Throwing away your reputation

A reputation is something acquired, rather than worked toward, over a long period of time. The brand name or ‘equity' associated with that reputation can be worth a fortune. Or, once tainted, it can become your greatest liability. Reputation is a delicate bloom. The public are short on good memories and big on retention of one slip-up. So it begs the question - why would you, without careful thought and assurance of quality control, relinquish your business' reputation into the hands of someone else? Too many businesses today are doing just that.

I've been a subscriber to Financial Mail (FM) longer than I can remember. My week just wasn't complete without it. Courtesy of the relentless inefficiency of the Post Office, I often had to read my FM several days late. But read it I did. This year, I didn't receive a notification for renewal of subscription. It just stopped arriving. After a series of attempts to renew, endless waits to get through to the subscription call centre, unreturned calls and the like, I gave up. Then something interesting happened. After two weeks, I found my addiction to FM waning. I could actually get through the week without it. Business Report, FM's stablemate Business Day and Moneyweb proved more than adequate to keep me thoroughly briefed on business news. So I was weaned, involuntarily and through someone's inefficiency, from a career-long subscription and addiction to FM. It was rendered obsolete courtesy of a badly managed subscription renewal service. About a week later, I received two printed notices in my mailbox inviting me to subscribe to FM.

I haven't used this space to take a gratuitous swipe at the FM. But the experience reminded me afresh of the danger of leaving some aspect of your business in the hands of someone, or people, who seem not to care. Indian, Jewish, Chinese and many other communities have historically used family members in their businesses, because they understand the need for ‘ownership' and an appropriately vested interest. When it's your money going out the door through wasteful phone calls or unnecessarily discarded packaging material, you tend to notice. When it isn't, we're not as inclined to care. It's to this issue that business, with its falling service standards and ‘don't-care' unfocussed employees, needs to pay attention.

I recently had to deal with Capital Alliance on behalf of my elderly godmother. Their call centre employees and indeed even the manager of the call centre didn't understand the scope and authority conferred on me by a general power of attorney, as opposed to a special power of attorney. Nearly fourteen days of frustration culminating in a call to their MD's office, was required to educate them. Their letter of apology indicates that they now understand how a power of attorney functions. But the experience with their call centre was deeply annoying.

Many companies have call centres or switchboard operators who answer the phone as if through a wad of Kleenex. To this day, I wouldn't know the name of several of them if it were up to the operators.

For business, this means giving very careful thought to outsourcing facets of your organization that have a direct impact on your customers, clients or suppliers. The behaviour of the outsourced operation becomes what business legend Jan Carlzon (of SAS airlines fame) dubbed, ‘A moment of truth.' Carlzon emphasized that it doesn't matter how that encounter with your organization occurs, or through whom it occurs - it has implications for your reputation and your customer retention.

The customer is not interested in your infrastructure problems or your outside supplier issues. They're doing business with you when someone answers ‘your' phones. Example: I've just had a quality assurance call from the UK. The incompetence of the British call centre functionary who called me to check on my Hewlett Packard South Africa service centre experience, was mind numbing. She was incapable of working ‘off-script' - a common call centre problem. As a result, any information HP get on my experience, will be useless.

If you're going to outsource - whether through a call centre or not - make sure you remain the brand custodian. It's you who's invested the time, money and energy in building your brand equity and reputation. Why on earth would you want to abdicate responsibility and leave that precious asset in the hands of some socially unsophisticated yobbo who doesn't give a fig about your business? You might as well just throw it away yourself. Think about it.