Yes, that’s right. Three whole weeks.

But there’s nothing more tedious than a rant about bad customer service, is there? So I’ll spare you the ins and outs of the sorry saga.

Instead, I’ll turn it [...]]]> Living in the slow lane on the information superhighway

My broadband was restored last week, after being down for three weeks.

Yes, that’s right. Three whole weeks.

But there’s nothing more tedious than a rant about bad customer service, is there? So I’ll spare you the ins and outs of the sorry saga.

Instead, I’ll turn it on its head, and tell you what it taught me about service – and about myself.

Service (without a smile)

Good service – whatever it is you do, whatever you sell – really isn’t all that difficult.

But it’s not one big thing – instead, it’s all the little things. And getting those right means having a plan, setting goals and making sure you meet them.

So if I were sharing a skinny latte with the Big Boss of my ISP, what would I tell him (or her)?

• Train your staff. Is there anything more trust-busting than being told by a second support person that the first person you spoke to was ‘new, and may have got it wrong’? Learning on the job is part of the job; learning at the customer’s expense is dangerous and damaging. So train them first, then release them into the wild.
• Tell the truth (even when you’d really rather not). The truth is your secret weapon – even when it’s bad. Hiding an embarrassing truth is worse than telling it with openness and honesty. An open-kimono approach works every time (metaphorically, you understand).
• Get your story straight (and stick to it). Do BT engineers work on Saturday and Sunday? Search me. I was told yes, then no, then maybe. Can support people talk to BT? Yes, then no. Would I get SMS updates? Yes, maybe. But not always. Not really. A simple story has a unique and winning quality – its simplicity.
• Organise your company around the customer. Yes, OK, they work shifts, and they’re sometimes off sick. And what if they get run over by a bus? Or they leave? All these things could happen, but it doesn’t mean teams can’t be organised into cells of 2-3 people who are instantly familiar with specific problems. It  means that customers don’t have to endlessly explain their problems to a new person.
• Use technology. Especially if you’re a technology company. If I can see that my friend Sally is calling on my landline, why can’t they? Better still, why can’t my incoming number fire up their database and bring up my record? And why is the database so slow (I’m just waiting for the record to come up, sir)?
• Don’t pass the buck (even internally). No, it’s not support, it’s accounts. It’s our faults department. It’s BT Wholesale. It’s BT Openreach. It’s the exchange people. It’s the call centre, you see. Your company is a blob, Mr ISP – one big blob that I see as a brand. So make sure that Blob Inc. does its stuff seamlessly.
• Be pleasant, open and helpful – even when the shells are coming in and you want to hunker down in the bunker. Smile even though you’re on the phone. And here’s a thought: listen. Pick up on the signals and ‘mirror’ the language and tone of the speaker (yes, it’s an NLP thing – and it works).
• Communicate. OK, you’re doing stuff, and the problem’s in hand. But does the customer know? If not, why not? Send a quick email, update the support ticket, let them know about that stuff. Manage their expectations, and they’ll never be disappointed.
• Don’t forget the value of existing customers. New customers are expensive and difficult to find. So why alienate existing customers needlessly? Treat them well and they’ll stay forever.
• Don’t wait until people shout – because when they’re shouting, they tend not to listen. And other people hear. Shouting is what I did in the end, when I posted a damning message in my ISP’s discussion forum (it worked).

Warts and all

So what did I learn about myself? Well quite a lot, actually. Living in the slow lane of the information superhighway wasn’t all bad.

My three weeks of subsonic internet access taught me:

• You can’t do two things at once – though super-fast broadband makes you think you can. Multi-tasking is multi-stressing, and being forced to do one thing at a time made me calmer, more focused and more organised.
• Having a backup plan, like a nuclear deterrent, gives you a warm fuzzy feeling. You know it’s there if you need it. In my case, my nuke was my Nokia, which give me reliable, if slow-ish, access to the internet, used as a modem for my PC.
• Don’t get angry at bad service. If you do, you lose twice over. And no, I’m not going to say get even instead. Just accept it for what it is, and if you’ve got a problem, focus on the resolution, not the obstacles along the way.
• Think laterally. When I was dealing with the support team, I was working in a walled garden. Worse, a soundproofed (think Truman Show) walled garden where nobody could hear my screams. When I changed tactics and shouted from the rooftops in a public forum, help materialised as if by magic, and the problem was quickly resolved. Think laterally and you beat the system.
• Take a break – from the online world, that is. Offline really isn’t that bad. You learn to slow down, read more carefully, not flit from one thing to another. You concentrate better, feel more centred and don’t feel as frazzled at the end of the day. Since my broadband came back, my browsing habits have changed. I spend less time online, and get more out of my day.

So bad service wasn’t all bad. Even forcing myself to see the positive in a very negative situation (which goes against the grain in a serial moaner, I can tell you) changed how I see things.

I even discovered that with a Starbucks card, you get free wifi. So now I’ve got another reason to go for a grande skinny decaf extra-hot wet latte.

As if I needed one.

Find out more:

• Butterfly mind. Are Twitter and Facebook affecting how we think? at the Daily Telegraph.
• Wifi with wings. Get yourself a Starbucks card and you can surf while you sip.

I just sent a PDF by email to a client. It’s password-protected – not by me, but by the person who sent it to me – and I told her so.

It’s password-protected, I wrote. Here’s [...]]]> In an age of too much information, be careful what you ask for (you might just not get it).

I just sent a PDF by email to a client. It’s password-protected – not by me, but by the person who sent it to me – and I told her so.

It’s password-protected, I wrote. Here’s the password, I wrote. It’s case-sensitive, I wrote.

A couple of minutes later, back came the reply.

It looks like it’s password-protected, she wrote. Could you let me have the password?

Sound familiar?

I’ll bet it does. In our always-on, 24×7, welcome-to-the-machine world, it’s easy to feel swamped by the deluge of data.

So we find ways around it.

I’m no exception. I’m just as guilty as anybody of skimming, scanning and hopping from one headline to the next.

But how else can you cope with the onslaught of information?

More importantly, how can you help your prospects and customers cope? Because it’s not just about helping them deal with information overload.

It’s about helping you make the sale, get the call, find a lead or receive an enquiry.

Here’s looking at you

OK, time to get our priorities right. You first.

And for a very good reason – because if you can’t see the wood for the trees, the message you get out to your target audience will be muddled, confusing and frustrating.

So how do you focus on what’s important?

Easy – cut down the distractions.

• Do one thing at a time. What happens to you when you’re overloaded? Personally, my pulse increases, I feel like I’ve had too much caffeine, and I get a strange tingling feeling in my arms and legs. If I start dumping the ballast (Skype, reading the news online, checking social networking sites) and do just one thing, I can feel my mojo returning and my karma heave a sigh of relief. You will too.
• Go offline. This is a really scary one, I know. And if you’re anything like me, you can’t trust yourself to really, really go offline. Luckily, help is at hand. Freedom is a devilishly clever little program that disables your internet connection for up to eight hours at a time. The only way you can close the program is by rebooting – which is enough of a disincentive to all except the most recalcitrant.
• Speed read. No, no, I’m not suggesting you plough through a Buzan book or fork out a fortune on a course. Just adopt one simple technique. It’s something I learned a few years back when I wrote copy for a speed-reading guru. Everything else I’ve forgotten, but this one simple tip has stuck: read the first sentence of every paragraph. Nothing else, just the first sentence. You’ll pick up the gist without reading the bits in between. It’s simple but smile-crackingly effective.

And that’s it? I hear you say.

Well yes, it is.

Because if I listed my 50 Top Tips for increasing productivity and getting more done, you’d work out a 51st one – skip them.

So there.

Now what about your customers and prospects?

Slowly, slowly, catchy…

You’re overwhelmed. They’re overwhelmed. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t get through to them.

You simply have to think ahead – and more importantly, think like them.

• Make it easy. I skim, you skim, he skims, she skims. Face it – we all skim, so make it easy for people to do it. Break up your copy with bold, bullets, headings and colours. Vary the font size, but don’t go too wild (here’s a tip: use three point sizes maximum, and multiples of two e.g. 10pt, 12pt, 14pt).
• One (idea) at a time. Divide your ideas up into paragraphs. Cut down the paragraphs, so they don’t look so daunting. Make sure each paragraph passes the ‘read only the first line’ test (yes, it’s a game two can play).
• Summarise before, summarise after. Don’t launch into the detail straightaway. First, give a summary – but not an executive summary, or at least, don’t call it that (nothing sends a shiver up the spine quite like those two fatal words). So it’s an overview. Then, follow with the detail, and at the end, wrap up with the main points. So your prospects have three opportunities to pick up your message.
• Don’t give too many choices. I’ve just been looking at broadband offerings. I’m having trouble with my current ISP (more about that sorry saga in another post) and I’m thinking of switching, after seven years of loyalty. But is the competition making it easy? No chance. Especially BT – there’s Anytime This, Total That, the Everything Package, the Almost-But-Not-Quite-Everything Package. Evenings and Weekends, free this, unlimited that. So which one did I go for? None of them, of course. I decided simply to cut and run.
• Make it obvious. How often have you read through copy and thought, yes, yes, all very well, but what do I do next? If your time is short, so is theirs – so don’t waste it. Get to the point fast, and show them what to do next. Allow for impatient readers, and impulse buyers. Have a clear, simple, easy call to action.
• Communicate often enough, but not too often. It’s a delicate balancing act, and it’s important to get it right. Let them know you’re out there, but don’t be a corporate stalker.

Meanwhile, back at the copy ranch, I got an embarrassed email from my client.

I must stop skim-reading, she wrote.

No, I thought, you mustn’t.

You’ve just got to start doing it properly.

Find out more:

• Nothing left to lose. Freedom’s more than just another word – it’s a way of life. And it’s available for Mac & Windows here. As used by Dave Eggers (and Rachel).

So there you have it.

The all-singing, all-dancing, everything’s-connected National Health Service IT system is to be ‘dramatically scaled back’ (i.e. quietly scrapped).

Mind you, I could have told you that. For two reasons.

First, I got a bad feeling about three years ago, when I did some copywriting on [...]]]> Easy is the new hard. No, really.

So there you have it.

The all-singing, all-dancing, everything’s-connected National Health Service IT system is to be ‘dramatically scaled back’ (i.e. quietly scrapped).

Mind you, I could have told you that. For two reasons.

First, I got a bad feeling about three years ago, when I did some copywriting on the subject. The background reading (all 500 pages of PDFs) was grimly compelling.

A bit like watching a road accident that’s about to happen but not being able to do anything about it.

Front-line staff weren’t behind it. It was ambitious, fiendishly complicated and promised the earth.

Mind you, it also cost the earth. Back then, my bedtime reading suggested anything between £6bn (€6.6bn/$9.8bn) and £30bn (€33bn/$48.9bn).

To date, it’s come in at £12bn (€13.2bn/$19.6bn).

My second inkling came when my doctor tried to use the system. She didn’t want to do anything complicated – just to book an appointment.

But it was complicated, as I’ve written about previously (High tech or hype tech?). And in the end, I bypassed the system and used the telephone to make the hospital appointment myself.

Not good.

Easy peasy lemon ketchup

The trouble with big projects is that they’re big. No one person can get their head around all the individual pieces, so they project is compartmentalised. And that means it very quickly becomes fragmented, complicated and disconnected.

A couple of years ago, I boarded a train at London’s King’s Cross station in the rush hour. I took an outside seat in a group of four. In the two seats opposite were a hassled-looking middle manager and her shiny-suited sidekick.

As the train pulled out, she flipped open her folder and peered at a spreadsheet printout.

“You know that consultant, the one with the gold-rimmed glasses, in Peter’s section – you know, whatshisname?” she said hopefully.

“Oh Graham, you mean,” he said. “What about him?”

“Well,” she said, “he’s paid £900 a day and he’s been with us six months. Do we know exactly what he does?”

I did a quick mental calculation, and came up with a figure of close on £100,000 (€110,000/$163,000).

“Hmm, ” said the shiny suit. “Not really. I mean, not exactly. Erm, no.”

“We should find out,” she said, lazily snapping the folder shut, “one of these days.”

Or tomorrow, I thought. Or right now. Because that’s my tax money (yes, they were civil servants – couldn’t you tell?).

Easy does it

Difficult is easy: you do one thing, then another thing, and yet another. Each without reference to what came before. You add a bit here, and there. You spread responsibility among different groups, and patch holes as they appear.

Issues are dealt with as they come in, not according to how important they are. And before you know it, you don’t know where you are. And neither does anybody else. And the result is organised, project-managed chaos. At £900 a day.

So what’s the answer? If difficult is easy, what’s easy – difficult?

Actually no. It’s easy – when you know how.

Here are my top tips for keeping it simple, staying on top of things, and never losing sight of what’s important.

And for leaving the office early (that’s the clincher, isn’t it?):

• Keep a log of your day: and see how you really use your time. Important things should take priority, with urgent ones trumping them only if they’re also important.
• Review your tasks, and update and re-prioritise each one every day. Or better still, at the beginning and end of every day.
• Take stock: check where you are with a project regularly, and make course adjustments if you’re off-track.
• Be realistic & honest: if you know you can’t achieve it, don’t say you can. If it’s too big to tackle, break it down into smaller, manageable chunks.
• Peel off. Adding another layer to an already-complicated process just makes it more complicated. Instead, strip away the unnecessary layers and get back to basics.
• Communicate. Tell people what you’re doing. Ask them what they’re doing. And if you’re the only one doing anything (like me) sit down and have a serious talk with yourself now and then.
• De-junk. Recently, I threw out old clothes, LPs, clever-but-useless kitchen gizmos and anything I hadn’t used in a year. It felt so good (better than skinny, to paraphrase Kate Moss). Take the same ruthless approach to your work and you’ll feel supermodel-light in less than no time. Need it? No? Junk it. Move on.

Now wasn’t that easy?

A few months ago, I was chatting with a headhunter – no, not the South American type, but one who hunts in the concrete jungle.

He places top people into top jobs in the City of London, the beating financial heart of the capital. Think [...]]]> More doesn’t mean better. In fact, it can mean worse.

A few months ago, I was chatting with a headhunter – no, not the South American type, but one who hunts in the concrete jungle.

He places top people into top jobs in the City of London, the beating financial heart of the capital. Think huge salaries, big bonuses and corner offices with walls of glass.

“So,” I said, “what makes them move? Is it the chance of even bigger salaries and bonuses?”

He didn’t even pause to think.

“It’s never about money. Never. Ever.”

Surprised? I was too. Surely you can never have enough zeroes on the end of your bank balance or big fat carrots on sticks at the end of the month?

Apparently you can.

For after a certain point, money fails to motivate. And that point is not as far down the line as you might think. For even high-flyers in the City are motivated by lesser things.

Like real challenges, new horizons and things that keep them fresh, alert and engaged.

What makes people tick is at the heart of Dan Pink’s talk, which I’ve just finished watching. The surprising science of motivation was delivered to TED Global in Oxford during the summer.

Here’s what I took away from it:

• Larger rewards almost always lead to worse results.
• Incentives dull thinking and block creativity.
• The key to the 21st century can be summed up in three words: autonomy, mastery and purpose.
• Google ‘gets’ it (that’s why we have Gmail, Orkut and Google News).

But I don’t want to spoil the talk by giving too much away.

Grab a skinny latte, put your feet up and treat yourself to 18 minutes and 36 seconds of entertainment, insights and sticking candles to walls (no, really – trust me).

If you’re reading this in an email and can’t see the video, click here instead: The surprising science of motivation.

Enjoy.

“How do you do it?” asked a friend of mine recently. “Dates, deadlines, facts, follow-ups. You never forget any of them.”

Her voice dropped a tone and took on a weary, wistful note. “I wish I had a memory like yours.”

Actually, she doesn’t.

You see, I have an average memory. [...]]]> The secret of eternal happiness: checklists.

“How do you do it?” asked a friend of mine recently. “Dates, deadlines, facts, follow-ups. You never forget any of them.”

Her voice dropped a tone and took on a weary, wistful note. “I wish I had a memory like yours.”

Actually, she doesn’t.

You see, I have an average memory. And like most people, I forget things. Then I worry about what I’ve forgotten, but because I can’t remember what I’ve forgotten, I’m not sure how worried I should be.

Not good.

Up, up and away

It’s over 10 years since I last flew a plane (ask me sometime over a skinny hazelnut decaf latte).

And yet, whenever I see a light aircraft taking off, I mentally say BUTPMFFESL. No, not a variant on Klingon, but the after take-off checklist I memorised way back when I thought I was Saint-Exupéry.

[OK, you asked: Brakes (test on/off), Undercarriage (up), Throttle (full), Pitch (fine), Mixture (rich), Fuel pump (off), Flaps (up), Engine pressure and temperatures (normal), Strobe light (on), Landing light (off). ]

The message is simple: checklists work. And the good news is that you don’t need to memorise them.

Just write them down.Then forget about them – until you need them.

Cheque list checklist

A few years back, I ran an unpaid invoice report in my accounting software. And my jaw dropped in disbelief. How could that be? Surely I didn’t have that many outstanding invoices?

I checked. And double-checked. I pulled out box files, spread papers over my desk, cross-referenced, got online and checked my account. I scratched my head and drank cup after cup of coffee.

And then I realised: they were all paid, but I’d forgotten to mark them off.

And thus was born my invoice checklist. Now I have them for everything.

Going away on holiday? Check. Coming back to work? Check. Quoting on a job? Check. Following up? Check. Posting on my blog? Check.

Check it out

So what could you use checklists for? How about:

• Launching a new product
• Carrying out market research
• Preparing your marketing plan
• Writing telemarketing scripts
• Creating a website
• Designing an ad campaign

As you’ll soon see, you can use them for virtually anything. And then, you can impress your friends and wow your clients with your prodigious memory and attention to detail.

As I did with my wistful friend.

Seeing her deflated, I couldn’t keep it to myself. So I told her: the secret of eternal happiness is one little word.

Checklists.

She smiled broadly. But it didn’t last, as joy quickly turned to consternation.

“Yes,” she countered, “but how do I remember to use them?”

I give up. Really, I do.

Find out more:

• From Aches to Zoo: checklists.com has something for everybody.
• It’s a snip: Surgical checklist cuts deaths by 40%, study reveals at guardian.co.uk.
• Don’t leave home without it: Moving home checklist from bbc.co.uk.