June 22, 2010

Success may breed success, but it can also breed complacency and contempt. This is not a new insight, but I have yet another example of the latter. One indicator is when product quality drops and customer service is ignored. My latest example is Skullcandy, a very successful business that manufactures ear buds and headphones. During last year’s crushing economic troubles, their CEO was quoted as saying “Recession? What recession?” Their sales growth was outstanding, their marketing budget seems limitless, but quality and customer service, well, that’s a different story.

And here’s my story. My family has owned several pairs of Skullcandy earphones, and in less than six months, three of them broke. Keep in mind that their products are not cheap! I expected better. In one case I returned the earphones to the company in person (they’re local here in Utah), and was offered a replacement for no charge. So far, so good, that’s what they should do. I paid a little extra to upgrade and left. A few months later, the new phones broke. The new, more expensive ones. Their website makes a big deal about their customer service, and this time I wrote them a message on the website explaining my dissatisfaction with the quality of their product. You can brag about customer service but I don’t want to have to keep using it!

I heard nothing back. Not a word. It seems they encourage you to send them a customer service message, but don’t expect a reply! Not my definition of service. So I decided to write a letter to Skullcandy’s president. An actual letter, on my business letterhead, explaining my concerns with poor quality earphones and no communication from their customer service people. Generally this brings a swift response. Company presidents usually know the value of keeping customers and projecting a good corporate image. Not so with Skullcandy. It’s been over a week and I’ve heard not a word in response. Again.

Products that break in a few months and a total lack of responsiveness from customer service and the company president. That’s Skullcandy. They’re still selling boatloads of their products, but this will catch up with them eventually. I ordinarily take pride in local businesses and try to buy from them whenever possible. But I won’t be supporting Skullcandy again if they think that little of their customers.

If you’re a consumer, don’t let businesses off the hook when they let you down. You are the marketplace and your voice should be heard. If you’re in customer service or run a business, one of the biggest dangers is when things go well. Don’t relax, don’t take customers for granted. Quality and service bring us in, lack of them drive us away.

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.