Remember the bank queue?

Having slagged the BNZ (I’m allowed to given I am a customer) I now find myself sprinkling a little praise. In this world we need to both give and take so back slaps where back slaps are due. The bank hasn’t surrendered its childish pigs yet but something profound is taking place right where it matters. I went into one of their branches several weeks ago and stood in the cattle race with a bunch of others during the lunch hour rush when bank tellers obviously desert the counters to also have lunch. But here is where the classic bank paradigm changed.
As I stood patiently in line I observed a bank employee emerge from an office and head straight for the woman standing in front of me. He asked her a question (I didn’t hear what was said) and took a keen interest in the wad of papers in the lady’s hand. They both headed off for his office and disappeared.
Now I was left pondering because there is little else to do in a bank queue. Did the banker know this woman, why had he picked her out of the cattle race, if she was here to see him why had she lined up with all the rest of us plebs?
As these thoughts raced around in my head I spotted another man emerge from another office but this character was making a bee line for me.
"Is that a cheque you are depositing sir?”, he asked me with a smile. I admitted it was. “Then I can sort that for you”, he said as he took the cheque from my hand and headed back to his office.
Now I know this isn’t exactly Mohammad going to the mountain but culling me out of a queue is a significant step forward and one that I think deserves a mention.
What is even more impressive about this ‘customer interface improvement’ is that the BNZ haven’t advertised it. My advice is don’t. It is better we discover this great service than hear you skite about it and then not deliver.
In fact lose the pork guys and beef up your customer service; we might just get some real competition in the banking industry.

Let's play telephone tag

Just because you are the biggest doesn’t mean you’re the best.
In fact market leadership until recently has often occurred by default. Big organisations, first to market gain a size and momentum that is almost impossible to stop. Telecom, Vodafone, ANZ, BNZ and TVNZ are good examples. With their market dominance often comes market arrogance, what I call ‘business chauvinism’.
These businesses are often run by accountants and financiers who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. They become skilled at the end game of economic chess to a point where winning (or making a profit) becomes their reason for being. They lose sight of what being in business is all about (looking after the customer).
Throwing your weight around is no longer a valid strategy for maintaining leadership (as the American auto industry is learning).

So when businesses such as Telecom and the ANZ decide to take their call centres offshore as a way of slashing even more costs they expose themselves to ridicule. I’m not talking about robbing New Zealanders of jobs; that’s another story in itself, I’m talking about turning an already shocking service into a farce.

Taking call centres to countries where English is a poor second language, where the people probably don’t even know where New Zealand is on the map is tantamount to telling customers “we’d rather you didn’t call at all. You won’t understand a word we are saying and we have no idea who you are or where you live anyway.”

The phone is the front gate for many of these businesses and ‘dumbing down’ the service to save costs will come back to bite them in their rears big time. The only good news is that it opens the door to competitors who understand that delighting customers is the key to business success. Energy, telecommunications and banking services have become commodities because the big businesses that dominate these sectors haven’t figured out that they could add value (answer phones quickly and intelligently) and make even more money.

But hold the phone folks. AXA is out of the blocks with an advertising campaign promising to answer the phones locally. Good on ya AXA. It appears some of the big guys can eventually figure it out

What's wong with Wanganui?

Michael Laws is the one throwing hissy fits now. At a time when the world is losing stuff the mayor of the city is rejecting the New Zealand Geographic Board’s kind offer of an ‘h’. Adding a letter to the city’s name aligns it with the correctly spelt Maori name of the river Whanganui that flows through the city. It is claimed to have been named by the legendary chief Haunui (spelt with an H) who arrived on the Aotea waka over six hundred years ago.

Now I can sympathise with some aspects of Michael's reluctance to change. The name Whanganui means ‘great harbour' and clearly the city can not claim this. But once again is this another example of just how intransigent the brain is to change especially an aging male brain or are there really major problems with undergoing a name change process?

Most women in this country change their names when they marry and it is usually requires more than adding a letter. They seem to cope with it Michael.

The name is not offensive, in fact it could be argued Whanganui is more flattering. I hear some business owners claiming the cost of changing signage and stationery will send them broke. Manage the change folks.

Now Mr Laws has in the past had no end of trouble with some of the local Maori camping on his flower gardens so perhaps he is taking this opportunity to tell them ‘to stick their name in a pipe and smoke it’.

What ever his gripe surely his emotional state is diverting his attention from the city’s 'opportunity of the century'. Most businesses seize on the renaming process as a way of reconnecting with key markets. They usually beat up a real song and dance, proclaiming to the world what a change means.

What an opportunity this could be to put this town on the map, change some old paradigms, focus on what the city has to offer.
Come on Michael, don’t be such an old stick in the river mud. Embrace the change, add value to the city; the promotional opportunities are boundless.

This is something to celebrate. Welcome home your prodigal ‘h’.

The pigs are fed but unlikely to fly

At a recent conference in Auckland I was addressing a group of mainly marketing executives representing national and international cosmetics brands. I wanted to reassure them that the current economic climate should not be viewed as a recession. If you are unwilling to change the way you do business and continue to play by the old rules then I guess you could be excused from seeing it that way. This is not a recession; it is a tectonic shift in the way business is conducted. There is no point in battening down and waiting for this to pass. This is not a storm you can ride out; it is a change to completely new ways of working.
There is no point in trying to read the tea-leaves down at the stock exchange or listening to the hand wringing gnomes of finance. These people are merely historians, forensic accountants raking over the smoldering coals trying to make sense of the global melt down. They have no view of the future worth considering.
You see balance sheets merely reflect the results of our behaviour, the red figures are what is or is not left when the job is done.
What they can confirm is that business has not been delivering value, the world has been caught up in paper investments, creative accounting and misguided loyalty. We have created a climate of distrust. We have been busy doing nothing other than creating an illusion
We are now painfully aware that business relies completely on trust. If we don’t trust each other then our sphincter muscles cramp; nothing goes in and nothing comes out. Business stops.

There are plenty of examples of old world behemoths. The BNZ, antiquated and lost, their new identity is devoid of any of the three new building blocks. They waste millions of dollars on billboards and TV ads that show us their cartoon, coloured pigs, old world creativity rather than meaningful value. Go into a bank and pick up an empty cardboard box instead of a helpful brochure (another example of creativity gone mad). Ask to talk to a business manager, as I did recently and you will quickly find they know nothing about business and what advice they offer is worse than unhelpful. They will probably blunder on because of their sheer size but sharper, faster and better banking models will overtake them in time.

The news however is good.
In the new environment the three most crucial issues will be common sense, trust and value. If you can provide all of these then you will do extraordinarily well.
The future is about smart long term strategies rather than desperate short term (colourful pigs) tactics.
Not only will you need to deliver but you will also need to communicate these. There will be no point hiding what will set you apart from others.

Do such businesses exist, absolutely?
Kiwibank and ASB are at the front of this new change process. But there are others out there, smaller businesses that are founded on the three platforms and they are doing extremely well right now.

I am impressed with the clever folk Trilogy ( www.trilogy.com ) who have embarked on a campaign requesting that businesses sign up to ‘not using the R word.
Equally I suggest everyone sign up to the concept of delivering commonsense, trust and value