Giving a damn about customers...

That's a true story. It happened to me, at Sun. While sitting in the hospital early on a Monday morning, waiting for my CAT scan (after a donkey kick to the head that sent me there unconscious the night before), I called in to explain why I wouldn't be showing up at the customer's site that day. I was told, "there's nobody in all of Sun's education division that can do this now, and we can't reschedule that customer's enterprise Java course for at least three months." Long Pause. "OK, I'll be there. But tell them I'll be late. Oh, and you better warn them I look like... well, I hope they aren't squeamish."

The customer's employees were horrified when they saw me--both shocked and incredibly grateful that I had actually done this.

And of course my mangers at Sun were deeply appreciative. Or so I imagined. Fast forward to my annual performance review a couple months later when I get my "Meets Expectations" rating.

I asked the obvious question, "So if [rattle off my list of do-anything-for-the-customer examples, of which the donkey incident which was just one] only MEETS expectations, then what the hell does it take to EXCEED expectations?" For dramatic effect I added, "Because I have to tell you, another year like this and I'll be dead." I was only partly exaggerating.

The manager's answer sums up the problem nicely, "There's a quota for the eval ratings and, uh, we gave 'Exceed' to Fred because he had a higher number of 'on-platform' hours. His work accounted for more direct revenue."

I countered with, "But Fred (not his real name) hates customers; he shows open disdain for them when they ask a question. And because I'm on the Quality Reveiw Board, and have to field all the customer complaints, I know that YOU know this is no secret to the customers. They leave his courses vowing never to take a Sun course again."

"That's not the point," the manager says. "This is simply about numbers. My hands are tied."

(Within 24 hours, someone had posted a Dilbert cartoon on my cubicle where Dilbert had donated a kidney to their biggest customer, and still got a "Meets Expectations.")

From a systems thinking perspective, it's no great leap to say that while Fred might have been responsible for more revenue that year, his "I hate customers" attitude was responsible for a devastatingly low customer-retention rate. The next time those customers took an advanced Java course, it sure wasn't from Sun. (And we actually had numbers to prove this.)

Meanwhile, the management of that company I walked into with my smashed face never forgot what I did, and they saw that as a reflection of the value Sun put on meeting their customer commitments, no matter what. We continued to do business with them almost non-stop from that first week. I set the tone for their relationship with Sun. (Not that I recommend the whole donkey-kick thing as a viable strategy...)

I guess I have two points:

1) If you're a manager, for the love of god PLEASE make taking care of the customers a top value. Customers are living, breathing people--not just Six Sigma stats.

2) Never, ever let your head be in striking range of a donkey.