July 2, 2010

I’d rather not write so much about lousy customer service, but almost every day I experience another example. This one is courtesy of Einstein’s, the bagel chain. And courtesy is exactly not what I received.

I ordered a sandwich and gave the cashier a gift card I had for payment. The machine wouldn’t read the card after several tries, and the manager told me to call the number on the back to figure it out. Einstein mistake 1: she should have offered to help with that call. So I pay cash for my sandwich, go home and call the number from the card. Now I enter the Einstein Twilight Zone.

There was the usual electronic menu and I dutifully pressed the numbers to get the help I needed for gift card issues. But after entering the 19-digit card number, the recorded voice never said anything about the cards, only about their website which was having problems. Einstein mistake 2: inaccurate phone help. The voice told me to call a different number for more help. Einstein mistake 3: the voice gave the new number only once, forcing you to repeat the process if you missed the number. I’m getting annoyed by now, but it’s just a warmup.

I called this new number, and of course there is no actual human to speak with. No, it’s another disembodied voice that tells me if I need help with my gift card, go their website. That’s right, the first gift card number which had no help sends me to a second number which has no help, and remember what the first voice told me about the website having problems? I’m now told to go to that website for help! Einstein mistake 4: the right hand has no idea of the left.

As you can imagine by now, the website has nowhere to click for gift cards. Einstein mistake 4: wrong information. Nothing, nowhere at all. So I decided to take the only course open to me at this point and express my frustration on the Contact page. I wrote all that I’ve described here, hit send, and of course nothing happens. I’ve tried sending my message for 24 hours now, but the website is indeed broken as they said. Einstein mistake 5: a broken website. In this day and age there is no excuse for a website operating so poorly.

So now what do I do? Start calling those phone numbers again and get caught in the deadly circle once more?

This example of customer no-service is egregious beyond belief. This is sheer incompetence. Einstein’s likes to position itself as the hip place to eat with definite cool factor, but behind the facade is mismanagement at its worst.

I often tell my clients to shop their own system, and too often they’re surprised and disappointed at what they find. From store manager to general management, Einstein’s bagels is a sad example of what happens when customer service is an afterthought. Why would I ever go back?

June 12, 2010

I’ve thought a lot about emotional intelligence and how it factors into individual and organizational success. It’s something I always consider when I have a consulting or coaching project, even though I don’t always label it as such with clients. Some people find it a little squishy and don’t take it seriously, yet if I speak about its principles virtually everyone agrees on their importance. That’s OK, it’s the results I’m after and so is the client. And EQ ties in very well with culture, and of course I believe that in culture you find the root causes of most company concerns.

Whether it’s teamwork or interpersonal skills, there are qualities we all want in our co-workers that are components of EQ. For example, how many of us have worked with someone who is obviously smart with high cognitive abilities yet can’t handle his (or her) emotions in the office, is uncooperative and seems oblivious to the feelings of others? I sure have! And that’s the definition of someone with a low EQ. There’s ample research that shows EQ is a much better predictor of star performance than IQ or any measure of intellectual prowess. And it also seems clear that EQ is not fixed at any particular age as is IQ, but that we can all develop it and make long-term improvement.

Let’s say you’re hiring. What exactly do you want from a candidate? The skills and experience to do the job? Yes, absolutely, but you also want that person to fit in, to have the social and emotional maturity to monitor and control their feelings while being able to monitor the feelings of others and make adjustments. They need to fit into the culture and the higher the EQ the greater the odds they will.

Culture and EQ are linked together, and have enormous effects on performance. The more you read about it the more sense it makes. Every one of us can do better and by doing so we’ll help each other and consequently the organization, too.