Learning lessons from poor performers

Customer relationships suffer when companies adopt an internal focus

Recently I flew the regional airline that has the worst record in the industry for late departures. The experience reminded me that one can learn some valuable lessons about customer service—usually what not to do—from poor performers.

Picture a gate being used by a regional airline at Boston’s Logan airport. It is snowing outside and the gate area is full and chaotic. In fact, it is standing room only due to canceled and delayed flights.

The fortunate few
Now picture a large oasis, a roped-off space about half the size of the gate area, in the middle of this bedlam. The fortunate few who are within the oasis are enjoying white rocking chairs, plenty of seats, tables and food.

You might ask, who had these privileges? Were they frequent flyers redeeming bonuses? Perhaps they were passengers being compensated for suffering the most severe inconvenience.

No, the people enjoying the oasis were employees of the airline. Right in the middle of a cramped gate area with not enough seats, they took care of their own. They made sure their flight attendants and pilots would have would have a good experience even if their passengers did not.

When a company thinks more about itself than its customers, as is clearly the case in our example, the company is internally focused. Interestingly, struggling organizations are likely to become more internally focused than customer focused.

Questions needing answers
Likewise, with all the challenges facing the newspaper industry, how many newspaper organizations are becoming internally focused? How many are spending too much time making things better for themselves while forgetting the subscriber? In the style of comedian Jeff Foxworthy and his “You Might Be A Redneck” routine, I’ve created a list that can help answer these questions.


You might be internally focused if…

…a subscriber looks up your main customer service number and gets a recording that says, right off the bat, “If you know your party’s extension, please dial it now.”

…it has been so long since you called your own customer service number that you don’t know what the recording says.

…you overhear your customer service people saying, “You should have called in by 10:30 this morning to get your paper re-delivered.”

…your supervisors are too busy with internal meetings and email to sit down and coach your low-performing customer service reps.

…you don’t know who your low-performing reps are.

…you don’t keep track of how many subscribers are canceling each day.

…you don’t know the saves rate on these cancellation calls by rep.

…you spend most of your new-hire training time teaching reps how to deal with circulation software instead of how to provide world-class customer service.

…you and your managers and supervisors are too busy with internal meetings to return subscribers’ calls.

Not a laughing matter
While Jeff Foxworthy is going for laughs with his routine, there’s nothing funny about the consequences of a newspaper—or any other business—being internally focused. In an industry experiencing circulation decline and paradigm shift, it has never been more important for newspaper organizations to ask yourselves whether or not you’re customer focused. If the answer is yes, the next step is to get even better at it. If the answer is no, it’s time for a change. Based on my experience with major newspapers across the country, the return on your investment of time, money and human resources in such improvement or change will be substantial.