The Hot Dog Stand – Customer Service?

At the game I went to the concession stand for some snacks and drinks, to be greeted by a long, slow-moving line. While the second quarter evaporated and the line inched forward, I looked at the hot dog stand operations to see why there was such a delay.

Here's some highlights:

• 8 enthusiastic people - 5 at the counter and 3 doing prep in the back
• the counter folks reminded me of a demolition derby, bumping each other and constantly crossing paths
• the preparation folks were paying no attention - standing and talking
• supplies (napkins, plasticware, cardboard trays) were on the right end of the counter but condiments were on the left end
• the menu and prices were on a banner on the back wall of the stand
• finally, the line was amorphous and confused, people lined up on a server but some also thought it was next available server

If a transaction takes an average of 4 minutes from order to payment per customer per server, a back-of-the-envelope calculation of service capacity is about 75 customers per hour. A person joining the end of this line at its peak can expect about an hour before heading back to the seat, partially due to the absence of training and flow.

From this experience, I saw several general guidelines for improving customer service, based on the pinch points and frustrations of the patrons at the hot dog stand. Consider these 5 items (the examples tie back to my quest of food and beverages):

• inform the customer what you expect from them – in our example, how to navigate the line was unclear and the menu and prices were not visible until at the counter
• design flow for efficiency – the servers bounced around to fulfill orders and customers had to cross the line and go to two locations for supplies and condiments
• train staff on role and assignments – servers were swamped while preparers ignored the chaos while chatting – alternative roles for all staff are required for peak demand periods
• manage customer perceptions – customers get angry while waiting when they see staff standing around - regardless of the reason
• create as positive an experience as possible while addressing the customers' needs – smile, be upbeat when serving the customer and remain focused on addressing the customers' need, NOT on why it can't be done.

It is not unusual to be too close to this issue to see the gaps and over-servicing areas clearly in your customer service operation – and an outside advisor will review and assess how things are actually done, not influenced by how insiders think things are being done.

Customers want to be heard and receive accurate, timely answers to their questions or concerns. Preferences aside, there are several channels to reach the customer – web site information, interactive topic search, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), employee blogging, telephone tree with simple questions answered by automated systems with an opt out for a real person who can do more than simply read the same web site screen to the caller. For the complex problems, one-on-one service by phone, in person, or by video call gets satisfying results.

The best approach to customer service is to put yourself in the customer's shoes and proceed the way YOU would like to be served.

Don't come to the game hungry is NOT a solution to the hot dog stand problem, even though you may see the second quarter.

Your thoughts?

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User, Maker, Prototyper

Dark. Parking lot. I’m with a really smart research scientist, and we’ve been talking long enough we’re getting into new areas.

“Have you ever finished a prototype on time?”

He laughs, “If it’s controlled by time it’s a project, not a prototype.” Aha!

Many watchers try to judge the value of prototype work as if it were production work. Whether due to placement on some theoretical organization chart, or just our inalienable self-given right to sprout an opinion, most default to Tommy Smother’s dictum, “I’m an American, I don’t have to know any facts.”

Should prototype work be optimized? Always. But that seems more in the province of leadership than management.

Kevin Kelly’s Found Quotes 6 posts: I confess that, in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that men would not fly for 50 years. Two years later, we ourselves were making flights. This demonstration of my inability as a prophet gave me such a shock that I have ever since distrusted myself and have refrained from all prediction. -— Wilbur Wright Speech at Aero-Club de France, 1908

Clearly, Wilbur was demonstrating the hard-won skills to lead development.

There is even an award for valuable original work that was not understood when it was done.

Years ago, I was a master carpenter at a Fortune 20 Industrial when the chairman announced the company would no longer invest in basic research, just applied research. This was so long ago I had to go to the library to find out that basic research was defining properties and applied research was solving specific problems. Since that announcement they have shrunk. Or perhaps rightsized.

A user takes something already made and gets value from it. Ordering a book from Amazon, making holes with a drill press, cleaning up around the house, users use tools to create value.

Makers create tools that users use. It’s the next step up in understanding. When you can’t decide if someone is a luthier or a mean picker, luthier, the maker, takes precedence...and I would figure he has some important insights about playing.

In Keith Richards” autobiography, Life, he details his search to understand how the blues developed. He learned the story of how Sears offered an inexpensive mail order guitar to musicians who played homemade 5 string banjos, so they played their new guitars tuned like a banjo. Keith tried it, mastered it, put it on a Telecaster, and that’s why a bar band can’t quite get Honky Tonk Woman.

So prototyper, maker, user, where does a cost conscious manager put the guys who don’t want to pay attention, don’t want to improve their work? Pretty obvious, isn’t it? Somewhere else!

At each level there is a need for constant improvement, which comes from the people doing the work.

In the construction trades, one who has mastered the craft and continues to get better is called a mechanic, a term of admiration.

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Importing Best Practices

I no longer think different ways of working are inherently better or worse. I find the most productive workers in any task group have found an optimal process. Often that structure can be improved by adding processes from outside the environment.

That’s harder than it looks, as Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it.

Yet, I have seen several times when importing a little knowledge from another discipline made for great gains.

My second tour selling COBOL, we started changing our offer every six weeks, borrowed from something I had read about cosmetics retailing. Prospects were meeting with us just to be entertained, but as long as we were there, would we take a look at...

Wasn’t too long before senior management wanted to renegotiate commissions if it was that easy...

Building a cellphone empire, we had enough hard partiers that we used parts of the 12 step approach to improve our global scalability. They understood the need for weekly meetings, for having everyone define their reality, for finding individual solutions. The level of managerial opinion went way down, and we set industry records for five years.

More frequently, I’ve seen best practice candidates that appealed to someone’s ego or how they THOUGHT the world should be. I wasted six weeks once because my boss kinda read a book on an airplane and thought he had found the silver bullet. My tribe thought I’d lost my mind.

Years later I learned Best Practices Better Be Blatantly Obvious, Otherwise They Are Not Best Practices. Wish I had figured that out.

Just when we’ve optimized all we know, that’s when we get to participate in disruptive innovation, ready or not. Just when you perfect the carburetor, you get fuel injection.

Stewart Emery says there are two requirements for growth, an absolute commitment to telling the truth about reality and surrounding yourself with people who are committed to growth.

Isn’t that the real secret of best practices?

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Fantasy And Reality

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth – Sherlock Holmes. Holmes never wavered from his rule, no matter how bizarre the outcome appeared. No speculation; no projecting an easier path; no daydreaming or fantasy about what would have or could have been.

I recall as a kid, pounding the pocket into a new ball glove (they were made flat back then) and daydreaming that I would be playing like Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, or Ted Williams. Reality set in with the very first play on the field, new glove on my hand – it would take more practice (much, much more) to get there - there's no shortcut for pounding in the pocket.

Sometimes a leader, manager, or collaborator fixates on a vision or desired outcome instead of addressing an issue head on.

Do you know of an incidence where a problem was ignored while the trivial and mundane were given priority? Or the 'let's wait and see' procedure was invoked? How did it turn out – did the problem self-correct or fester, getting worse?

Individuals rarely follow the Ostrich Model of head-in-the-sand, knowingly. However, they can be seduced by self-talk. This can be very persuasive, sound logical – even innovative – and offer a more desirable (and less painful) fantasy alternative to what's facing them right now.

Ever dread making a phone call or meeting – finding many ways to put it off? Then, the result of the call or meeting is nowhere near the disaster you had anticipated – in reality positive results happen most of the time.

I have found over and over that nothing is more effective than a direct approach. And yet, we still seek to take an indirect path or delay taking any action.

This is human nature – BUT – it is not a positive leadership trait. As with the boy and a new glove, or an adult facing a complex problem, it's not too difficult to slip into a fantasy to avoid reality.

To return to reality, I find it helpful to say the thoughts and plans out loud – to a trusted advisor. Not only will this help to better focus the ideas, it also churns up new ideas as well from both people's viewpoints. The outcome is more in tune with reality, since it is quite difficult to enroll your external self and your advisor in a fantasy. Perhaps that's why people say a good conversation is 80% listening!

As we wrestle with the gap between fantasy and reality, John Adams' words are a useful guide:

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

John Adams,'Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,'

How do you see fantasy and reality?

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Redo

Users work differently from makers, for good reason. If you make a mistake buying a book on Amazon, you can usually go back an action, or a screen, call it a redo. Makes sense to just keep hammering keys until you get what you want.

Makers often don’t have redo, so there’s an emphasis on using a planning and structure to reduce rework. I cut that board three times and it’s still too short! Well then, Measure twice, cut once.

Working in an IDE (Integrated Development Environment – programmer’s code-making software) discovering an error can require taking out days of development.

The old observation that one programmer can do the work of a thousand programmers is valid because many programmers spend the next morning tearing up whey did the previous day. One step forward, two steps back.

Sales Lab’s Planned Workcycle addresses the need for Architecture and Design before Executing, and came from construction contracting. If you order a crane, it better be busy the whole time it is on-site, and after it leaves, you best not need that crane again.

The Workcycle also has an original structure for how to do Evaluation which makes Evaluation work a whole lot better. I’ve found it increases efficiency in many types of complex projects.

How does the availability of Redo change the value of Planning, the process of Executing?