expertise imported from elsewhere. Even now, two decades after China first began to seriously open to foreign investment, too many multinational organisations look away from the mainland for managers and highly-skilled staff.

So - even after the economic miracle we have seen in China - why is there still a dearth of Chinese talent? This brings us to the one of the major reasons behind the war for talent. Even with talent so scarce, organisations are not doing enough to develop their existing employees. To continue our military metaphor, many organisations are developing a 'siege mentality'. They are charging into the job market with all their guns blazing to fight it out over the scraps of talent that are available. Their weapons of choice - salary, benefits and promotion.

The problem with the tactics most organisations are employing is that, ultimately, they are self-defeating. Even if they bring victory in the short-term, they serve only to prolong the conflict. For example, if an organisation manages to lure in a skilled and experienced new hire with the promise of a lofty position and bump in salary, they satisfy their immediate needs, but sew the seeds for problems further down the line. Each salary increase they offer sets a precedent for both employers and employees. The employee sees that their talents are saleable assets, they can auction off to the highest bidder. The organisation learns that if it wants talented employees, it needs to open its wallets.

To use one final ‘talent war’ metaphor, organisations need an olive branch. They need to make peace. Rather than fighting it our for one or two talented individuals, they need to develop the talent within their own team.