Ozzie

On any given day in San Francisco there are certain neighborhoods--the Haight-Ashbury, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Mission, and the underground transit stops along Market Street, to name a few--where street performers and panhandlers congregate.  If you go out with the sole purpose of finding them you won’t have to look hard.

What will be difficult is remembering one after you’ve seen so many.

In my time, two of them stand out--a hammer dulcimer player at he Embarcadero BART station, and the Bush Man at Fisherman’s Wharf.  The dulcimer guy got a 5-spot from me for lugging a temperature-sensitive, heavy, stringed instrument down into the tunnel, and the Bush Man got the 5-spot for scaring tourists, including me.  He made me aware of my surroundings.

The rest of the performers and panhandlers I don’t remember; they’re not all alike, but they are all weird.

I was thinking about them as I read an article over the weekend in the April 9th issue of the The New Yorker about the Miami Marlins.  In the article writer Ben McGrath profiles the new spangled stadium, the new players, and the new manager, Ozzie Guillen.  For those who aren’t familiar with Ozzie, you’re probably living in the same ignorant state of nirvana as those who don’t know who Nyjer Morgan is--the parade of sports figures who want to be known inside and outside of Major League Baseball for something besides baseball.  Ozzie’s extra-cirricular activity is his mouth, and his blatant disregard for tact or humility.  Most quotes from employers of such characters are along the lines of “Aw, that’s just Ozzie being Ozzie” and then we’re all to go on, dismissing the behavior as that of a celebrity who became famous by utilizing precisely that behavior.

What separates Ozzie from the other pack of weirdos (and maybe includes Nyjer as well, since he uses his San Francisco visits to anger fans who are from the community where he was born and raised) is that while he just had a mouth in Chicago, he apparently possesses a megaphone in Miami.  As of Tuesday morning, Guillen states he “has to live in Miami” and that he misspoke and that he meant to say that he’s surprised that Castro is still alive instead of saying that he admires him.  The question begs, “then why didn’t you say that?”

I have to wonder, too, how such a market-specific topic came up in the Time interview.  Was this Time’s question?  Or Ozzie’s offering?  Who’s pushing the buttons here?  I imagine the Marlins were seated to get all kinds of nationwide attention before this happened, which would explain why Time might have posed the question, or that Ozzie wanted to keep the national spotlight, which might have explained why he made the comment.

At the end of this hoopla another question is begged by the comments in the social networks, “Why should we care what Ozzie’s political positions are?”  In a utopian society, we wouldn’t, but utopian societies aren’t run by the consumer of the end product.  (If they were, I could watch the Nets or the Padres on Time Warner Cable.)  Ozzie’s consumer base is over 50% Cuban-American, and that consumer base is also no longer living in Cuba for a reason, and that reason is not because they too admire Fidel.  Well then, you say, boycott the games.  If only it were that simple.  Because the “Florida” Marlins had such a low fan turnout for their previous seasons, the new venue is mostly subsidized by the Dade County leadership.  McGrath explains in his profile that the mayor of Miami lost a recall election because of it.  So, whether you agree with the new venue, the name change, Ozzie’s politics, or if you aren’t even a baseball fan; if you live in Dade County, you’re a consumer.

And if you’re Cuban-American, you’re probably an infuriated consumer in Dade County.

*****

In another passage in the New Yorker article McGrath talks about all the bells and whistles on the new Marlins stadium, bells and whistles inserted because the general manager and the owners believe that the Miami fan prefers to be entertained than watch baseball.  “Come to the ballpark--look at me, look at me!”  One of the team mottos is “Did you see that?” and Ozzie’s placement seems to have been to add to the theatrics even before the Time article.

It all reminds me of the collection of the fantastic selection of weirdos who I don’t readily remember...unless they make the impossible happen or they scare me into awareness.

I wonder which of those two categories best fits Ozzie in Miami...if either one fits him at all.

Yelp, Revisited

Here she is again, beating the social network drum...

I am a regular poster on Yelp, an online site for reviewing businesses.  I post on Yelp despite that many of my fellow posters are half my age and despite the controversy of review manipulation to make numbers look better for some businesses over those of others.

My San Francisco Yelp experience (where the site began, too) has been mostly one-sided--the equivalent of a review in a bottle.  Once, someone acknowledged my review of a favorite burger joint and offered to make the experience better.  No one else in the Bay Area said boo, save for other reviewers who enjoyed my particular brand of scrutiny.

But San Diego County has been different.  Managers/owners are consistently checking their reviews, and listening to the voice of the customer with concern and gratitude.  The gratitude part comes from offering up the feedback in the first place--patrons in San Diego county tend to save their thoughts for FourSquare (a tracking device, for the most part, that can be activated on your phone), which isn’t that hard to believe, since Yelp doesn’t allow for review posting on its mobile edition.  You can save a draft of your review on your iPhone, but you have to go on like on a computer to publish that draft.  I have a feeling this gap in connectivity and the general lack of locked on cell phones here contribute to fewer reviews here.

I’m not picky...my favorite social media aspect is connectivity with others, and when that happens I’m happy enough.  When it happens with the business management, however, it takes on a feeling of having been heard.

Imagine...being heard by a business...so that you’ll go back...because that business seems to listen to you...

It’s not just a fairytale.

Mind the Gap

Oh, what a motley crew is starting to collect on the social networks.  First there  was Netflix raising their prices.  Then there was Bank of America and Verizon adding fees.  And, most recently, there was the Susan G. Komen Foundation making funding changes.

Some of the actions of these organizations were reversed.  Some weren’t.  But all seemed to be missing an important component--a proactive approach to customers and contributors.

One would think, with large organizations like these, that public relations consultants or social-networking gurus would have been hired years ago to use innovation and market knowledge to gauge ahead of time through sample studies what kind of reaction new policies would get.  One would think that organizations of this size would find a way to “float” an idea to customers and/or contributors without flat-out presenting it or dictating it.  One would think that organizations of this size would find a cleaner way of presenting their initiatives than the approach of shoot first, apologize later.

What kind of person might fill such a position for a company of this size?

• Someone with strong customer service skills;
• Someone with strong analytical skills, in order to analyze trends, news sources, and social networking to determine best practices;
• Someone who has the courage and support to bring their input to the boardroom;
• Someone who has the communication skills to articulate and be diplomatic about keeping customers and stockholders (or donors) happy.

I wonder where these companies could find someone like that, says this blogger as she reviews her experience and skills and sighs.

Even more importantly, I wonder what company will do the shoot first, apologize later tactic next?

The Purpose of a Business Page, Social-Networking Style

I spend a lot of time on the social networks these days looking for patterns in the cosmos that might improve the participation of my writing group members and the experience that they have once they visit.  More and more, I see a posting on other business and organizational pages that looks like this:

“What do YOU want our Google+/Facebook/Twitter postings to share?  How can we make this page better for you?”

I, um, hate to ask this, but isn’t that like asking customers of, say, a bakery why they came into the store to start with?

At the same time, I can see the conundrum.  Figuring out what gets people to participate on social network pages is roughly on par with figuring out how to cure cancer or eliminate the common cold.  But asking outright?  Isn’t that action displaying a complete and total lack of imagination?  After all, if we give you, the business or organizational page, the answer, then everyone will do it.

So it’s a lot of trial and error...and probably re-assessing online presence.

With the writing group, there seems to be three ways to get the group interested:

• Feature one of the participants’ projects;
• Say something controversial (note:  this also has the potential of dropping connections);
• Actually listen and respond to dialogue that participants bring up themselves, instead of treating it like a formula.

Oh, that last one was so hard to learn, especially since there so many articles about the “right” way to social network.

The thing is, I’ve found that if the participants start the dialogue and are strengthened by the moderator, they tend to stay longer and they tend to see the business or organization as one that recognizes their contributions.  In other words, loyal customers.

For that reason, I’m sticking with the last option, which is a remarkably simple solution, if I do say so myself.  Or, I should say, if my participants do say so themselves.

My Personal History of Customer Service, All the Rest

When I'm not working in customer service on a heightened and concentrated basis, I tend to notice it more than I do if I'm just passing through a traditional workday.  As is the tendency with any passion, if you're sitting on the outside, or if you are dealt the consequences of something you could have done better, then you instantly shift into backseat driver or Monday morning quarterback.

What I have been trying to do to be optimistic is a) look for the instances where there was exceptional customer service (and write about it somewhere so there's recognition to be found); and b) treat customer service providers in a way that if I would want to be treated as a worker.  I get the second part of that outlook from working in customer service myself, and the first part from being a manager.

Recognition is important.  All too often, front-line employees and middle managers aren't recognized by anyone, regardless of the challenge and the outcome, with one exception:  they are blamed if something didn't work for the customer.  Imagine hearing what didn't work all day and never hearing back when you exceeded your customer's expectations.  Sounds like the world's most abusive co-dependent relationship, doesn't it?

Throughout my experience as a manager my recognition of my employees has come about in a variety of ways.  Bring in baked goods.  Utilize them as mentors for the next round of new employees that are hired.  Even something as small as announcement acknowledgment works.  When I worked for Grainger I had a habit of saying "Thank you" to any radio announcements that employees made to inform other employees of crucial information.  It sounds way too simple, but I established such an expectation that when I would come back from lunch and no one thought I was listening, employees were acknowledging each other.  People like to know that they've been heard, that what they are doing or saying matters.  (You want proof?  Look at Facebook and Twitter on any given day and tell me there's no thrill in someone "liking" your status or retweeting a line of yours.  Even if it's small, it's gratification.)

Acknowledgment works for people who provide me with customer service as well.  A simple "thanks," a good write-up on Yelp or on other social networks (if you use the employee's name you can really make someone's day for thinking of them as memorable in a good way), or even sending a note back to the place of business thanking them is helpful (I did that once with a dentist; if you were like me in the dentist's chair, you would too).

In regards to the second aspect of my outlook--treating customer service providers in a way that I would like to be treated if I were doing their job--well, that comes from what I've tried to establish with every student or employee of mine.  Evaluations started with, first and foremost, asking the employee if they would have liked to have that kind of service.  Then we explored a breaking down of what could have been done better.  Then we made a plan of how to improve the next customer experience.  I do the same thing now when I greet a customer service provider as a customer.  Who's my favorite customer?  What could I do to make this person's job easier?  How can I be a better customer next time?  Being the best customer doesn't always mean spending the most money (although that works as incentive, don't mistake me there), but in little things like establishing clear expectations, addressing the person by name, and offering up a smile, to name a few.  I do this with Muni bus drivers, and they never see money from me with the transit card I use.  I say thank you when I get on the bus, and thank you when I get off the bus.  (I'm a better bus patron than dental patient, but it still pays to be kind.)

I may be independently employed at the moment in unconventional ways, but that doesn't mean I can't still follow establish practices of what works in customer service.

More on my passion, my foundation, next week.  Have a great workweek and a warm holiday.

My Personal History of Customer Service, Just the First Part

When potential employers and job boards ask me how many years of customer service that I have, I'm afraid I'm going to look really old.  This year, for instance, the count would be twenty-six years.

When I was thirteen, my mother opened a flower/vegetable/bedding plant/nursery business out of our home in Northwest Ohio.  We had fifteen acres of property on the corner of Williams County Roads C and 20, and the name of the business was Nancy's Gardens, named after my mother.  The hours, being home-based, were a bit on the funky side (open Tuesday and Friday afternoons, all day Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and closed on Sunday and Monday), and I was just beginning my teenage years.  Other girls my age were getting on the phone at all hours and finding ways to experiment with clothes, makeup, and dating.  I was doing my homework after dark, weeding, cleaning the cattails out of the water lily beds, and raising baby chicks.  We took our family vacations in the fall, because summer was the busiest time for the farm, and family vacations never extended farther than where we could drive to in a day.

I honestly didn't mind it much, save one factor--we lived in a small and friendly community, and my mother had a hard time with boundaries.  People who knew her hours came by anyway on Sunday and Monday because they insisted that "Nancy wouldn't mind," so there were never "normal" mealtimes or activities.  But, with a farm you don't really have that much anyway--that's part of the beauty of agriculture.  You have to give up free time to gain knowledge of how the world works.

You'd think that I would have been resentful, but I wasn't.  (Okay, it took leaving for me to admit that, but still...)  Agriculture taught me a lot about acceptance.  It taught me even more about customer service.  I learned to stay flexible, and ready.  When my mother was sick with cancer in 2001, I had to be nice for her.  I also had to be firm for her.  We had closed the business, we had put up signs, but so many people knew that "Nancy surely didn't mean them" when she meant closed.  I had to be understanding with these people, and firm.  It was a challenge, but the experience was also trying to teach me a lesson about work/life balance.

Agriculture teaches you a lot about process.  It teaches you to think on your feet.  I loved that feeling to the point that a few years after moving to Missouri (about the time I went to school for my Bachelor's degree) I worked on a ranch part-time, for FUN.  (This was in addition to going to school full-time and working full-time as a corporate trainer.)  Neither one of my forays into agriculture have been for money; one I inherited, the other one was because I was missing the first experience.  In Missouri, the time was spent on a beef cattle ranch, the dreaded task once a year in November was to vaccinate the cattle.  I say "dreaded" because everyone else dreaded it--the guy who owned the farm LOVED it, and I LOVED it.  We loved herding the cattle in, getting covered in mud, getting kicked, running from the bull--all of it.  I think the owner had a John Wayne envy working there, but mine was feeling useful, serving the cattle, serving others, taking me back to knowledge I inherited and could use again.  Everyone else who hated it hated what I loved about it, so I would try to do all the tasks so that everyone else would have a better experience.  At the end of the day I was worn out, but I felt like I had contributed.

My first customer experience was with a farm, serving a community.  When I came back to a ranch, that experience was with internal customer service, serving those who stood with me.

I think about both farms a lot these days as I make my way around the Bay Area on mass transit or in rental cars.  There's a constant need to be kind and considerate to each other on mass transit, or in California traffic.  What I find really amazing is how rare it is, and I often have to take the bull by the horns (pardon the pun), and be the one who is kind and considerate, even though it pays me nothing at all. That's how it all began--someone interrupting my dinner for water lilies, and now to someone asking for directions on BART.  I feed off of my foundation.

 More on my passion, my foundation, next week.  Have a great workweek.

What I Have Been Doing Lately

There is a short story by Jamaica Kincaid by the title "What I Have Been Doing Lately," in which she dispels a dreamworld of what she has been doing in a variety of shadings to make herself look better with each telling.

This story sounds remarkably like what an unemployed person must do for each application in order to be hired.

Still, here is a list of what I have been doing lately.  There have been no utilization of bonbons or of soap operas to the process--just me, doing the following:

• From November 19th through November 29th, I visited my brother and sister-in-love (they will get married in October 2012) in Carlsbad, California.  While my brother was at work daily in San Diego and my sis-in-love would go to one of her volunteer organizations during the day, I would work on one of the following tasks that I had been working on before and after the vacation;
• Every day, first thing in the morning, I free-write three pages.  Sometimes it feels pointless, other times it grounds me, and still other times it helps me plan what's next;
• I went for morning runs while I was in Carlsbad--usually a two mile climb up a neighboring hill and down again;
• I worked on a long work of fiction that I began in August, for an hour each day;
• I combed through job listings for as long as it took to work my way through the daily entries.  I've been looking for coaching, training, or management jobs with Amazon, the San Francisco Giants, and anything in coaching, training, or management in job boards like craigslist and publishing listings like Mediabistro;
• I had phone interviews;
• I spoke with locals about opportunities in Carlsbad.

After I returned home I usually take a short period (a couple of days), and re-assess; I review what works, what doesn't.  I have been trying to break into freelancing, offering my experience and skills up for consulting and any other related opportunities, but I hadn't been doing that well.  That's what I am working on now--the list above and offering my expertise on a short-term basis for improvement in our customer service-based world.  There will be more to come on my opinions in upcoming posts.

For now, I'm working hard to learn:  to learn how to change my approaches to the business world; to learn how to improve my communication skills; and to learn how to be a better leader.  When I flew back on November 29th, I had something to look forward to--joining with a group of writers at our weekly writing group, where all of us are trying to be better at fiction and prose.

There will be more to come on that, too.

Have a great workweek.

Innovation

When I hear the word "innovation" on the job boards, I think of two things immediately:

• The latest techie invention
• The best way to answer an interview question

Now, I'm not saying to lie when asked an interview question. I'm saying that the interview question should be asked with the intent to find out how much innovation the applicant possesses. "Given the following scenario, what would be your first course of action?" is a great interview question exploring innovation.

The latest techie invention is probably what everyone thinks of--innovation brings to mind iPads, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. But innovation exists on every level. Given the fact that I have a shortcoming or opportunity here, how do I make the most of it?

Think of Starbucks.

I went into Starbucks over the weekend with my environmentally-conscious "personal" cup, and ordered a grande mocha. For those readers who don't know how a mocha is made--chocolate is layered into the bottom, and espresso and steamed milk are poured on top. The entire thing is stirred with a spoon, and, in some cases, topped with foam or whipped cream.

The barista making my mocha was stumped--the only spoon she had in her hand was the wide, flat one used for dishing out foam from steamed milk, and she had no idea how to mix the ingredients. I told her I'd take care of it, and did--I stirred it with the wooden sticks they keep at the napkin station. Such a simple move. She might have been new, I suppose, but she had never stirred coffee in a Starbucks cup, and might have fooled me and gain self-confidence if she had possessed innovation.

Resume Parts & Pieces, Education

I won't pull a David Copperfield here and go all the way back to my kindergarten years; suffice it to say I went to a small town school growing up and my high school graduating class counted somewhere between forty and fifty graduates. I fell somewhere toward the top, but I was not the valedictorian or the salutatorian. I was strong in academics but not strong in athletics, with interests in music, journalism, and drama.

I waited to go to college until I had been out in the world for a little while, starting college at the age of 21. I was working as an assistant manager at the time in a luggage shop in a Branson, Missouri outlet mall when my manager noticed all of the books that I read and thought that I might like to take a class with the instructor who was teaching her introduction to literature class with a local community college, and I signed up just as an audit and fell in love with the academic culture and the knowledge I could acquire, regardless of class. I made the decision to start with my Associate of Arts degree in General Education to get my required courses out of the way, but what I wanted to study most was literature, which was primarily the courses I took while attending Ozarks Technical Community College. The instructors were patient, fair, and challenging despite the community college level, and while I was there I discovered another academic passion in history. Because I was committing myself to a full course-load I resigned from the assistant manager position in Branson and moved an hour north to Springfield, Missouri to be closer to the college and to find a job to work part-time, which I found in working for companies like MCI and Bass Pro. In these kinds of jobs and combined with my education commitments I developed a strong sense of commitment to efficiency and learning, both in the corporate world and in the academic world.

In between obtaining my Associate's and going to university study for my Bachelor's, I spent nearly a year back in Ohio helping my parents with their agricultural business, and then moved back to Missouri to pursue my Bachelor of Arts at what was then Southwest Missouri State University. I had performed well enough at Ozarks Technical to obtain scholarships at Southwest Missouri State, and thrived in classes at the university level. It was also at this time that I returned to Bass Pro Shops call center and made quick work of getting promoted to the corporate training instructor on the evening shift. Throughout the remainder of my college career I worked full time at Bass Pro and went to school full time double-majoring in literature and history until the final semester of my education at SMSU, at which point I decided to place full focus on my literary studies.

This blog owes a lot to my education at SMSU (which is now known as Missouri State University). I took my passion of the literary arts education and applied it to communicating effectively and inspirationally in all of my employment experiences, from Grainger to Bass Pro Shops, and to communicate in a way that would be effective to the greatest amount of people I was addressing, rather than just the highest-ranked of those I was addressing. Literature and history have taught me that the most effective communicator isn't the one with the biggest vocabulary--it's the one who uses the words he or she has to their greatest advantage. My goals in any position are to communicate the company's goals in an inspirational way to employees and customers alike, without losing them in the process.

In my next post I will talk about how I use my communication skills, and other technical skills, to do just that in a workplace situation.

AD HOC: What Every Recruiter Should Know

Ah, the news all over my Twitter and RSS feeds today: Dow Below 12,000 for the First Time Since March. And, from a week ago: Unemployment Rises In May.

I am the last person to tell any corporation how to run their business. The advice that I'm about to bestow is for when the employer is ready to hire again.

If you utilize a hiring agency, be sure the recruiter handling your account has basic written communication skills mastered.

I say this because:

1. I'm a communication professional. The opening line of my resume states just that.
2. It's good business sense, regardless of whether you're a recruiter, a hiring manager, or the receptionist answering the phone.
3. Anything less than a mastery of basic written communications skills ruins your opportunity for quality talent.

Since I've been actively looking for a job (starting this spring), I usually receive an a kind of inquiry from a headhunter about every other week or so that could be mistaken for an adolescent text message. This doesn't anger me so much as disappoint me--I'm not even going to read that job offer, no matter how sweet it may seem, due to the poor use of language in the e-mail. (And if the recruiter is not composing the message on e-mail but on an application of an e-mail program, that practice could be leading to the problem.) My understanding is that recruiters receive incentives for getting the right people in the right positions, but communications skills can make or break that determination. Consider my most recent offer, which contained the following syntax errors:

• Use of "U" instead of "You"
• Wrong application of "You're," meaning the writer should have utilized "Your" (Actually, it was spelled "u're," which troubled me twice)
• Improper spelling of the word "believe" (no spell check?)
• Little or no use of the article "a" or "an"

That was just the beginning. Normally I'm not a stickler for grammar (I don't walk around with a red pen), but how am I to take this job offer seriously and not think of it as spam? And, what's worse, how can the company hiring the recruiter possibly expect any productivity from this recruiter?

I'm not sure if we are in an employer's market or a candidate's market, but either way, candidates and recruiters alike should make sure they are sending out the right message. Talent could be missed or developmental growth could be lost due to either party deciding that communication skills are not important.

Resume Parts & Pieces, Work Experience: Jarden Consumer Solutions

Jarden Consumer Solutions, or, as I commonly knew them when I worked there, Tilia and VillaWare, was my first employer in California. Technically the temp agency that hired me to work at Tilia was my first employer in California, but Tilia was my first job with them.

I was first hired with Tilia to work with the retail services representatives to answer their phones for them. There were between seven and nine representatives at that time, and the bulk of the phone calls were from retailers wanting to order Tilia (FoodSaver) or VillaWare products, or they wanted to speak with their representative in sales or operations. In other words, when I started in September of 2004 I was a receptionist, and by January of the following year I had been offered a job with the company to be a retail services representative myself, specializing in RMAs and certain retailers, such as Kohl's. About one month after I was hired at Tilia the entire company was given word that the operation was moving to Neosho, Missouri for shipping and warehousing, and to Hattiesburg, Mississippi for administrative. We would be assisting in the transition not only in our approach to customer contact, but in the systems that we used to process orders and ship supplies, going from an SAP system to an AS400 system. Most, if not all of us, would be staying through the transition that would be scheduled for completion in August of 2005.

The skills that I honed with Jarden were minimal compared with my past jobs prior to that point, but I did significantly branch out in one specific area: satisfying customers at a corporate level as opposed to a retail situation. Many of the customer service aspects of retail carry over to a business-to-business type of situation, but some do not--my biggest challenge was in taking care of customers who had multiple representatives for their corporations. Mastering this challenge was a simple process of determining the customer's needs AND the representative's needs so that I could equal the two out, not unlike my developed focus of strengthening a business through customer service while improving employee retention. The contacts that I made within our customer base often became friends in the sense that I could offer them solutions to make their ordering process progress more smoothly or that they would have to maintain it less often by trusting me with the replenishment details. And, while I've mentioned that it was a challenging skill to master, it was a pure joy to discover that next level of customer service in myself and my performance.

In the next post, I'll talk about how my last job in Missouri with Alltel Communications helped prepare me for the jobs I was to enter in California.

Accessorizing

This week I was coming back from a trip to the South Bay via Caltrain, which is my favorite mass transit agency in the Bay Area. The ride is quiet and comfortable, you have the opportunity to sit alone in the upper deck, and at the Fourth & King station in San Francisco there are great places to eat before you depart or when you return.

I returned on Caltrain at around 9 am, so I swung by Philz Coffee first, and then backtracked to Panera Bread for a bagel to go with the coffee. One sees this a lot between these two businesses--people come into Philz all the time with Panera sandwiches and go into Panera with Philz coffee cups. The lovely folks at Philz were hard at work that morning--there was a line out the door and to the corner of Fourth & Berry. I wasn't on a time budget, so I was fine with taking the time to wait in line. When I got to Panera there was no line and I walked right up to a counter staffed with four people and ordered a bagel with cream cheese to eat there. From the moment that I began speaking with the Panera clerk I got the impression that he wanted to shake me--he started out by asking me if I wanted coffee, which seemed a bit odd with coffee in my hand. I hadn't yet stipulated the "to go" or "for here" part, and he asked me quickly "To go, right?" before I was finished with my order, something that I hadn't remembered saying. No, I corrected him, it's for here. He gave me my total and disappeared while I pulled out my wallet and prepared to pay. He reappeared a moment later with an art deco plate with bagel, spread, napkin and knife on it. I paid for it and realized on my way to a table that the slicing and toasting of said bagel was probably not a given, but I didn't want to create a hang-up in the customer flow that came in behind me (I had started that morning's trend of going to Philz's first and then Panera), so I went to sit down and destroy the bagel on the plate.

I've worked at three different companies now that required front-line employees to offer accessories to what the customer purchased. At all three the computerized ordering system generated suggestions for what the customer might also need but either isn't aware of or might be forgetting. The practice of putting said items on a prompt can give the employee offering it the feeling of loss of control in a transaction: "I have to do this part of the transaction in case someone's watching or so that I meet my numbers." The customer and employee feel the employee feel the employee is utilizing some sort of script, with the sole purpose of squeezing even more blood out of a turnip, more or less.

Reversing motivation works as a better incentive than driving to meet a number. The cashier at Panera could think of the process as an offering of thinking for the customer, or giving the customer every opportunity to have a great experience with them. True, this requires some significant amount of imagination in approach, from the standpoint of the employee, or, if that employee is hitting a wall, from the point of view of the person of leadership who is trying to utilize the employee to improve the customer experience. If the employee can can fathom picturing themselves in the customer's shoes, suddenly that portion of the transaction loses its scripted quality and achieves a tone of empathy and subject expertise offering advice. This approach requires some finesse--the end result, however, is a grateful customer with options, instead of a dull knife and a thick, stubborn, cold bagel.

When I trained and coached employees on phones during my tenure at two of these aforementioned companies, I would establish the empathy piece up front by asking the employee if they felt like running errands after work. "Imagine you have to go to the grocery store to pick up everything you need for dinner," I began. Then I would ask the employee if they could have someone greet them at the door and listen to what they wanted to make--say, lasagna--and then walk the store with them and pick out everything they need, so that they, the customer, wouldn't have to remember everything alone, wouldn't they choose that? Most employees agree that this would be the favorable interaction (those that don't usually have a spouse or parent taking care of their errands, but that's a rare scenario). Because the employee can't dispute this level of service, it makes sense, and starts the employee thinking that offering an extra item or service to the customer isn't something to get through but is more about the operative part of the transaction, like obtaining payment or verifying the item or service needed.

Does this approach make for a longer transaction? At first, yes. But the alternative could cost more time. The customer may wonder why they have to call back/return to the line when the employee could have reminded them of the need in the first place. Doing something over almost always takes more time than taking more time with the transaction in the first place. Worse, the lack of suggesting the "extra" may cost you a customer--since I didn't get the option of slicing and toasting, I could either go back and demand that the item be sliced and toasted (a "do-over") or I could just swallow the pain and go to Specialty's next time the opportunity comes up (another bakery on Berry). If I'm not the only one who has this type of transaction, then half of the transactions take twice as long and the other half never happen again. So long, business growth.

Sadly, you can also scare an employee into this practice by letting them know what the lack of offering eventually costs, as in the scenario above, but I prefer to build on the foundation of empathy with the possibility of praise directly from the customer. I was happy but tired that morning from the train ride and the lack of breakfast, and if the cashier would have thought of everything he would have had my gratitude. Not everyone will offer him gratitude, to be sure, but you can bet that the next place I buy my bagel from will be held against a standard of asking me if I wanted it sliced and toasted. The next bakery will go a long way to keeping me if they squeeze in the offer before I remember that I have to make the request. It's all in the timing of making sure that the customer has a favorable experience, the employee has a favorable experience, and that nothing is scripted out of fear.