Friends of Dave #147: I Feel For You
WARNING: There is a rant in the forecast....
Many of you know firsthand that a major storm seemed to come out of nowhere and blew through the Northeast this week. Rain and high winds accompanied it, taking down trees and power lines in its wake regionwide.
As I have mentioned in previous issues, one of the great things about where we live is that we are close to the ocean and the beach. It can be super relaxing during the warm months. The downside? Between Labor Day and Easter there is usually an increased chance that we will get crushed by storms like this one.
Given that, not surprisingly we awoke Thursday early AM with 90% of our town without electricity, cable and internet going on and off, trees down on roads, and kids' school cancelled. As the locals like to say around here: "Wicked awesome!!"
With no obvious fallen trees or power lines in our immediate area impacting us, we weren't sure why we didn't have power. As a result, we figured we'd probably be among the first to have full power back by night fall -- we got lucky.
Not the case. For some reason, as houses near ours got back to normal, we stayed in the proverbial dark. Worse yet -- the power company was saying that their estimate for restoration of electricity to our neighborhood was Saturday at 11pm on their interactive mobile outage maps. Ugh...
After a quick check, I noticed that this restoration time seemed to be the EXACT SAME estimate for EVERY neighborhood in our town AND the town next to us. You don't have to be Encyclopedia Brown to see that this didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.
So I went right to the one place that any sane, reasonable person would go to seek some immediate answers: Twitter. It was there that I found our power company diligently replying to every customer inquiry with close variations of this response:
Hi {yournamehere}. We have currently set a global ETR in MA & RI for 11PM Saturday night. This is a worst-case scenario of when we anticipate 95% restoration, and many customers will be restored in advance of this.
Nothing more specific than that was provided in the 36 hours following the storm. Additionally, they would periodically tweet out the number of people and trucks they had working "around clock" in both states to ensure they met this deadline. "We won't stop until everyone gets their power back!" they proudly tweeted.
On the check list of managing customer experience, the power company seemed to be doing the following:
Give people a way to visualize how widespread the outages are (and where) so they understand that they are not the only ones
Eliminate angry calls to a hotline (and the need to staff up during storms) by referring everyone to the mobile outage map
Provide customers estimates for restoration of their service that are based largely on an internal, top down goal, not based on actual analysis of specific affected areas.
Promote social media as a way to promptly engage customers and answer their questions, but without really communicating anything.
Talk about how many resources and how much effort is being dedicated to solving a problem.
Anyone see a problem here? In the hours following a storm like this, customers increasingly care about only one thing: getting their lives back to normal. They have little interest or value for effort -- they are literally and figuratively powerless. They simply want a trusted partner that shows some empathy, delivers results, but most importantly, communicates effectively and provides reliable information in order to minimize the time they are in the dark.
It seems to me that most utility companies don't understand this. They are clearly more focused on checking boxes and prioritizing their internal needs and processes over that of the customer (in part because, without competition, they can). Just a few weeks after we discussed it in this space, here was an example of self serving, tone deaf, straight up vendor behavior, Friends.
The sad thing is, it's not just utility companies that do this. Many large, established companies (maybe even yours) exhibit this exact same behavior with their customers. When the needs of the company are consistently prioritized first, it makes the customer feel powerless and breeds resentment. The moment they can switch, they will. But treat the customer like a partner and they will trust that you are doing your best. In turn, will appreciate your herculean efforts every time....
Friends, the links this week are mostly quick ones so feel free to dig into them. And the Last Word includes a rare gem for the music fans -- check it out. Have a good one!
XOXO
Dave
Think on These...
On Humility and Making Better Decisions
Quick read synopsis of a Farnam Street podcast on -- so doubly good. Also excellent points about delaying intuition, particularly when hiring.
On Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long
People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.
This one takes a little time, but worth it. Easy one to skim if you don't want to fully dig in -- lots of quotes and easy to digest subsections.
A Few For The Day Job...
The Case for Bringing Greater Passion to Work
There are three categories of people: people who think that love has no place in business; people who think it’s a nice-to-have but not a must-have; and then the third category...is that love is the thing that enhances every other thing that we do to make our business successful.
Another quick read and synopsis of a podcast -- this one by leadership consultant Steve Farber about the role of love and passion for what you do in business.
Why Marketers Need to Get Better at Marketing "Marketing"
Despite reports suggesting that people HATE their marketing teams and that the CMO role is obsolete, it isn't true. When marketers deliver a commercial growth strategy, there is no problem. It's those that can't do this that are giving marketing a bad name.
Want Higher Profits? Study says Hire a Female CEO, CFO
Firms with female CEOs saw a 20% increase in stock price momentum, a measure of positive price trend, compared to their male counterparts in the executives’ first 24 months in office...Companies that appointed a woman to the top finance role saw a 6% increase in profitability and 8% larger stock returns during the first 24 months in office.
More compelling evidence in the case for increased diversity on executive teams.
Your Weekly Dose of Randomness...
Hawaii family's 5.6-pound avocado certified as world's largest
No truth to the rumors that they also own a boat named "Wholly Guacamole."
Carlsberg reveals prototypes for first paper beer bottles
First paper straws, then this.....Next up? Red Cardboard Cup....you fill me up!
Painting zebra stripes on cattle discourages biting flies, new study says
Well, at least we have graduated from painting donkeys to look like zebras....
Dead man screams 'Let me out!' of coffin, confusing funeral goers...
Of course, it's 2019 and there is actual video of this too.....
And The Last Word....
LISTEN: Prince - I Feel For You [Acoustic Demo] — www.youtube.com
I never realized that Prince wrote this song, made famous by Chaka Khan in 1984. Here, to celebrate 40 years from it's original release in 1979, his estate dropped this rare acoustic find -- a demo recorded on a cassette tape no less.....listen and enjoy.