Jeff Bezos is spending this week working in an Amazon distribution center in Lexington, Kentucky (AMZN). He apparently wants to see what it's like to be a rank-and-file Amazon employee. More CEOs should try that once in a while.Like many entrepreneurs a friend of mine started off in the family business, starting off in the stock room, and growing with the business. Recently one of his key employees needed an extended time off and rather than hiring someone into the position or promoting someone temporarily he decided to take the opportunity to return to his roots and so he took over the vacant customer service manager position, in essence returning to the floor.
Now, there is an argument that the CEO doesn't have time to stop doing their CEO job and to be fair, he took on both positions at the same time with a known end time. His decision to step into the customer service position was, in his mind, an opportunity to answer the phones and talk to (his) customers again, something he hadn't done in a few years and here is what he found:
1. Staff were spending too much time on the phone answering questions about when customer orders would ship. When the umpteenth customer asked the same question during a call he decided to ask the next few customers what their expectation was and he got different answers and so he looked into it and discovered that the wording on their website was causing many of these unnecessary customer contacts. They reviewed the wording on their order confirmation page and also their order confirmation emails and discovered that the wording was ambiguous and after a couple of wording changes these calls almost completely stopped.
2. Customers were calling in and emailing asking for help with tracking their orders. Odd he thought, the tracking number is on their emails... until he asked a customer why they didn't just use the tracking number on their shipment confirmation email and the customer said that there must be a problem with his e-commerce system because the tracking number was blank! As you can imagine an investigation ensued and it turned out that some USPS packages were being sent out without a tracking number because the shippers were trying to keep costs down and so for low value shipments they weren't choosing to use a tracking number (an extra $0.18 per shipments). What the shippers didn't realize was that their eighteen-cent saving was actually costing the company more in dealing with customer contacts. A change was made to their emails text and processing to tell customers without a tracking number that their packages would take a certain number of days, instead of being blank and again the call volume dropped substantially.
So, even if you aren't the CEO of a company, returning to the floor today is important and here is why you need to reconnect with your customers:
1. Your staff are doing things that are costing you money (and they don't know it). You will find things as you do their jobs that you could eliminate or streamline. You will find that they are doing what they think is what needs to be done but don't typically have the authority to make changes or the goal of keeping costs down. You however will see these opportunities quickly and you have the authority to make the changes necessary to fix them. To be fair, in many cases that I have seen the line staff do know that things should be done differently and they may have even told you about them but until you actually see them for yourself you may not give them the authority to make the necessary changes.
2. Talking with your customers will help you find new opportunities or products. You pay good money to attract customers to your web site and then when you lose them it's so disappointing and damaging to your company. Talking directly to your customers will once again expose you to their problems and as any entrepreneur knows, problems are opportunities. When you talk to your customers you will find your next big idea.
3. The real world doesn't work the way you expect it to. When you return to actually doing the job, whether that is packing a box, picking an order or answering a customer's phone call you also challenge your mind's internal model of how the business runs with the realities of how your business actually runs. This reality will either inspire you or depress you, depending on what you find, but it will also put you in a position to correct the problems with your knowledge and authority.
Have you returned to the floor yourself or been there when the CEO did so, tell us about it. It's worth noting that the comments on the Bezos article I mentioned above has some great related stories. I know from my own personal experience that challenging how things are done and doing them yourself from time to time is a great way to discover issues and fix them.
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4 comments:
This reminds me of Management By Walking Around (MBWA) which was used by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard and described in their book, the HP Way.
Economist article on MBWA
nothing like being with the field and seeing what goes on day to day to improve moral and the bottom line.
The bottom line was definitely improved in this case and the moral too. The customer service staff especially really opened up and started bringing their issues to the 'boss' more because they felt he could really understand the situation better -- and that he would listen to them too 'because he was just like them'.
I agree with the above article. I always do a walk through in the production area every day, and work on the assembly line occasionally. It can be a real eye opener.
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