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Showing posts from March, 2010

IS PLANNING FOR YOU OR FOR THE CUSTOMER?

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Recently i did receive a card, which mentioned that on the 17th of March a preventive maintenance call was scheduled for my heating system. There was no time mentioned. As I was abroad at that time I did call for a new meeting. Okay, that was scheduled, but they only could plan the call in the morning (8am – 1pm) or in the afternoon (1.30pm – 4.45pm). They said that it was not possible to give me a more specific time. Well. That is very inconvenient for me as a customer, because I have to block these slots entirely in my agenda. So, the call was scheduled for the morning of the 26th. Fortunately the engineer arrived at 8.15pm. I asked him whether all his calls were planned for that day. His response was that all appointments were scheduled. A simple question remains: why do they not share this planning with their customers?? They could contact me shortly before the appointment and tell me when exactly the engineer will arrive. That will give me so much more flexibility in my own

INFORM YOUR CUSTOMER

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Last Sunday I had a stopover at the airport of Frankfurt, as I was flying from Ahmedabad in India to Amsterdam. I already had a boarding pass for my flight to Amsterdam and the gate was B7 at Frankfurt airport. We were early and our flight did not appear yet on the monitor, so I asked the customer service repr when my flight would be put on the screen. She said that her collegues would arrive in half an hour and then everyting should be okay. However, no customer service reps showed up and my flight was not mentioned on the monitor of the gate. So, I checked the general monitors in the hall and there was no mention of my flight at all...   I went to another gate and asked them to help me. It appeared so that my flight was boarding from a completely different gate.   Fortunately we reached that gate in time. From a customer service point of view, they should have informed us via the monitors on the ‘old’ gate and via the announcement system. This is failrly easy to implement and d

OLYMPIANS’ PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR CHANGE

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In his book Rules of Thumb, Alan Webber writes that change is a math formula. Change happens when the cost of the status quo is greater than the risk of change: C(SQ)>R(C) This is valid both at a personal level and at a professional level. And of course at an individual level as well as at an organizational level. At a more persona level Anais Nin says the same: And the day came when the risk it took to remain in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom . Another rule which is essential in this respect: I cannot change other people or the past. I can only change myself. Now lets see how these rules of changes have worked out in the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Here in The Netherlands the whole country was depressed by the disqualification of Sven Kramer at the 10 km speed skating. His coach publicly admitted that he had made3 a mistake and that he had sent Sven to the wrong lane. That is a professional reaction and he showed to be very vulnerable as we