Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Weakest Link of a Customer Experience Team

For several years now, in-house customer experience teams have been mushrooming in the corporate world. They are responsible for ensuring positive customer experiences with the company or its services and products. There is also no shortage of consulting companies that can provide such services.

The work of any customer experience team requires a holistic view on issues customers care about. Multidisciplinary in nature, the work of customer experience teams centers around soliciting customer feedback, codifying customer journeys, and adjusting processes, systems, and technology. In addition, understanding and redefining organizational culture and talent requirements is also vital to the teams’ efforts.

A great example of a customer experience team is the one set-up by American Airlines. Pretty much all of the team’s initiatives are talent focused. Consider:
• Controlling ground delays and better informing customers when unexpected delays occur;
• Smoothly and more efficiently processing customers when boarding aircraft;
• Improving interactions with customers (including for example a new staff performance requirement to greet first-class passengers by name); and
• Efficiently handling baggage and quickly resolving issues with misplaced or misdirected bags.

The emergence of customer experience teams is an interesting trend. Customer experience teams are overtaking HR departments in generating and acting upon customer literacy as popularized in the book by Dave Ulrich and Wayne Brockbank, “The HR Value Proposition” (2005). As a result, the strategic contributions related to talent are now increasingly made outside of the HR department. Another trend is blending strategic HR and talent management with the authority of Chief Operations Officer.

Consequently, HR is increasingly losing (yet another chance?) edge to impact the people agenda whereas their administrative efforts only seem to increase day-by-day.

For HR to add value to the business:
• HR needs to be proactive in helping line managers build the organization's core capability;
• HR must contribute to strategic conversations; and
• HR must take a hold off and lead costumer experience teams (presently dominated by professionals with backgrounds in Operations, Marketing, and IT).

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Hiring in China will test your patience

China is a unique cultural experience and this definitely extends into recruiting and hiring. What you consider to be common sense will not necessarily occur. Your patience will be put to the test.

Job Advertisements. Since working for foreign companies is still considered prestigious, Mainland Chinese are more likely to respond to job advertisements in English than in Chinese; irrespective of their English skills. But even if candidates demonstrate a high level of English, they will spend little time to review job descriptions and job requirements and may only know that the company is an international player. Furthermore, Chinese applicants believe in a numbers game; the more companies they apply to, the more likely they are to land a job. So, leaders in their industry can literally be overwhelmed with totally irrelevant applications.

Employee Referrals. Chinese Employees are very keen to refer their friends and former colleagues to fill open positions. Most of the time, they will forward a Resume of active candidates who they know, but not necessarily someone who excels at any key skill for a particular role. Rewarding such referrals financially with an employee referral award is probably a nice gesture, but in this society seems to be obsolete.

Resumes. Chinese like to oversell their skills and exaggerate their experience and knowledge. In addition, the majority of Resumes and cover letters are poorly worded. External recruiters tend to copy and paste Resumes of their candidates on the recruitment agency’s letterhead thereby taking care of the formatting; however, syntax and grammar mistakes still appear often.

Interviews. More than a few Chinese candidates will not bring along any copies of their Resume and may not even have a pen and paper with them to take notes. Late arrivals and not knowing the name of the interviewer is common as well. Annoying as it sounds; Candidates in China tend to leave their cell phones on and will not hesitate to pick it up once it rings. Other question that one needs to answer when recruiting in China is whether or not to consider candidates who come late to an interview or cancel it with every possible reason.

Communication Skills. “What’s your strength?” is one of those question that deliver no real value in getting to know the Chinese candidates. Communication skills are quoted most. Too often, everyone assumes strong language skills equate to being an effective communicator. However, even the best linguistic capability does not make one the best communicator. As a hint then, check candidates' “presentation skills” because this may be a good indicator for how well they convey concepts and ideas.

Salary Negotiations. When asked about their desired salary during the interviewing process, it is usual for candidates to express their net salary expectations (after all taxes and other government mandated contributions are subtracted).

Offer Acceptance. When making a decision whether or not to accept an offer, Chinese candidates living with their parents frequently consult both mam and dad. Salary is often the sole variable, parents are interested in. It is usual, particularly in Hong Kong, to contribute around US$500 to the household by the offspring as soon as they get their first job. A comprehensive assessment of the employee value proposition is missing. I once had a talk with one of young potentials who intended to leave the Agency lured by a higher package and title by the competitor. Only after she realized that her new manager is inferior to her current one, she changed her mind.